“Don’t relax, dearie, push it out, that’s right.”
But it was slowing down, fading away from her, and she let go of the mattress and turning her head saw the dark-skinned wrinkled midwife, bareheaded, in a black dress with a long yellow scarf around her shoulders, taking things out of an old suitcase and an enormous paper bag and laying them on the chairs.
The midwife pulled down the sheet and felt her and looked at her; her hands were deft and swift and gentle.
“It’s dead, isn’t it?” Lora said wearily.
The other’s black eyes darted at her. “So that’s what you want, is it? What makes you think it’s dead? What did you do, what makes you think it’s dead?”
“You’re a fool,” said Lora sharply. “I didn’t do anything. It doesn’t move. If it’s dead I’m going to die too.”
Chuckling, the midwife took a towel from a nail on the wall and wiped the sweat from Lora’s face and brow. “There’s nobody dead in this room yet,” she said cheerfully. “You’ll have enough to keep you busy this night dearie without worrying about things that’s none of your business.” She straightened up, and said suddenly, “I thought you said this was your first one.”
“It is.”
The midwife chuckled again. “Then I’m a virgin and God help me if my Luigi could hear that.”
“It’s my first one I tell you.”
“All right, all right, dearie.”
She turned and busied herself with the articles she had arranged on the chairs. Mrs. Pegg appeared with two wash basins, a pitcher and some old towels, and the information that there would soon be plenty of hot water in the bathroom; she had turned on the heater in the basement. Would she be wanted any more? No, the other said, she wouldn’t need any help; she had once handled triplets all alone, with a sore back too, and they were all alive to this day.
Mrs. Pegg’s footsteps could still be heard descending the stairs when Lora said suddenly, sharply:
“Ah, look out, look out.”
The midwife glanced at her face. “It’s coming, dearie? Don’t let up on it now — here hold on to this — that’s right, my little one — push it out, it comes quicker that way, an hour maybe, soon now — push it out.”
But nine hours passed before it would push out. Lora had long since ceased to care about anything, anything in the world, except to have it end. At times she imagined the midwife was torturing her; at others she pleaded with her to do more, do something, do anything. Gradually the night’s stillness surrendered to the city’s million morning sounds, infrequent at first — the clatter of a milkwagon or a taxi’s horn — then two or three together, and more, until it swelled into another day’s bedlam. Along with that the window which Lora faced became again alive; when the blind was raised it was already dawn; steadily the light increased so that soon the midwife turned off the electric bulb that hung from the ceiling by a cord; and then the sun was blazing in and the pulse of the July heat throbbed again. The midwife pulled the blind down. She had put on an apron, her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, her coarse grey-streaked hair was tumbling over her left ear, and now and then she yawned wide and long. Lora, in those intervals when she could think, decided that a week must have passed, a month, a year. It seemed impossible that it had ever begun or that it would ever end. It was easy to see what was going to happen — it would keep up a little while longer, and then she would die without knowing it. How many more times would she have to do that? Five more, ten more? Ten more would do it perhaps. She couldn’t do ten more, nor five either; not even one, no by god not one, not one, not one...
It was nearly noon when, lying with closed eyes, dead at last, she became aware of a noise beside her, and slowly and wearily lifting her lids, saw the midwife standing there expertly balancing in one hand a red and squirming baby.
“You’re lucky, dearie, it’s a boy,” said the midwife. “No wonder he nearly split you open, he’s as fat as a priest.”
Lora tried to smile.
“It’s wiggling,” she said, “look at it wiggle.”
VIII
Roy was eighteen months old, big and healthy and already argumentative, before Lora paid the debt she owed Albert Scher.
By that time the debt was a large one, though doubtless he did not consider it a debt at all. When the baby was only a week old he had appeared one evening at the room, astonished to find that it was all over. He had expected, he said, to be on hand, and was furious to learn that the doctor had been replaced by a midwife. Midwives were not worth a damn, they were dirty and superstitious, and might easily ruin a baby’s entire life by giving it an ugly and erroneous first impression. Lora replied that doctors were swindlers and pigs, and anyway look at the baby — nothing wrong with that baby. Doctors were expensive, Albert agreed, that’s what he had come for; and pulled from his pocket a roll of crumpled bills and proceeded to count it out upon the bed.
“Hundred and sixty-two dollars,” he announced. “Oh, it’s not mine, I never had that much money in my life. I described your classic plight to some of my friends and they passed the hat. Not a jitney from me, I couldn’t afford it. This was to be for the doctor; now what?”
“It won’t be wasted,” said Lora. “If I tried to thank you I’d cry. I cried yesterday because Mrs. Pegg brought me some soup. I hope I soon get over it.”
But that was a small part of the debt; it was he who solved the problem of a job for her. She had tried to think of something that would permit her to have the baby with her, at least something that would not keep her away all day, but besides office or counter work there seemed to be nothing she could do. Thanks to the generosity of Albert’s friends there was no immediate hurry, but she wanted to keep something in reserve. What if the baby got sick? Worse, what if she did? For the first time she began in dead earnest to appraise her situation and calculate the possibilities, and decided in the end that she was in a hell of a fix. Luck would see her through, nothing else. To pretend that hard work, any work that she could do or would be permitted to do, could bring ease or security or even a pleasant though hazardous journey along the road she was started on, was pure buncombe.
The immediate luck came through Albert, who turned up one day with the news that a friend of his would like to have her for a series of posters for Daintico Dental Cream. At least he would like to see her. Only, Albert said, she must first get some new clothes. Lora refused point-blank to squander her cherished capital on such a risk, but finally he persuaded her; and on a September afternoon, leaving the baby with Mrs. Pegg, she went in her new dark green tight-fitting suit, deep brown hat and alligator-skin shoes, to an elaborate studio in the Fifties. A smooth little man, polite and effusive, with a pale miniature moustache and no eyebrows at all, accepted her for the job at once on generous terms. She would be an inspiration, he said; and would be needed only two hours a day.
It was that same afternoon on her way home that she sent a telegram to her father and mother. Since the baby’s coming she had written them three letters, the first since she had left them, but sent none. For one thing, she had feared they might somehow trace her address through a letter, and for another she didn’t like what she had written. Re-read the next day, they sounded like bragging, and she didn’t want to brag; strength doesn’t brag, and they should, indeed they should, feel her strength! But this afternoon, passing a telegraph office, on the impulse she entered and sent a wire to Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Winter.