The Fallen Fruit, page 31
Mrs. Green pointed at Em. “Who’s that?”
“My new helper.” Not once did Tabitha glance at her. For now, Emily was nameless, a “helper” meant to stay out of the way until needed.
Penny mewled, her face contorting as another contraction hit. There’d be no anesthesia here—nor the earlier forms of pain relief, such as chloroform or ether. In Uncle Ozzie’s clinic, she’d treated grown men writhing in pain. Those men got pain relief, yet Penny would get nothing but soothing words and reassuring touches.
After that, hours passed as they waited for Penny’s baby. Emily was cast adrift to sail where needed. She moved when called upon and hovered near the door when others attended to Penny.
Plenty of folks passed Em on the way in and out. The door swung, from two girls bringing them a late lunch of warm mince pie to a Green relative letting Mrs. Green sleep for a spell.
Those with true intentions, compared to the nosy folks peering inside, tended to Penny’s chores. No one asked for permission. All women worked during the travail. Emily watched another Negro woman, at least ten years older than herself, tackle the cleaning, all the while minding her toddler clinging to her bright red petticoat.
When Emily left the cabin to fetch water, the sun edged toward the horizon. Her gaze swept over the farm for Matthew. He had yet to check on his sister.
“What are you doing?” Tabitha snapped from the doorway.
Emily had lost time daydreaming on her way back. “I have the water.”
“From where? The well back home?”
“Of course not.”
Em returned to find Penny squatting on the birthing stool with the other women surrounding her. A frowning Tabitha stooped down in front of Penny to catch the child. Two other women, including Penny’s mother-in-law, braced her shoulders and arms.
Good God, she’d almost missed the birth.
Emily tripped over a notch on the floor but managed to stay upright to leave the bucket by the hearth. Eyes wide, she rushed to wash her hands in the chilled water. There’d be no time for soap, for the midwife barked out orders.
“Push,” Tabitha said, then softer, “That’s it. The head is crowning.”
Emily stood to Tabitha’s left, ready to act.
“It hurts so much. Take it out,” Penny pleaded.
“I know,” the midwife said. “You’re almost there.”
“I can’t. Can’t.” The woman panted, then screeched in pain.
After a couple more pushes, Tabitha’s head twisted in Emily’s direction. “Tools. Now.”
“Which one?” Emily fetched the apron.
When the midwife snatched the knife, Emily steeled herself.
“Hold her tight.” With practiced precision, Tabitha applied a cut to widen the birth canal.
Penny hissed as her babe’s head slid out.
“Bear down again,” Tabitha instructed.
All around the room, encouragement rang out, along with cries of joy from Mrs. Green. Meanwhile, Tabitha grabbed a scrap of linen at her feet to wipe away Penny’s excrement.
“You’re doing well.” Tabitha secured the emerging baby with one hand and handed off the soiled cloth with the other.
Emily tossed it into a pile of dirty linens as the baby slid out, face down. The midwife guided the child out with one hand under the baby’s head while the other supported the baby’s backside. The precious baby girl gurgled, then screamed in the midwife’s arms.
“Well done.” After cutting the cord, Tabitha turned to Emily. “Take the child.”
“Praise the Lord!” Mrs. Green called out.
Emily grabbed a blanket and took the child.
“Hello, little one.” Warmth surged through Emily’s limbs, and she couldn’t resist grinning. She’d done it. She’d witnessed her first birth.
While Tabitha massaged Penny’s stomach to expel the afterbirth, Emily rested the baby on the table for a brief exam. A quick swipe to remove debris from the baby’s mouth and nostrils revealed the child had quite a healthy cry. Em marveled at the child’s tiny ten toes and thick head of hair. The sweet girl wasn’t pale, and she didn’t have blue fingertips. No struggling for breath either. She was perfect.
By the time Emily finished swaddling the babe, the matrons had put Penny to bed. A crowd had gathered outside the door.
“Bring the baby to suckle.” Tabitha rested in one of the chairs now. She hid a grimace and leaned to her right. Had she pushed herself too far?
Em crossed the room to lay the child in her mother’s arms.
“Do you have a name for her?” Emily asked Penny.
“Not yet.” Penny gave a weary grin. “My husband wanted a boy named after his daddy, but he’ll have to wait for the next one.”
“Didn’t you tell me your mama had all girls after your brother was born?” Mrs. Green leaned over Penny to help her breastfeed.
“Six girls after Matthew,” Penny murmured. “I should name her Ibilola, after my iya-iya. She was the first daughter, like my child.”
“Iya-iya?” Emily spoke slowly to pronounce it correctly.
“That’s what she calls her grandmother,” Mrs. Green explained.
“It’s one of the tongues from our homeland.” Tabitha had closed her eyes, and her chin rested against her chest. “Year after year, I hear it less.”
“The name is nice.” Mrs. Green reached over to stroke the baby’s forehead.
“My beautiful Lola.” Penny nuzzled the top of the girl’s head.
While the women spoke, Tabitha beckoned for Emily to come to her. “Help clean up, then eat.”
“Do you want to eat now?” Emily asked. “You look exhausted.”
The midwife flicked her fingers to shoo Em away.
