Little Fortress

by Laisha Rosnau

  * * *

  Six weeks after the night of the salon, the room spun in the morning when I woke and the floor lurched under me as I hung my legs off the bed and found the floor. I would spend the first few minutes of each morning with my head between my legs, waiting for the nausea to pass. It didn’t, though it would settle a bit when I ate Dirk’s fresh pastries. I ate those in the morning, large doughy pretzels in the afternoon and, if I could stomach it, a roll with a slice of the whitest, mildest Havarti for dinner. My body pale, I craved bland food, salt and ice.

  “Is this normal?” asked Knud. “You’re not even two months along yet.”

  “This is not normal. It is not normal that I, an unmarried woman, am alone and pregnant in godforsaken northern Zealand.”

  “Little Tree, it’s hardly godforsaken, and you’re hardly alone.”

  “Don’t ask me about normal. I can tell you about the gestation of a sheep, if you like, but I know no more about that of a woman than you do.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “I won’t – but even if I were to, who would I see?”

  “I’m sure Dirk and Anna can recommend someone. We have to tell them.”

  “We? I don’t, actually.” I was surly and sarcastic, not at all the bright, witty young thing who should’ve been a companion for a dandy like Knud. Why he was hidden away with me in a bakery in northern Zealand was beyond my comprehension. I imagined there would be more men like him in Copenhagen.

  One morning before my shift, there was a knock at the door of my room. It wasn’t Knud – his was a jaunty rap. This was slower, more cautious. I was sitting on my bed, head heavy in my cupped palms against my knees. I lifted my head and walked to the door. Though I was sure I didn’t yet look pregnant, I felt a new weight and heft in my body. My breasts were already fuller and sore – even the brush of heavy fabric caused them discomfort. There was a new heat between my legs, a tingling sensation that would have been pleasant if it had been caused by something else. I walked gingerly and took some time to open the door. Anna stepped in, put both hands on my face as though I were her lover or her child, then moved around me into the room.

  “Knud told you.” I closed the door.

  “He did, but even before then, I suspected. I can sense these things. And I noticed your diet – you’ve been eating like I did with two of my pregnancies. The girls.” This was more information than I wanted. I didn’t want to hear the word girl – or boy. Anna looked at me, her face a wash of earnest concern. When I didn’t say anything, she looked toward the window, then asked, “Is it Bertram’s?”

  A sadness that was both sharp and slack filled my cheeks. My voice was rough with choked tears. “Of course it’s Bertram’s.” I brushed by her as I made my way back to the bed. I sat on the edge, head between my legs again.

  She sat down beside me. “That was a silly question. I’m sorry.”

  “It –” I started, and my body involuntarily heaved out a sputtering sob. “It is a baby, I suppose, and I suppose it’s mine.” Anna put her hand on my back and I shook, though I didn’t make any more sounds.

  She waited until I stopped shaking, then asked, “Would you like to keep –” here Anna paused, “– the baby?”

  I looked at my hands moving against the thin white fabric of my nightgown over my legs. “No.” I wasn’t completely foolish. “I will find someone to take it. I know that there are homes for women like me, ways to find the baby a family.”

  “That isn’t the only option.”

  “I am not going to keep the baby.”

  “I meant there are other options if you don’t want to keep the child.”

  “No.” I shook my head while still looking at my own lap, then looked up and kept shaking it.

  “You don’t want to go to a home, that I know. And, though you’ve likely heard stories, there are good, respected surgeons who perform the operation in Copenhagen.”

  “Respected by whom?”

  “If you like, our cousin Anita can meet you in Copenhagen and –”

  “No!” I said again. I barely knew Anita then, and now here I was, pregnant with her cousin’s child. I did not want to see her, nor did I want her to accompany me to a surgeon’s backdoor practice. “I can make my own arrangements.”

