Dollybird

by Anne Lazurko

  “My teacups,” Moira moaned as the dishes rattled in the cupboard again. “I can’t lose them.” I felt her body shaking.

  “It’ll be okay.” I said it like I knew what I was talking about. “I think it’s heading north.”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it,” she said, her voice a choked whisper.

  I reached across the small ones and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling awkward. What the hell did I know of comforting? Her muscles tensed and she shifted a little closer to me, Casey’s small bum pressing into the curve of my stomach. The wind slammed against the house again. Rain beat on the roof so hard I could hear it leaking into the room. I was almost getting used to the fury of the storm, and my fear. We lay there listening for the thunder after each flash of lightning. Gradually Casey’s breathing became even, and before long he was snoring lightly.

  “I think he’s asleep.” Moira sounded relieved.

  There was another long silence, the baby gurgling, and then I could feel Moira tensing to speak. “I’m sorry about Taffy,” she said quietly. “About what I said.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her apology. I’d never been offered one.

  “You loved her. You did what you thought was best.”

  “It wasn’t though. The best.”

  Casey turned toward me, grabbing at me with his tiny hands. I couldn’t say anything for the tears in my eyes, my throat working against the lump growing there. The wind seemed less bent on killing us now. There was a faint glow coming in the windows, and I knew it was almost dawn. I started to drift between wake and sleep.

  “I knew you wouldn’t hit me,” she said. “You’re a decent person, Dillan.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I believe you are.”

  CHAPTER 28

  i i i

  MOIRA

  A voice from outside pushed through the fog of sleep and I woke, struggling for breath against Dillan’s arm heavy across my neck. Casey started to wail. Dillan swore as he woke and quickly rolled out from under the bed, pulling Casey behind him, then reached back to take the baby from me. I squirmed out, my dress twisted above my thighs, and I pushed up on all fours. Silas was across the room trying not to look, holding up the door, which hung crookedly from the top hinge. He righted it and then came in to take the baby from Dillan.

  I straightened my dress and smoothed my hair, stupidly hoping to avoid the inevitable: the mess, the dirt floor transformed to mud by the rain, sod blown out of the windows, the soaked crib. The house smelled of dank earth and musty bedding.

  “Needs a bit of cleaning up, is all,” Dillan said.

  I barely heard him, my eyes fixed on the blue-and-white china fragments littering the cupboard top. I went over to it, something disintegrating inside as I gathered one small piece after another in my hands.

  “Maybe we can fix them...,” he said.

  I glared at him. “You wouldn’t let me save them.”

  “You needed to save the kids more than this junk.”

  I was suddenly hot with anger and shook my fist in Dillan’s face. I could have saved both.

  “It’s okay, Moira,” Silas said sharply. “You’re okay now.”

  He led me over to a chair and put the baby into my arms. In silence the two men picked up the remaining shards and piled them into the tin wash basin, still intact after the storm. Only the strong and ugly survive in this place, I thought.

  I watched Casey squish mud through his fingers.

  “It’s a mess,” said Silas. “But at least you’re all alive.”

  “The animals?” Dillan’s eyes were suddenly frantic.

  “The big draft is in a field over by my place. But I haven’t seen Mule. And you’ve lost two of the pigs,” he said.

  Dillan raced outside calling for Mule and Nelly.

  Silas eyed me then, as though measuring my ability to handle more bad news. “Moira, I need you to come with me.” His voice was suddenly urgent. “Mrs. Schmidt’s broken her arm. She fell down the cellar steps, rushing to get out of the storm. Carla came by this morning. Says her mother’s in a lot of pain.”

  I couldn’t imagine being more exhausted, but the news brought me to my feet. Carla would be frightened. And I had to help. She was a simple person, but good, the only woman besides Mrs. Miller and Annie to make an effort at friendship. Silas went outside with Casey while I quickly nursed the baby and wound my hair up into a bun. Remarkably, the bucket by the door had not spilled, and I splashed a little water over my face. Grabbing my black bag in one hand, I scooped the baby up with the other and headed outside. The two men stood talking by the wagon, Dillan’s face bright with relief.

