No Risk, No Reward

I could have been happy, had it not been for that wretched pregnant woman. 

Perhaps happy isn’t the word, come to think of it, but I would have been fine. I would have been content to sit at this sewing machine day in and day out, letting fabrics from all over the world flow through my fingers and thinking nothing of it. But now each new bolt fills me with torturous curiosity. Whose hands wove this wool? What was their life like? Who did they love? What made their hearts sing and sob? 

No, Marie. I shook my head to shoo the incessant questions away from my head like so many gnats. I was Marie, I was a seamstress, and I lived in Edenvan, and those three things would always be true.

My mother was a seamstress, as was her mother before her and so on back seven generations, at least. The Johannesens should have delivered that baby, should have helped that woman, Bernadette (my thoughts soften around her name), and sent her on her way. They were the midwives- had always been and always would be.

Every child in Edenvan is born with their feet firmly planted in the path of their forbears before they take a single step, swaddled in the comforting security of knowing the end from the beginning. We worked together in our prescribed roles, and the town moved along peacefully and safely. We were wary of outsiders, of the branches they could introduce to our paths, so traders rarely stayed longer than absolutely necessary. Some called us inhospitable, but we were safe as we were and didn’t need any outsiders shaking things up. I heartily agreed with this sentiment. 

Until Bernadette.

It had been the day my Mama and Papa had given me my own sewing machine. The shining black machine was the same as Mama’s, only without the buffs and scratches hers had gained over time. The turn crank was smooth polished wood, and the inlaid golden leaves shone like candlelight. A new pair of silver sewing shears gleamed on the table next to the machine.

Mama gave me a small bag of coins and sent me to the haberdashers to buy my own new threads. I walked into the shop feeling a few inches taller and several shades more professional than I had on many previous trips. I told the shopkeeper, Mrs. Green, in what I supposed was a very mature voice that I needed threads for my new machine. She raised her eyebrows and said “Well, well Marie, congratulations! I am sure you’ll be a talented seamstress just like your mother.” I beamed, feeling my path fit around me like a perfectly tailored dress.

I practically skipped out of the shop, but I paused after a few steps down the road. Two women across the street leaned with their heads together, furtively glancing toward the town gate. I followed their gaze and saw a woman waddling into town, leaning heavily on a wooden walking stick. She straightened as if to catch her breath, and I saw her belly protruding from her simple woolen dress. Her hair fell in lovely golden waves around a ruddy-cheeked face contorted with effort.  After only a few steps, she curled into herself like a potato bug poked with a child’s stick.

The woman was in labor. 

The other people on the street whispered or focused intently on sweeping or rubbing scuffs from their shoes. I stared at the woman, fascinated, until her desperate blue eyes locked on mine. I broke eye contact and became very interested in my thread bag until I saw her worn shoes on the ground in front of me.

“Excuse me, miss,” she panted. I reluctantly raised my eyes to hers. “Is there a midwife in this town? Can you call her or bring me to her?”

I glanced around, hoping anyone else might chime in, but I was met with only the backs of heads. “We have a midwife, but she lives on the opposite side of town.”

“How far?”

“Thirty minutes’ walk, at least.”

The woman let out a string of expletives the likes of which I had never heard. 

“Alright, you’ll have to help me then.”

My stomach dropped to my feet.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about pregnant ladies, I’m a seamstress. It’s really the Johannesons who know about that.” I looked away from her for someone who could ride out to the Johanneson’s farm, but everyone was gone. My two extra inches of competence from the haberdashers had disappeared with them.  

“We don’t have time for that—” the woman leaned over again, breathing sharply through her teeth and sounding like the bellows my father used for his smithing fire.

The pain seemed to pass and she said “Do you live near here? I can talk you through it. I am a midwife myself, but I’d like to have an extra pair of hands.”

I wrung my thread bag in my sweaty palms.

“All... all right, I’ll take you to my house. It’s near. I can send my brother on our horse to fetch the Johannesons.”

She gripped my shoulder and we shuffled back to my house.

“George!” I called as we walked through the front door, “You need to ride out to the Johannesons! There’s a woman here that needs help!”

George pounded down the stairs and froze on the bottom step.

“She’s not from here but she needs help, George. Go!” I shoved him toward the door. He looked back once with eyes as big as saucers and then he was gone.

“You just sit here,” I said, pointing to the frayed chair we always used for visitors, “the Johannesons will be here soon.”

“I need you to get some clean linens and hot water, as fast as you can. What’s your name? Is your Ma at home?” the woman asked, grimacing.

“I’m Marie. Mama is out today for a dress fitting. Won’t the Johannesons know how to do all that?”

“We’ve got no time, Marie. I need you to do as I say.

I swallowed hard and nodded. Within a few minutes, I had a pot of hot water and a stack of muslin. When I walked back into the room, the woman looked like a potato bug again.

“The baby’s coming, I can feel it. Get down in front of me.” She said through her teeth.

I turned toward the door, willing George and the Johannesons to walk through, but it stayed stubbornly still.

I don’t remember much of the next few minutes- or maybe it was hours. I remember the rush of adrenaline, the woman’s cries and stilted instructions, incomprehensible in memory. I remember the sudden tiny cry piercing the room, the warm slippery body in my hands. I remember tying the pearly cord in two spots with a length of purple thread from my thread bag and cutting the line between the woman and her baby with my new sewing shears.

