Lisette took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes again. “Sorry, Nicky. There’s a lot going on these days. Sylvie and Pit are pushing me out the door and I’ve got some heavy term papers to finish before my due date. And it doesn’t look like Serge is moving in with me for a few months, not until he gets his act together.”
Nicky reached over to take her hand. “Don’t be sorry. It’s me that’s in the wrong. Bugging you like—” She looked outside. “Bingo, kiddo. There’s a woman in a red sweater sitting right next to the window.”
Lisette straightened. “What does she look like? Young? Old?”
“In her late thirties, maybe forties. Shortish hair—” She looked back at Lisette. “Hair colour like yours. The waitress just brought her a coffee.”
An older woman approached them at the sofa. “Excuse me. Do you work here? I need some help finding a book.”
“No problem, madam.” Nicky stood up and before following the woman to the bookshelves, turned back and gave Lisette a thumbs-up.
Lisette leaned back and took a deep breath.
Chapter 14
Nadine nodded to the waitress at the café to pour her a refill. More caffeine wasn’t going to help settle the acidity in her gut but the woman had already approached her table twice with her carafe. Nursing an empty cup made her look like she had nowhere to go. She’d have to make this coffee last longer than the last two.
No sign of... Lisette—not a name she’d choose, but what did it matter? She wrapped her hands around the hot mug and contemplated the late afternoon crowd streaming down Ste-Catherine Street. If only she had an idea what she looked like, she’d spot her right away as she entered, gaining a few moments to ease the pounding in her chest.
She had thought of nothing else since receiving the registered letter after Papi’s visit last Friday.
This letter is for Nadine Pritchart. The Archives Department of Social Services received a request this morning concerning the disclosure of some of your identifying information. Since the permission for disclosure in your file has been updated on a regular basis, we would appreciate that you call us as soon as possible. Our offices are open from nine to four, Monday to Friday.
Nadine Pritchart—nobody called her that anymore. The letter had left her breathless. She read it over six times before calling and reaching the woman minutes before she was about to leave for the day. Before they could give out any of her personal information, Nadine needed to drop by their office to sign the necessary form. She had made arrangements to take care of that before work on Monday.
Her daughter—the child they had stolen from her—was searching for her. A wave of warmth radiated through her chest. Her dream had come true at last—her daughter had come back to her. She imagined them jumping into each other’s arms. They’d be best friends to the end of time. Her daughter would love her as much as she had always loved her.
Nadine had made a point over the years of checking with Social Services on her daughter’s birthday to make sure they still had her disclosure form on file. It gave them permission to contact her if ever her daughter requested a meeting. Somehow she had always known the reunion was to happen. Social Services wasn’t aware that she no longer used the Pritchart name. She worried that telling them might screw up their search system and delay any possible meeting. She and her daughter had shared the same last name—at least until after the adoption. Informing them of her name change might rock the boat and make it harder for them to make the link.
The weekend before she was to stop by the Social Services office had dragged on and on. No sleep to speak of and no energy to cook or clean. She drank tea after tea while leafing through her scrapbook, dreaming about what her daughter might look like.
The next two days at the office had been a blur. She had taken copious notes at the meetings. After rereading them, she noticed certain comments appeared more than once. Other notes had nothing to do with the subject at hand. She’d have to check with her colleague before submitting her final report.
Papi was the only person to understand her excitement. She had to tell someone. She called him to share her news and he promised to drop in when he drove back to Montreal on the weekend. He came to mind when the telephone rang yesterday evening and her heart skipped a beat. No one ever called her after the late news. Had he had an accident? He had mentioned going to visit a couple of bush camps in northern Quebec. The gravel roads in that part of the province were often narrow and unlit. She took a long breath before picking up the receiver. When it dawned on her who was on the other end, her heart almost burst right through her chest. Her stomach churned so hard she had come close to being sick right after she hung up.
She wrapped both hands around her refilled mug and breathed in the warm coffee aroma. Her mind was in a whirlwind. The tight walls of her world had broken down and the tingling in her heart made her feel like she was flying amok in a huge beehive. First there had been that chance meeting with Papi. Then the letter from Social Services, and now—her heart gave a slight lurch—she had heard the voice of her own daughter. The actual telephone conversation was a total blackout. She had blurted out yes to everything the girl said.
She twisted around in her chair and took a look around the café. No new customer had entered since she had sat down almost an hour ago. A young couple holding hands across a corner table. An older woman sipping her coffee with the open pages of The Montreal Star covering the whole table in front of her. The two young men sitting at the table behind her had the Journal de Montréal open between them, poring over the details of the latest bombing.
She tugged at the collar of her wool turtleneck and fidgeted, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Lisette might have spotted her through the window and decided not to come in. Or… she hadn’t bothered to come at all. Something also might have happened to her. She bit the inside of her lip and glanced up at the darkening sky. If she got up and left now, she’d be going back on the promise she’d made so many years ago. Her dream had been with her too long to give it up. The girl had sounded keen on the phone and had even insisted that they meet as soon as possible.
