1979.
She was a night person. It was as if she were unable to let go of the day, and she"d stay up into the early hours of the morning, reading or-her mother didn"t know this-walking around outside, sometimes lying in the old hammock, trying to peer through the lacy network of tree branches to find the stars beyond. She"d been a night person all thirteen years of her life. Her mother said it was because she"d been born exactly at the stroke of midnight, which caused her to confuse day and night. Noelle liked to think it was because she was one-eighth Lumbee Indian. She imagined the Lumbees had had to stay alert at night to fend off their enemies. She was also part Dutch and one-eighth Jewish, according to her mother, and she liked shocking her cla.s.smates with that element of her heritage, which struck them as exotic for rural North Carolina. But her mother sometimes made things up, and Noelle had learned to pick and choose the parts of the story she wanted to believe.
She was reading The Lord of the Rings in bed late one summer night when she heard the rapid-fire crunch of footsteps on the gravel driveway. Someone was running toward the house and she turned out her light to peer through the open window. The full moon illuminated a bicycle lying in the driveway, its tires and handlebars askew as though some nor"easter had tossed it there.
"Midwife?" a male voice yelled, and Noelle heard pounding on the front door. "Midwife?"
Noelle pulled on her shorts and tucked her tank top into the waistband as she rushed into the pine-paneled living room.
"Mama?" she shouted toward her mother"s room as she headed for the door. "Mama! Get up!"
She flipped on the porch light and pulled opened the door. A black boy stood there, his eyes huge and frightened. His fist was in the air as he readied it to pound the door again. Noelle recognized him. James somebody. He was a few years older than her-maybe fifteen?-and he used to go to her school, though she hadn"t seen him this past year. He"d been a quiet, shy boy and she once overheard a teacher say there was hope for him, that he might end up graduating. Maybe even going to college. You couldn"t say that about too many of the kids in her school, black or white or Lumbee. But then he"d disappeared and Noelle hadn"t given him another thought. Not until right now.
"Get your mama!" He was all wired up and looked like he might try to rush past her into the house. "She a midwife, right?"
"Maybe," Noelle hedged. People weren"t supposed to know about her mother. Everybody did, of course, but Noelle wasn"t supposed to say it straight out like that.
"What you mean, "maybe"?" James pushed her shoulder, nearly knocking her off balance, but she didn"t feel afraid. He was the one who was scared. Scared and panicky enough to give her a shove.
"Get your hands off her!" Her mother swept into the living room, pulling a robe around her shoulders. "What do you think you"re doing? Shut the door, Noelle!" She grabbed the door and tried to push it closed but Noelle hung on tight to the k.n.o.b.
"He says he needs a midwife," she said, and her mother stopped pushing the door and looked at the boy.
"You do?" She sounded as if she didn"t quite believe him.
"Yes, ma"am." He looked contrite now, and Noelle could see his body shaking with the effort of being polite when what he really wanted to do was shout and beg. "My sister. She havin" a baby and we ain"t got-"
"You live in that house on the creek?" Her mother squinted past him as though she could see his house through the dark woods.
"Yes"m," he said. "Can you come now?"
"Our car"s not running," her mother said. "Did you call the rescue squad?"
"We ain"t got no phone," he said.
"Is your mother with her?"
"n.o.body"s with her!" He stomped his foot like an impatient little kid. "Please, ma"am. Please come!"
Her mother turned to Noelle. "You call the rescue squad while I get some clothes on. And you come with me tonight. I might need you."
She"d never invited Noelle to go out on a call with her before, but this whole situation was different than the usual. This was the first time a neighbor had come knocking at two in the morning. Sometimes there"d be a phone call in the middle of the night. Noelle would hear her mother leave the house and she"d know she"d be on her own for making breakfast and getting ready for school. Her mother would probably be back by the time she got home in the afternoon, but she"d be quiet about whatever had gone on. Noelle didn"t really care. She was more interested in reading than she was in how her mother spent her time.
Her mother was ancient-fifty-two years old-and her mousy brown hair was streaked with gray. She had wrinkles around her eyes and on her throat. She was much older than the mothers of Noelle"s cla.s.smates and people often thought she was her grandmother. Her friends" mothers painted their carefully shaped fingernails. They wore lipstick and went to the beauty parlor in Lumberton to get their hair done. Noelle was embarra.s.sed by her mother"s age and unconventional demeanor. But as she dialed the rescue squad and did her best to explain to the dispatcher where James lived, she had the strangest feeling that her perception of her mother was about to change.
