4

THE VAN DEN MAAGDENBERGH FARM was twenty-one miles out of town on a dirt road. The old bicycle jerked over each rut and stone. Penny banged down on the springless seat, rubbing her thighs raw. Flying pebbles bounced off her bare legs. On both sides of the road, corn rose six feet in the air, blocking her view of everything but the road before her. To relieve the monotony, she counted the telephone poles. High overhead she made out the black outline of a hawk circling.

When she first set out, she had expected some farmer to come barreling down the road in his pickup, roll down the window, and yell, "Penny Niebeck, what do you think you're doing out here?" Then he would take her back to her mother. Not a soul had come her way. Now that she was sunburnt, parched, her calves aching and her butt sore from the hard seat, she made herself face the fact that no one cared enough to stop her from doing this. It would be entirely up to her to turn around and go groveling back to her mother. But her face still burned from that blow. She tried to imagine what would happen when the news spread that she had gone to work for the Maagdenbergh woman. It would look bad, her taking off and leaving like that. It would make people wonder. Mr. H. would be embarrassed. He would question her mother, maybe even put an end to their dirty episodes.

The sun inched behind the wall of corn, throwing the road into shadow. Penny pedaled faster, following the tracks made by the Maagdenbergh woman's pickup. She wondered how many miles were left and if she would make it before dark. Finally the corn gave way to a field of wheat, still tinged green but shimmering gold in the sun, which hovered above the flat horizon. Her breathing quickened when she saw the mailbox and then the hand-painted sign marking the entrance of the driveway, PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT. ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. For a moment she hesitated, remembering the stories she'd heard. She imagined the Maagdenbergh woman glaring at her down the barrel of a rifle. Mrs. Deal's voice reverberated in her brain. That creature is insane. But it was too late to turn back. Slowly she pedaled forward.

Oak and cottonwood trees arched overhead, turning the long drive into a shadowy place where crows hopped up the branches and flapped their ragged wings. Their caws assaulted her ears. There was no uglier-sounding bird, she thought, imagining her mother turning into a crow, picturing the harsh glint in her eye as the crows followed her progress through the tunnel of trees. When she emerged on the other side, an apple orchard came into view and then an old brown farmhouse. Everything was as it should have been. The barn, the outbuildings, the woodlot, the pasture with the single Holstein cow grazing, the kitchen garden fenced with chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. On the back lawn, white geese nestled in the grass, their feathers blinding in the slanting rays of the sun. As she approached the house, they rushed at her, flailing their clipped wings and hissing, but she kicked at them and yelled shoo, plowing right through their midst with her bicycle until she reached the back porch.

Leaning the bicycle against the outer porch rail, she climbed the steps, legs stiff from the long ride. The door was ajar, swinging idly in the breeze. Standing at the threshold, she was sweating hard, even though the worst heat of the day had ebbed. She rapped on the doorframe. Three loud knocks. "Ma'am?" she called, not knowing how else to address her. She knocked again, her heart pounding. No one came.

"Ma'am!" Could the Maagdenbergh woman be off in the barn? Out in the fields somewhere? Something about the silence was not right. Her stomach clenched when she heard a noise halfway between a cry and a moan. It seemed to come from overhead. Backing away, off the porch and onto the lawn where the geese hissed, she saw that one of the upstairs windows was wide open with ghostly white curtains fluttering loose. Then, as the geese surrounded her, she heard the cry again, the cry that pulled her inside even as her heart raced in panic. Flying into the kitchen, she saw a narrow staircase. The voice called.

Swallowing, Penny climbed the stairs and reached a hallway where all doors except one were closed. Forcing herself forward, she looked inside that room, and then she was the one who cried out, her fist crammed against her mouth. Some unspeakable crime had taken place. On the floor lay a bloody pair of kitchen shears. What lay on the bed was too awful to look at. How could that half-naked body be the same person she had seen that very morning, the same person who had fixed her with that stare? The Maagdenbergh woman's rifle leaned against the wall in the far corner. A voice inside Penny told her that she would never reach for it again.

