The Waiting Place

by Sharron Arksey

  “If we had left it rooted in the prairie soil and let it drink in sunlight till springtime’s end, would the lines of this love story have rhymed more perfectly?”

  A sad memory then, whoever the crocus petals belonged to.

  The storm became a blizzard that lasted into the next day and left snowbanks across our driveway. If there was ever a time and place for a blizzard, it was January in Manitoba. But the weatherman predicted much milder weather once this system passed through.

  When the snow finally stopped, Glen and I went out to bed down the cows, laying fresh straw so that they could snuggle into it and keep warm.

  Our heifers started calving around the middle of the month and although it was getting harder to find snowsuits that would go around my baby bulge, I waddled out daily after work and on weekends to see the young calves and to check for imminent births. I often took the midnight check, leaving the three a.m. walkabout to Glen. Other years, we had taken turns. But this year my swollen belly gave me a pass.

  Except for the night Genie had her calf; Glen needed me that night.

  The newborn calf gasped for air. Glen stuck a straw down one of its nostrils, trying to clear the airway, and then leaned over to blow directly into the animal’s nose. But it was not enough. The calf shuddered and went still.

  “I’m sorry, Genie,” I said to the cow. Genie paid no attention. Head down towards her infant calf, she fiercely licked off the detritus of birth as if she could bring back life as she had given it.

  An hour earlier Glen had come to the house.

  “Wake up,” he said, throwing the bedroom light switch and jerking me out of sleep. “I need your help.”

  The unusual urgency in his voice made me dress quickly. The wind wrapped itself around me as I followed Glen down the packed snow trail. As predicted, the weather had turned after our January blizzard and temperatures were extremely mild for this time of year, but at two o’clock in the morning, the wind was raw.

  In the shed two-year-old Genie stood, straining with the effort of giving birth to her first calf.

  “One of its feet is bent back,” Glen said. “Hold her tail, will you?”

  I stood beside the cow, speaking softly and holding its tail so that my husband could work without obstruction. Glen pushed the calf back into the uterus, found the bent foreleg, and gently eased it into proper position. Then he attached chains to the calf’s front legs and used traction to one leg at a time, walking the shoulders through the cow’s pelvis and working in concert with the animal’s contractions.

  “It will be all right, Genie. Take it easy, girl.”

  But it was not all right. Although Glen was able to pull the calf, we could tell immediately that its future was precarious.

  Perhaps if we had called the vet, a Caesarian could have been performed. Perhaps if Glen had gone out to check the cows earlier or had come back to the house to get me sooner. But what ifs are pointless. Some things just are.

  “Let’s see if Genie will take one of the twins,” Glen said.

  Three days earlier, another cow in the herd had given birth to twins. Twins are not uncommon; we often have several sets each year. But they are extra work because many times the mother cow won’t have enough milk to feed two calves.

  This particular cow did not. We had to supplement her milk, feeding the twins manually with a giant nipple attached by tubing to a plastic bag of formula. If a cow had extra milk, I froze it for future use. The real thing was better for calves, but I didn’t always have any in the freezer.

  “It’s worth a try,” I said.

  Genie’s udder was already filling, a physiological response to the act of giving birth. The cow continued licking her calf, alternately nudging it with her nose. Wake up, baby. The act of licking bonded mother to child. Genie had already learned the scent of her newborn; taking another calf in its place would now be more difficult.

  I stayed with Genie until Glen came back with the larger of the twins, a red and white bull calf which seemed all legs. Its twin was a heifer calf, smaller and almost certainly sterile. Somehow that’s the way it seemed to work. Twins of the same gender might or might not be fertile, but the female in a set of boy-girl twins faced a greater chance of never being able to reproduce.

  By picking the larger and stronger of the two, Glen was giving the smaller calf a better chance with the natural mother. And the bull calf would be better able to handle any reluctance on Genie’s part to cooperate.

  The calf was willing and eager to sample Genie’s teats. But Genie was having none of it. She stiffened as she felt the mouth reach for her, and then kicked out at the calf. Time and again we tried. Each time we failed.

  They say that losing a child is like giving birth to the same child a second time, but without the release from pain that a successful delivery provides. I do not know if they are right. I do not want to know. There is pain in the thought of it.

  “It’s not going to work,” I told Glen.

  “Let’s try something else,” he said.

  After tying the bull calf to a panel outside the pen, we dragged the corpse into a far corner.

  “Want to hazard a guess at its weight?” I asked.

  “A good hundred pounds, maybe more,” he said. Poor Genie. No wonder there had been trouble. We had bred her to our heifer bull, a smaller animal that should sire smaller calves. Something had gone wrong somewhere.

  He pulled a knife out of his overalls pocket and, while he began his work on the calf, I returned to the birthing pen, but did not enter it. Genie was increasingly agitated. As quiet a cow as she normally was, to approach her now might be dangerous. I positioned myself between mother and child. “Don’t look,” I said to the cow. “You don’t want to know.”

