by Shelley Wood
All the same, it was a little upsetting to see the relief and pride on the faces of Mother and Father. They’ve spent more years than I care to imagine wondering what would become of their disfigured daughter.
Ivy would be angry with me for writing that. She keeps saying that my birthmark is a distinction, not a blemish, but it is easy for her to say. She is so naturally beautiful, even more so now that Fred Davis is stopping by most days. I think he is quite as struck by her as she is by him.
“It’s not just my birthmark,” I told Ivy today, holding up a clump of my thin hair hanging lank and limp, the color of wet straw. “And what of this?” I asked her when I knew the Captain wasn’t watching. I put one hand on my hip, striking a pose and running my other hand the length of my torso. “I have the physique of a twelve-year-old boy. It’s not even a question of being unattractive. I’m simply invisible.” Ivy shook her head and laughed.
But I’m right, I know I am. I come and go from the farmhouse, and I honestly believe, if you asked anyone other than Ivy or Dr. Dafoe whether they’d seen me, or what my name was, they’d be at a loss to provide an answer.
“And it doesn’t bother me,” I said to Ivy. “I don’t want to be noticed.”
She just kept shaking her head. Even in the stifling humidity of midday, she doesn’t look rumpled and sticky like the rest of us. She glows. “You’ll see, Emma Trimpany,” she said. “One day, you’ll see.”
August 18, 1934
THE NEWSPAPERS SAY the quintuplets are not suitably protected from kidnappers during these desperate times. The Lindbergh baby snatchers are still on the lam more than two years after they found that poor boy’s body. Now the papers are saying it likely wasn’t Italian mobsters who nabbed him, but someone acting alone who might easily have slipped across the border into Canada. Nurse Ellis, a Newfoundlander whose lilting English gives her simple predictions the ring of fabled prophecies, observed that, even if the kidnapper isn’t headed our way, the whole terrible tale is just “giving nasty people an awfully good idea.” She’s right: these babies are the most famous babies in the world and there’s no telling what ransom they’d fetch.
Tonight Ivy and I were on duty together for the predawn shift. I was heating milk on the stove in the nursery when we heard strange sounds coming from the adjoining room. Fearing it was M. Dionne, snooping around in what is now the nurses’ office, Ivy ducked under the sheet separating the two rooms without taking a lamp. The room was empty. She was about to turn back when she spied shadows moving on the porch outside, and, as she watched, one of the shapes took the form of a man, and the window creaked open.
Ivy screamed. I rushed into the room, and, within seconds, it seemed, M. Dionne was hurtling down the stairs in his nightclothes, Mme. Dionne, despite her still substantial girth, only a few steps behind him. The man at the window vanished. M. Dionne dashed barefoot out the door in hot pursuit. There is still no telephone at the farmhouse, no way to summon help, so we lit all the lamps and invited Mme. Dionne to join us in the nursery. I roused everyone from the nurses’ cabin, and the six of us sat nervously awaiting M. Dionne’s return. Sometime later he burst back into the farmhouse saying he was taking the truck to fetch the Mounties, but Mme. Dionne was hysterical, begging him to stay and protect us all until morning. I can’t sleep, none of us can, although the Dionnes have retreated upstairs.
August 20, 1934
TWO RCMP CONSTABLES have been assigned to watch over the Dionne farmhouse, night and day. We are all hugely relieved, although it is two more mouths to feed and two more people tied up in the lives of our five little girls. I was still rattled and spent yesterday and today back at Mother and Father’s and will spend the night tonight. Father isn’t remotely interested in what could have happened out at the farmhouse. He’s ranting and raving about the new president of Germany. I can’t understand why he cares about things so many thousands of miles away when there are real dangers right here, in our own backyard.
August 22, 1934
NURSE ELLIS, THE Anglophone Red Cross nurse, has quit. The tension here is simply too much. I walked into the kitchen earlier in the day when she was having a set-to with Mme. Dionne, having caught Madame lifting Cécile out of the incubator with her bare hands. Nurse Ellis’s French, however, wasn’t up to the task of negotiating.
“No, Madame! Non-non-non. Vous ne . . . You mustn’t!”
