My Name Is Mary Sutter (2 page)

Chapter One

“Are you Mary Sutter?” Hours had passed since James Blevens had called for the midwife. All manner of shouts and tumult drifted in from the street, and so he had answered the door to his surgery rooms with some caution, but the young woman before him made an arresting sight: taller and wider than was generally considered handsome, with an unflattering hat pinned to an unruly length of curls, though an enticing brightness about the eyes compensated. “Mary Sutter, the midwife?” he asked.

“Yes, I am Mary Sutter.” The young woman looked from the address she had inscribed that afternoon in her small, leather-bound notebook to the harried man in front of her, wondering how he could possibly know who she was. He was all angles, and his sharp chin gave the impression of discipline, though his uncombed hair and unbuttoned vest were damp with sweat.

“Oh, thank God,” he said, and, catching her by the elbow, pulled her inside and slammed the door shut on the cold April rain and the stray warble of a bugle in the distance. James Blevens knew Mary Sutter only by reputation.
She is good, even better than her mother
, people said. Now he formed an indelible impression of attractiveness, though there was nothing attractive about her. Her features were far too coarse, her hair far too wild and already beginning to silver. People said she was young, but you could not tell that by looking at her. She was an odd one, this Mary Sutter.

A kerosene lantern flickered in the late afternoon dimness, revealing shelves of medical instruments: scales, tensile prongs, hinged forceps, monaural and chest stethoscopes, jars of pickled fetal pigs, ether stoppered in azure glass, a femur bone stripped in acid, a human skull, a stomach floating in brine, jars of medicines, an apothecary’s mortar and pestle. Mary could barely tear her eyes from the bounty.

“She is here, at last,” the man said over his shoulder.

Mary Sutter peered into the darkness and saw a young woman lying on an exam table, a blanket thrown across her swollen belly, betraying the unmistakable exhaustion of late labor.

“Excuse me, but were you expecting me?” Mary asked.

“Yes, yes,” he said, waving her question away with irritation. “Didn’t my boy send you here?”

“No. I came to see you on my own. Are you Dr. Blevens?”

“Of course I am.”

Now that the time had come, Mary felt almost shy, the humiliation of her afternoon rearing up, along with the anger that had propelled her here, looking for a last chance. On her way, she had waded through crowds, barely conscious of a mounting commotion, lifting her skirts out of the mud, struggling past the tannery and the livery, finally arriving at the two-story frame building with its unpainted door and narrow, steep stairs, so unlike the echoing marble hallways where she had just been refused entry. And all the while, newspaper boys had been yelling
Extra!
and tributaries of people had been trickling toward the Capitol, and still she had pressed on.

“Dr. Blevens, I came here today—” Mary stopped and exhaled. All the hope of the past year spilled over as she stumbled over her words. “Today I sat in the lobby of the medical college for four hours waiting for Dr. Marsh, and he didn’t even have the courtesy to see me.” Mary shut out the memory of her afternoon spent in the unwelcoming misery of the Albany Medical College, where after several hours the corpulent clerk had finally hissed,
Dr. Marsh no longer wishes to receive letters of application from you, so you are to respectfully desist in any further petition.

“When he refused to see me, I decided to come and ask something of you,” Mary said.

“Would you mind asking me later?” Blevens asked, propelling Mary toward the young woman. “I need your help. This is Bonnie Miles. Her husband dropped her here early this afternoon. He said she has lost a child before—her first. I think the baby’s head is stuck.”

Mary pulled off her gloves and unwrapped her shawl, her quest forgotten for the moment, all her attention focused on the woman’s exhaustion and youth. Bonnie was small-boned, tiny in all her features, too young, Mary thought, perhaps fifteen, maybe seventeen. Her hips were too narrow, which might be the problem Dr. Blevens had encountered.

“Have you been laboring long?” Mary asked.

The doctor answered for her, speaking quickly and nervously. “She cannot say. Since the night, at least.”

