Free Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez Page B

moment, but somethingwas bothering her. Her feet. The blister on her left thumb. Her stuff down there, worn sore by the endless nighttime activity. She fumbled with embarrassment, tried to forget she was sitting before a strange white woman, groped with the knowledge that Glory could not understand her. The gulf was too deep, too wide.
     
    L izzie, wake up! come quick!”
    Lizzie heard the sibilant whisper through her window. It was loud enough to wake her but not Drayle. She hurried out of bed, knowing the nighttime call could only mean one thing. Sweet was ready to deliver. By the time she got outside her cottage, the servant was gone, returned to her room, her errand complete. A light flickering in one of the cottage windows beckoned Lizzie like a finger.
    Lizzie got to work before they had a chance to ignore her. Reenie sat beside Sweet drying her forehead with a cloth. Mawu dipped a pile of rags into a pot of boiling water. Lizzie gathered a stack of blankets, linens, some moth-eaten, others torn, stained. In the quarters back at her plantation, the women used a birthing chair. Here, Sweet would deliver on the bed. Lizzie shook out the blankets and layered them, one on top of the other, so they would provide a barrier between Sweet’s labor fluids and the hard bed below. Momentarily disturbed, dust swirled and hovered in the moist air like stars.
    Lizzie gave Reenie the signal everything was ready. Reenie spoke softly to Sweet who lay there, wet with exhaustion, her eyes slits of discomfort.
    “I need for you to stand.”
    As soon as she said it, a labor pain racked Sweet’s body and she heaved herself up, the bones in her neck jutting out like cords. She moaned, low and vicious, more like a growl. She was a meanbirthing woman and spit venom at Reenie. As the pain gathered strength, Sweet grew louder. Even though the cottage was already so hot the walls were damp with moisture, Lizzie closed the windows. It would do none of them any good if Sweet’s swearing woke the men. She slid a pasteboard square from beneath the stove, shook off the loose soot, and fanned Sweet with it.
    “Get up, now. Get up,” Reenie urged when Sweet’s pains had subsided.
    “I can’t.”
    “Yes, you can. You got to get up and walk so you can bust your bag of waters.”
    Reenie helped to lift her up. She and Mawu walked Sweet around the room for over an hour, supported her when she had a pain so strong it made her collapse. Lizzie sat and watched.
    “I can’t walk no more,” Sweet said.
    They got her back onto the bed. Lizzie sat behind her and cradled Sweet’s head between her legs. She remembered her own labors. Reenie reached into Sweet’s womb and worked her hand around. They waited, hoping Reenie would be able to find the bag quickly.
    When the pain started up again, Reenie drew her hand out. Sweet had several more labor motions while Mawu rubbed her feet and Reenie talked her through it.
    Reenie was as good as anybody at birthing a baby. But Sweet didn’t look good. No birthing woman ever looked good in Lizzie’s opinion. She had seen what looked to be easy, quiet, and simple turn into a death scene. She had seen woman and child survive large amounts of blood while another woman and child died in the clean of a warm blanket.
    So the bloody patch that spread like a flower on the linens beneath Sweet’s womb only mildly stirred them. Mawu rearranged the blankets to keep her dry. Reenie said “somebody take hold of a leg” and reached her long fingers into Sweet’s womb onceagain, working furiously. Sweet let out an open and full scream from the middle of her belly, and it lasted so long that she wore herself out.
    “I think us need to go fetch her man,” Mawu said.
    Lizzie pictured the man sleeping soundly in one of the rooms in the hotel. He was far from being a worried father. His celebration would be less over a newborn child and more over a newly acquired piece of property. She was pretty sure he hoped for a son.