The Birth House

Aunt Fran says it’s more likely that she took up with a sailor, and when he got tired of her talking, he dropped her here on his way home to his wife. It doesn’t matter. I’d guess she’s so old now that nobody cares about the whens, whys or hows of it, as long as she’s got “the gift” whenever they need it.

Miss B. never asks for payment from those who come to her. She says a true traiteur never does. Grandmothers who still believe in her ways and thankful new mothers leave coffee tins, heavy with coins that have been collected after Sunday service. In season, families bring baskets of potatoes, carrots, cabbage and anything else she might need to get by. They hide them in the milk box by the side door, with folded notes of blessings and thanks, but never stay for tea.

It was starting to get dark by the time we settled in for beignets and conversation. Not long after, I heard an odd stuttering sound from the road. I looked out the window and could just make out that there was an automobile coming towards the cabin, the evening sun glowing gold on its windshield. No one in the Bay owns even a work truck, let alone a shiny new car like that. Most men call them “red devils,” believing that just the sound of one is a sure sign that their horses will bolt and their cows will dry up for the day. No one comes out here from away unless they’re lost or looking for someone. No one comes down the old logging road unless they need to see Miss B. There’s one road in and one road out … and it’s the same one.

Miss B. took her teacup from the table, dumped what was left into a pot on the stove and stared into it, shaking her head. “Get up to the loft and hide behind the apple baskets. I think there’s some quilts you can pull over your head. Don’t you let out a peep.” The sound of the car was outside the cabin now, slowing and then sputtering to a stop in the dooryard. I started to question Miss B., wondering why she was acting so alarmed. She frowned. “Trouble’s come, I’m sure of it. I seen it in my leaves just yesterday and didn’t believe it, but now it’s here in this cup too. A bat in the tea, two days in a row … says someone’s out for me. I’d better take care in what I say and do. Shame on me for not trusting my tea. Go on now, get up there, before it comes for you too.” To please her, I climbed the old apple ladder that was fixed to the wall, pushed at the square lid that covered the small opening to the loft and crawled up into the space above the kitchen. Hiding under a worn wool blanket, I lay flat on my belly, peering through the loose boards into the kitchen below. Miss B. was squinting, looking in my direction. I whispered down to her, “I’m safe.” She smiled and nodded, then put her finger to her lips and turned to answer the knock at the door.

A tall, serious-looking man stood in the doorway. He introduced himself as, “Dr. Gilbert Thomas.” Miss B. invited him in, took his long overcoat and hat, and wouldn’t let him speak again until he was settled at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. She patted his shoulder and then smoothed the slight wrinkle she’d made in his dark suit coat. “Well, ain’t you tied up proper, like every day was Sunday?” Taken by her kindness, his voice halted and stuttered each time he tried to say shouldn’t and don’t, as if the words were too painful to get out. He sat cockeyed to the table, his knees too high to tuck under it, his fine, long fingers shyly wringing the pair of driving gloves that were sitting in his lap. Except for the hints of grey in his hair that shone silver when he turned his head, Dr. Gilbert Thomas looked as if someone had kept him clean and quiet and neatly placed in the corner of a parlour since the day he was born.

In a slow, steady tone, the doctor began what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech. “As a practitioner of obstetrics, I am bound by an oath to my profession to come to the aid of child-bearing women whenever possible.” He winced back a sip of Miss B.’s strong coffee and continued. “You, as well as other generous women in communities throughout Kings County and across the Dominion have had to serve in place of science for too long.”

Miss B. smiled and pushed the sugar bowl and creamer in front of him. “A little sugar there, dear?”

“Thank you.” He spooned in the sugar and doused the coffee with a large splash of cream. “Imagine the benefits that modern medicine can offer women who are in a compromised condition … a sterile environment, surgical procedures, timely intervention and pain-free births. The suffering that women have endured in childbirth can be a thing of the past—”

Miss B. interrupted him, catching his eyes with her gaze. “What you sellin’?”

Dr. Thomas’s stutter returned. “I, I … I’m just trying to tell you, inform you of—”

“No. You ain’t tellin’, you sellin’ … if you gonna come here, drummin’ up my door like you got pots in your pants, then you best get to it and we’ll be done with it.”