Nadine tightened her grasp on her mug. She didn’t want to risk leaving—not now—and have the girl appear a few minutes later. Maybe she’d taken down the wrong directions to get here. She remembered her hand shaking so much she had a hard time holding the pen, dropping it once and asking Lisette to repeat the address. She groped in her jacket pocket for the slip of paper where she had scribbled a few sketchy details. This was the right café, but it was also part of a chain with several locations downtown. Maybe she was waiting at the wrong one.
No, she wasn’t ready to leave. The girl was just late. There had to be a good explanation. She had never thought of asking for her phone number. She’d order three or more refills if she had to. The promise she had made twenty years ago was about to come true.
Chapter 15
Montreal
October 1950
Nadine clutched her small brown valise and hurried down the cement steps of Maternité Catholique. The early autumn breeze brought a welcome coolness to her face and neck. She paused when she reached the sidewalk facing Dorchester Boulevard and turned around. She tilted her head back to look up at the four-storey greystone that had housed her for the last nine months. No tears. Enough had been shed in the large communal dormitory she had shared with the other girls on the fourth floor.
Her quick exit from the cheerless building had been her sprint to freedom. Yet each step taken down the long dark hallway to the vestibule tore away at her heart. A part of her soul would linger there forever. Her pain impregnated the fabric of the walls, joining the chorus of grief left behind by previous women who had exited through the same oak door.
Six months of domestic work for the nuns had paid off her debt for board and medical bills. Now she was free to leave. At sixteen with no work experience, her only chance at full-tim
e work was the garment factories in the east end of the city. She had enough money hidden in the lining of her valise to pay for a few weeks rent at a cheap rooming house. Bread and butter, and maybe a bit of cheese, her only food till she saw a paycheque.
All she had left to do was walk away and forget what had happened. She was leaving her past self behind. It was time to detach herself from that scared sixteen-year-old who had first entered this building. Time to start a new life.
Isa, her friend and soulmate, had promised to wave from one of the windows, providing the nuns weren’t watching. Blinds on the street side of the building remained lowered at all times. Residents of the maternity ward for unwed mothers had to stay hidden from passersby. The nuns agreed to allow sunlight to filter in through the windows facing the cathedral in the back, except during the hours of public worship. Contact with family or friends, either by letter or by phone, wasn’t tolerated. Any reminder of their past selves, especially talk about the lives they had left behind, was off-limits. Their normal street clothes, pictures, trinkets from home, or any money they owned, had to remain hidden in their suitcases. The safeguarding of the family honour was paramount, so residents had to keep their real names secret and go by ones given to them by the home.
The nuns had declared that the name Isa sounded too much like Louisa, her birth name, and chastised her each time she used it. She resisted, refusing her assigned name, even for the few months of her stay. She didn’t care what the nuns said and stuck her tongue out each time they had their backs turned.
Lifting the blinds to wave goodbye no matter what extra chore the nuns punished her with was something Nadine expected Isa to do. She always managed to either be late for the 6:30 wake-up prayers, forget to do part of her daily chores, or worst of all, talk back to one of the nuns. The punishment was scrubbing the toilets on the first and second floors where the married women were. The residents there weren’t like the penitents on the fourth floor. They were the good mothers—the ones who made sure they had a wedding band on their finger before getting pregnant. Free to share their family stories and to get visitors. Proud and strong with the new life growing inside them. No need to hide these model Catholic mothers from society. They even had their own private entrance on the St-Hubert Street side of the building. The nuns encouraged them to treat Isa like a lowly servant and to order her to empty their bedpans and change their soiled sheets.
The nuns’ rigid rules proved difficult for Isa. She ignored the one forbidding penitents to talk about their lives outside the maternity ward. The women had to reinvent themselves during their stay and blot out all references to their past lives. They lived in limbo with two versions of themselves. Their sinful past selves had propelled them into this period of repentance. The new penitent selves waited to emerge cleansed and ready to reintegrate into society. Isa missed her five younger brothers and sisters too much to pretend they didn’t exist. Nadine often woke in the middle of the night to find her curled up beside her on her narrow cot.
“Not again.” She’d edge over to give Isa more room on the bed and tuck the coarse grey blanket around her. “It must be hard for you to know your baby is at the crèche here. But stay away from there. It’s for your own good. He’ll be gone soon and your heart will explode in a thousand pieces.”
Isa slid her head under the blanket and clutched Nadine’s arm. “I’ll go crazy if I have to stay here another six months. No one talks to me apart from you. Being around babies and pregnant women makes me want to be with my own baby more and more. I stay awake nights thinking of ways to kill all these stupid nuns. I told Sister Blain I changed my mind about those adoption papers. ‘Nobody can love him the way I do,’ I told her.” She poked her head out from under the blanket. “And do you know what that old biddy answered me? ‘Love?’ she said, like it was a dirty word. ‘You don’t even know what that means. You’re too immature and selfish to be a mother,’ she almost spit at me. I wanted to squeeze my hands around her neck till her eyes popped out of her ugly face.”
