Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  Mary had stopped, had made herself stop and wait. She studied her hands, thin and sinewy, spotted with age and criss-crossed with great knotty veins. “Done some hard things in their time, them hands has,” she thought, remembering the births and deaths she had presided over.

  But the girl had not spoken, had not said: “No Nan, I'm keepin' the baby!” So Mary went out to the back porch and brought in her big cooking pot which she filled with water and set on the fire. Choosing carefully, she pulled five bags from the line behind the stove measuring a spoonful from each into the pot. She set the girl to grinding roots of goldenthread, mixing it with seeds of Queen Anne's Lace, while she pounded bittersweet berries into a paste. For a little while, working together like that, everything seemed almost ordinary.

  All through the terrible night Rachel had followed the old woman's instructions without a word or whimper. The girl did not flinch, not even when Mary made her swallow the bitter stuff until she vomited, forced her to pace back and forth until she was faint. The old woman held the girl's head over a steaming concoction of herbs, spooned glutinous black seaweed into her mouth, made her eat raw eggs and, in desperation, finally dosed her with castor oil. By then Mary felt sick herself and so tired that every bone in her body ached.

  She went to the window, rested her head against the cold pane and tried to recollect if there was something more she could do. Outside, the night was black—“black as a cow's guts,” Mary thought, “not a light to be seen on land or sea.…”

  There were other ways, hideous dangerous means of producing a miscarriage. Gruesome probings and piercings, things she and Sarah had only whispered of. Things she recoiled from even thinking of in connection with Rachel.

  “Tis no use, maid—I done all I knowed of—'tis meant to be.…”

  Mary had turned away from the window then—and gotten the fright of her life. Standing by the table, holding onto it as if she might fall, had been not Rachel, but Una—Una Sprig. Mary's mother, almost ninety years in her grave, stood there looking very much as she had on the last day of her life. The weary slump of shoulders, the dirty, damp dress, the matted hair, the deep lines from nose to mouth, the crazed look, were all Una's. Mary gasped. The figure moved, straightened, Una vanished, became again Rachel.

  “So,” she had thought, “that's who the child takes after!”

  Never having seen herself in Rachel, Mary had often pondered on the girl's swarthiness, wondering secretly if people had been right after all, if Jessie did have Indian blood from her father Toma. But Mary could see now, it was Una's blood Rachel had. The blood of the old people—the only thing her mother had ever spoken of with pride.

  Without realizing it, Mary started to cry. She'd walked over and kissed Rachel's cheek, something she had not done since her great-granddaughter was a baby. “Some things nothing can change, girl—there's some things is just meant tobe.”

  “But Nan, what'll I do, what will Mam and Pap say? What'll I tell people?”

  “Less said, soonest mended. 'Twon't be the first merrybegot born along this coast and I doubt it'll be the last.”

  She looked at Rachel's exhausted face and said more gently, “Never mind, girl, you'll be all right. I'll work somethin' out. Go on up to my bed and lie down for a spell, no doubt your mother'll be up here nosin' around at the crack of dawn.”

  Rachel nodded and, biddable as a child, went upstairs.

  It had grown light, Mary blew out the lamp and looked around. The kitchen was in chaos, a chair overturned, a bucket of vomit by the door, the table littered with bags of spilled herbs and moss, spoons, saucers, cups and bowls, each containing the dregs of a different mixture. Some powder had tipped onto the floor and been ground in with their pacing. Pots of liquid still simmered on the stove, thickening the unsavory stench of vomit, the acrid smell of seaweed, sweat and fear. Everything must be cleared away. Jessie must not guess what they had tried to do.

  “I'll work something out,” Mary Bundle had promised—and she meant it. And for a woman nothing could be worked out without a husband—this lesson Mary had learned long ago. As she scrubbed the kitchen floor she was already running through a list of unmarried boys and men on the Cape, trying to think of one who might provide a name for Rachel's baby.

  After that night Rachel seemed to give up. She just wrapped grief around herself, curled up on Mary's couch and slept for longer and longer periods each day. The girl became obstinate, she ignored Christmas, refused to join in the mummering or the carol service and would not talk about her now obvious condition even with Mary.