Beneath the Maagdenbergh woman's body was a sheet of red-and-white-checked oilcloth where dark red blood puddled. Some of the blood had run off to stain the sheets. The Maagdenbergh woman's face was the color of a dead fish. The only thing she had on was a man's faded flannel shirt, not long enough to cover the part of her that was gaping and bleeding. Her unmoving arms cradled something bloody. At the sight of it, Penny started sobbing. Only when that thing began to cry did she realize it was alive. The sound was as feeble as a kitten mewing.

She did not think but only moved forward. Something beyond reason and free will made her reach for it, determined to rescue it from the dying woman's embrace. But before her trembling hands could touch the baby, the Maagdenbergh woman opened her eyes and stared at her. Penny froze, her hands clutching empty air. The woman gasped. Covering her mouth, Penny prayed she would not be sick.

"I'll get a doctor," she breathed.

The woman's face seemed to split in two. She lifted her head from the pillow. "No. No doctor." Then she collapsed back into the bedclothes. Her husband was a doctor, Penny remembered, thinking back to the conversation at the store.

"We need to get help! Do you have a telephone?" Her voice rose and cracked.

The woman's eyes seemed to cloud over, then they fell shut. Doctor, Penny thought, bile rising in her throat. Telephone. Surely the woman must have one. Hadn't she seen those telephone poles along the road? Racing down the stairs, she found it in the kitchen, mounted on the wall. She pulled the crank, then got through to the operator in town.

"Send a message to Dr. Lovell right away. This is Penny Niebeck out at the Maagdenbergh farm. She just had her baby. I think she's going to die."

 

When she returned to the room where the Maagdenbergh woman lay gray-faced and mumbling, Penny noticed for the first time the preparations she had made for this event. An old-fashioned cradle lay at the foot of the bed. On the bedside table there were neatly folded diapers, clean white tea towels, and a yellow baby blanket. A tiny nightgown and booties. She saw the bar of Castile soap the Maagdenbergh woman had bought at Renfew's that morning—soft white soap for washing the baby's delicate skin. The bloody scissors on the floor—she must have used them to cut the baby's cord. They had probably slipped from her hand and fallen. The baby was alive and breathing, so she had known what to do. The room grew dim around Penny, the last of the sun gone.

She found the light switch, then took one of the linen tea towels and placed it between the Maagdenbergh woman's legs to stanch the flow, but the blood saturated the cloth in seconds. The Maagdenbergh woman was silent now, her eyes closed, her body unmoving. Penny drew a deep breath and then reached for the baby, staining the front of her dress with the blood and mucus that coated its skin. It was so tiny, gazing up at her with unfocused eyes. All she could think of was the story of how her grandfather had tried to drown her in the rain barrel when she was a newborn. This baby, too, was a little girl.

Glancing back at the unconscious mother, Penny decided that if she couldn't save the Maagdenbergh woman, she could at least try to save the child. She would wash her. She drew water from the bathroom taps, taking care that it was tepid enough for her to stick her elbow into. With a clean cloth, she gently sponged the baby's skin, holding her carefully, terrified she would slip beneath the water. By the time Dr. Lovell arrived, she had the baby dried, diapered as best she could, and wrapped in the soft yellow blanket.

 

"Penny!" Dr. Lovell exclaimed when she opened the door to him. "Did your mother send you to check on her?" Before she could reply, he nodded to himself in a businesslike fashion and went to wash his hands at the kitchen sink. "I was telling Laurence just the other week that someone better go check on her, her time being so near. You're a good one, Penny."

Dr. Lovell was a close friend of Laurence Hamilton, and like Mr. H., he was thin, balding, and Presbyterian. He was older than Mr. H., though. Penny paid close attention to his age-spotted hands, which were steady and didn't tremble like hers did when he went upstairs with her to look at the Maagdenbergh woman. But when he saw all the blood, he shook his head and muttered, "Damn." He turned to her. "Penny, I want you to go down to the icebox, take out the block of ice, put it in a scrubbed-out washtub, and break it up with an ice pick. Break it so the pieces are the size of gravel. I need you to work as fast as you can."