I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything Nurse Ellis had lunged toward Mme. Dionne, whose wide face, shiny with perspiration, now flared beet red. She swiveled on her sturdy haunch and snarled, curling her shoulder over the startled Cécile and looking every bit like a bear protecting her cub. Mme. Dionne’s dress, I couldn’t help but notice, was the same one she’d worn yesterday to milk the cows, the skirt dusty from kneeling in the garden plot most of the morning.
Undeterred, Nurse Ellis swooped around the other side of the incubator, grasping Cécile, whose precious face pinched closed as she began bleating like a lamb. This might have turned into a true tug-o’-war, but perhaps Mme. Dionne had been bracing for the challenge, had been seeking it, because she relinquished her little bundle without a struggle and instead burst into a high-pitched defense of her rights. Her French patter, lightning quick, was utterly lost on Nancy Ellis, who countered with a flood of Newfie brogue that even I had trouble understanding, save for the parts that parroted the doctor’s rules and regulations. I slipped quietly out the kitchen door and darted to the nurses’ shack to summon the Captain before Cécile or anyone else got caught in the cross fire. M. Dionne must have gotten wind of the hullaballoo as well, because within minutes he was charging across the back pasture like a bull to a flag.
Nurse Ellis went off shift not long after. I forgot about the exchange, not even thinking to mention it to Ivy when she came back out to the nursery that evening and we got busy settling the girls for the night and catching up on the day’s washing and charts. But sometime after dusk, Nurse Ellis came flapping back to the farmhouse from the nurses’ cabin in her nightdress, very upset, saying she’d woken to the sound of someone trying to jimmy the window. “A man’s arm,” she kept whimpering. “It was a man’s hairy arm.” The policemen were summoned and did a full search of the property but found nothing amiss. We stayed up half the night trying to calm her down, to no avail.
I don’t know what words passed between her and the Captain, who returned to the nursery this morning having missed all the drama last night. All I saw was Nurse Ellis clomping off to pack her few things, hollering like an auctioneer that she wouldn’t stay another minute. I was quite fond of Nurse Ellis. She liked to regale Ivy and me with tall tales about growing up with four brothers in St. John’s and had a colorful repertoire of sea chanteys, riddled with unsuitable English, that she’d sing as lullabies to the babies. But her leaving is good news for me: more shifts out at the nursery, at least until my classes begin.
August 25, 1934
A MILESTONE TODAY—ALL the babies are now sleeping in cots, not incubators! We have much more space, and the air is so much fresher without the kerosene smell. I did a sketch of all five of them lying side by side in their tiny berths, and I gave it to Dr. Dafoe, who looked surprised and pleased, tucking his several chins into his collar and making a purring sound.
“You do have real skills, Emma,” he said. “You must keep this up.”
I’ve shown him some of the other drawings in my scribble book but took great care that he couldn’t read any of these jottings. If he read anything I’d said about him or Nurse de Kiriline or Fred Davis, I’d want to melt into the floor.
The truth is, with so little time for doodling, I suppose I’m starting to let go of my dream of being an artist. In town the lines at the relief office are growing longer and longer, and you see more people sleeping in the streets. Father told me that a brawl broke out at the mill in North Bay after more workers were laid off. There is always a chance that they will close the post office in Callander and move Father’s work to
North Bay, and, if they do that, they likely won’t need Father. I’m proud that I’ve been able to earn even a modest wage helping at the Dionne farmhouse, and I suppose it’s showed me how important it is to be able to make my own way in the world.
The girls are all filling out. Yvonne is still the biggest and now weighs a little under eight pounds—Ivy calls her the “little mountain.” My Émilie is just five pounds, seven ounces, and Marie is even smaller. I still have no trouble telling them apart. Cécile is the quietest and the most obedient, while Émilie is the sunniest. We all agree Marie will grow up to be the mischief maker. They had their first proper baths with soap and water today. Despite their gains, they are still so woefully tiny—funny little toads splashing in their basins.