  By then, of course, everyone knew that young Rachel Andrews was in the family way and that: dead Stephen Vincent was the cause of it. It was whispered about, but there was no open talk and, as far as Mary could see, no one condemned the girl. Indeed, there was a certain amount of sympathy for Rachel, especially among the women. In death, Stephen took on an even more romantic aura than he'd had in life. His good looks, his fine clothes, his manners, his habit of tipping an invisible hat, his reciting of poetry, his lavish compliments, were remembered and expanded upon.

  “I partly blames meself, so I do, after all's said and done he was me cousin's son,” Mary heard Flora Vincent tell Jessie one day when the women met in her kitchen, each bringing a pot of rabbit stew. “I shoulda kept a closer rein on the lad—but my, he were that handsome and him and your Rachel did make a lovely couple—I'm sure, girl, he intended to come back and marry her!” Flora was clearly trying to pull Jessie's tongue. And Jessie nodded and smiled—ignoring the fact that the handsome lad had already been married.

  “Stunned as me arse, both of 'em!” Mary thought, but she said nothing, sensing that such foolish embroidering of the truth might be of benefit to Rachel and the baby.

  Now, in late January, Mary sits sipping her cold tea, knowing she has been able to do nothing to protect her great-granddaughter. The poor maid is going to have to face life with a baby but no husband—and Mary knows how that will be. She studies the shape under the blankets trying to think what she can do, trying to calculate how long until the baby will be born, how long her own dying will take.

  It is near noon and the girl has not moved. “If she keeps on like this, sleeping half the day, not eatin' nor goin' outside the door, moping about like she don't care if she lives or dies, she'll do herself harm, and the baby too, belike.” Mary has seen more than one die from not wanting to live, she remembers her own daughter Fanny and Ida Norris, poor mad women both of them, women who lived in another world.

  Mary wishes Lavinia or Sarah, or even Meg, were alive to talk to, wishes her bouts of dizziness and forgetfulness had not started at such an inconvenient time, wishes she had the strength to pull Rachel from the couch, to drag her, body and bones, outdoors. A few days tramping through the snow would do the girl a world of good.

  There is one thing she can do. This very night, Mary resolves, they will change sleeping places. From now on, she will sleep in the kitchen and Rachel must sleep in the bed upstairs. The top floor is so icy cold the girl will at least be forced to get up each morning.

  Mary sighs, it's not much, but it's a start. She pokes more wood on the fire, adds water to the rolled oats that have been in soak since yesterday and moves the pot to the front of the stove. She leans over to study the girl's face, small and round with a little pointed chin, a child's face. Mary nudges her great-granddaughter awake, forces her to get up and eat.

  The old woman spends the rest of the short winter day trying to coax Rachel out of her lethargy, mentioning things that are happening on the Cape: that Greta Way was sung-down at last night's prayer meeting, the number of traps Moses John has set for fox, the light one of the boys saw out beyond the reach, the “time” planned for Friday night in the school and the astonishing, or so it seems to Mary, news that Triff Norris is crocheting a twelve-foot-long train for her niece Joanna's wedding dress.

  In the past Mary and Rachel could have spent any amount of time discussing these things. Toda
y the girl shows not a flicker of interest. Mary, who considers curiosity well ahead of godliness or cleanliness, tries to hide her annoyance at the girl's languor, suggests Rachel go visit the schoolteacher who has come by several times. But she just shakes her head, crawls back under the quilts and appears to sleep, leaving the old woman to brood by the fire.

  It is dark again before Mary thinks of something that might bestir the child. “I s'pose we could find out what Lavinia writ in her book about Charlie Vincent,” she remarks, talking as if to the cat who has curled in beside the girl but is at least keeping one eye open.

  Rachel does not reply but she does move slightly.

  “It just come to me how we can find out something about Char Vincent, him that was Stephen's grandfather,” Mary continued, carefully keeping amy eagerness out of her voice. “I allow, though, you'd hardly be interested in them old things happened before your time.”

