"He–he gave you one too?" she asked weakly. I nodded, and we dissolved into helpless laughter.
Our merriment was cut into abruptly by a loud crash and splintering outside.
"A wreck!" I exclaimed, dashing through the door and forming the first catch sentence for the story as I ran.
It wasn't exactly a wreck. A heavy truck, loaded with grapefruit, had been parked on the highway in front of Moe's cafe while the driver went in to eat. The brake had failed to hold, and the truck had slid backward, gaining momentum until it crashed heavily into one of the small cabins across the highway behind Mr. Bertram's grocery store. Fortunately, no one was in the cabin, which was half destroyed.
I knew Mr. Bertram would take time out from his snuff-chewing to get all the details about the incident, the name of the truck driver and everything else that I'd need in order to write up a story for the paper. I didn't have to wade into the mob of curious people that had collected. I'd just go over and talk to Mr. Bertram in an hour or so.
Someone had called the truck driver's attention to what had happened. He came dashing out of Moe's, his eyes wild, a doughnut clutched in one hand. He went galloping across the highway toward his truck.
"And look at the bar across the street!" Miss Nesdeburt cried, her little hands going to her mouth in dismay. "The front of it is smashed in a little bit too!"
"Oh, that happened last week," I said airily. "A man who was going to go in for a drink couldn't stop his car in time. We're so used to accidents like that that we hardly notice them any more."
Grant and David and Mr. Hawkins appeared from the direction of the garages, where they had been arranging for the black cat's living quarters.
Grant went across the highway to see the excitement and, I suspected, to get a few of the crushed or slightly damaged grapefruit that the truck driver would have to discard.
I was right. Miss Nestleburt and Mr. Hawkins had a big sack of slightly crushed grapefruit in the car with them when they left, and as for us–for three weeks we dined on sliced grapefruit, halved grapefruit, peeled grapefruit, grapefruit salad, grapefruit a la mode and grapefruit au gratin.
One morning as I placed grapefruit halves before Grant and David, Grant caught my expression. He said something that sounded like, "Don't feel that way. Grapefruit is good for hales."
"What?" I asked.
"I said you shouldn't feel that way. Grapefruit is healthy."
"No, that isn't either what you said. You said something that sounded like 'Grapefruit is good for hales.'"
"Well, I don't remember exactly what I said, but that's what I meant. Grapefruit is healthy."
"I knew what you meant; what I wanted to know was, what did you say?"
Grant sighed. I know my curiosity exasperates him, but it annoys me for hours if I can't discover exactly what a word was that I didn't quite get.
"Why do you always have to change the wording of what you say when I say 'What?' instead of actually repeating what you say, which is what I want you to do?" I railed at him.
This argument of ours, which has come up over and over again, grows very involved if we don't drop it in its earliest stages–and sad experience has taught me that Grant can't, or won't, recall and tell me the exact word he used, anyway.
I was clearing away the remains of the sugar-sprinkled grapefruit slices we had had for dessert one evening, and Grant was in the office assuring some man that we hadn't found his toupee in the cabin he had occupied the previous night, when a lanky, thin-faced, big-eyed boy opened the living room door and walked into the living room.
"Oh, I guess I musta got the wrong door," he said, twisting his dirty handkerchief nervously between skinny fingers. "I'm sorry, maam, but I thought I oughta tell you–I guess my ma is gonna have a baby."
I remembered renting a double cabin, number 3, earlier in the day, to an extremely pregnant woman and her son.
I stared at the pale boy. I must have been rather pale myself. "You mean–right now?" I gasped.
He nodded shamefacedly.
"Oh, dear. Well, sit down on the davenport there. Don't be nervous. What's your name?"
"Eugene."
"Well, well. And how old are you?"
"Ten."
"Ten? Well. That's a nice age. And what kind of work does your daddy do?"
"He's a salesman. He travels. On'y gets home once in a while."
"And do you have any brothers or sisters?" I asked. It was as though, by stalling and refusing to face what was happening in one of our cabins, I could postpone it, or make it not so. I was coming out of my first condition of shock and realizing that I must call a doctor, and tell Grant what was happening, immediately, when the boy answered my last question.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "I got six brothers and five sisters. My littlest sister is still a baby. On'y one and a half. My oldest sister is takin care of the kids now while Ma and me was gonna visit Gramma in Frisco. Ma didn't think she'd have this new baby for awhile yit. But I guess she's gonna, though. She's got pains somethin' awful."
