I rushed as fast as I could up the hill with two words on my mind. For Mother.
In Corning, New York, everywhere was uphill. And cold. Corning was always cold. In 1878—the winter before I was born—thermometers dipped to twelve below. Corningites liked to call the eleven winters since then “spring.” It was only a good joke when you weren’t freezing to death.
“Maggie!”
At the sound of my little sister Ethel’s voice I stopped and turned. I was a block and a half ahead of her. Behind her paraded the boodle of my brothers and sisters. I refused to wait. Partly because standing still meant frostbite, but mostly because of those two lovely words written in my best script on the first page of my wildflower report tucked safely in between my books. Five miles was a long way to walk uphill. But it was also a long way to be alone with my own gloriously uninterrupted thoughts about my marvelous report with its neatly printed grade of A+ and its detailed description of every single wildflower in the whole of Steuben County.
I didn’t care one red bean about wildflowers, or any flowers for that matter. But luckily I hadn’t yet chosen a subject for my report when Miss Hayes mentioned that it should include a dedication page. And after she did, I immediately chose wildflowers to please my mother. I could have chosen taxes to please my father, but my father was so often pleased.
Being happily occupied with my dedication, I barely noticed the wind biting my ears or the endless frozen slog. I was almost home when my brother Thomas slid in beside me carrying Ethel, now sound asleep on his back, her spit drooling down his neck. I couldn’t believe he was able to catch up to me hauling a load like my little sister.
“What’s up, goop?” he asked.
I didn’t answer his insult, but I did snatch the books from his hands, making it easier for him to carry her, and we trudged the last mile home listening to each other panting in the freezing air. My thoughts dimmed considerably as they turned from my report to my chores, and my toes felt as though they might snap off at any moment.
We picked up our pace at the sight of our chimney smoke. The dogs caught our scent and barked wildly from their pens. Thomas hollered at them to hush, waking Ethel, who pulled her head from his warm back and complained, only to drop it back against him a moment later, solidly asleep.
After another few steps, Thomas and I slowed to a stop and glanced at each other. It was quiet. Too quiet. Where were the little ones, Clio and Henry? Usually they were outside playing at this time, no matter how cold and gray it was. My mother liked her children hearty. She also liked her house clean.
Thomas and I stood in the gloom waiting for Joseph, Mary, Nan, and John to catch up to us. Joseph was the second oldest Higgins; Mary, the first. He and Mary were the living, breathing definition of fortitude and strength. Nan and John came next, born less than a year apart from each other. They were the kindest of us. We called them our heart. Then came Thomas, me, and Ethel. No one knew what to call us.
“What?” Joe asked, his cheeks red from the climb and the cold.
Thomas shrugged. Something seemed wrong. We looked around at one another and then at the house. . . . We all felt it now.
“Let’s go,” Mary whispered.
She took the lead. Thomas and I hung back, as if our birth order made it necessary to allow the older ones to overtake us. Ethel snored against Thomas.
The closer to the cabin we got, the more my ears seemed stuffed with worry. I could no longer hear the wind clicking through the empty elm branches or the scratchy breath fogging from my mouth. When Mary opened our front door, the sound was released, and it rolled over me in a wave: Henry wailing from his crib, Clio whimpering from the floor in a messy diaper, our wet boots hammering across the floorboards to my parent’s bedroom door. And then screaming. My screaming.
“Get her outside,” Mary commanded.
Joseph had already shoved past me on his way to the barn for the horse. He was going for Father at his shop in town. John grabbed hold of me, trying to calm me down, trying to pull me out of my mother’s bedroom. But I wouldn’t listen or stop screaming. That is until Thomas yanked me off my feet, carried me to the front door, and tossed me out into the snow like a bucket of dirty sink water. I hit face first, busting open my lip. Scrambling up out of the wet cold, I threw myself at the door just as he slammed it in my face. The bolt slid shut with a snap.
Ethel hugged me from behind, sobbing. They had put her out as well. I shoved her off me and howled at the door, attacking it with my fists, pounding so hard the boards bounced back at my hands as if they were alive.
Thomas unlatched it and swung it wide, his fury burning so much hotter than my own that it knocked the air right out of me.
“Back off, you relentless little rag!”
I stumbled backward as he slammed the door and bolted it again.
I sniffed in cold snot, and with it, the smell of blood. My school books were scattered around my feet, the pages of my report tumbling away across the snow. I hated wildflowers.
Placing both my hands on the door, I leaned my forehead against the wood, not knowing what to do. Until I remembered the window.
I snatched up the wash bucket and raced around to her window, where I flipped the bucket upside down and . . . stopped.
What did I want so badly to see?
Not what I’d already seen.
My mother. Lying in her bed silent and still, her long braid neatly plaited and resting over her shoulder, looking very much like it had been carefully placed there. The covers pulled up and over her mountain of a stomach. And Mrs. O’Donnell, on her knees next to the bed, praying. People only prayed if someone was dying, or already dead.
I hopped up on the bucket and I saw it again.
“Mother,” I whispered, so lightly the word didn’t fog the glass.
Why wasn’t she coughing? She was always coughing. Why wasn’t she coughing now? Where was the sweat and moaning of labor? The contractions? The blood? The pain?
The only movement in the room was Mrs. O’Donnell’s praying lips, reciting prayers to a god my father said didn’t exist. I raised my fists to shatter the glass into a thousand pieces. To stop her lips. To stop her prayers. But Ethel was standing behind me, clinging to the end of my skirt. And my mother . . . she liked the praying.
I lowered my hands and stared through the glass, willing her to see me. Willing her to live.
Mrs. O’Donnell turned toward the bedroom door. Mary and Nan entered. They were carrying a basin and rags.
No!
I leaped from the barrel, tearing myself from Ethel.
No! No! No!
Were they going to cut the baby from her? But she wasn’t dead. You didn’t cut babies from live mothers, because when you did, they died. I was back at the door. Pounding again. My screeches so loud I didn’t hear the horse. Or their footsteps.
I was plucked from my feet and twirled in the air into his arms.
“Margaret, what a fuss you’re making.”
Father!
I clutched him round his neck, smothering my face in his long red hair. Joseph shouted for John to open the door. I heard the snap of the bolt and the squeak of the hinges, and I was dropped from my father’s arms. He walked in and the door shut behind him.
I slipped to my knees into the snow and leaned heavily against the side of the cabin. Ethel crawled onto my lap, still crying.
“It’s okay,” I soothed. “He will save her.”