The storm that was hanging onto Kitsum meant that their father could not bring the Queen down on Wednesday as he had planned. “It’s no problem,” Brenda told her mother over the phone. “We’re all fine here. See you on the weekend.”
She had spent more time than she could remember with her mother during the past few months. Brenda had believed that the break would do her and her mother some good. Now that she was alone, she began to realize just how tiresome her mother’s routine could become. Dishes had to be done after every meal; laundry needed to be separated into darks and lights, along with heavy clothes and light clothes; floors had to be swept and mopped; garbage had to be taken out; bread had to be punched first thing in the morning. She had never really noticed just how gruelling her mother’s housekeeping schedule could be. By herself, Brenda did everything just as her mother would have wanted it done. The house itself knew the rules.
By the third day, Brenda felt like she was sleepwalking. She was exhausted. How did her mother come up with fresh energy every day? Where did that supply of patience and enthusiasm come from? To braid Millie’s hair just because she wanted it in that style. To bake cookies in the evenings instead of just letting the kids run off to the store. To truly care that meals were properly prepared, and that laundry was neatly folded. Only the year before, the thought of keeping house like her mother had not even registered with her as a real possibility. She had been looking forward to going to university. She may not have talked about it openly, but she had prepared the whole scenario in her mind. Her grades were high; she would get scholarships. Then she would move to Vancouver and stay with her Aunt Monica. What a cruel joke that was! Now here she was, doing the same daily house chores over and over again, worrying about dirty dishes and soiled clothing and mopping floors. A baby was going to make it permanent. The future she had once envisioned had disappeared.
The kids were all at school when her grandmother came to visit. She brought a casserole that they could heat up for supper. Brenda was grateful for that. She was also sure that her gran was there to check up on her. Her mother had probably asked her to do so. If the old woman saw her granddaughter’s nervousness, she kept that to herself.
Brenda felt self-conscious for actively avoiding her. Even so, her grandmother sat calmly at the table, drinking her tea and nibbling at one of the biscuits Brenda had put out. She seemed to have all the time in the world. Brenda jumped up to check the wood stove and then to finish the lunch dishes. Her pretended busyness did not drive her grandmother away though. The old lady merely waited until she had run out of excuses to leave the table.
“I’ve missed you,” her grandmother told her, once she had sat still long enough to hear.
She had never said a single thing about the pregnancy. Her silence had only confirmed in Brenda’s mind that the old lady was disappointed in her, even ashamed or embarrassed by her situation. “I understand how it is,” her gran told her now. “I really do. I wasn’t always old, you know. I was young like you once.”
Brenda tried to steel herself against the lecture that she had long expected to be coming. There was nothing she could do to avoid it now.
“I don’t know if your father has ever told you…I had a baby too, when I was sixteen.”
Her father had most definitely not told her any such thing. She stared at her grandmother in utter shock. She had expected advice or carefully veiled criticism, but not a revelation like this. Her grandmother was sixty-seven years old. Not too long ago, there had been all kinds of joking about her receiving her old age pension.
“I told your father when he was a teenager. I’m sure he remembers.”
Brenda was confused. She waited for her grandmother to explain.
“It was long ago, before I married Peter. The baby…he was a little boy…he died. He was born alive, but barely. He only lived for one day. He had trouble breathing right from the start. We were at home, my mother and I, here in Kitsum. There were not many people here then. People lived all over at that time, some at Lone Point, some at Sandy Beach, some even where Port Hope is now. In fact, there was no road, and Port Hope didn’t even exist yet. Not by the same name, anyways. Yakshilth, we called that place. The name describes how the beach runs along beside the river there.
“Back then, there was no hospital, doctor, or nurses. My mother and I were home alone when I went into labour. She heated the house as hot as she could make it. We had a drum stove that my father had made. I wondered why she was making the house so hot. I was sweating something awful, but she told me that it was better for the baby to be nice and warm once he was born. He came out all right because my mother helped me. She knew all about helping women have babies. She knew how to clean him and wrap him when he was born. I watched her make sure all the mucus was out of his nose and mouth. Even so, he was stuffy sounding right away. She kept checking and rechecking him. We named him Tooch-aa after my father’s brother who had passed away a few years before that.
“I think my mother knew right away that he wasn’t going to make it. She had that worried look on her face like she had whenever she knew something bad was going to happen. I was only sixteen, I didn’t know anything. I thought she was just worried about me because I felt so weak. She told me to just stay on the bed and rest. I must have drifted in and out of sleep all that day, and then I remember waking up, and my mother was crying and praying.”
Her grandmother paused to take a sip of tea. “But that is not why I am telling you, not to scare you. There are hospitals and doctors now. Your baby will be fine.
“I’m telling you because I understand how you feel. Me, I went to the Indian Residential School. When I was home that summer, I would have done anything not to go back. I begged and begged my mother not to send me back, but she was stubborn. She wanted me to finish school. So I thought, no, I’ll just get married and then she won’t be able to send me. Only…” Her grandmother laughed dryly.