She hadn"t known her mother could run. They jogged down the dirt road behind James"s bike. Even carrying her blue canvas bag of supplies, her mother was outpacing her. The air was heavy with the smell of the river, and Spanish moss hung from the cypress trees lining the road. They turned onto the lane that bordered the creek and some of the moss brushed Noelle"s shoulders. When she was little, her mother told her that a Lumbee Indian chief"s wife had disobeyed him, so he chopped off her hair and tossed it over the branch of a tree, where it grew and multiplied and soon began covering the branches of all the neighboring trees. What that had to do with Spain, Noelle didn"t know, but she loved imagining that the Indian chief"s wife might have been one of her long-lost ancestors.
Noelle and her mother followed James around the last bend in the lane. Moonlight flickered on the peeling white paint of the tiny shack, but they heard the screams even before the house came into view. The voice sounded more animal than human, and it cut through the dank air like a sword. The screams made her mother run even faster while Noelle slowed her own pace, a little unnerved. Birth wasn"t completely foreign to her-she"d seen their cat give birth to kittens-but she"d never heard anything like those screams. "Where are your parents?" her mother asked as James tossed his bike to the ground.
"Ma"s up to Lumberton," he said over his shoulder. He grabbed the k.n.o.b of the beat-up front door and turned it. "Her sister took sick."
He didn"t mention his father and Noelle"s mother didn"t ask. They raced into the house, which was no more than two squat little rooms. The first was kind of a kitchen and living room together, with a couch at one end and a sink and stove and half-size refrigerator at the other. Noelle"s mother didn"t seem to notice the room, though. She followed the wailing to the second room, where a girl, slim as a reed except for the giant globe of her belly, lay on her back in a double bed. She could only have been a couple of years older than Noelle, and she was naked from the waist down, her green T-shirt hiked up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her knees were bent and the place between her legs bulged with something huge and dark.
"Oh, my stars, you"re crowning already!" her mother said. She turned to James. "Fill every pot and pan in the house with water and set it to boil!" she commanded.
"Yes, ma"am!" James disappeared from the room, but Noelle stood frozen, mesmerized by what was happening to the girl"s body. It couldn"t be normal, could it? It looked and sounded like she was being torn apart.
"All right, darling." Her mother began pulling things out of her bag as she spoke to the girl. "Do not push. I know you feel like pushing, but don"t push yet, all right? I"m going to help you and everything"s going to be fine."
"Not...fine!" the girl yelled. "I don"t want no baby!"
"Well, you"re going to have one in just a few minutes, regardless." Noelle"s mother turned to her. "Find me every clean towel and piece of linen that"s in this house," she said as she wrapped her blood pressure cuff around the girl"s thin arm. "Then wet a cloth with some of that water the boy"s heating up and bring it to me."
Noelle nodded and began searching in the narrow bedroom closet, grabbing the neatly folded towels and sheets and pillowcases from the shelves. In the other room, she found James trembling over water-filled pots on the stove.
"I need to dip one of these in warm water." Noelle pointed to the pots. "Which one"s warmest?"
"This one, maybe." He nodded toward the one closest to her and she dipped the washcloth into the water, then wrung it out in the sink and carried it back to the bedroom.
Her mother partly unfolded one of the sheets and slid it under the girl"s bottom. Then she took the warm washcloth and held it to the bizarrely stretched skin that circled the baby"s head. Noelle leaned down to whisper in her mother"s ear, "Is this normal?" She pointed between the girl"s legs and her mother brushed her hand away.
"Completely normal," her mother said out loud, and Noelle knew she was trying to rea.s.sure the girl at the same time she answered the question. "Why don"t you go help the boy?" she suggested.
Noelle shook her head. "I want to stay here."
"Then get a chair." She nodded toward the girl. "Let her hold your hand."
Noelle dragged a straight-backed chair from the living room to the side of the bed. The girl was gripping the edge of the mattress with her fist, and Noelle awkwardly pried her fingers loose and then pressed them around her own hand. The girl squeezed her fingers hard. Tears ran down the sides of her face and tiny dots of perspiration covered her forehead. Her skin was lighter than James"s, and even with her face contorted with pain, Noelle could see how pretty she was. And how scared.
She reached forward, wiping the girl"s tears away with her fingertips. "What"s your name?" she asked.
"Bea," the girl whispered. "I"m dyin", ain"t I? This baby goin" kill me?"
