The Birth House (5 page)

4

T
HINKING IS SOMETHING
that Father says I do entirely too much of: “You think on things too long, especially for a woman.” At first I thought it was just something that fathers tell their daughters, but he’s not alone in this; Aunt Fran never seems to tire of carrying her journals of medical findings to the house and reading aloud from them during tea with Mother and me. Her latest is
The Science of a New Life
by Dr. John Cowan, M.D. “It’s right here, Charlotte, see? Oh, never mind your trying to read it just now, I want Dora to hear it too. I’ll just read this bit out loud. It won’t take but a minute. Let’s see…here it is…the esteemed Dr. Cowan states, ‘Closely allied to food and dress, in woman, as a producer of evil thoughts, is idleness and novel-reading. It is almost impossible for a woman to read the current “love-and-murder” literature of the day and have pure thoughts, and when the reading of such literature is associated with idleness—as it almost invariably is—a woman’s thoughts and feelings
cannot be other than impure and sensual
.’ There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion.”

This past autumn she was convinced that my bout with a cold and cough was brought on by my constant attention to
Wuthering Heights.
She even scolded Mother for letting me read it. “Lottie, whenever I see that daughter of yours, she always has a book under her nose! It would be one thing if she was studying psalms or even a verse or two of poetry…no wonder her health’s been compromised by the slightest change in the weather.”

Mother laughed. “Oh, Fran, with all your talk, you’d think Dora’s caught her death just by reading about the God-forsaken moors of Yorkshire.”

She turned to me and asked, “This is the one about the moors, isn’t it, Dorrie?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And then there’s the one about that poor woman whose husband kept her locked in the attic…I always get them confused. Of course, I’ve got no time to read them myself, I’m so slow at it and all, but Dora’s kind enough to tell me about them from time to time. Don’t you worry about her, she’ll be back to feeling right in no time at all.”

Aunt Fran lowered her voice. “Her cold is just the start of a greater sickness. These ‘stories,’ as you call them, will only lead her to more pain.”

“Fran, talk plain, will you?”

“I’m talking about
derangement.
”

“Don’t be silly!”

She whispered. “And deviant behaviours.”

Aunt Fran decided it was best to give Mother her copy of
The Science of a New Life.
“Normally, I wouldn’t lend this out. But I’ll make an exception in Dora’s case. You can’t put this sort of thing off and expect it to cure itself.” She patted Mother’s hand. “I’ve marked several pages for you. The ones that apply to her
condition.
”

Mother smiled and nodded. She no sooner put it on the dresser next to her bed than Father was ordering me to “Gather up those books of yours, Dora. Bring them out to the brush pile.” I acted as if I didn’t hear him and walked out to the pen to feed the sow. Before long I could hear the crackle of the fire, smell the smoke from dried twigs,
Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice
and all the rest. I leaned against the fence and cried. There’s no point in arguing with him. There never is.
I’ll say one thing for the boys: at least they don’t cry. I’ll never understand you, Dora.

Last night was the first night of bunking down. When I was little, I looked forward to cold December winds and the first snow, to Father closing off the upstairs and all of us children dragging our pillows, blankets and feather mattresses down to the front room. Each night we lay piled together, Mother kissing our cheeks in the order of our births—Albert, Borden, Charlie, Dora, Ezekiel, Forest and Gord—cozy and snug until the grass turned green in the spring. Although our winter sleeping arrangement has become crowded and a bit smelly in the last few years, I still love listening to Borden’s late-night storytelling: the time old Bobby One Eye paddled the riptides off Cape Split, how he and Hart Bigelow came to invent pig bladder baseball, the tale of the hidden treasure that’s never been found on Isle Haute, and the ghost of Old Cove Fisher’s lost foot.

This year, Father didn’t seem to know what to do with me. I heard him arguing with Mother over it after breakfast.

“Maybe she could stay at Fran’s for the winter.”

Mother sounded upset. “Why would we send her away? Surely there’s enough room for sleeping.”

