Eyes combing the prairie, Caroline hummed through another spasm. The drone of the cicadas cut in and out of the melody. She scanned the blue-white edge of sky once more, then hurried inside to strip the good quilt and muslin sheets from the bedstead. The gray blanket and the old oilcloth must cover the straw tick, if only she could steal enough time between pains to manage them. First, she folded up the red-checked cloth and laid the table with everything Mrs. Scott would need: lard, linen and pins, clean rags, flannel swaddling, and the butcher knife.
All the while, the heat grew heavy and muscled as the spasms, which pulled against her back as if the child had rooted itself at the base of her spine. By the time the knock came to the door, each breath demanded Caroline’s full attention. Panting a little, she smoothed her hair and blotted her forehead with the hem of the gray blanket before turning to the open door.
The sight of a stranger, stocky as a barrel, standing on her threshold with a fistful of wildflowers stilled her. Again the cicadas’ whir surged and then fell, as if impelled by the swells of her homesickness. Caroline dabbed the corners of her eyes with her apron.
“Good morning,” the woman said.
Caroline’s womb clutched in response, echoing the words from Saint Luke: For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
“Mrs. Ingalls?”
Caroline unstoppered her throat. “Good morning.”
“I am Mrs. Scott.”
“I am so—” Caroline’s voice caught again. “So pleased to meet you, Mrs. Scott.”
“Well now,” Mrs. Scott said. “Looks like I didn’t get here a minute too soon. I reckon you ought to trade that apron for a nightgown and leave the rest to me.”
Caroline could not argue.
While Mrs. Scott made busy with the blanket and oilcloth, Caroline peeled off her corset and settled her damp nightdress around herself. She polished the key to the provisions cupboard free of her perspiration before handing it to her neighbor.
“What a very tidy house,” Mrs. Scott said, helping Caroline into the bedstead. “It’s good to see more of our own kind of folks settling the place up.”
In the bed, Caroline’s mind had nothing to attend to but heat and pain. The hearth crackled behind her in spite of the steamy wind barging through the open windows, for the fire must be kept high enough to scald the knife. Every crease of her body pulled the nightdress closer.
Amiably as she spoke, Mrs. Scott’s voice crowded the cabin, while outside the insects’ cry ascended without end. The sounds held Caroline teetering even as the clench of her laboring muscles released.
“Been here the better part of a year and I’ve never seen a one of those Indian women,” Mrs. Scott was saying as she fitted the yellow flowers into a mug of water. “The men have so little modesty abroad, it makes a body wonder if the women wear anything at all in those huts of theirs. I don’t blame you for locking up the foodstuffs with the likes of them prowling all over the countryside.”
With the next spasm came a pressure so insistent, all Caroline wanted to do was scrabble backward out from under it. She pressed the heels of her hands against the straw tick and drew in all the breath she could hold. She did not want to push; she wanted only to put something between herself and that feeling. A picture of sausage-making filled her mind, how the filmy casings suddenly bulged and shone with each twist of the grinder.
She had forgotten this part of it, how the pain metamorphosed. With Mary, it had taken nearly two hours.
“Oh, Mrs. Scott!” Caroline cried.
“Yes?”
Caroline could not answer. She did not even know what she wanted.
The big woman clucked and nodded. “I was near about your age when I had my first. Yelled like a wild savage. Wasn’t much quieter for any of the next four, either. Go on and shout if it does you good.”
Caroline shook her head. She could not let go of herself, not with the whole world tilting and nothing else to hold on to.
With her next breath the momentum abated enough for her to feel that the child had loosed its moorings. Before Caroline could steady herself around it, an oncoming surge broke another cry out of her. Tears leaked down her temples, doubling her shame. She tried to hum quietly and faltered.
Mrs. Scott sat down on the edge of the bedstead and let her voice ring out:
There is a happy land, far, far away,
Where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day;
Oh to hear the angels sing, Glory to the Lord, our King,
Loud let His praises ring, praise, praise for aye.
Caroline surrendered to the hymn and together they sang, each verse more loudly than the last. She ended the final chorus gasping, “Another, please.” Her voice had become the only part of herself she held any sway over.
From one verse to the next of “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” the gait of the song quickened steadily until Mrs. Scott asked, “Shall we have a look, Mrs. Ingalls?”
“Please.” The pain was fisted now, slamming itself downward. Still singing, Caroline parted her thighs and tented the gown over her knees for Mrs. Scott to see.
Filled with delight my raptured soul,
Would here no longer stay;
Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,
Fearless I’d launch away.
The big woman nodded and patted her foot. “Any minute.”
Mrs. Scott joined her for one more chorus, propping the quilt and pillows from Mary and Laura’s bed behind her until Caroline was nearly upright.
She was full to quivering with the press of the child’s head. Her nerves boiled and crawled around its shape, her flesh unable to cringe away. Desperate for movement, Caroline gripped her knees like the two handles of a plow and began to push.
With the hardening of her muscles the frisson ceased. Caroline’s mind cleared as all at once she released herself into the pain. Breath by breath, she filled her chest with air and pressed it down against the bulge of her womb, down through her flanks to the end of the bed where Mrs. Scott sat coaxing. The force of each thrust bowed her spine and bunched the cords in her neck.
At the crowning, when it seemed as though the sun itself were boring its way out of her, Caroline lay back and held herself still as the seam at the base of her body unlaced, bracing for the snapping of the finest outer fibers. The hot squeeze of her heartbeat ringed the head and she felt herself stretched tighter and tighter until with a twist of lock and key the child bloomed into Mrs. Scott’s hands.