Mary lifted her gaze from the girl to appraise the doctor with a cool, steady glance. “No chloroform, no forceps?”

“Why do you think I called you? I’ve seen enough of the damage those can do. I’m a surgeon, for God’s sake, not a butcher. Please,” the doctor said, “I need your help.” Of late, surgeons had entered the obstetrics trade, but there had been too many mistakes to make him feel comfortable. He didn’t like administering chloroform to ease the mother’s pain, because babies ended up languishing in the womb, and doctors had to go hunting for them with forceps. Too many women had bled, too many babies’ skulls had been crushed. He would stick with the ailments of men: hatchet blows and factory burns.

“You’ll help me?” the girl asked.

As Mary smoothed the blanket, she thought that the girl resembled Jenny, though she lacked Jenny’s distinguishing clarity of skin. But the wide-set eyes, the high cheekbones, and the bright lips had emerged from the same well of beauty as Mary’s twin. Once, when Mary was very young, she had asked her mother what “twin” meant, and her mother, who had understood the root of the question, had answered,
God does not give out his gifts equally, even to those who have shared a womb.

“My last one died,” Bonnie said, whispering, drawing Mary close to her, her face transforming from a feverish daze to one of grief.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The baby before this,” Bonnie said, her eyes half closed. “I didn’t know it was labor I was taken with, you see?”

The ignorance! It was
exactly
like Jenny. But Jenny’s ignorance was something altogether different, a refusal to engage, to exert herself. A lack of curiosity.

Outside, above the street clatter of carriages and vendors came the hard clang of the fire bell, and cries of “On to the South!”

Blevens rushed to the window and threw it open as Mary whispered to Bonnie not to worry. The rising strains of a band joined the bugle, producing a festive, off-tune march that beckoned like a piper. A swelling crowd hurried along the turnpike, shoulders and wool hats bent against the rain. In the distance the flat pop of gunfire sounded.

“You there! Hello? Can you give me the news?” Blevens cried.

A man who had stopped to don an oilskin looked up, revealing a slick, battered face, pocked, the doctor was certain, at the ironworks where the spitting metal often scarred workers’ faces.

“Haven’t you heard?” the man shouted. “The Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter!”

“Has Lincoln called for men?” the doctor asked, but the scarred man melted into the stream of revelers pushing down the muddy turnpike toward the music as if something were reeling them in. James Blevens slammed down the window and turned.

“I cannot believe it,” he said. “It is war.”

Bonnie seized Mary’s wrist, and Mary said, “Do you want to scare her?”

“Sorry,” Blevens said, but he was agitated, glancing again toward the window.

“I’ll need scissors, lard, and any rags you have,” Mary said. “And water.”

With a last look over his shoulder, Blevens scurried to assemble the requested supplies. Bonnie nodded off into the deep sleep that overcame women between contractions. Mary probed her belly, feeling for the baby’s spine. Often it was the baby’s position in the womb that caused delay. There were also other reasons, worse reasons, that Mary did not yet want to entertain. Look first, her mother always said, for the common.

Bonnie was thin—undernourished even—but even through that thin wall of belly, Mary could not detect the rope of spine she was looking for.

“Bonnie.”

The girl snapped from her deep sleep and fixed her gaze on Mary.

“I have to put my hand inside you. Do you understand? I have to confirm where the baby’s head is.”

The girl nodded, but Mary knew that she did not understand. “You keep looking at me, do you understand? Don’t close your eyes.”

Mary slipped her hand into the warm glove of Bonnie’s body and began to probe the baby’s head for the telltale V, where the suture lines of the scalp met in ridges at the back. Bonnie’s water had not yet burst and Mary worked gingerly, pressing gently against the bulging sac around the baby’s head, taking care not to snag the membrane. Yes, there was the V. She ran her hand along the lines, keeping Bonnie’s gaze locked on hers, smiling encouragement as she searched for the obstacle.

