I send my Pupil Midwife, Julia, out to call the next lady, and bend down to massage my calves. My thick stockings make my legs itch even on a cold late winter day like this.
"Mrs. Hennessy," announces my pupil portentously. Apparently she yearned for drama school and took midwifery as second best. I look briefly at her spidery mascara and her teased up hair. I can well believe it.
Mrs. Hennessy slips off her mac and sits down quietly. It's her first baby. Her wedding band looks almost too heavy for her pale finger. There are two streaks of darker fabric on her dress where she has let out the darts to give herself more room. Even so, as she twists towards me, the side seams pull. I smile at her and ask Julia to take her blood pressure.
I flick through Mrs. Hennessey's notes. Born in 1939, just as War broke out, she is barely 21. When I was 21, I watched a woman die in childbirth for the first time. Her name was Mrs. Henderson and she never spoke a single word to me. I held her baby while she died. I was only really a girl then. Mrs. Hennessey has chosen another way to grow up. Once upon a time, she was called Marigold Fryer. I delivered her and her sisters, Violet and Rose. Mrs. Fryer fancied herself as a gardener. I wonder suddenly who she was before she was Mrs. Fryer. Her daughters are all Mrs. somebody now - she was so proud to see them all happily married before she died.
Mrs. Hennessey fiddles with her wedding ring as Julia pulls off the blood pressure cuff, and then she leans forward suddenly as Julia is fiddling with the notes. She asks me if she might have a hospital confinement. Her husband is in the Army and she has only an auntie near by.
"We'll see," I say. "I'll make the application."
Julia motions her to the couch, and leaves her to undress behind the screen. While she waits for Mrs. Hennessey to get ready, she fusses with her hair in the tiny mirror above the sink. Sometimes I could slap her.
When Mrs. Hennessey has undressed, her skin paler than her worn bra and slip, I move behind the screen and run my hands across her belly. It heaves beneath my touch. She smiles up at me, "He moves such a lot."
And I smile back, "It feels a good strong kick, and a nice size."
She nods as well as she can, laid flat on her back in her best underwear. I stand back to let my Pupil practice her palpation. Her fingernails are really too long for this work - I will need to speak to her about it when we have a moment.
I wash my hands whilst Mrs. Hennessey re-dresses. I ask Julia to weigh her and go back to my desk. My head is beginning to ache with a heavy insistence. On the street outside, the lamps begin to flick on. Sometimes it feels as though winter will never end. I let my head drop briefly into my hand.
At last Mrs. Hennessey shuffles slowly out from behind the screen. Her left hand holds her mac carefully closed and her wedding ring flashes briefly in the glow of my desk lamp. Her baby will be born in the summer, when the heat makes the tarmac shimmer and the rose bay willow herb dances in the verges. The baby will spend each day outside in its pram until the sky darkens to autumn. I remind Mrs. Hennessey to make an appointment to return in four week's time, and she nods, a smile crossing her pale face.
Julia lets the door slam shut behind her as she goes to fetch our last patient. I want to kick off my shoes and warm my feet in front of the fire at home. But I'm on-call tonight, waiting, half-alert for a bang on the door and a slip-slither in the ice to somebody's house. I wonder how much of my life I have sat waiting in other people's houses. The drama of the birth, the heart-stopping moment as we wait for the first breath, the relief as the after-birth slides out unresisting. It's all there, annotated in the birth registers stacked up on my little bureau. But the waiting, the long moments that don't get recorded, they are the bits that stay in my mind. The clock ticking, and maybe the fire crackling. Some women are terrified, some are resigned, others are powerful. But for me, the waiting is always the same.
I run my finger down the list of names in my appointment book. The pregnancy is just another part of the game. On clinic days I see an endless procession of women, trapped in hope and resignation. They sit quietly on the wooden chairs, swathed in macs and scarves, and they wait. And after the babies are born, I see them in the park, at the laundrette, or in the queue for the butchers and they are waiting still. I suppose it's only fair, that whilst they are in labour, someone else waits for them.
