The Birth House (2 page)

part one

Around the year 1760, a ship of Scotch immigrants came to be wrecked on the shores of this place. Although the vessel was lost, her passengers and crew managed to find shelter here. They struggled through the winter—many taking ill, the women losing their children, the men making the difficult journey down North Mountain to the valley below, carrying sacks of potatoes and other goods back to their temporary home, now called Scots Bay.

In the spring, when all who had been stranded chose to make their way to more established communities, the daughter of the ship’s captain, Annie MacIssac, stayed behind. She had fallen in love with a Mi’kmaq man she called Silent Rare.

On the evening of a full moon in June, Silent went out in his canoe to catch the shad that were spawning around the tip of Cape Split. As the night wore on, Annie began to worry that some ill had befallen her love. She looked across the water for signs of him but found nothing. She walked to the cove where they had first met and began to call out to him, promising her heart, her fidelity and a thousand sons to his name. The moon, seeing Annie’s sadness, began to sing, forcing the waves inland, strong and fast, bringing Silent safely back to his lover.

Since that time, every child born from the Rare name has been male, and even now, when the moon is full, you can hear her voice, the voice of the moon, singing the sailors home.

A RARE FAMILY HISTORY
, 1850

1

E
VER SINCE
I
CAN REMEMBER
, people have had more than enough to say about me. As the only daughter in five generations of Rares, most figure I was changed by faeries or not my father’s child. Mother works and prays too hard to have anyone but those with the cruellest of tongues doubt her devotion to my father. When there’s no good explanation for something, people of the Bay find it easier to believe in mermaids and moss babies, to call it witchery and be done with it. Long after the New England Planters’ seed wore the Mi’kmaq out of my family’s blood, I was born with coal black hair, cinnamon skin and a caul over my face.
A foretelling. A sign.
A gift that supposedly allows me to talk to animals, see people’s deaths and hear the whisperings of spirits. A charm for protection against drowning.

When one of Laird Jessup’s Highland heifers gave birth to a three-legged albino calf, talk followed and people tried to guess what could have made such a creature. In the end, most people blamed me for it. I had witnessed the cow bawling her calf onto the ground. I had been the one who ran to the Jessups’ to tell the young farmer about the strange thing that had happened.
Dora talked to ghosts, Dora ate bat soup, Dora slit the Devil’s throat and flew over the chicken coop.
My classmates chanted that verse between the slats of the garden gate, along with all the other words their parents taught them not to say. Of course, there are plenty of schoolyard stories about Miss B. too, most of them ending with,
if your cat or your baby goes missing, you’ll know where to find the bones.
It’s talk like that that’s made us such good friends. Miss B. says she’s glad for gossip. “It keep folks from comin’ to places they don’t belong.”

Most days I wake up and say a prayer.
I want, I wish, I wait for something to happen to me.
While I thank God for all good things, I don’t say this verse to Him, or to Jesus or even to Mary. They are far too busy to be worrying about the affairs and wishes of my heart. No, I say my prayer more to the air than anything else, hoping it might catch on the wind and find its way to anything, to something that’s mine. Mother says,
a young lady should take care with what she wishes for.
I’m beginning to think she’s right.

Yesterday was fair for a Saturday in October—warm, with no wind and clear skies—what most people call
fool’s blue.
It’s the kind of sky that begs you to sit and look at it all day. Once it’s got you, you’ll soon forget whatever chores need to be done, and before you know it, the day’s gone and you’ve forgotten the luck that’s to be lost when you don’t get your laundry and yourself in out of the cold. Mother must not have noticed it…before breakfast was over, she’d already washed and hung two baskets of laundry and gotten a bushel of turnips ready for Charlie and me to take to Aunt Fran’s. On the way home, I spotted a buggy tearing up the road. Before the thing could run us over, the driver pulled the horses to a stop, kicking up rocks and dust all over the place. Tom Ketch was driving, and Miss Babineau sat in the seat next to him. She called out to me, “Goin’ out to Deer Glen to catch a baby and I needs an extra pair of hands. Come on, Dora.”

Even though I’d been visiting her since I was a little girl (stopping by to talk to her while she gardened, or bringing her packages up from the post), I was surprised she’d asked me to come along. When my younger brothers were born and Miss B. came to the house, I begged to stay, but my parents sent me to Aunt Fran’s instead. Outside of watching farmyard animals and a few litters of pups, I didn’t have much experience with birthing. I shook my head and refused. “You should ask someone else. I’ve never attended a birth…”

She scowled at me. “How old are you now, fifteen, sixteen?”

“Seventeen.”

