“Where your mercy, Lord?” Willa Mae said as she checked on the storm again. Nothing had changed, except we were out of kerosene for the lamp and the cabin was dark. At three in the morning, Willa Mae said I needed help.
“The pains not doing right,” she whispered. “I got to gits Murphy. The storm be settled some, maybe.” A bolt of lightning lit up the sky outside the window.
“Maybe not,” she said as she patted my arm gently, her face as pained as my body. “But I gots to go, ’gardless.”
“Don’t leave me! Pleeeeease, don’t leave me!” I cried. “The pain’s worse!” Knives were carving up my insides. Bricks were smashing into my back. I thought I might just split down the middle, and Willa Mae needed to be here for that. I figured I’d die, and I surely didn’t want to do it alone.
“Please, please, please—”
“I can’t count them babies I delivered, Miz Adie,” Willa Mae said. “They’s so many. We gots to git you to that birthing place in Mountain City. Your little baby be in trouble, child. We needs help!”
I writhed against the blankets as another pain grabbed hold of me.
“Pulls on the sheet-ropes!” Willa Mae said. She placed the loops of the makeshift ropes around my hands. Hours earlier she’d braided strips of sheets, making two long ropes. She tied them to the springs, one under each side of the mattress. Then she pulled them back up to me, one for each hand, with a loop knotted in place to hold onto. When the pains got bad, I pulled on the sheet-ropes with all my might. I pulled hard. I yanked the ropes like they were the pain and I had it; it didn’t have me. I pulled and yanked and hollered till the pains eased and I could rest my head on the pillow again and wait for the next one. Willa Mae wrapped herself up in her shawl and stole away into what was left of the storm. I clutched the clock. When the lightning lit up the room, I could make out the time.
At four a.m., I heard a truck pull up and the door to the cabin open. Footsteps poured into the kitchen, some heavier than others. I was too weak to look up and see who they belonged to. Their voices overlapped one another, Murphy’s, Willa Mae’s, Miz Bailey’s, and a man’s voice I wasn’t familiar with.
“Adie,” Willa Mae said, “we’s here. I gots Murphy. And them fine Bailey folks be here too. You gwine be fine now.” Murphy and Mr. Bailey hoisted me and the wet pile of sheets that surrounded me into the back of the truck bed and placed me on the quilts Miz Bailey laid in place. They helped Willa Mae climb up next and waited until she was settled in beside me. Murphy climbed behind the wheel, where the Baileys sat waiting, and headed down the side of the road. He drove through the kudzu and vines, knocking holes in the foliage and leaving more twisted and broken branches hanging by the wayside. I guess storms hadn’t knocked all them scratchy vines down after all, but trucks traveling along the sides of the mud road after rainstorms had made them impossible to drive on.
“Willa Mae,” I screamed. “I’m hurting so bad!”
“Poor child,” she said and stroked my forehead. “Keeps doing that breathing.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled the blankets around us as best she could to keep some of the rain out.
“I’m gwine keeps telling you more that story. I knows it by heart,” she said. “You hangs on!” The truck lurched hard to the right and thumped onto the gravel road.
“We gwine make it—” Willa Mae crooned.
• • •
• • •
They took me to the hospital in Mountain City. The sign out front said Carolwood County Hospital, but it was just a big house sitting on top of a steep embankment. It had a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains that was postcard pretty. Murphy said it was built by one of the richest families around these parts as a summer retreat. They called it Carolwood after their only daughter. Miss Carol left it to the county when she died. Willa Mae said the doctor who ran the hospital was a descendent of Miss Carol’s and lived in a home built behind the original house with a passageway connecting the two. I can’t remember his name because I was screaming too loud, but he said my baby was coming out backwards and that was the reason I was having so much trouble.
“Take her into delivery,” he yelled, and the nurse and the orderly that came out to the truck to get me did just that.
That doctor was a magician. He pressed around on my stomach for a time and said, “There; baby’s turned. Won’t be long, now.” At the time, those were the sweetest words I’d ever heard for my entire life.
“Good thing you had Willa Mae Satterfield with you, young lady,” he said. “Best granny midwife we ever had. Been delivering babies in these mountains before I was born.”
“And I delivers you when you born,” Willa Mae said. “Don’t forgets that.” She edged close to the side of the table next to me.
“Wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t,” the doctor said. The nurse placed each of my feet in the metal stirrups and belted them in place. She strung a sheet across my tummy. Willa Mae flexed my knees and pressed them gently wide apart.
“Brings your chin down your chest, child,” she said. “And hunch your back and keeps it round as you can. Grabs hold your legs.” She placed my fingers behind my knees.
“That’s good! You do’s that real good, child,” she whispered. Willa Mae’s face inched close to mine. Her hands were cool as well water, and her crooning was a balm laid on my suffering like a magic salve.
“Now hold tight and when you feels likes you gots to push, do it hard as you can. I’m gwine count to ten. Keeps pushing whole time I’m counting. This be over soon.”
“Ohhhh, it hurts baaaad,” I said but tried my best to cooperate.
“Poor baby. Mercy Lord!” Willa Mae said, and her eyes rose to the ceiling. “Where your mercy?” I hung on to the backs of my knees and pushed like Willa Mae said to all the while she counted.
