As the weeks go on, Laure cannot think of anything but the child growing within her. She is so exhausted that she can hardly remember when she was one person. The pregnancy is consuming her thoughts like a fire destroying all that came before. As she weakens, growing heavier and more tired each day, Laure can feel the baby’s movements getting more powerful. Sometimes, lying awake at night, she can make out a hand or a knee protruding from her abdomen as if fighting against the containment. It is God’s punishment to have filled her with such a healthy baby. The creature with no destiny has a strong will to live. But, worse than this, Laure has started to sing to the baby. She remembers her father and the safety she felt in his arms. Of course he had nothing to give her except those songs.
Before long, Madame Rouillard is back to examine Laure once again.
“Just remember that this child doesn’t belong to you,” she whispers to her this time.
Laure is entering her eighth month of pregnancy and is amazed that Madame Rouillard can say such a thing to her. After all, the baby is enveloped in the stretched flesh of her abdomen. There is no separating their two bodies from each other.
“You cannot keep the child. Your husband will know it is from another man. Even if he remains quiet about it, people like Madame Tardif will spread the gossip all the way to Ville-Marie. There will be consequences for you and for the child.”
Laure attempts to follow Madame Rouillard’s thoughts, but she cannot raise her eyes from her belly. She hasn’t permitted herself to think about the outcome, the punishments that are levelled against adulterous women, including death. She has not dared to imagine what will happen when the child is born, a being separate from her and clearly not belonging to Mathurin. Like the skin of her midriff, Laure has let herself believe that this pregnancy will stretch on. That it has no end. That the half-remembered songs she sings are enough.
Laure doesn’t want to hear what Madame Rouillard is suggesting. She wants to scream like a crazed woman at the Salpêtrière. To think that she will not keep this child, even though doing so could have her sentenced to death, makes Laure feel like she is losing her mind.
“Listen to me. It is better for everyone. For you, your husband, and especially for the child, if the Algonquin, the father, takes the baby.”
Deskaheh? Laure hasn’t seen him since the summer. Surely he doesn’t even know she is pregnant.
“The authorities don’t count the Savage children or question their origins the way they do for the French ones. Now, listen. I have been to see him beyond Ville-Marie toward the Outaouais River and he has agreed to take the baby. He was very concerned about you and wanted to come and see you, which I advised him not to do. He isn’t bad, that one. A little foolish, but he has a kind heart. Misfortune usually chooses to strike fools with kind hearts.”
Laure asks what Deskaheh will tell his village. How will he explain this particular misfortune to them?
“They have adopted children before. It is a war practice of theirs. Deskaheh was adopted himself. But try not to think about the outcome of the child’s life. After all, it is better to be raised by Savages than to die.”
Laure nods. The baby will live. Both she and the baby will survive, apart but alive. Laure has lain awake while the Tardif household slept and implored the grace of her dead friend Madeleine, the only divine angel she trusts to listen, for this very outcome. Her prayers have been answered.
“There is still much to do just to make sure that the child, once born, is brought to Deskaheh before your husband or Madame Tardif sees it. But don’t worry about these things for now.”
Her child will live. There will be a second chance for everyone. Laure imagines Madeleine’s beatific face smiling. Laure is filled with gratitude.
22
Laure’s second spring in Canada was the windiest any settler could remember. It was hard to sleep each night because they heard the wind whistling like a tormented being through the cracks of their small cabins. It was as if this year the winter was unwilling to relinquish its hold on the colony. Laure had many dreams. The sailor Ti-Jean who had crushed Madeleine’s spirit rode the horses that came to wrench Laure from the arms of her father. In one dream, Ti-Jean was a monster dressed like the Bonhomme Terre-Neuve.
