7
Neva
I decided to become a midwife on a Wednesday. I was fourteen. After school, my teacher had passed me a note with the address where Grace was delivering. This happened from time to time, when the client’s house was within walking distance from school. This day it took me about twenty minutes to get there and when I did, a piece of lined paper was wedged between the wrought iron and the mesh of the screen door. The handwriting was Grace’s.
Door is open. We’re in the back.
“I’m here,” I called as I let myself in. I stood in the hallway, waiting for Grace to shout out a greeting. After a few minutes, she’d come and update me on how it was going, and either give me cab money or tell me Dad would pick me up on the way home. Not this day. Instead, the bedroom door peeled open. Her face was pale.
“Neva—thank God. Quick. Come in.”
I froze; a deer in the headlights. “What?”
“My birth assistant is sick, she’s had to go home. Agnes is nine centimeters dilated—I need someone now.”
When I was younger I was often in the room while Grace’s clients delivered. On those days, she jokingly called me her assistant. I may have passed her a towel or held a client’s hand for a while. I may even have whispered a few motivating words. But she’d also had an actual assistant. Someone experienced with childbirth. “I can’t.”
“Course you can.”
She ducked back into the room. Despite my reservations, I dropped my bag onto the floor and slowly followed her.
The woman—Agnes—sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a cream waffle-cotton robe. Her elbows were pressed against her knees and she rocked back and forth, moaning softly. Her husband sat beside her, rubbing her back.
“This is my daughter,” Grace said. “She’s attended more births than you’ve had hot dinners.”
I wasn’t so sure. The man was at least thirty. I’d attended about twenty births—fifty, if you included those I’d heard from my bedroom but didn’t see. Unless he’d eaten a lot of cold dinners, Grace’s stats were off.
“How old is she?” he asked.
I opened my mouth.
“Sixteen,” Grace cut in. “And we don’t have a lot of choice, Jeremy. My birth assistant had to leave. We’re just lucky we have an experienced person here to help us. Unless you’d like to transfer Agnes to a hospital?”
“No,” Agnes said.
Her husband, Jeremy, turned to her. “Honey—”
“No hospital! I’m not sick and neither is my baby. Why should we go to the hospital? I want my baby to be born right here in its home, not in some stark, sterile hospital room surrounded by strangers in surgical masks.”
Agnes’s tone left no room for doubt. I could tell Grace was trying not to look smug. She failed. “Right, then,” she said. “It’s decided. Neva, I have to prepare. Can you stay here with Agnes?”
She was gone before I could respond.
Another contraction was upon Agnes, and she curved in on herself again. She was in the advanced stages of labor, clearly, but I’d heard worse. I let her finish the contraction, then spoke.
“I’m Neva,” I started, feeling self-conscious. I squatted down, bending to see her face. It struck me that she might not be in the best position for this stage of labor. “Are you feeling comfortable there?”
She sat upright. I didn’t expect, after the strength of her no-hospital declaration, to see anguish on her face. “I’m just … exhausted.”
“I know,” I said, though I didn’t. I was a fourteen-year-old girl—what did I know about labor? I tried to think of what Grace would say to this woman, but all the options were too airy-fairy for my liking. You are a warrior was one of her catchphrases. Think of your precious little angel, ready to grow its wings. Neither of those things felt like me.
“Would you like to try standing?” I said. That was one thing my mother had taught me that was based on science, rather than fairy dust and sunshine. Good old gravity. “Your husband and I can take your weight, and you can hug one of us through contractions.”
I must have got her at the right time, because she seemed happy to get up, and reported that it helped a lot. Strangely, Agnes chose to hug me during contractions, rather than her husband, but I attributed it to height. Her head rested on my shoulder and we got into a good rhythm, pacing and adopting the slow-dance position when the pains came on. With each contraction, her face locked up—but she remained purposeful. She listened to all my suggestions and followed them.
“Shhh, you’re okay,” I told her, rocking back and forth, working through a contraction with her. “You’re okay.”
In fact, she was better than okay. I was impressed. Though I didn’t share my mother’s disdain of doctors and hospitals, there was something to admire about a woman’s determination to stick to her guns to have a natural home birth. She was certainly being tested. As I rocked back and forth with her, an unexpected feeling came over me. A feeling that I was an integral part of something. Something greater than myself.
“You’re amazing, Agnes.” Even as I spoke, the words sounded like they had come from someone else. “You’re doing it. Soon, the pain will be over, but you’ll have done something extraordinary. I’m very proud of you.”
It was an odd thing for a teenager to say to a woman in her twenties or thirties. But it just came out. Odder was the fact that she responded to it. She nodded. She believed me.
By the time Grace returned to the room, Agnes was feeling pressure in her pelvis.
“Looks like you’re ready to push your baby out, Agnes,” Grace said. “Let’s get you into position.”
To my surprise, Agnes looked at me. “Is it best to stand while I deliver too?”
“It’s best to be in whatever position feels right to you,” I said, not missing a beat. I felt Grace staring, but I didn’t break Agnes’s gaze. “So you tell us.”
She frowned as she thought. “I’d like to squat.”
When Agnes was in position, squatting over the end of the bed with her husband and me at each side, Grace raised her eyebrows at me. “Go ahead.”
“Really?” I mouthed.
Grace nodded. If she had any concerns, she kept them well hidden. It bolstered my confidence. Maybe, just maybe, I could do this. I paused, trying to think what to say. But when Agnes whimpered, the words just came.
“Try to blow while you push,” I said, kneeling by Grace’s side at Agnes’s feet. “We don’t want the baby to come too fast or it can cause a tear.”
Agnes did as I said. Grace moved to the side as the baby emerged, and I continued to guide Agnes, drawing on words of support that had obviously been buried deep in my subconscious. By the time the baby boy spilled into my arms, I knew. Women were warriors. And I wanted to be part of it.