The Home for Unwanted Girls

by Joanna Goodman

  She rushes out of the bathroom and returns to the kitchen, where Marie-Claude is washing dishes. “I think I’m pregnant,” she blurts.

  “Heh?”

  “I haven’t had a period since the fall.”

  “Who the hell is the father?”

  “Someone I met at the deli,” she admits. “He was going to Vietnam the following week. I don’t even know his last name.”

  Marie-Claude’s cheeks turn red.

  “It was just . . . a weekend,” Elodie murmurs.

  “Here? You did it here? In our apartment?”

  Elodie looks down at the floor, ashamed.

  “Are you sure you’re pregnant?” Marie-Claude says, her voice crisp with self-righteousness. “You haven’t been throwing up in the mornings—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know anything?”

  “I’ve been a bit tired and queasy,” Elodie admits.

  “Oh, mon Dieu. You obviously can’t keep it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t have a baby by yourself.”

  “You think I should give it away?” Elodie cries. “Are you serious?”

  Marie-Claude sighs. The water is still running, and her rubber gloves are dripping suds on the linoleum.

  “You of all people should know I could never give up my baby,” Elodie says.

  “But how can you be a mother, Elo? You can’t.”

  “I’m tired of people telling me what I can or can’t do. I’ve had enough of that.”

  “You don’t know how to do anything. How can you take care of a kid?”

  “At least it’ll have a mother.”

  Marie-Claude turns around and resumes washing dishes in silence. Elodie stands there for a few minutes, reeling. She didn’t think Marie-Claude would react this way. Didn’t think much at all.

  “You can’t stay here,” Marie-Claude says at length, her voice barely audible above the water.

  Elodie is frozen, speechless.

  “I can’t help you raise a child,” she says. “I just can’t.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “You have to find your own place.”

  Elodie’s mind is racing. She still has the suitcase from Saint-Nazarius and everything she owns still fits inside. But where will she go?

  “When do you want me out?” she asks coldly.

  Marie-Claude doesn’t answer, just slumps against the sink and turns off the water. She’s quiet for a long time. Elodie leaves the kitchen, retreating to the pullout couch in a daze. She lies there for a long time with her hand on the gentle slope of her belly. A baby. It’s surreal. She closes her eyes, not wanting to contemplate tomorrow, let alone the next few months.

  “I’m not trying to be cruel,” Marie-Claude says, suddenly appearing beside the couch. “I just can’t do this with you.”

  “I understand.”

  “You can stay for a while,” she concedes. “But you have to go after it’s born.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry, Elo.”

  “This is my fault,” Elodie says, sitting up. “I don’t expect you to help me raise my kid.”

  “Jean-Marc and I will probably be getting married anyway—”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  Marie-Claude nods, looking away, unable to meet Elodie’s gaze. “How could you let this happen, Elo? You should have known better than to repeat history.”

  Elodie knows she’s right, but she’d felt so happy that weekend. She’d let herself get thoroughly caught up in the charade of being normal.

  “You sure you don’t remember his last name?” Marie-Claude asks her. “Maybe he could help you.”

  “I never knew his last name. He’s probably dead by now anyway.”

  “Oh, Elo,” Marie-Claude says, shaking her head. “How could you let this happen?”

  The months of her pregnancy fly swiftly by—too swiftly. Her approaching due date feels more like doomsday. She’s still waitressing—day shifts only—but her swollen ankles are making it a living hell, as are the summer heat and her flaming heartburn. Len and the waitresses have been mercifully nonjudgmental. One night, when she was beginning to show, Rhonda came up to her and said, “The redhead from Boston?”

  Elodie nodded.

  “Is he going to marry you?”

  “He’s in Vietnam.”

  Not another word was said about it. Elodie let them assume there’s an ongoing, long-distance courtship and that he might be coming home to marry her at the end of his tour.

