Dollybird (19 page)

“I'll help her.” She glared at her father. “You won't need to worry. I'll make sure everything gets done around here.”

“But you're going to school,” I couldn't stop myself from saying. “How will you...?”

“I think the Schmidts will work this out for themselves.” Silas cut me off and handed over my scissors, motioning for me to put them in the bag, keeping me busy, keeping me out of the way. “Your work here is done, Moira,” he said quietly.

He took the baby from the child who now held her and pulled me along out the door. When we were outside, I yanked my arm free and planted my feet.

“Carla can't do everything – all those children, and her mother. She's just a girl.”

“Leave it alone, Moira.” His impatience stung.

“It'll be weeks before her mother's arm is healed. She can't miss school.”

“She has no choice right now,” he said.

Carla called out just as we reached the wagon. She ran to us and flung her arms around me. “My mother says she feels better already.”

I felt a familiar flush of pleasure at her gratitude, at my ability to help.

“I'm sorry for what I said to you, Moira,” she said suddenly. “What you do with your life is none of my business.”

I'd been so angry at Carla, and had imagined chastising her like she was a small child with a small child's limited experience of the world. I had wanted to tell her I was not like the women of this godforsaken place. I would have control over the direction of my life.

But her honesty was breathtaking. “I'm sorry too, Carla.” She grinned wide and I hugged her quickly, felt the small knobs of her spine, the smooth contours of her ribs.

The trip home was quiet. I ached all over, my body suffused with exhaustion and tension from the storm, the night spent on the floor, the encounter with Carla's father. Every time the wagon hit a bump my lower back went into a spasm and my legs throbbed right down to my ankles. I'd barely had time to recover from the trauma of giving birth, for heaven's sake.

Silas remained silent, seemed disapproving.

“Well what?” I said.

“You have to accept that some people are different. The way they do things is different.”

“I understand people.”

“Your people, yes.” He held up his hand to my objection. “But not these people, not parents who can't send their kids to school because they need them to work. It's not always the choice they want to make. They have to.”

“But tell me why it's the women who always suffer most. I've seen poor women, Silas. Trapped women. I've treated their infected and stinking wombs, the venereal diseases they never asked for, their skin so chaffed it oozes. And they'll never escape, can't even imagine themselves doing more than working in the house, raising chickens and having babies.” He thought he knew so much. “I've seen them, Silas. That's why I want more for Carla. For her to have choices.”

“It's not that simple.”

But how I wished it could be. Simple like the morning's mirage with its balance of light and air, all of us given whatever perfect combination might lift us beyond our circumstances. My doctoring had already given me choices, allowed me to be more than what people expected of a woman in this place. Maybe the light had already found me. Maybe it could find Carla too.

CHAPTER 29

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DILLAN

I was mad Moira
had gone off again, leaving me with the mess. But then, if I was honest, being mad made me feel worse about everything. She'd listened during the storm, when I was telling her things I hadn't told anyone. It was embarrassing, her knowing so much, but it was good too, like saying it out loud made it not as bad – Taffy and me and Taffy's dying.

I let Casey play in the mud in the middle of the kitchen
while I picked everything up and took the mattresses and blankets outside to dry in the sun. Finally I carried him out to the well and ran water over his muddy arms and legs while he hollered like I was killing him. He giggled fits when I threw him up onto my shoulders, using fistfuls of my hair for handles. He bounced and whooped as we jogged to the other end of the field, checking for damage. There were plenty of bent stalks, but few had broken completely. A surprise and a relief. I ran my hand over the carpet of green.

“It's tough, that Red Fife. Just like they told me.”

Casey bent his head around to look at me from the side. “Tough.” He nodded.

We found Nelly nearby in a patch of scrub brush, asleep with her nose to the wind. A piece of twine from my pocket was enough for a halter, and I threw Casey on her back and led her home. Mrs. Miller was on the porch waiting for us.

