43. Then Care
THEN: CARE
Magda taught us to be criminals with the mother’s moss.
Rowena was scared by this, but reasonable enough to overlook her fear as she understood the distribution of such a thing saved lives and eased the strain on households whose income and supplies were already stretched thin.
I saw it as a divine calling, a revolution in the name of women, and I was happy to be in our small army of three.
Magda overheard me say this and made a tsk noise with her tongue. “Fanciful horseshit,” she said.
But our true ordainment as outlaws was when she taught us about acts of care.
After a long day of pickling beets, boiling and cutting them, jarring them and then pouring over them brine made of vinegar, cider, and herbs, our hands stained a lurid reddish violet, we sat at her worktable in front of bowls of water, vigorously scrubbing our hands with a soap made from an astringent tree sap, lye, and animal fat.
We were hissing from the sting of the lye but laughing over the vibrant suds we were making when Magda set a roll of leather down on the worktable with a tremendous thump.
The leather rolled out and was revealed to hold two long tools made of what seemed like iron and silver held in by strips of leather looped through the roll.
“It’s time to learn a thing,” she said.
Inwardly, I sighed. I was exhausted. I had carried buckets of water all day, hunched over to cut the vegetables and to strain the brine into the jars. As eager a student as I was, I had nothing left in me.
As if she read my mind, Rowena said, “But we are so tired, madam.”
“Yes, and less likely to put up a fight or be offended by this lesson.”
“Be offended?”
“I am about to make you outlaws in two ways,” said Magda. “Once with mother’s moss and again with the act of care.”
“The act of care?”
“The act of care,” the midwife repeated. She pulled a rag from her apron and tossed it to Rowena, nodding her head as if to say that my sister should dry her hands off.
Our fingers and palms were still a violent pink, but we wiped them clean from the juice, soap, and water. When we were through, Magda continued.
“This work will fall under Rowena’s domain as midwife, but it’s best for you both to know a thing, of course.
I have said that mother’s moss can help a woman if she is early on with child and doesn’t want to be.
If it’s only a moon or so, you can mix nearly a tin’s worth of it, better with tansy, and it will clear out a womb.
But what is to be done if the woman is further along? ”
Neither of us had an answer.
“I will now teach you a thing that will likely have you imprisoned. This is your last warning. If you want to walk away from this, you must say so now. Your apprenticeship can end here without your father having to return his gold. Which, I suspect he no longer has anyway.”
We looked at each other. We were both content in our roles. Rowena enjoyed birthing and babies. I enjoyed foraging. And we both were decent enough at the practice of herbalism, of taking the things I foraged and distilling them to useful states.
When we did not say anything, Magda said, “I am going to teach you how to be the moss and the tansy. I am going to teach you how to clear out a woman’s womb.”
For a moment, only Dewdrop’s gritty tongue dragging and scraping over the fur of her upturned stomach could be heard in the farmhouse.
“But why?” Rowena asked.
“Because. Because for a hundred reasons,” Magda seethed, though it was apparent her anger was not directed at us.
“Because not all women have control over being pregnant. Because not all women desire motherhood. Because there are so many children in a house already and the food on the table is thinly dealt. Because she is a girl still and not a woman. Because she is afraid. Because she is deathly sick from being with child. Because rape. Because poverty. Because. Because. Because.”
“I can’t do it,” Rowena burst out, eyeing the tools in the leather. “I do not judge you for doing it, madam. Only I cannot do it.”
“It is part of a midwife’s work,” Magda said, her voice flat.
“Can’t Robbie do it?”
“You both should learn it—but, dear girl, this is your role. An act of care is as sacred as a delivery. Do you understand?”
“I cannot,” my twin protested, and her eyes were shining.
“I can do it,” I proclaimed. “Isn’t it better that she be blameless, living in town as the midwife? I will be here, living with you. I can perform the act.”
“This is abortion, isn’t it?” my sister asked Magda, a defiance to her.
I looked to Rowena, confused. Then I remembered the word in the list of offenses booklet.
The midwife nodded. “I call it an ‘act of care.’ But yes, this is what abortion is. And you may think a midwife’s only duty is to babes, but truly her duty is to the women who deliver the babes first. For as precious as a child is, that woman delivering the babe likely already has folk that depend on her. Do you see?”
“I just can’t,” Rowena whispered.
