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Philly Girl 53

Betty

I first got to know Betty in 1976 in the New York City
Health and Hospital system. The city hospitals were about
to hire freshly minted nurse-midwives to supplement the
surge of foreign-trained obstetricians who frequently insisted
on performing C-sections for the Puerto Rican, Colom-
bian, Dominican, Salvadorian, Panamanian, and Haitian
patients. The nurse-midwives were expected to act as buf-
fers between the foreign doctors and their black and brown
patients, who expressed themselves during their labors in
very culturally specific ways—screaming and wailing ritu-
als, for example—which we midwives were somewhat used
to. It was a good plan. The women learned to trust the nurse-
midwives, and they got wonderful, personalized care.
Betty was a talented African American woman from
Brooklyn, who was familiar with the clinic in Bedford
Stuyvesant and could navigate the Bronx Concourse. She
knew how to stay calm, read a fetal monitor, help a woman
with her labor, and deliver babies with ease. Meanwhile, I
was petrified all the time, and kept taking the subway in the
wrong direction. She was a calming influence, and I became
a better professional with her guidance.
We became close friends, and bought season tickets to
the New York City ballet. We loved the magical environ-
ment of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, a perfect
antidote to the dungeon-like chambers of the NYC Health
and Hospital system.