The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [137]
“Vinnie! Vinnie!” There was a figure far down the hill, jumping up and down, waving its arms. Standing, I shaded my eyes from the sun with my hand, and recognized it as Charles. “Come quick—Edward sent me to fetch you. Minnie needs you, Vinnie—do you s’pose it’s about the baby?”
There was uncertainty in his voice. Uncertainty as well as fear. My legs began to propel me down the hill before I could fully realize what they were doing; I shot past Charles in a blur. I was much faster than he was, as I ran just as I used to as a girl, forgetting about my corset, my train, my straw hat, which flew off my head at some point. Charles must have retrieved it, for later I found it on my bed, crumpled but not torn.
I also forgot about the tree; I remembered only when Dr. Feinway asked me why my fingernails were torn. By then, all the men were banished from the house, sent across to Mama and Papa’s; Edward did not want to leave, but Minnie, between gasping and writhing, insisted.
How do I write of what happened next? I’ve never been able to speak of it: not to Charles, not to Mama, not to anyone. Yet Minnie’s story cannot be told without describing the hell of that day, beginning with the sweltering July heat that soon turned the room into a sauna. It was captured in the sheets, in the curtains, within the folds of my clothing, rivulets flowing into rivers of sweat plastering my undergarments to my skin, turning my cotton dress into a velvet shroud, stifling my pores until I felt as if I were being boiled in a covered pot.
When the pains started, Minnie was so hot that she kept tugging at her nightgown, complaining that it was too heavy; by the end, she had lost so much blood that she was shivering uncontrollably, her skin icy to the touch.
The blood! Oh, so much blood, such a defiant crimson, soaking the sheets, sticking to her legs, covering Dr. Feinway’s arms, stringing, like ropy spiderwebs, between his fine, tapered fingers. The child simply could not emerge, although nature tried to take over, tearing my sister, wracking her with pain. Her piteous cries pierced the air, pierced my ears so that they still ring with them, all these years later. She started out whimpering, smiling apologetically between the pains; as they came closer and closer, more furious, unrelenting, she stopped apologizing. Her pupils dilated like a wounded animal’s as she waited for the next, and then the next, and then the next. Soon her entire body was being wrung with the force of the infant desperate to be born; her limbs flailed, her back arched off the mattress, as the doctor tensely held her legs down. Even as she was in the primitive throes of her torture, he was still able to overpower my diminutive sister. Minnie was helpless against everything, everyone, in that room—except me.
“Can’t you give her some ether?” I pleaded with Dr. Feinway, as her eyes glazed over and she bit her lip so hard that now there was blood there, as well.
“Not yet, not while there’s still a chance she can expel the child,” he barked. He had lost his kind, professional demeanor and was now in his shirtsleeves, spattered with blood, looking more like a butcher than a doctor. He grunted and groaned nearly as much as Minnie, and ran to the window to spit outside and curse his frustration before returning to the bed and the nurse he had brought with him. She was a woman so methodical, so practiced, as to be an automaton. She did not react to Minnie’s cries; she did not blanch at all the blood. She merely stood, silent and efficient, waiting to do whatever Dr. Feinway needed.
I hovered near the top of the bed, near the only part of her that was not being torn apart. I mopped her brow but could not do it easily; she had been moved to a guest room, placed upon a regular-size bed so that the doctor could better attend to her. I had to use my wooden steps, standing awkwardly, but by the end I simply crawled into bed with her, holding her to me as she begged me, in the most heartbreaking whisper, to “Rock me, Sister, rock me.” And I tried to do just that; I maneuvered my body