Maude (14 page)

I asked George several times to fix up the outhouse.
He always agreed to do the work, but he never got
around to it. I borrowed Maggie’s little wagon again
and walked into town to buy a bucket of paint, a paint
brush, some thinner, and a bag of lime. The
storekeeper loaded it into the wagon because the bag
was too heavy for me to lift, so when I got started, I
used a bucket to scoop the lime out of the bag and
dump it into the hole a scoop at a time. I wouldn’t
allow Clara to help me on a project that was clearly not
woman’s work. I started by dumping the lime into the
pit. It took a while to get the work done. That took care
of the stink.

I found a hammer in the barn. Whatever nails
were beginning to pop out of their place, I pounded
back in, straightening and fastening down some of the
boards that had come loose at the bottom and gone
crooked. I used a scrub brush to clean the walls inside
and out, and once they were dry, I painted both sides
in white. The difference was really satisfying.

Again, George made no comment, except to ask
how much it cost. When I told him, he began whistling
his non-tune and rubbing his chin, but he didn’t object.

It was the same when it came to painting and
papering the living room. He promised he would do it
the first chance he got, but after waiting several weeks,
I ran out of patience and did it myself. Again, I didn’t
ask Clara to help. That would mean her being in the
house with Mom Foley all day, and I didn’t want to
put her through that. It was a lot harder to work alone,
but since there was boarding on the bottom half of the
walls, the paper strips weren’t so long that I couldn’t
handle them.

I’d planned to get George to run a water pipe and
set up a pump in the kitchen like Helen’s house, but
after asking him over and over, I just gave up
completely on that idea. I would ask him, and he would
say that he’d think about it, but he made no move to
start the job. The longer he put it off, the more resentful
I got. After a while I suggested he hire someone to do
the work.

I can’t spend money for that.”
“You don’t want to do it, and I can’t do
plumbing. How else are we going to get it done?”
“My mother’s been getting water out of the well
without a pump for forty years. It’s right at the end of
the back porch. If a well and a bucket are good enough
for her, it’s good enough for you.” His mother stood
listening and smiled to herself.
I threw up my hands in surrender. I hadn’t
brought enough money of my own to the marriage to
pay for anything myself. I would have to make do with
the well and the bucket, at least for the time being, but
I began to think that maybe I could do something else
to have more of my own money.
I told Clara I would like to do some sewing for
other people, and she put out the word. In a few days,
I had work. I knew George would find out and
wondered what he would say. I was afraid he either
wouldn’t like his wife working for other women, or
that he might take the money from me, which as my
husband, he had the legal right to do.
When we got into bed a few nights later, he
asked me, “Doug Graham said that Sarah told him you
were doing some sewing for some of your friends at
the church. Is that right?”
“Yes, it is George. Do you mind?”
“Sure, it’ll help pay for all these improvements
you’re making around here.”
I kept my money in a little bag with a drawstring
top in the back of the drawer with my underwear.
George never mentioned it. It didn’t amount to a lot,
but it gave me a good feeling to have it.

It was the second week in November. I’d
overslept and jumped out of bed, thinking that Lulu
would be late to school. I dressed in a hurry, but when
I went to Lulu’s room, the bed was made and Lulu was
gone. Downstairs, I could hear her chattering away.
She must be eating breakfast with George and his
mother
.

I was glad Lulu was up, no matter who had
wakened her. I walked into the kitchen. George was
sopping up the black-eyed gravy with a thick slab of
bread. He lifted the bread out of the dish and the grease
made a string as it slid back down into the bowl. I
leaned over and threw up all over the kitchen floor.

I straightened up and leaned back against the
doorframe, so weak I could hardly stand. George
looked at me wide-eyed. “What’s the matter with
you?” he said.

