Lily's Story (44 page)

“
It’s just a
labour pain,” Lily said when she could feel her heart again. Sweat
dropped off the end of her nose. “The little bugger wants
out.”

Lucille didn’t laugh.

“
But you know
all about this,” Lily said, “Your Maman had a dozen after
you.”

Lucille was fumbling with the
hardwood faggots, spilling them on the floor in front of the stove.
“I don’t know nothin’ about it at all,” she whimpered. “I run off
an’ hide in the woods – every time.”

“
I’ll tend to
the fire,” Lily said. “You go for Tom.”

“
But how do I
find this – this
sage-femme?
” she
said.

“
Just
ask
, you silly girl,” Lily snapped. But Lucille was incapable
of asking anything. Lily waved her over to the cot, put her arm
around her, and then holding her chin gently in place, said to her:
“Don’t worry,
ma
petite
. We’ve done this all
before, haven’t we? Just go to Mr. Redmond’s place, the grocery on
the main street. He’ll still be there. Ask him to fetch the midwife
for you. Then bring her here. Okay?”

“
Okay.”

“
Her name’s
Sophie. She lives where the squatters stay down by the dunes.
That’s all I know.”

As Lucille reached the door,
Lily let out another cry, and Lucille started back.

“
Hurry,” Lily
gasped out. “Please.
Go!
”

Lucille disappeared into the
withered sunset.

The pains were coming about
seven or eight minutes apart as far as Lily could judge. They were
as raw and frightening as the last time, perhaps moreso because she
knew how long they would continue, and how much more frequently
they would come to remind her how cowardly and insignificant and
dispensable she really was, a mere web of birthing nerve and
muscle; and knowing that she too – like the millions of
child-bearers before her – would cry out for relief and expiation,
would curse the universe that could look on with such unfeeling
while the pain wracked from within as if it were ripping your skin
apart from nose to navel with a single, whittled fingernail.

Why did you
leave me?
she heard a voice
like hers shout from the underworld of her pain.
I need you, Auntie. I do.

O
nly the glow from the
stove-pipes offered any light to the room when the door burst open
and a burly moon-fringed figure strode to stage-centre and stalled,
as if wondering in which direction the audience lay.

“
Jesus-Christ-in-a-butter-box! Where in hell’s the
light?

Lucille, a
trembling silhouette in the wake of this large personage, flitted
across to where she had left Lily. “It’s
la sage-femme
,
she’s come with me.”

“
So I hear,”
Lily whispered in a voice that caused instant paralysis in the
girl.

The midwife was already at the
stove menacing it with a series of ferocious manoeuvres. Flames
shot up through the opening and smoke retreated up the
chimney-flue. Wielding a lighted chip, the midwife broached several
lamps and within seconds every object in the room softened into
view.

“
Well now,
ain’t that a damn sight better? You must be the victim,” she said,
ambling over to Lily who was struggling to sit up, a cautionary
hand on her abdomen. “I’m Sophie Potts.”

“
I’m Lily. And
I think you come in the nick of time.”

“
I’ve heard
all about you,” Sophie said, and she bent over Lily, easing her
gently down with a fleshy hand that looked as if it had just milked
fifty Holsteins and triumphed. “My, my, you got a live one in
there, my girl.” Without turning from Lily she barked softly at
Lucille: “Get fresh wood on that fire, Frenchie; I want that water
hot enough to boil a baker’s bowlin’ balls. Then haul the oil-cloth
off of that table an’ throw it across the bed back there. Then
bring all the pillows an’ sheets you can find. We gotta make this
young’un as comfortable as we can. Right, dearie?”

Lily cried out; her body
thrashed as if it were being jerked on a fish-hook attached to her
belly-button. Quickly both of Sophie’s hands were laid on Lily’s
convulsing muscles, like a phrenologist’s divining truth from a
skull’s topology. “Wonderful...wonderful...Such power for a pretty
little sunfish like you.” She kneaded and soothed. Her milkmaid’s
fingers seemed to communicate directly with the rolling, berserk
musculature under them.

“
We got about
half an hour, I’d say,” Sophie said, “so let’s get you off of this
junior-cadet cot and on to somethin’ soft an’ motherly.”

