Milk Fever

by Lissa M. Cowan

  “My daughter, my little nut, used to play with a doll just like that. My husband Robert brought it back for her after one of his trips.”

  “We must rescue it,” I said reaching once more for her stick.

  “Leave it there,” she told me. “I don’t want it back.”

  We stood there looking helplessly at the bonhomme, his body encased in ice. She tugged at my arm once more; I took one last look and turned away.

  She walked quickly this time as if to get further away from the little doll, further away, I thought, from her past. We went through a forest under branches laden with snow. The face of the bonhomme stayed in my head, his look of surprise, mouth open as if he wished to tell me something. We stayed close to the river then took a well-trodden path leading up the side of the mountain. Armande stopped by an oak tree that creaked in the wind. Her face was grim and the wind at her back made her look weak, not her usual self.

  “After the accident I took my daughter’s few playthings and laid them in the square for the village children, though it was my impression that I kept the doll with the funny expression as it was her favourite.” She looked as though her heart would burst. “She would hold it in her little hands, stare at it for hours. It was the bright red hat and the gold buttons that entranced her.” Her voice trembled. She grabbed hold of a low branch and leaned against the tree trunk for support.

  I wanted to rush back and dig the doll out of the ice for her, thinking that might end her pain. No, she did not want to remember what the doll conjured up about her daughter. My head was spinning and my heart cried rivers of tears. We kept on our way, the image of the doll sticking in my mind, though I did not dare speak of it.

  Sun melted snow on the mountain edge, streams trickling under rocks and ice, sign of an early spring. We walked in silence before she said to me, “I used to refer to Robert as l’homme des étoiles or l’homme de la rivière.” He was always either star-gazing or performing mathematical calculations on our river’s waters.”

  The sighting of the bonhomme in the ice had broken open the door to her past.

  “Where did you meet him?” I asked her.

  “I knew of him since I was a girl. One evening while strolling by the chapel on the hill after dark I saw him lying in the clover. We had not seen each other in a while and I was awestruck by his handsome appearance. He had large hands and very broad shoulders.

  “‘I am counting stars,’ he said to me. ‘By dividing the sky into sections I can calculate how many there are.’ I lay down beside him and observed a mass of planets lining the heavens like bands of silk. The more stars I counted, the more my body quivered at the prospect that his shoulder might rub up against mine.

  “I grew faint at the idea that the two of us could—paltry beings that we were before the immense firmament—give off some light of our own making. Stars danced before us like fireworks. One shot across the canvas and seemed almost to land at our feet. Brighter ones stood out. More digging made distant stars come to the surface, still more and I saw fused with all that blackness, clusters of them like masses of people with lanterns parading through a dense forest.” Light returned to her eyes remembering the starry evening with him in the clover.

  A shiver—that felt more like a tickle—went up my back as I became caught up in the romance of their stargazing. She loved him once I could tell. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. When Pierre touched me that time in the woods, his eyes told me he wanted to kiss me, yet instead he pushed me to the ground.

  We reached the top of a hill and then came to a cemetery. After walking through the village gates, we passed an apple orchard. The house belonging to Sophie’s family was white stone with a cheery blue door, steps leading to a small entrance. We walked through a corridor past three closed doors.

  In a dimly lit room, Sophie lay on her sickbed. She was so small inside the large bed and her skin was greyish with traces of blue. She lay there, eyes closed, like a slab of marble sculpted into a girl’s body. A young woman who resembled Sophie approached Armande. She wore a plain brown petticoat and had no lace on her chemise. An apron was tied around her waist.

  “Will you please, the baby hasn’t nursed all day and Sophie’s been asking after you.” Armande took the screaming child and found a spot at the back of the room to sit and nurse.

