FRIDAY, JANUARY 1
I spend the first hour of the first morning of this new decade burying a baby. He is dead born. And small. No more than five pounds, and his arrival into this cruel world came well over a month early.
“It seems wrong that he should go into the ground without a name,” Ephraim says.
“She refused to name him. Just as she refused to declare the father.”
He shifts the small, wrapped bundle in his left arm and sets his other hand upon it. “Nathan,” he pronounces.
“Ephraim,” I warn. “We have no right.”
“And who will know?” He looks around. Peers into the dark, cloud- covered sky. The forest. Then those intense blue eyes turn back to me, and I see the lantern light flickering in their depths. Again, he says, “He should not go into the ground without a name.”
I am too tired to argue. My hands are blistered and bloody from digging the hole, and my back aches. “Fine, then. Nathan.”
The grave is deep enough now—over a foot deep and wide—but was a misery to dig, requiring both hatchet and pick. Though Ephraim offered to do it, I’d insisted he stay inside with the family. It is only by luck that he is with me now anyway. The weather turned poor last night, and he was
headed to Fort Western as I left. So we’d crossed together, and he met me at the home of the laboring woman once he was done visiting with James Wall.
There was nothing I could do for mother or child. The wee boy was already gone when he whooshed from his mother’s body, and she—terrified and unmarried—had declared nothing, keeping the name of the father secret. She had only cried. Then screamed. Then started to shake. The shaking is normal. Most mothers find themselves unable to stop the trembling after giving birth. But this was different. It came from her core and continued. It was feral and unhinged, and I left the room only when she finally surrendered the tiny body, and her mother took over the vigil. Within moments, the girl fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. She is only eighteen.
Part of my remit, a thing required of me by law to be licensed as a midwife, is to bury a child born dead. Or one that passes while I am present. The requirement is meant to spare the mother this agony, but instead places the hardship directly on the shoulders of the midwife. And in winter—oh God, why must there be such a cruel season?—to shovel away the snow, then hack into the frozen ground, to dig a grave deep enough that any passing wild animal will not interfere. Rocks piled atop are usually needed as well.
In this case, the only possible location was beneath the boughs of a large, sprawling pine. It is the one place where the ground is almost soft enough to dig a grave. Still, it was not easy.
It is now the middle of the night, and I turn to my husband, reaching for the bundle in his arms. He does not hand the baby over immediately. Instead, he looks at the tiny, wrapped, linen parcel, and I see the sorrow pool in his eyes.
“It’s time.”
Ephraim shakes his head, dislodging the ghosts that reside there, then gently sets the child into my arms. Together we place him in the hole. Cover him first with dirt, a heaping of snow, then pine needles, and finally a stone cairn that cannot be dislodged by any wild animal. Afterward, my husband
kneels beside the grave, lips moving in silent prayer. This sight is so familiar to me that I am nearly blinded by grief. Some memories never fade.
He looks to my face and the tears that freeze against my cheeks. “Let’s go home, love,” he says.
*
In the morning, after I’ve indulged myself in a rare cup of hot black coffee, I retreat to my workroom and go over the list of deliveries I have performed in the last twelve months. The Year of Our Lord, 1789, brought fifty new souls to Hallowell. Of those, I attended thirty-nine. The rest either were delivered by someone else or happened before I could arrive.
As has been true every year since I began my inventory, the majority of babies I delivered were girls. Twenty-seven last year. I do not consider myself a superstitious woman, but I find comfort in these numbers. Every midwife I have ever known has cautioned that an abundance of male births for multiple years in a row means looming war. One of them—old, bitter, and widowed—had buried every child of her own and, in the calcification of her grief, would refer to such boys as “the cannon fodder of kings.” I have never delivered a boy—either from my body or with my hands—and not thought of those words. Of my own nine children, six were girls, and I have always taken this as a good omen. It makes me hopeful that the wars of this country are behind us.
Four of the births in the Hook last year were stillborn, though I attended only three of them. Each is a bitter loss, and I take my time reading the entries.
Thursday, February 25. Birth. Mr. Jacob Chandler’s daughter. Mrs. Chandler was delivered at the 9th hour of a girl, dead born….
Thursday, September 10. Birth. Mr. Pinkham’s
daughter. Clear. I was called to see Captain Pinkham’s wife. I left home at the twelfth hour. Walked. My patient was delivered of a daughter, at the ninth hour in the evening. It was dead born. I tarried all night.
Thursday, December 17. Birth. Mr. Stone’s daughter. Clarissa Stone was delivered of a dead daughter at the twelfth hour yesterday. The operation performed by Dr. Benjamin Page. The infant’s limbs were much dislocated, as I am informed. The man knows not how to deliver a breech presentation.
