The reverend begins with a prayer and then leads us in the old spiritual “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” He follows with another prayer and then an account of Mrs. Potts’s life, how she had come from Maryland through Front Royal and over the mountains into West Virginia in 1870, a former slave, released along with her mother by her master when she was a child before the end of the Civil War. Her husband, Alfred Potts, was born free in New York State, a trained blacksmith and farrier, and they settled along Horse Shoe Run, a creek Mrs. Potts actually named.
I had never thought of Grace Potts as a slave. How could that be? Such a dignified, well-educated community leader? We all have our histories, but this is a revelation to me.
The pastor goes on, telling us that the couple had four children, all of whom died in an outbreak of yellow fever in 1878. I think again what a woman she must have been. All of your children dying in one year? What would that do to you? Four little graves . . .
“Grace Potts was truly a saint,” Reverend Miller intones.
“Amen,” the congregation responds, and then we sing another spiritual. “Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in.” The harmony raises the roof of the little church and sunlight streams through the windows. I wonder why I didn’t visit the old midwife more, why I didn’t try to learn from her while I had the opportunity. Once we had Star to ride, it would have been easy. She was always so open with me. I guess I thought she would be here forever, but I should have known better.
Next the pastor asks everyone who was delivered by Mrs. Potts to come forward. Two-thirds of the congregation rise, from babies to men and women Hardman’s age. I’m surprised to see Mr. Maddock, my neighbor, push his wife up the center aisle in a squeaky wicker wheelchair; the woman I’d thought so stern and disapproving, the woman who never came to the door or asked me in. Now, as I glance at her withered legs under the green-and-white crocheted blanket, I understand why. There’s another surprise.
“Is that Twyla? With the baby?” I whisper to Bitsy.
Bitsy whispers back, “Well, she was delivered by Mrs. Potts, and her baby too, with our assistance.” I can tell she’s proud of the role she played that very wild day. The infant begins to fuss, and Samantha goes over and picks him up, carrying him over her shoulder like a little sack of potatoes.
“This is Mrs. Potts’s legacy . . . her gift to the world,” the reverend explains. “She called all her babies her angels.”
Emma begins to sing in her low contralto, “Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee.” Bitsy squeezes my hand. Mrs. Potts’s angels move slowly back to their seats, many crying, the children and older people too.
I sink into myself, pull down my mind’s purple curtain, hardly listening to the rest of the prayers, thinking about death, thinking about birth and all the beautiful mess in the middle. I don’t come out of it until Bitsy elbows me.
Mrs. Miller is standing by the piano. “ . . . and there are two other people that we’d like to introduce today,” she’s saying. “Patience Murphy and Bitsy Proudfoot, please rise.” I frown. What’s going on? Bitsy pulls me up.
“These are the midwives for Union County now.” All heads turn to look. “If there was anything you ever planned to do for Grace Potts someday, then do it for them. If you owed anything to her, you can pay back the girls. I’m sure Mrs. Potts would approve.” I almost laugh at the reference to us as “girls.” My companion may be young, but I’ll be thirty-seven by the end of the year. Bitsy pulls me back down, and I plunk into my seat, feeling my face beet red. Still, it’s a generous and unexpected thing for the Millers to do.
When the service is over and Mrs. Potts is laid to rest, the church ladies arrange food on wooden picnic tables under the trees. I prepare my plate of greens, fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans and plan to sit next to Bitsy or maybe at the table with Becky Myers and the Stengers, but when I look around Bitsy is sitting with Byrd Bowlin on a blanket under the trees and the table with Becky and the others is full. I’m wondering where to go when Mr. Maddock beckons me over to a green wooden table where he’s already served both himself and his wife. I sit down on the bench across from him, expecting one of them to say hello, but they’re mum. Maybe I’m supposed to start the conversation.
“I’m Patience Murphy,” I announce, turning to Mrs. Maddock.
“I know.” She smiles. She has a nice voice like a motion picture star. “I’m Sarah Rose Maddock. You should come for tea someday.”
“I’d love to.”
“And your friend.” That surprises me. Bitsy has slowly been accepted in the bedrooms of white women, as my birth assistant, but no one has ever asked us for tea.
“We’d be delighted,” I accept formally.
Maddock is already standing. Enough of the pleasantries, his rangy body says. He adjusts his suspenders and pushes his Sunday farmer’s hat down firmly over his thinning dark hair, then takes both their plates and places them in their woven picnic basket. “I have to get home to milk,” he announces, though we both know it’s way too early. “Do you need a ride?”
“No, thank you. I have my horse.”
Mrs. Maddock nods good-bye as he bumps her wheelchair across the grass and out to their truck on the dirt road. I look around again for Bitsy. She’s still sitting with Byrd, their thighs touching, her hand on her cheek, listening carefully to something he’s saying.
I’m contemplating getting on my mare and leaving without her when Samantha, the church soloist, comes over, still carrying Twyla’s baby, Mathew, and pushing two shy pregnant girls in front of her, one coffee-colored and one ebony. She stops and introduces them as Harriet and Sojourner Perry, her nieces. Harriet, the smaller of the two, is sucking her thumb. Twyla stands with them, arm in arm.
“I know where you got your names,” I tell the girls. They look up from their white Sunday shoes. “I do. I bet Harriet is for Harriet Tubman, the ex-slave who risked her life to lead over three hundred others to freedom, and Sojourner for Sojourner Truth, the famous black orator who stood for women’s and Negroes’ rights.”
Harriet takes her thumb out of her mouth and grins. “How’d you know that?”
“Our grandma named us,” Sojourner, the older, adds. Her pink-and-yellow flour-sack dress stretches tight over her belly, which I calculate may be eight months along.