“Where's Moira?” There were deep furrows in her forehead, and she looked half worried, half mad. “Is everyone okay here?”

“We're fine. Moira's gone with Silas to help Carla's mother. Hurt herself in the storm.”

“Oh for goodness sake, Dillan.” Now she was mad. “With the baby? What were you thinking, letting her go?”

“Hey, they never asked my opinion, and she wouldn't listen to me anyway.” I hoisted Casey down. “Say, could you watch him for a while? I'd like to go find Mule.”

Out back of the house, I found two weanling pigs huddled together against the wall, their slick pink bodies one on top of the other, dead. They might have died of fright, or been suffocated by one another, or been slammed against the house. I ran my hand over the firm back that was just starting to prickle with wiry hair and pulled the piglet off its brother. It was a shame. I found the others wandering nearby, rooting at the grass and dirt.

I went looking for Mule, walking about half a mile to a slough ringed by thorny buckbrush and wild rose bushes. Getting closer, I saw the coyote before it saw me and quickly loped away. There was another movement in the bush, and then Mule's nasal bray. I ran into it, the sharp thorns raking my arms and tearing at my shirt sleeves.

At first Mule looked kinda contented standing in the shade. But the horror rose up at me as I got closer, and Mule's bulging eyes came into focus, his throat working hard. His tongue was huge with swelling and stuck out the side of his mouth, hanging there like a thing already dead. His halter was tangled in the branches and his thrashing about had wound the knot at his throat into a tightening noose. The coyote had been there. Small chunks of meat were gone from Mule's haunch and rear end. I was close to sick.

Mule stood still now, his eyes fading and rolling back in his head. Moving closer to him only scared him, and he thrashed his hind legs, trying to find footing in the mud he'd already churned into a slick mess. His carrying on made him weaker still, and he fell back and to the side. And the noose tightened.

“Oh shit.” I ran to his side, but he flailed again, his front hooves just missing my head, so I had to get back. “Stop, Mule. I gotta help you.”

His strength sputtered out. He stopped struggling and waited for whatever was coming. A high-pitched wheeze squeezed out from his pinched windpipe. The cheek strap was pulled tight across his one eye, crushing it. The strap at his neck had gouged through hair and skin; white flesh pulsed under it. I rushed in and worked at the leather halter with my knife.

“Shit, shit, shit. Come on goddammit.” It was like the knife wasn't attached to my hand. No matter what I did, I couldn't make it cut faster. One by one the strands broke while Mule's gasps became small puffs, and finally there was only the sound of the blade scratching through rope. The last strands split, the rope snapped back and Mule's heavy body fell, knocking me on my ass in the mud, his head in my lap. I searched his eyes; they were glazed and gone black.

“Jesus Christ, Mule. Not you too.” I heard a wail that grew louder, not knowing the sound was coming from my own mouth. I sat there stunned a minute. And then I wanted to yell. At Moira for taking off again. At myself for not getting here earlier. For Mule being dead.

I rubbed Mule's stringy mane, hard at first and then more slowly ‘cause it made me feel better doing it, my breathing slowing down too, so's I could think. Sometimes bad things happen, Moira had said. They just happen. Like Taffy dying. Like now. I didn't make it storm, didn't lead Mule to this bush or sic the coyote on him. And I might have taken my time coming out here anyway, fixing something in the house, or nailing a loose board on the corral, or cleaning up the dead pigs. I'd spent a lot of my life looking to blame myself for all the bad things, strangling myself with guilt. I was like Mule pulling on his halter, doing the very thing that made it worse, that killed him. But there was no need to blame anyone. And maybe I could stop killing myself.

CHAPTER 30

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MOIRA

“Have you named
her then?”

Dillan was pouring water into a basin to wash up. He'd just come in from the field, face black with dirt, his dusty coveralls now in a heap by the door. His red-rimmed eyes blinked constantly, swollen nose dripping.

