MONDAY, JANUARY 18
Sam Dawin is not happy to see me. I can tell by the set of his mouth and the way he rounds his shoulders as he throws a bale of hay over the fence. A giant red-and-white bull with long, hooked horns begins to tear at it, then he’s muzzle deep, gorging himself. Within seconds, the hay is scattered, and Sam is stomping through the snow toward me.
“I know what you’re here to ask,” he says, “and it’s none of your business.”
The man has never been rude before, not in all the years I have known him, and this, more than anything, stuns me into silence. He can see his misstep though and has the good grace to stop.
“I haven’t come to ask you anything.” “You haven’t?”
“No. I’ve come to congratulate you on your marriage and to bring a wedding gift. Though I am a month late and I do apologize for that.”
Abashed, color floods his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I assumed….” “What?”
“I thought you came to ask why May went to see Doctor.”
“That’s no more my business than it is yours to know why I was there.”
“I’m truly sorry. I…that was very rude of me.” Sam looks at the ground. “You have been kind to us, and I had no right to assume anything.”
“You are right to be protective of your bride. No matter the supposed offense.”
Sam darts a quick glance at my face, then returns the steady gaze to his feet. “I’ve already heard the rumors. They’re spreading fast, you know.”
“Rumors do that. And you did go to housekeeping quickly.” I can see Sam stiffen again, can see the defensiveness creep in around the corners of his mouth. “I brought a quilt for May. I make an extra one every winter.” It’s a risk, but I take a step forward and set my hand on his arm. “No woman should go to housekeeping without a proper quilt.”
I don’t add that rushed marriages are nothing new in Hallowell, nor are the assumptions that go along with them. Tied to my saddlebag is the large, wrapped parcel. I undo the binding and hand it to Sam. He lifts it from my arms carefully, as though picking up a child.
“Your marriage is your own business, Sam. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“Thank you. May’s mother wouldn’t make her a quilt. She’s too angry.
Will probably never forgive me.” “Of course she will.”
“You don’t know her mother.”
“I do, as a matter of fact. But regardless, my own mother forgave me, and Ephraim as well, after we went to housekeeping early.”
He looks up at me. “You didn’t wait?”
“No,” I say. “Ephraim took me home that evening.”
A different sort of young man might blush at those words. He might stammer or shift his feet. But Sam Dawin is staid and steady, practical, and he makes no show of being ashamed at the desire to bed his own wife.
“I am glad you understand,” he says. “Not many do.”
“You would be astonished at the things I understand, Sam.”
I can see the decision running through his eyes, first the question, then the answer, one chasing the other. Finally, he asks, “Do you want to come in? I am certain May would like to see you.”
“I would like that very much,” I tell him, then go back to my saddlebag. Brutus is tied up at the post, drinking from a trough and grazing on the bale of hay beside it. I lift a bottle from my bag. “And I have another gift. But this one is just for May.”
The house is small but neat, designed well so that Sam can add on as their family grows. It is set back from Water Street by a good fifty yards, but it has views of their wharf and the river beyond. Sam Dawin was fortunate to lease one of the last lots with river frontage and is therefore able to take advantage of both the mill traffic and his eighty acres of farmland. If he manages it well, he’ll provide a solid living for his young family.
The front room is warm, clean, and smells of new wood and freshly baked bread. May sits in a rocking chair beside the hearth, a pile of knitting in her lap and a cup of tea on the small table to her left.
At first, she looks startled to see me, but then she smiles, and two perfect, round dimples appear at the corners of her pretty mouth. “Mistress Ballard,” she says, “please come in.”
Sam holds up the parcel. “Martha has brought us a wedding gift.”
“How kind of you. Our very first,” May says, trying to stand, but she isn’t even fully upright when she plops back into her chair again, dizzy.
That’s when I notice the bucket at her feet, and within seconds, May has grabbed it and leaned over, retching.
“I’m so sorry.” She gags. Retches again. “Forgive me. I—” Her words are lost in the gurgling, wet slop.
I am at her side immediately, kneeling, pushing the hair away from May’s clammy forehead. A palm set against her forehead proves that she has no fever, so I put the bottle I’ve brought on the little table, and, operating on instinct, begin to give orders.
