The Birth House. Ami McKay

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ year. How many babies were born in the Bay last year? I can think of three, at least. There was Mrs. Fannie Bartlett, and—”

      “Oh, you know, I can’t recall. I think she just laughed and said, ‘the usual.’ You know Miss B.”

      Mother went back to stirring a big pot of beans on the stove, wiping her brow as she inhaled the word yes.

      ~ November 16, 1916

      Never have I had so many things I couldn’t say out loud. At least my journal listens to the scribbling of my pen.

      When Dr. Thomas left Miss B.’s, his face was all flushed, looking like he wouldn’t be happy until he’d found a way to make Miss B. say she was wrong and he was right. I told her that I couldn’t bear to see her locked up behind bars, that maybe she should consider asking the women of the Bay to seek Dr. Thomas’s care from now on, but she just smiled and strung a single bead of jet on a string and hung it around my neck. “He ain’t gonna come back. There’s nothin’ out here for him. All the money’s down in town. Them people down there come to doctors with every little ache and pain. They empty their pockets right on the examinin’ table. Why’d he want cabbages and potatoes for pay, instead? Besides, a man who can’t drink my coffee straight ain’t got nerve enough to do me harm.”

      She’s probably right, but it hasn’t kept the nightmares away. It’s been the same one for the past three nights. First I’m dreaming I’m with Tom Ketch, and he’s looking down on me, gentle and sweet, like he might even kiss me. I close my eyes, but when I open them, Brady Ketch is holding me tight, his unkempt beard scratching against my cheek, his foul tongue pushing into my mouth. I try to scream and my voice won’t sound. I try to get away and my body goes limp, like I’ve got no bones, and then I’m falling, falling into the ground, into the dark, wet hole under the Mary tree. There’s moss and bones, leaves and skulls, potato bugs and worms. I can hear a baby crying. I dig through the muck until I find it. It’s Darcy, only this time he looks like the most perfect baby in the world. He’s pink and beautiful, plump and whole, his clear blue eyes staring up at me, waiting for me to take him home. When I go to reach for him, the Mary tree comes to life, her roots turning to arms as she pulls the baby up from under the moss. I call out to her, “I’ll take care of him this time, I promise.” She doesn’t speak; she just takes Darcy and starts to walk away. I cry out again, “Please, bring him back. I’ll take care of him.” I follow her, hoping that at least she’ll take him up to heaven, but she just keeps on going, walking out of the woods and down the mountain, until she’s standing at Dr. Thomas’s door.

      

      ~ November 20, 1916

      Tonight we strung apples to dry and made coltsfoot cough drops. Miss B. pulled what looked to be an old recipe book from the shelf and placed it on the table in front of me. “This here’s the Willow Book.” She closed her eyes and stroked its cracked leather cover. “For every home in Acadie that was burnt to the ground, there’s a willow what stands and remembers. By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. We put things here we don’t want to forget. The moon owns the Willow.” She untied the thick piece of twine that was holding its loose, yellowed pages together, thumbing through until she found what she was looking for. “Thank you, Sweet Mary. Here it is: coltsfoot. Some likes to call it the son-before-the-father ‘cause it sends up its flowers before the leaves. Just the thing for an angry throat. You write your name down in the corner of the page, Dora. So’s you remember to remember.”

      From the last apple, she made a charm, grinning and singing as she pared the peel away to form a long curling ribbon of red. “The snake told Eve to give Adam her apple, oooh, Dora, who gonna get yours?” She threw the peel over my left shoulder and then stooped on her hands and knees to study it. She crossed her chest, then drew a cross in the air. “Look at that … I sees a pretty little house, a fat silk purse and the strength of a hunter’s bow.”

      I bent down to join her. “What does it mean?”

      “Nothin’—not right now, anyways.” She patted my hand as I helped her to her feet. “You’ll knows it when it do.”

      I’d beg her to tell me more, but there’s no use in bothering Miss B. with questions. She’s said all she wanted to say. I suppose Tom Ketch is a hunter; he’s got to have a bow, living in Deer Glen and all … but there’s no pretty little house and not enough money to fill a thimble, let alone a silk purse. Miss B.’s never wrong about these things. She can tell a woman that she’s with child before the woman knows it herself. She can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, and the week the baby will arrive, most times getting it right down to the day. She can touch a person’s forehead, or hold their hand, and tell them what’s making them sick. So, even though she never said who, or even when, I can’t stop guessing at her clues and thinking over each word.

4

      THINKING 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 СКАЧАТЬ