August 28, 1934
LAST NIGHT NURSE de Kiriline overturned a lamp in the nursery while trying to pierce holes in the feeding nipples, which started a terrible fire, flames pouring across the kitchen like they’d been sluiced from a bucket. With the oxygen tanks stacked against the wall and the kerosene lamps, the whole place could have gone up with a mighty bang; I can’t even bear to think about it. I was sorry we’d ever spoken ill of the Captain or mocked her behind her back. She is truly a hero, throwing herself on the flames as they dashed toward the babies’ cots and smothering the fire with her own body. I can’t spend a moment thinking about what might have happened—to her, to the babies, to Ivy—if she hadn’t. Now Nurse de Kiriline has very serious burns. We don’t know when she’ll be coming back, if at all.
September 1, 1934
EVERYTHING IS IN turmoil. Nurse de Kiriline is still in the hospital, and while that’s meant more time for me at the farmhouse, it’s still not enough. The girls have been sickly again these past two days—crying and not taking their milk. As soon as one of them starts to seem stronger, another will decline; it’s awful. Spending any time away from them is like a punishment. I’m terrified every time I ride my bicycle out along the Corbeil road that I’ll be met with bad news. So I pedal as fast as I can, perspiring like a farmer over the final rise, just until the homestead is in sight. Then I slow to a snail’s pace because I can’t bear to arrive and get bad news. My classes at St. Joe’s begin in three weeks, and then I will have to get used to not knowing how they are doing every hour of every day. I’m dreading it.
September 14, 1934
RIBBON CUTTING TODAY for the new hospital: a media circus, with photographers and reporters jostling to get closer to the doctor and dignitaries. All this brouhaha while the girls are still so desperately ill they can scarcely be lifted from their beds, let alone be moved across the street. The new hospital is very modern, two stories high, with tall sash windows facing in every direction and fitted with electricity, plumbing, and indoor toilets, central gas heating for wintertime, a proper kitchen, dining room, and two play areas, plus dormitories for the nurses. A gleaming plaque on the door reads: THE DAFOE HOSPITAL AND NURSERY.
Dr. Dafoe himself snipped the ribbon, but even we could see that he was straining to bend his mouth into a smile. The fact is all of the babies are feverish, weak, and vomiting. These last few nights, the doctor has ordered enemas, milk of magnesia, and mustard baths for convulsions, but nothing is doing the trick. He may not say it to the newspapermen clustered around him, but Ivy and I can read what he’s thinking from the way his chin dimples and his glasses seem to sink even deeper into his face: the quintuplets might not live to make the move to the new hospital.
September 20, 1934
THE CAPTAIN HAS been cleared to come back to the nursery. Dismissing any pleasantries or questions about her own health with a brusque shake of her head, she began tenderly examining each of the girls in turn, clucking over their fevers and color. Then she inspected the nursery, offices, and nurses’ cabin, running a long finger across every sill and ledge, her nose wrinkling. From there she tramped upstairs to see that Mme. Dionne was keeping the living quarters clean and tidy—I can’t imagine how M. Dionne will react if he finds out about that. Then, summoning everyone together, she started in on Ivy, Nurse Clouthier, me, and the orderly, about all the things that we’d let slide while she was gone, putting the lives of the babies in mortal peril. Ivy and I stayed mum. Truly, we’ve done as much as we possibly could, but with Nurse Ellis gone and Nurse de Kiriline herself in the hospital, it’s been almost impossible to keep everything to the Captain’s standards. Nurse Clouthier, the most senior among us, bowed her head meekly and mumbled an apology.
“We have made the health of the girls our absolute focus,” she said, “but we’ve struggled to keep up with the premises and the laundry.”
The Captain said nothing for a moment, her eyes blazing at Nurse Clouthier. Then, as if struck with a premonition, she marched down the steps and past the section of field that we’d commandeered for our laundry lines. That’s how she came to make the discovery in the stables.
We were back indoors with the babies when we heard her stomping up to the porch and calling all staff to join her again, tout de suite. We hustled back outside to find her, arms crossed and gnashing her large teeth, dark curls springing indignantly from her head. Her impeccable nurse’s apron was missing, and we saw now that she’d used it to bundle up a wad of soiled and reeking cottons that she held at arm’s length.