Laure lay on her side, unable to turn over from the weight of her belly, imagining the sounds of women screaming as Iroquois warriors raided the settlement, brandishing the long-haired, bloody scalps in victory. There were so many noises in the cabin, the Tardif children coughing and whimpering in their sleep. Madame Tardif slept through it all with roaring snores and awoke refreshed for her duties each day like a commanding soldier, whereas Laure began those spring mornings weary and drained, convinced that the demons of hell had visited her the previous night to chastise her for her sin.
If the baby inside her can hear any of it or feel the disquiet building in its mother, it shows no signs. It continues to grow through the beginning of April, kicking harder than before. By the end of the month, Laure is far bigger than any of the settlers have ever seen a pregnant woman who still has two months remaining to her pregnancy. She can no longer do much of anything other than lie in bed on her side. There is still no sign of Mathurin, and Madame Tardif has grown so tired of her unwanted guest that she comes in from her outside work just long enough to grudgingly prepare some broth for Laure and to sigh about how this winter has left her household economies in a dire state. In truth, Laure feels the woman is a bit afraid of Laure’s unnatural size.
When May arrives, even though Mathurin has not returned with the other men from the fur country, Madame Tardif asks Laure to move back to her own cabin. She promises that she will bring Laure some soup and help as much as she can, given her own woeful circumstances, until Mathurin comes back.
Once Laure is in her own cabin, Madame Rouillard comes every few days to study her pregnant belly, to see if it is time to deliver, and also to prepare soup and bread and a little meat for her. The midwife feels Laure’s stomach and assures her that the baby she is carrying is healthy, if the strength of its kicks is any sign. She offers to bleed Laure, to try to bring down some of the swelling in her arms and legs, but Laure doesn’t see how any treatment other than getting the child out of her will do anything at all. She does take the herbs that are supposed to speed along the birth, because the midwife feels it is taking too long for the baby to be born.
At last, one night in the middle of May, the baby starts to come. At first Laure is uncertain whether the tightening of her abdomen and the pain that follows is any different from the signs of impending birth she has been feeling for weeks. But after a few hours, when she can no longer sleep, Laure gets out of bed and lays down some pelts on the floor of the cabin. She is unsure what force is guiding her actions, but somehow she is unafraid and purposeful. There is no room in her mind for thoughts or doubts as she prepares to give birth.
She doesn’t know how long she stays like this, her face pressing into the furs, the smell of dead animal flesh rising into her nostrils. She attempts to doze between the spasms of pain. There is nothing to do but endure. She forgets all that has come before and what lies ahead. Hours pass like minutes and minutes become an eternity of agony.
Laure has been sleeping fitfully, caught between the world of dreams and the pain that keeps her awake. But in an instant the characters of her dream go cascading as if on a waterfall right out of her mind. She rises to her knees and feels a moment of terror. The months of swelling have deflated in a rush of warm liquid on the furs beneath her. The most excruciating pain Laure has ever felt replaces the bloated feeling. She releases into the settlement first one scream and then another.
Laure has opened the door to the cabin and is about to head outside, possibly into the forest, anywhere to escape the pain that is almost relentless now. But Madame Tardif is there, blocking her way. She pushes her back into the cabin and onto the pelts and tells her that she will send her husband to get the midwife. Laure can feel the baby thra
shing inside her.
When Madame Rouillard arrives a few hours later, she dismisses Madame Tardif from her duties, saying she will call on her closer to the time when the baby is due to arrive. Laure hears Madame Rouillard say that it probably won’t be before morning, that it takes a long time for a first baby to emerge.
The midwife helps Laure onto her elbow and lights the gas lamp she uses sparingly for the delivery of babies born at night. She lifts Laure’s skirt and spreads wide her legs. Laure cannot feel Madame Rouillard’s hands as she examines her, but she manages to calm herself a little by looking at the midwife’s face.
“The baby is coming, but try to hold it back,” she hears her say. “You haven’t stretched enough to push it out.” Laure feels her eyes rolling into the back of her head. It is impossible to heed the midwife’s advice. She cannot stop the pressure of the baby’s head against her spine. She is sure it will push through her back. The midwife comes close to Laure’s face and tells her to forget the pain and to listen to her words. Then she works to stretch the opening between Laure’s legs to let the head through.