It all passed in a blur, her hands frantically scouring the galvanized iron washtub she had found in the kitchen, then hacking the ice with the pick and mallet. As she worked, she heard the Maagdenbergh woman come to life and yell at Dr. Lovell. Penny couldn't make out the words—Dr. Lovell must have closed the bedroom door—but her fury was unmistakable. Penny's hand on the ice pick slipped. Bringing the mallet down, she hit her thumb.

Dr. Lovell opened the bedroom door. "Hurry up!" he shouted down the stairs. "We need that ice."

Hoisting the washtub, she struggled up the stairs, then nearly dropped it when she heard the Maagdenbergh woman scream. When she entered the room, she saw her thrash on the bed, her hands lashing out as she tried to push Dr. Lovell away.

"Mrs. Egan," he said sternly. "How can I help you if you behave like that?"

What came from her was a stream of curses so livid, they made the doctor's face go white. He turned to Penny, as though to seek out a witness for what he had to endure. "I need you to hold her down."

Setting the ice tub on the floor, she shook her head.

"Penny!" he snapped. "We don't have any time to waste."

So she sat on the edge of the bed and took her hands, squeezing them nervously. "Shh," she whispered, bracing herself for a stream of abuse. The Maagdenbergh woman clutched her hands with what seemed to be her last strength.

"Jacob," she said softly. "Jacob, please. Don't let him take the baby away." Her hands were so cold, they made Penny shudder. "Be good to me, Jay." Now she wept, her tears far more alarming to Penny than her curses had been. Penny smoothed back the woman's damp hair, her movements clumsy and faltering. She'd never stroked anyone's hair like that before.

"It's all right," Penny told her. "The baby's safe. She's over there in the cradle. That's only Dr. Lovell. He's trying to help you."

Penny glanced at him, then looked away. He was thrusting his hairy arm right inside the Maagdenbergh woman, who shrieked. Then her hands went limp and she lay unmoving, her eyes closed and mouth slack. Penny could still feel the faint beating of the blood inside her wrists. Pulse, she told herself. That was called the pulse.

"She fainted," she said, unable to look at the doctor while he had his hand inside the woman.

"She's still got some placenta in her." He spoke calmly, like a schoolteacher giving a lesson. "The placenta's the sac the baby comes in. If I don't clear away this tissue that's stuck to the inside of her womb, she could die of infection. Of course, she tore herself, too. She'll need stitches. I can't imagine how she cut the cord by herself. Damn lucky she didn't kill herself and the baby with her."

"I heard she used to be a nurse," Penny said after a pause.

He laughed curtly. "Then what she's done is truly unforgivable. A nurse should have known better. Just imagine if you hadn't found her."

After sponging away the excess blood, he applied the broken ice, which Penny helped him wrap in clean oilcloth and cushion with sterile gauze. He kept sending her down to his car to bring him fresh bundles of gauze and cotton padding. Then he gave her a baby bottle, and instructed her to sterilize it and prepare sugar water. "For the first two days, you can give the baby sugar water, sterilized cow's milk after that."

Why was he telling her this, Penny wondered. She wasn't the mother.

"You know how to give a baby a bottle, don't you?" he asked, but when she shook her head, he didn't appear to notice.

It was hard to hold the bottle steady. The baby was so little and helpless, Penny feared she would choke on the sugar water or that something else would go awry. She considered her own misbegotten birth. How had her mother, weakened from labor, been able to save her from the rain barrel? How had she summoned the strength to take her and run away? But she couldn't bear to think about her mother.

 

"I've got another job for you," Dr. Lovell announced a while later, handing her an enamel pan filled with something that looked like raw liver. "The placenta," he informed her. "Go out and dispose of this. You might want to dump it in the chicken coop. Some swear it makes the best chicken feed."

"It's dark out there."

"Dark? The moon's nearly full." He turned Penny around by her shoulders and nudged her in the direction of the door. "Throw it behind some bushes if you have to, but far away from the house, because it'll attract animals."

