Dollybird (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

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DILLAN

I tried to save
my wife from all the bad things that can happen. It hadn't gone very well so far. And then the stranger stomped in like he owned the place. I jumped up to shield Taffy from him, but he looked past like I weren't even there, to her lyin' curled up on a filthy mattress on the floor in a dark corner. He had nasty eyes, and sighed as though I was a disgusting bit of fish bait he'd like to see wriggling on a hook.

“It's Gibson,” said the man, pushing past and shedding his coat and hat onto the only chair in the room. “Doctor Gibson. You're damn lucky your neighbours have some sense.”

It was the burly woman next door was always asking after Taffy. Protestant. Meddling. She must have sent for him. The doctor's shirt was plastered to his back where rain had soaked through, and he shivered hard. Out the window a nor'easter was blowing. Hadn't even seen it coming. Too busy with Taffy I guess, sponging her forehead, singing softly, praying.

Gibson lit a tallow and set it on the crate beside Taffy, feeling her face, looking into her eyes with a light. “Not long for the world, I'm afraid.” His voice wasn't mad any more. More weary than anything.

I couldn't say nothing, what with my gut falling to my knees. Taffy was supposed to be having a baby. I'd only thought she was tired, the baby taking its time the way Mother said a first child should. The doctor slid his stethoscope over Taffy's bulging stomach, grunting like he was surprised.

“There's a heartbeat.”

He rolled up his sleeves, and before I could stop him, the bugger was looking between Taffy's legs.

“My God, the head's coming,” he yelled. “Why didn't you tell me she's in labour?”

What?

“You damn Catholics. Sure know how to make ‘em, and then
pretend the whole bloody thing is immaculate. Like they'll just land in a goddamn crib from the goddamn sky.”

He fished huge tongs from the black bag he'd brought.

“You're living in the back end of a stinking livery and you still gotta make babies.” He was muttering like a lunatic. “Jesus.”

He shouldn't have been swearing in front of my wife. “I couldn't find work. I...”

“Get a blanket, an old shirt, something you can wrap the baby in.”

The words sent me into action. I grabbed a blanket off the bed.

“No, for Christ sake. Something clean.”

Everything about the place was suddenly strange and hopelessly dirty, so I galloped around like a mental, picking up and throwing aside any piece of cloth I saw, until finally I found a towel under the washstand. Only a few stains. I turned back in time to watch Doctor Gibson reach the tongs deep into Taffy, grunting with the effort of the pull. The baby was ripped from my tiny wife. She screamed, a huge open-mouthed, gut deep, animal scream.

When she went still again I thought she was dead. Just before I could grab the doctor by the throat, she moaned real low, like the sound our milk cow made just before my father shot it, a sound like there was no way she could hold on to this world any longer. Taffy opened her eyes only once to get a glimpse of her boy. And then she turned her huge eyes on me and I all but shrank away into the floor, the world gone whirly, the doctor's voice a far-off whisper telling me she'd not likely last the night, the baby'd need caring for, he was small and sick.

Finally a shout. “Clean the place up, man. Give the child half a chance.”

I didn't understand. Taffy was still, her chest barely moving under the thin blanket. The top of a small pink head and one tiny hand poked out of the towel beside her. Who was dying? Who would live? I was like a blind man looking at the doctor. But he was stomping outside, coming back in quick with carbolic acid and a bucket. He looked around, his eyes wild, like a cat about to be skinned, and slammed the bucket on the side cupboard so hard the flaking paint flew up in a dust and
the wobbly leg damn near broke off. I'd found the cupboard at
the dump and brought it home for Taffy to use for the baby. It was only to be used for the baby.

“Get away from there. What the hell are you doing?”

The doctor dumped acid into the bucket and poured water into it from the pail by the door. “We're going to get this place clean so this child doesn't catch his death too.”

I couldn't move. The doctor looked at me hard, grabbed my hands and thrust the wet rag into them, pushing my hands with his own, scrubbing like there were demons in the walls and floor. He had no right, barging in, hurting Taffy, ruining her things. I swung round and jumped him. He fell hard, knocking over the bucket so the water sluiced across the floor, the acid smell stinging in my nose. He just lay there in it, mad and scared.

“All right then,” he said real calm. “If you want to live like this.” He sat up and shrugged like he'd given up. “Your wife is going to die soon, and unless you do something you'll lose your son too. It's up to you.” He picked up his things.

I didn't really notice him leave. Going to die. Pictures were flashing through my skull, beautiful Taffy, her wide-set blue eyes red from crying, small mouth and nose twisted with fear, begging to stay in Arichat, our tiny village on Isle Madame off Nova Scotia.

“This is home, where we have family.” She'd taken turns between mad and yelling, or sad and whining with her lip out to there. “We'll make out just fine here. You can work with my father at the mill. He's told you he needs another foreman. And he can help out if we need it. What's in Halifax? We'll be all alone.”

But that was the point. I didn't want them watching every minute, noses in the air, judging, interfering. And my family-backward immigrants and all their kids-barely surviving on a wreck of a farm. I'd brought her to Halifax so's we could find our own way. Now it was killing her.

Taffy had the typhoid. The doctor left, swearing he'd never seen anything like it, and I could only watch while her whole body shook with cold even while her face was burning up. She moaned and thrashed about, occasionally waving her hand at something in the distance, whispering at ghosts there by the door, now by the table. The stench of her was unbearable, her functions out of control. I cringed to go near her, even more with guilt at my disgust.

She would have hated the indecency of it. She hadn't even wanted me to see her scratching behind her ears for the lice. I'd shaved off my hair to get rid of them, had even soaked my head in kerosene that left it reeking for days. But Taffy would never cut her long locks, too proud, too worried of what I might think. And she never complained about it either. Only the scratching when she thought I wasn't looking. The lice was nothing compared to this.

