Bex Hainsworth
Agnodice
“This one won’t survive.” The doctor hands
my great-grandfather a four-pound parcel.
Pale limbs are petals folded shut. She is dwarfed
by her twin brother, screaming for his mother’s breast.
An all-night vigil begins. Drops of warm milk are coaxed
between miniscule lips. He will not give her up:
they have already lost two children.
By dawn, her face is flushed with color, tiny fists
thumping against her father’s chest. She is named June,
just as planned, despite her early arrival.
My grandmother has entered this world ready
to defy expectations, with a will to fight all her life.
1948 and the National Health Service
is crowning. Shaking off the ashes of war,
June is eighteen and one of the first midwives
to qualify in this hopeful era of medicine.
Bobbing over the cobbles of inner-city Bradford,
she cycles from house to house, from birth to birth.
Like Agnodice, she is aware of her own legacy:
she is wise woman, cunning folk, gatekeeper of life.
My childhood was spent holding my gran’s hand
through busy streets. We never seemed to reach
our destination without being stopped by unfamiliar faces.
“Mrs Whitaker!” followed by the clucking of old friends,
mention of chocolate boxes and money on the mantlepiece.
Walking away, I would ask, already knowing the answer:
“No idea, I must have delivered her daughter.”
June is ninety-two when a great-grandchild
is placed into her arms. Memory is complicated,
but still she knows the secret to the perfect swaddle:
the way her father held her through that first night