Trying not to look at what she carried, she hurried out the door. The doctor was right—there was the moon, a hard bony face hovering over the barn. As she made her away across the back yard, she awakened the geese, who closed in around her, honking and hissing, pecking at her shins. Something awful ran up her spine.

"Go away!" She hurled the afterbirth to ward them off, but the afterbirth was what they wanted, what they pounced on and devoured, snapping at each other to get at it. In the moonlight, she saw the blood darken their feathers. She fled back to the house and slammed the door behind herself. For several numb minutes, she stood at the sink and washed her hands over and over.

"Penny!" Dr. Lovell called. "Where are you? Can you find this woman a decent nightgown?"

Penny turned off the tap and dried her hands. "Nightgown?" she echoed as she trudged up the stairs. What could he be thinking? Of course this woman had no decent nightgown.

"This thing she's wearing now," he said as Penny stepped into the bedroom, "is soiled." He pointed at the flannel work shirt. "I want to clean her up, change her into something decent, and get some clean sheets on this bed before I leave." He mopped his bald forehead with a folded handkerchief. The ice was gone from between the Maagdenbergh woman's legs, and in its place was what looked like a huge cotton-wool diaper pinned to a rubber belt. Dr. Lovell told her it was one of those new Kotex sanitary napkins. "More hygienic than old rags."

The Maagdenbergh woman stared at the ceiling, her eyes blank, her mouth and palms open. She lay there like a spent thing, a broken doll flung away, no fight left in her, not even the strength to glare at the doctor.

"Is she going to die now?" Penny couldn't keep herself from bawling, her hands clutching her face.

"Don't cry, honey. Everything's dandy. While you were out of the room, I gave her some ether. Just to calm her down and help her rest."

 

The only nightgown in the house was Penny's, which her mother had hurled into the wicker suitcase along with her other things. She went down to the kitchen to get it, then brought up a basin of warm water.

"We can't move her from the bed with her stitches," the doctor said, so they gave her a sponge bath where she lay. It seemed obscene that she was so naked and exposed. Suddenly Penny understood Dr. Lovell's insistence on the nightgown, even though her nightie was small on the Maagdenbergh woman, tight across the chest. Carefully turning her over in bed, they stripped off the oilcloth and stained sheets, and made up the bed fresh. Penny brought up a bucket of hot water with vinegar and disinfectant, and went at the floor. At least this was something she knew how to do.

When she was finished, Dr. Lovell called her down to the kitchen. "Penny, sit down for a minute. There's something I need you to sign." He handed her a form. "Tomorrow you can show this to Mrs. Egan and tell her this is a signed statement saying that you and I witnessed the birth of a live female infant. Here is today's date. Here's the mother's name and address. Now, I want you to sign at the bottom, under my name." He unscrewed the cap ftom his fountain pen and handed it to her. The silvery pen was cool and smooth in her hand. She summoned her best handwriting as she wrote out her full name—Penelope Maria Niebeck. Except she wasn't used to writing with a fountain pen. She pressed the nib too hard, and the ink clotted and smudged.

"Oh, Dr. Lovell. I'm sorry. I..."

"That's fine, Penny. Now I want you to sign here, too." He opened a black clothbound book. The heading at the top of the page was BIRTHS. Inside there were columns listing the date, the sex of the child, the parents' names and address, the father's profession. "This is my record of all the births I've attended this year," he said. "Now would you please sign here as my witness and attendant?" He spoke kindly, as if they shared some important secret.

When she signed her name, it occurred to her that he must also have another clothbound notebook titled DEATHS. And the statement he had made her sign wasn't true. They had not witnessed a live birth, only what had happened afterward. She wanted to remind him that the Maagdenbergh woman had birthed her baby alone, but who was she to contradict a doctor?

"What you've signed is very important," he said as he screwed the cap back on his fountain pen. "If that woman tries any funny business, she won't get away with it, because there are two witnesses to a live birth. It's all on record now."

"What kind of funny business?"

