Midwives

“I was always an avid parent watcher, but in those months surrounding the trial I became especially fanatic. I monitored their fights, and noted how the arguments grew nasty fast under pressure; I listened to them apologize, one of them often sobbing, and then I’d wait for the more muffled (but still decipherable) sounds they would make when they would climb into bed and make love. I caught the gist of their debates with doctors and lawyers, I understood why some witnesses would be more damning than others, I learned to hate people I’d never met and whose faces I’d never seen.”

Connie’s lines illustrate the effect of the family crisis on her psyche. She becomes overtly watchful of her parents, sensitive to their moods, and embroiled in their problems, the long catalog of activities Connie mentions underscoring how exhaustive her surveillance is. While the text suggests Connie’s response is natural, it also suggests that Connie’s involvement in her mother’s case traumatizes her to a degree, contributing to the portrayal of Growing Up in the Shadow of a Family Scandal.

“Mrs. Charbonneau’s baby was nine pounds, two ounces, but my mom was able to massage the vagina and stretch the muscles so the perineum didn’t tear. Most women who have babies that are around nine pounds have to have episiotomies—that’s where you cut the perineum from a lady’s vagina to her anus—but not Mrs. Charbonneau. Her vulva’s fine […] My mom says the placenta was big, too, and it’s buried right now by this maple tree Mr. Charbonneau planted in their front yard. My dad says he hopes their dog doesn’t dig it up, but he might. The dog, that is.’”

An example of the text’s use of humor, these lines also highlight Connie’s liberal upbringing. For Connie, women’s reproductive parts and labor are not taboo topics, but elements of an exciting story to tell. She calmly uses words like “vulva” and “perineum,” much to the shock of the adults around her. The detail about the dog digging up the placenta adds to the comedy of the sequence, highlighting that, for all her knowledge, Connie remains a child, blurting out details that most adults would withhold.

“I could begin my mother’s story with Charlotte Fugett Bedford’s death, but that would mean I’d chosen to open her life with what was for her the beginning of the end. It would suggest that all that mattered in her life was the crucible that made my family a part of one tragic little footnote to history.

So I won’t.

Besides, I view this as my story, too, and why I believe babies became my calling as well.”

As these lines show, Connie often draws attention to the constructed nature of narrative, implying that even a so-called “true” story is formed by its teller and their choices. It is Connie’s choice to begin this book not with Charlotte’s death but with a description of her childhood and her mother, Sibyl.