The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  The Dionne farmhouse is almost unrecognizable now. Nurse de Kiriline has had a second door cut into the back of the building so that the Dionne family can come and go from the upstairs room without tramping through the kitchen. Dr. Dafoe has declared the kitchen must remain off-limits to the other children because of the risk of germs.

  Outside, a rough shack has been thrown together next to the farmhouse as a dormitory for the nurses, and the fence around the property has been extended two feet higher to keep out nosy visitors. We still have no electricity—M. Dionne has flatly refused, even when the government offered to pay for it, calling it a fire hazard. Instead we must put up with the steady drumming of the generator, chugging away as if with a heartbeat of its own. The privy is still out back, but Nurse de Kiriline has insisted on having a water line brought to the kitchen to provide a steady supply for our kettles. Every single scrap of cotton, cloth, bib, or diaper that so much as touches one of the babies gets washed and boiled after the lightest use.

  Boss Number Two has brought to the nursery an almost military precision. Ivy and I have taken to calling her the Captain—although not to her face, of course. Ivy nearly got caught saluting her behind her back yesterday. She can put me in stitches with some of her funny faces and horseplay, but she wouldn’t dare do it in front of Nurse de Kiriline. The Captain has an accent and a clipped manner of speaking that make you feel as if she’s snipped off the second half of whatever it was she’d been about to say. She’ll tell you to do such and such a task, but she’ll say it so abruptly, with so little intonation, that you’ll linger for a moment expecting her to say more. Then you realize she is finished, and there you are, standing around like a half-wit rather than snapping to the job at hand.

  Ever since the uproar over the contract he signed with the Chicago promoters, Papa Dionne never pokes his head into our side of the farmhouse unless something is specifically needed of him. The entire country is furious with him, or that’s what you’d think if you read the papers or listened to all the people who keep arriving every day along this quiet stretch of road. Even Mme. Dionne, who was still on bed rest when she learned about the Chicago deal, went into such a fit we were worried she might not recover.

  When I’m not out at the farmhouse, I go into the post office to help Father, who is busier than ever because of all the mail arriving related to the Dionne babies. Many for M. Dionne simply say “To the Father of the Baby Girls,” but even more are addressed to Dr. Dafoe or “The Doctor of the Quintuplets.” I’ve seen postmarks from all over the continent. Father will punish me if he catches me peeping at any of the postcards, but truly, some of them are written in such large block letters, it’s impossible not to read them.

  “One read: ‘Dear Mr. Dionne: Time to get yourself sterilized. Enough is enough!’” I whispered to Ivy while we were hanging the endless sets of minuscule nighties and bonnets on the clotheslines, whole rows of diapers the size of handkerchiefs. “Another to Dr. Dafoe said: ‘Don’t you think it would be a good idea to castrate the father and sew up the mother so she cannot have more children?’” Ivy’s eyes bugged out of her head.

  “Gruesome!” She grinned. “But effective.”

  Others sent to Dr. Dafoe are urging him to seek the aid of authorities to help keep Mme. Dionne and her children “away from that brute of a man” and to protect the children—all of them. Because of course there are ten children in total—our five babies clinging to life in the makeshift nursery, plus the five other Dionne children crammed into the top floor of the farmhouse or sprinkled around the parish.

  As far as the Captain is concerned, the other Dionne children are a heavy cross to bear, screeching at top volume outside the windows, tearing through the charting quarters, or clattering around in the room above. It’s impossible for everyone. This evening there were seventeen people, including the children and babies, crowded into that creaky, sweltering farmhouse in the middle of a scorching Ontario summer, plus a crowd of strangers craning their necks outside. It would have been a laughable situation if the lives of those little girls weren’t on the line.

  Meanwhile, every hour of every day someone is trying to deliver something we haven’t ordered and rarely need: forty-eight rolls of Scotch cello tape, twenty tins of corn syrup, cases of soap and toilet tissue, Jake’s potato chips and Royal Crown soda—all donations or gifts from people who’ve seen the newsreels or read about the babies in the paper. Yesterday a man on a bicycle pedaled up to the front gate with, of all things, ten copies of the new Nancy Drew—as if any of us have time to read!

