The Birth House

by Ami McKay

  Although the widow would say it’s her rheumatism that’s brought her to know the midwife, Miss B. says otherwise. On more than one occasion she’s been called over to the Bigelow place to clean it out. “Miss Simone may put on a good show at church, clutching the hymnal, singing them hymns louder than everybody, but I’m not the only one who hangs a colander over her keyhole, or keeps a needle jar in the window and a crow’s wing over the door.” The two women often argue over religion or how to make a decent roux, but they agree that they have no choice but to get along. “We’d lose all but the foulest words of our mother tongue, our maman français, if we weren’t civil to each other. Our blood both come from people who suffered for God, and that make our hearts almost the same. When she needs me, I be there.”

  This time, Miss B.’s invitation to the dinner party seemed more for show than anything else. The widow made quite a fuss over our arrival, kissing Marie on the cheeks and starting all her sentences with quoi qu’il en soit, “be that as it may,” her loud and pointed overuse of French brought on by her brother’s visit. She can’t be blamed for this of course, since it comes from what most residents of the Bay call “feelin’ fussy.” A person tends to get the fussies when someone visits from away, especially if it’s someone like Professor Payzant, who left the Bay to live abroad, vowing to “make his mark.” The person with the fussies insists on acting as if they haven’t missed a thing, that they’ve kept a keen eye on the whole world through newspapers, or friends of friends, or letters from faraway places, or perhaps even something as exotic as a crystal ball.

  Over dinner, Professor Payzant explained that he felt it was his duty to come back to the Bay to share his adventures with us. “I’m happy to do it; in fact, I consider it a calling of sorts, bringing the best parts of the world to my dear sister in Scots Bay.

  “I thought long and hard about this evening’s gathering. Would it be the pigmies of Papua New Guinea, the Inca of Peru, the mighty Zulu? In the end, the decision was clear: tonight you shall meet the Maoris of New Zealand!”

  We retired to the parlour, where Professor Payzant brought out several artifacts from a large steamer trunk. Intricate carvings of whalebone and greenstone, spearheads and small wooden flutes, a long, sweeping cloak made from dog skin, feathers and flax. He passed around a book of photographs as he described the tribal life of the Maori. “They look quite menacing with their wild eyes and their tattooed faces, but I can assure you that it’s the higher classes who have their bodies pierced and pricked in such fashion.” He held up a crude tool. “A simple process, done with bone chisels and blue pigment. The more important the man, the more intricate his moko, or tattoo. Dare I say, the highest-ranking chiefs even have their buttocks covered. The women are more modest with their adornment, only having it on their lips and chin.”

  The reverend popped a pastry in his mouth, licking powdered sugar from his fingers as he stared at the photo album, glancing every so often at Aunt Fran. “What lascivious-looking creatures. They must be mad with lust over their constant nakedness.”

  Professor Payzant responded, “What seems sordid to some is quite natural for others. For all our differences, they were hospitable to me, taking me into their homes and even teaching me to cook food in the hot springs by dipping skin pouches into the steaming water. Quite ingenious, the Maori.” He walked around the room, putting out all the lamps but one. “Now I’ll tell you one of their legends.

  “Te Rauparaha, chief of the Ngati Toa tribe, is perhaps one of the most famous of all the Maori chiefs. Once, while this great warrior was fleeing his enemies, a local chief assisted him by hiding him in a kumara store under the earth.” Professor Payzant’s voice fell to a low whisper. “Te Rauparaha sat silent in the darkness, barely wanting to breathe, waiting for his death.

  “When at last the store was opened and the sun shone in, it was not the spear points of his enemies he saw, but the smiling face of the gracious and famously hairy chief! When Te Rauparaha came up from the pit and was once again standing in the sun, he performed a wild and victorious haka.”

  Professor Payzant removed his shoes and began to chant, his eyes bulging, tongue stuck out, fists beating at the sides of his head, stamping and grinding his bare white feet on the floor. Uncle Irwin was asleep, snoring in a chair in the corner of the room.