  “Are you sure?” Anna clutched her wrist in a tight grasp, seemed older and more earnest than I was used to her looking. “I want to help.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I did want help, just not from Anna. I would find a place to follow through with the pregnancy, and I would find a good family to take the child. All I needed was someone to help me figure out how this could be possible. I would do it all on my own, if I needed to, but I was just so very, very tired. I wrote to my cousin Kristine and explained that I had got into some trouble. I asked her to please not mention the letter or my situation to any of my family. Kristine wrote back and gave me a date and the address of an apartment in Frederikshavn. She had sent me a train ticket and told me to meet her there, that she knew what we could do.

  Twelve

  When I got off the train in Frederikshavn, my abdomen throbbed not with the froth of anticipation I’d once felt when arriving in a new place, but with a dull ball of weight, like uncooked dough. I went to the address Kristine had sent. She opened the door, saying, “It’s only me,” and I dropped my bags, hugged her. When we let go, she rubbed my arms. “It’s okay.” I believed her. “I’ll help you settle in. We’re the only people here.”

  “Whose home is this?”

  “My employers in Aalborg. This is one of their residences. I told them that I had a family matter, and they offered me the use of the apartment while I’m here.”

  “They just let you leave, on such short notice?”

  “They’re good employers – and I’m the best personal secretary my lady is likely to ever hire. Besides, everyone understands family matters – we’ve all got them.”

  “I suppose, though I never thought I would become a family matter.”

  “Well, you won’t then, not in our family –” Kristine stopped there, though it seemed she had more to tell me. “Come, sit! How are you feeling?” She led me by the arm to one of the brocade chairs in the sitting room.

  I perched on the edge. “I’m not an invalid!” Though only a week before I’d often felt too nauseated to stand. “Much of the queasiness seems to have passed, thankfully.”

  Kristine looked at me, blinking, her lips in a tight, straight smile, then said, “Tea! Would you like some tea?” She sounded uncertain, nervous.

  “No, no, I just want to sit.”

  “Sit back then, pet.”

  I was still balanced on the front edge of the chair.

  “I’ll get you some water and put on some tea for myself. You might change your mind.”

  I leaned back, though the chair was uncomfortable. The entire room seemed stiff, cool, the drapes and upholstery patterned in shiny shades of pastels, a wealthy Danish couple’s idea of cosmopolitan. My mind ranged backward to the simple wood furniture and warm textures of my apartment above the bakery, further back to the airy heft of our duvets and the smell of the fireplace lit in the bedroom I shared with my sister on the farm. After that, there was nowhere for my mind to go.

  Kristine came back in the room carrying a tea service and a glass of water on a tray. I got up to help her. When we were both seated, on matching chairs, likely equally uncomfortable, she watched me as I drank most of the water. “You asked me not to tell your family.”

  I stopped drinking, put the glass down, held it on my lap.

  “And I haven’t, but I have spoken to someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you remember our mothers’ cousin, Agnete?”

  “Only vaguely.”

  “Her daughter, Elisabeth – she’s a few years older than us, remember
? She’s here, in Frederikshavn, and she and her husband haven’t been able to have a child. My mother keeps telling me how heartbroken they are – I think she means me to take this as a cautionary tale, that I’d better find a suitable husband soon because, even then, children aren’t guaranteed.” She paused. “I’ve spoken to her, Elisabeth – I know she won’t tell anyone –”

  “How? When?”

  “My employers often come here for business. I come along and they give me some time off in the evenings to visit Elisabeth. She told me about her, well, her problem. She’s devastated.”

  We both faced forward then, rather than toward each other, a teacup balanced in her hand, a glass of water in mine. It seemed strange. I listened as Kristine kept speaking, not turning to her, and it seemed we were both addressing an empty couch. I saw sitting there a man and a woman, only a few years older than me, attractive and smartly dressed. I saw how they leaned forward slightly, yearning coiled in their bodies. I kept listening to Kristine.