  No one can access the property without first getting past Grandpapa Dionne, and no one can enter the farmhouse kitchen—our nursery—without first being granted permission from Dr. Dafoe himself. He or she must then proceed directly to the washing station and don a special smock that we’ve bleached, boiled, and ironed before taking a single step in the nursery.

  M. and Mme. Dionne are the exceptions, of course: they are still required to wear the smocks, but they don’t need explicit permission to enter so long as they do so during the strict “visiting hours” set by the Captain. And the clincher: Dr. Dafoe has now informed the parents they are not allowed to actually touch the babies. Fearing fireworks, Ivy and I slipped out onto the porch when the doctor summoned the Dionnes to explain this new rule. The flimsy screen door filtered out none of Oliva Dionne’s outrage.

  “Non,” he bellowed. “Non! This, this, I will not allow.”

  Mme. Dionne murmured something in French that I couldn’t catch, likely a plea for translation from her husband—I could hear the arc of confusion in her tone. Sure enough, he launched into a blistering rendition, in French, of the doctor’s latest decree, padded with complaints about “les anglophones” who put more stock in expensive medicines and machines than they do in God’s will and a mother’s love. His words were loud enough that the reporters and photographers slouched against the fence line all straightened themselves up and craned their heads closer, like antennae. Inside the kitchen, I heard the floorboards creak and imagined the broad, round shape of Madame, inching away from her husband’s spluttering.

  But perhaps it was Mme. Dionne herself stepping forward to Dr. Dafoe, because she raised her trembling voice and spoke in a tone I hadn’t heard from her before, pleading, but resolute. “Docteur, docteur, je vous prie. Mes bébés. Mes trésors . . .”

  I was watching Ivy and saw a look cross her face: a flash of feeling for Mme. Dionne. Elzire Dionne is a simple woman, finally on her feet again and baffled by the swirl of her own life these past few weeks, by the commotion in her home, by the efforts being expended to save these five girls. The papers say she had had only a few years of schooling and married M. Dionne when she was just sixteen—younger than I am now. Also, that she had already lost a baby boy, Léo, to pneumonia, four years ago. I can’t imagine changing places with her, but nor, I’m sure, can she understand why all of the young women bustling about her farmhouse aren’t back in their own kitchens, fussing over their own babies.

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Mrs. Dionne, Mr. Dionne. Please understand. This is temporary, but compulsory.” He paused, and, after a moment, M. Dionne spat out the words in French for his wife one at a time, his voice calmer now, but seething. The doctor continued. “As soon as it is safe, as soon as the babies show any sign of thriving, I assure you, they will be yours to have and hold.”

  The screen door flew open then and M. Dionne burst out, slicing across the porch and down the steps in three long strides, his scrawny arms swinging through the air like cleavers.

  July 15, 1934

  M. DIONNE, SHOWING uncharacteristic concern, has rigged up a much bigger fuel tank for the generator and moved the whole clanking contraption closer to the road, all by himself. He’s phenomenally strong, for such a small man. Now Shell Oil Company’s bright yellow bowser comes along every morning and tops it up for free. The Red Cross has provided separate incubators for all of the babies and organized for a stea
dy supply of breast milk from hospitals in Toronto and Montreal. The little ones are putting on weight, ounce by precious ounce, Annette and Yvonne especially. But just as we start to get our hopes up, one or the other of them falls sick and scares the dickens out of all of us.

  Ivy and the Red Cross nurses, Marie Clouthier, Nancy Ellis, and Nurse de Kiriline, are all living in the cabin built for them on the Dionne property, rotating shifts around the clock. Every one of them is tired to the bone, and they seem to keep a kind of competitive distance, as if they are all vying for the approval of Dr. Dafoe.

  Only with me, I think, is Ivy able to simply be herself. She is always absolutely professional and would never think of goofing around with Annette or Marie in her arms. But if, for a moment, we have them all stowed away safely in their berths, fed and oiled, in fresh cottons, with a pause before the next one needs milk or changing, she will ask me to tell her a story or show her my scribble book, and we’ll be lifted out of our worries.