  On a particularly sweltering afternoon in her final trimester, Elodie lets herself inside the apartment after work and shuffles down the hall, stopping in the kitchen to get something cold to drink. Marie-Claude is sitting at the table, smoking a cigarette and fanning herself with an Allo Police magazine.

  “How’re you feeling?” she asks Elodie. “You look a little pale.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You’re going to have to stop working soon.”

  “I can’t,” Elodie says, grabbing a Pepsi from the fridge and lowering herself into a chair. “Not till the baby comes.”

  “That’s in less than a month.”

  “I need the pay.”

  She’s already made arrangements to move into Mme. Drouin’s basement apartment next door at the end of the month. Mme. Drouin has agreed to mind the baby while Elodie is at work, charging her a reasonable monthly payment that she’s rolling into the rent. With tips and welfare, Elodie figures she should be able to manage.

  “I know you think I’m making a huge mistake,” Elodie says, tearing open a May West and biting hungrily into the cream-filled cake. “Raising the baby by myself.”

  “I don’t actually,” Marie-Claude says, surprising her. “I’m an orphan, too, remember? I know what it’s like to grow up without parents. I know you could never give it away.”

  Elodie washes the cake down with a swig of Pepsi.

  “I do think you made a mistake getting pregnant in the first place,” Marie-Claude adds sharply. “Especially with a stranger.”

  “I’m scared I won’t know what to do,” Elodie confides.

  Marie-Claude reaches across the table and taps her hand. “You won’t,” she says. “But you’ll figure it out. You’re smart.”

  Marie-Claude has been kind to her over the years. After Sister Camille was transferred to a hospital in Repentigny, Marie-Claude became her one and only confidante, letting Elodie stay here through her pregnancy and forgiving her for her mistake. She may not be the easiest person, but she has a spirit of compassion.

  “I’m going to have a nap,” Elodie says, taking the Pepsi over to the pullout couch.

  She lies down on her back with a pillow under her legs and closes her eyes. The bed has never felt so comfortable. The baby presses a foot or elbow against her. Strange little creature, she thinks as it continues to kick and tumble inside her. It’s always most energetic when Elodie settles down to sleep. She finds it strangely lulling, all that motion and activity.

  The next thing she knows, Marie-Claude is shaking her awake. “Elodie!” she cries. “The bed is drenched!”

  Elodie opens an eye.

  “Feel the mattress.”

  Elodie touches the bed and it’s saturated. She sits up, confused. “What’s happening?”

  “Didn’t they tell you at the clinic that your water would break right before you went into labor?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That must be what this is,” she says. “You have to get to the hospital.”

  “I’m not ready!”

  “I’m calling a taxi.”

  Elodie starts to cry. “Mon Dieu! What have I done?”

  “Now is not a good time for that.”

  “I don’t know how to be a parent! I’ll never know what to do!”

  Marie-Claude ignores her, dials the phone, and requests a taxi.

  “Will you come with me?” Elodie cries, panic
rising.

  “Of course,” Marie-Claude says. “I just have to be at work by seven. It better be out by then.” Marie-Claude still works in the secretary pool at the Grand Trunk Railway.

  “I’m scared,” Elodie whispers.

  “You should be.”

  Thirteen hours later, Elodie finds herself alone in a hospital bed, wondering how she’s going to be a mother to the baby girl she’s just delivered. When the nurse placed the baby on her chest, Elodie felt nothing. Not joy or relief, nor any significant kind of connection. Certainly not love. She felt what she always feels. Empty.

  She wasn’t able to relax until the nurse scooped up the baby and whisked her away to the nursery. “You can visit her later,” the nurse said, smiling as she left.

  “When can I leave?” Elodie called after her.

  The nurse gave Elodie a strange look and said, “In two days.”

  Two days in the hospital. She’d rather be on the street than trapped in here. She hasn’t been inside a hospital since the day she left Saint-Nazarius; everything about it makes her squeamish. The smell, the fluorescent lights, the horrible cafeteria food.