Numbly I seized the telephone book and looked up the number of one of the town's three doctors. There was no answer when I dialed his number. I dialed the number of another; he was, a crisp feminine voice informed me, out on a call. I dialed the number of the residence of the third doctor. I heard a ringing sound, and I prayed that this doctor would be avail able. The suspense of waiting for someone to lift the receiver at the other end of the line was terrible, and I tried feverishly to occupy my mind. Doctors … doctors . .. how many famous ones could I think off? I kept my mind off what was happening in cabin 3, and concentrated on doctors. Famous doctors; well, there were the Mayo brothers, of course, and Dr. Kildare. He's pretty famous, I mused, even though he is just a figment of someone's imagination.
Imagination .. . some philosophers think everything is a figment of people's imagination–or would it be figments? Figments, pigments, pudding and pie; babies are cute, but they sure do cry. And here I was back on the subject of babies again.
The ringing at the other end of the line stopped (although the ringing in my head continued) and the doctor himself answered. I said,
"I'm calling Dr. Kildare! I mean–" I laughed apologetically, "I'm calling Dr. Adams. Is this Dr. Adams?"
When he gave me a curt, affirmative reply, obviously bored with what he considered my facetiousness, I told him what was going on; and he said he'd be over at once.
By that time Grant, having convinced the man that we hadn't found his toupee, came back into the living room, and I told him about the impending blessed event. His complexion took on a hue to match mine and that of the skinny boy.
"I've called the doctor," I said. "What do we do in the meantime?"
Grant, the ever resourceful, the maddeningly efficient, was stymied for once.
"Well…" he said uncertainly.
"That's how I feel about it," I said. "But we can't just–sit here."
"You're a woman," Grant pointed out cruelly, passing the buck to me. "You've had two babies."
"Yes," I came back at him, "but I just had them–I didn't deliver them."
"Well, you won't have to deliver these either. I mean, this one. The doctor will be here in a few minutes."
"I know, but–what about in the meantime?"
"Well," Grant said uneasily, "I suppose you should go in once and see how she's getting along. Maybe you can give her some aspirin or something."
"Aspirin!" I snorted.
Donna was playing contentedly in the bedroom, stacking blocks, knocking them over, and stacking them up again. David was outside adding another worn-out baby blanket to the bed he had made in the garage of cabin 6 for his new black cat. With the children occupied, and the dinner dishes done, obviously I couldn't claim any pressing domestic duties.
"Well… come on," I said.
The door of cabin 3 had never looked so forbidding. While we were standing in front of it, wondering whether or not to knock, little Eugene brushed past us and opened it. He went to stand beside the bed, where he looked from his mother to us with big, dark eyes.
"You had the baby yit?" he asked her anxiously.
"You don't see it nowheres, do you?"
Grant and I edged into the cabin. "How do you do," I said. "We heard–that is, your son said–you were–well, having a little difficulty."
"That ain't the half of it, honey," the woman remarked, biting her lower lip until there was a row of neat little white teeth marks printed upon it.
She was a huge woman, broad-shouldered and big boned, and her body rose like a small mountain beneath the blankets. Her greying hair was long and untidy on the pillow. Her dark, beautiful eyes were like jewels in a crude setting; they were surrounded by flushed, large-pored flesh, and complemented by a large, misshapen nose. Her teeth were pretty, but they were too much in evidence when she talked, as were all the other details of the interior of her mouth. The brazen display of such an expanse of gums and tongue made me feel ill.
"I'm Mrs. Watkins, you prob'ly know that. Cripes, I'm sorry if I was rude when you come in, but I was havin' a pain. Say, didja call me a doc?"
I nodded, and she went on, "Ain't it a fit, me havin' a kid in a motel? I never thought I'd have it so soon, but you sure can't tell noways, can you?"
She took my feeble smile for agreement that you sure can't tell noways, and laughed heartily, slapping a swelling under the blankets that was presumably her thigh. Her laugh was of a size to match her body; it boomed and bounced through the room until the pictures on the walls quivered.
