The Midwife's Tale (6 page)

Despite the gaiety that prevailed, Martha hesitated. Now that the birthing had reached a successful conclusion, the questions about Victoria and Martha’s attempt to bring her home were just waiting to be voiced.

Martha felt dizzy, like she was hanging from the blade of an emotional pendulum that kept her swinging back and forth from fear to courage, sorrow to joy, and awe to despair and back again.

“You must be starving. I know I am,” Daniel admitted.

Even though her stomach was empty, the mere thought of food made Martha queasy. “You go ahead. I think I’ll take in some fresh air first.” She stepped outside without bothering to retrieve her cape or her bonnet.

Fall air, chilled by the night, welcomed her as she went directly to the shadows well beyond the ribbons of light pouring from the cabin windows. Driven to find a private place, she hurried around the cabin past the barn and kept going until she reached a copse of trees.

Just in time.

The dam holding back her emotions finally burst. Sobbing, she leaned her shoulder against the trunk of a tree for support. Unable to stem the tears, she stifled her sobs with the back of her hand.

Slowly, the storm ebbed. Sobs became whimpers. The flood of emotions receded, leaving her physically drained and emotionally spent.

Before she worried about facing her friends and neighbors, as well as her family, and telling them the truth about her failed attempt to bring Victoria home, she had to face herself. Honestly. And without pretense.

5

M
artha faced the truth about herself and Victoria’s disappearance. To deny it any longer would only keep her soul festering and her spirit in such turmoil she might never find peace or ease the pain that constantly nibbled at her gut.

Spending the coming weeks and months, possibly years, without ever knowing where Victoria was or how she fared was a difficult reality, but honesty dictated that Martha had to admit that her pride had been skewered as deeply as her heart when she learned Victoria had run off with a theater troupe.

A theater troupe!

Her entire body stiffened, and her throat tightened. The shame was nearly unbearable. Images of drunkards and scoundrels, not to mention the fallen angels who typically made up such troupes, nearly stole her breath away when she thought of her precious, innocent daughter associating with such people.

Could Victoria have chosen anything worse to do? Probably
not. But then, Victoria had been her most rebellious child, locking horns with her mother almost from birth. When she was only a day old, this darling little bundle of joy had slammed her lips shut and willfully, deliberately, held her breath and turned blue to protest being set into her cradle.

The memory raised gooseflesh along the length of Martha’s limbs and made her tremble.

If Grandmother Poore had not been there to force the tip of a spoon between that babe’s lips and pry that little mouth open to draw in air, Victoria would have been buried before experiencing her first full day of life on this earth.

New tears escaped, and Martha brushed them away with a weak smile. Victoria still carried a small scar on her lower lip to testify to the whole affair, and Martha frequently got obedience from the child by simply saying, “Now, where did I put that spoon?”—a clear signal of who was going to be in charge.

A theater troupe!

Shame burned deeper and flamed her cheeks. Victoria could not have hurt her mother more if she had slapped her face and openly denounced the values of God, family, and community that were the cornerstone of Martha’s very existence. Beyond the public scandal, which added yet another layer of shame, the personal tragedy of living, day and night, without knowing her daughter’s fate within that troupe was far and beyond what Martha could endure.

Yet another layer of shame, this one of personal failure, would provide even more fodder for local gossips, and it was realizing the full scope of her situation that nearly sent Martha to her knees.

Martha had earned the respect of most women in her community and claimed friendship with many. Because of the nature of her calling as a midwife, Martha was privy to the most intimate
details of her patients’ lives. There were few family secrets in Trinity today not already guarded behind the mantle of her responsibility, not that folks did not try to wheedle information out of her, but she guarded carefully against even the slightest slip of the tongue.

Other secrets lay hidden in her grandmother’s diary—a diary Martha continued to safeguard to this day, recording in it births, along with the rewards she received and an accounting of the debts owed to her for her services.

With the scandal surrounding Victoria’s disappearance, and with Dr. McMillan’s presence in Trinity, Martha’s very existence as a midwife, despite Adelaide’s delivery tonight, was now at risk, unleashing fears as real as those she held for her daughter. Or surpassing them?

She bowed her head and clenched her hands at her side. “Forgive me, Lord, I am a prideful, selfish woman. I don’t blame Victoria, but I do—”

“Indeed!”

Startled by Aunt Hilda’s voice, Martha swung away from the tree and turned about so fast she almost lost her balance. She grabbed the trunk for support.

The elderly woman helped to steady her by placing a firm hand on her shoulder. “I thought you might have wanted some time alone to pray about the miracle we just witnessed and to thank Him. Sarah always led everyone in prayer following a birth. It’s a tradition you’ve always kept. Till now. I suppose this has something to do with Victoria.”

Mortified, and quite properly rebuked, Martha was grateful for the darkness that hid the hot flush burning her cheeks. Any attempt at pretense was hopeless, especially with Aunt Hilda, who knew Martha almost better than she knew herself. “All my efforts to find Victoria were in vain. She’s gone, and I don’t
know where else to look to find her. And now . . . now I know why,” Martha offered.

Aunt Hilda patted Martha’s shoulder twice before letting her hand drop away. “I’m listening. Of course, I expect it’s a choker of a pill to swallow, what with Victoria gallivanting off on some wild adventure, leaving you to worry and make excuses for her when it isn’t your fault why she ran off or with whom.”