“That’s real good,” she said.
“Breathe deep through your mouth,” the nurse said. “And stop fighting it. You’re making it harder on yourself!”
“Leave this poor child be,” Willa Mae said. She stared at the nurse, her eyes black and angry. “She be doing best she can!” The next pain reached up between my legs and sliced like a razor. My belly pushed down hard against it without any help from me. I was too weak to help it along. Willa Mae wrapped her arms about my shoulders.
“Just leans on me,” she said, “and we just push hard as we can.” The doctor was on a little stool at the end of the table.
“One more good push, young lady,” he said.
“We doing it,” Willa Mae said. I pressed against her, grabbed my knees, let out a scream to scare Geronimo, and pushed with all my might.
“Here’s the head,” the doctor said. “Hold it! Don’t push! Pant! Pant!”
“Wheeew. Wheeew. Wheeew,” I blew out my mouth.
“Here’s the shoulder,” the doctor said.
“Am I having the baby?” I yelled. “Am I?”
“Chile, your baby be here!” Willa Mae said. “You gots a fine baby girl.”
I pulled myself up on my elbows. The doctor and the nurse had the baby down between my legs, which were still strapped to the metal stirrups. I leaned forward far as I could to get a peek. They used a little rubber bulb and sucked at her nose. She let out a puny cry. Her skin was drenched in some kind of sticky flour, but beneath it, her skin was gray-blue. The doctor whisked her away.
“Oh, let me see her!”
“She’s having trouble breathing,” the nurse said. “You can see her later, if she makes it.” She pressed hard on my belly with her fist.
“Aaaaaahhhh!” I sure wasn’t expecting that, and it hurt bad.
“What’d you do that for?” I said. “I just had a baby from there!”
“We got to get the afterbirth out.” She kneaded my belly like she was punching down bread dough. “Don’t give me any trouble now,” she said crossly, and Willa Mae was no longer there to comfort me. She’d gone to get Verna and Buck.
“I want to see the baby,” I said.
“Don’t get your hopes up. That way, you won’t be disappointed,” she said and wheeled me to a little room down the hall and gave me some orange juice. Thankfully, she left me alone for a spell. When she came back, she said the baby weighed just over five pounds and her lungs weren’t fully developed.
“Be better you don’t see her,” she said. “She probably won’t make it.” I started to cry.
“Sometimes it’s for the best,” she said and rolled down the headboard and turned off the light.
“You’ve got plenty of years to have babies when you’re older and can handle it.” She showed me the call button and left me be. When the shift changed, I snuck out of the room and found the nursery where they kept the babies, but my baby wasn’t there! I started to panic and wandered down another corridor. I found her there. She was in a little room all by herself. She was the sweetest thing, like one of Mama’s little pickled cherries! Her skin was no longer blue; it was a soft pink, but it was still a bit wrinkled. They had her in a special bed with round holes cut through the sides. I reached through one of the openings. Her fingers magically curled around mine.
“Mama’s here, baby. Don’t be scared,” I whispered. “It won’t ever be for the best if you don’t stay with us, no matter what that nasty old nurse says.” The baby’s eyes were closed, but she stretched her little legs and arms all the while I talked to her. “If she comes in tomorrow, just don’t listen to her, okay?”
“Listen to who?” Another nurse was at the door to the nursery. “You’re not supposed to be in here. The incubator units are off limits,” she said.
“I just wanted to see my baby. Make sure she’s all right,” I said.
“You need to get back in your bed. We’ll let you know if her condition changes.”
“Grace,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Her name. It’s Grace,” I said. “Grace Annie.”
“Go on back to your room. We’ll let you know if Grace Annie—”
“Just Grace,” I said. “The Annie part’s her middle name.”
“All right…just Grace,” she said. “I’ll put that right here on this little placard over her bed. Okay?” I leaned around to see the card she pointed to. It was white and had a pink angel etched on the front that was holding a banner with a long blank line.
“Now, off your feet and back to your bed.” She pointed to a room down the hall. It wasn’t even the right one.
I stood my ground and stared at Grace through her see-through bed. I didn’t want to leave her. I shouldn’t have to. She’d been with me all these months. She needed me now more than ever. Didn’t these hospital folks know that? Didn’t they realize a mama should sit next to her little baby at a time like this? Stay by her side and hum every lullaby she ever learned? And if that baby lived, she’d remember deep down in her baby soul that her mama loved her right from the start. And if she died, she’d know her mama never ever wanted her to, and knowing that might be enough to help her hang on, so she wouldn’t.
I didn’t budge. The nurse cocked her head sideways and slowly folded her arms across her chest. She twisted her lips out of shape, lowered her chin, and fired her eyes at me like darts. I narrowed mine, pursed my lips, and returned the same, but I could feel the tears coming. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
“I’m a grown-up,” I said. “So I’ll be back,” I added and marched to my room. I made it as far as the edge of the bed they’d assigned me before I broke down. I knew what was best for my baby! These people—all that schooling—and they didn’t know anything! Grace needed me as much as she needed that incubator. And I needed all the prayers I could muster. I dropped to my knees.
Pleasegodpleasegodpleasegodpleasegod…