The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  Mr. James told me later that the Dionnes had arrived with trunks and suitcases. Four of them! They told the Captain that they and the other children were moving in to our hospital and nursery. Where did they presume they were going to sleep? With us, in the nurses’ dormitory? I said that to Nurse Clouthier, only joking, of course, and she burst into tears.

  Happily, before things could get any more wild, Dr. Dafoe arrived and sent one of the constables to fetch Grandpapa Dionne, who of course is one of the official guardians—at least for now. He managed to talk some sense into his son, and they eventually dragged their trunks back to the truck and drove them the hundred yards back to their own home.

  I’m not without empathy for the Dionnes. They must feel completely fed up with the government and doctors telling them what they can and cannot do. But the fact remains, the girls are still very young and we can’t know whether their immune systems are hardy. I truly believe we are doing the right thing by the Dionne family, but to hear them shout and curse at us, you’d think we were devils from the darkest corner of hell. In fact, Mme. Dionne may have used precisely those words on Monday.

  It doesn’t end there, however. That very night, and again yesterday, there’ve been strange noises at night. Nurse Garnier heard something first, of course, and came to wake me, the poor thing trembling like she’d seen a ghost. But we’ve all heard it now: knocking and tapping at the doors and windows at two, three, and four in the morning. Nurse Garnier is scared absolutely rigid. Yesterday I spotted a paring knife in the pocket of her uniform when we sat down to breakfast, so I confronted her about it. She can’t be having kitchen knives jangling around in her pocket when she’s lifting Annette out of her crib or changing Em’s diaper. The upshot is, we’ve learned that a third constable will be coming from Callander tonight so that there will be one man at the front door and another at the back at all times, with the third watchman patrolling the grounds. They are also going to extend the perimeter fence by another two feet. It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? Three burly men to “guard” five babies, four nurses, and two housekeepers. But I do think we will all sleep easier tonight.

  Now, on that note, are you excited to be coming out for the week? I hope I haven’t frightened you off.

  Lots of love,

  Ivy

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  March 27, 1935 (North Bay Nugget)

  * * *

  DR. A. R. DAFOE, OLIVA DIONNE APPOINTED QUINTET GUARDIANS

  TORONTO, Ontario—The Dionne Bill received the assent of His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor today, a special visit being made to the Legislature in order to give final enactment to the measure.

  David A. Croll, Ontario Minister of Public Welfare, is made a special guardian of the babies and the bill gives him power to appoint active guardians. These, he has announced, will be Oliva Dionne, father of the famous girls, and Dr. A. R. Dafoe, their physician.

  Control of the babies’ persons and finances is vested in the minister, and he must approve all contracts regarding the babies. Contracts previously not approved are rendered null and void.

  The bill makes the quintuplets “special wards of His Majesty the King” until they reach the age of 18.

  Used with permission.

  March 30, 1935

  Back at St. Joe’s for the last six weeks of my program. I can’t wait to be finished. I’ll work at the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery for as long as they’ll have me! Dr. Dafoe confirmed yesterday that I will have a place on staff as soon as I’m finished, replacing Nurse Clouthier.

  What an extraordinary week to have spent at the nursery. The weekend was relatively quiet. We didn’t see a whisker of the Dionnes, not even for Mass on Sunday, which is unheard of with Madame, who Ivy says insists on sitting with the babies when Father Routhier comes by the nursery each Sunday morning. This meant we had the girls to ourselves, bright-eyed and full of smiles. And Em started crawling while I was there! She is the last to do so. On Saturday morning in the playroom, with me sitting on the floor a few feet away from her, she pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. After swaying there for a bit, she fixed me with a very serious expression, then started toward me. Her face when she’d made it that short distance broke out into a huge smile, and she crumpled herself headfirst onto my lap. It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Then, Wednesday morning, the news we’d been waiting for. The guardianship of the quintuplets has been formally extended by seventeen years, wards of the crown until their eighteenth birthday, with four appointed guardians, including Dr. Dafoe, and M. Dionne, who will be replacing his father. I can’t help but think of the senior M. Dionne as a more measured and fair representative, but effective immediately, M. Dionne junior will have a one-quarter say. He has no allies among the others, however. He and the doctor are scarcely speaking these days, despite the fact that the doctor’s only concern is the fragile health of the babies. The other two men are the welfare minister Mr. Croll, and Mr. Valin, a francophone judge from North Bay.