  Professor Payzant motioned for the rest of us to join him as he continued to stomp his feet. “Imagine their tattooed faces.” He stuck his tongue out at Widow Bigelow. “Imagine their wild eyes!” Aunt Fran, Reverend Norton, Dr. Thomas and Precious lined up next to him. They repeated the chant, stumbling over the words, Dr. Thomas scowling as he tried hard to get every gesture right, Precious, laughing and giggling. Professor Payzant instructed, “Now turn, single file, your left hand grabbing hold of the left ankle of the person in front of you, your right hand on the small of their back to steady yourself!” Reverend Norton’s hand slipped, grabbing at Aunt Fran’s behind. She turned and winked at him. He grinned with delight.

  Instead of joining them, I chose to look further into the contents of the professor’s trunk, wishing I could crawl inside and sail off to anywhere but here. Not that I don’t care for the Bay, but sometimes I feel tethered to this place, by what’s always been. So many of the men, my father included, have sailed away from here. They come home with globe-shaped bottles, giant seashells or sailor’s valentines for their wives. And after all that, they still swear that “there’s no prettier sunsets then right here in the Bay.” I hope they’re right, because it seems the women will always have to wait and wonder.

  I picked up one of the headpieces, ran my fingers over the intricate carvings, held it to my face and breathed in its woody scent of hot sun and warm sea. Through the mask (the face of a snarling, bloodthirsty monster), I could see Miss B. sitting next to Mrs. Thomas, her eyes closed, hands stroking the woman’s round belly. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I could see tears falling down Mrs. Thomas’s face. Before I could put the mask away, the young mother-to-be caught sight of me. She screeched and then fainted into Miss B.’s lap. Dr. Thomas broke free from his place in line, Precious falling to the floor, Reverend Norton catching Aunt Fran in his arms.

  The doctor knelt at Miss B.’s feet, giving little smacks to his wife’s cheeks. “Lydia, Liddie…wake up, dear…are you alright?” He glared at Miss B. “I should have known better than to leave her side.”

  Mrs. Thomas’s eyes fluttered as Dr. Thomas helped her to sit up. “Oh, Gilbert, don’t be silly. It’s my own fault. I should have taken care to wear a different dress; this one is too confining and hot. Besides, you should be thanking Miss Babineau rather than scolding her. She was giving me good news.” She grinned at Miss B., then squeezed her husband’s hand. “We’re expecting a boy.”

  Dr. Thomas patted his wife’s hand. “Shh now, Lydia, you should stay quiet.” He held the back of his hand to her forehead. “I know you’re anxious, but let’s not give in to foolishness. I’ve told you before, there’s no way to predict the sex of a fetus.”

  “Ain’t never been wrong yet,” Miss B. argued as she offered Mrs. Thomas a cup of tea.

  The doctor’s face grew red, his voice flustered. “Superstition and wives’ tales may prove true some of the time, but they can’t be trusted. Belief in such practices in today’s day and age does nothing but halt the progress of science. No wonder so many of the women out here won’t come to their senses.”

  Arms folded across his chest, eyes still closed, Uncle Irwin said, “I can’t recall a time she’s been wrong. Not once.”

  “That’s all fine and good, sir, but I’m afraid that’s impossible.” Dr. Thomas fanned his wife with one of the feathered Maori masks. “Counting on that sort of thinking is ignorant, dangerous even.”

  “The danger’s in forgettin’ who’s really in charge. Science don’t know kindness. It don’t know kindness from cabbage,” Miss B. interrupted.

  The doctor raised his voice. “Science is neither kind nor
unkind, Miss Babineau. Science is exact.”

  “Exact? Exact don’t do a woman no good when she’s wailin’ for her mama.”

  He pulled out a handful of coins from his pocket and dropped them in Miss B.’s lap. “Which reminds me, I owe you a little something, Miss Babineau.”

  She looked at him and scowled. “What’s that for?”

  “Mr. Laird Jessup brought his wife, Ginny, to me last week. Mrs. Jessup will be the first woman from Scots Bay to have her baby under my care.”

  Ginny Jessup is the most recent woman from away to come to the Bay, having married Laird Jessup last summer after he brought her across the Bay of Fundy from New Brunswick. She’s much younger than Laird (not much older than me, I’d guess), and his second wife in five years. He lost his first wife when she ran off to Halifax with a picture frame salesman. Of course, Aunt Fran blamed it on the fact that Laird’s first wife had also come from away. “You’d think he’d have learned his lesson the first time. If he’d just waited a bit longer, he might have taken Dora’s hand. The man’s got good land and such nice cattle. Can’t ask for much more than that.” Not that I would ever have married him, but Ginny’s a better match by far. She speaks so soft you barely know she’s there, and it’s clear she’d just about throw herself in front of a wagon if she thought it would please her husband, always following after him, whispering yeses.

