The Birth House

by Ami McKay

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Two

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part Three

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Notes from the Willow Book

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  The Birth House

  About the Author

  Praise for the Birth House

  Copyright

  For my husband, Ian

  My heart, my love, my home

  prologue

  MY HOUSE STANDS at the edge of the earth. Together, the house and I have held strong against the churning tides of Fundy. Two sisters, stubborn in our bones.

  My father, Judah Rare, built this farmhouse in 1917. It was my wedding gift. A strong house for a Rare woman, he said. I was eighteen. He and his five brothers, shipbuilders by trade, raised her worthy from timbers born on my grandfather’s land. Oak for stability and certainty, yellow birch for new life and change, spruce for protection from the world outside. Father was an intuitive carpenter, carrying out his work like holy ritual. His callused hands, veined with pride, had a memory for measure and a knowing of what it takes to withstand the sea.

  Strength and a sense of knowing, that’s what you have to have to live in the Bay. Each morning you set your sights on the tasks ahead and hope that when the day is done you’re farther along than when you started. Our little village, perched on the crook of God’s finger, has always been ruled by storm and season. The men did whatever they had to do to get by. They joked with one another in fire-warmed kitchens after sunset, smoking their pipes, someone bringing out a fiddle…laughing as they chorused, no matter how rough, we can take it. The seasons were reflected in their faces, and in the movement of their bodies. When it was time for the shad, herring and cod to come in, they were fishermen, dark with tiresome wet from the sea. When the deer began to huddle on the back of the mountain, they became hunters and woodsmen. When spring came, they worked the green-scented earth, planting crops that would keep, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, turnips. Summer saw their weathered hands building ships and haying fields, and sunsets that ribboned over the water, daring the skies to turn night. The long days were filled with pride and ceremony as mighty sailing ships were launched from the shore. The Lauretta, The Reward, The Nordica, The Bluebird, The Huntley. My father said he’d scour two hundred acres of forest just to find the perfect trees to build a three-masted schooner. Tall yellow birch, gently arched by northwesterly winds, was highly prized. He could spot the keel in a tree’s curve and shadow, the return of the tide set in the grain.

  Men wagered their lives with the sea for the honour of these vessels. Each morning they watched for the signs. Red skies in morning, sailors take warning. Each night they looked to the heavens, spotting starry creatures, or the point of a dragon’s tail. They told themselves that these were promises from God, that He would keep the wiry cold fingers of the sea from grabbing at them, from taking their lives. Sometimes men were taken. On those dark days the men who were left behind sat down together and made conversation of every detail, hitching truth to wives’ tales while mending their nets.

  As the men bargained with the elements, the women tended to matters at home. They bartered with each other to fill their pantries and clothe their children. Grandmothers, aunts and sisters taught one another to stitch and cook and spin. On Sunday mornings mothers bent their knees between the stalwart pews at the Union Church, praying they would have enough. With hymnals clutched against their breasts, they told the Lord they would be ever faithful if their husbands were spared.

  When husbands, fathers and sons were kept out in the fog longer than was safe, the women stood at their windows, holding their lamps, a chorus of lady moons beckoning their lovers back to shore. Waiting, they hushed their children to sleep and listened for the voice of the moon in the crashing waves. In the secret of the night, mothers whispered to their daughters that only the moon could force the waters to submit. It was the moon’s voice that called the men home, her voice that turned the tides of womanhood, her voice that pulled their babies into the light of birth.

  My house became the birth house. That’s what the women came to call it, knocking on the door, ripe with child, water breaking on the porch. First-time mothers full of questions, young girls in trouble and seasoned women with a brood already at home. (I called those babies “toesies,” because they were more than their mamas could count on their fingers.) They all came to the house, wailing and keening their babies into the world. I wiped their feverish necks with cool, moist cloths, spooned porridge and hot tea into their tired bodies, talked them back from outside of themselves.

  Ginny, she had two…

  Sadie Loomer, she had a girl here.

  Precious, she had twins…twice.

  Celia had six boys, but she was married to my brother Albert…Rare men always have boys.

  Iris Rose, she had Wrennie…

  All I ever wanted was to keep them safe.

  Around the year 1760, a ship of Scotch immigrants came to be wrecked on the shores of this place. Although the vessel was lost, her passengers and crew managed to find shelter here. They struggled through the winter—many taking ill, the women losing their children, the men making the difficult journey down North Mountain to the valley below, carrying sacks of potatoes and other goods back to their temporary home, now called Scots Bay.