Lucille
started across the room to help. “I told you to stoke that
fire,
ma’amselle from la
dell
, and I mean it.” Then she
reached down, wrapped both arms around Lily, and lifted her into
the air where Lily floated, at ease. Sophie’s arms were like
goosedown lined with stanchions. Lily could see the lamplight wash
across plump, pink flesh – not in the least fat or lumpish but
rather more like a peach or nectarine that’s just passed the
penultimate point of its ripeness. It exuded vigour and lusty
health. Its sweat slid over her own. However, when Sophie breathed
extravagantly on her, Lily caught the echoes of garlic,
herring-smelt and improvised whiskey.

While Sophie
held Lily aloft, Lucille controlled her trembling satisfactorily
enough to cover the bed with the oil-cloth and several layers of
clean sheets. She fluffed up two feather pillows. Sophie laid Lily
down as carefully as she would a bruised baby. “Hang on,” she said,
clasping Lily’s right hand just as the convulsion struck and
double-struck. Lily’s scream brought Lucille to her toes with an
hysterical snap. “It’s okay,
la petite
,” Sophie
said in a different voice. “It’s Nature’s way. I been through this
myself many times. You gotta holler or you’ll bust open like a
milkweed pod. Now you go on outside an’ bring Sophie in her
medicine kit.” The cramp had eased off, but Lily kept her hand in
Sophie’s.

Suddenly there was a clatter
and a thump outside the house – on the stoop or just off it.

“
Shit,” Sophie
hissed, “I forgot all about the bastard.” She rumbled past Lucille
spilling her onto the bed, and could be heard intimidating the
door, cursing, and then returning with a kind of scraping clutter
across the plank floor of the big room. The tea-table Tom had made
for Lily’s birthday went over without a whimper. Sophie’s generous
figure ballooned in the bedroom doorway. She had one hand behind
her back. She glared at the startled women. Lucille had begun to
sob again. Sophie then laughed. And her laughter was gargantuan. It
rose like throttled thunder from the paddled drum of her belly up
through the great organ-loft of her lungs whence it whistled
through the bass-tuba of her voice-box, thrummed over a tongue that
could stun an ox and roared in ecstatic release across the
countryside of parlours, vestibules and unresisting
gardens.

“
I found him
pissed to the gills in Car-teer’s pig-sty,” Sophie said, and hauled
out her catch for display, letting it dangle a bit from her
hammerlock before she dropped it on the rope-rug in a shaggy heap.
“Carted the silly-ass as far as the back-garden an’ plunked him
down in the compost heap where I figured he’d feel more at home.
Some sight, eh?” And she released another trumpet-blast that made
the baby lurch in its nest. “I reckoned he belonged to
you!”

Tom
moaned and tried to sit up, in which
position he hoped that his eyes might actually open and see
something familiar.

“
I couldn’t
find him nowhere,” Lucille sobbed to Lily. “I try real hard. When I
get to Mrs. Potts, she says she knows where he be an’ she goes
–”

Lily came right off the sheets,
her nightshirt flung as wide as her cry.

“
Oh
Maman, Maman
,” Lucille sobbed.

Sophie put one
paw on Lucille and the other on
Tom. “Go put some coffee on,” she said to Lucille with such
force that the girl stiffened with more resolve than fear, “stick a
funnel down his throat an’ start pourin’.” With that she jerked Tom
out of the room and dumped him onto the cot. It collapsed. There
was a shriek, like cloth tearing.

“
I’m sorry,
Lil, real sorry,” Tom said with great effort, not realizing no one
was near enough to straighten out his slur.

“
You stay
put,” Sophie shouted back to him from the doorway. “We don’t need
you. You done your damage about nine months ago, though I’m damned
if I know how you managed it.”

“
Would ya’
like some coffee, Mr. Marshall,” Lucille said from a safe
distance.

“
Just keep him
quiet and outta the way,” Sophie said. “The missus and I got work
to do.”

