Sarah Ridge
Running Waters
October 1829
L
ess time passed between birthing pains and rooted me to the bed. Behind me, Quatie leaned my body forward. I breathed through the contraction, trying to distract myself by looking out the window. This afternoon’s storm melted into a foggy night. This weather would delay John’s arrival even more.
Quatie broke the tempo of raindrops tapping tree leaves outside. “Have you eaten speckled trout in the last few months? If you did, this baby will be covered in freckles and birthmarks.” She intended a distraction to help me breathe. I laughed, exhaling all the air held in my lungs.
I said, “Then, she’ll look like me.”
Quatie said, “Was your mother fond of fish?” Then she fixed her eyebrows in pretend sternness. “Have you eaten black walnuts? Tell me. I must know.”
“Is that bad?” I asked.
“Only that your son will have an enormous nose.”
Mother Susannah entered the bedroom and spoke with her pipe wedged between her teeth. “Let’s call this baby down,” she said. Susannah brought with her a basin of steaming water, cloth, and the baby basket. Sheathed in leather across her chest rested her familiar blade.
She’d called many a baby down, chanting prayers in each of the four directions. East and west to bring a little boy.
As she moved toward the northern corner, Honey entered and interrupted Mother Susannah’s smoky chants. “Might as well just stay there. That osdi is going to be a baby girl. Sarah been eatin’ sweets for weeks.”
Quatie asked Honey, “Has Sarah eaten rabbit stew? Surely, even white women know what that means.”
Honey tilted her head, confused by Quatie’s question.
Quatie said, “If Sarah has eaten rabbit stew, this baby will sleep with its eyes open. It’s how Sleeping Rabbit earned his name.”
Mother Susannah came to my bedside. She held my hand through another pain, comforting me with humming and whispers. If Major Ridge had a gift of calming horses with his voice, Mother Susannah did the same for expectant mothers. She put her hand on my constricting belly and whispered to the child underneath. “Four mothers await you, little one, with gifts of loom or blow gun, whichever you choose.”
Honey said, “Where are the papas? Walking Stick should be back with them by now.”
Quatie said, “Fathers don’t bring babies into the world.” She turned to me and said, “That nightingale in the oak is telling us the storm has passed. Can you hear it?”
Mother Susannah lowered my back when the pain subsided and took the cloth from my forehead. She doused it in the water basin and wiped my face. Afterward, she placed it on the back of my neck. I exhaled with the momentary calm its coolness brought. I rested my head on Quatie’s chest, closed my eyes, and breathed. “It is late in the season for them. It’s singing in the rain.”
Honey came to my bedside in a shuffle of skirts. Quatie brushed my hair and began braiding it.
Mother Susannah said, “Birds know much we do not.” Quatie repeated the message in English.
A little time passed before another pain pulsed, tightening the skin across my belly. After Mother Susannah raised the quilt to check on the child, she gave a busy and nervous Honey something to do. “Go to the kitchen and prepare Sarah some honey water. Make plenty. Steep some yarrow and shepherd’s purse from my bag.”
Honey nodded, and, for once, closed the door behind her.
Quatie asked, “What is the tea for?”
My incoming pain stopped Mother Susannah from explaining. Behind me, Quatie’s chest raised and lowered. She said, “Breathe with me.” The quiet whirl of her hair brushed across my shoulder. I tried to follow her lead. Instead, with the gripping pressure, I clenched my teeth, squinted my eyes, and held tight to the air in my lungs.
Quatie said, “It doesn’t serve you or the child to tense.”
I moaned and rolled to my side, holding my belly. Mother Susannah kneaded her fists into my lower back, pushing against the tense and tired muscles. Like unraveling an old knot, it was difficult to find purchase enough to set it free. I asked, “Where is he?”
Quatie said, “The child will not wait for its father. No matter. I wouldn’t let him near you now for all the world. Men have no business with babies after seeding the field.”
I said, “With Clarinda and Rollin, John was here.”
Mother Susannah gently rolled me to my back and pushed my knees apart. Her warm hands touched me. When she rose, she folded the quilt covering me over my thighs, and her face told me more than her words. She said, “It’s nearly time.”