She laughed and reached out her wrinkled hand to me. “Mary-be. I was half your age when I first started helpin’ to catch babies. You’ve been pesterin’ me about everything under the sun since you were old enough to talk. You’ll do just fine.”

Marie Babineau’s voice carries the sound of two places: the dancing, Cajun truth of her Louisiana past and the quiet-steady way of talk that comes from always working at something, from living in the Bay. Some say she’s a witch, others say she’s more of an angel. Either way, most of the girls in the Bay (including me) have the middle initial of
M,
for Marie. She’s not a blood relative to anyone here, but we’ve always done our part to help take care of her. My brothers chop her firewood and put it up for the winter while Father makes sure her windows and the roof on her cabin are sound. Whenever we have extra preserves, or a loaf of bread, or a basket of apples, Mother sends me to deliver them to Miss B. “She helped bring all you children into this world, and she saved your life, Dora. Brought your fever down when there was nothing else I could do. Anything we have is hers. Anything she asks, we do.”

As I pulled myself up to sit next to her, she turned and shouted to Charlie, “Tell your mama not to worry, I’ll have Dora home for supper tomorrow.” We sat tight, three across the driver’s seat, with a falling-down wagon dragging behind.

Miss B. began to question Tom, her voice calm and steady. “How’s your mama sound?”

“Moanin’ a lot. Then every once in a while she’ll hold her belly and squeal like a stuck pig.”

“How long she been that way?”

“It started first thing this morning. She was moonin’ around, sayin’ she couldn’t squat to milk the goat, that it hurt too much. Father made her do it anyways, said she was being lazy…then he made her muck the stalls too.”

“Is she bleedin’?”

Tom kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Not sure. All I know is, one minute she was standin’ in the kitchen, peelin’ potatoes, and then all of a sudden she was doubled right over. Father got angry with her, said he was hungry and she’d better get on with what she was doin’. When she didn’t, he shoves her down to the floor. After that, hard as she tried, she couldn’t stand on her own, so she just curled up and cried.” He gave a sharp whistle to the horses to keep them in the middle of the rutted road, his jaw set hard, like someone waiting to get punched in the gut. “She didn’t want me to bother you with it, said she’d be alright, but I never seen her hurtin’ so bad before. I came as soon as I could, as soon as he left to go down to my uncle’s place.”

“Will he stay out long?”

“More’n likely all night. Especially if they gets t’drinkin’, which they always do.”

Tom’s the oldest of the twelve Ketch children. He’s fifteen, maybe sixteen, I’d guess. I think about Tom from time to time, when I run out of dreams about the fine gentlemen in Jane Austen’s novels. He’s got a kind face, even when it’s filthy, and Mother always says she hopes he’ll find a way to make something of himself instead of turning out to be like his father, Brady. I can tell she prefers I not mention the Ketches at all. I think it makes her scared that I’ll not make something of myself and turn out to be like Tom’s mother, Experience.

The Ketch family has always lived in Deer Glen. It’s a crooked, narrow hollow, just outside of the Bay, twisting right through the mountain until you can see the red cliffs of Blomidon. No one here would claim it to be anything more than the dip in the road that lets you know you’re almost home. The land is too rocky and steep for farming and too far from the shore for making a life as a fisherman or a shipbuilder. Too far for a pleasant walk. The Ketches suffer along, selling homebrew from a still in the woods and making whatever they can from the hunters who come from away, men who hope to kill the white doe that’s said to live in the Glen. In deer season they block off the road, Brady at one end, his brother Garrett at the other. They stand, shotguns strapped to their backs, waiting to escort the trophy hunters who come from Halifax, the Annapolis Valley, and faraway places like New York and Boston. The Ketch brothers charge a pretty penny for their services, especially since they’re selling lies. It’s true, there’s been a white doe spotted on North Mountain, but it doesn’t live in Deer Glen. It lives in the woods behind Miss B.’s cabin, where she feeds it out of her hand, like a pet. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard her call to it on occasion, walking through the trees singing,
Lait-Lait, Lune-Lune.
Father said he saw it once, that she’s the colour of sweet Guernsey cream, with one corner of her rump faintly speckled. He came home with nothing that day and told Mother, “It would have been wrong to take it.” Shortly after, at a Sons of Temperance meeting, the men of the Bay all pledged never to kill it. They all agreed that there’s sin in taking the life of something so pure.