His mother actually cackled. “It’s about time,”
she said.
Lulu’s eyes grew wide. “What’s the matter,
Mommy? Are you sick with the flu or something?”
I stood there, my eyes squinched shut, my throat
squeezed so tight I could hardly get a breath, and my
mouth filling with water that I couldn’t seem to
swallow. It was a familiar feeling, and I realized what
it was right away.
“I’m all right, baby, just a little sick to my
stomach, is all.”
George’s mother laughed. George and Lulu
looked at her in surprise, and she said, “Your mother’s
going to have a baby, Lulu.”
I was angry at the old woman for saying it so
blunt. I wouldn’t have put it out like that. I’d have
waited until my stomach grew, and then would have
set Lulu down for a mother-daughter talk and broke
the news gently. Mom Foley had no such refinement
in her.
Lulu’s eyes opened even wider and her jaw
dropped open. “A baby? When are you going to have
a baby?”
Again, I didn’t get to answer first, Mom Foley
butted right in. “I’d say about May or June.”
I did a little math in my head and nodded in
agreement. I hoped the news wouldn’t upset Lulu, but
I needn’t have worried. Lulu jumped up from her seat
and grabbed me in a bear-hug. “Have a little girl,
Mommy, so I can have a little sister.”
Mom Foley got up and walked up to me. She put
her own face just a few inches from mine and gazed
into my eyes. Then she stuck out her hand and placed
it with her fingers spread apart on my stomach, never
flinching in her stare, “She’s going to have a boy, Lulu,
and we’re going to see to it that it’s a big, healthy one,
aren’t we?”
My throat began relaxing so I was able to
swallow the water that had filled my mouth and I stood
straight. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean up this mess.”
With her hand still pressed against my stomach,
the old woman smiled and said, “You go upstairs and
lay down. I’ll clean it up.”
George, Lulu, and I were all speechless. I
thought that maybe the world would stop turning, but
I was still shaky and glad of the opportunity to rest. I
went back upstairs and dozed for another hour. I heard
the front door slam behind Lulu as she left for school.
I thought maybe George would come upstairs to talk
to me before he left, but I heard his horse trotting
around the house as he rode for town.
A stubbornness took hold of me. I waited for
George to talk about the baby, but he didn’t mention it,
and I wasn’t about to bring up the subject with him. I
didn’t know if he was happy or not. I was sick every
morning for the next three weeks, but had learned
when to expect it and always made it to one basin or
another before it came over me.
I was almost down to the kitchen one morning
when I heard George’s mother say to him, “You leave
her alone at night, George. You’re made just like your
father and she doesn’t need that going on with her
carrying a baby.”
George didn’t answer. I hoped he would listen to
his mother. He hadn’t reached for me since that
morning I’d thrown up in the kitchen. I wouldn’t mind
a seven or eight month rest from the painful relations.
As much as I longed for him to kiss me or even hold
my hand in some sort of tenderness, I hadn’t missed
his nighttime attentions at all in the last few weeks.
What I did miss, what I pined for, was affection.
James had held my hand when we walked together,
stopped to kiss my neck when he passed behind my
chair, sometimes just wrapped his arms around me and
gently held me next to him. I would relax my body
against his and feel that I understood the true bond of
marriage. George never touched me for anything but
the relations. Not anything. It seemed to me that he
went out of his way to keep from touching me.

I put on a lot of weight and couldn’t do much
without getting tired. I gave up work on any
restorations to the house, fearing that lifting things and
dragging the wagon back from town filled with
supplies might be too much for me. I knew it was
useless to ask George to do anything to help. I went to
church every Sunday until my stomach was too big
and might be an embarrassment.

I’d bedded my garden for spring before the
winter set in, and I looked forward to working it after
the last frost. Lulu would have to help me. I talked to
her about it, and she was excited about it.

Everything seemed to make Lulu happy those
days. She loved her teacher, loved her new friends,
loved the idea of helping with the garden and
especially loved the idea of the baby. She and I sat
sewing a layette for him and little coverlets for the
cradle in the few daylight hours left after she got home
from school. I remembered how I loved sewing with
my mother, and now, I loved sewing with Lulu.

Lulu and I both shared our relief when winter
passed and the days began growing longer so we could
have more light to work.

I’d given up asking George to do anything at all
around the house, but realized that if I worked it right,
there was a way to get things done. At the kitchen table
one morning in April I said to Lulu, “I’ll have to ask
George to get your cradle down from the attic so we
can clean it up.”

Lulu was happy at the prospect, but she’d also
figured out that George wouldn’t ever get around to
doing the small chore. “I’ll get it down after school,
Mommy,” she said. “We can get it cleaned up and
ready. It’ll be fun.”

George walked in just then. His mother fastened
her glare on him. “Get upstairs to the attic and bring
down that cradle, George.”