  In the spring, when all who had been stranded chose to make their way to more established communities, the daughter of the ship’s captain, Annie MacIssac, stayed behind. She had fallen in love with a Mi’kmaq man she called Silent Rare.

  On the evening of a full moon in June, Silent went out in his canoe to catch the shad that were spawning around the tip of Cape Split. As the night wore on, Annie began to worry that some ill had befallen her love. She looked across the water for signs of him but found nothing. She walked to the cove where they had first met and began to call out to him, promising her heart, her fidelity and a thousand sons to his name. The moon, seeing Annie’s sadness, began to sing, forcing the waves inland, strong and fast, bringing Silent safely back to his lover.

  Since that time, every child born from the Rare name has been male, and even now, when the moon is full, you can hear her voice, the voice of the moon, singing the sailors home.

  A RARE FAMILY HISTORY, 1850

  1

  EVER SINCE I CAN REMEMBER, people have had more than enough to say about me. As the only daughter in five generations of
Rares, most figure I was changed by faeries or not my father’s child. Mother works and prays too hard to have anyone but those with the cruellest of tongues doubt her devotion to my father. When there’s no good explanation for something, people of the Bay find it easier to believe in mermaids and moss babies, to call it witchery and be done with it. Long after the New England Planters’ seed wore the Mi’kmaq out of my family’s blood, I was born with coal black hair, cinnamon skin and a caul over my face. A foretelling. A sign. A gift that supposedly allows me to talk to animals, see people’s deaths and hear the whisperings of spirits. A charm for protection against drowning.

  When one of Laird Jessup’s Highland heifers gave birth to a three-legged albino calf, talk followed and people tried to guess what could have made such a creature. In the end, most people blamed me for it. I had witnessed the cow bawling her calf onto the ground. I had been the one who ran to the Jessups’ to tell the young farmer about the strange thing that had happened. Dora talked to ghosts, Dora ate bat soup, Dora slit the Devil’s throat and flew over the chicken coop. My classmates chanted that verse between the slats of the garden gate, along with all the other words their parents taught them not to say. Of course, there are plenty of schoolyard stories about Miss B. too, most of them ending with, if your cat or your baby goes missing, you’ll know where to find the bones. It’s talk like that that’s made us such good friends. Miss B. says she’s glad for gossip. “It keep folks from comin’ to places they don’t belong.”

  Most days I wake up and say a prayer. I want, I wish, I wait for something to happen to me. While I thank God for all good things, I don’t say this verse to Him, or to Jesus or even to Mary. They are far too busy to be worrying about the affairs and wishes of my heart. No, I say my prayer more to the air than anything else, hoping it might catch on the wind and find its way to anything, to something that’s mine. Mother says, a young lady should take care with what she wishes for. I’m beginning to think she’s right.

  Yesterday was fair for a Saturday in October—warm, with no wind and clear skies—what most people call fool’s blue. It’s the kind of sky that begs you to sit and look at it all day. Once it’s got you, you’ll soon forget whatever chores need to be done, and before you know it, the day’s gone and you’ve forgotten the luck that’s to be lost when you don’t get your laundry and yourself in out of the cold. Mother must not have noticed it…before breakfast was over, she’d already washed and hung two baskets of laundry and gotten a bushel of turnips ready for Charlie and me to take to Aunt Fran’s. On the way home, I spotted a buggy tearing up the road. Before the thing could run us over, the driver pulled the horses to a stop, kicking up rocks and dust all over the place. Tom Ketch was driving, and Miss Babineau sat in the seat next to him. She called out to me, “Goin’ out to Deer Glen to catch a baby and I needs an extra pair of hands. Come on, Dora.”

  Even though I’d been visiting her since I was a little girl (stopping by to talk to her while she gardened, or bringing her packages up from the post), I was surprised she’d asked me to come along. When my younger brothers were born and Miss B. came to the house, I begged to stay, but my parents sent me to Aunt Fran’s instead. Outside of watching farmyard animals and a few litters of pups, I didn’t have much experience with birthing. I shook my head and refused. “You should ask someone else. I’ve never attended a birth…”

  She scowled at me. “How old are you now, fifteen, sixteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  She laughed and reached out her wrinkled hand to me. “Mary-be. I was half your age when I first started helpin’ to catch babies. You’ve been pesterin’ me about everything under the sun since you were old enough to talk. You’ll do just fine.”