Hours after the baby was born, Taffy was finally still, her blue eyes open and empty, blonde hair spread wildly on the flat pillow. In death she was no one I knew. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I signed myself and figured I'd better do the same to her. I was no priest, but maybe my blessing her was enough to save her. Purgatory weren't near as bad as hell. I took the amulet from around her neck to see what prayer she might have tucked inside. Instead on a tiny piece of paper she'd scrawled,
Casey – courageous and brave.
The baby squalled and my insides crumpled up small and dead. Before I knew it I was on my knees bawling with him.

We cried together for a while, but his tiny voice insisted I pay attention, his problems were bigger than mine. Slowly he came into focus. At first I was kind of suspicious of him, felt like a cave man poking at something that might poke back. I knew babies, just not my own, and not without a woman there to take over at the first sign of trouble.

“Taffy was ready for you,” I told him kind of quiet. “Stitched gowns out of feed sacks using these small perfect stitches. And cut up old flour sacks for diapers, said they'd be softer.” I fingered the towel he was wrapped in. “I had to bring home any rag, anything, no matter what it looked like. And she washed them, cut them into squares and quilted them. She was a genius.”

“And I was useless to her.” The baby had gone quiet, just lay there, big-eyed, wanting an explanation for his current miserable situation. I'd begged for jobs, but no one wanted an unskilled, uneducated bohunk. Almost took the bottle from toothless old Ralph in the street out front. But I only had to think of my old man to chase that want away. I looked at the baby hard. “She worked hard to make this hellhole bearable for you. I couldn't do nothing to help. Should have taken the job with her father. She'd have had family around to help, women to appreciate all th
is.” I motioned around the room and laughed. “Mind, she never said it. Told her father to piss off when he threatened to cut her out of his inheritance. Said it didn't matter; I was her husband. She was loyal, was Taffy.” The baby looked bored.

As I stood looking at Taffy's body, all her efforts seemed a waste. Slowly I kissed each cold fingertip and folded her hands together on her chest, smoothed each soft eyelid over each tired eye. I drew a rough blanket over her and finally turned to the baby. It was tiny, like the small hairless kitten I'd found abandoned in a carton in an old shed at home. I'd felt helpless then too. The baby was mewling, a soft whimper. He seemed barely to breathe.

My hands felt enormous picking up the child, his soft downy head in one, the tiny bum fit neatly into the other. I swayed back and forth with him for the longest time, afraid I'd crush him if I held him close, afraid to set him down now in case he broke. His arms and legs were long and skinny, his tiny stomach stretched tight over blue ribs. Even the boy's head was narrow and pointed, his small face pinched and red, bruises starting where the doctor'd grabbed him with his tongs. Never seen anything so in need of protection; matchsticks would break with less force. It was amazing Gibson hadn't wrenched the boy in two. The thought gave me gooseflesh and I cradled the boy close, feeling his warmth through my fingertips and arms. Casey.

Why don't men prepare for anything? The dense fog parted
long enough to understand what Taffy'd been doing. She didn't know anything about babies, but a million mothers before her had taught her to prepare and so she did, like life depended on it. I had waited about like a great oaf with his head up his arse. Holding this tiny thing, his dead mother only two feet away, my heart thumped with a new kind of sadness, for her loss now, the lost chance to hold him and feel what I was feeling right then.

Suddenly a new warmth flowed over me. The baby was peeing, a small fountain, and I couldn't help but chuckle a little. Casey stopped squirming, his black eyes turned toward my voice. I laid him on the mattress beside Taffy and reached for one of the diapers folded and stacked inside the small basket Taffy had secretly received from her mother. They called it a bassinet. Whatever that means. It was the one beautiful thing we owned. White lace reached to the floor while a see-through white curtain hung from a curved pole at the head of the basket to protect the baby from wind and sun.

Just as I turned back, a woman lumbered in through the door, filling the small space with her huge body and voice. “Gibson sent me,” she said through the mask she wore over her mouth and nose. She only glanced at the outline of Taffy on the bed. “To be his wet nurse. Says you're desperate.” She turned to holler at someone behind her. “This is the place, boys.”

“What the hell?”

Two men followed her in. They wore handkerchiefs over their mouths and gloves on their hands. They pushed me away when I tried to stop them wrapping Taffy's body more securely in the blanket. Finally they picked her up and headed out the door, bumping her against the door frame on the way out.

“Wait. No.” I hauled on the second man's arm.

“The doc says she's gotta go.” He shrugged and hoisted Taffy so he had a better grip. “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled and turned again to leave.

“Gibson even paid my first week for you,” said the woman, and when I turned back, “Bless him.”

She'd shed her boots at the door, and her coat was draped across the back of the chair. I could barely take all of her in. Rolls of fat smothered her limbs. Her ankles and calves were purple-veined sausages peeking out from under the huge housedress she wore. She was waiting for me to say something about the doctor's grand gift. When I didn't, she turned up her nose. “I'd say you owe him a debt of gratitude, I would.” She was English. I don't like the English. “Good thing some of us'll still come and work for the likes of you, eh?”

“I don't need your help.”

“Well, who's going to feed the wee thing then? You?” She laughed, pushed me out of the way and lifted Casey's bottom, taking the diaper I had still clutched in my hand and sliding it under the baby and round his legs. She pinned it, the whole thing like she'd been doing it for years. “Where's his gowns?”

I reached into the cupboard where Taffy had them neatly folded one on top of the other. They were soft against my rough hands.

When I handed her one she fingered it and frowned. “It might chafe.” She looked round and let out a long, heavy sigh. “But I guess it'll have to do, eh?” She pulled his tiny arms through the holes and did up the string at the neck. “You gotta clean this place through if you want me to stay, get rid of the disease.”