It was nearly dark when we got to the Ketch house, its clapboards loose and wanting for paint, the screen door left hanging. The inside wasn’t much better. A picked-over loaf of bread, along with pots, pans and empty canning jars were crowded together on the table, all needing to be cleared. Attempts had been made at keeping a proper house, but somehow the efforts had gone wrong, every time. The curtains were bright at the top, still showing white, with a cheerful flowered print. Halfway to the floor, little hands had worn stains into the fabric, and the ends were frayed from the tug and pull of cats’ claws. No matter how fresh and clean a start they may have had, the towels in the kitchen, the wallpaper and rugs, even the dress on the little girl who greeted us at the door, all showed the same pattern, their middles stained, their edges worn and dirty. The entire house smelled sour and neglected.

Experience Ketch was hunched over in her bed, clutching her belly. Her oldest daughter, Iris Rose, was standing next to her, dipping a rag in a bucket of water then offering it to her mother. Mrs. Ketch took the worn cloth and clenched it between her teeth, sucking and spitting while she rocked back and forth.

Miss B. sat on the edge of the bed and held Mrs. Ketch’s hand. She talked the woman through her pains enough to get her to sit up and drink some tea. The midwife wrapped her wrinkled fingers around Mrs. Ketch’s wrist, closed her eyes and counted in French. She pinched the ends of Mrs. Ketch’s fingertips and then pulled her eyelids away from her pink, teary eyes. “Your blood’s weak.” Miss B. pushed the blankets back and pulled up Mrs. Ketch’s bloodstained skirts. Her hands kneaded their way around the tired woman’s swollen belly, feeling over her stretched skin, making the sign of the cross. After washing her hands several times, she slipped her fingers between Mrs. Ketch’s legs and shook her head. “This baby has to come today.”

Mrs. Ketch moaned. “It’s too soon.”

“Your pains is too far gone and I can’t turn you back. If you don’t birth this child today, all your other babies don’t gonna have a mama.”

“I don’t want it.”

Iris Rose knelt by the bed and pleaded with her mother. “Please, Mama, do what she says.”

The girl’s much younger than me, twelve at the most, but she’s as much mother as she is child. From time to time she’ll show up at the schoolhouse, dragging as many of her brothers and sisters behind her as she can. She barks at the boys to take off their hats, scolds the girls as she tugs on their braids, making her voice as big and rough as an old granny’s. For all her trying, it always turns out the same. By the time the snow flies, the desks of the Ketch children are empty again.

Mrs. Ketch needs them home, I guess. I’ve heard that each of the older ones is assigned a little one to bathe, dress, feed and look after, so they don’t get lost in the clutter of a house filled with dirty dishes and barn cats. With six brothers of my own, I think I can say there’s such a thing as
too many.

When Mrs. Ketch’s wailing went on, Tom and the older boys disappeared out to the barn. With Iris Rose’s help, I tucked the rest of the children into an upstairs room. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest. “Now don’t you make another sound, or Daddy’ll come running through the hollow and up these stairs with an alder switch!” The room went quiet. Six small greasy heads went to the floor, six bellies breathed shallow and scared.

“Can I watch?” Iris Rose asked.

“If you promise not to say anything.”

“I’ll be silent. I swear.”

I left her on the stairs, peeking through the broken, crooked pickets of the banister.

Miss B. and I turned back the straw mattress and tied sheets to the bedposts. She tugged hard at them. “See now, Mrs. Ketch, you know what’s to do…when the time comes, you gots to hold on for dear life and push that baby out.” Miss B. motioned for me to steady Mrs. Ketch’s shaking knees. “And it’s comin’ fast and hard as high tide on a full moon.
Pousser!
”

Mrs. Ketch bent her chin to her chest, the veins on her neck throbbing. “Let me die, dear Lord. Please let me die.”

Miss B. laughed. “How many times you been through this, thirteen, fourteen? You should know by now, the Lord ain’t like most men, He ain’t gonna just take you home when you ask for it…”

Just last Sunday Reverend Norton went on and on about the trespasses of Eve, pounding his fist on the pulpit, his face all red and puffed up as he spit to the side between the words
original
and
sin.
While he talked at good length about the evils of temptation and the curse Eve had brought upon all women, he never mentioned the stink of it. I never imagined that “the woman’s tithe for the civilized world” would smell so rusted, so bitter.

I kept the fire in the stove going, unpacked clean sheets from Miss B.’s bag, did whatever she told me to do, but no matter how busy I made myself, my stomach ached and my hands felt heavy and useless. I don’t think my nervousness came from it being my first birth, or even from seeing such pain and struggle in a woman, but more from hearing the sadness, the wanting, in Mrs. Ketch’s cries. Nothing we did seemed to help. She sobbed and cursed, her wailing and Miss B.’s coaxing going on for an hour or more, I’d guess, or at least long enough for Mrs. Ketch to give up on a miracle and have a baby boy.