  An old woman took a cup of pee from the bedside table then drew it to her nose. It was said the colour and smell of the liquid told a person what made the body sick. The woman’s petticoat was stained with blood and a yellow substance like dandelion. She whispered in Armande’s ear, and then returned to Sophie. Another woman, not as old as the first, stooped on a chair. She held a rosary, pressing and rubbing each bead as she prayed. The doctor came in and then with all of us there watching, Sophie suddenly sat up in her bed, looked at me and said the words as plain as day, “Don’t let him come.” Him? Who? What did she mean? As I struggled to understand, she vomited a reddish mixture that rained over the bed sheets, the floor and on the doctor as well as the old woman, sister, and me. My heart was in my throat, my body swaying.

  “Menstrual blood mixed with urine,” said the doctor after taking some on his finger and bringing it to his nose. The old woman put a precious stone near Sophie’s heart so blood would cease to flow from her mouth. My fear of her dying grew as I watched her. Then just like that, she opened her mouth to take a last breath and fell back on the pillow. I stared at her still face and wept silently. The doctor grabbed her wrist and touched two of his fingers to it. He then folded both hands over her chest, gently but without emotion. Her mother ran over and began to howl. Sophie’s face had streaks of red vomit on it and her bedgown was soiled. A sister quit the room to fetch the priest. Sophie’s eyes stayed open until the priest arrived. The first thing he did was to cross himself three times, and then place a coin on each lid so her eyes stayed shut. After, he laid a wooden cross atop her chest.

  Prayers around her began right away. Her mother wailed and stamped her feet on the floor. Her father prayed silently at the back of the room, the centre of his brow forming a letter V. There were two sisters; the older one came and went. I wandered outside not wanting the family to see my tears. Water dripped from the rooftop and the front garden was hidden under snow. Armande came out to join me and I saw the baby in her arms had colour in its cheeks. His hands pawed the air and his legs kicked, looking nothing like the frail infant I saw before.

  Armande sat on a step then wrapped the orphan in her shawl rocking it to and fro. Her face was sullen, her usually bright eyes, lost-looking. Maybe she sensed Sophie’s soul—or that of her own dead child—crying out from beyond. The sky was low and trees dragged branches on the ground. Even outside, I felt Sophie’s presence. Her eyes had glazed over, her head turned in my direction when she spoke those words, don’t let him come. She was gone now and so I had to rely on my own cleverness and my instinct as guides.

  The old woman came outside and asked for my help with the body. The family quit the room where Sophie lay except for one of the sisters who relit the fire. Lanterns glowed at each bedpost. Another lantern sat by a basin of water on a table near a small window.

  “I washed this child when she was born,” the old woman murmured. “Now I am washing her dead body.”

  Sophie was the same age I was when I fled my mother and father’s house. She was even weedy like me.

  “Undress her,” said the old woman. “While I ready the soap and water.”

  I was afraid to touch her, yet did what I was told, gradually pulling her arms out of her bloody bedgown. Her mouth was partly open. Someone had removed the two coins causing the skin of her eyelids to lift slightly as though she peered at me. My heart ached for the poor girl, and I wiped tears from my face with the back of my hand. It wasn’t good, I thought, for her to see me crying. Sophie’s buttery hair trailed upwards when the bedgown came over her head. Her nipples were the size
of buttons on a gentleman’s waistcoat, hips slender with no womanly beauty. The sister finished lighting the fire then stood by the bed for a moment, gazing with longing at her dead sister before she quit the room. There was so much coarse blood on Sophie that the bowl of water was soon as dark and thick as beet soup. Tiny golden hairs stood up on her leg tickling my wrist. Though her eyes were closed, I felt her watching me. She said, “We are the same, you and I, both of us dead inside.”

  One morning, when I lived with my mother and father, I had painted wooden spoons for my mother to sell at market—blue and yellow like shooting stars. My mother’s spoons gave her just enough money to buy a chicken once a full moon, just enough to nab a cake at Christmas. Sometimes she even gave me a few coins from what she sold as long as I promised not to tell my father. He drank up much of his earnings while the rest he spent on girls. The graveyard was full of these careless maids who bent over the village’s corpses, dead gentlewomen’s robes on their backs and ne’er two sous to rub together. “Strong women they are,” he’d say, “who undress the dead.” He took money from corpses if any money could be found. Rings, earrings, charms and necklaces he did not dare touch. He reckoned those that gave it to them would come for him.