  The Widow Bigelow reached over and put her hand around Miss B.’s clenched fists. “That’s wonderful news, especially for you, Marie.” She grinned at Mrs. Thomas. “I’ve been trying for the longest while to convince our dear Miss Babineau that it was high time she gave up nursing all those mothers and let the rest of us take care of her.”

  Miss B. pulled her hands away from the Widow Bigelow. “We been through this before, Simone. I ain’t done ’til the good Lord shows me the way home.” She held the coins out to Dr. Thomas. “And I told you, I don’t take no money.”

  Aunt Fran interrupted. “The White Rose Society would be happy to put the money in a Mother’s Fund, as you once suggested, Doctor. The women of the Bay can choose for themselves as to how they want to have their babies.” Dr. Thomas handed Aunt Fran the money, and she put it in her purse, pulling the strings tight. “After seeing the maternity home for myself, I’d say it makes good sense.” She gave Miss B. a sympathetic look. “After all, we won’t have our dear Miss B. forever.”

  Miss B. scolded Aunt Fran. “Don’t look at me like I was already dead and gone, Fran Jeffers. I gots help when I need it. I got Dora now, and she does just fine.”

  I smiled at Miss B. “Dr. Thomas, the maternity home is nice enough and all, but I do wonder about the safety in getting there. Going down North Mountain in the winter can be difficult.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned that, Miss Rare. Perhaps you would be willing to act as an escort for Mrs. Jessup when the time comes. You could see what goes on, even lend a hand, reassure Miss Babineau. I’d compensate you for your troubles, of course.”

  Miss B. answered for me. “We’ll have to see about that.” Archer Bigelow was in the kitchen when I went to put another pot of tea on the stove for Mrs. Thomas. He sat there, legs lazy and wide, with one arm draped over the back of the chair. I could feel the dark of his eyes staring at my back, creeping up my spine.

  Grace Hutner and the rest of the card-party girls bicker over who’ll sit next to Archer at church, at pie socials, at Temperance picnics down to Lady’s Cove. It’s not lost on me that he’s handsome, and not like a boy, but as a man who’s nearly thirty. Even his work clothes cling to him like they want something, his pants folded tight in his boots, his thick wool vest buttoned neat. He stood and steadied my waist as I climbed on top of a stool to reach a bag of sugar in the cabinet. He wrapped his arms around me as I came back down, lingering long enough for me to smell pipe tobacco and pomade, ginger beer and shaving soap. I felt the warmth of his breath as he whispered in my ear, “You’re lovely.”

  Before I could respond, Archer’s brother, Hart, stomped through the doorway, leaving loose trails of snow on the kitchen floor. “Beware old Archie there, Dorrie, he’s some careless with his affections.” My face blushed with embarrassment as I pushed Archer aside and gave my attention to the kettle, now whistling and spitting on the stove.

  My two oldest brothers, Albert and Borden, along with Hart, have long called themselves the “Holy Terrors of the Bay,” always pulling pranks to make me or Mother scream. Father even calls Hart his seventh son. On my thirteenth birthday, Hart hog-tied me while Albert and Borden threatened to lower me into the pigpen. Hart was over six feet tall by the time he was twelve. He started working for Father in the shipyard shortly after. He’d been on less than a month when he caught his left hand between a rope and a pulley and lost three fingers. Miss B. tried her best to save them, but they were a ragged mess. If it weren’t for that, he’d be off to the war with Albert and Borden. Instead, he’s stuck in the Bay, breaking his back, watching his ten-fingered brother sweet-talk and grab all the girls.

  Precious came into the kitchen. “Mrs. Bigelow wants to know if you’ve run into trouble.”

  Flustered, I answered, “Trouble?”

  “With the tea?”

  I set the pot, sugar and creamer on a tray and hurried out of the kitchen. “No, no trouble at all.”

