Ghost of the Southern Cross

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  “The gulls would throw that up,” she told Jacob.

  He gave her a boyish grin. “Not a’tall. It’s a relish.”

  Handling fish guts wasn’t something she had imagined doing when she fell into marrying Jacob. She thought of how she’d starch and scent crisp white sheets and huddle against Jacob in bed, their feet entwined, feeling his strength, and listen to the strong rhythm of his heartbeat. She’d mistaken life with Jacob for love without labour.

  Early November, fish was barrelled and sold to Harold Andrews, the harbour merchant. Fishing boats were pulled up on the launch and left like gulls with their heads under their wings.

  Winter came early, and when its first snow swirled in the mouth of strong winds and shadowed the hills, Elizabeth felt its chill and with it her first labour pang.

  No one had told her that she’d have to bear down and push out, her own life force caught in a maelstrom of pain. Nor did anyone tell her that it would be forgotten once her newborn lay snuggled against her breast.

  19

  Elizabeth had heard women say that an unborn child does not exist for men; the baby becomes real only when they hear the first cry. Jacob wasn’t like that. Before the baby was born his rough hands had gently cupped Elizabeth’s belly. Sometimes he had pulled up her nightgown and waited for movement, hardly believing his eyes that a living human being could be cradled inside another body.

  After Elsie was born Jacob stood in the doorway of the bedroom. He ran his fingers through his rich brown hair, sleek and thick above his handsome face, and looked at her. His tone was mockingly solemn. “Looks like we’ve made an entirely separate human being. I don’t think anyone has done that before.”

  Elizabeth held her stomach while she laughed. “You think so, eh? Well, let me tell you. No one has made a child exactly like this one.”

  Jacob rushed then to lift the baby into his arms, all the while looking into Elizabeth’s eyes. “Well, now,” he said. “I guess we’re Mamma and Pappa.”

  Elizabeth looked at her child and at Jacob and felt complete for the first time in her life. She smiled. “I’ve put the first limb on my father’s family tree. Maybe Jamie will put on the next one.”

  “Indeed he might,” Jacob said.

  “Nine days abed,” the midwife told her. “After a woman’s body is torn it needs time to heal. That means time away from the household and husband’s needs—time to get to know the little stranger.”

  Elizabeth looked toward the window in the early morning light, the sun rising quietly and as beautifully as a flower opening, the new day dawning as pure as her sleeping newborn.

  Three months later there came the sound of chatter and laughter. The upbringing cake was ready and the cove women were coming to tea to watch as Elsie was shortened. Alvina, Diana, and others came. Elsie’s barrow was untied and the sheet binding her legs lifted off. She let out a chuckle as her legs kicked the air. Then she stopped as if puzzled that she didn’t have to push against the cloth binding. The bellyband was removed and the coin holding the healed cord given into the keeping of Elizabeth’s dresser box to await the next child. Elsie was dressed in a white woollen gown, bonnet, and long stockings Elizabeth had knit for the occasion. The baby’s wrinkled skin had unfolded plump and smooth, her blue eyes clear and focused. Once she was shortened the wide-eyed, dark-haired baby preferred to suck on her toe rather than take the breast.

  Sarah Ann hadn’t been well for a few months. Now she ambled down Kennedy’s Hill. Elizabeth spied her through the kitchen window and thought, She’ll never get back up. I would have brought her the baby had she waited for me to get my strength back.

  Sarah Ann came on down the path and up the lane clutching her chest as if to squeeze the pain away. “I couldn’t wait,” she gasped, her face drawn. “I wanted to get me hands on the child and remember how it was for me, though I never really forgot.”

  Elizabeth opened her arms and Sarah Ann gathered the baby to her. She put a finger to her cheek. “She’s healthy enough. John William, my first baby, was born November 6, 1879. He wasn’t quite the colour he should have been. He struggled to breathe and he lived until two days past Christmas of the next year. Then Henry William died when he was born in 1890. Now these babies live in my heart.” She looked away but not before a tear slipped from her eye. She caught it with a worn finger. “Death is like a wild creature, not only waiting on the rise of an ocean wave near and far but also at every turn in the road.”

