thirteen

Baby Lizzy was a round and cheerful child of a suitable size for thirteen months. I dandled her on my lap in the late afternoon, her chubby hands grabbing for my glasses as I tried to speak with her mother. Nell, Guy, and the baby lived with Guy’s parents in a modest house on Summer Street.

“What is Lizzy eating these days?” I asked.

A thin and pale Nell shrugged. Her dark hair wasn’t properly done up and she reacted little, even when I placed the baby on her lap. Her hands still rested limply on her legs. She hadn’t changed since I’d seen her on the street.

Nell’s mother-in-law Josephine swooped in and set Lizzy on the floor. She shot me a look of caution I well deserved. The baby could have fallen off her mother’s lap.

“Lizzy’s eating porridge, bread, eggs, a bit of applesauce,” she told me. “She’s a hungry girl.” She left the room again, and I watched that Lizzy didn’t crawl near the hot stove.

“I’d like you to take this tonic,” I said to Nell, handing her a script. “It’s strong in iron.” I knew she needed more than that. I had seen this type of postpartum melancholia before. Some mothers simply outgrew it, but I’d heard one horrific tale from my teacher, Orpha Perkins, about a mother who had methodically suffocated each of her five children, including her tiny newborn, saying God had told her to do so. She was sentenced to live in the insane asylum for the rest of her natural days.

Nell clutched the script and stared at it but didn’t speak. I scooped Lizzy up and carried her in to be with her grandmother, since she clearly wasn’t safe alone with Nell.

“Nell is not in a good way,” I said.

“That she is certainly not. I’m afraid she’ll do harm to Lizzy.” Josephine watched Lizzy crawl to the window and pull herself up to standing.

“I gave her a prescription for a tonic. Is she eating and drinking?”

“Very little. But I watch the baby constantly.”

I thanked Josephine and bade her farewell. After retrieving my satchel from the room where Nell sat, I walked slowly away from the modest house. The sun had warmed enough that a great deal of the remaining snow on the ground was now transformed into rivulets of water running along the edge of the road. The late afternoon light burnished the budding trees with tints of gold. My feelings weren’t so lovely. Nell Gilbert was most certainly ill with melancholia.

I thought it might be time to pay Orpha a visit. She always provided me with good counsel and I hadn’t seen her in some weeks. She’d lived eighty-two years already, and I couldn’t trust she would always be there to visit, at least in the flesh. Orpha now lived with her granddaughter, a dressmaker, and her husband and children over on Orchard Street, only a few blocks distant, so I headed in that direction. Within minutes I sat in the parlor with a cup of hot tea in my hands and a plate of shortbread cookies on the table between us.

“I am right pleased to see you, Rose.” Orpha beamed from her rocking chair. She rocked back and forth with a slow rhythm, her feet on the needle-worked cushion that topped a small stool. A Bible sat on a round table to her right. Her kinky grizzled hair was tied back in a bun. She had once confessed to me, knowing of Friends’ views on equality, that a slave was part of her ancestry. It didn’t concern me, and her facial features didn’t reveal it. I knew some in town would have refused her services if they were aware she harbored even a drop of African blood, no matter that slavery had been abolished decades earlier or that many in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had welcomed escaped slaves.

“I have missed thy company and thy counsel, Orpha.” I sipped my tea.

“I miss working with you too, dear. And how is the work lately? No losses of mother or child, I hope?”

“Not a one this year, for which I am grateful, although I had a difficult shoulder dystocia only last week.” I told of her calling for David’s help and then not needing it. When I mentioned David’s name I blushed, and of course she noticed.

“You are sweet on this doctor. I thought you were looking well. Now I see why.”

“I am quite fond of him.” I smiled. “But I do worry. He took me to meet his parents yesterday. I survived it, but his mother is a true society woman and I’m afraid she disapproves of his spending time with me.” I twisted my hands in my lap.

“If you love him … do you?”