  “The wheat doesn’t look too bad from here,” he said.

  “Yes, considering.” Silas nodded and hoisted Casey up, pushing him into Dillan’s arms. “We’re going to help Mrs. Schmidt.”

  “But what about the mess here?” Dillan whined. “Who’s going to help me?”

  His voice in the night had been so reassuring, his arm strong across my shoulder – where did that man get to in the light of day? Maybe only the thought of death gave him courage. The thought made me shiver.

  “We shouldn’t be long,” said Silas. “Clean up what you can, and we’ll help when we get back.”

  Dillan scowled and stalked off into the house with Casey.

  “He’s not very happy about this,” I said.

  “He’ll get over it. That man needs to understand he can handle some things on his own.” Silas stopped for a moment to survey the scene. “Just some boards need fixing on the corral, sod to repair the roof. It’ll be good for him.”

  He grinned and helped me into the wagon. Within minutes he was pointing out small buildings in the distance that were the Schmidt farm. I’d never noticed them before, but somehow the sun burning off the previous night’s rain made the flat expanse shimmer and images rise up out of the ground, closer, bigger.

  “It’s a mirage,” I said. “Seems like I could reach out and touch it.”

  “Every once in a while, when the air and light are just right, it’ll do that.”

  Simple. Air and light in the right combination rescuing the landscape from its sameness, giving it a new look, new possibilities. Maybe the transformative light would find me, offer up a bigger life than what I’d expected from the prairie, make me more than the forsaken daughter, the not-quite doctor, the dollybird. It was a comforting thought, lulling me along with the creaking of wheels and harness, the plodding of the horses’ hooves.

  To the right of the trail, several planks lay askew on the ground, looking like broken bones. I meant to ask Silas if they’d been deposited there by the twister, but he seemed distant.

  “Is your place okay?” I asked.

  “I’ve got some roof repairs to do, windows that need replacing.”

  For the first time, I wondered about where he lived and imagined a large farmhouse, Silas alone in all those rooms with the ghost of his wife in the kitchen, that of his child peeking through dust-caked second-storey windows.

  “The worst thing,” he continued, “is I lost most of the trees I planted when I first bought the place. They were finally getting a good size to provide some shelter. Some beauty.” He shook his head. “They take so long and then, bam, a storm can take them out like they’re no more than matchsticks.”

  “It was really frightening,” I said, surprised to hear myself say so. “On the island we have bad weather. Winter storms with lots of snow. Takes days to dig out. And in the summer, wind and rains that scare the life out of you. But we have neighbours to help if we need it. I don’t know how people expect to survive out here.”

  “Luck and common sense. Maybe a little prayer,” Silas said.

  “Hmmph.”

  “I imagine you offered
a prayer or two through last night.”

  I hadn’t actually. Dillan had muttered his own wishes to God, but hearing them made me angry. He seemed to reach for prayer only when he’d already lost courage, and I’d needed Dillan to be brave in that storm, more than I’d needed God’s help.

  “I’m not one to preach. But I think there’s something out there.” Silas nodded toward the horizon. “Something can help us figure all this out. How to be deserving of being alive. And in the worst times, like last night, how to endure our circumstances.”

  “People die from their circumstances all the time, prayer or not.”

  He laughed, a big booming laugh, and pushed his glasses up to rub his eyes. “Oh come on now, Moira. It’s not all that serious. Just a bit of talk.”

  It was not simply talk. His blue eyes shone with the wisdom of a man who had lived much. We came over a small rise, and beyond was a farmyard with a small wooden house resting like a lean-to against a large barn. The barn doors were open, and as we drove up I could see the line of horses’ rumps protruding from their stalls. One of the loft doors had been torn off by the wind and lay in splintered pieces on the ground fifty feet away. What must have been a small chicken coop was flattened, the surviving chickens darting about the yard, pecking at the dirt, their wings flapping in a flurry of distress.

