The Birth House. Ami McKay

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СКАЧАТЬ the job, it looks like all the houses in the Bay have settled in giant bird’s nests, ready to roost for the winter. Uncle Irwin and Aunt Fran pay to have neat, tight bales stacked around their house. Others swear by spruce bows all heaped up on the west side, facing the water. Father says he’s too smart to waste good hay and that the porcupines’ll clean the needles off the spruce in one meal, so we’re stuck doing things the hard way.

      At least the twins, Forest and Gord, are big enough to help this year. Even though they’ve turned eight, they still act like whimpering puppies, forever tugging at my sleeves, following me, calling my name. Every day we walk the Three Brooks Road, the same round loop. Past Laird Jessup’s place, then down along the pastures and the deep little spot where the brooks all meet, then on around to school. Sometimes we go down to the beach to play, or out to the wharf to fetch Father, who always takes us back on the other side, the Sunday side of the loop. Up to the church, then on past Aunt Fran’s place, up to Spider Hill and home again. Boys ahead and boys behind. I’m the only girl stuck in the middle of six boys who spend most of their days poking, laughing and wrestling together as they trip and drag their muddy boots through my life.

      Mother says I shouldn’t complain. She’s got her own rounds to make. Up before dawn, down to the kitchen, out to the barn, back to the kitchen, down to Aunt Fran’s, over to the church, back to her kitchen. She holds the boys close to her every chance she gets. They wiggle and roll their eyes as she kisses the tops of their messy heads. She sighs as she lets them go, watching them run off to play “Things aren’t as certain as they used to be.” She’s not talking about their age or the fact that they’re always outgrowing their shoes. It’s the war, she means to say, but won’t. It’s the war that she’s afraid of, that’s got her wondering how long she can keep her boys at home, that has us listening to gossip and reading headlines and moving in circles, as if we might cast a spell of sameness to keep the rest of the world away.

      Banking the house took so long that I was late getting to Miss B.’s. I have been visiting her every Saturday since we buried dear little Darcy. It’s a relief to get to her door, to sit at her kitchen table, to be able to breathe and sigh and even weep over my small, blue memory of him. I’ve told the tale only once, to Mother. When I came to the part where Mrs. Ketch refused the child, it was all she could do not to shake and cry all over me. Instead, she held her breath, closed her eyes and whispered, “God forgive, God bless.” Although I can still feel the weight of his body in the crook of my arm, I won’t put her through hearing of it again. She wasn’t there; she doesn’t need to know how much it still comes to my mind. And now there’s no one else to tell. Father wouldn’t know what to say. He’d be angry with me for bringing it up at all. My dear cousin, Precious, though she hangs on every word of a good story, is still Aunt Fran’s child … any news that’s ugly or sad is not allowed in their house: words of sensation and death leave a sinful mark on the walls of a good christian home. (Aunt Fran prefers to carry her gossip under her hat and deliver it to everyone else’s door.)

      I’m Miss B.’s only guest on Saturdays, or any other day of the week. I’m the only person in all of Scots Bay who dares make a friendly call to the old midwife. As a child, I was always happy when Mother had reason to send me to Miss B.’s cabin, happy to walk down the old logging road, away from Three Brooks Road and our house full of boys, happy just to sit with her in her garden, or in her kitchen filled with, as she says, “things to make you wonder.” A tarnished, round looking-glass hangs by the door. Jars and bottles of herbs, salves and tinctures line her cupboards. Feathered wings are tacked up over the door and every window. Crow, sparrow, dove, hawk, owl. One large, dark wooden crucifix hangs over her bed, while the rest of the two-room log cabin—every wall, shelf or tabletop—is covered with tallow candles and a thousand Marys. I did my best not to ask questions, but if she spotted me staring at something, she’d be quick to recite a verse or sing a song about whatever it was. (Although sometimes she’d just smile and say, “Never mind that just now, Dora. If I told you, you’d never believe.”)