Noelle shook her head. "No," she said. "My mother-"
Bea interrupted her with another scream. "I"m splittin" apart!" she yelled.
"No woman"s ever split apart, darlin"," Noelle"s mother said, "and you"re stretching just like you"re meant to do."
"My thing"s burnin" up!" Bea said. She let go of Noelle"s hand to reach between her legs. Her eyes widened as she touched whatever was down there out of Noelle"s line of sight. "Lord Jesus!" Bea said. "Lord Jesus, save me!"
"Yes, Lord Jesus," Noelle"s Jewish-Lumbee-Dutch mother said with a laugh, probably using those words together for the first time in her life. "Your Lord Jesus is right here with you, darlin", if you need him to be." She lifted her head. "Noelle, you want to see this baby come into the world?"
Noelle stood and walked to the end of the bed. The dark circle had grown even larger and she held her breath, wondering how her mother was going to get that baby out of skinny little Bea. All of a sudden, Bea let out a yelp and the dark haired, dusky-skinned head popped from her body.
Noelle gasped with amazement.
"Beautiful!" her mother said. "You"re doing beautifully." She held her hands above and below the baby"s head, not touching it, not touching Bea, just holding her hands there as if supporting the head in midair by magic. The baby"s head turned to the side and Noelle could see its tiny face, all scrunched up as if this being-born business was as much work for him or her as it was for Bea. Suddenly, the little squinty eyes and blood-streaked lips blurred in front of Noelle"s face and she realized that for no reason she could name she was crying.
All at once, the baby slipped from Bea"s body into her mother"s hands.
"A precious boy!" Her mother wrapped the squawking infant in a towel and rested him on Bea"s belly, the movement so quick and easy that Noelle knew she"d done it hundreds of times before.
"I don"t want this baby," Bea moaned, but she was lifting the corner of the towel, touching the damp hair of her son.
"We"ll see about that," her mother said. "Right now we have a little more work to do down here."
Noelle watched as her mother cut the cord and delivered the placenta, answering her questions and explaining everything she was doing. Her mother was not the same woman who made their dinner each night, who cleaned their house and fed the chickens and grew tomatoes and mowed their scrawny lawn. In that room filled with animal cries and sweat and blood and air too thick to breathe, her mother became someone else-someone mysterious, part sage, part magician. She was beautiful. Every line in her face. Every gray thread in her hair. Every swollen knuckle in the hands that had brought the baby into the world with such ease and grace. Noelle knew in that moment that she wanted to be like her. She wanted to be exactly like her.
The rescue squad came way too late to be of much use, and the atmosphere suddenly shifted in the little house. There were pointed questions. Shiny medical equipment. Sharp needles and bags of liquid hanging from poles. A stretcher on wheels.
Bea was afraid. "Don"t be." Noelle"s mother squeezed her hand as two of the men in uniforms moved her from the bed to the stretcher. "You did a perfect job. You"ll be fine."
"You deliver the baby?" one of the men asked her mother.
"She a midwife," James said, and the rescuer raised his eyebrows.
"Just a neighbor, helping out," Noelle"s mother said quickly. A few years earlier, she"d spent several days in jail for midwifing and Noelle knew she didn"t plan to go again. Daddy"s girlfriend, Doreen, had stayed over while her mother was gone. Doreen was a maid, her father had explained to her. Noelle might have been only nine years old but she wasn"t stupid. Her father eventually divorced her mother and married Doreen. Noelle hated that woman. Doreen had stolen her father. Stolen her mother"s husband. "Don"t ever hurt another woman the way Doreen hurt me," her mother said to her later. "Just don"t ever." And Noelle swore up and down that she never would and she thought for sure that she was telling the truth.
It was nearly dawn by the time they walked home. Their pace was slow and easy, and for a while neither of them spoke. The buzz of the cicadas had given way to a peaceful quiet that enveloped them in the darkness. Every once in a while, Noelle could hear the call of a bird from deep in the woods. She loved that sound. She"d hear that same bird sometimes when she wandered outside in the middle of the night.
They turned from the lane onto the dirt road that led to their house. "How did you know how to do all that?" Noelle asked.
"My mama," her mother said. "And she learned it all from her mama. There"s no big mystery to it, Noelle. Doctors today would like you to think that there is. They make you think you need drugs and C-sections-that"s surgery that cuts the baby out of you-and all sorts of sophisticated interventions to have a baby. And sometimes you do. A good midwife needs to know when it"s safe for a woman to have a baby at home and when it"s not. But it"s not rocket science."