  Carla came running from the house, scattering the hens, her long braids flying. She ran alongside the wagon and pulled on my arm before my feet hit the ground.

  “Thank goodness you’re here, Moira.” She took the baby from me and hurried toward the house. “Mother is hurting really bad.”

  The faces of several young children peered out from behind the barn door. They vanished quickly when I smiled, so I wondered if they’d been real.

  “We were all so frightened. The children wouldn’t stop screaming. It was awful,” Carla said, and started to cry. I put my arm around her shoulder. “There was a big bang and I thought the house was going to fall down. It was only the loft doors, but we didn’t know that and went to the cellar. That’s when Mother tripped.” She hugged the baby tighter.

  Silas came up beside her and steered her toward the barn. “You take care of the baby and keep the kids busy. Moira will have a look at your ma. I’m sure she’ll get her fixed right up.” He darted a glance at the house.

  The bright morning light blinded me to the darkness inside. I stood in the doorway, pupils adjusting, and heard the woman’s low moans and then an impatient male voice hushing her. He came into view out of the murkiness, a large, thick man with thinning grey hair and bushy eyebrows that knit together to form a peak. His appearance was comically threatening as he looked me up and down, his gaze wary, measuring. Maybe he’d been at the sodding, shared the contempt his wife had shown to me when she’d dragged Carla away as though I might corrupt her. After a moment he nodded.

  “This way.” He motioned to a corner of the room where the moaning had started again. I could only make out a bulky form sitting in a chair. He pulled sod out of the windows as we entered, the light spilling into a room surprisingly tidy, given the chaos of the storm the night before. Beds were tucked into every available corner, all made up, the floor swept, dishes neatly stacked on shelves in an oak cabinet.

  A long bench ran the length of one wall, providing seating on one side of a huge table that was surrounded by chairs on the other three sides. The black wood stove in the middle of the room was unlit, yet warmth emanated from the room. This was Carla’s mother’s home, a home she cared to make welcoming. Now that I was helping her, perhaps she’d accept me as Carla’s friend.

  She sat in an armchair, a light wool blanket thrown over her, grimacing with pain. I took a step toward her, and she threw the blanket off with one hand and tried to stand.

  “No.” I had spoken too loudly. “I mean, you’re fine where you are. I can examine your arm there.”

  “I don’t need anything.” Beneath Mrs. Schmidt’s gruff voice, the flutter of tears.

  “But maybe I can help.”

  “I don’t need anything,” she said again, a little softer now.

  “You let her look, Mama,” Mr. Schmidt barked, as though he simply wanted the whole episode over with, then left us to go outside. Mrs. Schmidt shrank from me. I’d seen it before, patients afraid my father might inflict worse pain than what they were already experiencing.

  “I’ll try not to hurt you. I just want to see if there’s anything I can do for your arm.” When I reached out to reassure her, she seemed to relax a little, and gazed past my outstretched fingers into my face.

  Mrs. Schmidt was not as old as I’d thought, maybe thirty-five, and considerably younger than her husband. When I reached for her arm, she squirmed, then took a deep breath and gingerly lifted it with her other. Wincing again, she kept her eyes on my face. The upper wrist plate was jammed over the bottom, and the bone in her forearm possibly broken. I went outside and called Silas and Carla. Mr. Schmidt was nowhere to be seen.

  “She’ll be all right, Carla. But she must be in a great deal of pain. I can give her a cocaine mix for that.” Carla moved to hug me. I hurried on. “But right now I need to realign her wrist bones. Can you explain that to her while I get my things? I think it’ll be better coming from you. Tell her it will likely be painful, but if we don’t do it, her wrist will never set properly.”