“Bonnie,” Mary said gently, withdrawing her hand, wiping it on a rag. “Your baby is coming out face up. That’s why you’re having so much trouble. I have to turn the baby. It will make things easier for both of you. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but I’ll do it quickly.”

Mary nodded to Dr. Blevens; at her summons, he strode across the room and took Bonnie’s hands in his. Mary slipped again inside Bonnie and slowly fitted her fingers around the baby’s skull. With her other hand, she felt through the abdominal wall for the baby’s arms and legs. She established a grip. She was standing now, her right hand deep inside Bonnie, the other on her belly. The wave of contraction hit hard. Bonnie’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Dr. Blevens was leaning forward, his face inches from Bonnie’s, whispering encouragement into her ear. When the contraction relaxed, Mary grasped the baby’s skull and made a percussive shove with her left, rolling the baby in a wave. Bonnie writhed under the abuse, arching her back off the table, then falling again. Through the tidal swell of the next two contractions, Mary held the child in place, keeping the baby locked in its new position, the muscled womb clamping down on her fingertips. From outside, Mary could hear more shouts, but even these could not distract her now. All her movements, decisions, and thoughts came from a well deep inside her. When she was certain that the baby would not roll back, she carefully withdrew her hands, and the rest of the delivery proceeded. Mary looked only at Bonnie, thought only of Bonnie and the baby. She was authoritative when Bonnie faltered, stern when she panicked, and unflagging when, screaming, Bonnie expelled a boy in a rush of amniotic fluid. Mary wiped the small flag of his gender along with the rest of him, and then swaddled him in a blanket that the doctor handed her. There was no deformation. The child was perfect, if small. She judged this one at nine months’ gestation, but maybe less.

“Extraordinary. I was certain the head was too large,” Blevens said.

“It’s a common enough mistake.”

Efficient but tender, Mary went about her work with a kind of informality. She tucked the mewling infant into Bonnie’s grateful arms and tied off the cord after the afterbirth slithered out. There was little blood. The girl had not even torn.

“It’s the lard,” Mary said, wiping her soaked skirts with a towel. “Massage it into the flesh beforehand, a bit at a time.”

Blevens tucked in the ends of the blanket that had fallen away, but he knew it to be an insignificant contribution, the act of a maiden aunt after the danger had passed.

“Do allow me to pay you,” he said, but Mary dismissed this offer with a wave of her hand.

“Where is her husband?” Mary asked.

“I don’t know. He ran in with her and then left.” Blevens looked around the room as if the boy might suddenly appear.

“But where will she go?”

Blevens shrugged. His rooms were not made for keeping patients overnight.

“If you like, I can take her home with me. My mother and I have a lying-in room. She can stay with us until she’s recovered.”

He protested, and Mary shook it off as if it were nothing, but James Blevens knew it wasn’t nothing. The girl and her husband were poor farmers. James had surmised that much when the boy had dropped Bonnie off. They would never be able to pay for any care, not even room and board. Her offer was very generous, more generous than James had any right to expect given that she had been called in at the last minute. But now he recalled the earlier confusion.

“Miss Sutter, what was it you wanted from me this afternoon?”

Mary wiped her hands on her ruined skirts. Her birthing apron was at home, along with the rest of her medicine, rubber sheets, scissors, and rags. “You have already seen me turn a child. I am just as skilled with a previa, or twins. But I want more. I want to study. I want to know more about anatomy, physiology. The
something
I cannot see.” It was the speech she had meant for Dr. Marsh. She began to speak in a rush, the words tumbling out. “For instance, the problem of why some women seize in labor. I know that headaches and light sensitivity precede it, but do they trigger it? Is it like other seizure disorders? I know that sometimes it’s caused by a rapid revolution of blood to the head, or a too severely felt labor, but why? I was reading in
The Process of Parturition—
”

Dr. Blevens swiveled to look at his bookshelf and then turned back to her. “Aren’t deliveries enough for you?”