Six days after he gave Grace Sewell a near-lethal dose of laudanum, Clarissa Stone called for that idiot doctor to deliver her child. The results were disastrous. And yes, I understand why she did not want me in attendance after the tongue-lashing I gave her in Coleman’s. But there was no reason to go to Dr. Page. I am but one of five midwives in this county.
He is twenty-four years old. Twenty-four! I have thirty years on the man and well over twice as much life experience. Yet the young mothers of this town are dazzled by the mere idea of a Harvard-educated man. So much so that they put the lives of their unborn children in his hands, and the results are deadly.
It is not that every birth I attend goes well, of course. Last night’s delivery is proof of that. But she had lost the child before I ever arrived, and that is the difference between Page and me. With a heavy heart I lift pen to paper and record the life lost yesterday:
Thursday, December 31. Birth. Ruth Emery’s son. Clear
and very cold. I was called to see Ruth Emery. Delivered her of a son that was dead. It was her first born. She continues in grief. I left her at midnight. Mr. Ballard conducted me there and home again as the roads are near unpassable.
I consider them my babies. I am not their mother, of course, but they are mine, and I can still feel the weight of grief hanging heavy in those birthing rooms. The only thing harder than losing an infant would be losing a mother, and I thank the great gift of Providence that I have yet to experience this myself.
Sometimes, however, the most difficult part of a birth is simply getting myself there in time. The river, as always, is my greatest obstacle. Frozen or free, it must often be crossed, and whether by ferry or foot, there is no safe way to do so. The weather, too, acts as villain against me more often than I think is fair. Together, these two forces make as much trouble for me as the patients themselves.
Earlier this spring I faced such a circumstance, and I flip back in my journal to the entry.
Saturday, April 6, Birth. Eben Hewin’s daughter. A severe storm of rain. I was called at the first hour by Eben Hewin. We crossed the river in his boat. It was a great sea a’going. We got safe over, then set out for Mr. Hewin’s. I crossed the stream near his home on fleeting logs but made it safely. But as we passed by Mr. Haines’s, a large tree blew
up by the roots before me which caused my horse to spring
back, which spared my life. I was assisted over the fallen tree by Mr. Haines. Went on, and soon came to another stream but the bridge was gone. Mr. Hewin took the reins, waded through, and led my horse to the other side. We arrived safe and unhurt. Mrs. Hewin safe delivered at ten that evening.
Last year, two of the children I delivered were illegitimate, but only one mother declared the father while in travail. She has since wed. But poor Sarah White remains unmarried and much maligned.
Sunday, June 21, Birth. Sarah White’s daughter. Clear morn. Yesterday I was called at the rising of the sun to Sarah White, she being in travail and is yet unmarried. She remained ill through the day but was delivered safe of a daughter at the 9th hour this morning.
Today it is not just the births that I take time to note. I also go back in search of three entries, noted by an ink blot in the margin. Keeping with tradition, I do not move on in my survey of the previous year before paying tribute. This time, however, I mark an important—and grievous— anniversary:
Saturday, June 26…My daughter Triphene died twenty years ago today. She was four years old….
Sunday, July 4…My daughter Dorothy died twenty years ago today. She was two years old….
Thursday, July 7…My daughter Martha died twenty
years ago today. She was eight years old….
Of everything that I have suffered in my fifty-four years, these three scars are etched deepest in my soul. It does not matter that I had two more daughters after burying those three. The loss is still as fresh and painful as though it happened yesterday. When they died, generations died with them.
I leave my desk for a moment and go to the wooden box on my worktable. I pull out the Bible that Ephraim gave me on our wedding night so many years ago. On the family register, beneath our names, is the list he promised we would make together. Our own legacy, recorded in black-and- white. I run my finger down the birthdates of our nine children.
Cyrus Ballard—September 11, 1756
Lucy Ballard—August 28, 1758
Martha Ballard—April 7, 1761—died, July 7, 1769
Jonathan Ballard—March 4, 1763
Triphene Ballard—March 26, 1765—died, June 26, 1769
Dorothy Ballard—May 17, 1767—died, July 4, 1769
Hannah Ballard—August 6, 1769
Dorothy “Dolly” Ballard—February 20, 1772
Ephraim Ballard, Jr.—March 30, 1778
For twenty-three years, my primary work was to grow a family. Work I considered both honor and duty. Joy and trial. The fact that I am only fifty- four and have buried one third of that family is a sorrow for which there are no words.
I was eight months pregnant with Hannah that awful summer and—in my darkest moments—was convinced that the ache of it would put me and the child I carried in the ground as well. Rarely does a day go by that I do not look at Hannah and think her a miracle.
It hurts. Every year it hurts when I do this, but to forget would be the greater injury. Now that it is done, however, I push my book away and
breathe long and deep through my nose. I listen to my daughters rattling around the kitchen. Smell the hiss of bacon and the sizzle of potatoes. I put away my journal and my Bible and go to be with the children I still have left.