  “Does this mean the girls will stay living here, at the Dafoe Nursery?” Ivy asked the Captain.

  Nurse de Kiriline gave a curt nod. “That is the current plan,” she said, “but the act also carries the provision that the quintuplets will be reunited with their family at such a time as their health and well-being are stable enough to allow integration.”

  I glanced around the cheerful dining room, with its smooth white walls and tall windows. Ivy and the other nurses have hung bright paintings of animals and sea creatures, and the early-morning sun making its way into the room gave everything a warm glow.

  As for the rest of the week, everything ticked along so nicely. Mr. Davis came at 10:00 A.M. every day to take his photographs of the babies. He was charming with both me and Ivy equally, which is kind of him, because it’s no secret where his interests lie. He and Ivy are very familiar with one another now, after all these months of mornings together. Mr. Davis can be a bit of a tease, or maybe that’s what all men are like in the city? I’ve no idea. He asked me whether I’d found myself a handsome doctor up at St. Joseph’s who was going to whisk me away from the Dafoe Nursery before I’d even managed to properly come back. I blushed so deeply my birthmark must have been pulsing blue-black. Fortunately Ivy came to my rescue.

  “Mr. Davis! You should be ashamed of yourself. You can’t be talking that way in front of these young ladies.” She was referring, of course, to the five babies scrambling around on their hands and knees and getting up to all sorts of mischief if you didn’t keep an eye on them, all of them, every minute of the day. She might just as well have been talking about me, however. I don’t think I said more than five words to a doctor at the hospital that weren’t directly related to our lessons. And I know for a fact not one of them noticed me.

  Dr. Dafoe and the Captain are still insisting that the babies nap outdoors, at least when the sun is shining, bundled up against the cold. But under no circumstances is naptime to be disturbed by people rattling at the fence. Instead, the doctor has announced that visitors may tour through the Dafoe Nursery, from the front door to the back, in order to catch a glimpse of the babies playing through the two large interior windows separating the corridor from the nursery. I had assumed these were placed in order to allow more light into the corridor. Now I wonder if Dr. Dafoe hadn’t anticipated the need to accommodate curious visitors back when the nursery and hospital were in their earliest planning stages.

  It is the strangest thing. There must be two or three hundred visitors per day pulling up in cars having driven from heaven knows where to see the quintuplets. And more are arriving by train. George Leroux, Ivy’s father, has quit his job at the mill and has started a taxi service charging people fifty cents to drive from the Callander train station out to the nursery and back again, making dozens of trips a day. Visitors now come shuffling through the doors during playtime, peering through the windows at us, pointing and gasping at the slightest thi
ng. The guards on duty tell them in no uncertain terms that they must not tap at the windows, or call out to the girls, or make any funny faces to get their attention, but many do it anyway. It seems it’s impossible to get them to stop.

  The girls notice, of course, and are distracted from their capers. Today a tall, lumpy woman in a green dress, which made her look like a string bean, had to be pried away from the window by one of the policemen after she locked eyes with Annette and started sobbing, inconsolably.

  “Ba-ba-bah,” Annette mumbled, pointing at the woman. When her sisters ignored her, she crawled to the chair where I was sitting and tugged at the hem of my skirt, repeating herself more urgently. “Ba-ba-bah!”

  We’ve all commented that the girls play differently when there are no prying eyes. They smile more and are calmer. We, too, no doubt. For my part, I try to find tasks to do outside the playroom during observation hours. I hate the idea of so many strangers seeing my birthmark and commenting on it, wondering how someone who looks like me could be allowed to work with these miraculous babies.