  “Elisabeth remembers you from when we were girls. She would never say anything. She wants you to know that if you want to find a home for the baby, a good home with someone you know, she and her husband will raise it as their own.”

  I nodded slowly, still looking at the empty couch. I should have felt relief – I did not want a baby, not now, not his. My family would turn away. They might speak to me again but the child would never be considered their relation. Already I did not consider the baby my own. It should be Elisabeth’s. She and her unnamed husband’s baby. It was theirs already. I stopped nodding and turned to Kristine, an itch and heat behind my eyes that I willed not to water.

  * * *

  I could stay in the Frederikshavn apartment when Kristine’s employers weren’t there, but I could not leave a trace of my presence. She would let me know in advance each time they were coming to town, which seemed quite often. During those times, I stayed at an inn, enduring the glances of reproach I received when I registered alone. I hid the pregnancy as long as I could, but I am a small woman and growth became hard to conceal. Once I began to show, I slipped a cheap ring on my finger each time I went to the markets for food, spoke as little as possible. I knew no one in Frederikshavn but my second cousin Elisabeth, and I didn’t seek her out. I didn’t want to see her, to watch her mouth moving in conversation, imagine her cooing to a child. Watch her hands adjust her hat, imagine her tying a bonnet under a chin. I didn’t want those things myself – cooing and bonnets – but I didn’t want the temptation to stitch stories from gestures. So, I kept to myself, stayed in the apartment as much as I could. Time seemed slow, an awkward, halting thing, but I reminded myself that the baby would arrive soon and then be gone. The rest of my life was waiting for me.

  Kristine alerted me of her employers’ impending arrivals through postcards. She’d given me a key to the apartment mailbox and I checked it daily. She disguised her handwriting and used a code to let me know the dates her employers would be there. I often had a week’s notice before they arrived, plenty of time to erase any evidence of my habitation from the apartment. Despite my increasing girth, I lived lightly in the flat.

  We had a plan. When the baby was about to arrive, I would go to Elisabeth’s house. It would be the first time I would meet and see the man who was to become the baby’s father. He would take me to the hospital and admit me under Elisabeth’s name. All the official documents would be in his and Elisabeth’s names, and after we left the hospital together, he would take the baby home. Kristine believed that she had found me a place where I could go afterward. “You can rest there at first, and then there will be employment for you,” she told me in a letter. “I won’t tell you anything else until I know more.”

  The plan, while not impervious, seemed like a good one, though it was almost entirely dependent on timing. I know now that timing cannot be relied on. Every opportunity for time and place and coincidence to slip and twist and contort must be considered. One cannot anticipate the unknown; we may not even recognize it when we stumble into it, disoriented. One must acknowledge that every plan is porous, the ways the unexpected can flood in.

  Thirteen

  It was early evening. I was washing a dish at the sink when the crashing began. My abdomen tightened into a knot, and I felt a sharp kick of pain downward between my legs. I gripped the counter and thought, No. It was too early. I wasn’t ready. The apartment was not clean. I had to leave it ­immaculate. I began to tidy, thinking of what I had to do before leaving for the hospital. I was sure I’d be able to get it all done except the laundering of the bedding. I was sure they would smell me – the heat of my small yet burgeoning body imprinting the linens. I hoped that I would be able to return to the apartment. Sheets must always be left clean.

  I didn’t have much time to contemplate. The next wave crashed into me, knocked me to the ground. The tightness began at my back and wrapped around my abdomen, gripped my belly and then tore through my legs. I stayed on my hands and knees until it passed. No, I thought again. This is too fast, too fast. I had to get to the hospital. First, I had to find a way to get to the hospital. No, first, I had to get out of the apartment and down the stairs. No, no. First, I had to get my bag, my things – what was I supposed to take with me, everything? I had to get everything together, I had to – and then it came again. I gripped the doorway to the bedroom before falling to the ground. I squeezed my eyes closed and bore it, mouth open, panting. The feeling (such a gentle word – feeling!) climbed, peaked and fell away, leaving me clenched and trembling.