She waved her hand in the air as if to shoo him away. “Oh, and by the way, whatever it is, I ain’t buyin’. I figure if I tell you that right now, you’ll either pack up and leave or tell me the truth.”

Dr. Thomas continued. “The truth is, Miss Babineau, I need your help.”

She settled back in her chair. “Now we’re gettin’ somewheres. Go on.”

“We’re building a maternity home down the mountain, in Canning.”

Miss B. interrupted him. “One of those butcher shops they calls a hospital?”

Dr. Thomas answered. “A place where women can come and have their babies in a clean, sterile environment, with the finest obstetrical care.”

She scowled at him. “Who’s this ‘we’?”

“Myself and the Farmer’s Assurance Company of Kings County.”

“How much the mamas got to pay you?”

He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing.”

Miss B. snorted. “You’re a liar.”

“I won’t charge them a thing. I won’t have to, we—”

“You got a wife?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s a good girl, a lady who deserves the finer things?”

“Well, of course. But I don’t see—”

“How you expect to keep her if you don’t make no money?”

He laughed. “I get paid by the assurance company.” He lowered his voice and smiled. “And you could get paid too … if you participate in the program. They’ll give you five dollars for every woman you send to the maternity home.”

Miss B. got up from the table. “What I gots, I give, and the Lord, He takes care of the rest. There’s no talk of money in my house, Dr. Thomas.” She held his coat and hat out to him. “I gots all I need.”

Dr. Thomas took his belongings from her, but motioned towards the table. “Please, I didn’t mean to offend you. Let me at least have my say and then I’ll go.”

She poured the doctor another cup of coffee and sat back down at the table. “You got ‘til your coffee’s gone or it turns cold.”

Dr. Thomas quickly made his case. “Many families in Kings County, Scots Bay included, already own policies with Farmer’s Assurance. A small fee, paid each month, gives these families the security of knowing that if something happened to the man of the house, he could get the medical attention he needed and they could still go on.” He spooned more sugar into his cup. “As you well know, the mother is just as important as the father; she’s the heart of the home, she’s what keeps everything moving.”

Miss B. nodded. “I always say, if the mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Dr. Thomas grinned. “Exactly! For the price of what most households spend on coffee or tea each month, a husband can buy a Mother’s Share from Farmer’s Assurance. This guarantees his wife the happiness of a clean, safe birth and the comfort of having her babies at a Farmer’s Assurance Maternity Home. The family can rest well knowing that ‘Mother’ will be well cared for during her confinement.”

Miss B. stared at him. “What if a mama wants to have her baby at home?”

Dr. Thomas looked confused. “Why would she want to do that when there’s a beautiful new facility waiting for her?” He tried again to convince Miss B. “You are a brave woman, Miss Babineau, taking on this responsibility all these years. Everyone I talk to has said how skilled you are, how blessed, but with new obstetrical techniques available, women can rely on more than faith to see them through the grave dangers of childbirth.”

Miss B. sat there, humming and knitting, looking up at him every so often as if to see how much longer he was going to stay.

Frustrated, Dr. Thomas tried to further the conversation. “Do you know Mrs. Experience Ketch?”

Miss B. took a sip of tea. “Some.”

“Her husband, Mr. Brady Ketch, came to my offices about a month ago with some disturbing news. Since you’ve had your hands on so many babies in this area, I wonder if you might be able to make some sense of what he told me.”

Miss Babineau smiled. “I’ll certainly do whatever I can.”

The doctor’s tone grew serious. “Mr. Ketch was quite distressed. He said that his wife was bedridden and too weak to stand. He was afraid she might die. I followed him to their home and found her to be in poor health. She was pale and wouldn’t speak.”

Miss B. shook her head. “Well, that’s just some awful. I hope you could help her.”

“I made her as comfortable as I could under such circumstances, but there’s one thing I still don’t understand. When I asked Mr. Ketch what had brought about his wife’s illness, he said that she had just given birth the day before, and that you and a young girl were there to attend it.” Dr. Thomas stared at Miss B. “Was there nothing you could do to keep her from falling into such poor condition?”

