Chris Bohjalian - Midwives

No, I really don't believe Anne Austin hated my mother when she started her phone calls that bitter morning in March. But I do believe she grew to hate her over the summer; I do believe she learned to despise her. She had to; her mental health demanded it. How else could she have justified the pain she was inflicting upon my mother and upon my family? How else could she have lived with herself?

By the time the trial began, I am quite sure in Anne's mind my mother was a sloppy and dangerous midwife, and deserving of the punishment before her.

I could see it the moment she arrived in court Friday afternoon, just after we'd all stood for the jury and judge and then retaken our seats. She marched to the witness stand, careful to stare straight ahead, but I could still see the loathing she had for us all sparkle in her round dark eyes, and the way she had her jaw set against us.

She and my mother hadn't spoken since they left the hospital in Newport that Friday morning in March; they hadn't said a single word to each other. I watched my mother study Anne as she was directed across the front of the courtroom and sworn in by one of the court officers, and it was as if my mother were seeing for the first time a twin she hadn't known before existed, or a rare and frightening animal in a zoo-the sort of creature that would cause one to run or cringe were there not steel bars as a buffer. My mother slowly swiveled her chair so she was facing Anne directly, and for one of the few times in the trial I actually saw her whispering to Peter and Stephen when the shock of seeing Anne finally wore off.

My mother seemed to be more perplexed than angry. Occasionally she shook her head slightly, a small gesture that seemed to me to be asking Anne, Why are you doing this to me?

Anne's voice had a slight trace of Boston I hadn't recalled from the winter, and it made her seem stronger, more authoritative. She was small-boned and she looked tired, but the young woman-a mere eight years older than I-sat up straight and spoke well, telling the jury in measured tones of the horrors she had witnessed, and how my mother had used a kitchen knife to cut open the stomach of a living woman in Lawson.

It was during Anne's testimony that the jury began growing uncomfortable, and began to steal glances at my mother. Although Anne did not begin speaking until the afternoon of the fifth day, the trial's first Friday, and although the panel knew well the outline of what had occurred in the Bedfords' bedroom, they had not yet heard an account from an eyewitness. And as Anne answered question after question Bill Tanner asked, I think Charlotte Bedford grew real for the first time in some of the jurors' minds.

In all likelihood, that was Tanner's plan. All of the individuals the State had put on the stand so far were mere warm-ups for the final three, a troika of powerful witnesses who in theory would seal my mother's fate. Anne Austin and the medical examiner on Friday afternoon. The Reverend Asa Bedford on Monday morning. Even at fourteen I understood instantly the logic of this progression: The first witness, the one who had initiated the litigious part of this saga, recounts the nightmare she saw. The second, an expert with powerful credibility, explains the exact cause of death. And the third, the one who had lost the most, serves as the medley's anchor.

What I did not appreciate until later that Friday (and what I might not have appreciated for years had Patty Dunlevy not explained it to me) were the subtleties of Tanner's order. The last witness the jury would hear before the weekend-two full days during which they would stew upon all they had seen and heard the first week-would be the coroner giving the State's version of the cause of death. Then, if the State had any fears that their case had lost momentum over the weekend, they knew that on Monday morning they had the widower left, a grieving but articulate pastor who was-to take liberty with a cliche-very much accustomed to public speaking.

By the time Stephen had an opportunity to cross-examine Anne, most of the jurors must have had a picture in their minds of Sibyl Danforth as an alarmingly slipshod midwife, a woman whose carelessness would eventually cost one mother her life. Moreover, when they envisioned my mother on the morning Charlotte Bedford died, they must have imagined her as a lunatic: a midwife who became hysterical and panicked, a woman who temporarily lost her mind and grew capable of hacking apart a living woman in the final stages of labor. (Would things have ended differently if insanity had actually been my mother's defense? They might have for me, perhaps, but in the long run the outcome would not have been much different for my mother. And though I did not know then that Stephen had once broached the idea of temporary insanity as a possible defense, at the time my mother still believed she would resume her practice once the trial was over, and vetoed the discussion instantly. No one, she told Stephen, wanted a midwife who went certifiable under pressure.)

Like my mother, Anne dressed for court in an uncharacteristically conservative outfit: a white blouse, cardigan sweater, and gray skirt. No midwife-wannabe work shirts for her that day; no baggy dresses with monster pockets. She looked like a young bank teller from Burlington.

Throughout her testimony she had avoided looking at my mother, and I noticed that when Stephen stood up to begin his cross-examination, he remained behind his table so Anne would at least have to stare in my mother's general direction.

"Prior to Veil Bedford's delivery, you had only seen nine births, correct?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And none of them resulted in an emergency situation, right?"

"That's right."

"Veil Bedford's was the first, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Prior to March fourteenth, had you ever been in an emergency situation?"

"Like what?"

Stephen strolled behind my mother's chair so Anne would see her. At first she turned toward the lake and stared at the puffy white clouds floating by over Canada instead. "A car accident, maybe. Ever been in a car accident where people were badly injured? Or come across one?"

"No."

"Plane crash?"

"Of course not."

Stephen shrugged. "Train wreck? Man with a heart attack? Baby falling into a pool?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Never?"

"Never."

"And you've never been with an EMT or rescue squad volunteer in a life-and-death crisis, have you?"

"No."

"Charlotte Bedford was the first, wasn't she?"

"Yes, she was."

"And you've never witnessed surgery of any kind, right?"

"Like in a hospital?"

"Yes. Like in a hospital."

"No."

"Do you have any formal medical training?"

"You mean like at a college or something?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"Not yet, but I'm planning on-"

"Thank you, Miss Austin. You've never even taken an accredited first-aid course, have you?"

"No."

"And you don't know CPR, do you?"

"I know it a little. A few days after Charlotte died, I was going to start-"

"Are you formally trained and certified to administer CPR?"

"No."

Stephen raised an arm and I thought for a moment he was going to rest his hand gently upon my mother's shoulder, but he didn't. Instead he merely reached inside his suit jacket for a pen. "Was Charlotte Bedford the first person you ever saw die?" he asked, and for the first time that afternoon he raised his voice a notch and sounded ready for one of the confrontations he seemed to relish.

"Yes."

"When you saw the blood that resulted from Sibyl's attempt to save the baby, was that the first time you'd ever seen a body opened?"

"I'd seen pictures in textbooks."

"Please, Miss Austin, I didn't ask if you'd ever looked at a body in a book. Was that the first time you'd ever seen a body opened?"