  Now what?

  Sister Ignatia’s words come back to her. Imbecile. Retard. How is someone like her supposed to care for another human being?

  She wipes tears from her face with a corner of her bedsheet. For a split second, she contemplates running. How easy it would be to escape! But then she imagines her daughter and reconsiders. Surely that would be worse than a life with Elodie.

  All this is pounding in her skull when the nurse returns to clear away her tray—the food beneath the cloche untouched. “You have to eat, Mam’selle de Saint-Sulpice,” she says. “You’re going to need your energy.”

  “It’s inedible,” Elodie mutters.

  “Have you picked a name yet?” the nurse asks, her voice upbeat and perky. “She’s a little angel.”

  “No.”

  “Is your family coming to see her?”

  Elodie turns away, not answering.

  “I’ll let you rest,” the nurse says, her chipper tone never waning.

  Marie-Claude shows up after her shift, holding a handful of pink carnations. “How is she?”

  It takes Elodie a moment to figure out Marie-Claude is talking about the baby. “I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t been to see her yet.”

  Marie-Claude lays the flowers on the table and sits down on the edge of the bed. “You have to get on with things,” she says. “You can’t stay in the past.”

  “I have no feelings for her,” Elodie confesses. “What kind of mother am I?”

  “You have to get to know her, that’s all.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Marie-Claude snaps. “You have a baby now and she needs you. Did you give her a name yet?”

  Elodie shakes her head no.

  “Well, you better think of something.”

  Elodie turns away, ashamed.

  “She’s better off with you than in an orphanage,” Marie-Claude says sharply. “You can’t possibly do more damage than the nuns.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A shitty mother is still better than no mother at all.”

  “Do you remember the way Sister Ignatia used to line us up and give us the strap, always for another girl’s mistake?”

  “Of course.”

  “One time she strapped a bunch of us because Sylvie saw a mouse and screamed. When it was over, she said, ‘This is to teach you all how to behave.’”

  “What’s that got to do with now?” Marie-Claude says impatiently.

  “That’s all I know about raising a child.”

  “Is that what you want for your daughter then? For her to grow up like that, without a mother?”

  “What about a good family?” Elodie says, perking up. “I could give her to a family. People I pick. Rich and kind.”

  “Get up,” Marie-Claude says.

  “Heh?”

  “Get out of the bed and come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To see your daughter.”

  Elodie does as she’s told, slowly sliding her legs around and easing herself off the bed. She shuffles down the hall alongside Marie-Claude, her chest filling with dread as they approach the nursery.

  “Think how much times have changed,” Marie-Claude says, linking her arm in Elodie’s. “Our mothers weren’t allowed to keep us and raise us on their own. They had to give us up. At least you have a choice now. It’s okay for a woman to have a child without being married.”

  They stop in front of the nursery window and press their noses to the glass. Elodie scans all the cribs until her eyes light on the name de Saint-Sulpice, which seems officially to have become her last name. Seeing it written there on her daughter’s crib—not her name at all, but the name of the orphanage where she spent the first seven years of her life—she breaks down sobbing.

  Nestled inside the crib is her daughter, wrapped in a pink blanket and no bigger than a doll. A pink face, long lashes, perfectly bald.

  Marie-Claude brings a hand to her mouth and gasps. “She’s beautiful, Elo!”

  Elodie stares at the baby. “Is she?”

  “Of course she is. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”

  Marie-Claude turns to face Elodie, grabs her by the shoulders, and gives her a hard shake. “Give that baby a name and get on with it,” she says. “Do you hear me? You need to find a way to let go of what happened to you.”

  “Have you?”

  “I try,” Marie-Claude cries, releasing Elodie. “At least I try.”

  “I don’t know how to let go.”

  “Then tell people what they did to us at Saint-Nazarius,” Marie-Claude says. “Write it down, talk to someone from a newspaper. They print stories like that all the time in the Journal de Montréal. Tell the world about Sister Ignatia and how we were treated in there. Do something and then give your daughter a goddamn name.”