Miss B. completed her row of knitting and shook her head. “Did you happen to catch wind of the man’s breath?”

Sugar spilled from the doctor’s spoon before he could get it to his cup. “Pardon?”

“I’m sorry to say so, Doctor, but the only truth Mr. Brady Ketch is good for, is in tellin’ the innkeeper when he’s reached the bottom of a whiskey barrel. If his wife’s in trouble it’s ‘cause he can’t keep his hands from her one way or another. If he’s not puttin’ a bun in her oven, he’s slapping her black and blue. If I’ve ever given Experience Ketch a thing, it’s been to tell her she’s workin’ herself to death.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t know anything about her having a baby?”

Miss B. pulled on the ball of yarn in her lap. “Did you see one there?”

“No, Mr. Ketch said it was a stillbirth.”

Miss B. rolled her eyes. “Why, I’d guess we’d both know it if she’d just had a birth, as I’m sure you gave her a thorough examination.”

He drummed his fingers on the table, staring at his cup. My handkerchief was sitting near it, the one that Precious had given me for my last birthday, my initials embroidered in a ring of daisies. “Mr. Ketch said Mr. Judah Rare’s daughter might be able to shed some light on the matter.”

“Miss Rare is a proper young lady who’s kind enough to keep company with a wretched, feeble granny like myself. She’s also wise enough to know better than to find herself in Brady Ketch’s part of the wood. Nothin’ there but lies and brew. Either one you choose, you’re askin’ for trouble.”

Dr. Thomas picked up the folded square of cloth and looked it over. “Dora’s her name, isn’t it? I stopped by her house and spoke with her mother before I came to call on you. What a kind woman she is. She guessed that I might even find her daughter here, with you.”

Miss B. calmly put out her hand, reaching for the handkerchief “Left this behind last time she was here. You know how forgetful them young girls can be. Can’t tell you what they done that same mornin’, never mind yesterday, or last week. Some flighty too, never know when she’ll show her face at my door.”

Dr. Thomas frowned as he chewed on the inside of his cheek. It’s the same thing Father does when he knows something he’s planned on paper isn’t going to work with hammer and nails. “Maybe I’d better visit Mrs. Ketch again and see if she can remember anything now that she’s back on her feet.”

Miss B. gave a cheerful response. “No need for that, my dear. Brady Ketch may well forget he ever knew you and shoot you on sight. It’s best you leave the women of the Bay to me.”

The doctor mumbled under his breath. “Leave them to have their babies in fishing shacks and barns.”

Miss B. scowled. “What’s that?”

“I think you should be made aware that the Criminal Code of 1892 states: ‘Failing to obtain reasonable assistance during childbirth is a crime.’”

Miss B. ignored him and said, “I’m wonderin’. Doctor, how many babies you brought into this world?”

“During my residency in medical school, I observed at least a hundred or more births—”

“How many children you caught, right as they slipped out of their mama’s body?”

“Well, I—”

Miss B. stopped him from answering. “It don’t matter …” She pulled at the tangled mass of beads around her neck. “See these? That’s a bead for every sweet little baby.” She pulled the longest strand out from the neck of her blouse. “See this?” A tarnished silver crucifix dangled from her fingers. “As you’ve probably heard tell … this child’s mama ‘give it up’ in a manger.” She let it fall to her chest. “So’s next time you come out here, tryin’ to save the barn-babies of Scots Bay, you remember who watches over them.” She stood up from her seat. “I believe your coffee done got cold, Dr. Thomas. I’d ask you to stay for supper, but I know you’ll want to get back down the mountain to your dear wife. The road has more twists when it’s dark.”

Mother didn’t wait long to ask me what it was Dr. Thomas wanted. “Did he find you at Miss B.’s? He seemed nice enough. Quite the thing to come way out here. Your brothers couldn’t get over that automobile of his. What’d he want, anyway?”

“He just wanted to find out how many babies were born in the Bay last year. Part of some records they keep for the county, or something like that.”

“That’s interesting. How many babies were there?”

“When?”

“Last year. How many babies were born in the Bay last year? I can think of three, at least. There was Mrs. Fannie Bartlett, and—”

“Oh, you know, I can’t recall. I think she just laughed and said, ‘the usual.’ You know Miss B.”