Grant and I were so relieved at finding her in good spirits and not in much pain that we began to giggle, too; and a moment later the three of us were laughing uproariously at nothing, while Eugene stared at us with wide, solemn eyes.
Mrs. Watkins was the first to regain control of herself.
"I'll bust a gut if I don't quit laughin'! Ain't it about time for the doc?" she asked, dabbing at her moist eyes with a handkerchief she took from under the pillow.
"Yes," I said. "He lives only about a mile and a half away. He'll be here any minute."
"I wouldn't care," she said, "On'y I have my kids pretty sudden. It'll be that way for you too, honey, after you've had eleven, like me."
I couldn't think of an appropriate reply to that one. Grant looked at his watch anxiously, shook it and held it to his ear.
"Eleven!" I exclaimed after a moment. "You've had twelve, haven't you? At least that's what Eugene–"
"Sure, ma, you know, there's Ruthie, and Lyon, and Ernest, and–"
"Well, I guess I know my own kids' names!" she interrupted. "Yeah, that's right, twelve. So many I can't remember noways! My husband don't git home very often, but he sure gits home often enough! I musta forgot about the littlest one. Seems like I ain't got used to havin' her yit."
I couldn't keep my eyes off Mrs. Watkins' large, flapping red tongue when she talked. The crease down the center of it seemed to separate two smooth pieces of raw meat.
Suddenly her teeth clamped down on her lip again and she turned her face away from us, moaning.
I looked at Grant. He looked at his watch again. We were still standing, stiff and uneasy, beside the bed.
When Mrs. Watkins' pain had ebbed, she put one hand into her mouth, took out her false teeth, and stared at them.
Grant and I stared at them too, fascinated. They were even and pretty, a fragile pink-and-white toy in her big, roughened hands.
"Seems like it makes me feel better to look at 'em," she confessed. "Makes it so I ain't so lonesome for Rodney. That's my hubby. He gave me these teeth, for our tenth weddin' anniversary. I was gonna get some cheap old ugly things, but he said no, the best wasn't none too good for his girl, and so he bought 'em for me. They're the–the nicest thing I ever had in my life!"
Tears were pouring out of Mrs. Watkins' lovely dark eyes, streaming over the flushed, coarse skin of her cheeks. "Cripes, I wisht Rodney was here!" she sobbed.
"I'd settle for Doctor Adams," Grant said. He glanced again at his watch. '"He should be here by now. I wonder if his car could have broken down?"
"Maybe–maybe you should go look for him," I said hesitantly.
"I think I will." Grant moved toward the door. "I'll call his home first, and if he's been gone awhile I'll start out looking for him."
Mrs. Watkins replaced her teeth, wiped her eyes, and beamed at me.
"I'm awful moody, an awful sentimental," she admitted.
Eugene edged to the door behind Grant.
"I'm gonna go with him, ma. 'Bye, ma'am."
"The kid's gittin' scared," Mrs. Watkins remarked, chuckling, when the door had closed behind them. "So's your hubby. Men are all alike, ain't they? Pantywaists, when you git right down to it. Pantywaists!" Her great booming laugh filled the cabin, while I tittered politely and wondered where she got the idea that men had exclusive rights to the term. My legs felt as though they were made of jello that hadn't quite set, and my hands were useless, quivering hunks of ice.
"How long do you think it will be," I began; "I mean, you've had so many, maybe you can almost tell…"
"How soon I'm gonna have the kid? Cripes, it ain't gonna be long, honey, I can tell you that! Wouldn' it be a fit if I had it before the doc come?"
I collapsed onto a chair.
Mrs. Watkins looked at me sympathetically, and clucked her huge red, wet tongue. Her tangled grey hair formed a rough halo around her face.
"Don't you worry none, honey," she comforted. "The doc'll git here all right."
Then she had another pain.
Watching her, I thought I had never felt so alone in my life–dreadfully alone, although there was one human being in the room with me and strong indications that there would very soon be another.
I began to review the pitifully little I knew about officiating at births–just in case. First, you had to be sure the baby cried, so it could start breathing properly. Second, you had to tie its umbilical cord. That was as much as I knew.
I wiped my forehead and glanced at Mrs. Watkins. She was gazing at me now, her dark eyes full of compassion. I had a feeling that if a stove and a pan had been handy, she would have climbed out of bed to make me some hot tea.
