03709_0168: I Ain't No Midwife (third version)

Ga-17E

duplicate

I AIN'T NO MIDWIFE Revised

Written by: Mrs. Sadie S. Hornsby Area 6 - Athens, Ga.

Edited by: Mrs. Sarah H. Hall Area 6 - Athens, Ga.

John N. Booth Area Supervisor of Federal Writers' Project Areas 6 and 7 Augusta, Georgia

June 9, 1939

1817

March 14, May 29, 1939 Mary Willingham (Negro) 140 Cohen Street Athens, Georgia Practical Nurse S.B.H.

I AIN'T NO MIDWIFE

"You'll have to come up on the porch and set down whilst I washes if you wants to talk to me," Mamie announced, when I found her in the backyard tending the fire around the boilin washpot. "I meant to wash outdoors in the sunshine," she continued, "but my husband and daughter got off befo' I had a chanst to get 'em to move my wash bench off the porch for me."

"I'm surprised to find you at home, Mamie," I told her. "I was just taking a chance when I sttolled around to the back after there was no answer to my raps on your front door. Have you given up nursing in favor of taking in washing now?"

"No, mam, I ain't had no nussin' job in gwine on a month now. I'se just doin' my own fambly washin', least I is this mornin'. I does have two small washin's. I means I calls myself havin' two, but the folks didn't bring 'em last week, and they ain't brung 'em so far this week."

I sat down and watched her as she worked. Mamie is a stout woman of medium height. Tightly braided gray hair framed her gingerbread-colored face, and she wore a nurses' soiled blue uniform, a white apron, black slippers, and grey cotton hose.

She spat into the tub of clothes, half-heartedly rubbed a garment across the washboard a time or two, stood up straight and said, "Miss, does you know where I can git a job?"

1818

2.

"No," I replied,

''What!'* she ejaculated. "Outen all the folks you knows!"

"That's true, Mamie, I surely don't know of a job you could get right now," I told her, "but the National Reemployment Service will help you to get work if you'll register in their office."

"I did try at that place. They axed me a hundred and one questions and then some: 'What did you make? What did you spend your money for? Well, why didn't you save some of it while you was makin' it?' They took all them questions and washed my face with 'em. I'll bet not a one of them folks that asks them questions saves none of their own wages, yet they goes right on askin' other folks questions they wouldn't wanta answer for nobody else. I told the one that axed me them things that the reason I couldn't save none of my money was that me and my fambly had to eat, buy clothes, and pay rent, let alone having to holp my people when they needed it. They's been a heap of colored folks gone hongry at times in these last several years, when they own folks didn't have nothin' to 'vide with 'em no mo'.

"I sho don't know what us pore Negroes is gwine do," she grumbled. "When I first started to work I got more to do than I could keep up with. Now, folks goes to the hawspital, but when they gits back home some of they folks comes and stays with 'em 'til they's up and about again. I reckon folks Just has to do that way to cut 'spenses."

"How long have you been a nurse?" I asked.

1819

3.

"Lemme see now, since 1924," she answered. "You know I ain't no midwife; I'se a practical nurse. I'se helped doctors and midwives, and I'se maided and cooked. Lord, have mercy! I had to spend my money fast as I could git it feedin' my fambly, payin' house rent, and for all the things I told that man what axed so many questions at the 'Ployment Office. I got my 'stificate to do practical nursin' in 1926. It took me 2 years to git it. It used to be anybody could wait on a 'oman havin' a baby; they could go ahead and cut the cord and tie it if they knowed how. Now, that's all changed. If you don't have that 'stificate they'll put you in the penitentiary for life. I hopes to git my next 'stificate in 'bout another year, and then I can call myself a midwife and pull down $35 a week. Then I won't have to worry 'bout my meat and bread no mo', leastwise not long as 'omans keeps on havin' babies. I means to save up for a rainy day when I does git to makin' what a midwife should.

"I don't know when I was born 'cause I didn't know nothin' t'all 'bout my ma. I recomembers seein' my pa all right enough. I can guess at my age, but I really don't know jes' how old I is. I tells ever'body that. I 'spect I will be 'most fortynine my next birthday. I was born on a farm down here in Clarke County, and all I ever done in my younger days mostly was work in the field. I'se just been in town 'bout sixteen years. I used to have time and money to go see my folks, but I don't no mo'. Like I done told you, my ma died when I was a baby. My sister raised me part

1820

4.

of the way, then some white people took me up and I lived with 'em years and years. I lived and worked in the house with them white folks 'til I married.

"The first real nurse I ever seed was a white 'oman what they called in to nurse one of the chillun that was took bad sick out in the country. One day that nurse went out in the yard to the lavatory - folks didn't have them places In the house to set on in the country. The lavatory was hid back of a grape arbor. She was passing under the arbor on her way back to the house when a bug got in her ear. She went to the kitchen, twisted a little white somepin' 'round on a match stem, got some warm water and worked with her ear a long time. I thought that was fine doin's. I said to myself, 'If she can do things like that, I can too.' Right then and there I decided to be a nurse.

"Gittin' my first case come so easy that I thought nursing was going to be a reg'lar job. My husband's sister that was nursing a white 'omen took sick and give me the job. I went there and liked the work and the white folks liked me. That $8 a week they paid me was a whole lots more'n I coulda made oookin',or maidin', or takin' in washin'. That was a good lady what I nursed. Her aunt said that shakin' disease she had was caused by her being a senarvis (stenographer). She had done worked her fingers so long on a typewriter that she 'most lost use of her hands and arms, and that condition spread over her whole body. 'Oh, please rub my legs,' she would say. 'Oh, please scratch my head. If you will only rub my back; I'm so nervous.' I had to be doing somethin' for her all the time, day and night."

1821