The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman Page B

seat in the third row.
    A heavily made-up redhead in a low-cut green satin gown was on stage belting out “Sweet Adeline,” and I was glad to have a chance to look around. The colors of the theater were rich and dramatic, with dark gleaming wood, red plush velvet, and silver accents. Box seats rose to the ceiling. I was so enchanted that I didn’t hear the gentleman with the clipboard call my name.
    â€œElizabeth? Elizabeth Snyder!” That was before I took on my alias.
    â€œOh, me, sir!” (No one I knew ever called me Elizabeth. I’d always been “Lizbeth” to my family. That’s my heart’s name.)
    â€œSheet music?”
    I felt silly. “I don’t have any. I’m doing my mother’s favorite song, ‘Oh Promise Me.’ The man with the missing tooth rolled his eyes but perked up when I sang without accompaniment, in my clear alto, “Oh, promise me that someday you and I will take our love together to some sky.”
    I never went back to the House of Mercy, not even to visit, and I felt bad about that, about not saying good-bye to the girls, especially the little ones, but I’d left without permission, stolen their storybook, and lied about my age to get the job at the Majestic. If I returned, they might try to keep me.

11
    The Majestic
    It was at the Majestic in ’09 that I met my first love, Lawrence Clayton, an artist, scene designer, and student at the Art Institute of Chicago. During rehearsals, I’d stare at his hands as he painted the canvas sets, watch his delicate strokes. Eventually he asked to walk me home. We took the long way.
    Soon it was a regular arrangement. We’d stroll along the boardwalk and throw bread to the pigeons in Washington Park. It didn’t matter what we did, we were so happy just being together.
    I guess I was reckless, but that’s the way of young lovers, isn’t it? I missed one period and then another few. Since I’d never been regular, I wasn’t concerned; in fact, I didn’t know I was pregnant until Cassandra, my roommate, another chorus girl, asked me when I’d last had my monthly.
    It seems strange now that I couldn’t tell I was carrying, never even thought of it, but my mother had died before my first flow and no one had ever discussed the birds and the bees with me.
    When I finally told Lawrence about my pregnancy, he was thrilled but apprehensive. His mother, an Episcopal minister’s daughter, and his father, a professor of history at the University of Iowa, were sure to disapprove. The money for his education came from a small stipend his grandmother had left him, and he depended on his parents for his room and board, but he had little cash. That’s why he worked part-time as a scene designer.
    Finally we could wait no longer. We wanted to marry, and he had to inform his family. (It was easier for me. I had no one to explain things to, no one to judge me.) My beloved was on his way home to ask for their blessing when he was killed in that train wreck at Western Springs. I read about it in the Tribune over soft-boiled eggs and rye toast. The front-page article listed the sixteen dead, Lawrence Frederick Clayton near the top. I traced his name with one finger and then collapsed like a tree cut off at the base. Lawrence was gone, his mouth that had kissed me, his hands that had touched me, his mind that had loved me.
    It was shock that brought on my labor, I’m sure of it, and then the bleeding and the terrible pain. The baby was too early; not that it would have mattered, even a full-term infant couldn’t have survived that kind of blood loss.
    The professor and his grief-stricken wife never learned about me or their son’s child. If the baby had lived, maybe I would have searched for them, but when the blood poured out of my womb, erupted like a flash flood on the Des Plaines River, I knew all was lost.
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    Milkmaid
    â€œI can’t bring your