  The fact is, we are worried. Ivy is keeping a journal where she dutifully records the daily weights and heights, feeds and bowel movements for each of the girls. If Marie is a half ounce lighter, or Cécile’s diaper is clean when it shouldn’t be, we are all scared rigid. Also looming in our minds, Ivy’s especially, is just how long the nurses will be allowed to look after the babies. Not a day goes by without Mme. Dionne lumbering into the nursery outside of the strict visiting hours—typically when the Captain is getting some rest—and bedeviling us with questions. “They are stronger, yes? Today? I can hold them?”

  The doctor has explained to her again and again that the babies cannot yet be handled by anyone other than his staff. She simply doesn’t understand, her face crumpling, then twisting sour when she sees them in the arms of Ivy or the Captain. She contents herself by shuffling between the boxes that hold her daughters, muttering her prayers, and, when the Captain isn’t looking, sprinkling holy water on the glass tops of the incubators. We’ve also seen her knitting five darling little cardigans and bonnets in the softest pink: I shudder to think how she’ll react when she’s finished all five and is forbidden from dressing the girls.

  Ivy says M. Dionne has sent the hundred dollars back to the Chicago businessmen, but it’s not clear whether the contract is still in place. Twice today, Dr. Dafoe huffed down the steps from the kitchen and stood in the yard surrounded by newspapermen with an air of studied chagrin, his thumbs hooked into the armholes of his waistcoat, elbows jutting, looking every bit like an owl swaying gloomily on his perch. He’s telling anyone who asks—and many who don’t—that any contract involving the girls requires his sign-off and that’s something he’ll never give. It still has us worried.

  My world has shrunk, I realize that. I have no interest in anything happening outside the sweltering farmhouse, despite the snorts and exclamations from Father at the breakfast table, his newspaper rustling over his oatmeal. He says there’s a madman politician in Germany, blithely murdering his political opponents, and Babe Ruth has hit seven hundred home runs. I couldn’t care less.

  July 27, 1934 (The Globe)

  * * *

  ROEBUCK BREAKS QUINTUPLETS CHICAGO CONTRACT: ORDER OBTAINED FOR GUARDIANS OF DIONNE BABIES

  Grandfather, Doctor Are Named Among Those Looking After Infants

  NORTH BAY, Ontario—Acting in his function as “parens patriae”—father of the people—Ontario Attorney General Mr. Arthur Roebuck has obtained, through a North Bay solicitor, a judicial order appointing guardians for the quintuplets and so has defeated the “perfidious contract” which the father, Oliva Dionne of Corbeil, was induced to sign when the babies were four days old.

  The order effectively removes the quintuplets from the custody of their parents and into government care.

  Under the contract, the whole Dionne family was to be placed on exhibition at the fair, with Mr. Dionne receiving 23 per cent of the takings. Seventy per cent was to go to the Chicago tour bureau and 7 per cent to Rev. Father Daniel Routhier of Corbeil, as “personal manager” of the family. Mr. and Mrs. Dionne already have five other children.

  Efforts to defeat the contract have been under way up North, but with no success until now. The Children’s Aid Society found itself unable to step in, since there was no evidence of neglect, and finally W. H. Anderson, Red Cross chief in the North, personally brought the problem to the Attorney General. Lightning action brought appointment of the guardians who consist of Mr. Anderson, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe of Callander, who has been in charge of the babies since birth, Kenneth Morrison, Callander Merchant, and Oliver Dionne, grandfather of the quintuplets. They now have charge of the babies and can and will manage their well-being going forward, starting with the prevention of their removal to Chicago.

  “If exploiters from American cities come to Canada to pull off this sort of racket, they need not expect the Attorney-General’s office or the courts to stand idly by,” Roebuck said. “Lives of children are of bigger concern in Canada than the profits of a vaudeville troupe who are playing with the lives of defenceless infants in the name of money.”

  Used with permission.