“I’ll get it later, Ma, I’m running a little late right
now.”
She strode over to him and stuck her face up to
his, “Get it right now,” she hissed. He jerked his head
back away from her. His eyes grew wide. “All right,
Ma, I’ll get it.”
He went out of the room. Lulu looked down at
the table in shock. She’d never seen the grandmother
like that. I smiled to myself.
There’s more than one
way to skin a cat around here.
George’s mother didn’t miss my reaction, and for
the first time, she smiled at me. “You just don’t know
how to handle a man,” she said, then went back to her
work.
George was back in the kitchen in a few minutes,
cobwebs hanging from his head. It was all I could do
to keep from laughing at him. He started to put the
cradle in the corner.
His mother glowered at him, “Put it out on the
porch so we can clean it up,” she barked. He did as he
was told, then went straight out to the barn to get his
horse and leave for town.

June second, a Wednesday, in 1915, just before dawn,
the first pain woke me. It wasn’t an easy pain, like the
first ones I had when Lulu was coming, but sharp and
strong. I gritted my teeth until it passed and then poked
George in the back with my elbow. It took
considerable pokes to wake him, but he finally sat up.
“What is it?” he asked, as if it had never come to him
that it was time for his son to be born.

I took a deep breath. “It’s time, the baby’s
coming. Go fetch the doctor.”
He rubbed his chin. “Doctor? Why would I get
the doctor? Is there something wrong?”
“George, I told you, the baby’s coming.”
“My mother’s here. She’ll take care of it.”
“Your mother?”
“She can do it. There’s no need to pay a doctor
for something when my mother can do it just as well
as he can.”
I could see that there was no use talking to him.
Maybe his mother could do it. A lot of women had
babies with a midwife instead of a doctor. “All right,
let her sleep until the pains are closer.”
George lay down and went back to sleep right
off. I shook his shoulder. “I need for you to get my
things. I need the pads to keep the bed clean and the
linens and such for the birthing.” He answered me with
a snore.
I was fed up with his sloth. I thought about
hitting him with the flower vase that I kept on my
bedside table, but instead got up and gathered what I
needed myself. I got the bed ready for the birth and lay
back down. Another wave of pain hit me about a halfhour after the first. I rode it out, and after a minute it
eased up. When the next one came, it was a little
sooner and a little harder than the first two. The sun
was coming up, and the rooster crowed. George was
sound asleep. I prodded him again with my elbow.
He finally woke enough to look at me. “What?”
he asked.
“Go tell your mother it’s time, George.” Just as
he stood to pull on the trousers he’d dropped in the
floor the night before, his mother opened the door and
came in. She was carrying a bundle of rolled up cloths
in one hand. She laid them on the bed and gave an
order to her son. “Get out. See to it that Lulu eats and
goes to school. We don’t need her here in the house
while this baby is being born. It might scare her. Just
say her mother is too tired to get up, and I’m sitting
with her in case she needs anything.”
George pulled on his shirt and shrugged into the
vest with the badge that he wore to work. I knew that
he would do what his mother told him, and for once, I
agreed with the old woman. Lulu didn’t need to see the
birth and didn’t need to sit in another room worrying
while it happened.
The pains came off and on all morning, coming
harder and closer together as I expected. I was getting
more and more tired. I wondered if I would have any
strength at all when it came time for the baby to be
born.
Mom Foley did her work around the house,
looking in on me from time to time. Around noon she
came in carrying a bucket of water. The pains were
close together and awful by then, but I tried to hold on,
telling myself it would be over soon.
Mom Foley unrolled the bundle of cloths she had
brought in earlier. Inside it were two knives, one I
recognized as being from the kitchen, and one I hadn’t
seen before. It had a short, thin blade. She laid the
strange one on the table and stuck the kitchen knife
under the mattress. She said, “This is to cut the pain.”
There was also a cloth bag that smelled of herbs
and a small roll of new string.
A really bad wave of pain rolled over me. I sat
up a little and braced myself with my hands behind me.
I pulled up my knees. Mom Foley pulled back the
covers, then sat on the side of the bed, giving me a
single command, “Push!”
I took a deep breath, held it, and pushed as hard
as I could. Mom Foley nodded in satisfaction. “One
more will do it.”