Father lowered his voice. “She needs to act like a proper young lady.”

“And she doesn’t?”

“It’s just that with six boys…”

“Judah Rare, you’re being foolish.”

“She’s getting to the age where she might be considered, someone might think…”

“That she’s a sweet girl who cares for her brothers?”

“She and Charlie still hold hands whenever they walk down the road, and no matter how many times I’ve scolded her, she insists on getting in the middle of the boys when they wrestle or fight.”

“Stop worrying over her. She’s got a pure and innocent heart. I’m almost certain she’s never even been kissed.”

“That’s the trouble. No man wants a girl who’s always tied to her brothers. The longer we let this go on, the more people will think there’s something odd about it. Let’s send her to Fran’s. I’m sure your sister would be happy to—”

“Yes, I’m sure Fran would be happy to make a housemaid out of my daughter. How we raise the children is our business and no one else’s. We’ll put Dora on the end after the twins, or lay her longways down by their feet, but she’s staying home and that’s that.”

Father’s right in supposing I’ve lost my innocence, but it wasn’t by having my rose plucked in the middle of a field that hasn’t been hayed. (I can still look forward to a bit of blood on the sheets on my wedding night.) Still, a girl can lose her heart long before she gives it away. Mother’s never mentioned it, or maybe she was too busy to notice, but I remember exactly how it happened. It was the day Father showed me I was no longer a child.

Before that day, I belonged with my brothers, I was one of them. If Borden or Albert teased me, I’d tease them right back. If Charlie put mud in my shoes, he’d find a toad under his sheets that same night. For every shove one of them gave me, I’d pinch two bruises into the fleshy part of a thigh or the back of an arm. Then Father put a stop to it. On a warm, sunny day (about the same time I started to bleed and my breasts began to feel heavy when I ran), Albert, Borden, Charlie and I snuck off to Lady’s Cove after school. The tide was just going out, the rocks were filled with pools of warm seawater, and a long strip of clay lay glistening at the edge of the shore. In the shelter of the cove, we did as we always had done: we stripped off our clothes and began throwing wet, heavy balls of mud and clay at each other. We must have been quite a sight, laughing and screaming, our bodies streaked with sloppy trails of brown and grey, but
my
name was the only name Father called out when he found us. It was a slow, angry insisting,
Dora Marie Rare.
I pulled my clothes over my dirty, crusty skin and he pulled me by my arm all the way home. I shouldn’t have argued with him, but it didn’t seem fair that I should be singled out. After all, it was Borden’s idea to go to the cove, it was Albert’s idea to wade in the water, it was Charlie who threw the first mud ball. Father didn’t care. He turned, took both my arms and shook me as he spoke. “I never want to see you behaving like that again.”

“But, Father, I—”

“Don’t make me cut an alder and take it to your skin, Dora.”

When we got to the house, Mother greeted us on the porch, looking concerned. She must have spotted us coming up the road and seen from Father’s stride that he was angry. He ordered me to pump a bucket of water from the well. “Get yourself cleaned up before supper, and I’d better not find a speck of clay behind your ears.” When I came back into the house, I heard him complaining to Mother. “She’s too old to fall in with the boys, and she’s gotten some smart with her mouth too. Talk to her, Lottie, tell her she’ll never get a husband if she keeps it up. No man around here wants a wife who talks back.”

He acted as if it made him sick just to look at me. He shook me so hard he put his fears right into my body. He let go of every nasty thought, every father’s nightmare, and put them in my head—the desire to watch animals mate in the spring, the thoughts of wanting to be touched, the need for men to notice me. I couldn’t have stayed innocent, even if I’d wanted to. I guess he finally realized that there’s no way to stop a girl from becoming a woman.