“Of course it’s my fault. I should have been home when that theater troupe stopped overnight in Trinity, instead of being fifty miles away!”

“You were doing God’s work and helping one of His creations arrive safely.”

“I’m supposed to be a mother first,” Martha argued, unleashing the resentment she had long harbored at being forced to choose between her roles as mother and midwife. So many times in the past, her dual roles had merged, making it hard to know where her duty to Victoria ended and her duty to her neighbors began, although she had never voiced her concerns about this to Aunt Hilda before now.

A soft sigh of understanding. “And you’re angry. Victoria has disappointed you.”

Hilda’s words finally ignited the firestorm that had been smoldering for months. “I’m not angry. I’m . . . I’m . . . Yes, I’m angry! I’m very, very angry at Victoria.” Martha gritted her teeth and waved her arms in frustration. Her words continued to tumble out, overwhelming her attempts to restrain them. “How could she do this to me? How could she run off and leave me to worry like this? She knew I’d follow her, yet she kept running, hiding from me, until she finally managed to completely disappear. The good Lord only knows where she got the money she needed to leave,” she whimpered. “I don’t know where she is. I don’t know how she’ll survive, if she’s hungry or cold or sick or—”

“Or doing very well.”

Martha paused to drag in cool air that chilled her lungs and helped extinguish some of the flames of her anger. “She had no right to run off the way she did. None. No excuse whatsoever can justify her leaving a note, a very short note, I might add, propped on top of her pillow, leaving poor James and Lydia frantic with worry.”

“You’re right,” Aunt Hilda murmured. “She should have waited until you came home to tell you herself. In person. Face-to-face.”

“Exactly.” Her feelings vindicated, Martha relaxed her stance, but only for a few heartbeats.

“Then she could have joined up with the theater troupe later.”

“Yes. I mean, no!” she argued, but Aunt Hilda had opened the door to Martha’s deepest disappointments and they tumbled out before Martha could stop them. “I don’t approve of her associating with a . . . a theater troupe! Her place is here, in Trinity, with me, so I can continue to teach her everything Grandmother Poore taught me. One day soon, she’ll be ready to be a watcher, like Melanie and Belinda. They started when they were just a little older than Victoria. Once she’s married, she’ll learn firsthand what childbirth entails. Then, as her children grow older, she’ll have time to learn more and take over my duties. Gradually. Like I did for Grandmother.”

Aunt Hilda took hold of Martha’s hands and pressed them between her own. “That’s your dream, Martha dear. Not Victoria’s, though I agree with you that traveling with a group of no-account actors would be about my last choice for the girl. But it’s not my decision to make. And it’s not yours, either.”

Martha clenched her teeth and briefly closed her eyes. When her heartbeat returned to normal, she swallowed hard. “I have so much I could teach her,” she whispered.

“I know. Sarah felt the very same way when your mama turned her back on learning the skills she’d need to follow in
her
mother’s footsteps.”

“My mother? That’s absurd,” she protested. Orphaned before her fourth birthday when a carriage accident claimed both her parents, she had no real memory of them, only the stories Grandfather and Grandmother Poore had shared while raising Martha and her brother. “Grandmother always told me what a good midwife my mother would have been, had she lived. She told me my mother had a special talent for growing the herbs used—”

Gentle laughter interrupted her earnest protest. “Your mother, Rena, killed every living thing she ever planted. Even weeds knew better than to sprout in her garden. Sarah finally gave up and admitted growing herbs just wasn’t Rena’s gift.”

Refusing to budge an inch, despite her shaky ground, Martha shook her head. “My mother was a wonderful watcher. Everyone says so.”

“True. To a point. Rena watched over the groaning table better than anyone I ever knew. Even walked off grinding pains with those mamas, but you couldn’t get that woman within twenty paces of the birthing stool when those babies were ready to enter the world. Of course, knowing her mama would have taken a hickory branch to her if she dared so much as a frown . . .”

Aunt Hilda paused. “She tried. Your mama really tried, but truth be told now, she never wanted to follow in her mama’s calling. Then again, she did have a special gift of her own. Nobody made a quilt like Rena Fleming. She had a knack for teaching anyone interested how to turn the most sorry pieces of cloth into beautiful quilts. That truly was her gift, and she shared her gift by making cradle quilts. She gave one to your mama to take to every birthing, too.”

Long-treasured stories about the woman who had given Martha life shattered, then reshaped themselves as Hilda’s words resonated in Martha’s mind. If what Aunt Hilda said was true, Martha had lost the long battle to force Victoria to fit into the mold of a family tradition because that tradition simply did not exist, at least not in an unbroken chain, as Martha had always believed.

Like it or not, she had to accept the fact that the midwife tradition would end with her.

The mantle of disappointment was so heavy her shoulders actually slumped. Her eyes filled with tears, but she felt no anger toward Grandmother for stretching and fabricating the truth for all those years. Her intentions had been good, but if Martha had known . . .

Her conscience reminded her there was no room for pretense now, either.

Even if Martha had known the truth about her own mother, she probably would not have done anything differently while raising Victoria. She still would have expected that twenty or thirty years hence, when Martha was too old and feeble to continue her work, Victoria would have been ready to take her place.