The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  ‘Really? I might be.’

  ‘No. You’re easy.’ She wiggled her feet, sending ripples across the surface. ‘I could tell you about … about stealing the host when the priest wasn’t looking. I hid it in a handkerchief and ate it in bed at night when my sisters were sleeping. If my tummy gurgled, I knew it meant I was full of Jesus, pregnant like Mary with the Christ hidden inside where no one could see. Mine alone. Blasphemy. You shouldn’t laugh – I was very wicked. Still am.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Marie. You’re a lamb.’ The rock was warm on my bare legs, the water cool, and I watched the sunlight move across the surface of the lake.

  ‘I ran away, too. Lots of times. I hid in trees, once in a ditch. I watched my mother cry.’ Little minnows came curious to nibble at our toes. ‘She loved me anyway. She worried. I got fed up and ran further. I left school without telling anyone and got on a bus to Montreal. That’s where I met Hans. At the bus station.’ She splashed her toes, and the minnows scattered. ‘He looked at me and I knew I loved him. Right like that.’

  ‘That sounds easy.’

  ‘Yes.’ One minnow emerged from the shadow and tentatively made his way back towards our toes. ‘Scary, too. He was older. And Soeur Perpétue had warned us about men like that. I’d just come off the bus.’

  She kicked her feet a little more, the splash coining out across the lake. Then she told me about the town up north, the school, the hallways and the classrooms and Soeur Perpétue teaching her music.

  ‘It wasn’t a bad place,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like the singing, and I didn’t want to stay, but it wasn’t bad. Soeur Perpétue said I could teach the little ones and be safe inside the walls. Said it would be the best life for me. That was after my sister’s broken arm and everything. And when my sister left home, Soeur Perpétue made me promise I’d never hitchhike. She told me the bus was just as bad – bad men would find you at the station – but she didn’t make me promise about that. I was so scared getting off that bus – and so hungry for a sandwich. I thought if I could just find a church or somewhere someone could help me … But Hans found me. I was scared of him at first, but it turned out I didn’t need to be. He isn’t like that. With him, I’m safe.’

  Later, I realized I didn’t ask if she went home again. I didn’t ask about her mother. I was distracted by the water and the heat, the way I could see the ripples on the surface and the minnows underneath. A large fish darted out past the shadowed rock and chased the minnows away. In the bright emptiness, it paused, and I glanced up to see if Marie noticed, but she was looking out across the lake. When I looked back, the fish was gone. I wondered if it was camouflaged against the rock, or if it swam away. Or it hadn’t been there at all. Like Asher, I thought, and that was ridiculous. But as the days slipped past, Asher felt further and further away, the little swimmer tumbling inside me far more real than he. When I slept, I dreamed of swimmers and rivers, and Nicolas Gatineau who might have wandered this way, might have stayed and drowned or never been at all. That story surfaced in my dreams and felt as strong as a current, tumbling over all I’d rather have kept submerged. Because there wasn’t an off-switch for love. Even in absence, it kept flowing. I pictured my heart as a river in the night, the shores unseen. Beautiful Asher, wherever you are now, I hope you aren’t lonely for me. Go look for love again, look for living love, and when you find it, hold on and don’t let go. I wanted to say I was sorry, that I missed him, but morning rippled in and I woke with my hands around my belly, worrying about names. The baby would have my last name, of course. I couldn’t take Asher’s. But what else? What name could I wrap around this little life? What story was strong enough, bright enough? What was best?

  By the middle of the month, I wasn’t sleeping any more. Not at night, anyway. I could manage a nap mid-morning or late in the afternoon, but at night I felt restless. I went out walking through the dark woods, finding my way by looking up at the spaces between the branches where the sky was brighter than the path beneath my feet. I watched the moon grow fat each night. One night, I lay down under the birch trees by the shore, the cool lake air helping to relax my muscles and the sandy ground holding my weight. Over the lake, the sky was bright with stars. I could breathe it in, I thought. Inhale deeply and fill myself with tiny lights, the path of planes and planets and the deep colour in between. Half an hour, I told myself, just half an hour and then I would go back to the bunkhouse and to bed. I didn’t sleep there on the ground but time passed strangely, and then came quiet laughter in the woods behind me, and I heard Marie’s voice.

