Eight March 1997
EIGHT
It didn’t take long for my savings account to dwindle, so I was grateful, if not a little hesitant, when Susan told me that one of the nurses at the small community hospital had decided to retire and a position was going to be posted soon.
It wasn’t public yet, but Susan was on the community health board and knew about these things.
I went to the library in town and updated my resumé.
I’d been working at the hospital only a few weeks when I met Miriam.
I was taking a nap in an empty bed in one of the exam rooms. The bed was old and didn’t lie flat, the reclining mechanism broken long ago.
It was covered in a green sheet, and if you wanted a blanket, you brought one from home.
The warm flannel blankets, hidden away in the warmer, were reserved for patients only.
It felt like only minutes since I’d closed my eyes when the light flickered on and the head nurse told me to get up. We had a pregnant woman in distress.
The woman was rushed in, alert but in obvious pain. Her heart rate was up and once we got her hooked up to the fetal monitor, we noticed that the baby’s heart rate was high as well.
“How are you feeling?” I asked as I inserted an IV into her arm.
“Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Isn’t it?”
“Well, we’re not sure, so let’s just get some tests and see what’s going on. I just need you to relax and allow that baby of yours to chill out.” I smiled, hoping if I sounded calm, it would alleviate some of her fear.
I was checking her vitals when a woman in a sweater and jeans, her curly blond hair tied behind her head, came into the room. The pregnant woman sighed with relief.
“And this is . . .” I asked, since only family were permitted.
“My midwife.”
I was taken aback. I had assumed midwifery was illegal or at least strongly discouraged. I had a hard time reconciling the notion of this woman standing in front of me as a midwife when my grandmother had met so much resistance.
“I could tell something was wrong and advised hospital care immediately. Her husband is on the way. He had to drop their toddler at his mother’s.”
“Okay, well, we got it from here. Thank you.” I respected her work, how could I not, but something about this white woman standing there telling me she was a midwife irritated me.
And none of it had anything to do with this woman, who appeared to understand her role and the situation.
She shouldn’t be the target of my unreasonable rage, and I needed to remember that.
“Please let her stay. I need her,” the woman pleaded.
“Okay, but please just don’t interfere with her care.” I sounded sharper than I intended.
“Of course not. I’m here to assist.”
I listened to the midwife explaining the situation to the young woman in clear and reassuring tones as I reviewed and recorded her blood pressure, oxygen and heart rate. She reminded me of Kiju in the way her voice conveyed comfort.
“The obstetrician will be here shortly and we will be sending you upstairs. Good luck with the little one,” I said as I checked her IV bag one last time before leaving. I cleaned up and made my way back into the emergency room.
Five and a half hours later, my feet sore and my eyes tired from working through the night, I was ready to head home to my bed.
As I gathered my sweater and purse, I peered out of the little glass window into the waiting area one last time.
It was empty except for the midwife. As I headed for the main doors, with no way to avoid her, she stood up and extended her hand.
“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Miriam.”
“Aliet.”
“Aliet. That’s very pretty. Where is that from?”
“It was my great-grandmother’s name. It’s Mi’kmaq.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I felt a lurch in my stomach, thinking she would end the conversation then and there or, worse, tell me I didn’t look Mi’kmaq.
“Your people have a long tradition of midwifery.”
“Doesn’t every culture?”
“Yes, I guess so. Doctors have only been birthing babies for a hundred years. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time.
” She threw her head back and her laugh filled the waiting room.
“Walters, the doctor here, thinks we practise witchcraft. Fuck, I’m tired of hearing that from old white men. ”
“I’ve heard it once or twice myself.”
She motioned for me to sit, so we sat down in the blue vinyl chairs, the magazine table between us, old copies of National Geographic and Maclean’s, dog-eared and worn.
Aside from the custodian waxing the floors and the kitchen staff coming in to start their day, we were the only ones there.
The fluorescent lights were harsh, and I knew they made the dark circles under my eyes appear darker than they were.
“So how is the woman you came in with?” I asked to break the silence.
“She’s great. A baby girl. Needs to spend the night in the NICU for observation, but she’ll be okay. They named her Jacqueline, after her grandmother.”
I nodded my head, grateful for a safe delivery.
“So, I wanted to talk to you . . .” She hesitated. “. . . because you seemed like you didn’t like me back there and I can’t handle when people don’t like me. My hurt feelings are downright pathological.”
“No, no. I’m so sorry, it’s just that I didn’t know there were midwives around here. I thought it was illegal. Not that I agree, I just thought . . .” I trailed off.
Miriam explained that midwifery was not legal, but it wasn’t illegal either; it was unregulated.
Women had a choice, but to Miriam’s knowledge there were only three of them working in the province and they needed more.
The demand was there, but the government was behind in supply and it seemed to her they weren’t even trying.
“They are so stuck on their own ways of doing things.” She let out an exaggerated sigh.
“They complain, but they leave us alone mostly.”
“They?” I asked.
“Government. Old stick-in-the-muds like Walters.”
“My grandmother was a midwife around here. But that seems like so long ago now. She used to help the Mi’kmaw women give birth under the birthing tree.”
I told her about my grandmother, about the birthing tree. Miriam had been born in a different province but had been living in this town for twenty-two years, and she’d never heard of the birthing tree, something that didn’t surprise me at all.
“And you didn’t carry on your grandmother’s tradition?”
I looked down at the floor, the weight of generations of knowledge, knowledge I had chosen to walk away from, heavy on my shoulders.
“Sorry,” she said. “Did I hit a sore spot?”
“Sure did.” I tried to laugh it off. “It’s just that she wanted me to. But the women stopped coming to the tree and I got wound up in my own life and . . .”
“Life happens. We can’t always do everything.”
“I have her recipes, the ones for all the medicines. I have the knife she handed down, a knife whose sole purpose is to bring life into the world, to separate baby from mother. I have these things from her.”
“I’d love to see them sometime. If it’s okay. I don’t want to interfere with any protocols you might have.”
“Are you trying to recruit me?” I tried to make another joke, but my exhaustion made it hard to be witty.
“I’m not saying no.”
The sound of the opening doors distracted us as a man brought in a little boy with a fever and a cough.
I excused myself and, despite my shift being over, accompanied them through the metal doors and into an exam room.
When I looked out next, Miriam was gone, but she’d left her name and number and a note with the charge nurse, asking me to call her sometime.
She signed it with “I think we’d be good friends.
” I folded the note and stuck it in my pocket.
The next day, the sky was threatening rain, but I set out to the birthing tree anyway, in my raincoat and rubber boots.
I picked up the cans and trash and threw them to the side and sat in that place where the tree had held so many women.
No one knew how long women had been giving birth under that tree.
Kiju had always told me it had been happening for longer than there was memory.
I sat there as the rain started, soft at first then harder, but I didn’t move.
I stayed there, under that tree, letting the rain cover me, letting the rain run off the tips of my hair and my nose, letting the rain seep in under me and wet me completely.
It was a cool rain, but I wasn’t cold. I felt relief and maybe even hope.
I thought about all those women, all those babies, the memory of this tree, a grandmother to generations.
I thought about my own mother, her young body, sitting here where I now sat.
I thought of my Kiju and the joy she felt each time she welcomed a new soul.
But I also thought of the day they took her away in handcuffs, those intrusive memories that make themselves heard even when we want to block them, to un-remember.
I saw her bruised wrists and her crushed spirit.
When the rain finally let up and I had let it soak through my clothes and into my skin, I got up and headed home.
I felt, for the first time since I’d made my own teas for Sally when she was giving birth, that maybe, just maybe, I had a purpose.