"Mrs. Tyler," Julia intones, waving the woman vaguely to the seat next to my desk, like an usherette at the cinema. Mrs. Tyler sits down carefully on the flimsy wooden chair. She crosses her legs demurely at the ankle and I wonder what made her wear red stiletto shoes to see the midwife. Winkle-pickers, they call them. They look new, still with a fierce bright sheen. Mrs. Tyler's cheeks are pink, two pin-pricks of fever. I shuffle my papers and she waits. She came in last Thursday to take a pregnancy test and she has returned today for the result. I assume she knows the answer already. Most women do. Her eyes do not meet mine. She keeps her gloves on, and her grey coat pulled tightly around her slender frame.
"Well," I say. "You're certainly pregnant, an autumn baby judging by the dates you gave me, Mrs. Tyler..."
All our ladies are addressed as "Mrs.", as though being pregnant alone confers that honour. Never mind rings and dresses, tea sets, and honeymoons in Scarborough. You lived your life before all that. I know that Mrs. Tyler's finger is bare under her gloves. I look at her, sat so tidily on the spindly wooden chair. She's got a trim figure on her - she should be fine until June for a wedding if she is careful with the fabric
I pull a record card towards me and Mrs. Tyler - Joyce - finally looks up. Her eyes are blank. I put the card down. Suddenly I know that she will do everything in her power to make sure that I don't see her again. She won't play the waiting game. I wonder if she has lost her fella, or whether she never really had him. She clicks her stilettos on the tiled floor. I've heard all the solutions; gin and hot baths, getting your man to thump you in the belly, pills advertised as safe and effective and taken by the bucket load. And if all that fails, there are the women, discrete and silent, who will do the deed.
I look back at her, her eyes as grey as the wool of her coat, her cheeks as red as her fancy shoes. Last week when she came, her eyes still sparkled, and she was almost giggling for shame and shock. Today her eyes look dead, as though she has seen her life ebb away. The things we do.
"I'll take your blood pressure," I hear myself say, "and we'll need to see you again in four weeks time?"
I pause and she whispers, "I see."
When she stands up, she belts her coat tightly around her narrow waist. I adjust my hat, catching my finger on the badge that declares boldly that I am one of the Corporation's midwives. Mrs Tyler says, "Thank you," in a quiet voice. I know that I will not see her here next month. I know that, in her bright red heels, she will do everything in her power to become Miss Tyler again.
~
That night, sitting in my chair, half-alert for a call-out, I dream of Mrs. Henderson. I hear the blood splashing onto the wooden floor as I see her face, as grey as Mrs. Tyler's coat. I put my hand to my face to push my hair away, and realise that the damp streak across my face is blood. I want to scream, but no sound comes out. There is blood on my skirt and my shoes.
I wake up, my heart pounding. I can still see her face. She was dead before the doctor arrived - her pulse, weak and thready, simply disappeared. She never opened her eyes and I never heard her speak.
The baby mewled in the corner, and the midwife under whose instruction I was working told me to take it to a neighbour and make sure I was well-covered in my coat before I went home. Outside it was drizzling and I splashed through the puddles to try to get the blood off my shoes.
E.S. Parkinson is a writer and historian, interested in, and inspired by, the lives of 'ordinary' women. She has worked as a social historian and as a midwife, and these roles impact on everything she writes, in direct and indirect ways. She is fascinated by people's stories; their ways of making sense of their world and their ways of getting through.
She likes cricket, and tea, and old books about cooking and housecraft. She lives in Nottingham, UK with her partner and teenage children.
Mark Tonight
Eric McKinley
I am not who she thinks I am. This much is clear. I am seated alone at the middle of the bar. My friends, who had joined me here, have both left. They are both married, but not to each other. She walked in as they walked out. Luckily, I was not quite ready to go.