Lucille got the coffee
boiling in a saucepan and somehow managed to administer it to Tom,
who was progressively jolted out of his fog by the staccato of
cries from the other room. Tom winced, then shuddered as each one
nicked him like a sniper’s bullet. These cries were not Lily’s:
they had no voice; they were not even animal; they surfaced from
something farther down the chain of being, some phylum where
salt-blood and the composition-of-bone contended, or
perished.

S
ophie came out of the
bedroom with the baby in her arms. Lucille at her side. Tom was
seated almost upright at the kitchen table. “It’s a boy!” Lucille
cried.

“
How’s
Lily?”

“
Lily’s fine,”
Lucille said, beaming and peeking into the blanket.

“
Thank God,”
Tom said, rising.

“
Thank me an’
Mother Nature,” Sophie said, opening her treasure to display the
bawling, rubber-red being, blood-smeared with its knotted umbilical
sticking out raffishly.

Tom
peered into its bluish eyes,
astonished that already they were staring back, that some
primitive, fearful thought about the world was even now collecting
in its tiny brain. Tom reached out and touched the protruding
umbilical, its ruptured stub.

“
That ain’t
his do-hickey,” Sophie chuckled, “if you was worryin’.”

“
How can I
ever thank you,” Tom said.

Sophie gave him a steady,
mocking appraisal. “First, I charge five bucks,” she said with a
sort of sly cackle as she turned to lead them all back into Lily’s
room. “An’ second, I’d like a nip of that hair-straightener you
tore into this evenin’.”

Lily, pale as the flower of her
name, held the child close to her; her eyes were drooped with
fatigue but refused to give up consciousness, wanting to seal the
baby’s presence with their unceasing adoration.

“
He’ll be here
when you wake up,” Lucille whispered tenderly in her ear. “So will
we,
certain.
”

Sophie took
several
jars from a knapsack
and put them on the dresser. “Now Lucille dear, you soak them
cloths in this here linseed oil, then put on plenty of this powder,
then put the whole shebang onto your lady’s injured parts – three
times a day. An’ throw out the rags when you’re done.”

“
What’s this
bottle for?”

“
That’s nerve
tonic. Special recipe. Good for just about everythin’
bad.”

“
How often do
Lily have to take it?”

Sophie snorted. “It’s not for
Lily,” she said. “It’s for the patient.”

Lily smiled just before she
fell asleep.

T
om walked Sophie as
far as the windbreak. The night-air was bracing. He held onto
Sophie’s arm. She turned to him. “She’s gonna be fine, Mr. Tom
Marshall,” she said. “Your son came out slick and easy.”

Tom
gave her a thankful squeeze on the
wrist.

Suddenly the moon landed
in both her eyes. She flashed Tom a broad-beamed grin. “There’s
really nothin’ to it,” she said. “You oughta try it sometime. It’s
as simple as shittin’ a watermelon.”

T
om lay beside Lily.
In the kitchen Lucille hummed a Norman ditty of some kind. The
kettle steamed. Young Robert had both chubby hands on his mother’s
breast, sucking health and strength into his sturdy body with
abandon and no particular thanks. Lily was quite happy to have
their firstborn named for Bags Starkey. It seemed right, in so many
ways.

“
You get to
name the girl,” Tom said.

I already have, Lily
thought.

“
And ain’t
that Pott’s woman the fattest, most foul-mouthed creature you ever
laid eyes on?”

Lily changed
breasts, and smiled. “She
was
nice, wasn’t
she?”

16

1

R
obert Marshall was
born into the pastoral world of Canada West on June 19, 1863, just
about three weeks before the Union armies under General Meade and
the Confederate rebels under General Lee butchered one another
among the meadowlands of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. No odour of the
exhalations of the dead made its way this far north on any
prevailing wind. Not even the drought which had scorched the crops
from Kingston to Windsor could disturb the quietude that had
settled over the Marshall homestead this summer. Robert suckled
lustily and his green limbs grew apace. The Grand Trunk, inspired
by a government loan, took on extra help, including past
miscreants, so Tom went back to his part-time labour with a light
and willing step. Lucille stayed on, her good cheer interrupted
only by occasional periods when she would stop in the midst of an
act – scrubbing a pot, feeding the stove – and stare across at
mother-and-child, overcome by a sense of wonder, pure and
inexplicable.