Kathy Little Bird (15 page)

I
WAS
wakened by the nurse.

She put Kathy in my arms.

My heart pounded. I held her against me, afraid to move.

The nurse laughed. “No, no, give her the breast. Your milk won’t have come in yet, but sucking encourages lactation and strengthens the baby’s ability to feed.”

I transferred the precious bundle, held her in the crook of one arm, and with the other hand put her little face against my breast. My nipple sprung hard as her tiny mouth closed over it. What a strange and marvelous sensation to give suckle from your own body, to nourish your child. It wakens such floods of love.

I looked into the little face. She was all eyes. Big, dark, beautiful eyes, and that fringe of red hair. “Oh you blessed thing,” I crooned at her. “You blessed thing.”

She resumed her effort at nursing, and I began to speak to her seriously. I realized that in this first meeting with my daughter we should get to know each other. “To begin with I’ll tell you what’s important in this world. I wish you could do the same. Before you started getting born, did you see the plan of all possibilities laid out? Did you pick me? By the way you look at me I know you’re trying to tell me. But by the time you can talk, you won’t remember. And I suppose that’s the way it’s meant to be.

“Since you can’t tell me about your world, I’ll tell you about mine, this one you’ve come into.”

I touched her little cheek with my finger, it was so soft. “The most important thing is that you’re Kathy. Like me and my Mum, right back to Katherine Mary Flannigan. You see, the namer and the named are bound together by closest ties. That is why I am so lucky to be both mother and namer to you, Kathy.”

Closing my eyes and travelling inward, I called. The Grandmothers came, and my own mother, and Oh Be Joyful and
Mrs. Mike—“Know this new Kathy,” I begged, “be with her, watch over her steps and her heart.”

The nurse came back. She reached to take Kathy.

“Oh no, let me have her a moment more. We’re just getting acquainted.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that.” She gave me my night medication in the forrm of a pill to swallow. “This will give you a good night’s sleep. You need to get your strength back, you know.”

She lifted Kathy from my arms. I tried to explain I still had important things to tell her, especially about Mum. “Oh, Kathy, how she would have adored you. It doesn’t seem right that you won’t know each other, that you’ll never know her except what I can think of to tell you.

“She was a woman of two worlds. I don’t think she was at home in either. She was Cree. She looked Cree, and she married a First Nation person. I think that was one side of it. The other, she was adopted by Katherine Mary, the first Kathy, and raised white. She graduated from nursing school at the top of her class and went to war, a white man’s war. And she married a second time—white.

“All that is buried somewhere deep inside me and you. It’s called DNA, and it makes you up, part of you, like fingernails. Kathy, the thing I want to tell you about that other Kathy—she lived. I want you to live. She loved—and I want you to love. Because she never held back, but gave herself completely, she became Oh Be Joyful’s Daughter. That was her Indian name and that was her heritage. All her life she brought others joy and finally…finally…”

I was being shaken awake. I thought Jack was part of the dream. He wasn’t. He had my clothes laid out on top of me.

“We’re blowing this place.”

“What?” I asked, still groggy, still asleep.

“Come on, baby, we’re getting you out of here.”

I nodded. That was okay with me.

“Let me help you into these,” and he started to dress me.

“Does anyone know? The doctors? The nurses?”

“That we’re getting you out? Of course not.”

Jack cranked the bed up until I was sitting leaning against it, dressed except for my shoes, which he was fitting to my feet.

“Where’s the baby?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you about that in the car…. Oh, she’s all right,” he hastened to add. “She’s fine.”

“But where is she?”

“Now, lean on me and we’ll get you down the hall.”

“I can’t stand up, Jack. I feel as if my insides will spill on the floor.”

He captured a wheelchair from the hall and helped me into it. I was dizzy and felt strange sitting up straight. I may have fainted. I’m not sure.

In the car I asked, “Where’s Kathy?”

“Don’t you worry about Kathy. She’s better off than we are.”

“I want my baby!”

“Of course you do. But just for now Mrs. Mason will look after her.”

“No.”

“Just till you get your strength back, and we get on our feet. Believe me, it’s best for the baby.”

“But, but—”

He quelled my fears, stopped my questions with sensible answers.

We put up at a motel, and I was so glad to be helped into bed that I let everything slide until morning.

It took two or three days for my strength to return. I used the breast pump Jack foresightedly provided. I had plenty of milk, but no baby.

“When we’re able to get her,” I said, “it would be nice to go back to Alberta. Just for a visit. We could stay at Jellet’s, it wouldn’t cost much. And I’d get to see Jas.” I said Jas, but I meant Abram. “Jas is a good kid, you know. I miss him.” I knew who it was I missed. “I miss Morrie too—after all, they’re uncles now and don’t know it.” And I told him about the Canadian geese I’d seen winging their way back.

“That’s not us, honey. We aren’t going back.” Then he told me if we attempted to reenter Canada we’d be arrested.

“What!” But I stopped the protest that rose in me and waited to hear what he had done.

“That’s why we had to find that out-of-the-way border crossing into North Dakota. You remember, we were pretty much on our uppers. I was flat broke. Didn’t have a cent to give you for the shopping.”

I nodded numbly, waiting for the blow to fall.

“We had to eat. So I left the market without paying. I figured, they’re a company, they’re insured against loss. It didn’t mean anything to them….”

“So you shoplifted?”

“It’s a misdemeanor. Not worth extraditing a person, but they’d pick us up at the border.”

“You, maybe. I didn’t take anything.”

“You were with me. You drove the car, ate the food.”

I didn’t say anything. What was the use? A heavy hopelessness descended. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t take my baby home.

Jack’s plan for little Kathy left not only my breasts but the rest of me aching.