At least I’m not as far gone as Grace Hutner. She has a way of speaking, putting her finger to her chin and rolling her eyes while she giggles…it’s as sly as any county-fair magician or snake oil salesman. There’s always a slight dip to the front of her blouse and an impatient turn to her ankle as she sticks her leg out to the side of her desk or into the aisle of the sanctuary at church. The lightness of her hair and the blue of her eyes fool most everyone into thinking she’s perfection walking. Her one-dimpled smile pulls everyone into her path, boys, girls, men. They fall right to her side: “Do you need help carrying those books, Grace?” “Tell us about your new dress, Grace.” “A young thing like you shouldn’t walk alone.” Every churchgoing boy in the Bay, including both Albert and Borden, has rolled her in the hayloft. The only time I’ve ever seen the two of them come to blows was over her. She had them each believing her heart belonged to him. Even though they made peace and forgave each other when she took up with Archer Bigelow, she can still get them to argue over which one of them gets to walk her home from church. All the boys want her, and every little girl wants to be her. Grace Hutner could make a man want to go blind, just so he could better hear her lies.

I’ve “borrowed” a few books from a dusty, forgotten cupboard at the schoolhouse, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen among them. Miss B. lets me keep them at her cabin as long as I read them aloud to her while she makes clay pipes with her willy-nilly fingers. She teases me, holding my wrist before and after each reading, counting my heartbeats. “Your heart’s not changed a flit, your skin’s not hot…you sure you’re alright?” We have formed a reading circle for two,
un veille du mot,
as Miss B. calls it, and have begun with Jane Austen’s
Northanger Abbey.
The heroine, Catherine Moreland, is falling in love with the dashing, yet passive, Henry Tilney. She is seventeen.

Once I figured Aunt Fran’s copy of
The Science of a New Life
had been forgotten, I stole it too and hid it between my mattress and the boards of my bed. Dr. John Cowan and I have gotten to be on quite intimate terms.

Let us glance at some of the results of masturbation, as affecting the health and character of the individual; the array is altogether an undesirable one: headaches, dyspepsia, costiveness, spinal disease, epilepsy, impaired eyesight, palpitations of the heart, pain in the side, incontinence of urine, hysteria, paralysis, involuntary seminal emissions, impotency, consumption, insanity, etc.

The female, diseased here, loses proportionably the amiableness and gracefulness of her sex, her sweetness of voice, disposition and manner, her native enthusiasm, her beauty of face and form, her gracefulness and elegance of carriage, her looks of love and interest in man and to him, and becomes merged into a mongrel, neither male nor female, but marred by the defects of both, without possessing the virtues of either.

Dr. Cowan may go on to call it
self-abuse,
but I like to refer to it as
practising patience.
What’s the harm in thinking of love? Is bringing around little heartaches under my covers any different from mouthing the words of the Brownings or Keats or Christina Rosetti? Just yesterday I took another book from Miss Coffill’s library at the schoolhouse, this time a poetry collection.
Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream.
I’ve marked my favourites with bits of string. Like my hands down between my legs, the words are sweet, and nothing but wishes.

˜ December 1916

Dr. Thomas has not been back to bother Miss B., but Aunt Fran reported the other day that the maternity home in Canning is nearly finished and there’s to be a “Ladies Tea” for the women of Scots Bay. She’s encouraging all “the fine ladies of the Bay” to attend. Of course, she gets herself excited over any occasion that calls for her to wear a new hat and lift her pinky. She was also quick to inform me, “Dr. Thomas will be presenting a lecture on ‘Morality and Women’s Health,’ something I think you’d quite enjoy, Dora.”

The more I learn about them, the more I realize I’m not much for doctors.

5

Dr. and Mrs. Gilbert Thomas

Invite the ladies of Scots Bay to attend a special afternoon of Tea and conversation

at

The Canning Maternity Home of Kings County

Saturday, December 7, 1916

Transportation to and from Canning will be provided from the Seaside Centre.

T
HREE TEAMS OF STURDY
horses hitched to three beautiful new sleighs were waiting at the Seaside Centre. Courtesy of Dr. Thomas.

Mother said I would have to take her place in representing the Rare family, since she had far too much work to do at home. I tried to convince Miss B. she should come along for the ride, but she refused, saying, “I ain’t been down North Mountain since the day I arrived. It’s been so long now, I guess I’d up and turn to dust if I set as much as one toe outside the Bay.”