With plenty to do, Emily gathered Tabitha’s tools. She’d sanitize them properly back at the house. For now, she assisted others in cleaning up. No one spoke to her, even as a familiar face entered the house and took off his tricorn hat. It was Matthew.
“Have you sent word to my husband?” Penny asked him as she shielded her chest from his view.
“Not yet. He’s due to return tomorrow.” Seeing Matthew melt before his niece added a grin to Emily’s face.
“Come meet Ibilola.” Penny glowed through her fatigue. “Little Lola.”
Emily couldn’t resist joining them. “Your sister’s baby is beautiful,” she remarked.
Penny chuckled. “She has her daddy’s nose, but that’s about it. Lola is an Oyo girl through and through.”
“Oyo?” Em asked. “Are you all related to Mrs. Oyo?”
“No, it’s where we’re from,” Matthew explained. “Mrs. Oyo took on our homeland as her last name.”
The siblings stared at each other until Penny turned away with a pained expression.
“You’ll be fine.” Matthew touched the top of Lola’s head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Does that matter? Has it ever?” Penny asked.
“Is something wrong—” Emily began to say.
“No, everything is well.” Matthew retreated slightly. “I came to see the child, and now I must return to work.”
“What about leaving for good?” Penny’s voice grew quiet. “Are you still going to go?”
“You know I have to.” He said his farewells to his sister, then departed. Emily left behind him.
“Are you heading back to the Millwell place?” Emily asked once they were outside the house.
“I am.”
“And what about after that? Penny said you’re leaving.”
“Not yet. It will take a while, but I’ll go when I have enough money.” He turned to the forest past the fields. “Now that Penny had her baby, I can leave Virginia.”
Emily nodded, although her heart sank knowing he’d leave someday. Eventually, she’d have to go too, but a part of her would’ve liked to have gotten to know him better.
Chapter 38
Emily Bridge
June 1758
Long before the sun rose, Emily and the midwife stood shivering before eight departed souls lying under coarse gray blankets. A great fire had risen like a wraith in the night and consumed a house in Petersburg. A wagoner’s widow and her precious children had perished.
“We must prepare them for burial,” the midwife said quietly. “Their family is upriver. They’ll come for them in the morning.”
“Tell me what I need to do.” Emily had repeated that phrase many times, and like the other days, her heart hurt whenever a child died.
Pain or not, this was her new life now under the midwife’s tutelage.
The starless night passed with Phoebe keeping torches lit while Tabitha and Emily stooped down before each blanket and blessed the body with care. Before each patient, the midwife murmured words Emily couldn’t understand. A prayer perhaps. After a while, Em spoke those words too. Emily liked to imagine the midwife asked for God’s favor as she gently wiped the grime off the toddler’s cheeks or replaced the eldest girl’s charred dress with another.
In the morning, a cart arrived with sullen white men. They thanked the midwife with two coins and hoisted their loved ones into the wagon. Before they could take the smallest child at the end, Tabitha picked up the babe, cradled the child against her chest, and arranged him with care next to his mother.
Emily didn’t have an ounce of strength left, but she stood beside the midwife until the cart disappeared over the bridge into town. Smoke still darkened the skies to the southeast.
This place had given her far too many firsts. Birth and death walked hand in hand.
* * *
Less than a week later, Emily escaped the house to forage and clear her head. There was plenty to do. This morning, she couldn’t find precious wild rose petals. A month earlier, she’d spied the elusive dark-pink plant hiding among the river-edge thickets, like the naughty flash of one’s shift underwear.
It was on days like this that she wished she could steal the petals from a neighbor’s garden back in 1924. So many of the well-to-do folks in the U Street neighborhood grew them to impress the other families. A fistful of those plants would’ve lasted her an entire season.
After Emily found the critical herbs on her list, she still needed at least two bunches of valerian. The umbrella-like flower had calming properties she could tap into. Foraging always had a soothing, valerian-like effect on her senses. She could pretend she was back in 1924. When she could hear nothing but the whip-poor-will’s familiar call from the treetops, Em imagined the Bridge farm was just past the birch trees on the way to Petersburg.
A whistle from behind her made her glance over her shoulder. Matthew, this time with deep-brown skin and a wide grin, waved in her direction with his right hand. In the other, he held the reins to a mare hauling pelts and small parcels.
“How have you been, Miss Freeman?” he asked.
“I’ve been good, Mr. Abramson.” She slowed her pace, unable to resist returning his smile.
“Busy morning?” he asked.
“Just searching for plants, but I can see you’ve been busy too.” She glanced at the pelt pile, recognizing the familiar rings from coons and the thick beaver coats.
“Mr. Millwell sent me all the way to Cobbs to get these. Can we trade? Your load looks much lighter.”
“No thanks.” She stuffed her hands into her apron pocket, suddenly conscious of the dirt under her fingernails and the mud smearing her sleeves. Had their time apart not helped? He’d disarmed her with ease. Of course they walked past some marshmallow plants, and she needed those. A part of her hoped he’d wait, and he did. Even the horse grazed on nearby grass. The stubborn flower had deep roots in the thick soil, forcing her to chip away at the earth. An easy silence settled between them, so she kept working until she freed the white-petaled flower.