“Who is responsible?” Her dark eyes flashed. “Who has left the babies’ things, this filth, to pile up in the stables?”
A glance flickered between me and Ivy. Week in, week out since Nurse de Kiriline first set the rules, all of the girls and women in that farmhouse have spent some part of their day soaping, scrubbing, boiling, wringing, and hanging every diaper, blanket, blouse, bib, and bonnet that has passed through this nursery. Some of the neighboring farms, we understood, had been taking in some of the laundry, particularly since the hired girls brought in to help Mme. Dionne have proved so unreliable—here one day and gone the next.
“We had no idea that any of the babies’ things had even been taken to the stables,” Ivy said finally. “We don’t go elsewhere on the farm.”
Lauren, the pleasant, fresh-faced orderly who joined us this week, also expressed surprise, saying she herself had taken a load of cottons back to St. Joe’s Hospital laundry when she went off shift yesterday morning. Nurse Clouthier, blinking rapidly, also shook her head. I believed her. She’s not the kindliest, but she’s honest and has worked very hard, all of us have.
“There are more in the stables,” the Captain said in her terse French. “See that they are burned. All of them.”
This time there was no mistaking whether she might have more to say. She stalked off the porch and across the yard, pausing to cram her bulky load, apron and all, into the big B/A oil drum that M. Dionne uses to burn waste. Then, dusting off her hands, she marched into the rocky fields, presumably in search of Mme. Dionne, a stern word, and a matchbook. Her own burns still raw and smarting, I don’t expect a bonfire was something she herself intended to set alight.
Ivy and I went out to the stables, and sure enough, a rank mound of unwashed diapers and other cottons had been stashed in a corner of the far stable, now crawling with flies and maggots. My stomach heaved at the sight, and Ivy’s pretty face was as cross as I’ve ever seen it.
“And we wonder why the babies are ailing,” she said, spluttering. We were using rakes to coax the pile into a burlap sack rather than touch it with our hands. “These are the same flies that come into the house day and night, that alight on our pots and kettles, that crawl on the babies.”
She twisted her head sideways, trying to avoid the stench. “Dr. Dafoe will be furious,” she said. “Mark my words. Heads will roll.”
September 21, 1934
AFTER DR. DAFOE found out about the soiled cottons in the stable, he didn’t shout or get angry, but we could see his chin pucker and he grew very quiet, then marched out of the farmhouse and across the dusty street. As usual, he was pestered by the flock of newspapermen twittering along the fence line, but for once he didn�
��t stop and take their questions. All of them want to know if the babies are any better, if their fevers have come down, if they’ve managed to take in any food. The truth is, little Cécile is hanging by a thread and the others have lost all of their pep, their skin turning ashen gray, their cries so plaintive it is squeezing our hearts of all hope.
Dr. Dafoe did deign to speak with the men in blue coveralls who have been erecting the electrical poles around the new hospital across the street. Mind you, the wires themselves are nowhere to be seen. Nor has any of the furniture and supplies arrived. Ivy and I wandered through the new building just yesterday, and, apart from shelving and cabinetry, everything is gleaming white but completely empty.
Within a few minutes, Dr. Dafoe had beetled back over to the Dionne property, heading first to the fields, where we could see him speaking with Oliva Dionne and his father. What passed between them we couldn’t hear, but whatever the doctor said, the Frenchmen seemed to offer little in the way of protest, although I saw the senior M. Dionne rest an arm on his son’s shoulder and he didn’t shrug it away. Returning to the farmhouse, the doctor gathered us all together in our charting quarters beside the kitchen, the air stale and heavy in our lungs. “We are moving the babies today,” he announced, rocking from heel to toe, chest out. “They need clean air, sunshine, and some peace and quiet, away from the dust and germs and crowds. The longer they stay here, the slimmer their chances of survival. I’ve informed M. Dionne, it is my belief, in fact, that some or all of them will perish today.” He paused, and his deep-set eyes roved over each of us in turn, registering our looks of horror. “The hospital is not ready, but it is hygienic and bright. This is the best chance we have to save the quintuplets.”