Mother went back to stirring a big pot of beans on the stove, wiping her brow as she inhaled the word yes.

~ November 16, 1916

Never have I had so many things I couldn’t say out loud. At least my journal listens to the scribbling of my pen.

When Dr. Thomas left Miss B.’s, his face was all flushed, looking like he wouldn’t be happy until he’d found a way to make Miss B. say she was wrong and he was right. I told her that I couldn’t bear to see her locked up behind bars, that maybe she should consider asking the women of the Bay to seek Dr. Thomas’s care from now on, but she just smiled and strung a single bead of jet on a string and hung it around my neck. “He ain’t gonna come back. There’s nothin’ out here for him. All the money’s down in town. Them people down there come to doctors with every little ache and pain. They empty their pockets right on the examinin’ table. Why’d he want cabbages and potatoes for pay, instead? Besides, a man who can’t drink my coffee straight ain’t got nerve enough to do me harm.”

She’s probably right, but it hasn’t kept the nightmares away. It’s been the same one for the past three nights. First I’m dreaming I’m with Tom Ketch, and he’s looking down on me, gentle and sweet, like he might even kiss me. I close my eyes, but when I open them, Brady Ketch is holding me tight, his unkempt beard scratching against my cheek, his foul tongue pushing into my mouth. I try to scream and my voice won’t sound. I try to get away and my body goes limp, like I’ve got no bones, and then I’m falling, falling into the ground, into the dark, wet hole under the Mary tree. There’s moss and bones, leaves and skulls, potato bugs and worms. I can hear a baby crying. I dig through the muck until I find it. It’s Darcy, only this time he looks like the most perfect baby in the world. He’s pink and beautiful, plump and whole, his clear blue eyes staring up at me, waiting for me to take him home. When I go to reach for him, the Mary tree comes to life, her roots turning to arms as she pulls the baby up from under the moss. I call out to her, “I’ll take care of him this time, I promise.” She doesn’t speak; she just takes Darcy and starts to walk away. I cry out again, “Please, bring him back. I’ll take care of him.” I follow her, hoping that at least she’ll take him up to heaven, but she just keeps on going, walking out of the woods and down the mountain, until she’s standing at Dr. Thomas’s door.

~ November 20, 1916

Tonight we strung apples to dry and made coltsfoot cough drops. Miss B. pulled what looked to be an old recipe book from the shelf and placed it on the table in front of me. “This here’s the Willow Book.” She closed her eyes and stroked its cracked leather cover. “For every home in Acadie that was burnt to the ground, there’s a willow what stands and remembers. By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. We put things here we don’t want to forget. The moon owns the Willow.” She untied the thick piece of twine that was holding its loose, yellowed pages together, thumbing through until she found what she was looking for. “Thank you, Sweet Mary. Here it is: coltsfoot. Some likes to call it the son-before-the-father ‘cause it sends up its flowers before the leaves. Just the thing for an angry throat. You write your name down in the corner of the page, Dora. So’s you remember to remember.”

From the last apple, she made a charm, grinning and singing as she pared the peel away to form a long curling ribbon of red. “The snake told Eve to give Adam her apple, oooh, Dora, who gonna get yours?” She threw the peel over my left shoulder and then stooped on her hands and knees to study it. She crossed her chest, then drew a cross in the air. “Look at that … I sees a pretty little house, a fat silk purse and the strength of a hunter’s bow.”

I bent down to join her. “What does it mean?”

“Nothin’—not right now, anyways.” She patted my hand as I helped her to her feet. “You’ll knows it when it do.”

I’d beg her to tell me more, but there’s no use in bothering Miss B. with questions. She’s said all she wanted to say. I suppose Tom Ketch is a hunter; he’s got to have a bow, living in Deer Glen and all … but there’s no pretty little house and not enough money to fill a thimble, let alone a silk purse. Miss B.’s never wrong about these things. She can tell a woman that she’s with child before the woman knows it herself. She can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, and the week the baby will arrive, most times getting it right down to the day. She can touch a person’s forehead, or hold their hand, and tell them what’s making them sick. So, even though she never said who, or even when, I can’t stop guessing at her clues and thinking over each word.