  ‘There’s someone there already,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’ll be folk from the tents,’ Hans said. ‘It is a good night for a swim.’

  I heard splashes behind me, and turning, saw women in the lake, swimming far out from shore, their heads sleek in the bright water.

  I rolled over and called out to Marie. She skipped down the sand, light, slight, despite her swelling belly.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful? I’m going in.’ She pulled her T-shirt over her head, and pushed her long skirt down to her ankles, leaving it like a puddle on the grass.

  ‘You are a birch tree, my love,’ Hans called.

  Marie laughed. ‘Birches don’t have belly drums. And I’m browner than that, too. Come on, Felicity. You’ll come in with me?’

  Hans was climbing out of his clothes, too, his body thick and shadowed with hair. I wasn’t prepared for that, for the feeling in my own body, looking. I felt like a statue, solid, weighted, smooth, and shifting now. My fingers brushed at the buttons on my dress.

  Marie swung her arms, readying herself for the water. ‘Felicity, you’ll come with us, won’t you? Rika says she won’t let us back in the water for at least six weeks after the babies come and for me, the lake will be practically frozen by then so I need to swim now. Every day. And night if they’re nights like tonight.’

  Hans’s voice was deep and warm. ‘These are nights to remember when February comes. Wherever we all are then, we’ll have this.’

  ‘But we’ll be here, won’t we?’ Marie said. ‘Even in the snow and ice.’

  ‘Yes, of course we will. But we can still swim for February.’

  I stood, looked down, unbuttoned my dress. I slipped it off and set it on the sand, folding my underpants, my unclipped brassiere carefully on top. The air was fingers on my back and soft around my ribcage where the cotton cut tight. I turned to face the others, but no one was waiting or watching at all. They had walked down to the water, and stood facing the lake, almost hesitating, but maybe that was still me. They looked like a couple at a train station, looking up to check the schedule. They held hands.

  I ran in.

  The sand felt sharp under my feet, then the water cold and the women in the lake hooted as I splashed out towards them. I dived under, a shallow dive but not shallow enough because my belly scraped the sandy bottom, then the water was cool all around me like fresh sheets or the palms of Asher’s hands. With my eyes closed, I rolled over under the deepening water, then over again to feel the rush of this water against my skin. Alive.

  I’ll need to remember this, I thought. It’s a story for the baby – this water and the sky tonight. I’ll tell how we all swam together, Marie and Hans and the strangers laughing in the shadows, and how I floated on my back and we were an island floating, the two of us together, an island under the stars.

  When I came out of the lake, Rika was sitting on the sand with a cigarette between her fingers.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Gorgeous night, isn’t it?’

  ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’

  ‘No. Wide awake, it seems. It doesn’t feel like a night for sleeping. But how’re you feeling?’

  ‘Marvellous. I was a bit off earlier, but the water helped.’

  ‘Here, you should wrap up.’ She took her flannel shirt off and slipped it over my shoulders. ‘Don’t want you to get chilly. I once swam in Lake Superior. Not late at night like this, though. It was earl
y morning and so cold that you could see your breath, but I just had to go in. It felt like the whole world spread out in front of my eyes, just for me. Silver and blue. Like I was God and everything in creation was dancing in light. So beautiful. I didn’t want to talk to anyone after that, not for days.’ She rubbed my shoulders, then gathered my hair between her fingers and squeezed the water out onto the sand.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you back to the bunkhouse. You should try to get some sleep. Prop that beautiful belly of yours up with pillows and settle down to rest for a while. Dawn will be coming soon, but you rest as long as you can. I’ll save you some breakfast if need be.’