  Part IV

  Planting

  1974

  How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.

  —Benjamin Disraeli

  Chapter 51

  Maggie

  Maggie looks up from her typewriter and gazes out the window at her beloved view of the water. She sips her coffee, enjoying the peaceful Sunday morning. The subtle licorice smell of the wildflowers Stephanie picked for her—a lovely homemade bouquet of goldenrod, aster, thistle, and snakeroot—wafts around her. She loves her new home, her life here in Cowansville. After they had Stephanie, they decided to sell the house in Knowlton and move closer to the store. Gabriel never could get comfortable living in Roland’s discarded house.

  Roland let her sell the place without a hassle. He’d remarried by then and had children of his own, and he was happy to let her keep the money from the sale of the house. She and Gabriel bought a white 1830 Georgian on two acres of land, overlooking Lac Brome. Gabriel can fish in his free time and still run the farm back home in Dunham. Clémentine has a fiancé now and has relinquished control over the day-to-day operations. Gabriel is finally doing what he was always meant to do—working his field on his own terms. He’s been able to increase revenue on the farm thanks to the expansion of Route 10 into Magog and Sherbrooke, and with the seed store also faring well, they live a better life than either of them ever thought possible.

  It’s not lost on Maggie that in many ways she is also living her father’s life. She spends her days serving the sons of the farmers she grew up around, talking seeds and crops and earworms with them, warning them about the pesticides for which her father has become a cautionary tale. Like her father, she is known to engage in long political conversations and the occasional argument (or sermon, if warranted) for she is still an Anglo at heart. Like her father, Maggie isn’t afraid to make her opinions known. She is respected for that, as much as for her knowledge and expertis
e of seeds.

  At the end of each day, before she goes home to prepare supper for the family, she locks herself in her father’s office—she still refers to it as her father’s office—and takes a quiet moment to review the day’s sales or double-check Fred’s bookkeeping, and then to make her to-do list for the next day. She understands now her father’s reluctance to let go of the reins even a little bit. Having her hand in every facet of the business gives her a feeling of security, especially since that new garden store opened up in Granby. It’s called Seed World—the sign doesn’t even include the name in French—and it’s one of those gigantic, industrial-looking warehouses where the customer has to push a cart through the aisles and fend for himself. It smells of hardware, not gardening. At least Maggie’s store still smells of things growing.

  Out in the yard, Gabriel and the kids are sprawled in the grass, a bucket of fresh-picked blueberries between them. Maggie watches Gabriel toss a blueberry at James, and then another one at Stephanie. The kids both retaliate, and before long the three of them are engaged in a blueberry fight, their screams of laughter coming in through the windows.

  Maggie chuckles to herself as James sticks his hand in the bucket and launches a handful of blueberries at his father. It still confounds her to observe him on the brink of manhood—long-limbed and gangly, almost as tall as Gabriel, with a square jaw and shaggy hair that is too “hippie” for her taste. He’s thirteen and his handsomeness is just budding, his features readjusting themselves within this new larger frame. Seemingly overnight his body shot up, while the rest of him is still scrambling to catch up. She finds herself searching frantically for that little boy she knows once existed somewhere beneath those broad shoulders and big hands and feet that go clomping clumsily around the house, but all traces of her baby are gone.

  Maggie’s attention drifts back to her typewriter, and she resumes planning the contents of the spring catalogue. Although corn season is barely underway, by the time her mock-up goes to print, the November deadline will have arrived. She tends to stick to her father’s original layout, dividing it into categories of seeds—grasses and legumes; herbs; fruit and vegetables; grains; flowers—with separate sections for packaging and transport, tools and pesticides. She’s added a section called Tips of the Trade, where she discusses how to identify abnormalities in the seedlings, how to test for moisture, ultimate conditions for germination, and other fascinating topics of that sort.