  When finished, I tied a lengthy piece of cloth to the painted spoons, and was hanging them out my window to dry when my father came in.

  “Look out the window, my pretty.”

  At the time, I thought my ears lied to me for he had not called me pretty before. Trumpeter swans flew and called overhead. My father clutched my waist from behind. I clutched the spoon I was holding, wet paint covering my hands.

  “Look out the window.” I did what he told me to do in hopes the loving words would keep on. He pulled me to him and lifted my petticoats. “My pretty, yes.”

  He propped me up with one hand as a puppeteer steadies a puppet. The swans called out again. Pain filled my body, legs shaking and caving in. Still, he held me up where I bounced lifeless, no longer hearing the swans, nor finding my breath. I am dying, I thought.

  “My pretty, yes,” cried my father once more.

  Then suddenly my breath returned, and, standing up partway, I began to shout back at him. “My pretty, my pretty, oh yes, my pretty.”

  “Shut that mouth,” yelled my father, but protests only made me shout louder.

  “My pretty, my pretty,” I said until my words ran together and my tongue went limp. He moved his hand from my waist to cover my mouth.

  “There she is. That’ll stop you.”

  That only made me bite his hand and shout more loudly. He picked me up dragging me to the window. I looked down from on high and saw a mix of trees and sky. The land was foggy to my eyes as if death was taking me away.

  “You go out the window my pretty, you see?” These words were the last I heard.

  Later that month, when blood ceased to flow from between my legs, my mother burst into my room, pulled away the covers, crying and shaking me as though she thought that would make the blood come. Though the child was never born. In its place a scraggy thing wrapped in a cloak of black filth came out of me just after arriving at the country estate where I had worked. I would be dead just like Sophie if I hadn’t quit my father’s house.

  The old woman replaced the bloody bowl and brought over a fresh one. As I wiped the dead girl down with clean water, I thought for an instant it was me I was washing down. Somewhere deep inside me was a place that had not been touched before, a place that came alive. Thanks to Armande, all the blood and hurt was slowly coming off me, yet still there were some spots left to come clean.

  When I got to Sophie’s head, at first I saw no blood though her hair was a rat’s nest. I parted it in the middle and began brushing the left side in long strokes. Her hair flowed over her shoulders like water. On the right side, strands of hair underneath were stuck together with dried blood. Under that was something thick, the size of a vest pocket. After prying the object from the strands of bloody hair, I saw it was a piece of paper folded several times. A letter. The date read 1783, which was six years ago, and it was addressed to Armande’s father from his long-time business partner Monsieur Taranne. I read quickly for fear the words would vanish before my eyes.

  I do not wish to cause a rift between us dear friend, as I know how much affection you have for your daughter’s newly betrothed and how much his talents are greatly esteemed by you. Nevertheless, I feel it my duty to explain my actions, which at first glance may seem nonsensical. Sadly, I am unable to publish Monsieur Phlipon’s pamphlet, which he sent me two months ago. In fact, it is my belief that it would be morally indefensible to do so and I shall explain why. Enclosed is a book, which will demonstrate better than I can how I came to my decision.

  I stumbled upon the obscure little work in a bookshop that is owned by a customer of mine. I have since learned that it didn’t sell many copies and in fact disappeared from sight directly following its publication. I was struck by the title of the book, The Cultivation of Alpine Plants, as the topic made me think of Monsieur Phlipon’s pamphlet about plants in the High Alps. I purchased the book for my own amusement not realizing at the time what I was to uncover. As I began to read the little book with colourful illustrations I detected echoes of Monsieur Phlipon’s shorter work. And so, placing the works next to each other, I began to read and compare them page-by-page. I was greatly alarmed to discover that whole passages by the posthumous author, best known as a village physick, were lifted by Monsieur Phlipon and planted into his essay. I suppose he thought it was a little known work and that nobody would find out what he had done. I know you honour originality above most other intellectual attributes and you would wish to be apprised of what the man is doing to make a name for himself. I also know that you prize your daughter’s happiness above all.