“I had no one to marry me. They were strict back then. Parents and families arranged marriages. You couldn’t just go around with anyone you wanted. But I started sneaking out with…I won’t tell you his name now. When you’re older, I can tell you if you still want to know. When summer was over and my mother was getting ready to send me back, I told her ‘No, I’m getting married.’ Oh, what my mother had to put up with from me!”
Brenda sat absolutely still. She would not have washed another dish now for anything.
“Anyway, my mother didn’t really believe me. She thought it was just a trick so I wouldn’t have to go back to school. I had to tell her who it was, this man I was going to marry. Only this man, he had not said anything about getting married. We’d fooled around all right, but he’d never mentioned marrying me.”
The glint in her grandmother’s eyes was suddenly a mischievous one. Brenda could not contain herself. “Grandma!”
“What?” Her father’s mother laughed. “You think you invented it? I haven’t always been an old woman.”
Brenda was now eager to hear the rest of the story. “What happened? What did you do?”
“I had to tell this man what I’d told my mother. I didn’t even like him that much, but I told him that we should get married. He said that was fine with him. Only I guess he didn’t really mean it, because a few weeks later, he left Kitsum. You might say it was lucky for me the freight boat that brought the kids to the residential school had already come and gone. Then in the spring, we heard he was living down south with another woman. I don’t think he ever knew that I was pregnant.
“I guess Martin never told anyone. Maybe your mother, I don’t know. The old people around here, they’d remember. Peter, he wanted to marry me anyways. He said it was over and done with, and he was glad that I never married that man.
“Brenda.” Her grandmother looked straight at her. Her gaze did not waver. “For a long time I felt guilty. Guilty and afraid my feelings had affected my baby. I
don’t know. My mother said I was just too young. But I was angry. Very angry all the time. I was always sorry for myself and not thinking about the baby at all. I am not saying that you are as foolish as me. I just want you to be careful, you know.”
Her grandmother finished her tea. She seemed to know that Brenda needed time to think about what she had told her before she could really make sense of it all. She rose to leave. “You come see me whenever you want,” her grandmother said. Then she walked out the door.
Brenda was left alone at the kitchen table. She was still stunned. First her father goes out to a drinking party and fools around on her mother, and now she finds out that her grandmother had a baby before she married Grandpa Peter. Had she ever really known her family at all?
The unasked-for advice! Did her grandmother think she was being negligent, or not caring for herself properly? No, that was not it. She knew that her grandmother still cared about her. She cared about her so much that she had shared a story that might have been embarrassing and even shameful for her. Tears ran down Brenda’s cheeks.
She was still sitting at the table when Tom, Becky, and Millie got home. “Told you I’d beat you,” Tom yelled to his sisters as he attempted to push the kitchen door shut before they could enter.
“Hey…hey!” Brenda jumped up to prevent the door from being wrecked. There was no longer any time to think.
Ruby kept her word. The weekend after she and Martin arrived back in Kitsum on the Queen, the whole family was off to Campbell River in the truck. The doctor who saw Brenda at the Kitsum Health Clinic, a Port Hope doctor who drove out to Kitsum once a week, had referred her to a doctor in Campbell River. She was instructed to make an appointment with this new doctor and arrange for him to deliver her baby. It worked out that the kids could have their weekend in Campbell River and Brenda could see this Dr. West on the Friday afternoon when they got into town. If she did not factor in her doctor’s appointment and the constant burden her own body had become, she could say that the family trip to Campbell River was just like old times.
The appointment went well. Instead of a dozen or more people ahead of her like at the Kitsum Clinic, there was only one conspicuously pregnant woman waiting at the new doctor’s office. The chairs were stylish and comfortable. They were actually spread far enough apart so that no one needed to crowd the person sitting next to them. When she entered the examination room, Dr. West looked up at her and smiled. He appeared relaxed and calm rather than rushed and anxious the way Dr. MacLean invariably did when he was in Kitsum.
Dr. West checked everything. He explained each test and each new prodding, telling her what they revealed. He said that her blood pressure and weight were slightly high, but well within healthy levels. Also, the baby’s heart rate was strong. The length of the baby — determined by a cloth tape measure like the one her mother used when working on sewing projects — was exactly what it should be at this point in her pregnancy.
“I want to see you by the end of May, and no later, for another appointment here in Campbell River,” he told her pleasantly and firmly. “After that, you’ll need to stay in town for the delivery. We have June 15th as your due date, but really it could be any time around the beginning of June or later.”
Brenda nodded obediently. She had expected such instructions because they were given to all new mothers from Kitsum: move to Campbell River or another city at least two weeks prior to your due date. Medical Services would put you up in a motel and give you a meal allowance, and then you would wait. Her own mother had done the same thing. It was strange how Dr. West’s statement of the facts made the experience seem more real. She tended to ignore most of what she heard from Dr. MacLean. She mainly saw him just to keep her mother from nagging and worrying. Dr. West seemed different, like someone she could trust. The end of May was only a month plus a week or two away.