“Let go of me.” Nadine pried off Isa’s grip. “You’re hurting me. If you’d wring her neck as hard as you’re squeezing my arm, we’d all be attending her funeral.” She pulled her closer. “Sister Blain only knows about spiritual love. She doesn’t know anything about a mother’s love. Separating a mother and child is like splitting a soul in half. The soul won’t rest till it’s back together again.”
“That’s right.” Isa sat up straight. “Those nuns have their noses stuck so tight up God’s robes, they have no idea how real people feel.”
“Some nuns are OK, Isa. A few here—I’m not sure which ones—took their vows after giving away their own babies. It must be harder for them with all those babies reminding them of their own. At least we have the hope of one day reuniting with our child—they never will. You can’t give up. Your child will want to meet you one day.”
“Wish I was as sure of that as you are. But what if they give my baby boy to some mean rich people who mistreat him? No one can be sure they’ll love my baby boy. In my nightmares, I’m looking through the window of a fancy Westmount house. My baby’s there crying his eyes out in the biggest crib you’ve ever seen and his little arms are all black and blue with bruises. A woman in a nanny’s uniform is sitting in a shiny new rocking chair beside the crib. She’s examining her nails and yawning at the same time. I start banging on the window for her to let me in, so she gets up and jerks the black drapes closed tight. I can’t see my baby anymore, but I can hear him wailing.”
“It’s the mother in you. You’ll worry about him for the rest of your life. That’s how you’ll keep him in your heart.” Nadine eased Isa back down beside her under the blanket. “You know how the nuns keep on reminding us… that if it wasn’t for what they’re doing here, a lot of babies would die. In the old days, before the nuns took care of finding homes for the babies, unwed mothers didn’t know what to do once they left this place with their newborn. Some darted across Dorchester Boulevard right in front of the building here. They’d run down Woodyard Street past the old railway tracks and throw the poor baby in the St. Lawrence River.”
Isa was quiet for a long while. Muffled sounds of traffic and the rise and fall of women’s snoring swirled around them in their scratchy grey cocoon. Her voice, when she spoke again, came out soft, almost childlike. “Throwing him in the cold water all alone like that... that’s just mean. I’d hold on to him real tight and jump into the St. Lawrence with him.”
“Try not to think too much about all this. Give your body time to get stronger. Your heart will heal in time.” Nadine held her hand. “It’s only been two weeks since you gave birth.”
Isa sat up again. “Nobody can tell you’re three years younger than me. It’s my job to give advice and not the other way around.” She placed her head in her hands and let out a soft moan. “I won’t make it here without you. I have to get out before I dunk someone’s head in the toilet bowl. Everybody looks at me like I’ve escaped from the asylum. Sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in all around me and I can’t breathe.”
“Hush. Not so loud.” Nadine smoothed Isa’s long tangled hair away from her face. “We don’t want Sister Gagnon finding you here again. And you know you can’t leave this place before you pay off your debt to them. Promise me you’ll work hard and stay out of trouble. Time will go faster for you that way.”
“I swear I didn’t try to pick him up this time. All I did was look at him through the glass.” She slammed her fist down on the mattress. “I hate them. It’s my baby. If I don’t bother going to see him, they’ll say I’m not interested in him so they can give him away faster. If I do go, I get scolded like a child. I wish they’d all drink poisoned tea and die in their sleep tonight. We’d all get up next morning and walk out with our baby—” She paused and stared at Nadine. “Oh no... I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Nadine looked away. For two weeks after the bir
th of her daughter, she had thought only of breaking into Sister Blain’s office files to find out where her baby had gone. She plotted nonstop to escape from the maternity home to get her child back. Lying awake nights imagining ways of sneaking her baby girl out of her adopted home... and... that’s where her plans fell through. She had no idea where to bring her. To feed herself was a challenge, to feed a baby on top of that would be overwhelming. Getting a job in a factory was possible, but what about the baby while she was at work? She had nightmares of the baby howling in a crib with large grey rats scurrying all over her.
“You’ve seen your child’s face, Isa. You’ve touched his soft hair and smelled the perfume of his small body. I know you’re suffering, but at least you have that precious image of him. They bundled mine into another woman’s arms long before I even woke up from the labour. My child is faceless—like a dream baby. But in my heart, she has brown eyes and hair like me... and she smiles each time she sees me. She’s six months old now and must be sitting up by herself. There’s a big sunny room full of colours of the rainbow for her in my heart, with a bunch of pretty dresses and lots of dolls and stuffed animals in her crib. She’ll always be with me no matter where they’ve sent her.”
After taking a long breath, she managed a weak smile. “You see, no matter how many nuns you knock off, nothing will bring my baby back right now. I have to wait and grow strong for when she comes back to me.” She twirled a loose strand of her friend’s hair around her finger. “I wanted to call her Isa, like you. I never told anyone. It seemed pointless after they took her from me. Who knows what her name is now. She’ll always be Isa to me.”
Isa leaned down to hug her. “Like me? You mean I’d be her godmother?”
“Of course. I wanted her to be a rebel like you. I wanted her to change the world.”
The Daughters' Story Page 13