  Splotches of blood hid the last couple lines from view. My hands quivered as I placed the letter in my embroidered pocket for safekeeping. Had he ever told his daughter that he knew about his son-in-law’s thieving ways? The pieces fit together: the so-called stranger was Armande’s husband. He had a reputation to uphold. If he knew Armande’s father, a man with many friends in high-up places, was aware of his plagiarizing he would think twice before going near his wife. Then I remembered the handkerchief from the library that I gave to Isabelle for safekeeping. Stitched in red were the initials R.P.—Robert Phlipon.

  I never dressed a dead body before, and touching her skin made me tremble yet for Sophie, I got on with it. I put the fresh chemise and gown on the body whose skin was still red from the blood, as there was no time to undress her and scrub her afresh. Sweat fell from my brow to my upper lip. What was Armande’s husband doing coming back after all these years? When I tried to rub the redness from her hands and face that only made it worse and I started to cry once more.

  The old woman saw me fussing and said, “Don’t worry my child. Just arrange the cloth of her chemise so the skin is less visible.”

  I fluffed up the lace collar, pulling her dainty cuffs past her fingers. The old woman then arranged Sophie’s damp hair over her forehead and cheeks. Her tresses resembled a flowing stream of sunlight. The old woman turned her back for an instant, at which time I bent down and whispered in Sophie’s ear, “Thank you for the letter. I promise to keep Armande safe.”

  Shortly after, the girl’s mother came into the room and saw her daughter in her satin gown the colour of plums.

  “She never looked so pretty,” she moaned. She told me her daughter was between the world of the living and the dead when she said don’t let him come, and could therefore see things others could not. She said her last words were about keeping the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts to ward off evil. Then the mother’s eyes turned angry. “We will have to guard her against those thieving bonesetters and pig-castrators.” When she quit the room, the old woman told me what she meant.

  “Dead bodies have gone missing in the villa
ge because of doctors wanting to use them for dissection.” She held my hand and looked at me straight on. “The mother is afraid that if this occurs, her daughter’s soul won’t be able to leave her body.” Her youthful blue eyes stood out to me over her wrinkled face marked with brown spots and veins.

  Armande and I stayed with the family. That night I thought about Monsieur Vivant’s letter that Sophie kept for me to find, and about the stranger who turned out to be Armande’s husband. In the morning she gave suck to Sophie’s baby for the last time as one of the sisters was nursing and said she would take the orphan.

  The very same day we returned from Les Combes, I raced to the fountain to rescue the wee bonhomme in the ice. Once I had him in my hands I would forget about the recent troubles. I would give the doll a proper warm bath with water fresh from the well that I would heat up slowly in the pot. He did not look like he was stained when I saw him, but just in case I would rub a little fragrant soap in the water to get him nice and clean and smelling like fresh picked roses. His little mouth would surely open to say thank-you. I never had a doll before, not a toy of any sort. I would be sure to treat him well and take care of him as he belonged to Armande’s little girl. I would set him by the fire, though not too close, just enough to dry and warm him. Of course, that night he would sleep nestled up next to me with his own little cover pulled to his ceramic chin. I would see he was safe and out of harm’s way.

  I did not wish to tell Armande what I was up to, as she would grow sad when she thought of the doll once more. Yet I vowed to fish it out no matter how long it took me or how much my fist might hurt if I had to punch the ice to get at it. After all, the doll was her daughter’s and my heart told me nobody else should have it because of that. Armed with a stick this time, I circled the fountain poking the ice in search of the little face that previously looked with such longing for me to save it. It had rained since yesterday, but the ice was still clear enough to see the stones on the bottom of the fountain. At one side, the ice was broken up and so I stuck my stick in deep to pry a chunk of ice from the surface. Yet there was no splash of red. No little face of worry. The bonhomme was gone.