The Birth House (6 page)

The women whispered and nodded, Trude Hutner adding, “Two days of labour it was with my Grace.” She patted Grace’s hand. “Can you imagine? Two whole days.”

Dr. Thomas sat down at the head of the table. “Late last week I was called to a birth in the village of Baxter’s Harbour. The local midwife attended the young mother’s birth, but as the labour progressed, it was clear that the mother was in much distress. The father, having been sent away from his home by the midwife, had sense enough to come to Canning to enlist my help. When I arrived, the mother was in a state of utter exhaustion and was too weak to deliver the child. It was too late for her to get any relief from the medicine I administered, too late for the use of forceps.” He shook his head. “That poor mother and her child are not alive today.” He took the forceps and placed them back on the cart. “Every time I recall that tragedy, I realize that there are more occasions than any of us care to think when a physician’s hand is the only saving grace.”

While the ladies were all shaking their heads in silence, Dr. Thomas continued, looking in my direction. “I don’t think that young mother was much older than your dear Miss Rare.” The ladies all turned and looked at me. “She’s the perfect example of one of Scots Bay’s fine young ladies who will be needing my assistance in the future.” He smiled and then winked at me, as if he knew me, as if we shared a secret (or as if he might have known I was hiding at Miss B.’s the day he called on her). My face, my ears, the back of my neck went hot. “It’s never too soon to start thinking about the day she’ll be a bride, a wife, a mother.”

As the ladies all agreed with Dr. Thomas, Grace choked on a petit four. Mrs. Hutner poured more tea in her daughter’s cup and encouraged her to drink (or at least hold her cup to her face to stifle her laughter).

Dr. Thomas placed a small booklet next to each place setting around the table. “A Mother’s Share from the Farmer’s Assurance Company would make a wonderful gift for a new bride.”

Mrs. Thomas added, “For any woman, really.”

The doctor stood behind his wife and placed his hand on her shoulder. “It gives a woman the peace of mind of knowing that she has a safe, clean place to have her babies.”

Although impeccable with his manners and polite at every turn, it was clear to me that Dr. Thomas was less concerned with a woman’s circumstances and more concerned with selling his services.
You ain’t tellin’. You sellin’.
Thinking of Miss B., I raised my hand to speak, my voice wavering as I questioned Dr. Thomas. “What about the cost? I don’t know many families in Scots Bay who can afford what you’re asking.”

Aunt Fran hissed at me. “Dora, don’t be rude.”

Mrs. Thomas smiled. “What a family spends on coffee and tea each month could easily buy a share.”

Not feeling as if I’d had a proper answer, or that Mrs. Thomas had the slightest notion of what the word
cost
means to most families in the Bay, I ignored Aunt Fran’s scolding and held up the back of the pamphlet. “But it says right here, ‘A Mother’s Share costs twenty-five dollars for one year.’ That’s an awful lot of coffee beans.”

Aunt Fran snatched the pamphlet from my hand and whispered, “I won’t hear another word from you.”

Dr. Thomas interrupted. “No, she’s right, not every woman may be able to afford her own share, but that’s why I’ve brought you ladies here today. This is a wonderful chance for women’s organizations like the White Rose Temperance Society to help the ladies of their community. What price, I ask you, is greater than life?”

Although she was all politeness and smiles, when the tea was over, Aunt Fran was the first to head to the door, pulling me along and muttering under her breath as she went. “For heaven’s sake, my own niece. If I’ve told Lottie once, I’ve told her a thousand times, you’ve got to keep an eye on that girl. Keep her away from books and those boys.”

Dr. Thomas followed close behind. “Mrs. Jeffers, a word, if you please?”

She turned, forcing her angry grimace into a pleasant smile. “Certainly, Doctor, although we’ve already taken up so much of your time today.”

He took her hand in his. “I wanted to thank you for coming and for bringing your niece along with you. It’s a pleasure to see such thoughtfulness in a young lady, don’t you agree?”

Aunt Fran blushed. “Why, yes, how kind of you to say so. I’m always telling Dora that she needs to speak up more, open that dear mouth of hers on occasion.”

Dr. Thomas looked at me. “So good to see you, Miss Rare. Please give Miss Babineau my best, will you?”

I nodded. “Yes, I certainly will.”

Aunt Fran interrupted. “Dora, dear, you neglected to tell me that you had already made Dr. Thomas’s acquaintance.”

Before I could insist that we’d never met, Dr. Thomas looked at me and grinned. “I imagine that Miss Rare is
hiding
all sorts of surprises.”

6

M
Y
S
ATURDAY VISIT
with Miss Babineau the following week was spent at Mabel Thorpe’s place. Miss B. had her birthing bag packed and was ready to go as soon as I walked through the door. “Turn yourself around. Mabel’s bornin’ her third, so we’d best get over to the house and lend a hand.” I thought of Mrs. Ketch and of baby Darcy and how I held him until his breath was gone, his body cold. In the time that had passed since his birth, my nightmares had disappeared only to be replaced with the thought that perhaps I had caused his death, that Laird Jessup had been right to blame his calf’s misfortunes on me, that my presence at any birth somehow brought on ugliness—pale misshaped bodies, weak hearts and eventually death. “I don’t think I’d be much help. Maybe I should go back home.”