  Silas and I returned to the house just as Carla finished explaining. Her mother nodded and looked resigned. I instructed Silas where to stand, how to pull, and stood across from him with my hand around Mrs. Schmidt’s forearm. Silas and I looked at each other for an instant, gathering courage, then took a deep breath and pulled hard. The crunch of bone on bone was drowned out by shrieking. Mrs. Schmidt passed out just as her husband came crashing in.

  “What the hell did you do?” he hollered and, seeing his wife slumped in the chair, he went still, his voice become a whisper. “Oh my God, you killed her?”

  Silas almost laughed. “No, Gerhard. She’s fainted.” He patted Mr. Schmidt’s back. “It’s probably for the better. This way she won’t feel as much pain.”

  I busied myself setting the splints on her arm, then wrapping them around and around with lengths from an old sheet Carla had cut for me. The arm was huge from the elbow down, but our contraption would keep it immobilized. Carla bathed her mother’s face with a warm cloth and, when Mrs. Schmidt came to, we carefully helped her into bed, clothes and all.

  “She’ll need to rest now,” I said pointedly to Mr. Schmidt.He’d been agitated and muttering to himself. I didn’t like the man. “She’s had quite a trauma. I’ve given her something for the pain, and she’ll sleep for a while.”

  “Sleep?”

  “Yes, she needs to sleep.” I pronounced each word carefully, loudly. “And she’ll need help if her wrist is going to heal. She can’t be doing any work.”

  “Well.” Carla’s father puffed himself up to object, but Carla came over from the doorway where she’d been watching with some of the small children.

  “I’ll help her.” She glared at her father. “You won’t need to worry. I’ll make sure everything gets done around here.”

  “But you’re going to school,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying. “How will you...?”

  “I think the Schmidts will work this out for themselves.” Silas cut me off and handed over my scissors, motioning for me to put them in the bag, keeping me busy, keeping me out of the way. “Your work here is done, Moira,” he said quietly.

  He took the baby from the child who now held her and pulled me along out the door. When we were outside, I yanked my arm free and planted my feet.

  “Carla can’t do everything – all those children, and her mother. She’s just a girl.”

  “Leave it alone, Moira.” His impatience stung.

  “It’ll be weeks before her mother’s arm is heale
d. She can’t miss school.”

  “She has no choice right now,” he said.

  Carla called out just as we reached the wagon. She ran to us and flung her arms around me. “My mother says she feels better already.”

  I felt a familiar flush of pleasure at her gratitude, at my ability to help.

  “I’m sorry for what I said to you, Moira,” she said suddenly. “What you do with your life is none of my business.”

  I’d been so angry at Carla, and had imagined chastising her like she was a small child with a small child’s limited experience of the world. I had wanted to tell her I was not like the women of this godforsaken place. I would have control over the direction of my life.

  But her honesty was breathtaking. “I’m sorry too, Carla.” She grinned wide and I hugged her quickly, felt the small knobs of her spine, the smooth contours of her ribs.

  The trip home was quiet. I ached all over, my body suffused with exhaustion and tension from the storm, the night spent on the floor, the encounter with Carla’s father. Every time the wagon hit a bump my lower back went into a spasm and my legs throbbed right down to my ankles. I’d barely had time to recover from the trauma of giving birth, for heaven’s sake.

  Silas remained silent, seemed disapproving.

  “Well what?” I said.

  “You have to accept that some people are different. The way they do things is different.”

  “I understand people.”

  “Your people, yes.” He held up his hand to my objection. “But not these people, not parents who can’t send their kids to school because they need them to work. It’s not always the choice they want to make. They have to.”

  “But tell me why it’s the women who always suffer most. I’ve seen poor women, Silas. Trapped women. I’ve treated their infected and stinking wombs, the venereal diseases they never asked for, their skin so chaffed it oozes. And they’ll never escape, can’t even imagine themselves doing more than working in the house, raising chickens and having babies.” He thought he knew so much. “I’ve seen them, Silas. That’s why I want more for Carla. For her to have choices.”