Laure cannot concentrate on Madame Rouillard’s voice or the room around her. She imagines a door opening in her mind and she passes through it. A bright fire burns in the room and she is back among the characters from the dreams that have been tormenting her all winter. She makes a snarling noise like a sick dog and resumes her screaming. The midwife tells Laure she is going to get a pail of water.
In bringing this overgrown child into the world of the living, Laure catches a glimpse of the world of the dead. She has been seeing it in her dreams all along as the baby grew through the long winter. But when the giant head tears its way out of her body and she begins to lose blood, Laure glimpses something else. It is as if she can no longer hear the noises in the cabin and there is only a deep and distant quiet.
This time she sees a stream as peaceful and inviting as a summer sky. The babbling sound is as gentle as birds playing in the branches. She doesn’t feel pain and she is able to walk like she did when she first arrived in the New World. The heavy weight of the child is gone. Someone is there by the water. His hair is as long and black as hers and his arms are the colour of tree branches and just as strong. I didn’t know Jesus would greet me like this to welcome me to heaven, Laure thinks. She recognizes him as he comes toward her. It has been a long time since Deskaheh has watched her.
This is your home, he says. She thinks he is referring to his arms, because she wants to run into them, to feel them around her slim body. But he smiles and extends his hand to indicate the great expanse where they are standing.
Laure wants to believe him, to shed the heavy clothes she is wearing, to drop the memories she has of stone buildings and men with stone hearts and the heavy, heavy stone she has been carrying in her stomach. She wants to bare her skin to the sky and let go of everything else. Stand with him in the cool, calm water. But there is too much distance between them and she cannot reach him. The peaceful river becomes the angry sea, and in an instant Laure is swept under.
Someone is smacking Laure’s face and a new voice is crying in the room. Laure’s stomach has turned to liquid, her body has been returned to her, a river without its banks. She is unable to move even a finger and cries without making a sound, or releasing another drop of water.
For the first time in months, Laure feels cold and thinks they must have moved her outside, the woman who hits her must have dropped her in the snow. Laure cannot sleep or stay awake. She prays to go back to the heavenly stream. Only there is a new animal life in the cabin. The midwife is putting the baby, a girl, to her breast. The creature that was so enormous and powerful inside her belly now seems so small.
Once the baby begins to suckle on Laure, Madame Rouillard busies herself preparing some food, from supplies she must have carried with her. “Some soup for the new mother,” she says. “Giving birth is hard work.”
Laure is hungry and eats first one bowl and then another of the soup filled with chunks of meat and root vegetables. Then Madame Rouillard says that she must leave. She has to rest after the long night, to travel the trails, to prepare for another birth. She promises to return in two days and advises Laure to stay in bed except to tend to the fire and to get more soup. “Keep the baby on your breast and against your skin so she stays warm, and get as much rest as you can to keep from bleeding too much.
“A fortunate birth,” she says to Laure.
Laure spends the first day of her daughter’s life in the cabin lying in bed, nursing the new creature. The baby is either sucking greedily or asleep. Laure strokes the fine tuft of black hair on the tiny head and marvels at the smooth pout of the baby’s lips and the dark stains of colour on her cheeks. How could such a clandestine, impossible union have created this remarkable being so hungry for the next hours of her doomed life?
Laure is neither asleep nor completely awake in the hours following her daughter’s birth. Instead she lets herself be carried on the soft waves of these new and tentative breaths. She feels she must remain awake, vigilant, so she can urge her baby forward, raising her with a mother’s will, ever deeper out of the water, away from slumber and into the wakefulness of the world.