For her benefit, I summoned what I hoped would pass for a brave smile. "I'll be right back," I said. "I'll just get some string and–can you think of anything else I might need?"
"You look like you might need a good stiff snort, honey!" Her merriment thundered behind me as I slipped out to the linen closet.
On the bottom shelf of the linen closet was a pile of string, salvaged for months past from neatly wrapped and tied packages of clean laundry. I gathered great handfuls of the string, thrusting it into the curve of my arm. Then I happened to notice the heavy, folded rubber sheet that we lend to customers with small children. That, I reasoned, might come in handy.
A large round head appeared in the doorway of the garage, announcing itself with a cough. "You the lady that rents cabins? I want a cabin. How about renting me a cabin?"
"Not now!" I snapped. "I'm busy! Can't you see I'm having a baby?"
After the head had disappeared I surveyed the linen closet distractedly, wondering what else I should take. There were stacks and stacks of snowy sheets, pillow slips, towels, bath mats and wash cloths. There was the untidy pile of tooth brushes, pajama tops, slippers, hot water bottles, blouses, and odds and ends that customers had left and failed to come back for. There were extra blankets, pillows, boxes of toilet paper and soap, coat hangers and water pitchers. None of it seemed especially appropriate for the occasion.
I went back into cabin 3. I threw the string onto a chair and held up the rubber sheet, not knowing how to suggest, in a delicate way, that it might be wise to put it on her bed.
She got the idea immediately. She replaced her false teeth, from which she had been deriving solace again, and said, "I'm glad you thoughta that, honey. I don't wanna cause you no more trouble than I got to."
She heaved up her mountainous body while I slipped the rubber sheet under and adjusted it so that it would be smooth and comfortable for her to lie on.
A horrified expression shot over her face. "Cnpes! I hadnt ought to've pushed myself up like that. I'm afraid we're in for it now. I–oh, cripes!"
My heart pounded in my throat as I realized that I was about to become a midwife, whether I wanted to or not.
"Oh, wait!" I pleaded. "Please wait! The doctor will be here in just a few minutes."
"Honey," she gasped, "I can't wait. You oughta know that. Cripes, I wisht Rodney was here! That man ain't never around when I want him, only after the kids is born, and then all he does is git me that way again!"
"Can you wait just one minute?" I beseeched. "I'll get my medical book–I didn't think of it till just now–please, oh, please wait!"
I staggered out the door and along the sidewalk until I reached our door. I threw myself into the living room, tore open the door of the bookcase, and snatched out our heavy, important looking medical book.
I was starting back toward cabin 3 when I heard the anguished shriek of a very young human being. I froze in horror.
"Already?" I must have said it out loud because David, who had appeared from nowhere, said, "Huh? You better take care of Donna, Mama. She's sure crying–don't you hear her?"
"Oh, is that Donna?" I was so relieved I could have kissed him. I hurried into the children's bedroom, David jabbering about something loudly and excitedly behind me.
Donna was holding up one small fat hand. "Donna hurta finger!" she wailed. "Mama kiss it."
Apparently she had hit her finger with one of the blocks she was stacking into piles. David was still talking excitedly.
"Oh, be quiet!" I said. "Whatever it is you're talking about, it can wait. I'm very, very busy. Now hush and go play."
I kissed Donna's upraised finger and, turning to leave again, noticed that she had been stacking more than just blocks. Her soft, stuffed dolls and teddy bears formed the base of a pyramid of toys that culminated, two feet up, in her little rocking chair.
I charged back to cabin 3, clutching the heavy medical book.
As I opened the door Mrs. Watkins shoved her teeth back into her mouth. "Did the doc git here?" she gasped.
"No!" I snapped. "Now just don't be so impatient. I've got this medical book. We'll get along without the doctor." I was unreasonably angry at her.
I snapped on the light and opened the book at random. I tried to concentrate on the print that swam and bounced before my eyes.
Mrs. Watkins was breathing hard, and grunting spasmodically. I decided to read aloud, to keep Mrs. Watkins' mind off her troubles and to reassure her that I was capable and efficient, that I was doing something, that I wasn't just sitting idly by.