  11

  FRIDAY AND THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN WAS STICKY WITH jam-making. Rika’s hair sprung into curls over her ears, and she wore her sleeves rolled high as if about to catch a baby. In her hands, she held the forceps, shiny, sterile pinchers, but they were for the jars boiling in the kettle. I melted wax in a small copper pan, ready to make the seals, and Bas stirred the cauldron of jam. It was syrupy and thick, a deep, bright red. Bethanne had gathered a crew from the tents and they’d spent the day before down by the railway tracks picking wild raspberries, which were far sweeter than the ones in the garden. I’d wanted to go, too. I used to help my mother pick berries – raspberries, brambles, sea buckthorn along the coast and rosehips from the hedgerows, filling pots and baskets and then the biscuit tins we’d packed with sandwiches and emptied at lunchtime, all possible space used to save every scrap of sun-fed sweetness we could find. Once I found a toad under the berry canes, sitting flat-bellied in the shade. I crouched to watch his mysterious breathing in and out, the flicker of his ancient eye. His skin was dry and ridged, sedimentary and strange. After that, I always looked, but I didn’t find him again, that stone-coloured toad sitting hidden and heavy as a heart.

  Are there toads like that here in Quebec? So many things can’t be marked on a map or true stories found in a book.

  Jam bubbled and more berries sat in bowls on the table, swimming in cool water so that the bugs might rise and be removed. White bags of white sugar sat waiting, too, printed with their Montreal address and Granulated Sugar – Special Fine.

  We’d get two batches at least from all these berries today, and no point in heating up the kitchen two days running, Bas said. Not with weather like this. I sat down behind the table sorting lids, matching rings and disks and discarding wonky ones. A low tightness was starting to stretch under my belly and every so often, I shifted on my stool to change the pressure.

  ‘You okay there?’ Rika asked, her face glowing with the steam. ‘Need some fresh air?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sitting feels awkward right now.’

  ‘I’ll just get these jars onto the tray and then I’ll be out to join you. I could use a breather, too.’

  Coming out to the porch a few minutes later, she asked if I wanted to walk, but I didn’t. I just wanted to stand with my back against the solid farmhouse wall, looking at the lake. The loons were out on the bay, diving and surfacing, travelling underwater further than I imagined, surfacing together, catching me unawares.

  ‘You might be starting,’ she said. ‘You crampy?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘You want to lie down? See if you can nap at all, and when you wake, we might see if anything’s going on.’

  She held out her hand to me and I took it like a child, or a lover, trusting. The wind blew through the pine needles overhead and she walked me down the path to the bunkhouse.

  ‘There, it’s cool in here, isn’t it? And quiet. You can rest here. And if there are any cramps, don’t hold onto them, okay? Just let them be. Don’t try to make anything happen – that won’t get you anywhere.’ She helped me into bed, eased my boots off my feet and smoothed the hair from my hot forehead. ‘Sleep, love. Don’t worry. You’re fine.’

  The afternoon slipped away and maybe sleep came, but I didn’t notice. Everything came and went in waves. Cramps and thoughts, doubts, too, and imagining those loons out on the lake, swimming and diving, dark and graceful, sometimes seen, sometimes hidden. That’s what that afternoon felt like. To keep steady, I thought about the shoreline constant every year and then every year the loons returning to dive again, fishing, nesting, hatching, coming up for air. Evening came around and I found I was ready. All of a sudden full of energy, almost crazy with it, knowing that this was really happening at last. I got out of bed and took a work shirt from a nail on the wall, then walked myself down to the birthing house, stopping on the path only twice to lay a palm against a tree and breathe. Rika was there already, waiting for me.

  ‘Ah good, we were right, weren’t we? Let’s get you something to eat, if you can manage it. Fuel for the work ahead.’ She gave me a glass of water to sip as slowly as I could, and a bowl of berries. They were sweet and wet on my tongue, the night warm around me.

  I’d thought it would be textbook: waters breaking, contractions building through to transition, breathing and finding an opening calm – like Rika said, a way forward – and then the desire to push which I would manage and work with carefully, but it wasn’t like that at all. That was only a view from outside. A Dr Birch view and translation at best. Inside, everything was different and I only knew words when I came up for air.

  Pain travelled through me, pushed me to the edge. Pain made me scrabble up and out of my body. When it grew stronger, I could not ride through it with breathing. My waters hadn’t broken yet and how long would I have to ride this pain? I stretched my neck and craned to pull away and Rika’s gentle voice called me back.