4

THINKING IS SOMETHING that Father says I do entirely too much of: “You think on things too long, especially for a woman.” At first I thought it was just something that fathers tell their daughters, but he’s not alone in this; Aunt Fran never seems to tire of carrying her journals of medical findings to the house and reading aloud from them during tea with Mother and me. Her latest is The Science of a New Life by Dr. John Cowan, M.D. “It’s right here, Charlotte, see? Oh, never mind your trying to read it just now, I want Dora to hear it too. I’ll just read this bit out loud. It won’t take but a minute. Let’s see … here it is … the esteemed Dr. Cowan states, ‘Closely allied to food and dress, in woman, as a producer of evil thoughts, is idleness and novel-reading. It is almost impossible for a woman to read the current “love-and-murder” literature of the day and have pure thoughts, and when the reading of such literature is associated with idleness—as it almost invariably is—a woman’s thoughts and feelings cannot be other than impure and sensual.’ There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion.”

This past autumn she was convinced that my bout with a cold and cough was brought on by my constant attention to Wuthering Heights. She even scolded Mother for letting me read it. “Lottie, whenever I see that daughter of yours, she always has a book under her nose! It would be one thing if she was studying psalms or even a verse or two of poetry … no wonder her health’s been compromised by the slightest change in the weather.”

Mother laughed. “Oh, Fran, with all your talk, you’d think Dora’s caught her death just by reading about the God-forsaken moors of Yorkshire.”

She turned to me and asked, “This is the one about the moors, isn’t it, Dorrie?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And then there’s the one about that poor woman whose husband kept her locked in the attic … I always get them confused. Of course, I’ve got no time to read them myself, I’m so slow at it and all, but Dora’s kind enough to tell me about them from time to time. Don’t you worry about her, she’ll be back to feeling right in no time at all.”

Aunt Fran lowered her voice. “Her cold is just the start of a greater sickness. These ‘stories,’ as you call them, will only lead her to more pain.”

“Fran, talk plain, will you?”

“I’m talking about derangement.”

“Don’t be silly!”

She whispered. “And deviant behaviours.”

Aunt Fran decided it was best to give Mother her copy of The Science of a New Life. “Normally, I wouldn’t lend this out. But I’ll make an exception in Dora’s case. You can’t put this sort of thing off and expect it to cure itself.” She patted Mother’s hand. “I’ve marked several pages for you. The ones that apply to her condition.”

Mother smiled and nodded. She no sooner put it on the dresser next to her bed than Father was ordering me to “Gather up those books of yours, Dora. Bring them out to the brush pile.” I acted as if I didn’t hear him and walked out to the pen to feed the sow. Before long I could hear the crackle of the fire, smell the smoke from dried twigs, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and all the rest. I leaned against the fence and cried. There’s no point in arguing with him. There never is. I’ll say one thing for the boys: at least they don’t cry. I’ll never understand you, Dora.

Last night was the first night of bunking down. When I was little, I looked forward to cold December winds and the first snow, to Father closing off the upstairs and all of us children dragging our pillows, blankets and feather mattresses down to the front room. Each night we lay piled together, Mother kissing our cheeks in the order of our births—Albert, Borden, Charlie, Dora, Ezekiel, Forest and Gord—cozy and snug until the grass turned green in the spring. Although our winter sleeping arrangement has become crowded and a bit smelly in the last few years, I still love listening to Borden’s late-night storytelling: the time old Bobby One Eye paddled the riptides off Cape Split, how he and Hart Bigelow came to invent pig bladder baseball, the tale of the hidden treasure that’s never been found on Isle Haute, and the ghost of Old Cove Fisher’s lost foot.

This year, Father didn’t seem to know what to do with me. I heard him arguing with Mother over it after breakfast.

“Maybe she could stay at Fran’s for the winter.”

Mother sounded upset. “Why would we send her away? Surely there’s enough room for sleeping.”

Father lowered his voice. “She needs to act like a proper young lady.”

“And she doesn’t?”

“It’s just that with six boys …”

“Judah Rare, you’re being foolish.”

“She’s getting to the age where she might be considered, someone might think …”

“That she’s a sweet girl who cares for her brothers?”