The Herbalist
A heavy woman in her mid-40s, with frizzy, curly hair and a mischievous glint in her eye kicked open her 1925 Chevy door and kicked it back, walking with a slouch up to her front door.
“And this is the only time when I wish Rosie lived with me,” she muttered, as four large bags, all hanging from her arms, weighed her down.
She again kicked open her front door and dropped the bags at her doormat. One of them was a midwife’s bag, and earlier that afternoon, she had delivered triplets—oh what a rarity that was—in eastern Colorado. The other three bags contained groceries. Being a midwife and having to be prepared to leave the house at any second, she usually ate at any restaurant she passed by the side of the road. But also being a sort of doctor, she figured she should be more conscious of her health.
Before she could store anything away, be it the fresh produce or the medical equipment, her telephone (recently acquired) rang with a soul-jarring jangle and she stubbed her toe getting to the new-fangled contraption on the wall.
“Hello, this is Hilda Price.”
“Ms. Price! I’ve been trying to get you on the phone for an hour!”
“Yes, and I’m so sorry about that. I was out of the house, you know, with midwiving and calls… Anyways, who is this?”
“Janet McDilly – I originally had an appointment for next week – ”
“Of course, Janet, I thought I recognized your voice, what is happening? You haven’t broken yet -?”
“Yes, I did, just a few hours ago.”
“Alright, I assume you’ve checked the color of the fluid – it’s clear?”
“Yes, clear, just as you told me.”
“Could you find a place to sit down?”
“Oh, sure. Anywhere?”
“A couch, or a chair, just a place to sit.”
“Okay, I’m sitting…”
“Now stand up and tell me if there’s a difference in the rate of the fluid.”
“I’ve stood up…I think I feel more fluid coming out and faster…”
“Well, it has definitely broken. Would you mind if I called Rosie, my herbalist (you may remember her from when we last met)? We’ll try to make it to your house tonight… it is quite a long drive… .”
“Why, of course!”
“And if Rosie and I can’t make it today and the contractions come, time them—look at a clock—to see if they’re regular.”
“Okay, and if they, the contractions, are coming regularly?”
“Then call me again. We’ll start towards your place at dawn. So, I’ll call you back.”
“Alright.”
Hilda set down the phone and picked it up again, this time asking for Rosie’s number.
Half an hour away, Gershwin floated out of an apartment in the fashionable Park Hill section of Denver. Rosie sat in front of her vanity, humming to the music and tapping her foot as she painted blush onto her cheeks. She had just put one pearl earring in when her telephone rang. She twirled to the phone, admiring the way her dress billowed behind her. Maybe it was her date calling her. She turned down the Victrola and cleared her throat before picking up the phone.
“Hello, who is this?”
“Rosie! It’s me, Hilda. Listen – ”
“Oh, Miss Hilda! How are you?” Rosie exclaimed, holding the phone between her right shoulder and cheek while trying to stick the other pearl earring in her left ear. It was early evening on a Friday, it couldn’t be an emergency… .
“Fine, fine. Do you remember Janet McDilly? She came over at the end of last month. Well, her water broke a few hours ago. You don’t happen to have any plans tonight, do you?”
“Oh yes, I remember Mrs. McDilly. So her water broke.” Rosie peeked at the clock to her right. Exactly eleven minutes left. “Is she experiencing contractions yet?”
“No, she is not. So you don’t have plans tonight?”
“Not exactly.” She shuffled through her purse. “So she’s not experiencing contractions now, and her water has only broken a couple hours ago?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Well, as you know, Miss Hilda, when a patient’s water breaks, contractions can take up to 24 hours to come. Even after the first contractions come, it takes time for them to become strong and regular. Don’t you always complain about how much time we spend waiting at a patient’s house, between when their water breaks and when contractions, true contractions, begin? Why don’t we set off early tomorrow morning? Surely we’ll make it in time.”
“I suppose so. And from your long ramble, I guess you have something tonight. Remember what you said: we’re leaving early tomorrow morning. I’m picking you up at 8 o’clock sharp. Hopefully that gives you enough time to refresh yourself from wherever you are going tonight.”
“Yes, Miss Hilda,” Rosie beamed through the phone. “Of course! I’ll see you tomorrow morning!”
She placed the phone down and turned the Victrola back up again. She skipped to her vanity to touch up her makeup (in case the telephone had smudged something) and finished it up with a dark red lip. Then she grabbed her purse and slipped on her Mary Jane pumps.
***
The battered 1925 Chevy rattled down a winding dirt road. Hilda was in the driver’s seat, clinging onto the steering wheel while squinting at the map of the area. Rosie lay in deep sleep next to her.