I relaxed as the pain let up, but it was followed
right away by another. Again, I took a deep breath and
pushed. I could feel it when the baby slid free of me.
The old woman laughed sharply and held it up for me
to see. “Look at him, a big fat boy, just like I told you,”
she said, her eyes shining. The baby had long, thick
black hair. His grandmother rubbed the herbs over him
and began chanting in a low voice. He let out a scream
and then began crying shrilly as most newborns do.
His grandmother laughed again. “Listen to him!”
She laid him down and picked up the roll of
string, cutting off two lengths and tying them on the
cord. Then she picked up the small knife and cut the
cord between the two knots of string. She wrapped the
baby in a blanket, picked him up, and left the room.
I waited for her to come back, but she didn’t.
After a while I began having sharp cramps. I knew this
time that it was the afterbirth. After a few minutes it
came out and the cramping stopped. I lifted my head
far enough to look at it.
There was more blood than I expected. I waited
and waited for George’s mother to come back and do
something to stop the bleeding, but there was no sign
of her. I tried to call out, but I was so weak I couldn’t
raise my voice. I finally closed my eyes and let myself
sink into the blackness.
It was still daylight when the sound of the baby
crying woke me. I wasn’t sure how much time had
passed or where the sound was coming from. I
struggled to get up, but was too weak. The best I could
do was prop myself up on the pillows. The crying kept
on and grew louder.
Mom Foley came in the room with him in her
arms. She stood over me and stared at me with a look
that could freeze water. I reached out my hands for my
baby, but the old woman waited, her look changing to
one of satisfaction as I struggled to reach my
screaming child. She finally stuck the baby in my
hands and stormed out of the room. I held the baby
with one arm while I unbuttoned the neck of my
nightgown. When I was finally able to hold him to my
breast, he latched on right away.
When he was finished eating, I inspected my son.
His grandmother had cleaned him up, and I could
smell the sweet herbs she’d rubbed on his body. He
had thick black hair, almost two inches long, and his
skin was the color of new strawberries. I didn’t have
any idea how much he weighed, but knew it had to be
well over nine pounds. Lulu had been only two-thirds
as large when she was born, and they told me Lulu
weighed a little under seven pounds.
I unwrapped his blanket and examined his body.
He was long and thin and had beautiful hands with
long fingers and long feet.
I waited, but it didn’t happen. The feeling of love
that came over me when I had Lulu didn’t come. He
went to sleep. I gazed at him, waiting for it, and
waiting. There was something missing. I held him in
the crook of my arm and dozed off again myself, still
lying in the bloody, wet, and now cold, bedding.
The slamming of the screen door told me that
Lulu had come home from school. She came running
up the stairs to my bedroom and grabbed up her little
brother. “Look at him, Mommy, he’s beautiful. He’s
just like a little papoose.” She ran her hand over his
hair.
They weren’t words I liked, but they were true. I
took hold of Lulu’s arm and said, “I need for you to go
fetch Clara for me, Lulu. Give the baby to George’s
mother to take care of until you get back.”
Lulu minded me and went to get the neighbor. In
a few minutes Clara was there. She had a joyful face
that faded to worry as soon as she saw me. “Are you
all right? Did you have a hard time of it? I didn’t see
the doctor’s buggy, or I would have come over and
helped.”
I tried to talk in my normal voice but a whisper
was still the best I could manage. “George’s mother
brought him by herself, but I need you to help me clean
myself.”
“Didn’t she clean you up after he was born?”
“She just took him and left me here. I think I bled
a lot, Clara, because I’m so weak, I can hardly move.”
Clara pulled back the blankets and gasped. “You
mean she didn’t even deliver the afterbirth? Good
Lord, Maude, you could have died!”
I put my finger over my lips. “I don’t want Lulu
to know.”
Clara nodded. She pulled the chair next to the
bed and took a blanket off the stack of linens that I kept
nearby. She shook it out and then draped it over the
chair. She leaned over me, “Wrap your arms around
my neck and hold on, Maude, I’m going to sit you in
the chair so I can clean the bed.”
I shook my head. “I’m too heavy for you, Clara.
You’ll have to get George’s mother to help you.”
“After the way she left you, I wouldn’t ask her
help for anything.”
I wrapped my arms around Clara’s neck, and she
put her left arm under my knees and her right arm