“Not yet.” It was none of his concern. “I'll name her when I'm ready.”

“But she's three months old for God's sake. You can't just keep calling her baby.”

When I didn't answer, he shrugged as though I was daft, lathered soap to wash, rinsed and grabbed a towel off the chair next to the table.

“Hey that's my dishtowel.” He was absolutely infuriating. “Maybe you should help with the washing, and then you'd stop making so much of it.”

He laughed. “Moira, I can't help getting dirty. The binders kick up so much dust I can hardly see. It's bound to stick to me.”

Dust was embedded in the creases of his eyes, awns stuck in his hair. He was quiet, studying me. I was ugly, hair barely contained in a bun, clothes the same as I'd worn the previous day, no powder to hide dark rings under my eyes every morning. The baby had croup.

“Baby up all night again?” he asked.

“Not that you'd notice.”

“Who could sleep through that racket? But there's nothing I can do for her.”

“I know.” The kettle of soup was heavy, and it landed on the table with a thud. I could never have imagined this kind of exhaustion. I was in some kind of purgatory, wandering from one chore to another, constantly reminding myself to stay awake.

“The wet nurse used to dip her finger in whiskey and let Casey suck on it.” Dillan sat down beside the boy, who banged a spoon on the table. “It put you to sleep every time, didn't it?” Casey giggled when Dillan tickled him.

“Whiskey for a baby. I would never.”

Dillan dished up some soup, sharing a slice of bread with his son. “You told me once,” he said through a mouthful, “what you planned to name her. I recall it was a good Scottish name.”

It would have been justice to smack the sarcasm out of his voice. When I watched her obsessively, marvelled at the purity of her sleeping face, worried at the pitch of her insistent cry, I knew what I wanted to call her all right. But I couldn't bring myself to make it official, the weight of the choices preventing it, the weight of her small life in the balance. I let him eat his lunch in silence.

“I'm taking some harness over to the Millers' to get fixed. Nelly's gonna walk right out of the field on me if I don't.” He laced up his boots. “I have to get the rest of the crop cut. Threshing crew will be here soon.”

He stood up tall, proud to use the words in relation to himself. Farmers' words. I wondered if the language of motherhood would ever find my tongue.

“I'll take Casey with me so you can get some rest.” He held out his hand to the boy.

I nodded from where I stood at the sink. The door slammed, and I released my breath in a ragged sigh. How easily he made me question everything. The baby's cry sent a quiver through my tender breasts. Early on it had been torture every time the baby latched on; sometimes it still was if I didn't get to feeding her soon enough. No one had warned me, not the good doctor Berkowski. Not even my father.

Sitting in the rocker, breasts relieved, I watched the baby, stroked her downy head and crooned small ditties remembered from childhood. I was becoming sentimental, every spare minute spent watching the child, listening to her, wondering that she had come from me. A dusting of sadness came over me. Evan didn't even know his baby had been born, or that she was a girl, that she was perfect. It wasn't fair. But it wasn't fair to leave her without a name either, to keep her waiting as though she weren't important enough to have one.

If I was honest it wasn't only her life in the balance; I'd delayed her naming for my sake as well. The dreams I had for my future had never included a baby. They were of myself, alone with my black bag, riding off like Father to help people, to cure them, even to save them from themselves as he'd tried to do. I would be respected, maybe revered for my wisdom and knowledge, and I would not be shackled by the demands placed on other women. If I was really honest, the picture hadn't included Evan either. For as much as we'd shown love to each other, his love wasn't something I'd thought I would need.

But the baby was mine. That was one true thing. I looked down at her, clasping my finger in her small hand, kneading my breast with the other, her small mouth pursed and rooting for my nipple. Suddenly she looked directly at me, gazing intently until the clouds dissipated from her small grey eyes and the pupils became clear and quizzical, seeing me, all of me. We looked at one another a long moment before her eyes relaxed into recognition of a bond that belonged with the smell and touch already imprinted into her trust. It was her trust that swallowed me up, crowded out the sadness and pain of the past few months, pushed away the deadness. And in that moment I knew she would always be mine, that somehow whatever my future held, she would be part of it.