He fixed her with a rueful smile. "When babies are born on backwater farms, all kinds of things can happen. You're too young to know the half of it. Let me just say that some women will do all kinds of things to hide their bellies from everyone. Then, when the baby's born, they make it disappear."

Penny's stomach lurched. "You think she would try to kill her own baby?" That didn't make sense. The Maagdenbergh woman had cut the cord and made sure the baby was breathing. She had begged Penny not to take the baby away. Upstairs the bedsprings creaked and the Maagdenbergh woman cried out, her voice jumbled and slurred.

"She probably wouldn't do that," the doctor conceded. "On the other hand, she's an eccentric character, don't you think?" He scratched the back of his neck. "But let's move on to more practical matters. Tomorrow you'll want to make her beef bouillon. I see she has some bouillon cubes in her cupboard. At least she had sense when it came to buying provisions. Make her weak tea with plenty of sugar. Tomorrow I'll bring some cow's liver and you can cook that for her. She needs iron to build back her blood."

"I can't stay here." Penny's voice rose in panic. "I thought you would drive me home, Dr. Lovell."

The doctor rose from the table and laid his hand on her shoulder. He let it rest there gently and smiled at her, making her blush. "I'm very proud of you, Penny. That woman's crazy as a coot, but you might have saved her life. She'll be all right now as long as you keep feeding her and changing the napkins. Remember, those are disposable napkins. Don't try to wash them out and reuse them like the kind you get from Sears Roebuck." He stopped short. "Don't look so peaked, dear. You did a wonderful job. The baby would have most likely died, too, if you hadn't found them."

She could not believe she had saved anyone. "I can't stay here."

"Don't worry, Penny. I'll talk to your mother." He spoke with authority, leaving no room for argument. "I'm sure your mother's very proud of you. Mrs. Egan needs to stay in bed for at least two weeks. Do you understand how important that is? Doctor's orders." He smiled in a way that invited her to smile with him. "You'd make a good nurse," he said. "Now, I'm not one to interfere in family decisions, but I think it was a shame your mother took you out of school. If it were up to me, you'd go to high school and then on to nursing school. You have nurse written all over you."

Penny blinked, her throat too tight to speak. High school, nursing school? The house was so quiet, she could almost forget about the woman and baby he had ordered her to take care of.

"Tomorrow or the day after," Dr. Lovell said, "I'll come back and check on her. I need to fill out the birth certificate and have her sign it. She wasn't much good for that today, was she? That woman," he added, his voice going flat, "hasn't done much in the way of making friends here, so if anyone's going to look after her, it has to be you, Penny." He shook his head sadly, then gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "She'll pay you for your troubles, though. I'll see to that. You know that her grandfather had over ten thousand dollars in the bank?"

Before Penny could think what to say, he picked up his black doctor's bag and wished her a good night. Penny listened to his car engine start up, listened to him drive away. Leaving her alone with this stranger and her baby. Responsible for them. She turned on the tap in the kitchen sink. Holding a washcloth under the stream of cold water, she stripped down and scrubbed every inch of her body, scrubbed her legs, grimy from the long bicycle trek. She washed away the sweat under her arms. Wincing at the chilly water, she washed her hard flat chest and told herself she was nothing like the Maagdenbergh woman with her swollen breasts and torn body. She hardly had any hair on her crotch, didn't even bleed down there yet. What happened to the Maagdenbergh woman didn't have anything to do with her—she was completely removed from that whole chain of female suffering. She vowed she would never have a baby, never put herself through that.

Off the kitchen, she found the spare room, which must have been Roy Hanson's when he was the hired man—it still smelled of cigarettes and men's hair pomade. When she turned down the quilt, the sheets looked clean. Opening her suitcase, she looked for her nightgown before remembering she had given it to the Maagdenbergh woman. You're stuck, she told herself, putting on clean underwear to sleep in. Stuck with her. She could just imagine her mother cackling like a crow.

Crawling into the strange bed, she tried to sleep, but the events of the day kept parading through her mind. Nurse written all over you. Rolling over, she pictured herself in a clean white uniform, working in some immaculate city hospital, far away from geese that ate placentas and women who gave birth all alone.