  Once Glen had finished skinning the calf, he carried the hide over to the pen. He untied the twin and, as quickly as possible, flipped the calf over and rolled it in the slimy afterbirth still coating the floor. With any luck, the scent would fool Genie into accepting a replacement.

  Then, as I held the twin steady, he carefully draped the hide over its back.

  “Cross your fingers,” he said.

  He led the calf once more to Genie. At first Genie stiffened, but then nosed forward to sniff the hide. Glen held the calf still and we waited in silence for Genie to recognize and accept the scent. When Glen edged the calf towards the waiting teats, the calf grabbed hold and began to suck.

  I should be relieved, I thought. It was a happy ending; the young heifer had a calf to feed, the older cow’s burden was halved, the twins each had enough to eat. But instead I was angry. I wanted to yell at Genie. I wanted to hit her.

  We tricked you, you stupid cow. This is not your baby.

  They call it imprinting, don’t they, the bonding between parent and child at first sight and touch? If I touched my baby and transferred that knowledge into some inner part of me, how could I possibly be fooled this way?

  Once the calf had had its fill, it lay down on the straw beside its adopted mother. I brought over an armful of hay and Glen carried a pail of water into the pen. We stood and watched for several more minutes.

  “I know it often works but I don’t like doing it,” Glen said. “It feels like cheating somehow.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  We turned to leave the shed and headed back through the corrals to the house. I led the way and saw the cow first.

  “We’re not finished yet,” I called. An eight-year-old cow, a veteran of the delivery room, was in the final stages of labour. There was no time to bring the cow into the shelter of the barn; birth was imminent.

  We stood and watched Agnes heave and push, ready to lend a hand if problems became apparent. But this cow had no need of our services. Indeed she ignored our presence as if it were irrelevant.

  With one last push, the slippery body exited th
e birth canal and slid onto the ground. Now Glen and I began our ritual. We wiped the calf as dry as we could and lifted it onto a sled built for this purpose. As we pulled the new calf, a spry, alert baby with legs already kicking, the mother cow followed us into the barn.

  Once inside the pen, Agnes began to assiduously clean the calf with the rough edge of her tongue, scraping the new hide till it warmed from the abrasive treatment.

  She looked at us as if to say, What’re you two still doing here?

  “Come on,” Glen said. “Let’s go get some sleep.”

  I gave one last look at the far corner where Genie and her adopted son rested, the hide still covering the three-day-old body.

  “Everything is fine,” Glen said, coming up behind me. “No worries.”

  “What am I, an open book?” I asked.

  “Sus, I can read you from across the barn,” my husband said.

  For a long time, I wanted to be a veterinarian and look after animals—big ones, small ones, it didn’t matter. But then I realized that there would be animals I couldn’t make well. Even worse, there would be animals that I would be expected to put to sleep. I didn’t think I could handle that and my vet dream came to an end. Instead I took business courses and got a job in the local vet’s office, setting up appointments and doing the bookwork. I work three days a week and every second Saturday. I get to see lots of animals and occasionally I get to care for them. I just don’t have to make any of the tough decisions. Not at work.

  Ironically, though, I married a farmer so I didn’t escape. Those tough decisions followed me home. I might as well have opted for vet school. At least I’d be getting paid better.

  When Mom came home the following weekend, I told her the story of the calf skin coat and the calf that never lived to feel its warmth.

  “Remember what your grandfather used to say?” she asked.

  “If you’ve got livestock, you’ve got deadstock,” I answered.

  “Well, I hope I don’t have any deadstock when it’s my turn to check the cows tonight,” Mom said.

  ~ Sandra ~

  These days I could be packed in ice and still sweat. Certainly I don’t need full winter gear on a January night that is positively balmy by normal Manitoba standards. I pull on a pair of light-weight nylon pants and push my arms into a ski jacket that once belonged to Susan before pulling on my work boots. I grab the heavy-duty flashlight sitting by the door and head out onto the doorstep.

  Immediately the dog pokes its head out of the doghouse. When it sees me, it comes out, tail wagging. Three a.m. or p.m., it makes no difference. The dog is always ready to go.

  Fog obscures my vision, making the tree branches dance with the side-to-side motion of the flashlight. I plod along the path to the corrals, wishing for the crisp squeaky crunch of cold snow beneath my feet. The snow instead is a sodden mass that squelches as I move through it.

  Reaching the corral fence, I slide the flashlight under the bottom rail and climb over the top. Once on the other side, I stand still and watch the cows. At first they are just shapes in the dim light sifting through the fog tendrils. Gradually, the shapes assume colour and become real.

  Home for the weekend, I think it only fair that I give Dave some respite from the barnyard. The farm invested in a video surveillance system years ago and Dave and I can watch the television screen from inside the comfort of the house. But the TV cannot completely replace an actual walk through the corrals; always there is activity in the far corners of the enclosure that no camera can reach.

  Only cows are in this enclosure; all the bulls are kept in a separate location. Males have no role in this place of pain and placentas. It reminds me of biblical times when women retired to the “red tent” once a month during their periods and during labour and childbirth. This is their red tent, open to the air and consecrated in the blood of birth.