Quatie responded in Cherokee, but whatever she said made Mother Susannah’s face fall.
Speaking of the blood scared me more than thinking about it. But I knew this pain was more complicated than other birthing pains, with sensations more like tearing, rather than only tautness. Everyone stopped speaking when I said, “Save the child.”
Mother Susannah nodded, understanding my request in English. But such a choice brought a thorny stillness into the room.
Quatie moved from behind me. In her absence, I prayed.
Men find their faith with sight, ever altering like moonset’s arch toward sunrise. He praises God for fortunate rain but curses the same God for sending a sun-scorched drought, baring a single breath between. Women’s sorrow doesn’t exchange blessing for curse. Her faith doesn’t shine blue light like the transient moon—but pulses from unseen rays under her skin. A mother’s faith glows through anticipating and enduring the unforeseen, recognizing whatever comes as God’s will.
The nightingale’s song called, with swelling breast under brown feathers.
Honey returned with two cups. After drinking both, I shook. The instinct to push told me to bear down, but after laboring all day, I had little power to do so. My muddled vision smudged dark like the snuff of candle smoke.
Quatie’s troubled face blurred. I heard Honey beg to delay. Mother Susannah’s hand touched my forehead, across my taut belly, and between my legs. When I opened my eyes, Susannah raised a red hand in front of her face.
The nightingale warbled.
Mother Susannah called my name and commanded, “Wake. Push.”
Mother’s blessing, not Eve’s curse.
The pulse inside me. Bearing down.
The nightingale whistled.
With a gasp, I was no longer in any pain. With an unblemished sight, I saw Jesus’ mother, Mary. She knelt on a stone floor before an open window, hands clasped in prayer. She was bound to the earth by streams of moonlight. We both heard the resonant voices of angels, speaking with the same dissonance to follow the ringing of bells.
Mary put her hand on her swelling womb. When she conceived the Son of God, she could not see Him, even though she sensed His presence, one ordained by God’s will. At first, only the stretch of muscle or push of bone let her know of Him. In time and without warning, Jesus swirled in her womb. His effortless touch reassured her He was alive.
Nightingale’s bottomless song filled my ears.
Blind to distant sounds. Underwater. Holding my breath.
Minutes seemed like hours. Tightening. Constricting. Bearing down. Baptized with blood.
When I opened my eyes, I floated, a pulsing silver cord attaching my spirit to my body.
I smelled animal musk and dry hay from an unfamiliar barn. Joseph comforted Mary and held her hand as she felt for the Son she couldn’t yet see. Jesus’ earthly body filled Mary to bursting, wretched in painful sorrow, believing her heart enough to hold Him. God trusted Mary with a gift only known to her. With angelic midwives, Mary gave birth to the Son of God. And He breathed. Even in infancy, He cried for the sins of the world.
Tugged. A suck of air. Awake. A child’s cry.
The knife. Separation. Mother Susannah said, “Daughter.” The child was alive. Then, I felt the flow of rivers in bright red blood.
The nightingale’s warble turned into squawks and shrieks.
John’s scent overwhelmed me. He stopped in the doorway and then rushed to my side. He lifted my body, cradling the weight of my head on his arm. He begged his mother. Then, I couldn’t feel his warmth or hear his voice. I floated above. His lips said, “Do something!” Mother Susannah didn’t answer, couldn’t.
A stranger, a woman dressed in yellow calico, entered with a lit candle shining up on her face. Loose hair hid her sunken cheeks. She raised the candle toward my spirit. When no one else had seen me, she did. She set her light beside the stained bedside and touched John’s shoulder. He lifted my body, bracing my back against his chest.
Without words, the stranger moved Quatie’s and Mother Susannah’s hands to hold my ankles and feet tight. Her hand entered my womb and pulled the bloody cord from me. Her other hand pressed my womb from the outside, palpating.
The silver cord retracted. The softest touch was unbearable. When she tugged, my senses returned. I screamed in agony.
My heavy body shuttered once more and stilled. I floated again, with no silver cord attaching soul to body. Calm.