  The girl sat up. “What book?” she said.

  “That big old book Vinnie wrote in for ages, said I was to take care of it for her,” Mary pokes at the fire, holding her breath.

  “Where's the book now?”

  “Stowed away somewhere—up in Vinnie's room I expects, in that old sack hung on back of the door. You can go take a look if you got a mind.”

  Mary knows exactly where the journal is. She had taken it from beneath the pillow of Lavinia's deathbed and slid it into the worn and patched bag Lavinia had carried around for most of her life. Then, right after the funeral, thinking she might soon be dead herself, Mary tucked her own prized possessions down into the bag and hung it behind the door.

  How often, during their last years together had she watched Lavinia turning the pages, reading and smiling to herself. It had infuriated Mary. She'd threatened more than once to burn the damned book. And Lavinia had known how she hated and distrusted writing. Still and all, a few days before she died, Lavinia told Mary to keep the book safe and pass it on to someone else who would keep it safe.

  “Someday the Cape will be a big, important place, there'll be a town here with thousands of people and they'll want to know how it was in the beginning when we came. It's a testimony, Mary, to what we done. Like the Bible,” Lavinia had said, giving her that great broad smile that had never changed from the day Mary first set eyes on her.

  Rachel wrinkles her nose in distaste as she puts the sack down on the kitchen table. It smells fousty, damp and mildewed. Along, long time has passed since Jennie Andrews, sitting by the window on Monk Street, had pieced the bag together for her daughter. Rachel sits opposite Mary and watches the old woman taking things from the bag, laying them out, one by one, on the kitchen table.

  The largest item is the journal, which Mary puts to one side. “Vinnie's book,” she says, patting it, “I'll tell you about that after—first I wants to show ya what else is in here.”

  “Now this is some old,” she pulls out a little sealskin purse, folded over and tied around with a bit of dirty twine, “I think your Great Aunt Jane gave it to me when she was learnin' to sew.” Inside the purse are three gold pieces, looking like new, the head of George III still shining bright.

  Rachel fingers the coins, examining them, “‘King William was King George's son and all the royal race he run’—is this the king in that song, Nan? I wonder what the ‘royal race’ is?”

  “I don't know, maid,” Mary has no interest in history. “I only knows them's sovereigns, real gold, and the longer you keeps gold the more it's worth. Here, look at this,” she unfolds a piece of flannel, “what you think of that?” she asks with glee.

  The girl picks up the purple brooch, holding it with the same wonder and covetousness Mary once had: “Oh Nan, it's the beautifullist thing I ever seen! Who do it belong to?”

  “'Twas Tessa's—not your Great Aunt Tessa—the Tessa who was my sister, the brooch were hers. Once I traded it to Sarah Vincent but I got it back.”

  Rachel sighs, “I never thought to see such a thing!”

  “Never wore it, not once. I regrets that now,” Mary says and leaning forward pins the brooch on Rachel's sweater. “Here, ‘tis yours—wear it outside where people can see and know you owns somethin’.”

  She reaches into the old bag and this time pulls out a thin wad of paper money, wrinkled and soft as cloth and kept together with a rusty safety pin, it has “Newfoundland Commercial Bank” printed on it. A sheet of parchment is curled around the notes. Mary flattens the paper and passes it to Rachel, “Read it out!”

  “This is to declare that the store and wharf formerly belonging to Caleb Gosse and latterly to Timothy Drew are hereby assigned to Mary Andrews nee Bundle and to her heirs or beneficiaries in perpetuity,” Rachel stumbles over the long word.

  “In perpetuity!” Mary rolls the word over her tongue, “Means forever—means long as rivers run, long as fish swim!”

  The girl puts the paper down beside the bank notes and stacks the gold pieces. She stares at her great-grandmother: “Why, Nan—you're rich!”

  “No girl, not rich nor nothin' like it, what I got here wouldn't buy the horse and carriage off a rich man. Still, I'm not dyin' a pauper—and I'm the first in me family as can say that.” Mary surveys the collection with pride.