Aunt Fran told Mother not to worry. “I’m already going, in an
official capacity
as secretary of the White Rose Temperance Society, so it’s no trouble to watch over my dear young niece. I’ll see that she minds her
p
’s and
q
’s.” Precious had begged her mother to include her as well, but Aunt Fran put her off, explaining, “You know how you suffer in the cold. Who knows what state you’d be in after riding down the mountain and back?” She smoothed Precious’s hair and retied the bow at the end of her braid. “What do we always say?”

Precious chimed in with a reluctant sigh. “Think of yourself, think of your health.”

Aunt Fran smiled and popped a lemon drop in Precious’s mouth. “Well done, dear, well done.”

Poor Precious waved us off and began to make her way home, but not before she made me promise to tell her “every little thing that happens.”

Aunt Fran was dressed in her Sunday best. When Mrs. Trude Hutner made a fuss over Fran’s new rabbit fur muff, Aunt Fran insisted that Mrs. Hutner and Grace ride opposite so they could continue their conversation. She handed the muff to Mrs. Hutner for a proper inspection. “It arrived yesterday. Irwin said I should pick out an early Christmas gift from the Eaton’s catalogue. At first he suggested that I might like a new coat, but I told him ‘no,’ of course, what with the war on and all. This is all I need. I was going to wait until church tomorrow to use it for the first time, but this seemed like the perfect occasion.”

Mrs. Hutner nodded as she stroked the soft white fur. “Like a little bit of heaven, I’d say…but practical too.” She slipped her hands inside the muff and grinned. “I think it’s time I had a new one myself. Perhaps I’ll give Grace my old one and mail in my order to Eaton’s this week.”

Aunt Fran tried her best to fight the disapproving look from her face. The two women are friends, but only because they are both in the position of having much more than most women in the Bay. Evidently, it takes equally thin parts of kindness and sincerity to marry well. “There was a lovely one made from beaver, pictured right next to this one. You’d certainly look smart in such a dark colour, if I do say so myself.”

Mrs. Hutner pouted and handed the muff back to Aunt Fran. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Most of Aunt Fran’s time (and much of Uncle Irwin’s family fortune) goes towards her need for
having.
Last Christmas it was Irish linens, after that, French lace table runners, and then it was figurines made from Italian porcelain…mostly birds, insects and fruit. These days, her fancy’s gone towards collecting spoons, hundreds of them, engraved with the faces of royalty and the great wonders of the world, the likes of which Aunt Fran would never dream of leaving her comfortable home in the Bay to see. She faithfully polishes them, singing hymns all the while, grinning as her reflection turns in the bowl,
right side up, upside down, right side up, upside down.
They line her parlour wall, each one a useless droplet of silver, but delicate enough not to offend God or any of the good Christian ladies of the Bay.

Mother always smiles to herself whenever we visit Aunt Fran. “A woman’s got to have something to set her clocks by…Fran’s cuckoo sings somewhere between spouting off Bible verses and rubbing those spoons.” I’ve never heard her complain about Fran’s treasures or how little she has for herself. She spends day after day sweeping dust and dirt out the door, one mealtime running into the next, her heavy, tired feet shuffling in front of the hot cookstove. Her back aches from wringing clothes over the washtub and tugging milk from the Guernsey’s udders. She was the pretty one who married for love. Seven children later, I hope she holds tight to that thought, as she tucks our dreams safely under our pillows and kisses Father good night.

I watched the trees go by, birch branches sparkling in the sun, spruces flocked white with fresh, wet snow from the night before. The horses kept a brisk pace, the sleigh cutting a clean path as we made our way down the mountain, winter-brisk air rushing past our faces. Fran shouted above the jangling of the sleigh bells. “I also got three new spoons…Buckingham Palace, the Pyramids of Giza and the Taj Mahal. You should come to tea next week and see them, they are glorious, simply glorious!”