around my waist and half-lifted, half-slid me into the
chair. She cleaned the bed, and then she washed me. I
was so embarrassed. “I hate it that I can’t do this for
myself, Clara.”
“Nonsense, I may need you to take care of me
someday.”
“Where’s the baby?”
“He’s down in the kitchen with Lulu and his
grandmother. The way they’re making over him you
would think they never saw a baby before.”
“I’m glad they love him, Clara.”
“Of course they love him. Everybody’s going to
love him.”
“Clara, can I tell you something awful and you
won’t hold it against me?”
Clara stopped her washing. “You can tell me
anything, Maude.”
“I fed him and looked him over and I waited,
Clara, but it didn’t come.”
“What didn’t come?”
“When they put Lulu in my arms for the first
time, my heart swelled up with so much love that I
thought it was going to bust right out of me.”
“I felt the same way.”
I looked in Clara’s eyes. “I didn’t feel any of that
with this baby, Clara. What’s the matter with me?”
“You’re just wore out, is all. When you get back
on your feet you’ll be fine. He’s a beautiful, healthy
boy. You’ll come to love him in no time.”
I nodded, but I knew in my heart that I would
never feel the way I ought to feel for this baby. Clara
finished her cleaning, slipped a fresh nightgown over
my head and guided it down over me. She pulled up
the covers.
“There, good as new. You rest now. I’m going
downstairs and get you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care. You have to eat something, and you
need some water to drink or you won’t be able to make
any milk for that little boy.”
Clara went out and I dozed off. It felt wonderful
to be clean and dry and warm. She brought me a tray
with dinner, and I ate like I was starved and fell back
to sleep. When I awoke again, Clara was sitting in the
chair next to the bed. It was dark outside.
“What time is it?” I asked , still half asleep.
“It’s almost eight o’clock. You had a good
sleep.”
“I need to pee.”
“All right, do you think you can get up to use the
chamber pot or should I get something to slip under
you in the bed?”
“This is embarrassing, Clara. I don’t think I
could make it outside. I’ll try to get up and use the jar.”
Clara pulled the ceramic bowl out from under the
bed. Once again, Clara helped me out of the bed, then
held my nightgown up so I could squat over the bowl.
It took a few minutes, and Clara was relieved when I
was finally able to pass water. It was an important sign
that things were all right ‘down there.’ She helped me
back in bed in a sitting position and tucked me in.
“Now, I’m going to fetch the soup I made special
for you.”
She was back in a few minutes with a bowl of
chicken soup and some slices of bread. I hadn’t
realized it until I smelled the rich broth, but I felt
hungry again.
She said, “You eat that and I’ll take the pot out
and empty it. I’ll be right back.” I finished my meal
and drank a glass of water.
When Clara came back, I asked, “Where’s
George?”
“He’s downstairs. He joined them in admiring
that baby. He wanted to see you, but I ran him off. I
told him you needed your rest.”
The sound of the baby’s crying reached us, and
Lulu brought him to me this time. “Grandma said that
he wanted his supper, and you were the only one that
could give it to him. It looked to me like that made her
mad.”
She handed me the baby. I held him to myself
and fed him again. My milk was in, and this time it
didn’t hurt. As soon as he went to sleep I handed him
back to Lulu. “Put him in his cradle, Lulu.”
The cradle had been cleaned and furnished with
the bedding that Lulu and I made together and placed
in the corner of the room, but when Lulu picked up the
baby and started in that direction, the cradle was gone.
“Where is it, Mommy?” Lulu asked.
I pursed my lips. “I think Mom Foley has put it
in her room. Take him to her.”
Lulu left, cooing to the baby. Clara stood and
stretched her back. “All the better that he’s in her
room. You can get more rest that way. I’ll go on home
now, Maude. If you need me for anything at all, send
Lulu to get me, and I’ll be here in a minute. I don’t
care if it’s the middle of the night.”
I caught hold of Clara’s hand. “I don’t know
what would have happened to me if you hadn’t come,
Clara.”
She smiled and leaned over me and kissed my
forehead. “Us women got to stick together, Maude. I’ll
tell George he can come up now.”
In a few minutes George came in. He sat on the
bed next to me and took my hand in his. He looked
awkward, as if he were embarrassed to be touching
me. “He’s a fine boy, Maude. You did good. I’ve never
seen Ma so happy.”
I decided to keep his mother’s treatment of me
quiet. “That’s good, George. I’m glad you’re happy
with him.” George undressed and got in bed. He was
asleep in a few minutes.