"I want to do it."
"Do what? Have a baby?"
"Be a midwife. Like you."
Her mother put her arm around Noelle"s shoulders and hugged her close. "Then I want you to do it the right way," she said. "The legal way, so you don"t have to hide your light under a bushel like I do."
"What"s the legal way?"
"You become a nurse first," she said. "I never took that step. I don"t think it"s necessary. Harmful even, because they indoctrinate you with the idea that more is better when it comes to having babies. But North Carolina"s got its laws and you need to do it legally. I"m not having a daughter of mine spending time in jail."
Noelle thought back to Bea"s steamy little room where her mother had done nothing but good. "That Bea girl," Noelle said. "She"s only a couple of years older than me. If I had a baby, I"d want it. I don"t understand not wanting your own baby."
Her mother didn"t say anything right away. "Sometimes not keeping a baby is the loving choice," she said. "Sometimes you know you don"t have the money or the support to give a baby a good chance in life and then letting the baby go to a good family is the right thing. That girl-" her mother drew in a long breath "-she"ll have to decide for herself. The baby being black makes it harder to find adoptive parents for it, so I do hope she decides to keep it and maybe her mama can help out with it. But fifteen is just plain too young. So do me a favor and don"t get pregnant until you"re a lot older than that."
"Don"t worry. I don"t even want to kiss a boy, much less make a baby with one."
"That"ll change." Her mother was smiling. Noelle could hear it in her voice.
The sky was beginning to pink up with the sunrise. The dirt road was visible now beneath their feet, and ahead of them Noelle could make out the corner of their house beyond the woods.
"There"s something I need to tell you, Noelle," her mother said suddenly, her voice so different it might have been another woman speaking. "It"s something I should have told you long ago, but with your father leaving and everything...it just seemed like too much of a burden to give you."
Noelle felt the muscles tighten in her chest.
"What, Mama?" she asked.
"Let"s sit out in the yard while the sun comes up," her mother said. "I"ll make some tea and we"ll have a good talk."
Noelle slowed her footsteps as they turned into the gravel driveway, not sure she wanted to hear whatever it was that made her mother sound so strange and different. She couldn"t shake the feeling that she"d left the house that night as one person, but would be returning to it as another.
She was right.
5.
Tara Wilmington, North Carolina
2010.
It seemed like only a few weeks since I"d sat in this same church for Sam"s memorial service, and I"d had to force myself to come today. Emerson and I had planned the service in a daze. Em had asked me if I wanted to sing, which I did occasionally at weddings or receptions, but I"d said absolutely not. As I listened to one of my fellow choir members sing Faure"s Pie Jesu in her beautiful soprano, I was glad I"d pa.s.sed. My voice would never have made it past the lump in my throat. Not here, where the memories of Sam"s service still hung in the air of the church. And not now, when I still couldn"t believe our Noelle was gone.
Noelle"s mother sat to my left. I hadn"t seen her in about a year, and at eighty-four she was showing the early signs of dementia. She"d forgotten my name, although she remembered Emerson"s and even Jenny"s, and she certainly understood that Noelle was gone. Sitting next to me, she pressed one crippled fist to her lips and shook her head over and over again as if she couldn"t believe what was happening. I understood the feeling.
Grace sat on my right next to Jenny, Emerson and Ted, twirling a strand of her long hair around her index finger the way she did when she was anxious. She"d pleaded to stay home. "I know it"s hard," I"d said to her that morning. I"d sat on the edge of her bed where she had coc.o.o.ned herself beneath her sheet. Her blue-and-green polka-dotted comforter lay in a heap on the floor and I had to stop myself from picking it up and folding it neatly on the end of the bed. "I know it reminds you of going to Daddy"s memorial service, but we need to be there to honor Noelle"s memory," I said. "She loved you and she"s been so good to you. We need to be there for her mother. Remember how important it was to have people come to Daddy"s service?"
She didn"t respond and the hillock her head formed beneath the sheet didn"t move. At least she was listening. I hoped she was listening. "It wasn"t for Daddy that people came," I continued. "It was for us, so that we"d feel their love and support and for people to be able to share memories about-"
"All right!" She snapped the sheet from her head and pushed past me out of the bed, her hair a tangled mane down her back. "Do you ever stop talking?" she said over her shoulder. I didn"t criticize her for her rudeness. I was too afraid of pushing her even further away.