  Once a cow appears close to delivery, it is moved to what we affectionately call the maternity pen. We can easily view the pen on the television screen.

  When the calf is born, mother and child are moved inside the barn where the newborn calf can find its legs and its mother’s teats in insulated comfort. The pair remain inside for several days until the calf is well on its way before being led once more out to the larger enclosure.

  I begin to walk towards the herd, using the flashlight to guide me over the lumps of semi-frozen straw and manure. The swaying light creates moving shadows. The dog, never one to miss a good chase, begins swinging left and right, yipping at the edges of the shadows.

  The cattle take notice. Those lying down stand up. Those standing begin to move. Herd instincts take over and suddenly the cows are a moving mass. All it takes is one leader.

  The dog, well-intentioned but as usual misguided, dashes into action. Its bark reverberating, it rounds the cattle and moves them back in my direction. The lead cow snorts and begins a rapid if clumsy gallop across the enclosure.

  “Blue, stop!” I yell. To its credit, the dog obeys. But it is too late to stop the cows. And the light from my industrial strength flashlight seems to blind them, so that they lose themselves to panic. They charge in the direction of the light.

  Fear paralyzes me for a few seconds, although it seems like longer. Then I turn and head back to the fence, scrambling, feet stumbling, to grasp the upper rail and safety. In my haste I drop the flashlight and it sends a thin line of light in the direction of the cattle.

  My heart is pounding; I can feel its heaviness inside my chest. I sit and watch the cows race towards the far end of the corral, then turn and come back again.

  Just be quiet, I tell myself. Give them time to calm down. It is the first time this winter I have been out to check on them. They have to get used to me again. Just be quiet and still.

  I picture Dave watching my antics on the television in the house, although I know that he is asleep in our bed. This is my turn to mind the cows, not his. Still I can imagine his laughter as clearly as if he was sitting in front of the television set and I was standing beside him.

  The echoes of that unheard merriment anger me briefly, but the emotion subsides as quickly as it flared. Now it is my turn in front of the television screen. I watch myself running across the corrals. A middle-aged woman, never in the best of physical shape and certainly far from it now, hurtling across the mushy cow turds with terror written in the lines of her face. That final undignified scramble up the fence almost demands laughter. I obey, if somewhat ruefully.

  The sound of my laughter alerts the cattle once more, but there is no sudden movement among the herd. From my perch I watch them, looking at the same time for signs of incipient labour. I can find none. In a few minutes, once I feel confident again, I will venture down from the fence and resume my walkabout.

  I always feel at home within this female place. It is a place of waiting, I think. The waiting is by and large a peaceful time, albeit with the intrusions of humans and dogs. Cats, too. I watch as an orange barn cat makes its way through the herd towards me. When it gets to the fence, it leaps upwards, nimble as only cats can be, and curls itself in my lap. Once comfortable, it immediately begins to purr. The purring calms me.

  The cows are calming down as well. Some are already lying down. Others have stopped by the bale feeder to eat.

  Later in the season as January turns to February and February to March, young calves will leap about the enclosure with spring inside their bodies. They will be ready then to leave their mothers for longer periods of time in order to explore their surroundings.

  At fifty-eight, I have no longing to be pregnant again, nor to face the demands of a young infant. I feel relief that my own children are long past that stage. Jon is himself a parent and Susan is in her own waiting place these days. Only Sam remains unattached and unfettered. How then to explain this ache?

  The cycle of life has died inside my body. My periods once s
erved as a kind of alarm clock with their regularity. Now months go by unheeded. How often I had welcomed them. Thank you, God. You love me, you really love me. Should one be flippant when thanking God? Perhaps not. Truth was, they called it the curse, but sometimes—oftentimes—it was a blessing. And yet—always the disclaimer—how often, too, I had seen with dismay the telltale stains. Another month, another failure. Make me fertile, Lord. Did I want to be pregnant? How I answered that question determined whether the period’s arrival was good or bad news. And the answer changed from month to month, year to year.

  All those years, more than forty of them, all those dollars spent on feminine protection. For a while when I was in my late 40s and early 50s, Dave would tease me whenever I came home with a jumbo package of maxi pads.

  “You’re optimistic, aren’t you?” he asked. “Do you think you’ll need them?”

  “Hope springs eternal,” I would answer.

  In the end, he was right. I have an almost full package in the house and it sits gathering dust bunnies in the bathroom closet. Being prepared has its own price tag.

  Beyond the paraphernalia of womanhood, there is the ritual. Months, years, entire decades are measured in menstrual cycles. I read in one of my textbooks that the origins of seeding and the harvest—the birth of agriculture—came from the twenty-eight-day cycle that governed both the moon and the female body. How does a woman measure time without the cycle of her body to guide her?

  “With a calendar, of course,” I can hear my husband saying. “I think you’re taking these Women’s Studies of yours way too seriously, Sandra.”

  Looking out at the pen of pregnant and nursing females, I wonder, not for the first time, whether cows go through menopause. I do not know the answer.