Dr. West asked her to think about who she wanted with her at the delivery, and if she wanted natural childbirth, and if she was going to be breastfeeding. He made her feel like she had choices. He did not pressure her for immediate answers either. He simply told her to think about his questions and make decisions before the next appointment. Perhaps, she thought, she had not completely lost control over her own life after all. She left the appointment feeling uplifted.
Brenda’s good mood lasted throughout the following day while shopping with her mother and her sisters. In fact, she was happy all the way back to Kitsum. She awoke at home in her own bed, and felt better than she remembered feeling in a very long time. Her mother could barely hide her surprise when Brenda announced that she was off to visit her grandmother.
Brenda thought about the choices presented to her by the doctor. Ruby, of course, would be with her when she had the baby. Beyond that, she could not really imagine. Every time she made up her mind to ask her mother about natural childbirth, she wondered what the alternative would be. Un-natural childbirth? And what about breastfeeding? She felt hugely pregnant now; her belly protruded like some overblown basketball. Her baby kicked and squirmed inside her. When she stood in front of the full-length mirror on her bedroom door and lifted her shirt up, she could actually see its movements. Still, she put off any further discussion. She was too embarrassed to bring up the topic of actually having the baby, even with her mother.
She often wished that Marcie was still living in Kitsum. Brenda knew that her friend had stayed in Campbell River too; Marcie had quite a few funny stories about living in the motel, taking taxis, and waiting in the doctor’s office. She had ended up having a C-section because her labour was not progressing properly. She had even shown Brenda the scar that ran along her belly, and then she had made a joke about that too. In retrospect, Brenda realized that she had simply not known enough to ask Marcie for more details.
It was obvious that her mother was getting more and more excited at the prospect of becoming a grandmother. After making an entire set of blankets, she had begun to crochet baby booties and sweaters. Brenda had watched her pick out more wool in Campbell River and ponder over various colours. “White or yellow,” she had wondered aloud, and Brenda had only shrugged. She had no preferences. Her mother’s anticipation was contagious too. Even her father had started making jokes about being a grandfather and taking his grandchild fishing. Brenda smiled each time he told one, but in truth, she did not find any of them particularly funny. A couple of times, Brenda overheard him calling her mother “Grandma.”
Just as their earlier dismay had depressed her, their blooming enthusiasm now made her feel vaguely ill at ease. Things were just simpler for them. For Brenda, nothing was completely clear. One day she felt like she was still a happy child; the next she felt near ready to be a mother; and another day she felt like a teenager with a bad attitude. It was like being out on the Queen in a stormy sea with the wind and waves pushing at her from all directions. She could still steer all right, but it took a whole lot of effort.
NINETEEN
By the middle of May, Brenda had her arrangements in place. The process was not very difficult at all. She had gone in to see the Community Health Representative at the Kitsum Clinic. She relayed to her the doctor’s information and passed on the form that Dr. West had completed. The CHR — everyone referred to her by the abbreviation — took care of everything after that. Brenda had not even needed to ask her mother about accompanying her to Campbell River.
She found that slightly disappointing. She had imagined sitting nervously alone with her mother one day in the kitchen at home. Brenda would quietly but earnestly acknowledge that she knew her mother did not like to be away from the kids for long, but this was a special circumstance. She needed her very much at this time. It was going to be an official reconciliation of sorts, a kind of fresh start to their relationship as mother and daughter. Before she could even bring the matter up though, a whole scenario had already been put into place. Her mother would drive her out to Campbell River and stay with her until
the end of the following week, when her father would bring everyone else on the Queen. It was as though the CHR and her parents — and who knew who else — had created the perfect plan without even consulting Brenda about her wishes. So much for having choices! Immediately, she felt guilty at the thought. How could she even dream of complaining in the face of everyone’s thoughtfulness?
During the long drive out, Brenda finally broached the subject of natural childbirth with her mother. There really was no one else she could possibly ask, and she would have to tell Dr. West something that very day. Her mother explained that natural childbirth just meant that a woman did not take any medication during her labour. Some women were given pain medication in the hospital, and others chose not to take any drugs because they were worried that they might distress their baby. Brenda wanted to ask her mother what she had done, but she waited instead. If her mother wanted her to know, she would tell her. Brenda did not even bother with the breastfeeding question. She could remember her youngest brother and sisters being breastfed. She also remembered them crying after her mother no matter how Brenda or Monica or her father tried to soothe them. She had already made up her mind back in Kitsum that breastfeeding was not going to work for her. For most of the trip, the two women travelled in silence.
Brenda had been looking forward to the stay in Campbell River. She had been inside the house in Kitsum for too long, and she was also just plain tired of being pregnant. At least in town, she figured that the waiting would be easier. She could go out whenever she wanted and not worry too much about what people thought of her. They were only strangers. In town, there was always the promise — or at least the possibility — of something close to adventure or excitement.
Through Different Eyes Page 15