Apparently he’d talked the Masons into taking Kathy until I was able to work. This seemed monstrous to me. Jack talked and talked and convinced me it was for the best. But deep inside I knew it was monstrous. I had to have my baby. My breasts called for her, my womb ached, my arms were empty. They laid her against me in the hospital. I felt a little warm being, knew an overwhelming content, felt love. I looked into her face. We communicated.

Jack said we had to move on. There was the matter of the hospital bill, and we had run out of money. I remembered the suggestion Mrs. Mason had made about the Moose lodge. It was a different lodge; this was in Illinois. Jack also checked out the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I was a hit at their events, and at a Masonic Temple dance.

Jack made dates with clubs too.

“Don’t you think we can pick Kathy up pretty soon?” Each time I asked this, Jack stalled. He always had a reason why it couldn’t be done—we had a lot of debts, doctors, hospital, anesthesia—until we broke even. Then, when we broke
even, it was the moving around. Constantly changing surroundings was unhealthy for a baby, we had to get our feet under us, there was a great opportunity in the next town, a real gig, two solid weeks…

Finally, reality struck. He never intended that we should raise our daughter. I had to sit down; the blow paralyzed me. I think I’d known. I think I’d known from the first, but I’d cowered in dark corners and pretended on bright stages, unable, utterly unable to face that Kathy was lost to me.

“It’s better this way, hon,” he said when I charged him with it. “She’s got a stable home. A kid needs that. And she’s got all the love she can handle from two decent God-fearing people.”

“And a room with chintz curtains and a chintz bedspread.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

Often my eyes would fill with tears. I’d go into the bathroom, lock the door, sit on the stool, and cry. I tried to recall what it was like to hold her. She was put in my arms; I held her, talked to her, looked into her little face. We had a conversation. I told her about her name—and naming. She wanted to tell me about the other side, where she came from. I couldn’t lose her.

I wouldn’t accept that I had lost her, I couldn’t. I wanted my baby, I had to have her.

If I wanted her, I would have to go get her. The only way to do it was to run out on Jack. I got up while he was still snoring. I thought of taking the car. After all, we paid for it with money I’d earned. But this was something Jack
would never forgive. He could do without me, but not without the car.

So I caught the first bus out of town, telling myself with every turn of the wheels I was closer to my little girl. When the bus finally pulled into the terminal I realized there was another connection to be made. I had missed it and had an hour to wait.

I sat on a hard bench, my eyes closed, trying to picture it, imagining how it would be. I’d talk to Mrs. Mason first, of course. She’d be upset. She must be very attached to her by now. Attached! What a word. She loved her.

Well, I loved her too, and she was mine.

I couldn’t wait to get my arms around her. How would it feel finally to hold her again?

The bus rolled up, its brakes screeching to a stop. I boarded. This was the last leg of the trip; at the other end was a little redheaded daughter. She couldn’t understand when I talked to her, but I could sing to her—the Cree ballads no one wanted to hear, and that wonderful lullaby. That she would understand.

Telegraph poles whizzed by. We passed a lot full of old tires, not the best part of town. We were slowing down. I looked out the window and there was Jack waiting for me.

He smiled and waved. I rubbed the window with the arm of my sweater, hoping it was a mirage, that he would go away. But he was still there, still smiling.

A smile is simply a distorted face, the lips spread open. I don’t know why people think it kindly and jolly—I didn’t. I didn’t like Jack’s smile.

I wasn’t getting out of the bus. He had to come in and get me.

“Honey,” he said, “I’m not mad. I don’t blame you. You just want to see your baby. Don’t you think that’s what I want? She’s mine too, you know. I want her just as much as you do. But I want to do it right, Kathy. I want us to make a real home for her. I want to be able to take care of her properly. A little girl like that, she’ll want piano lessons and maybe ballet. And we’ll be able to give her those things. Just not yet.” He got me into the parking lot and walked me to the car.

He opened the door.

I stood there. I didn’t get in.

“The Masons understand this, honey. They know it’s just a temporary arrangement while we get our feet under us.”

We stood facing each other by the open car door. “All right,” he said in a change of tactic, “I’ll take you to the Masons. We’ll go right now. We’ll say hello, get acquainted. What do you say?”

I got into the car.

“Take me back, Jack.”

M
Y
voice was fuller these days; maybe it was from having a baby. I don’t know why, but I was able to throw a note into the air and sustain it in a way I had heard no other singer do. Wherever I sang, people loved it and wanted more. My breasts no longer ached and I didn’t use the pump, but my mind was always on Kathy.

“You still send the Masons money, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“A hundred dollars every month, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s good.”

“They’ll be able to get the kid anything she wants.”

“No. I know them. They’ll save it.”

At the moment things were pretty bumpy with us. These
days Jack lost as much as he won, maybe more. He claimed stud poker was his game, but as we moved into bigger towns and classier joints, it became obvious that he was overmatched.

I had a talk with him, and he promised to stay away from bar bets and football handicapping. Poker, on the other hand, he didn’t consider gambling. It was, he insisted, a science.

Gambling was in his blood; he was like a drunk hiding bottles in the chandelier.

I wasn’t angry. He didn’t tell me deliberate lies, he meant what he said. But it was discouraging to watch the money disappear. I needed things; my shoes were run down at the heels. And I wanted a dress I’d seen in a store window.

On the other hand, you couldn’t be gloomy long around Jack. He was always good for a laugh. He whipped up a story for every occasion. Life to him was one big party, and if you were light on your feet and quick enough, you could keep ahead of the bad parts.

I
GOT
into the habit at night, before I slept, of asking Abram what I should do. Should I ditch Jack and get my baby?