  Everyone who visits takes a stone, just as Ivy told me. Dr. Dafoe has arranged for the eldest Dionne child to be paid ten cents to fill a bucket with little stones each morning, and it is positioned at the back door of the nursery along with a sign that says GOOD LUCK STONES. And sure enough, people are helping themselves to the pebbles when they leave. Mother and Father finally came out to the nursery to see the babies. I didn’t walk with them through the observation corridor, but Ivy and I popped out to see them when they had passed through. Father was in good humor for a change. He helped himself to a stone and passed it to Mother, saying, “We all could use a bit more luck now, couldn’t we?”

  Mother was still exclaiming about the nursery and all of its modern conveniences—I think she was more impressed by the kitchen than she was by the babies—but she dropped the stone in her purse.

  “You might find those stones bring you more than good luck,” Ivy said, her brown eyes twinkling. I elbowed her in the ribs. Father gave her a strange look, but I shooed them toward the front gate, where other townsfolk were climbing back into Mr. Leroux’s bus.

  Back in my tiny room at the dormitory, I’m still wearing my winter coat in the hope that my room will warm up—a lost cause. I think I’ll need to leave off my writing and climb into bed. I’m fed up with winter and ready for spring. It’s snowing again outside, fat, heavy flakes that look like they might turn to rain by morning. Or that’s the hope.

  May 15, 1935

  I’M FINISHED! GRADUATION is not till the end of the month, but I’ve already started on a regular schedule out at the Dafoe Nursery. It is so, so good to be with the girls and working with Ivy again, almost every single day.

  All of the babies took ill last month—Marie quite seriously: she needed a mustard plaster—but they are busy as a hive of ants again now, crawling to and fro and causing no end of trouble.

  The Captain has put a stop to the visitors tramping through the nursery to peek at the girls. Ivy says it was getting ridiculous, with hordes of visitors tracking grime and contagion into the building.

  This is the strategy the Captain has devised to keep the public happy, without unduly disturbing the babies. Four times a day, before we put them out to nap on the private porch and before we bring them back in, we detour out the front door and hold the babies up, each with a sign bearing her name, one after the other. The times for the showings are posted on a big clock out on the road, and visitors must stay on the other side of the fence. The distance is not so great that people complain, but it is far enough that the babies are not quite so discomfited as they were by the taps and calls on the windows right above their heads in the playroom.

  It’s a perfect solution. If all of the girls are already getting dozy, or they’ve all had a good nap, we take each one in turn and display her to the crowds that are inevitably waiting at the scheduled time. The other day I was concerned that Marie’s infection was returning, and both Émilie and Cécile, too, seemed very out of sorts—the last thing I wanted to do was send them out to be displayed to the mob out front.

  “No matter,” said Ivy. She gathered up Annette and all five of the signs and stepped out on the porch five times, always with Annette, but with a different name on the sign each time.

  When she came back in the fifth time with Annette blinking in her arms, we both were biting back our laughter in case the Captain had seen what she’d done. But when we glanced at Nurse de Kiriline, we could see that she’d put two and two together and she had a sparkle in her eyes. She’s under no small amount of stress, keeping everything running shipshape here. I was pleased to see we’d actually given her something to smile about.

  May 17, 1935

  THE CAPTAIN REFUSED to allow the Dionnes up on the porch today when the quintuplets were asleep in their prams—their outdoor nap is a medical necessity, as far as the doctor is concerned. The exchange turned very ugly, and one of the constables had to step in and escort the Dionnes off the property. All of the babies woke up and started crying. Marie and Cécile settled back down to sleep, but we had to bring the others indoors.