Mrs. Hutner paused and buttoned the collar of Grace’s coat to the very top. “Only if you’ll come and see my newest pretties…” Grace smacked her mother’s hand away and pulled the button loose again.

Aunt Fran clapped her hands together. “Oh, Trude, did you get it already?”

Mrs. Hutner reached for Grace’s hand and squeezed it, tight. “Yes, the box arrived three days ago.” She spoke at a fast, excited pitch. “The Gilded Lotus. Rose medallion pattern, covered with flowers and gilt, and the charming face of an empress looks back at you from the bottom of each cup. They’re so small and delightful, each one with its own little rounded cover, like a tiny Chinaman’s hat.
Guywan
they call it, a covered cup.” Grace wormed her hand away from her mother’s grasp and then slowly dug her heel into the toe of her mother’s boot. Mrs. Hutner’s eyes began to water. “They have no handles, you know.”

Aunt Fran handed her a handkerchief. “How very odd.”

Mrs. Hutner dabbed the corners of her eyes. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been feeling under the weather.”

Aunt Fran nodded in sympathy. “Something’s going around. The Widow Bigelow started off with a slight cough, but wound up in bed for a week. I guess it’s a good thing we’re going to see the doctor.”

The Canning Maternity Home sits at the top of Pleasant Street. The tall, straight house looks as if it sprang up, white and clean, from nowhere. A stranger to the area would never guess that the place was once the rundown, forgotten house of Captain Robert Dowell, an English ship’s captain who had a wife in London and an extra wife right here in Canning, Nova Scotia. His tombstone in the Habitant Cemetery reads:

Captain Robert Dowell

1836–1883

Who gave up his life
to his one true love,
the sea.

Most people might take those words to mean that he drowned, but the fact of the matter is, Captain Dowell met a more sinister fate. After Emily Dowell, wife number two, received a letter from Lucinda Dowell, wife number one, the two women made an agreement. They vowed that the Mrs. Dowell who saw darling “Robbie” next would take a butcher’s knife and run it deep into his unfaithful heart.

It was Emily who met him first. It was Emily who waited in the dark of the wharf, Emily Elizabeth Dowell, née Trublood, the fair-faced daughter of the Honourable Judge Kingston Trublood. It was Emily who stabbed Captain Dowell, shoved him in the water and made good on the chance to right a wrong. Sadly enough, Emily couldn’t live with the consequences. She couldn’t bear to think that her own father might have to put her head in a noose. When she was done, she turned the knife on herself. Her marker is set next to her husband’s. Underneath a carved hand that points to heaven, it reads:

Emily Elizabeth Trublood Dowell

1858–1883

Faithful consort

True of heart

The mystery of their two bloody bodies floating in the Habitant River might never have been solved, except for a letter that the Canning postmaster received after their deaths.

Manchester

England

October 25, 1883

Attention: Postmaster

The Village of Canning

Kings County, Nova Scotia

Canada

Dear Postmaster,

It has been many months since I have heard from my dear friend, Mrs. Emily Dowell. Does she still reside there? Is she well? Please tell me, have she and her dear husband settled their differences? I wouldn’t trouble you, but it isn’t like her not to send word. We are relatives of a sort, through marriage, and I am most anxious to hear news of her.

Awaiting your kind response,

Mrs. Lucy Dowell

The postmaster, a Mr. Martin deGroot, sent a quick response to Lucy Dowell. Even after the gruesome details were explained, they continued to exchange letters, Lucy telling of the lonely damp weather of Manchester and Martin cursing the long Nova Scotia winter. It wasn’t long before the postmaster realized it was the perfect match, Lucy being a widow, and he being in need of a wife. In the spring he sent for her, and Lucy Dowell became Mrs. Lucy deGroot.