  ‘That won’t work, honey. Chin down is better. Put the force where it needs to be. Open. That’s the way. Open your eyes and look at me, okay? In my eyes, there. Yeah, there. It’s time for that now. Open and push.’

  I heard her words or her voice between the words. Another translation and I found her eyes, the sweetness there. Strength. Time stretched out and everything was moved towards the feeling that was and wasn’t pain. I learned to crest each wave, to push, to hold and let go.

  Then, before dawn, he was born. Squeezed past my bones and out into the wooden room, into Rika’s hands. There was no cry, no sharpness in the moment, as she lifted him to my belly, placing my hand on his small back, his soft, wet hair. ‘That didn’t take long,’ she said. ‘Just a little guy, look at that. I thought for sure you’d have a girl.’

  He felt so small outside me, and when I bent up to see him, his eyes were already open, his small mouth, too, and he made a gentle coo hello.

  ‘Hi, little one. You’re here. You’re … you’re Stanley, I think. Does he look like a Stanley?’

  ‘Sure,’ Rika said. ‘It’s a good name.’

  She wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and Eleta was there, though I hadn’t seen her come in. She held out her hands for Stanley.

  ‘I’ll look him over for you,’ she said. ‘Toes to count and all that. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him warm.’ She cradled his head in her palm, her eyes soft and loving as she looked into his little face. Rika pressed her hand high on my belly and I felt small rushing cramps. For a moment, I pictured another baby – a twin like Carole’s – another small, perfect face, but as I shifted, I knew these contractions were the afterbirth coming away. A few small pushes and Rika caught it in a bowl and set it aside. She’d want to examine it and make sure it was healthy, and I might have asked if I could help, too, but I didn’t. Instead, I lay back against the pillow, and felt like I was floating under an open sky, suddenly surfaced to find the shoreline changed.

  ‘He’s small,’ Eleta said. ‘But perfect.’

  ‘Have you done his numbers?’ I asked. Eleta and Rika both laughed.

  ‘And colour and tone. His temperature’s a little down, but it should go up once he’s tucked in beside you. And I’ve dressed him in the kimono you chose, but I left the front open for skin-to-skin.’ She passed him into my arms and as soon as he was close, he opened his mouth wide to nurse, which made us
all laugh again.

  ‘As I said: he’s perfect.’

  He knew just what he wanted, this small burrowing being at my breast. And I expected that, but I hadn’t expected that I would know. Not how to nurse – that would take time – but that I wanted to. It was a desire that surprised me, and I didn’t understand. No one talked about that want. That warmth and softness and close breath and its urgency, its complete necessity. That love that was new that was old.

  ‘There,’ said Rika. ‘Now, you’re both happy.’

  I wished my mother could be there. I wanted her to see my Stanley. I wanted to tell her what it was like. And I wanted Marie, too. I’d reassure her. I’d let her hold him and I’d show her the tiny whorl of his ears and the light hairs across his forehead.

  Rika sat beside me on the edge of the bed. I asked her about Marie.

  ‘She’ll be along in a little while. Everyone will, in turn. But maybe you’d like to rest first. That was a lot of work. You rest now, okay? Eleta will stay with you, and I’ll be back in a little while to bring you something to eat. Sleep if you can. You’ll want to be awake for the broadcast later. The next show on the agenda.’

  Usually Rika encouraged new mums to stay around the birthing house for a few days, but this was different. There wouldn’t be another first moon landing. It was afternoon when we walked slowly down the path together, one step at a time, and Eleta carried Stanley. When I got to the farmhouse, there was a white sheet hanging from the porch, catching the wind like a flag. WELCOME STANLEY, it read. OUR NEWEST ASTRONAUT HAS LANDED!

  A crowd of folk came outside to see us, and Soleil danced about with a tambourine whilst James and Eleta led ‘Happy Birthday’.

  I never cry, but I did. So goofy and wonderful and everyone was there. So many people. Of course, they came for the broadcast, but we were family all together and that made it special. Some people from the tents brought cases of beer, and Bas made vast trays of sandwiches. Once inside, Rika helped me settle with Stanley on the sofa and she sat close by to help.