Laure tries to forget that they will soon be parted. In a few more days, she will be left alone, wounded and shapeless. What is the use of holding the baby to her breast and singing? Laure will soon belong to a time in her baby’s life when being drowned was the same as being alive, a time before she knew the earth, this forest, the snow, her father and his people.
Later that day, Madame Tardif comes knocking on Laure’s door. Laure considers not getting out of bed when she hears the loud, familiar voice outside. But she knows this will only elicit suspicion and might lead to a worse invasion later. Rising out of bed, Laure takes her baby and wraps her tightly in the blanket, covering the dark hair and face and nestling her against her breast. Then she stumbles, bent over and in pain, to open the door to the unwelcome guest.
Madame Tardif barely seems to notice the infant and Laure’s weakened state as she pushes into the cabin. “Good, now that the baby has arrived, I need to talk to you.”
Laure walks back to the bed. She needs to sit down. Madame Rouillard removed the wood cover of the lit-cabane to make it easier for Laure after the birth. She rests on the edge of the bed, holding her baby’s head tightly against her chest.
“I wanted to tell you sooner but it was the midwife who asked me to wait. I don’t think it should have been a secret at all.” Madame Tardif crosses her arms over her chest.
What news can she possibly have for Laure? Whatever it is, it can’t be good. Laure detects a note of smugness in the Canadienne. She is too tired to tell Madame Tardif that she doesn’t want to know, that she has no desire to hear any bad news. That if Madame Rouillard, her trusted midwife, thought it could wait, then surely it can.
But the words are out of Madame Tardif’s mouth before Laure can utter her protest.
“Your husband is dead.”
For a brief moment, Laure is unsure who Madame Tardif is talking about. In a flash, she imagines that Deskaheh and Mathurin were engaged in a battle and that one of them has died. But which one? Mathurin has known all along about her relations with Deskaheh and now it has come to this. Perhaps they have both been killed and now Laure’s secret is out. This baby, whom she already desires more than either of the men, will be wrenched from her chest.
“Mathurin fell through the ice and drowned on his way hurrying back to you and the child,” Madame Tardif says. There is a note of accusation in her voice.
Laure feels relief even though her heart has already risen to her throat and is racing fast. Her secret is still safe. Mathurin, her pink pig fool of a husband, simply lost his footing and slid beneath the water, a greedy fur trader consumed by the cruel indifference of the landscape. But what face must Laure show to this woman, her shrewd neighbour? What new lie needs to be told? Surely Laure should appear sad, shocked, griev
ing. Mathurin is dead. But Laure is not really surprised. She has known all along that he would be swallowed whole by the force of her disdain.
“Our men are so brave,” Madame Tardif says. “We are fortunate that they take such good care of us. We are safe here at the settlement while they risk their lives in the woods among Savage nations. Your husband had gone to winter with the Cheveux-Relevés along the Outaouais with some other men from here. They travelled further west than usual and had a good year acquiring plenty of pelts. But your husband left early, to get back to you of course. He travelled with some Savages, probably paid them in goods to take him across the dangerous terrain. But the ice was already beginning to thaw. You are now a widow.” Madame Tardif utters the last word like it is bitter on her tongue.
All of Laure’s past losses come flooding back to her. Gone are the protective arms of her father, the kindness and instruction of Madame d’Aulnay and Madame du Clos, Madeleine’s friendship and prayers. How much more abandonment will she know? Only madwomen know the freedom that loneliness brings, what it means to let your life flow into and become one with the sea. Madame Tardif, with her husband returned from the fur country and her solid cabin filled with children, thinks she will escape her own drowning.
Madame Tardif casts her eye around the room. The expression on her face clearly shows that she thinks Laure is responsible for the squalor. If only she had been an industrious, practical wife, like Madame Tardif, Laure might also have some good pieces of wooden furniture by now, some iron pots and utensils in the kitchen, food supplies on the shelf, a warmer hearth. Of course Laure’s husband would be alive as well.
Bride of New France Page 23