A few of the words finally detached themselves from the swirling pages. "Whenever material from the bile, called bilirubin, gets into the bloodstream, it is followed by a yellowish discoloration of the skin." Maybe, I thought, there was some bilirubin loose in my blood right now. Goodness knows I felt bad enough for there to be quarts of it coursing around through my veins. And since yellow symbolizes cowardice and fear, what could be more appropriate than for my skin to take on a virulent shade of that color?
Mrs. Watkins grunted, and caught her breath. "There ain't no use worryin' about anything like that now, honey," she panted.
She gave a longer, sustained grunt, and then she began to laugh weekly. "There ain't no use worryin' about anything. It's all over, honey."
"Over!" I threw the book onto the floor.
Mrs. Watkins pulled back the blanket, uncovering herself. For the next few minutes I was a very reasonable facsimile of a whirling dervish.
There was a tiny, obscenely red and gooey creature, howling till I thought my ear drums would break. Fighting to think in spite of the noise and Mrs. Watkins' uncontrollable laughter, I clung to the two things I could salvage out of the chaos that was my mind. The baby's umbilical cord must be tied and the baby must be made to cry so that he would start to breathe.
Well, there was no use in worrying about his breathing. His lusty howls were shredding the air all around us. That left only one urgent task–the tying of the umbilical cord. Throwing fastidiousness and delicacy to the winds, I seized the heap of string and tackled the job.
By the time I had finished, the baby was literally swathed in string, but his umbilical cord was tied. I wasn't exactly sure why a new baby's cord must be tied, but in order to be certain that I had accomplished whatever purpose the ritual serves, I had tied it in four separate places.
Just as I was washing my shaking hands in the bathroom, David burst into the cabin.
"Mama! A customer's waiting for you. And Donna's all bloody. I turned on the light and she's all bloody."
"I'll be right back," I told Mrs. Watkins, rushing through the door.
Judging by the wreckage and her bleeding upper lip, Donna must have tried to sit in the chair that was perched on top of the pyramid of her toys.
"Donna hurta mouf!" she wailed, when she saw me. I picked her up out of the mess and tucked her under my arm, heading for the bathroom to wash her lip. I glanced into the office on the way. A young man with a pale, quivering mustache was standing there. His expression stated plainly that he had been standing there for some time.
I was afraid I'd begin to gibber if I tried to explain the delay to him, so I waved my free hand at him in a ghoulish attempt at cheerfulness.
"Let's wash Donna's lip," I suggested, when we were in the bathroom. Donna sent up an immediate howl of protest, and I applied psychology–although I was tempted to apply something less abstract and more painful.
"Oh, yes," I crooned, "we must wash Donna's lip, and her hands, and her feet."
"Wash Donna's feet?" she repeated, her round blue eyes interested behind their veil of untidy wisps of brown hair.
I nodded, looking more closely at her lip. I decided the cut wasn't very serious. It had bled a lot, but it wasn't bleeding now. I'd wait on the impatient young man and get him out of the way before I took the time to wash her lip.
I left Donna in the bathroom and hurried back to confront the quivering mustache.
The prim, thin-lipped mouth beneath the mustache was opening to speak, when David hurtled into the office and clutched my dress.
"Mama!" he yelled. "She's having another baby!"
"Twins?" I shrieked. "Oh, dear, what'll we do?"
The mustache was twitching with shock now. "You'd better rent a cabin somewhere else," I said. "I'm–" I paused. What was that splashing noise?
I deserted the mustache and ran into the bathroom. "Donna washing hands and feet," Donna explained. She was standing in the toilet.
I looked at her dumbly, too confused to be able to decide whether to take care of her or to rush out and get to work on the second baby's umbilical cord.
David, who had disappeared, came excitedly up to me again. "I was just out there again," he cried, "and now she's got another one! And this newest one is solid black!"
I pulled Donna out of the toilet. Then I lowered the seat cover and sat down heavily.
"Black?" I repeated in a whisper. My lips felt dry, and my head was throbbing. "Oh, no, it couldn't be black. You must be mistaken."
"Nope, it's black, all right. And you should see the second one–all white, with black legs and ears! Well, I'm going back to see if she has any more. Gee, won't Miss Nestleburt be surprised when we tell her the cat she gave me turned into four cats?"