After, the room felt like a field after a snowstorm, blanketed in an insulated quiet. The woman’s golden hair was slicked to her temples and her neck, and her cheeks glowed. She stared down at the baby with a look I had never seen before. It was a reckless and furious love. Husbands and wives and parents and children in Edenvan loved each other, but it took on a duller sheen than this. It suddenly seemed to me that love here was really almost-love, as though we were all holding just a little bit back. The love I saw in this mother’s eyes- the uninhibited adoration- split my heart a little. 

It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen.  

“I’ll call her Leandra. Brave as a lioness.” The woman whispered.

Feeling like an intruder, I took a step to leave.

“Marie,” the woman called out. “Thank you. I forgot to mention it, but my name is Bernadette.”

Just then the door flew open, and Mrs. Johanneson and her daughter rushed in, bursting the quiet bubble that had covered the room only a moment before. Mrs. Johanneson stared wide-eyed at Bernadette, then at my stained skirts, then at the baby.

Bernadette was the first to speak.

“You must be Mrs. Johanneson. Marie has done a fine job here, but I’d appreciate you having a look to make sure everything is in order.” She winked at me. I backed out of the room, feeling embarrassed and a little ashamed for doing Mrs. Johanneson’s job. It wasn’t how things were done. 

Later that night, I padded up to my oldest brother’s old room, where Bernadette had been moved by Mrs. Johanneson and her daughter. Mrs. Johanneson told us Bernadette would need a few days to recover, and Mama reluctantly agreed to let her stay with us. Bernadette looked up from Leandra’s sleeping bundle as I entered the room with a tray of stew and crusty bread.

“Thank you, Marie. Would you like to hold her for a moment?” Bernadette said, holding Leandra out to me.

I was terrified, but I didn’t want to offend, so I took Leandra in my stiff arms and sat straight-backed on the edge of the bed while Bernadette wolfed down her food. She set her spoon down with a soft clink and sighed.

“She looks so like her Da.”

“Where… who is her father?” My cheeks warmed at the impertinence of the question.

“He died fighting in the eastern wars, not six months ago.” She answered, not noticing my embarrassment. Nestled in a mountain pass away from major trading routes and cities, Edenvan had never been forced to participate in a battle, and they had certainly never joined one by choice. Bernadette continued.

“I was traveling, trying to learn everything I could about midwifery. He had just written to me- he thought the battle was going well and he was proud to fight for the East. He admitted he was scared sometimes, but no risk, no reward, he said. That was our favorite saying. He was a farm boy in my town, and my parents didn’t approve of our marriage- said it was too risky, that he wouldn’t be able to provide for me like I was used to. I didn’t mind all that. Loving him was worth the risk. Even now. I miss him so much it feels like a wound, but grief is the price we pay for love, isn’t it? I’d rather have had a year deep in love with him than a whole lifetime floating on the surface. And now I have Leandra, so I’ll have a piece of him with me always. It would have been a terrible tragedy if I had listened to my parents.” She smiled, but there was sadness in it, too.

It seemed to me that her life became a terrible tragedy when she disobeyed her parents. She wouldn’t have had this grief like a wound, and surely, she would have had a child with someone else eventually. I passed Leandra back to Bernadette, and my arms were lighter but colder. I took the tray and turned to leave, but not before watching Bernadette bury her nose into her daughter’s downy hair and breathe like it held the last oxygen on earth.

I avoided Bernadette for the rest of her stay. She left a few days later, Leandra wrapped to her chest. Mama said Bernadette didn’t want to stay in Edenvan, even after Mrs. Green offered her a job in the haberdashers. Mrs. Green didn’t have any children, and she didn’t know what would happen to the shop when she was gone. Bernadette said she had to keep moving, keep learning, keep traveling.

“It could be dangerous out there!” Mama had said. “Think of your daughter!”

Bernadette had smiled and said “No risk, no reward.”

She paid us handsomely and walked out of the city gate without a backward glance.

I returned to Mama’s side tailoring skirts and hemming pants, but Bernadette’s words had burrowed deep in my mind. If grief was the price for love, what was the price we were paying for safety? What rewards were we missing by shunning risk? I hated Bernadette for putting these thoughts in my head. I loved her for showing me something new. It was as if she had scrubbed clean a grimy window in my mind, and where I thought there had been light before, I could see it was only a dim imitation of the sunlight pouring in now. My path that had fit like a perfectly tailored dress was now pinching at the ribs, making it hard to breathe. 

I poured my heart into sewing to distract myself, and soon everyone in town was commenting on my expert craftsmanship. I could almost forget Bernadette. My parents had found a young man in town whose family situation was compatible with ours, and I would be betrothed soon. The dress squeezed a little tighter, but I tried to ignore it. One day I was clearing out my chest from my bedroom to make room for more fabric, and amidst dresses and shifts that no longer fit, I found a small velvet bag. I dumped the contents into my hand and found a roll of purple thread. 

The memories came rushing back like water bursting from a dam. 

The umbilical cord.

Leandra’s first cry.

Reckless love. 

I had to leave.

Mama doesn’t understand. Papa won’t speak to me. My brothers tell me I’ve had gone mad. Our neighbors whisper about me and shoot my parents sympathetic glances. It doesn’t matter. Or, it matters less than the future I’m walking toward. My pack is heavy on my back. In one hand I hold a map to the towns that trade fabric with us. Bernadette searched the world for midwifery knowledge. I will search for dressmaking knowledge. It’s not such a noble quest, but it’s a new path- one I can finally breathe in. I have been safe in Edenvan, but I’m not willing to pay the price for this safety anymore. I have to find what I’ve been missing.

Reckless love. 

Something deeper than floating on the surface. 

I take a deep breath, clutching the purple thread inside my pocket, and whisper “No risk, no reward.” 

I take my first step out of Edenvan.