  The rest of the night I thought of Archer, wished he would come into the room, or that I’d find some excuse to get back to the kitchen. Maybe I’d ask him to tell me what he meant, or say that I wasn’t sure of what it was he had said and could he say it again? Maybe he’d come close, this time staying long enough that the smell of him would linger on my clothes, just long enough so I could go on thinking of him whenever I breathed, without having to mean to, without having to try.

  By the time I got back to the kitchen, Grace Hutner was standing at the back door, pulling on Archer’s arm. “Lovely night for a walk, wouldn’t you agree, Dora?”

  ~ January 20, 1917

  We have finished Northanger Abbey. Despite the meddling of Isabelle Thorpe, all has ended well. Catherine marries Henry Tilney.

  Miss B. has gone on, night after night, complaining about Dr. Thomas. “Exact…How exact gonna do her anythin’? Ain’t no exact way to have a baby…like catchin’ snowflakes, she’s gone before you got it figured out…exact, in all my life…” Most of the time she follows these rants with her thoughts on “how we gots to handle him” and why. Her constant fretting makes me wonder if maybe she’d be better off if she just gave up.

  I’ve cleared out the loft over the kitchen. With my old feather bed, wool blankets and a quilt, it makes for cozy sleeping. I had been sharing Miss B.’s bed, but it’s too small for the both of us, and if she’s indulged in a nip or two, she’s prone to rattle and snore. Now, with a lamp and my books (rather than hiding from Dr. Thomas), I like it up here, tucked away with strings of wrinkled apples and bundles of sage, catnip, raspberry leaves and rosehips. As in all the other nooks and crannies of her cabin, Miss B.’s got a picture of the Virgin Mary tucked away in the corner. It’s pasted on top of the horsehair plaster, along with crumbling wallpaper and old sections of newspaper. I look at her each night before I sleep, my own way of praying, I suppose. There, in the flickering light of my oil lamp, the Holy Mother smiles at me, her face framed in white roses, her hands cradling a small white dove with a glowing red heart. She stares at me, looking like she knows something I don’t.

  Never mind what she knows. Never mind Dr. Thomas or Miss B. All I can think of is the word Archer Bigelow whispered in my ear, the word that sits in my wishes, working with the Devil to get me to believe that it might just be true. He said it. I didn’t imagine it. Lovely.

  11

  PRECIOUS HAS BROUGHT a new book, Dr. A.W. Chase’s Information for Everybody, to my attention. She smuggled it in the bottom of an egg basket and was panting with excitement by the time she reached Miss B.’s door. It’s not nearly as interesting as when she brought me Aunt Fran’s copy of Se
xual Secrets, with its nine hundred pages of Dr. O. S. Fowler’s commentary on the “electric currents” shared between men and women and how they are “especially regulated and deranged by sexual intercourse.” Sadly, today, the topic on Precious’s mind was not sexual relations, but rather a question of blood. My dear cousin is only fourteen and not yet having her courses, so the following passage put her in a panic.

  Allow me here to give a word of caution about taking cold at this period. It is very dangerous. I knew a young girl, who had not been instructed by her mother upon this subject, to be so afraid of being found with this show upon her apparel, which she did not know the meaning of, that she went to a brook and washed herself and her clothes—took cold, and immediately went insane.

  Her sweet, round face turned pale as she pointed to the words on the page. “The thought of that young girl thrashing around in a creek, shivering and mad! Can you imagine?”

  I explained the menstrual processes as best I could and assured her that I would never let her go mad from bleeding or exposure. I then made her promise she’d come to me as soon as she even suspected one drop of blood. It was a difficult conversation, since her mother has never spoken a single word to her about the facts of life. Storks and faeries have more to do with Precious’s idea of “where babies come from” than anything else. It won’t be long before I’ll have to explain that too, although I’m not sure how to go about it. The poor girl can hardly keep herself from fainting to the floor when she reads the words blood, death or naked. Aunt Fran does her no favours, always treating her like a baby. Precious never has any chores to speak of, and she gets every new thing she desires, dresses from Halifax, satin ribbons for her hair, sweets before supper. I only wish she clamoured after literature the way I do. I’ve now stolen nearly all the novels Miss Coffill keeps tucked away at the schoolhouse, and Aunt Fran’s collection of almanacs and journals of health is outdated, no matter how entertaining they may be.