I nodded slowly. This full, warm sensation whenever I thought of him, my respect for him, my genuinely liking him—it couldn’t be anything else.

“And he you?”

“I believe so.”

“Then the two of you will find a way. You know that, Rose, in your heart.” She cleared her throat. “Now, about that birth. Would it be the illegitimate infant I heard word of?” Orpha’s glance was sharp despite her eyes’ watery appearance.

“Indeed. Minnie O’Toole is the name of the unmarried mother. It’s not that part which bothers me, and she and the babe are both healthy.” I told my teacher of my suspicions about William Parry being the father. “And he’s also about to be a father again. His wife is seven months along.”

Orpha nodded. She leaned forward and took a shortbread. “The Parry factory was the first to burn.” She took a bite and rocked some more. “What a curious confluence of events in our town. Sad, true, but curious.”

I agreed. “Minnie’s brother Jotham seems sore aggrieved about the bastard baby, as he put it.”

“I don’t know this man. Jotham is an unusual name.” She pursed her lips. “It’s biblical in origin. Jotham was a king of Judah who ruled long because he followed the Lord steadfastly.”

“This one doesn’t look much like a king. He also said he’s likely to lose work,” I went on. “He delivers supplies to the industries that support the carriage factories. But something about the way he talked seemed passing strange to me. As if he wasn’t sincere.”

Orpha laughed, loud and long. It always surprised me how this frail old woman maintained a hearty guffaw in her.

“My dear Rose, do you expect only sincerity from the human race?” She wiped a tear from the edge of her eye. “Good heavens above, that will be the day.” She snorted and laughed a little longer.

“No!” I protested, but I smiled with her. “Oh, never mind. I have another matter I wanted to discuss.” I described Nell’s melancholia and her inattention to her daughter. “She is truly in a bad way. I gave her an iron tonic, but I know she needs more than that.”

“I have seen this more times than I wished. Have you tried Saint John’s wort?”

“No. Of course, that has an antidepressive effect.” I should have thought of it myself.

“Yes. I recommend combining it with chamomile, and then add in portions of peppermint, licorice, and star anise for soothing.”

“I’ll bring her some at the next opportunity. Now, tell me how thee is getting along.” It had been over a year since Orpha had made the decision to cease attending births or even doing prenatal examinations. I had supported her in her choice. She had grown increasingly wobbly, with her thin legs and hips made stiff from osteoarthritis. The strain of staying up all night accompanying a laboring woman was too much to ask—yet I sorely missed her. She had been generous in making sure her current client list turned to me for their care instead of to another midwife in town, or even the doctor.

“I am well. I have my books.” She motioned to a well-stocked bookcase behind her and the Bible on the table next to her chair. “And my great-grandchildren keep me young.”

With that, two little girls ran into the room, the smaller cradling a doll and the older holding a piece of paper.

“Great-granny, look!” The taller girl, aged about six, pushed the paper into Orpha’s lap. “I wrote a screepipshun for the new mommy. She needs a tonic. Don’t you agree?”

The younger girl held her doll forward. “She just had a baby yesterday and she’s looking right poorly. Isn’t she?”

Orpha took the doll and gave her a careful examination. She handed her back to the girl and told her big sister, “I agree a prescription for a tonic is exactly right for a new mama. Very nice work, dear. Both of you, say hello to Miss Rose, now.”

Each of them curtsied, said their hellos as quickly as possible, and ran out, the doll now relegated to being dragged by one foot.

“Training my replacements, I see?” I finished my tea and set the cup and saucer on the table.

“Why not? Unless you’re planning to have your own daughter take over the business?” She cocked her head.

“My … what? Thee knows full well I’m not yet even married.” With that, David’s gentle face popped unbidden into my mind.

Orpha’s voice grew gentle. “And is it not about time you made that happen, Rose Carroll?” She gazed into my eyes. “You cannot let a painful experience in your distant past govern your future, you know. That would be giving it more power than it deserves.”