  May 20, 1935

  IT’S HARD TO believe that the babies’ first birthday is just around the corner! If someone had told me last June that this day would come, and that all five babies would be here to celebrate it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Gifts have been arriving for the girls from all over the world. It’s astounding. King George and Queen Mary sent five sterling silver rattles emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. President Roosevelt sent a set of five wooden cars with wheels that swivel, all of them in different colors. We nurses have spent hours rolling these around and pretending to crash them into one another, which sends the girls into peals of laughter. Then there were gifts of clothes and candy and toys that have come from people near and far, rich and poor. One little girl drew a birthday card and sent it with a nickel, saying she had nothing else to spare.

  How do we know all of this, when the birthday is still a week away? In fact, we’ve celebrated early. The girls are none the wiser, of course, but the world is so eager to see and read the news of the quintuplets that Dr. Dafoe arranged for Fred Davis, two dozen reporters, and the newsreel people to come early, so that the papers can run the news and photographs on the day itself. So we had cake, presents, and dignitaries last week. The Dionne parents came across, and Mr. Davis took roll after roll of photos. It must be said, the girls looked happier crawling over Dr. Dafoe than they did their own mother and father, who scarcely mustered a smile for the cameras.

  Needless to say, tensions remain thick between the Captain and the Dionnes. My guess is the papers will want to run the photos of “the Quints,” as they’ve started calling them, clambering all over the doctor or puzzling over their presents. It’s sad, but the frowning Dionne parents likely won’t be pictured at all.

  May 22, 1935

  THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY thing today: I painted the girls. I held a paintbrush, its tip as soft as a lock of hair from Émilie’s head. I dipped it in paints and dabbed it on a palette. I mixed thirty shades of skin and forty shades of sky. A year ago, what I wanted most in the world was to leave school and become an artist—a total delusion, I realize now. And yet there I was, not an artist by any stretch, but sitting in a warm, bright room, steps from those I love, dotting my brush at a canvas and thinking that maybe, just maybe, dreams can come true.

  I will read this later and roll my eyes until they fall out of my head, but I won’t think of that now. Here’s what happened.

  Today the girls had a much quieter day, although it was all the more thrilling for me. The famous American painter Maud Tousey Fangel visited this morning. She is to be the official artist of the quintuplets, if you can believe it. To be honest, I’d never heard her name before the Captain explained who she was—she is the painter responsible for all of the portraits you see on the covers of Ladies’ Home Journal and Woman’s Home Companion. She’s also painte
d the babies for Colgate’s talc powder, Squibb cod-liver oil, and Cracker Jack. It never occurred to me that those paintings were done by a woman, but of course, now it’s been explained to me, it makes so much sense. How could a man have painted anything quite so sweet?

  She brought paints and pastels to the nursery, but ended up using only her pastels during the visit. The quintuplets are so busy, clambering all over one another in pursuit of whatever toy they aren’t holding at that moment, or crawling over to Mrs. Fangel and trying to snatch at her supplies. None of us could have gotten them to sit still long enough to be painted.

  I should have expected it, but didn’t. When Dr. Dafoe was introducing Mrs. Fangel to the nurses, Ivy opened her big mouth and told her that I am also an artist and have been drawing the quintuplets since birth.

  “Emma, you should show Mrs. Fangel what they looked like when they were born,” Ivy said.

  I was mortified. I mumbled something about art being a hobby I don’t have much time for and was hoping to leave it at that.

  To my surprise, Dr. Dafoe chimed in and suggested that I show my scribble book to Mrs. Fangel in his office when she was taking a break from her sketching, so there was no way for me to wriggle out of it.

  Mrs. Fangel was so kind. She took her time leafing through my sketches, particularly the early ones.

  “They were so, so tiny, weren’t they?” she said, her finger hovering over the page as if tracing the lines I’d drawn. “You’ve really captured something here,” she said later. It was one of my sketches of Émilie and Marie curled around one another in the clunky old incubator. “You’ve caught their vulnerability and otherworldliness, haven’t you? You make us yearn for them, but also sense that we can’t quite touch them, they’re so frail.”