Miss B. took my hand, pulled me out of the house and started walking down the road. “It’s gonna be just fine. Don’t you worry.”

I should know by now, once Marie Babineau’s mind’s made up, there’s no saying no.

The walk was cold and long. By mid-December the trees are naked, the Bay has turned the colour of lead and the winds have changed, pushing the grass down, ignoring our lives as it cuts the breath short and shallow, forcing us to move from fire to fire. Mabel’s house sits along the main road where it branches off towards Cape Split, just after the shipyard and Hardy Tupper’s blacksmith shop. It’s no different than all the other Thorpe houses in the Bay, framed straight and square like a saltbox, with one chimney poking up through the middle of the roof. This is how the Thorpes are too, plain living and dependable, every last one.

Once inside, Miss B. was quick to push Mabel’s husband, Porter, and their two small children out the door and off to stay with his sister’s family down the road. “That wife of yours has to think on this baby now. The little ones won’t know why she’s not actin’ herself, and dear Mabel can’t do what she needs to if she’s frettin’ over givin’ them a fright.”

Her belly almost too wide between them, Mabel leaned towards her shy, quiet husband, giving him an awkward kiss on the cheek. She tousled the hair on her little girls’ heads saying, “You be some good for your auntie. Mind your daddy and say your pleases and thank-yous.” Two little strawberry-blond heads nodded together as they looked up at their mother, smiling, reaching out their hands to rub the roundness of her one last time. At four and five they are perfect stair steps, both freckle-faced and as sweet-natured as their mother. Big as a barn and nearly ready to drop, Mabel Thorpe still made motherhood look easy. Miss B. says, “It’s a mama’s faith what keeps her children right. I’m not talkin’ ’bout the churchgoin’ kind, neither. Miss Mabel’s got faith in goodness. Tell me you can’t help but believe in it too just by lookin’ at her.”

Soon after they left, two of Mabel’s neighbours, Bertine Tupper and Sadie Loomer, arrived. Miss B. greeted them by kissing their cheeks and teasing them about the difference in their heights. “Well, if it ain’t the broom and the bucket.” Bertine’s as tall and sturdy as you’d expect a blacksmith’s wife to be, while Sadie, though wiry and rough as a sailor with her talk, isn’t much taller than my youngest brothers. They came through the door cradling baskets filled with tiny quilts, cradle blankets and baked goods. Miss B. cooed over Bertine’s knitting, smoothing the folds with her blue-lined hands. “
L’amour de maman.
A mother’s love.” Then she set us all to work, even Mabel. “It’s too early to be puttin’ yourself to bed, little mama. You know right well you gots to keep on movin’ so’s you can open up them bones.” Mabel didn’t argue. She busied herself with her friends, moving back and forth between sifting flour and gripping the edge of the kitchen table when her pains grew too hard.

From three different outports in Newfoundland, Mabel, Bertine and Sadie all came to the Bay about the same time. They’re what Aunt Fran calls
women from away.
She says it means they couldn’t find husbands in their own villages, so they had to find a way to get “hitched” to men from somewhere else. “Newfoundland may as well be the moon the way those women act sometimes. When you’ve got no family to speak of, no one knows who you
really
are. I suppose that’s what they want, running off like that from home, like they’ve got something to hide.” I think they’re wonderful, and even brave, sitting together at church socials, laughing louder than Aunt Fran thinks they should. They seem more like sisters (or at least how I imagine sisters might be).

Miss B. called to me. “Dora, go out and fetch us some fresh eggs. It’s time to make the groanin’ cake.”

Some say the groaning cake, or
kimbly,
brings good fortune to the new child. These days, most people save the tradition for when the mother’s churched
.
The first Sunday she can get out of bed and take the baby to services, the father stands outside the church door and hands each mother in the community a little cake wrapped in brown paper and red ribbon. Mabel wanted to do it the old way, where the mother breaks the eggs and mixes the batter herself just before the baby comes. “It fills the house right up with sweetness. That’s the way my mother and all her sisters did it back home.”

Bertine nodded in agreement. “My granny always said just the smell of it baking cuts the pain.”

Sadie added, “As soon as you think a baby’s coming, it’s time to tie lavender to the bedposts, put an axe under the bed and a cake in the oven.”

Miss B. smiled as she lifted the cozy off the teapot. “The scent of a good groanin’ cake, a cuppa hot Mother’s Tea and
time.
Most times that’s all a mama needs on the day her baby comes.” She handed Mabel a cup. “Plenty of time to do whatever she needs, tell whatever story’s on her mind, time enough to say all her prayers.”

As the afternoon wore on, Mabel became more and more quiet, stopping every once in a while to hold her stomach and let out a groan. After her water broke all down her legs and she got to where she couldn’t hold a spoon in her hands or a smile on her face, Miss B. led her back to the bedroom. She unpacked three glass jars from her bag, sterilized scissors, scorched muslin and castor oil. She sang and prayed over them, and after that, over anything else she touched. It was getting dark now, so I lit a few lamps and brought them into the room.