This is a mid-town spot with a Euro motif that is hard to discern because the room is crazy dark. Dozens of votives provide the only light. This is plenty. The room is smoky from the steady burn of incense. A driving bass, like the smoke, is constant. I will have a headache in the light of the morning.
It is two times evident that she believes she knows me. She is certain I am a friend. Her glazed over eyes, which are hazel, could mean that she simply cannot see straight. But, she seems so sure.
She taps a slender, moisturized, manicured index finger on her nose and says, "If you want, you can have a bump. I'll let you know when my guy gets here."
Liquor and pussy aside, I haven't touched a drug in years.
Before this offer, she is even more definitively mistaken. She greets me with, "Hey, Mark. Oh my God. I was just thinking about you. I mean, this is really unbelievable. How are you?"
As she steps toward me with outstretched arms, I take her in. She has a symmetrical, pretty, waspy face. She flips her lightened hair, which falls around her shoulders before instantly returning to its previous place. She smiles and it's an orthodontist's fantasy. Straight, white, even. She is toned, no doubt from pilates and undereating. When she hugs me, she feels tight. Whenever I hug a woman, I take note of breasts. Hers are right. She is a study in the elimination of flaws. Except, my name is not Mark. Not before tonight, anyway. She begins the dance of catching up.
"So, my God, I haven't seen you in ages," she says.
"I know. It has been awhile."
"Too long."
"I agree."
"Are you still deejaying?" she asks me.
"Yeah, here and there. I've cut back recently though." I say this without a blink. She presses on.
"Well, thank you again for working my house warming. People are still talking about it."
"Yeah?"
"Absolutely," she says, so enthusiastic. "And then, how you helped me clean up afterward, so thoughtful."
"It was nothing," I say. "Really."
We pause. She looks toward the door. I think of pretending to step out for a smoke, only to take my ass home. But, I don't know if Mark smokes or not.
"So I guess you're wondering why you haven't seen me for a while," she says.
"You must've read my mind."
"I've been away."
"Away?" I ask. Then I wave to order a round.
"Yeah, away, in a facility, a hospital... I was in a mental hospital."
Because maybe Mark would be stunned by this, but then again, maybe not, I simply nod.
"Fucking restraints," she says, making an angry face.
The bartender puts down her cosmo, my stout. The angry face is gone.
"Well, cheers anyway," she says.
We toast to freedom.
"So I suppose you want to know why I was locked away."
I desperately want to know.
"Only if you feel like telling me," I say.
"Sure, I mean, I trust you, right?"
"Right."
"Well, you remember my dad was having those problems?"
"Vaguely," I say.
"He shot himself, last year. Put a shotgun to his chest."
"Oh my god," I say. "I'm so sorry."
I mean this.
"Don't be," she says, defiant. "I'm done blaming myself."
"Well, that's good."
"I realized there's nothing I could have really done to help him, you know. I mean he was the parent."
I nod again. She drinks half the cosmo in one sip, then looks to the door again. She's wearing a sparkling necklace. With the nose pointing finger, she plays with its stones. All I can think about is what fucking her would be like. Desperate, I imagine.
"That's a pretty necklace," I say. She touches it with more certainty.
"Oh, thank you. It's from my new line. By the way, how do your girls like their bracelets?"
Thankfully, the bass has grown louder. "I'm sorry, what?"
"The bracelets, the ones I made for you. How do they like them?"
"Oh, the bracelets," I say. "They were very happy with those bracelets."
"And, how are things there? With your girl?"
This is veering away from where I want it to go.
"You know, the same. Ups and downs."
"Well, your daughter is absolutely gorgeous."
"Thank you." I say, pretending she means my own daughter.
I am now pissed at Mark. I thought he knew this woman biblically, not neighborly. Perhaps she is friends with the mother of Mark's daughter. Terrific.
"Fucking Bryan cheated on me while I was away."
"Now, that doesn't surprise me," I say, hoping this flies.
"I know, right? Everyone told me. Now I'm just a fucking divorce statistic."