“About time. Stubborn beggar.” She got to walking again, and Matthew strode up beside her.
“Not for someone like you.”
“I’ve never met an herb I couldn’t dig up,” Emily said. “With time, of course.”
They walked a bit more. When her side brushed against his, she added space between them. Again and again, they drifted back and forth until they found a sweet spot. All she had to do was turn her head to see him.
“May I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Back in Oyo, what did you do?” she asked.
When Matthew didn’t immediately answer, she added, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“My family fled our village after a rival chief took over,” he said slowly. “He planned to kill my uncle along with his relatives. Most of us stayed over there, but a few, like my sisters and myself, became apprentices.”
“How did you find that kind of work without speaking English?”
“My eldest sister knew their tongue. She made the arrangements for us to work five years for passage. I thought she was coming to America with us, but she was sent to England.”
“Are you done working off your debt?”
“I finished two years ago, when I turned thirty. Felt like much longer.”
So many questions came to mind. She wanted to know everything about him. Was his sister coming here someday? Had she written any letters? Matthew sounded like he still missed his homeland. She’d give anything to know if Isaiah thrived in his new home.
“You’re free now to do as you please,” she said. “There’s something wonderful about knowing you can go anywhere, see anything.”
He adjusted the load from his backpack. “There’s much to learn out there. Much to experience if you’re willing to see the world. My family rarely left our village, but we had all sorts of stories and lessons about our ancestors. Those tales taught me not to fear the unknown but to embrace it and find my way.”
“I’d like to hear a couple sometime.”
“It will be nice to tell them,” Matthew said, flashing that easy smile of his. “Now that I’m so far away, I’ll never hear them from my aunts again.”
Emily nodded, thinking of the Bridges and how Professor Mayberry considered the family Bible more precious than anything. But those records went back only so far—the Bridges’ story began long before Zachariah and Gertrude set foot in the colonies.
“I don’t know my family’s history before we came here either, but we all can take root anywhere and find our purpose.” She fell silent for a moment, feeling the weight of her journey. She’d never had a chance to grow roots and settle down, but she’d thrived, accomplished things.
Matthew smiled at her with his eyes, and she couldn’t resist saying, “Why do you look at me like that?”
Oh God, can I rip my mouth off? Emily scurried to walk faster.
She could feel his eyes on her back. There was no way he was frowning this time.
“On the way to Cobbs, it rained the whole time,” he said quietly. “After a while, I was miserable and cold, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this lady I met. She makes me laugh, and she smells like the bitter plants she picks.”
Did he just say she smelled like weeds?
“When you stitched up my arm,” he added, “you had this scent I couldn’t place, but I liked how it wasn’t subtle or soft like a flower.”
“That was mint.” At least he hadn’t mentioned the onions.
Something inside her bloomed like the white rose petals in her apron, a warmth rivaling the June heat caressing her cheeks. Matthew had thought of her.
“Are you leaving again soon?” she asked before a more intrusive question came to mind.
“Not any time soon.”
She glanced in his direction and found him content.
They walked for a spell until the familiar fields of tobacco and flax appeared. She expected him to veer off with the horse toward the Millwell place east of Petersburg, but he followed her right up to the midwife’s house. At the doorway, he hoisted his pack off his back using his right arm instead of both.
“Why aren’t you using your left arm too?” she asked. “Something wrong?”
“Still hurts, but it’s my fault.”
She pursed her lips. That man probably would’ve left the rags on his arm until the fabric jumped up and danced a jig.
“Let me see it,” she said firmly.
“Not today. I have to deliver these.”
“You have enough time to walk with me, but you don’t have enough for me to see your wound.” She folded her arms.
“I’d never do that to a friend.”
Did he think he could fool her?
“I’ll let you see it tomorrow,” he finally said.
“Fine.” Emily marched to the front door. “You’ll either show up or you won’t, but if we’re friends, it’s better to admit you’re not fully healed.”
Matthew bid her goodbye with an amused glint in his eyes. “I’ll see you at first light then, Miss Freeman.”
Chapter 39
Emily Bridge
June 1758
Emily found Matthew waiting outside her door at sunrise. The mid-June heat had kicked in, bringing enough waves of humidity to dampen anyone’s spirits, yet he bathed half in shadow, half in the sun next to an evergreen near the house. Clouds of gnats were the only creatures bold enough to dance in the light around him.
He greeted her with a nod and trailed after her to the well.
Having his eyes on her backside unnerved Emily at first, but he followed her diligently, and helped carry the bucket back to the house.
Only moist air circulated through the house, so she took care of his wound right out front. While she unraveled the cloth around his arm, she fixed her gaze on the middle of his chest. Any higher might’ve betrayed the thoughts caressing her mind. Was the curve of his cheek as smooth as it appeared? What would happen if she cupped it to run her thumb against the smooth stubble?
She peered at the cut, finding less angry-looking welts than before. She ran her fingers over his forearm to search for inflammation and he quivered. The movement had been subtle. A brief flash. But she’d caught it and stilled.
“Is something wrong?” Matthew asked.
“Everything looks good.”