  Elizabeth rushed to tell her, “The year Henry William died was the year I was born and here I am now givin’ you a grandbaby to hold. Life has many wonderful surprises.”

  “Indeed,” Sarah Ann answered. “I’m grateful for God’s mercies in givin’ me the children I have.” She reached to give Elizabeth back the baby, and when she left to go back up the hill it was with a smile, if not a quick step.

  Elizabeth watched her go, hoping never to have to live her years with the memory of a dead child. She would never want to carry a baby only in her heart.

  20

  The January Mary Jane took sick she kept going as long as she could. Then one evening she climbed into bed away from what was left of her day’s work and closed her eyes. She lay deep in the folds of the featherbed, her flesh burning the cold air around her.

  William brought wet cloths and wiped her body. He drew his lips tight as he listened to the croaking coughs and wheezing breath.

  When he told Jamie his mother was sick and had taken to her bed, Jamie crept up the stairs, the creak of boards blending with the hoarse sound of his mother breathing.

  Caroline came to administer the herbal remedies she and Mary Jane had often used to help other people recover. Nothing worked. Mary Jane slipped into a deep sleep.

  On her last evening Mary Jane lay in bed forgetting, for a moment, her struggle to breathe. William placed his hand on her head and she felt its warmth. Her greying hair lay across the pillow. She opened her eyes as William reached to loosen it from a braid, still silky soft and wavy like the sea. She imagined it dark and flowing and not a grey hair in sight. She had just met Edward Kennedy . . . just had her first child . . . her second child . . . her third. Then she lost Edward. She was lying on the floor crying, believing that tomorrow was empty. Then the children had tightened their hold on her and their little bodies had given her strength to stand on her feet, to look beyond what she had lost, and to think on what she had left: three children who needed her. Then William came and they were blessed with two children of their own: Elizabeth and Jamie. It’s hard to get into this world, difficult to stay in it any length of time, hard to believe we have to leave it.

  Her heartbeat was slowing and her breath no longer had an easy pull. Someone else was going to handle the worries between the birth of each day and the sleep of each night. “Hold me gently,” she planned on telling God. “These old bones are brittle and tender.”

  She knew He’d smile and answer, “Not anymore.”

  * * * * *

  Jamie had gone to the beach to gather kelp washed up by strong northerly winds. He’d have it dried by spring to fertilize the vegetable gardens. Joe came for him.

  “Pick up your feet and get on up to your house,” his uncle called. “Your mother don’t have enough breath to cool a bowl of porridge and not enough time, if I’m any judge.”

  Jamie trudged along the path trying to shut out the news that his mother was failing. He looked toward her bare apple trees remembering the sweet taste of apple pie soaked in sugar and cinnamon. He staggered into the house feeling weak.

  Joe put his hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be goin’ soon, Jamie. There’s nothing anyone can do. Her pulse is struggling and her lungs—” He shook his head. “They’re aflood with double pneumonia. Your father made a mix of kerosene and molasses and got it to her lips but no further. Her stomach’s too weak.”

 
; Jamie’s steps were heavy as he climbed the stairs to the sounds of his mother’s breath rasping her throat like a saw. Jamie and his father’s eyes met over the bed of a woman they both cherished.

  She’s only sixty, not old enough to die, Jamie thought, touching his lips to his mother’s eyelid as soft as swansdown. Under it he felt the slippery ball of her eye quivering. Her eyelashes, like thin threads, fluttered.

  Trying not to cry, he left the room. Later he wondered why he hadn’t stayed to hold her hand while it was warm and soft. Maybe she would have wanted to hear him say, “Mam, I love you.”

  William was left like a bicycle knocked to the ground, its wheels spinning in the air going nowhere. His head dropped into his hands as the anguish of losing Mary Jane sliced through his heart.

  Hours later, Edward John and Fannie, who had been called from Kelligrews, hurried down the road holding each other and sobbing as if their hearts would break.