Mother and Aunt Fran’s side of the family is connected to the deGroots through their great-great-grandmother’s sister. She left the Bay to marry into the strong Dutch family and never returned. Mother always points out the deGroot orchards on the way to Canning. “There’s the finest apples in Kings County.” They are round and plump with a red blush, just like the rest of our deGroot cousins, not at all like the small, tart fruit that grows in the Bay. We see the apples and the cousins once a year, in the autumn. Father brings new barrels down the mountain, and in return we get our share of apples and cider.

It was because of that simple tradition between our two families that Charlie and I always felt we had the “rights” to crawl through the broken cellar door of Captain Dowell’s house. Despite the boarded windows and the faded “no trespassing” sign, we figured (through murder, marriage and loose blood ties) that the house was ours. We’d sneak off to the house whenever Father let us tag along on his Saturday trips to Canning. To clean out the ghosts, we’d run up and down the stairs, howling and screaming. After that, we’d sit in the attic, silent and still, to see if they’d return. Even the ghosts wouldn’t recognize the place now.

Mrs. Dr. Thomas is a sweet woman, and although I found her to be kind enough, she seemed almost giddy with hospitality. She bounced as she led us from room to room, her expectant belly pushing forward, her hair piled in girlish ringlets atop her head. She rested her hands on her round stomach. “It’s our first, and hopefully one of the many babies to be born at the Canning Maternity Home.” She winked at Aunt Fran. “We ladies of Kings County are lucky to be in such good hands.”

We followed her through the first floor, touring a small sitting room, Dr. Thomas’s examination room, a large kitchen and sleeping quarters for two nurses.

The second floor had been turned into one large room. The white walls were lined with neat, square cupboards filled with folded towels and blankets. Under the far window were three large washbasins. Straight down the middle of the room were two long rows of empty white bassinettes. This was the nursery.

Dr. Thomas greeted us as we approached the third floor. “Welcome to the delivery room, ladies.” The top post of the banister, once dark with carved sea serpents and sailing ships, had been painted over, whitewashed like everything else. The dreary attic was now a wide, ample space. Ten spare beds with tight white sheets lined the walls. In the centre of it all was a large table, set with candles, finger sandwiches and fine china. Dr. Thomas motioned for us to be seated. “Please, won’t you join me for tea?”

He took each of the ladies’ hands as they entered the room, complimenting their dresses and hats, commenting on mutual acquaintances, distant relatives and the weather. He paused when he came to me, repeating my name after I said it. “Miss Dora Rare. A lovely name.”

We sipped our tea as Dr. Thomas explained “the advantages of modern childbirth.” He pulled on a sheet that was hanging from the ceiling and let it fall down as a partition between two beds. “At the Canning Maternity Home we have both privacy and efficiency. Up to ten women can labour at once and still have the best in obstetrical care.” He pushed the sheet back and tied it to the wall. “And more beds can be added as needed.” He stood at the end of a bed and turned a crank. The head of the bed rose and lowered and then rose again. “The new mother can labour and rest in the same bed.” He bent down and yanked a metal footing from either side of the end of the bed, smacking them into place with a hard jolt. “Stirrups. For support during birthing.”

The ladies all smiled and nodded. While they continued to eat their tiny sandwiches, Dr. Thomas wheeled over a metal cart. It was draped with a sheet and looked something like a caddy for tea and sweets. Aunt Fran gasped when he revealed the contents of the tray. The doctor chuckled. “It may look ominous, but I assure you, it’s all part of progress.” The tray was cluttered with shining silver knives, scissors and other medical instruments. Stored in the compartment beneath were jars of every shape and size. He took two medicine bottles and nestled them around the flower arrangement in the centre of the table. “Pituitrin and chloroform, a mother’s two best friends.” He then held up a pair of large wide tongs. “Forceps, the obstetrical physician’s best friend.” He passed them around the table. “I brought out all these things—the surgical knives, the scissors, the needles, the bottles of ergot and ether—not to frighten you, but to show you the path of modern medicine. These things
hasten
childbirth and put the labour process in the doctor’s hands. He has complete control. The faster the birth, the less chance for infection, and the less time the mother has to suffer. I’m sure you’d all agree, the less a woman has to suffer, the better.”