“Rosie,” Hilda called, shoving the map into the seat next to her. “Look at this and tell me where we’re supposed to go.”
Rosie blinked her eyes open and immediately shut them from the brilliant rays of the sun. She gingerly cracked them open again and saw the glittering greenery around her. She inhaled sharply, expecting clean air, but instead she received a potent whiff of gasoline mixed with dust particles and began coughing. The grumbling engine pierced through her ears, and she winced as the pang in her head returned.
“Tell me which way we are supposed to turn,” Hilda repeated, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. They had stopped at an intersection. On the right was a mild incline up a green hill while the left featured endless, flat land.
“I don’t know, Hilda,” Rosie muttered as she fumbled with the map. “How about… Turn right!”
The car lurched right and continued up a hill, leaving the rolling valleys below. After several minutes of driving, just as Hilda was about to question Rosie again, they came upon a small cottage embedded in the wilderness around it. Vines crept along the sides of the house and moss covered the sides of the porch. Magenta, royal blue, and baby pink flowers speckled the perimeter of the cottage.
“I guess this is it,” Hilda exclaimed, stopping the car.
Rosie shoved the map onto the dashboard and grabbed her satchel. The two ladies hopped out of the car, and Rosie walked around the car to the trunk. She heaved up the trunk lid and lugged out a suitcase and duffel bag, both stuffed with medical equipment. Closing the trunk, she scurried—the suitcase in one hand and the duffel bag in the other—to catch up to Hilda, who was already heading towards the cottage.
“I’ve got to remember to pack more bags for these trips,” Hilda commented, standing on the porch with her arms crossed and watching as Rosie was struggling to drag the suitcase and duffel bag up the porch steps.
“Why…?” Rosie said breathlessly, finally hoisting the luggage onto the porch.
“You seem to need more exercise,” Hilda responded, neatly folding her sleeves to roll them up. “You ready?”
Rosie nodded, straightening her clothes and running her fingers through her hair. Hilda knocked on the wooden door. Several seconds later, a young lady opened the door. She sported a bob that was styled, curled with not a single strand out of place. She was great with child. Hilda and Janet went to sit on the couch as Rosie followed them inside with the luggage. She walked to the kitchen and placed the suitcase and duffel bag on the counter. The room smelled faintly of tomato sauce, and as Rosie approached the stove with the jar of raspberry leaf, she saw dirty dishes in the sink, stained with red goop. She found the empty tea kettle on the stove and brought it over to the sink, narrowly avoiding the unclean dishes, to fill it up with water. She brought the full kettle to the stove and turned the stove on.
She leaned back against the counter, surveying the kitchen around her. The walls were bare along with the furniture, though she imagined the youthfulness and radiance that the future child would bring. The walls would be covered with murals drawn with crayons and the tray of glasses on the counter held a small cup for the child. She heard a voice calling her name repeatedly and saw a child running up to her, screaming.
“Rosie!” Hilda called from the other room.
Rosie blinked her eyes twice and the shrill whistle of the kettle pierced her ears. She quickly shut the stove off and put a few leaves into a mug.
“Is the tea ready?”
“Yes, Hilda! Just one moment!” Rosie called back.
She got a tray from one of the cabinets and placed the kettle and mug onto it. She carried it to the living room.
“Rosie, why don’t you prepare a labor-inducing herb as well,” Hilda suggested, as Rosie placed the tray onto the coffee table and poured the tea from the kettle into a mug. “This way, the contractions will come quickly.”
Rosie walked back to the kitchen and dug through her suitcase, scanning for the glass jar of small blue bulbs with the label “BLUE COHOSH” on it. But it wasn’t there. And she had no doubt that she’d forgotten to pack it in the suitcase this morning. If only she had woken up on time today, or if she hadn’t drunk three (or was it four?) martinis last night, or if she hadn’t gone out with that guy (what even was his name?), then she wouldn’t have forgotten the blue cohosh. She pawed at the contents of her suitcase one last time, feeling for the smooth cool touch of a glass jar, but came back empty-handed.
She poked her head back into the living room. “Miss Hilda, could I discuss something with you?” Rosie asked. “Privately,” she added.
Hilda gave Janet a smile and patted her hands. Then she stood up and hurried to Rosie.
“What’s the matter?” she whispered, “Do you have the blue co–co–whatever you call it—is it ready?”
“That’s the problem,” Rosie also brought her voice down to a whisper, “I must’ve forgotten it.” She waved her hands over the pile of mess in her suitcase. “It’s not here.”