  The ritual of counting her possessions reassures her. It always has. But tonight there is something else, a feeling of comfort just from seeing the book Lavinia used to write in and the sack she always had slung across her shoulder. The terrible sadness that came over Mary the night she found out Rachel was pregnant lifts a little. She should have brought the bag down before, not let it hang untouched for fifteen years.

  “First thing tomorrow I wants you to get the teacher. Bring her down here and tell her to bring ink; and paper. I wants her to set down that you'll have this house and the store when I dies. And I wants nothing said of it, tell her that, too.”

  “You're not going to die, Nan—not forever and ever!” Rachel repeats the old words she used to say as a child whenever they'd gone to a funeral. In those days Mary had agreed with her great-granddaughter. Now she tells her not to be so foolish.

  “I'm over ninety, child, nobody can expect to live forever—beginning to think I don't even want to.” Even as she says this Mary knows it is not true. She does want to live forever—but not as an addled old woman. She wishes she could believe the things Meg and Sarah used to be always pratin' on about: streets of gold and robes of light, everlasting summers with Ned and Lavinia—with her sister Tessa.…

  Mary shakes off such fancies. “Must be gettin' soft in me old age,” she thinks and continues with her instructions: “When I'm gone you got some things to do—I'm tellin' them to you now, so remember. When me time comes I wants you to go upstairs and hide the gold and the book away for yourself, let them find the bag and sort out who owns the rest of it, but remember, hide the gold and the book first.”

  There were other things that Rachel must do. Ignoring the girl's protestations, Mary lists them. She will go over this same list time and time again in the weeks to come: “Make Nan decent, go upstairs and hide the journal and the gold, put the bag back on the hook…”

  “What do ‘make Nan decent’ mean?” Rachel recites the list twice before she has courage to ask the question.

  “Cover me up, child, fix me hair and, you know, see me eyes is closed—I'll do what I can meself but I got to count on you to do what's necessary before they comes traipsin' in and sees me lookin' like a witch altogether!” Mary begins to cackle at this and goes into a fit of coughing.

  “Don't worry about it,” she says when she gets her breath back, “dead bodies don't feel nothin', just close me eyes and plait me hair—take me nice hairpins for yourself—plain ones is good enough for the grave.”

  Rachel's shudder does not stop Mary. “You'll be surprised how easy it'll be, girl—I done worse long before I was your age.”

  After the morbid conversation they became quite festive, treating themselves to leftover Christmas cake and syrup before settling
on the couch like children with Lavinia's journal between them.

  “It come to me today, now's me chance to find out what Vinnie put down about them all—about Charlie, and about his people, about Meg and Ben and Thomas—about Ned and me, too,” Mary told the girl.

  The old woman speaks casually, turning pages, reaming off names of people long dead, her excitement is growing—with Rachel here not only can she find out everything Lavinia had written in the book—she can write something of her own! For the first time the power of written words—words that can stay behind and talk, just as if you were alive—dawns on Mary: “Sure that's why Vinnie done it!”

  “I'm going to have you write something down, something of me own—at the end here, maybe,” Mary shows her great-granddaughter the empty pages and watches slyly as the girl picks up the book and squints at the lines of fading script.

  “I can write, but I'm slow. Miss says I'm about the slowest in class for penmanship—and she says I writes too small.”

  “I allow now you're every bit as smart as Vinnie was. We'll do it a few words at a time. If I told you what to set down, couldn't you put it in the book for me?” There is not another soul in the world she would have, could have, asked such a thing of.

  Writing certainly is slow work. Mary had never realized how slow but she holds tight her impatience, makes herself repeat and repeat each sentence, watching the pen move snail-like across the thick paper, and after a week three pages are covered in Rachel's fine web-like writing.

  Except for the growing bulge below the girl's waist it is almost as if Stephen Vincent had never set foot on the Cape. Rachel and her great-grandmother are together all the tinne. Mary sits in the rocker they have pulled over to the front of the stove while Rachel, curled up on the couch, reads Lavinia's words. This, too, is slow. Lavinia's writing is hard to make out, there are many misspellings, lines scratched over and dribbling into illegibility.