John’s voice caught, and he rocked me closer to him. Indigo light emanated from his forehead, between his eyes, and draped like robe’s sleeves over his arms. Faint pulses of teal, the color of Quatie’s peacocks, rose from the crown of my red hair. Each hue absorbed into his skin, making his color deeper, richer.
John tilted my limp head to his. His voice shook, stopped, and started again, interrupted by weeping breaths. “I will not—give your heart back—I cannot. It’s too late.” I understood his thoughts without need for speech.
Mother Susannah reached bloody hands behind her and slid down the wall to a waiting chair. Quatie reached for her hand, a tear falling down her face.
There was no need for tears.
John said, “Do you remember when you held my heart in your hands? The night we went to water?”
I could never forget it.
“The Great Spirit came to us through the river. He took your heart and put it inside me, took my own and placed it in you.”
We knew He did so even though we couldn’t see the work of his hands.
“Since then, I’ve heard it beat—your faith in my chest. I know its rhythms by heart as you know mine. We are only half ourselves without the other.”
He shook my body and then, with sudden serenity, accepted what was.
“I’ll tell our children how much you loved them each day. You held our lives dearer with every breath. I will hold them close so they can feel your heart beating against their cheeks.”
With each of his promises, his strength, the purple light, seeped from him and dissipated. The turquoise light emanating from my spirit faded into blue ether.
My spirit floated toward the open window when the woman raised her hand. The yellow of her dress had turned russet orange with my blood. Her black hair became a sunflower’s collection of seeds. White light emanated from her eyes, as if she held her face to an invisible sun.
I sent my thoughts toward her, asking her to allow me to stay. I said, “Mary’s faith manifested in her arms, nursed with love, swaddled in hope, for the babe she’d loved but never seen. Through faith alone, she was reborn.”
The woman, a sunflower, nodded her head with understanding. She opened the door and gathered my baby from Honey. No others moved in the room when she exposed my breast and guided the baby to latch.
At first, John wouldn’t release my body, wouldn’t allow her to touch me. When he recognized her intent, he relaxed his arms.
With the familiar tug, I opened my earthly eyes. The child suckled and stared at me with golden hues under their infant blue. Tufts of black hair covered her pale white head.
“I’m right here,” I said.
Honey sobbed. Mother Susannah fell from the chair to her knees. Quatie’s hands dropped from her mouth. John’s eyes, full of tears, held us both, mother and child. And the beautiful sunflower angel stood over us, smiling.
I awoke to morning sunshine. From the chair next to me, John held our daughter’s hand above the blanketed swaddle resting on his forearms. He stood, gently laid the bundle in my arms, and kissed my forehead. He was never more than an arm’s reach away.
During the night, Quatie must have returned home. Honey changed the bed and helped me change into a clean shift. Mother Susannah forced me to drink her tea and honey. And the sunflower angel, that I didn’t know was real, stood as sentry and stared out the window.
We admired the morning’s grace, a sky’s array of gold and rose, like quartz infused with rose-clouding crystal. While my daughter suckled, the tender soreness in my womb returned. Her healing saved my life. The holy ache was a reminder of the miracle I’d been granted. With my sacrifice of blood, our daughter brought me visions of Heaven. That quiet morning, we named her Susan—the lily of the valley.
In Cornwall, Reverend Daggett once called the flower’s white blossoms “Eve’s tears,” shed when God banished her from Paradise in sinful shame. Reverend Sam called the same flower “Mary’s tears,” cried under Jesus’ cross. Susan, too, was manifested by faith.
The nightingale no longer hovered outside the window. The Greeks believed the bird sang of sorrow: a piece of hidden music sung by a broken-hearted woman transformed into a bird.1 Later poets imagined the nightingale’s song accompanied the lover’s waltz, a tune for those who’d rather tryst among the sage, dreading their inevitable separation when the cock announced the morn.2 My mother believed the ladybird cried, searching helplessly for a mate to care for her.
But Mother was wrong. They all were. The nightingale’s song comes from the male, trilling until dawn, calling his love down in the hours before day, hoping they’ll reunite under his protecting wing, safely on the ground.