  Caroline brought a boiler of soup and fresh bread. “Your poor mother went quicker than we’d expected,” she told them.

  William was unable to eat. He sat smoking his pipe and thinking he had to be dreaming. Mary Jane couldn’t have left him forever.

  Caroline called midwife Melinda Tucker, whose task it was to bring out the newborn and lay out the dead.

  The next morning Jamie came downstairs not wanting to go near the back room, where his mother lay, hands folded over a still breast like a fork and knife over a plate after a meal is finished. He leaned against the door facing. “We’ll have to get Elizabeth over for the funeral.”

  “You can’t be wearying your sister,” William said. “She’s full of work tendin’ to Jacob and the baby. ’Tis not fit this time of year for her to be in a boat or knockin’ around on a train. Joe already sent someone with the news.”

  Jamie turned to a familiar sound. The door was ajar and wind swept in like a gentle hand setting the rocking chair in motion. For a moment he thought his mother was sitting there.

  William said, “It’s her ghost.”

  “It’s the wind, Pappa, just the wind finding a crack and blowing in to stir the rocker.”

  “The wind never rocked it before she died,” he said hopefully.

  Mary Jane’s sturdy rocking chair had been, like many rocking chairs, made to the specifics of the woman who would use it. William had made it to accommodate her height so that her feet touched the floor to rest exactly where they should.

  Maggie went to sit in it before the funeral. The chair didn’t match Maggie’s long legs for a good reach though the headrest was a perfect fit.

  “I’ll make you your own,” Jamie promised.

  She smiled up at him and he leaned to kiss her. “You’re the only woman who loves me now.”

  She shook her head. “Not true. Your sister thinks the world of her brother.”

  21

  Who’s coming now, and what for? Elizabeth strained to see through an upstairs window, shading her eyes to make out the man in the small skiff. She watched as the painter was thrown up and tied to the stagehead.

  She saw that it was Sam Bishop from Foxtrap. The man was wearing a black armband on his sleeve. Her hand went to her throat and she let out a gasp. “Pappa—Mamma—Jamie.” She ran downstairs, took off her apron, smoothed her hair, and braced herself.

  “My mother! My mother!” Elizabeth cried when Sam took off his hat and solemnly relayed her father’s news. Her legs wobbled like a young foal’s as Jacob folded her in his arms—Jacob so strong holding her, she so weak leaning into him.

  Alvina helped Elizabeth get ready to go to her mother’s funeral while Jacob went to turn over the punt pulled up on the launch and put on its cuddy, a shelter for Elizabeth.

  “It’ll get easier,” Alvina said as she gathered warm blankets and packed Elizabeth and Jacob’s belongings. When she was finished she reached to hug her sister-in-law.

  Elizabeth stared past her and spoke softly. “My mother never told me she loved me but I knew she did.”

  “Sure, she loved you,” Alvina said. “Now go on. The baby will be left in good hands.”

  Elizabeth stepped down into the boat remembering the sound of her mother’s quick step to open the door to her knock when she was too little to reach the latch, her smile after she bit off the last piece of thread to a dress she’d finished making. She’d pull the dress over Elizabeth’s head and Elizabeth would push her hands out the sleeves feeling like a princess. Her hair was combed smooth with her mother’s gentle hand. Her mother may have held her words in but she had been generous in meeting her daughter’s needs.

  Jacob was a good hand at making sandals and coffins, the first to wear while one was very much alive and the other to lie in when one was off one’s feet for good. He used pine for his boxes, the wood gentle to his saw. He and Elizabeth left for Foxtrap, his boat carrying a pine coffin.

  Jamie was standing on the stagehead watching Jacob tie up. “We already have a coffin,” he said, “but Pappa and me’s much obliged.”

  “It won’t go astray,” said William.

  “No, indeed,” Caroline said as she came down the path. “There’s always someone—” She stopped and turned to Elizabeth. “I’ll come with you to see your mamma. She’d been laid up for only a few days after she caught a chill hangin’ out clothes.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  Inside the house Elizabeth turned to acknowledge Edward John standing by the coffin, his eyes swollen. Mary Jane looked young, her face unlined in death. Elizabeth bent to kiss her cold face. She cupped her cheek and it was like holding a beach rock in her hand.