Magda sighed and closed her eyes. “You are an excellent midwife already, Rowena. I cannot bring myself to end your apprenticeship.” When our mentor opened her eyes, she was looking at me. She said, “This is your charge then.”
I nodded.
“You’ll watch tonight, though,” Magda directed at Rowena.
“I will,” she answered.
Magda pulled the largest tool from the leather.
At one end, it had the openings for a pair of shears, holes into which one might put a forefinger and thumb.
On a hinge, when the openings were pulled apart, two long rods with rounded ends would make a V shape.
They were smooth and thick. The tool was made of an old iron.
Magda held up the tool and opened the hinge. “This will open a woman’s womb.”
Both of us flinched.
Magda rolled her eyes. “Obviously you don’t stick it in and do that. You make sure she’s calm. Give her some tea first. Ginger root. Pink basil. Mint. Anything, even old bark with a little tonic or lightleaf in it. I say a woman ought to have whiskey.”
“But women can’t drink,” Rowena interrupted.
Magda turned to me. “I’m allowed to buy whiskey from The Pale Horse, and you will likely be allowed that too. Even if I wasn’t, Gertie, the tavern keeper’s wife, she would sell it to me.”
“She doesn’t seem very nice,” I said, thinking of the sour-faced woman married to the man who owned The Pale Horse.
“You’d be rather mean too if every night for the rest of your life, you had to watch the men of your town call themselves holy and then piss themselves in your alleyway. Hypocrisy will do that. Are you done interrupting?”
Magda went on to advise us about how to make a woman’s body calm and relaxed, how to soothe her, talk to her, let her know there would be a pinching, a pain, that her sex would be pried open by the tool.
“Do not call it anything like ‘a widener’ or ‘the widening shears’ either,” she warned. “Show her the tool, don’t name it. Explain how it’s actually less painful than most men’s pricks.”
Magda pulled out the second tool from its strap. It was as long as a forearm with a thick handle at one end and a small teardrop-shaped loop at the other. “This is what you’ll scrape her womb with.”
Rowena sucked at her teeth and looked away.
“Yes, it is painful,” Magda answered her as if Rowena had said a question aloud. “It is even more painful to watch your children have less food to eat. It is even more painful to mother a child you did not plan for—”
“Alright!” my sister bleated. “I’m sorry. It’s just overwhelming.”
“A woman’s life is overwhelming,” Magda pronounced.
Sensing discord between the people I liked most in the world, I said, “It is a lot you set before us tonight, Magda.”
The midwife looked at me. Up until now I had only called her “madam.”
“I’m sorry,” Rowena repeated.
Magda frowned. “I suppose I have lost my touch. I forget you are girls and not women. But you are soon to womanhood. If I could keep you from the trials of this life, believe me, I would.”
Magda went on to explain how to use the second tool to sweep out a womb, that for the first several moons of a pregnancy, the formation of the babe was so small it could not be seen, that it was like a clot of blood.
She also explained that if a woman had miscarried her babe, she could bleed to death or grow feverish and that to clear out her womb was a way to prevent this.
“I only have one set of these tools though,” said Magda, looking between us. “Rowena, if you have a woman miscarry and bleed too heavily, you’ll have to send for Robbie. It’s not common, but it’s not without occurrence.”
We listened to her nearly all night, pausing only to eat jerky and cheese she put in front of us.
As the sun rose, she still waxed on, detailing all the women she had needed to perform an act of care on over the winters, explaining each case as if she had just seen those women the day before.
When she was done, I realized the number of acts of care equaled to only one or two for every winter Magda had been in Sheridan.
“So it won’t be something I have to do often,” I said.
The midwife shook her head. “Not with the gathering and dispensing of the mother’s moss. Which, if your church truly found this to be sinful, they would not criminalize the moss. But that is another rant for another day.”
She let us sleep the rest of the day, waking us in the afternoon, feeding us a stew she had made with a tough kind of bread she seemed to favor baking.
She was gentle with us, asked no tasks be done, and sent us back to bed after she insisted we bathe as we both smelled of vinegar and sweat.
It was as if Magda was apologizing to us, perhaps for her terseness and blunt manner, but also for our having been privy to knowledge that was heavy and esoteric.
It was so unlike her, it was perplexing.
I could tell Rowena thought so too, and we were both relieved to be bossed around and shouted at the following day.
But I was grateful for the brief moment, as she set a plate of stew before me, of her gnarled hand on my back and the slight squeeze she made there before removing it.