She saw Hilda’s eyes harden and her expression turn serious.
“Rosie, you know the consequences of a woman going into labor too late after her water breaks. It’s already been 24 hours since Janet’s water has broken, and you’re putting both her and her baby at risk by being so irresponsible.”
The words sparked a fire in Rosie’s body, an uncontrollable one whose flames and smoke of shame and embarrassment engulfed her.
“I–well… There should be blue cohosh growing around here, right?” she stuttered, fidgeting with her hands. “I-I mean we’re surrounded by nature. Even if there’s no blue cohosh, there must be some other herb that would work. I-I can go out and look for some.”
Before Hilda could say anything, Rosie was rushing towards the front door with her woven basket in her hand.
“Ms. McDilly,” she said, addressing Janet who sat on the couch, confused. Then, Rosie turned to Hilda, “I should be back in half an hour or so!”
She flung open the door and flew down the porch steps, past the Chevy, and across the dirt road. Her T-strap pumps—nowhere as pretty as her best ones that she wore last night—clacked against stray pebbles, and her simple beige dress clung to the front of her body. Blue cohosh, blue cohosh, blue cohosh, she repeated in her mind. Her head turned from side to side, scanning for the plant, but her surroundings were a blur. It wasn’t until about half a mile into the trek that she was brought to a stop—she had tripped on a rock.
Crouched on the ground and her hands digging into the dirt, Rosie regained sense of her surroundings. She suddenly felt the warmth of the sun, pressing down on her back and urging her to curl up in the grass and doze off. She sat back on her heels and shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand, staring into the brilliant blue sky. It seemed so vast, endless, infinite, and so vibrant that it seemed like it would never dull. And the sky was blue, like the herb, that herb, blue… what was it called… blue… co…
As she lowered her head back down, her thoughts were drowned out by the sea of greenery around her. There were the yellow-green hues of long wild grass, still reviving from the winter slumber. Far in the distance to her right, she saw the rolling lime-green alleys below with clusters of forest green from the pines. Nearby mountains were covered in patches of light green, dark green, tan, and red-brown. Rosie stood back up on her two feet and started the descent further downhill. She began to see speckles of flowers. She knelt down to pick one, a blue flax. With every turn, she found a new type of flower: cow parsnip, Indian paintbrush, and fleabane; she was in a flower field. When she approached the sunflowers, she looked up in the direction they were facing, and sure enough, the young flowers were facing the sun. “Flowers and other plants need light to grow and develop,” her mother had explained to her ten years ago when they went herb-picking together. “So the baby ones face toward the sun to soak in more of its light.”
Rosie moved along, picking up more flowers as she went. Then, she froze. A pair of eyes stared at her. It was a fawn, standing still in the tall grass as if it had been caught. Rosie stared back, her eyes wide. She kept as still as the fawn was. Suddenly, she burst out laughing. Her body convulsed as hysteria overtook her. Her basket fell to the ground, some of the flowers spilling onto the grass. How crazy was she to mimic the actions of a wild animal! But where was the fawn’s mother? Surely, she should be looking for her baby. When she regained control of herself, she looked back to see the fawn. Instead, she saw the child from Janet’s kitchen. She froze again, this time out of shock. What was it doing out here? Janet. Her baby. Hilda! She grabbed her basket again, and she reached out to grab the child, but she stumbled as it vanished.
She made her way back to the cottage. Blue cohosh, that was the herb she was looking for! By the time she had reached the dirt road, however, she only had her basket of flowers. Her heart rate sped up and her breathing shallowed. She had returned empty-handed.
As she trudged past the Chevy and up the porch steps, the setting sun glinted off something small in the cracks of the wooden porch. She stooped down at the top of the steps. There it was, the round berries of blue cohosh peeping out between the cracks. She snatched the plant, pulling out its roots as well. With the blue cohosh still in her hands, she barged into the cottage.
“I found it!” she exclaimed, lifting the blue cohosh up.
Hilda came walking briskly out of Janet’s bedroom, the farthest room from the front door. Her face was as stern as ever, and when her eyes met Rosie’s, she seemed to fume.
“It’s been two hours – you’re lucky that Janet started her contractions,” she said furiously but also trying to keep her voice low. She eyed Rosie’s basket of flowers. “And you found the time to go flower-picking? I – ”
“I’ll go into the kitchen to prepare the herb,” Rosie interjected hastily. “And please give these flowers to Mrs. McDilly.” She shoved her basket into Hilda’s hands and walked off to the kitchen.
She put on the kettle and began to wash the blue cohosh.