  Fannie came up behind her, her small brown eyes red. “Our mother,” her half-sister sobbed, and gathered Elizabeth into her arms.

  Lavinia pushed open the door and came in with her mother’s dish of stew. “Poor Aunt Mary Jane,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. She laid down the dish and left quickly.

  Fannie turned to Elizabeth. “I remember when Mam was havin’ you. When she’d sit for a spell her belly moved under the flower print of her apron and the flowers seemed to nod. That was you wantin’ to get out.” She gave Elizabeth a weak smile.

  Elizabeth kept that fresh image of her mother as she came back to the cove and pulled up the window shade Alvina had pulled down. She sat at the kitchen table and stared at the leaning, lichen-crusted headstones in cracked stone like an open palm holding the commandment: THOU SHALT DIE. A few surnames were legible: Grealey, Bishop, Butler. . . . She drew the window shade back down and went upstairs while Jacob went to bring Elsie home from Alvina’s. A yearning for her mother came as strong as any she felt for Jacob. She remembered her mother washing her face tenderly with a warm cloth when she was a child. She retraced her footsteps down the stairs to where Jacob was laying the sleeping baby in her cot. She gave Jacob a plaintive look. “Likely no one else will ever wash my face, like my mother used to do.” She broke down sobbing and sniffling like a small child.

  Jacob got up and, without saying a word, went to the stove. She watched as he picked up the kettle and took it to the porch, where he poured warm water into the face pan. He dipped a cloth and wrung it. He came back and, placing his arms around Elizabeth’s drooping shoulders, he sat her down. He washed her face with the warm cloth, lingering over her swollen eyelids, his voice steady. “I’ll be your husband and your mother. I’ll give you children and they will fill your heart until you’ll hardly have room even for me.”

  She looked at him, and then at Elsie in her cot, and for that moment it was only Jacob and her baby she thought of, only Jacob and Elsie she wanted to think of. They were enough.

  22

  William hardly lifted his feet as he trudged back to the grave after Mary Jane was buried and everyone had left. He wanted to be alone with the only woman he had ever loved. The gravedigger had cut into a beautiful b
lanket of snow and turned up dirt for Mary Jane’s grave. A fresh fall of snow had given it a new covering and filled the lines in headstones beside the path, leaving blank faces. Scarves of snow shadowed them just as sorrow now shadowed William. The rosy cast to his face and the twinkle in his eyes were gone. He wished he could be gone with Mary Jane, away from the pain of losing her. His footmarks left long, deep trenches in the snow as he made his way home. He sat alone, the tick-tock of the old Clinton clock grating on his nerves. He had wound it with its heavy brass key days before. He reached his hand inside the glass door and stopped the pendulum. He wondered if this was how God felt when He held a person’s heart in His hand and stopped its ticking. He could almost hear Mary Jane say, “Fancy how you talk about God when you don’t believe in Him.”

  He sat in the silence waiting for Jamie to come home. The silence grew loud against his ears and he muttered, “That young scallywag is gone courtin’ and left me alone.”

  He could hear Mary Jane answer him, “What else would you expect?”

  He curled up on the settle. Though it was hard on his bones it was close to the fire he left lingering through the night. Sometimes it sputtered and crackled. A log rolled and he awakened startled.

  Jamie came home, but it was long after he walked Maggie to her aunt’s place. He came on down over the hill through thick snow falling around him. His shoulders were bent into the wind, his tears like rain falling into his open mouth. He swallowed them, warm and salty. Instead of going into the house and following the lamp’s light upstairs he turned up the path to the barn. He squeaked open the door and went inside. Curling up on a bundle of hay he fell asleep and dreamed that St. Peter reached down from heaven and grabbed his mother. He looked at Jamie out of fiery eyes and threatened, “I’ll get you later.” Then his mother and St. Peter disappeared into the clouds.