“Shannon Louise,” I whispered. “Your name is Shannon Louise.”

i i i

“It's going to be hard doing it all,” said Mrs. Miller when I showed up in her kitchen an hour later. “Doctoring. Raising her by yourself.”

“I know, but I've decided to take her home as soon as I can.” I'd walked to the Millers' farm, inhaling the pungent air of late summer, the smell of ripened crops and crisp grasses reinforcing my confidence in what was possible. I took a knife from the counter to slice bread for the lunch Mrs. Miller was preparing for her husband and Dillan. “My sister and father will help.”

“Well, whatever happens, you'll manage because you have to. That's what I did. With George.” She nodded out the window to where the two men worked on the harness just outside the barn doors.

“You had the community,” I said, still prickling from the treatment I'd received.

“No dear, we didn't.” She hesitated, smoothing loose hair back into the bun at the nape of her neck. “You see, I was a dollybird too.”

“Oh.” I felt a kind of relief. She knew me better than I thought.

She frowned. “I wasn't in your situation. Pregnant and all. But I had been working in the rooming house in town. The one you lived in.” She paused. “With Annie.”

I tried to keep the shock out of my face.

“Now I help the girls out when I can. Make sure they're eating properly, that they stay healthy as much as possible.”

“I had no idea.”

I recalled then the occasional surprise of freshly baked cinnamon buns and pies. Thought too of Annie. She'd only seen the baby once when I'd taken her to the doctor in town. Since then, I hadn't seen Annie for weeks.

“I was destitute. I didn't have a choice.”

“But you're here.” I gestured vaguely around her perfectly arranged kitchen.

“Yes, someone took pity on me, saw I wasn't made for that kind of life. In fact -” she sized me up-”I had already tried to kill myself. Cut my wrists. But I'm not very good at it I guess.”

“Mrs. Miller!”

“There wasn't a reason to live.” She smiled out the open window and across the yard at the barn where the two men worried over the harness, their heads close. “Then George came along.”

As though her thoughts had travelled across the yard, he looked toward the house.

“So he married you then? His dollybird?”

“No, we were never married. We live like a married couple, yes.” She continued to set the table, carefully placing a knife and spoon alongside each setting. “That's what people couldn't abide. You see, George was already married to a woman down south in North Dakota. She was supposed to come up here after I got the place livable. But it never happened.”

I looked out at the men. “You mean you just let her wait?”

“No. George sent her a letter, but she was so angry she wouldn't get an annulment. A Catholic, you know. Visions of hell I suppose.”

“But think of her.” I pictured a young woman waiting expectantly, her life carefully packed into a trunk, growing ever sadder as time passed and her hope wore thin.

“I'm sure it was terrible for her,” said Mrs. Miller, wiping vigorously at the cupboard. “But she had family. She had choices that I didn't have. I'm quite sure I'd have been dead long ago if George hadn't come along.”

“So you've lived this way, all this time?” I cringed the moment the words came out, the judgment in my voice making me a hypocrite.

“Some people call it sin.” Mrs. Miller gestured around the room. “But is this life more sinful than living in a brothel?” Her eyes were probing. “I can tell you, I understand now I was never a bad person, only desperate. And it's the people who wouldn't help me, who've judged me all these years, who should bear any guilt. My conscience is clear.”

I realized I was thinking like my mother, forming intractable opinions of everyone but myself, thinking my life and the choices I had to make were so much harder than anyone else's. Suddenly mine seemed almost easy. I picked up the baby and held her close.

“Mrs. Miller, I'm sorry.”

“It's all right, dear. I thought you should know.” She put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed hard.

“I've named her then,” I said. “It's Shannon Louise.”

She told me it was perfect.