      It’s long been understood that, unless you’re a woman who’s expecting, or you’ve got an ailment that can’t be cured, you’re better off not to bother with her. Never break bread with midwives or witches; your skin’ll soon crawl with boils, hives and itches. I don’t know who’s worse about spreading such rumours, schoolyard tattletales or the ladies who run the White Rose Temperance Society. Those women never give Marie Babineau more than three words about the weather, some cold today, fog comin’ in, strong south wind … They’re careful not to form their words into a question or to invite her into their conversations. They ignore her gap-toothed smile and never look twice at her brown, wrinkled face. They spread loudmouthed gossip about the green stink they say comes from her breath and “out every wine-soaked pore of her body.” Aunt Fran says it’s like soured, mouldy cabbage. Mrs. Trude Hutner argues, “I’d say it’s more like a wet dog that’s been nosing around a skunk.” Most of the Ladies of the White Rose don’t have babies underfoot anymore, so they feel they haven’t any need for Miss B. Along with their age, comfortable size and the scattered prickly hairs sticking from their chins, they’ve forgotten Miss B.’s sweetness and everything she’s done for them. They forget that when you’re close to her, eye to eye, she smells as honest and kind as the better parts of hand-picked herbs and fresh-ground spices. Her sighs are full of lavender, ginger and fresh-brewed coffee … her laughter leaves hints of chicory, pepper and clove.

      Always keep at least three pots on the stove. One for tea, one for the simples and one for coffee with blue sailors. “You know I never touch the coffee but my one cup that gets me goin’ of a morning. Any more’n that and I gets the jumps,” she says as she bounces in her rocking chair. “I only lets it go on sim-merin’ ‘cause I like the black, grumbling smell of it. Brings a man to mind, it does.”

      She makes a great show when I visit—fussing over her iron pots and teacups, serving lavender tea and beignets, each one a plump, warm square of sugar-coated heaven melting on my tongue. I’m grateful (in the most selfish way) that no other fingers are pinching at the chipped, yellowing edge of Miss B.’s best serving plate every Saturday afternoon. No, the Ladies of the White Rose, who once called on her to birth their babies and cure their ills, politely ignore the river of stories that sit ready on her every breath. They are deaf to her wise, loose chatter, peppered with lazy French and the diddle diddle dees of Acadian folk songs.

      Miss Babineau’s great-grandfather Louis Faire LeBlanc was the last baby to be born before the British drove his family and the rest of the Acadians from their settlement along the dyke lands of Grand Pre. Miss B. sighs and clutches the mass of rosary beads twisted around her neck whenever she speaks of it. “The precious seeds of Acadie were scattered across the earth, the names LeBlanc, Babineau, Landry, Comeau, all planted along the bayous with bayonets, ashes and blood.” Many died on the difficult journey to Louisiana, but little Louis Faire lived. “He grew to be a strong, fine man. Blessed by the Spirit. Called of angels, he was. The sick, the weary, them that was gone out of their heads … they all come to Louis Faire. A traiteur, he was. He put his hands on their heads and their bodies—lettin’ the prayers come down, right through his mouth, healin’ them. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Baby Jesus. Thank the Father in Heaven. Amen.”

      At seventeen (the same age I am now), Miss B. was visited by Louis Faire in a dream. He spoke to her, telling her that God had chosen her to take the sacred gifts of the traiteurs back to his homeland. The dream lasted all through the night and into the next morning, her great-grandfather’s spirit whispering secret remedies and prayers of healing in her ears. When it was over, she began walking, leaving her family behind as she made her way from Louisiana to Acadie. No one is quite certain of how she ended up in Scots Bay instead of the fertile valley of her ancestors. All she will say is, “It was for Louis Faire that I came back to his homeland, but only God could make me live in Scots Bay.”

      Mother says Granny Mae once told her that Miss B. had had a vision, a visit from an angel, right here in the Bay. “When Marie СКАЧАТЬ