  July 28, 1934

  The babies are two months old today—it’s impossible to imagine them reaching the age of two, which according to the newspapers is the age they must reach before the Ontario government transfers their care back to their parents. Any pretense of civility between M. Dionne and Dr. Dafoe has now evaporated. To the nursing staff, M. Dionne’s manner has been more unpredictable than ever, at times wheedling and, at others, menacing. It’s a hopeless situation. The babies can’t be moved—their health is so precarious—but the Dionnes are making it abundantly clear: we are not welcome in their home.

  July 31, 1934

  DR. DAFOE TOLD us yesterday that the government has at last approved the construction of a special hospital and nursery for the quintuplets right across the street. Not a day later, an army of young men descended on this quiet street, taking measurements and breaking ground on a stretch of land on the other side of the road. Ivy has been watching them from time to time, teasing me, saying I might find myself a beau if I took a moment to stand on the porch and watch them toiling in the sun. I won’t be drawn. All I care about is that the new hospital be clean and fresh, so that the nurses won’t have to feel like they are squatters on the Dionne homestead. The biggest problems here are the noise and the dirt, the horseflies and deerflies, the prying crowds, and the wind, hot and wicked, whistling through every crack and seam of this rickety house as if it, too, was trying to run off with a good story. The girls are so frail, they take a turn for the worse with the slightest disturbance.

  “But if they are building a special hospital, this must mean that Dr. Dafoe believes the babies will survive,” I said to Ivy. She merely chewed her lower lip and looked worried. “It’s too soon to know,” she said quietly. “No one can know if they’ll make it or not.”

  August 4, 1934

  OUT OF NOWHERE, a gift for Ivy.

  The girls’ guardians have decided they need to secure a steady income for the babies while limiting some of the hoo-ha caused by the dogged press photographers who surround the farmhouse from dawn to dusk. They’ve hired an official photographer for the quintuplets. Under the deal, the Star newspaper will have exclusive Canadian rights to photograph the quintuplets and to sell the photos in the United States via the Newspaper Enterprise of America.

  The Captain gathered the nurses, the two hired girls, the orderly, and me on the porch to deliver the news and explain the implications. It was clear from her tone that she disapproved.

  “A more unusual situation you are unlikely to encounter again,” she began, blinking at us reproachfully. “Effective immediately, the only person permitted to photograph the quintuplets is Mr. Fred Davis.”

  I heard Ivy exhale softly, as if she’d been holding her breath. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her ducking her head, smiling.

  The Captain was straining to purse her lips together,
looking at each of us in turn. The shrill chirring of the cicadas seemed to swell in the silence until she spoke again. “This rule extends to any other photographer rapping at the door and telling us he is from the Star newspaper, and it extends equally to the parents and other family members. No one is permitted to take photographs of the babies, with the exception of Mr. Davis.

  “To be clear,” she continued, her voice rising. “The health of the babies at all times supersedes any requests of the photographer. He cannot ask for one of the girls to be taken from her bed in order to be photographed. But during feedings and the routine course of care, Mr. Davis may take his pictures.” She sniffed. “Mr. Davis, I’m told, will be moving from Toronto to North Bay, later this month.”

  I raised an eyebrow in Ivy’s direction, but she either ignored me or didn’t see it. When we all realized, three seconds too late, that the Captain had finished her speech, we trooped back indoors and there was no chance for me to talk to Ivy. Later, when we had a moment to ourselves, she couldn’t be drawn. We have joked about the film-star looks of the big-city photographer for most of the summer, and I’d teased her (harmlessly I thought) about the photographs he’d taken of her on the porch. But now, it seemed, he was stepping out of the pages of a magazine and into our day-to-day lives.

  August 10, 1934

  DR. DAFOE, AT Ivy’s urging, has arranged for me to be accepted into the nursing program at North Bay, all of my tuition paid by a new scholarship in Dr. Dafoe’s name. I can’t quite believe it. Me, a nurse! I am wishing I’d paid more attention in my science classes. It is a one-year program, not the three years of training that the Red Cross nurses were required to obtain, but there is more and more demand these days for practical nurses, Ivy says. Plus, Dr. Dafoe has arranged for me to continue to help out with the quintuplets as part of my training requirements. I’m pinching myself.