  I needed to forget my bag. I needed to forget everything beyond getting down the stairs and to the street. There wasn’t much time. There wasn’t enough time. How would I make it from the sixth floor to the street without collapsing? After this, how would I wait until a hackney appeared? There wasn’t enough time. I didn’t even think of the baby’s arrival. It still seemed to be somewhere else, submerged in a distant world. It was the pain, the way it demanded I drop to the ground to bear it out. How could I possibly make it down the stairs and to the street before it hit again? My mind shifted from saying No, no, no to How, how, how.

  I made it to the landing outside the apartment. The stairwell was narrow, with one sharp turn in direction for every floor. I told myself that I only had to make it halfway down each flight before there would be a place to pause when the steps turned. I could make it. I can make it, I told myself, but as I did the sensation built again, hitting me in the middle of my back, pushing me face down onto my hands and knees. This is the positionI was in when the woman across the hall opened her door. “Oh, sweet Mary,” she said.

  I wanted to tell her that I needed help getting down the stairs, that I needed to hail a hackney and driver, but I believe that all I could say was, “Help,” if anything at all.

  Once I could stand again, the woman took my arm and led me back toward the apartment. I pulled away from her. “No, I have to get to the hospital.”

  “You don’t have time, dear. I’m going to try to find someone.”

  “No, no.” I shook my head, resisting her, then I dropped to the ground again, endured another wave.

  The woman helped me up. When she led me back to the apartment, I didn’t protest again. “Where is your husband?” I shook my head. This was not the way it was supposed be. The woman got me to the bed and waited as I knelt against it until another contraction passed, then she said, “I need to find a midwife.”

  “Don’t go!” The pitch and force of my voice surprised me.

  “I’ll be back, dear. I’ll be back soon.”

  She left the room, and though I believed she would be back, I knew that I was completely alone. A baby was pushing its way out of me and not even my body was my own. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” I repeated as the next wave rose and the force plowed into me. When it passed, I was still alone. I had made it to the other side, as I had with each of the contractions. I would continue t
o get through this, each wave that dragged me under, gasping for air, left me panting and prone when it retreated. I could, I would.

  I did. The woman returned to the apartment. Later, another woman was there. They each sat in the room with me as though keeping vigil while the raging sensations brought my body closer and closer to shore. In the moments that I was conscious of anything, I saw the night as a storm at sea.

  The baby arrived before the light. One of the women put her to my breast. The baby’s suckle was weak and clumsy at first, as though she had just woken, which I suppose she had. When she found the latch and clamped to my nipple, a different kind of pain than the one I’d just endured shot through me. I cried out, once, briefly, made a mewing sound much like the baby, then we must have both fallen asleep, the baby still on my breast. I surfaced out of sleep a couple of times and heard voices of women around me, once when they removed and replaced the sheets from under me while the baby and I still slept. I could feel their hands on my hips, the gentle yet heavy roll of my body from side to side, the baby tucked into me as though part of my skin. The apartment seemed damp, overly warm.

  I woke to light leaking into the room and voices raised enough that they cut through my sleep, wouldn’t let me plunge back. I heard the loud voice of a man against that of the woman from across the hall, her timbre familiar after a night in which she spoke little that I could remember. And I heard Kristine imploring, “It’s all right. I know her. She is family. I can explain this.”

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we truly could explain things, the big things – birth and life and family and timing and why we are where we are and when? As it was, Kristine set her mouth and held back tears as she packed my things. I sat on the bed, trying to nurse the baby, who seemed to have forgotten how after that first night together. I told myself it didn’t matter, that she would soon be with someone else. We left together, Kristine with my bags, me with the baby, swaddled in an old, soft nightgown of mine. I had wanted to say thank you to the woman from across the hall, but I didn’t.