“Sam, go get a cold, wet cloth.”
He’s back in less than thirty seconds, and I press the fabric to May’s forehead. “Lean back. Rest your head on the chair. Breathe through your nose.”
The girl obeys without question as I pat her brow and cheeks with the cool cloth. “Are you ill?” I ask.
“In a manner of speaking.”
One look at Sam proves my suspicions correct. He closes his eyes slowly. Sighs. Nods. May is pregnant.
This angers me. Not because the child was clearly conceived out of wedlock—that happens more often than not in Hallowell—but because it gives the gossipers room to gloat. I had hoped to suffocate that rumor.
“How far along?” I ask.
“I have missed two cycles.”
And they’ve only been married one month.
Tears trickle down her cheeks, and I wipe them away. Then, when I’m sure the girl won’t flinch, I cup May’s face in my hands.
“No baby is conceived apart from the will of God, May. If you are pregnant, it means that you have been touched by Providence, and you will never hear me say an ill word about the child you carry. Nor will I let anyone do so in my presence. Do you understand?”
May nods. Continues crying. I cannot tell if she is afraid or ashamed or simply ill.
The act of mothering is not limited to the bearing of children. This is another thing that I have learned in all my long years of midwifery. Labor may render every woman a novice, but pregnancy renders every woman a child. Scared. Vulnerable. Ill. Exhausted. Frail. A pregnant woman is, in most ways, a helpless woman. Her emotions are erratic. Her body betrays her. Since May Dawin is presently without a mother of her own, I stroke her hair, encourage her to breathe, promise that her stomach will settle. And it does. The wave subsides, and then we are left in the vulnerable aftermath of confession.
I do not make eye contact with May. I do not look at Sam. Instead, I settle my gaze on the crackling fire and I offer them something that I rarely part with: the secrets of our neighbors.
“Every year I deliver children born out of wedlock in this town. You know those names. Most everyone in Hallowell does. They come to court
just to hear me say them. Last year there were two. The year before, five. What you do not know is how many of the children I deliver are conceived out of wedlock. Four in ten. An early birth they call it. Premature. And not a one of them underweight. Our Puritan fathers would have us believe that lovemaking rarely happens outside the marriage bed. But I know better than most that it rarely happens—for the first time, at least—within that bed.”
I am astonished to find that Sam is also crying now. He looks as though he wants to pluck May right out of my arms and run away with her. Words can be a gift, but so can silence. And that is the next thing I give to this new family. I rest my cheek against May’s soft brown hair and let the silence settle around us like autumn leaves. I do not stand again until the need for it has dissipated.
“I brought you something,” I tell May. I pick up the bottle. Hand it to her. “It is a syrup of bearberry leaf, cranberry, green tea, and mint. It helps calm infections of the urinary tract. These are common in newlywed women,…a result of…er…overexertion.” I had wondered what it would take to make Sam Dawin blush, and now I know. His cheeks are flaming. “One spoonful morning and night, taken with a glass of water.”
May runs a fingernail over the cork. “Thank you.” “Now, open your other gift.”
Sam hands the parcel to May and she tears off the paper. The quilt is large, big enough to cover them both, and is made of scraps of fabric that I have gathered and kept over the years for this purpose. Every year I make an extra quilt, sewn in bits and pieces at night before the fire when my other work is done. And every year I choose this same pattern. It is called Wedding Rings, soft loops intertwined and set against a pale background with a solid border. I do this because every year there is a wedding. Sometimes rushed. Sometimes performed according to the standards of our town. Yet each young bride finds herself in a new home and does not know how to make it her home. This, a simple piece of bedding, is the answer. Everyone must sleep, and to do so beneath a warm quilt, tenderly made, is the first thing that helps a house become a home.
Again, there are tears, but happy ones this time.
“I don’t know how to thank you.” May presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
“You don’t have to.”
I don’t want to overwhelm the young couple any more than I already have, so I say my farewell, then add, “May is lucky to have you, Sam. Do not be overly hard on yourself.”
He and May exchange a look that I cannot decipher, and the reciprocated smile dies on his lips.
