touchy these mothers get when they’re dilated to nine. The birth went well, though.”
“Maybe you’ll grow on him,” Tony said encouragingly. “You help with Lamaze classes here all the time, and the volunteer program at the free clinic would fall apart without you. He’ll get used to you.”
I could hardly disagree with Tony. He’s fought some uphill battles himself as a male nurse in the utterly feminine obstetrics ward. His competence and professionalism ultimately win people over. I had to do the same.
Of course I’m hopeful for a little more than that, like a good working relationship and a shot at starting an agency and clearing house for doulas right here at Bradshaw General.
It was late by the time I got home. My German shepherd, Hildy, was standing, legs crossed, by the front door dying to get out. We took a quick run through the streets of my neighborhood, a quiet little area that is slowly and inexorably being absorbed into the city. It is still, however, a quaint and quiet haven for me to retreat to and regroup after a long, intense labor with one of my moms.
I live life simply. Home, family, friends and faith are what is important to me. Someday I want a family of my own, but until that happens, I live vicariously through my clients bringing new life into the world. Oh, yes, and animals. I adore animals.
Hildegard, Hildy for short, led me on a circuitous route through the neighborhood to sniff at fire hydrants, shrubs and a popular squirrel hangout before bringing me back to my front door. I put out her dog food and fresh water and walked through the house to my bedroom.
Knowing I wasn’t alone in the house, I went looking for my other roommate. Geri usually hangs out in the sunroom when I’m not home. I found her there, looking out the window, dressed in her glitzy denim jacket studded with rhinestones.
“Bedtime, Geri.”
She moved away from me.
“Come on, Geri, don’t give me any trouble tonight. I’ll help you take your jacket off.” Feeling bone weary and ready for bed, I wasn’t ready for an argument. Geri is a bit of a night owl. “You aren’t going to a fashion show, you know.”
She grunted in protest and planted her hefty backside on a floor pillow as if to say, “Make me.”
“Let’s take off the jacket.”
Geri looked at me as if to say, “Who, moi?”
She can be so willful and obstinate sometimes—especially when I’m already exhausted. “Okay, you stubborn, vain, egotistical sow, I’ll teach you!” And I lunged for her thinking I could wrestle her to the ground, but Geri squealed and escaped like the proverbial greased pig. She ran into the bathroom and skidded into the side of the bathtub.
Geranium is never very good on tile. Her little hooves just can’t get a grip.
It’s not every woman who owns a pig—or wants to—but I’ve never considered myself an ordinary woman.
Geranium was, for a time, a preschool mascot at the private school at which I taught. When I announced my resignation, the staff and children voted that Geranium should come with me, a bit of tender pork by which to remember them. This was much to the relief of the administration, who had been wondering how to break it to the kids that Geri’s feed bill had been cut out of the budget.
Although my mother did become hysterical for a while upon learning her first grandchild was actually a potbelly pig, she’s come to appreciate Geranium. Pigs are very smart. Geranium is capable of similar reasoning and mischief making to that of a four-or five-year-old child. She needs me. Having been a kindergarten teacher, I’m able to stay one step ahead of her most of the time.
I wrestled her out of her little denim jean jacket with the industrial snaps on the arms. Geranium loves her jacket. She’s very vain and self-important for a pig.
Once she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she willingly let me unsnap the jacket, and trotted outside through the pet door that leads to her sandbox-size litter box and her bed. Geranium is small, which is fortunate for me. She weighs about sixty-five pounds and stands just over a foot tall and approximately two feet long. Pigs are very compact and have hard bodies, so Geri actually takes up very little space—not much more than a large footstool. She’s at least twenty pounds lighter than Hildy and has no tail to sweep everything off coffee tables. In truth, she’s a lot easier to handle than Hildy, who, when I enter the front door, sometimes jumps up and puts her paws on my shoulders to lick my face.
That was another thing about Hank that made me know we’d never work out as a couple. He thought pigs belonged in pigpens in the state of Iowa and nowhere else on the planet. He’s going to have a bad shock when he sees his first pig farm in Mississippi.
He also bought into all the clichés and fallacious stigmas about pigs, and wouldn’t be convinced that the term “dirty as a pig” is pure falsehood. Pigs are very clean animals if not forced to live in untended stys. In fact, even under those conditions, a pig will use only one corner of the pigpen as a toilet. It’s where they’re forced to live, not the pigs themselves, that is to blame for the phrase “stink like a pig.”
Pigs have no odor. I tried to make Hank smell Geranium once to find that out for himself, but he refused. Yet another chink in our relationship.
The other public relations problem pigs have is that they like to roll in the mud. They don’t like being warm and can actually get sunburned if they’re exposed too much. Therefore they roll in the mud to cool off and keep the sun off their skin. Does anyone criticize a woman for using sunblock? I think not.
The telephone rang just as Hildy and I were settling in for the night. It was Mandie, a young single mother whose parents had just hired me to be her doula. She was crying.
“Molly?”
“What is it, honey?”
“I’m so scared. I went to the doctor today, and he says that I could give birth any time now. I don’t want to give birth, Molly.” She hiccuped tearfully. “I want it to stop!”
It’s a little late for that now. Tactfully I didn’t point that out.
“Things are going to be fine,” I assured her. “You’re a healthy young woman. You have a wonderful doctor to care for you, and I’m here for you, too.”
“I’m not a woman, I’m just a kid!”
Truer words were never spoken. Babies having babies. I see far too much of it and it breaks my heart. But it’s not my place to judge. I’m called to be salt and light to these girls, Jesus embodied in me.
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Are you having pain?”
“No. I just keep thinking…”
“How about if I talk you through some deep-breathing exercises? It might be time to give your brain a rest.”
I stayed on the line until Mandie was calmer and ready to sleep.
Hildy snuffled wetly and shifted so that her legs were rigid, managing to take up two-thirds of the mattress. I could hear Geranium rooting around in her pen for nonexistent truffles and the tick of my grandparents’ old clock in the living room. All was right with the world.
The telephone rang at 8:00 a.m. I tried to ignore it and let my answering machine pick up, but then I remembered Mandie. She might be in labor.
“Hullo?” I snuffled into the phone, my voice scratchy from disuse.
“Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s play day!” Lissy sounded annoyingly chipper.
Saturdays are always play days for Lissy. She tries to pack an entire week’s worth of fun into eight or ten hours and always wants company doing it—me.
“I might have a baby coming today.”
“Then we should go soon so we can get a few hours in before you have to be at work.”
“I