Sadie and Bertine took turns telling Mabel gossip as they pulled a clean nightdress over Mabel’s round belly.

“And then Bertine gots her foot tappin’. You know the way she does when she thinks she’s been lied to, says, ‘well, isn’t that interesting’—an’ all that.”

Mabel paced back and forth, trying to keep her mind from her pain.

“I just thought it was awful interesting that Mrs. Trude Hutner would say she already knew whats how to thrum a pair of mitts when you know right well she’s never knitted a proper mitt, nor sock, nor a bloody thimble for her thumb. These women around here like to think they know it all…she wouldn’t have to stuff the
Canning Register
down her husband’s boots if she knew to make a proper sock.”

Sadie’s half Bertine’s size, but it didn’t stop her from teasing. “Shut it now, Bertine, and let me tell it right. No one wants to hear about your blessed wonderful socks…again.”

Mabel reached for the bedpost, groaning with pain. “Here it comes.”

Miss B. clutched at the rosary beads around her neck. “Hold on to it, don’t you go pushin’ just yet.” Sadie and Bertine rushed to their friend, holding her up on either side. With every moan Mabel let out, they did their best to comfort her, saying, “You’ll be fine, just a little while longer, you’ll be fine,” but when her pains came in waves, each one following on top of the next, they gave up their words. Miss B. closed her eyes and listened. “There’s a sound that creeps up…it’s like no other sound I ever heard. When it pulls at the hairs on the back of your neck, that’s how you knows it’s time.”

Miss B. asked me to bring in a bowl of warm water and a clean towel. She spread blankets on the floor, making a soft nest at Mabel’s feet. “You gotta get on your knees now, dear, it’s time you gonna push.” Bertine and Sadie got down on the floor with her, giving Mabel their shoulders to hold on to. Miss B. sprinkled a few drops of castor oil in the water, prayed over the bowl, wrang out the steaming cloth and placed it against the red, bulging skin between Mabel’s legs. She looked at me and motioned to a small stool beside her bag. “Bring that stool and come hold this for me. Keep it close and warm so she don’t tear.”

Mabel cried out as the next pains began. Miss B. knelt beside me. I started to move to change places with her, but she whispered in my ear, “You stay put.” She looked up at Mabel. “Now we push, little mama, now we push.”

It was tight and round where I held the cloth, and as I pulled my hand away, I could see the dark of the baby’s hair. As she pushed, Mabel’s body seemed to open up as wide and full as her wailing. When the baby’s head moved out into the light, I saw that its face was starting to turn blue. Miss B. whispered in my ear, her voice calm and steady. “It’s just a corded birth. You gonna get him loose so he can breathe.” I held my breath as Miss B. went on. “Feel your fingers ’round the neck. Can you slip the cord over the baby’s head?” The wet bumpy cord was taut and pulsing. There was barely a finger’s width of space to hook my fingers underneath. Not wanting to frighten Mabel, I turned my head towards Miss B. and mouthed the word
no
. Miss B. called out to her, “God knows you’re tired, dear, as do all the angels in heaven, so on this next push they’re gonna help you get that baby out.”

Mabel whimpered, her body shaking and weak. “I don’t know if I can.”

Miss B.’s voice was firm. “You ain’t got no choice…now here we go. Mother Mary, help this mama, help this baby, Mother Mary, Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of the Moon and Star of the Sea,
Ave Maria Stellas
…
un, deux, trois
…” Mabel closed her eyes and let out a long, anguished wail. Bertine and Sadie cried out loud beside her, moaning right along with her, all three women letting out heavy groans. As the baby slipped out, all milky-looking and wet, I pulled the cord free from its neck. Miss B. scooped the baby up, opening its tiny mouth with her fingers. She held her mouth to the infant’s, her cheeks puffing with gentle breaths, then made the sign of the cross over and over as the baby gave its first cry.

It was late by the time we finished tending to Mabel and her new baby, clearing away the bloodstained sheets, spooning fennel broth between Mabel’s tired lips. Miss B. squeezed drops of watery red alder tea into the infant’s mouth “to clear the liver and cut the hives.” When mother and child were sleeping, we left them to Sadie and Bertine’s care. I recorded the day’s events in the Willow Book, still amazed at the way it felt to be the first person to bring her hands to a child’s life. While it cannot replace the sadness I feel over Darcy, it has changed me, somehow opening my heart again.

December 8, 1916. Evening, about half-past eight.

Mabel Thorpe has another beautiful baby girl.

Her name is Violet.

Not wanting to wake up my family, I stayed over at Miss B.’s cabin and slept in her rocking chair until dawn. I woke to find Miss B. standing beside the rocker, praying over me.

She whispered, “You believe in spirits of the dead?”

Thinking I was dreaming, I whispered back. “Yes.”

“You know where they lives?”

“Right here. Right where we are. Everywhere we are.”

“How you know this?”

“I just do.”