Mary, looking worn, stared out the window at the last of the black-eyed Susans along the back fence. Her chin rested in one hand, the other hand smoothed the tablecloth.
“So,” I continued, “I’m uncomfortable, but I guess we could try it—”
The big lady jumped up, knocking over her chair. “Praise Jesus! You were my last hope.”
“—on a trial basis. We’ll see how it goes. See how we get along. At least it will solve the problem for a while.”
Now Bitsy is here, climbing off the top of a load of firewood, and my privacy’s gone. I lock my journal with its little key, tuck it under the sofa cushion, and open the door.
For a week, Bitsy and I tiptoe around each other, careful not to offend. At six A.M. I wake to hear her shaking the grate, taking out ashes, tossing in the kindling and split oak that Mr. Cabrini and Thomas brought: not only two cords of wood but gunnysacks full of small chunks of coal, spilled by the railway cars, that the Cabrini children had picked up along the tracks.
The pile of black gold and the stack of oak and hickory are my pay for delivering Mrs. Cabrini’s baby. If you don’t count the golden crescent moon that Katherine dropped in my apron pocket before I left, it’s the best payment I’ve received in a long time.
By the time I rise and dress in an old sweater and trousers, the downstairs is warm and fragrant with the sweet smell of bread toasting on the top of the cast-iron cookstove. Bitsy and I eat together in the kitchen (there’s nowhere else to eat), though I suppose she and Mary dined separately from the MacIntoshes. We comment on the weather and discuss the chores for the day. There’s no milk or cream with our meal. Moonlight has dried up and is at Mr. Hester’s, consorting with his bull.
“Do you want some more toast?” Bitsy asks me.
“No, I’m fine.”
We don’t talk about anything personal. The habit of hiding my past is so much a part of me, I wouldn’t know where to start. We just tread the surface of the backwaters, never diving into the stream.
I could ask Bitsy if she has a sweetheart. Does he live in town? Does she miss him? I could ask what her favorite food is or what books she likes to read, but I just eat my bread with blackberry jam and hot tea. Then Bitsy gets up and clears the table.
At first I insisted she let me take my turn at cooking breakfast and washing up, but the young woman always rises before I do. I had to draw the line when she got out the washtub and washboard and started to launder my underclothes!
Yesterday, at breakfast, a deer and her fawn crossed the yard just outside the picket fence that circles the house.
“Bitsy,” I hiss. “Look!”
The small woman leans over my chair. “Should I get my rifle?”
My head goes up sharply. “No! Not the mother with her baby!”
“Most female deer will have babies this time of year.” She looks at me as if I don’t know anything. “They give birth in the spring, and by fall the young ones are following them around. If you want to eat meat this winter, as soon as it stays below freezing, I’ve got to hunt. The fawn is old enough to survive.”
It’s the first time Bitsy has argued with me. Usually it’s “Yes, ma’am.” “No, ma’am.” “Whatever you say, Miss Patience.” It gets on my nerves.
9
Ice Storm
All night it sleets, and toward dawn the house gets cold. I toddle down the stairs in my long red flannel nightgown to build up the fire and find Bitsy already standing there.
“Ice,” she says, pointing at the window. She’s wearing the faded pink chenille bathrobe that Katherine gave her before she left town.
I shove a few logs into the firebox.
“Here, let me do that.”
“No, Bitsy. I managed to keep warm before you came. I’m not helpless.” She turns away hurt, and I regret my sharp words, but I stir up the coals with the wrought-iron poker. Then we both move toward the window.
Outside, when the clouds part, you can see by moonlight that every branch and twig is covered with ice. The limbs are so heavy they droop to the ground, and as we watch a branch breaks and shatters like crystal. We look at each other with big eyes.
Then the clouds close in again and everything’s black, like the curtain dropped at the end of a picture show. In the silence that follows, there’s a new sound, the crunch of footsteps in the distance, coming up Wild Rose Road.
“You hear that?” I ask, hoping I’m imagining it.
The footfalls don’t frighten me. It’s the thought of someone being in labor on a night like this that makes my stomach turn. I do a quick review of the women who’ve already arranged for my services. Minnie Boggs is not due until Christmas. I shut my eyes and hope it’s not her. She’s only fourteen and the baby would be five weeks early. Then there’s Clara Wetsel, but she’s had four kids and shouldn’t deliver until mid-January. She’d be so early that her husband would know to go to Dr. Blum, no matter what his wife said.
“Can you see anyone?” I wonder. “It’s darker than a coal mine. Wait . . . a man on a horse.”
“He’s leading another horse.” That’s Bitsy.
“We’d better get dressed. Light a lantern.”
Minutes later, Bitsy and I, each holding a kerosene lamp, stand in the doorway watching as Thomas ties two burros to the closest maple tree. The Proudfoot brother and sister give each other fierce hugs, and I see now how much Bitsy misses her family. Not having any relations myself, I hadn’t thought much about it. She misses her mother, with whom she’s lived her whole life. She misses her brother. She most likely misses the fellowship of the Liberty A.M.E. Church.
“They need you in Hazel Patch” Thomas finally says by way of a greeting. There’s no “Howdy” or big smile.
What now? I don’t know anyone in Hazel Patch, an isolated village of about a hundred souls where mostly blacks live. Becky Myers, the home health nurse, told me their story, how they had migrated up from the southern part of the state to work the Baylor Mine near Delmont, then stayed on after the cave-in when seventeen men were killed. That was in ’21, before Mrs. Kelly and I got here. Most of those who weren’t killed won’t go back underground again and now make out a living as subsistence farmers.
“What do those people want with Miss Patience?” Bitsy demands protectively. “It’s after midnight and a terrible ice storm. Those people got no call for us. Anyway, they have Mrs. Potts to help them.” She emphasizes those people a second time as if they are country and we are too good for them. Hazel Patch is also way on the other side of Spruce Knob.