Judith Wall - The Surrogate

And there were landmarks along the way. A wooden bridge over the creek. A large pond that a pair of heron called home. And atop a rise about a half mile from the ranch house was a tiny cemetery surrounded by a tall ironwork fence. She would have liked to take a closer look at the cemetery, but Lester had informed her that it was off limits.

Since the library off the great hall offered almost no current titles, Jamie selected books by the Brontë sisters, Edna Ferber, and Mark Twain to begin her reading program.

And she wrote a letter to the UT distance-learning office requesting enrollment in the correspondence course American History, 1870 to Present, and enclosed a check for the tuition.

She asked Miss Montgomery what return address she should use and reminded the housekeeper that Amanda knew about her plan to enroll in a correspondence course.

“Just give your mail to me, and I’ll take care of it,” Miss Montgomery said.

Two weeks after she had been inseminated, Jamie was awakened quite early by a knock on her door. Before her feet were even on the floor, Miss Montgomery had already unlocked the door and was standing in her bedroom. “I have a pregnancy-test kit,” she said. “The first urine in the morning is more reliable.”

Miss Montgomery had already read the instructions and went over them with Jamie. Jamie was allowed to urinate in private, but Miss Montgomery performed the actual test herself.

It was positive.

“The Lord be praised!” Miss Montgomery called out, clasping her hands and looking heavenward. “I must notify Amanda immediately,” she muttered as she went rushing out of the bathroom.

Jamie sat on the side of the tub, staring at the purple line across the tiny round opening in the tester. Purple for pregnancy.

She should be experiencing some sort of emotion-relief or joy or even apprehension. But all she felt was a need to be out-of-doors. She made her bed and called the security office.

“But I haven’t had breakfast yet,” Lester said with a groan.

“Neither have I,” Jamie said. “I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”

It was a glorious morning for a walk. Ralph fairly danced along. And she saw what she thought might be a brown-headed cowbird, but it was too far away for her to be certain.

The week following her pregnancy test, Jamie took one look at her breakfast tray and rushed to the bathroom to throw up.

Not ten minutes after Rosa had come for her tray, Miss Montgomery was at her door. “Anita said you didn’t eat any breakfast. Are you sick?” she demanded.

That afternoon, Lester drove Jamie to the Hartmann City medical clinic, where Freda Kohl, a sturdy woman with salt-and-pepper hair, greeted her.

Freda explained that as a nurse practitioner she had advanced training that allowed her to diagnose and care for patients. In addition, she was trained and certified as a midwife. Nurse Freda also was a nonstop talker.

When Jamie emerged from the changing room, Freda weighed and measured her. “You’re a tall one,” she said as she adjusted the weights on the scale. “A bit on the skinny side, but not too bad. Now, have a seat on the end of the examining table.

“Just look straight ahead, sugar,” Freda said, ophthalmoscope in hand. “That’s good. You’re the second OB case this month. At least the pregnant girls come into the clinic. I look after a number of shut-ins, and sometimes folks are just too sick to get themselves out of bed. You ought to see inside that camper shell on the back of my truck,” she said as she checked Jamie’s ears. “I travel around like the large-animal vets with a whole clinic worth of stuff in the back of my truck. Sometimes when folks have a bad heart attack or get themselves messed up real bad in an accident-mostly with farm equipment-I have to send them to Amarillo. Just last month old Judd Choate had himself a massive heart attack, and I called out the medevac folks in their helicopter, but Judd passed before they got him to the hospital. Most things, though, I can take care of on my own or sometimes by talkin’ things through with an MD over at the medical college in Amarillo.”

Freda paused in her dialogue while she checked Jamie’s blood pressure and pulse. “Some folks don’t have any money to pay me,” she continued as she put the stethoscope to Jamie’s chest. “Now, breathe in and out, sugar, nice and deep. That’s good. Now let’s do it from the back, nice big breaths. Good girl. Your lungs sound nice and clear,” she said, stuffing the stethoscope back in the pocket of her white jacket. “And I end up with more chickens and eggs and homemade bread than you can shake a stick at, but let me tell you, Amanda Hartmann is my guardian angel, and there’s not a thing I wouldn’t do for that woman. Not a single thing. Amanda is a saint. A real saint. The pope in Rome, he should just make it official. Saint Amanda. She set up this clinic here at the ranch and pays me well to come here to look after her people. And let me tell you, these Mexican folks love their Amanda like they love the Madonna. Maybe more. Amanda has offered to build my husband and me a house if we’d move over here. I’d like to sell out and do just that, but my husband won’t leave the old home place. His people are all buried over there, and when the time comes, that’s where he wants to be planted. But if he goes before I do, I’m taking Amanda up on her offer.

“Now, as for the morning sickness, I want you to keep soda crackers on your bedside table and eat two or three before you even lift your head off the pillow. Then wait a while before you get up and put anything liquid in your stomach.”

Jamie nodded.

“I understand you are going to have the baby here at the ranch.”

Jamie nodded again.

“Amanda and Mister Toby certainly are looking forward to having a baby,” Freda said as she helped Jamie lie back on the examining table and put her feet in the stirrups. “You’ll never know how she suffered after her son’s accident, but then the Lord sent her Mister Toby, and now all her followers are so happy for her and praying that she’ll have a baby with her pretty young husband,” Freda continued as she poked around on Jamie’s abdomen. “When they find out she’s in a family way, they will be so thrilled.”

Confused by the nurse’s words, Jamie asked, “Is Amanda expecting a baby, too?”

The nurse said nothing for several seconds. “We should not be talking about Amanda’s private business,” she said in a chastising tone and continued her examination in silence. Then she helped Jamie return to a sitting position. “You can leave as soon as you pee in a cup. Don’t forget about those soda crackers. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and see how you’re getting along.”

OVER THE NEXT few weeks, Jamie was able to control her nausea by never allowing her stomach to be completely empty. If she awoke during the night, she ate crackers. And she ate crackers while still lying in bed in the morning. Which helped but didn’t cure her.

She no longer had the energy for swimming laps, but she still went on walks with Ralph, always with a packet of saltines in her pocket. Lester usually accompanied her, but he no longer did so on foot. With country music blaring out the open windows, Lester would follow along behind her in a white pickup with the words “Hartmann Ranch” painted on the side. Jamie could have done without the music, but she liked the privacy that the arrangement provided. And sometimes he would drop far enough behind her that the radio wasn’t an issue. Then the only sounds were the wind rustling through the prairie grasses and the calls and chirps of the many grassland birds. When she saw a bird she didn’t recognize, she would pull Granny’s field guide from her pocket.