Read Online The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon - Free Book Online
Authors: Annabel Lyon
Tags: Fiction:Historical
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once.)
The girl woke with the cut, a stroke the length of my hand from navel to pubic hair. It looked like a scratch at first, and then it started to bleed. My father probed it with his finger, and then ran the knife a second time along the same line, deepening the cut. The girl was screaming now, get it out, get it out.
“Quickly,” my father said, glancing up at me. “If you want to see.”
I did want to see. Through the blood and the yellow fat I saw the head, and then my father reached in and lifted out the baby. It wasn’t moving. The umbilical cord was thick and ropy, an unfleshy grey. My father was holding the baby with one hand and pointing back inside the girl with the other, naming parts I couldn’t properly make out for the gore. A midwife appeared at his elbow with a clean cloth; he gave her the baby so he could cut the cord. Fortunately he had encountered her before—a competent, unemotional woman near his own age. It was she who had persuaded the family to send for him when her own skills had proved insufficient. She didn’t wait for his instruction now, but swiped the baby’s mouth out with her little finger and then put her face over its nose to suck out the blood and mucus. Her own lips now red with blood, like a predator at feed, she slapped its purple bum smartly and it began to choke, then scream.
“Good.” My father, surprised, glanced up from the cord, which he had tied off to stop the bleeding. “There’s a little sewing kit, like your mother uses,” he told me, but I already had it out. He closed the lips of the girl’s belly with small, tight stitches, a painstaking process made worse by her screaming and writhing. In the corner, the husband was vomiting a thin yellow gruel onto the floor. My father had me hold a wadded cloth to the incision to sop up the blood that continued to seep through, and held his hands out for the baby. This had all taken a matter of minutes.
“Boy,” the midwife said, and handed it over.
“A lovely boy.” My father held the swaddled bundle up to the light, and then down to the mother’s head, so she could see. Her glance slid to it and stayed there. My father nodded at one of the slaves, who released her arm so she could reach for it and touch its hair. When we left, she was still bleeding.
“The baby will live,” my father said as we walked home. We were both bloody, my father especially, and I carried the bloodied tools in a separate bag to keep the rest of the kit clean. “The mother will die, tonight or tomorrow. Usually like that you lose them both. That was a good day’s work.”
“What if you sealed the incision with wax to stop the bleeding?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “You have a good head for this. I was proud of you today. Wax would get into the wound and clot the veins, kill her from the inside. Did you see the afterbirth?”
I had: a slab the size and texture of a beef’s liver, with a membrane dangling from one side. My father had pulled it out before he closed the incision and had given it to another woman, who took it away, wrapped in a cloth.
“You must never forget to remove the afterbirth,” he said. “Through the belly, as we did today, or through the vagina if it is a normal birth. It will rot if you leave it inside and kill her that way. Sometimes you can cut a slit to make the vagina bigger, but that works best when the baby’s head is already coming. That wouldn’t have helped us today.” We were home. “This way.” My father led me around back. “We’ll clean up before your mother sees us. That’s good manners.”
That evening, my father saw me attempting to draw the inside of the girl’s belly. “The blood made it hard to see,” I said.
My father looked at the drawing but offered no correction. “You learn to do it by feel. The position of the baby, the depth of the incision, the bits of the afterbirth if it’s torn apart. Your fingers become like your eyes.”
“Have you ever cut in
The girl woke with the cut, a stroke the length of my hand from navel to pubic hair. It looked like a scratch at first, and then it started to bleed. My father probed it with his finger, and then ran the knife a second time along the same line, deepening the cut. The girl was screaming now, get it out, get it out.
“Quickly,” my father said, glancing up at me. “If you want to see.”
I did want to see. Through the blood and the yellow fat I saw the head, and then my father reached in and lifted out the baby. It wasn’t moving. The umbilical cord was thick and ropy, an unfleshy grey. My father was holding the baby with one hand and pointing back inside the girl with the other, naming parts I couldn’t properly make out for the gore. A midwife appeared at his elbow with a clean cloth; he gave her the baby so he could cut the cord. Fortunately he had encountered her before—a competent, unemotional woman near his own age. It was she who had persuaded the family to send for him when her own skills had proved insufficient. She didn’t wait for his instruction now, but swiped the baby’s mouth out with her little finger and then put her face over its nose to suck out the blood and mucus. Her own lips now red with blood, like a predator at feed, she slapped its purple bum smartly and it began to choke, then scream.
“Good.” My father, surprised, glanced up from the cord, which he had tied off to stop the bleeding. “There’s a little sewing kit, like your mother uses,” he told me, but I already had it out. He closed the lips of the girl’s belly with small, tight stitches, a painstaking process made worse by her screaming and writhing. In the corner, the husband was vomiting a thin yellow gruel onto the floor. My father had me hold a wadded cloth to the incision to sop up the blood that continued to seep through, and held his hands out for the baby. This had all taken a matter of minutes.
“Boy,” the midwife said, and handed it over.
“A lovely boy.” My father held the swaddled bundle up to the light, and then down to the mother’s head, so she could see. Her glance slid to it and stayed there. My father nodded at one of the slaves, who released her arm so she could reach for it and touch its hair. When we left, she was still bleeding.
“The baby will live,” my father said as we walked home. We were both bloody, my father especially, and I carried the bloodied tools in a separate bag to keep the rest of the kit clean. “The mother will die, tonight or tomorrow. Usually like that you lose them both. That was a good day’s work.”
“What if you sealed the incision with wax to stop the bleeding?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “You have a good head for this. I was proud of you today. Wax would get into the wound and clot the veins, kill her from the inside. Did you see the afterbirth?”
I had: a slab the size and texture of a beef’s liver, with a membrane dangling from one side. My father had pulled it out before he closed the incision and had given it to another woman, who took it away, wrapped in a cloth.
“You must never forget to remove the afterbirth,” he said. “Through the belly, as we did today, or through the vagina if it is a normal birth. It will rot if you leave it inside and kill her that way. Sometimes you can cut a slit to make the vagina bigger, but that works best when the baby’s head is already coming. That wouldn’t have helped us today.” We were home. “This way.” My father led me around back. “We’ll clean up before your mother sees us. That’s good manners.”
That evening, my father saw me attempting to draw the inside of the girl’s belly. “The blood made it hard to see,” I said.
My father looked at the drawing but offered no correction. “You learn to do it by feel. The position of the baby, the depth of the incision, the bits of the afterbirth if it’s torn apart. Your fingers become like your eyes.”
“Have you ever cut in
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