"Maybe it's for the best." Here, I am sure to look her in the eye.
"Definitely," she says, looking right back, killing the cosmo. I have barely dented my stout. I am questioning where I am with her. Or rather, where Mark is.
Her guy comes in. I know this because she walks away from me mid-sentence. He is diesel, chiseled, Asian. I don't see his face for that long. I watch them. They don't speak. They walk down the bar's dark corridor, which leads to a darker stairwell. The bathrooms are downstairs. It occurs to me that this place is perfectly laid out for down low moves. They descend. In a minute, her guy comes back. I try to see him better, make eye contact. He has none of it. In another minute, she returns.
"Okay," she says. "Okay."
"Everything alright?" I ask.
"So listen, it's a little crowded in here, right?"
"True."
"I'm gonna go. It was great seeing you." She kisses my cheek. The brush of her skin is like softened butter.
"Thank you for listening to all my drama," she says.
"No problem."
"You are welcome to join me, you know."
"I'll walk you," I say.
She turns to go. I place money on the bar and stand. With half steps and my hand approaching the small of her back, we move toward the narrow exit.
Eric McKinley is a Philadelphian. He is a former public defender in the former most dangerous city in America, Camden, New Jersey. Now, he is an MFA in Fiction Candidate at Rosemont College, slightly reducing the likelihood that he'll get stabbed. He writes a story every now and again. He has also appeared in The Aurelian Literary Journal and apt literary journal. His novel, "The Blessed Sons", is in search of a home. Somebody hook a brother up. https://mckinleykaizen.blogspot.com/
Poetry by Duane Locke
Yang Chu's Poems #317
With two Zen monks,
Sat as still as stones,
With me by bamboo.
I, a Taoist, said, "Listen to the music
Of the bamboo."
"That is Maya," they said.
I said, "Is that so."
I gazed at the wine
In the hand of a man
Who was surrounded
By friendly gibbons,
The two monks saw me
Gazing, said "Wine is Maya."
I said, "Is that so."
I started staring at a girl,
Long, black, glossy hair,
Slender in her tight green silk kimono."
The two said,
"She is Maya."
I said, "Is that so."
Years later we met,
Both the monks
Were called "Masters"
now.
They asked me what I had learned
From my meditations and study of the Sutras.
I replied, "Maya is maya."
"Is that so," they both
Replied in unison
Yang Chu's Poems #318
On an autumn red-spotted leaf autumn
In Mount Hakusan chilly forest far
Away from people I recited aloud
My poems about
About the transport of the transient,
How the concept of permanence is a lie.
I heard the bright green tip
Of new emanated pine needle applaud.
Felt the pine needle's lips kiss my cheek,
Knew I had not written in vain.
Duane Locke lives in rural Lakeland, Florida, next to a sacred underground stream, thick-foliage concealed. He has a PH. D in "Metaphysical Poetry." and as of May, 2008, has had 5,971 poems published (none self-published or paid to be published)--- needs 29 to have 6,000 published. For a list of his book publications, poetry, scholarly, and philosophical works, plus other information, see the Google Search Engines. His E mail is
[email protected] and he welcomes correspondence.
Milk
Melanie Haney
She didn't tell her husband what she had seen. That while standing in front of the bathroom mirror, scrubbing her face, brushing her teeth, he was there. Not a shadow in the bathtub, but a boy, couldn't have been more than five or six and pale, nearly iridescent, looking at her over the glossy white lip of the tub. The toothbrush fell loose in her mouth then dropped to the tiled floor by her toes. She blinked, rubbed her eyes with the pits of her palms and then peeked again. He smiled at her and then leaned forward, out of view. She heard the splashing of water. Then nothing.
She smoothed lotion over the loose skin of her cheeks and exhaled slowly. She inhaled, bent down and picked up the wet toothbrush, dropped it in the trash. Exhaled again. And then she went and lay down beside her husband, who was already breathing slow heavy breaths in the dark.