  Marie Babineau’s voice carries the sound of two places: the dancing, Cajun truth of her Louisiana past and the quiet-steady way of talk that comes from always working at something, from living in the Bay. Some say she’s a witch, others say she’s more of an angel. Either way, most of the girls in the Bay (including me) have the middle initial of M, for Marie. She’s not a blood relative to anyone here, but we’ve always done our part to help take care of her. My brothers chop her firewood and put it up for the winter while Father makes sure her windows and the roof on her cabin are sound. Whenever we have extra preserves, or a loaf of bread, or a basket of apples, Mother sends me to deliver them to Miss B. “She helped bring all you children into this world, and she saved your life, Dora. Brought your fever down when there was nothing else I could do. Anything we have is hers. Anything she asks, we do.”

  As I pulled myself up to sit next to her, she turned and shouted to Charlie, “Tell your mama not to worry, I’ll have Dora home for supper tomorrow.” We sat tight, three across the driver’s seat, with a falling-down wagon dragging behind.

  Miss B. began to question Tom, her voice calm and steady. “How’s your mama sound?”

  “Moanin’ a lot. Then every once in a while she’ll hold her belly and squeal like a stuck pig.”

  “How long she been that way?”

  “It started first thing this morning. She was moonin’ around, sayin’ she couldn’t squat to milk the goat, that it hurt too much. Father made her do it anyways, said she was being lazy…then he made her muck the stalls too.”

  “Is she bleedin’?”

  Tom kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Not sure. All I know is, one minute she was standin’ in the kitchen, peelin’ potatoes, and then all of a sudden she was doubled right over. Father got angry with her, said he was hungry and she’d better get on with what she was doin’. When she didn’t, he shoves her down to the floor. After that, hard as she tried, she couldn’t stand on her own, so she just curled up and cried.” He gave a sharp whistle to the horses to keep them in the middle of the rutted road, his jaw set hard, like someone waiting to get punched in the gut. “She didn’t want me to bother you with it, said she’d be alright, but I never seen her hurtin’ so bad before. I came as soon as I could, as soon as he left to go down to my uncle’s place.”

  “Will he stay out long?”

  “More’n likely all night. Especially if they gets t’drinkin’, which they always do.”

  Tom’s the oldest of the twelve Ketch children. He’s fifteen, maybe sixteen, I’d guess. I think about Tom from time to time, when I run out of dreams about the fine gentlemen in Jane Austen’s novels. He’s got a kind face, even when it’s filthy, and Mother always says she hopes he’ll find a way to make something of himself instead of turning out to be like his father, Brady. I can tell she prefers I not mention the Ketches at all. I think it makes her scared that I’ll not make something of myself and turn out to be like Tom’s mother, Experience.

  The Ketch family has always lived in Deer Glen. It’s a crooked, narrow hollow, just outside of the Bay, twisting right through the mountain until you can see the red cliffs of Blomidon. No one here would claim it to be anything more than the dip in the road that lets you know you’re almost home. The land is too rocky and steep for farming and too far from the shore for making a life as a fisherman or a shipbuilder. Too far for a pleasant walk. The Ketches suffer along, selling homebrew from a still in the woods and making whatever they can from the hunters who come from away, men who hope to kill the white doe that’s said to live in the Glen. In deer season they block off the road, Brady at one end, his brother Garrett at the other. They stand, shotguns strapped to their backs, waiting to escort the trophy hunters who come from Halifax, the Annapolis Valley, and faraway places like New York and Boston. The Ketch brothers charge a pretty penny for their services, especially since they’re selling lies. It’s true, there’s been a white doe spotted on North Mountain, but it doesn’t live in Deer Glen. It lives in the woods behind Miss B.’s cabin, where she feeds it out of her hand, like a pet. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard her call to it on occasion, walking through the trees singing, Lait-Lait, Lune-Lune. Father said he saw it once, that she’s the colour of sweet Guernsey cream, with one corner of her rum
p faintly speckled. He came home with nothing that day and told Mother, “It would have been wrong to take it.” Shortly after, at a Sons of Temperance meeting, the men of the Bay all pledged never to kill it. They all agreed that there’s sin in taking the life of something so pure.

  It was nearly dark when we got to the Ketch house, its clapboards loose and wanting for paint, the screen door left hanging. The inside wasn’t much better. A picked-over loaf of bread, along with pots, pans and empty canning jars were crowded together on the table, all needing to be cleared. Attempts had been made at keeping a proper house, but somehow the efforts had gone wrong, every time. The curtains were bright at the top, still showing white, with a cheerful flowered print. Halfway to the floor, little hands had worn stains into the fabric, and the ends were frayed from the tug and pull of cats’ claws. No matter how fresh and clean a start they may have had, the towels in the kitchen, the wallpaper and rugs, even the dress on the little girl who greeted us at the door, all showed the same pattern, their middles stained, their edges worn and dirty. The entire house smelled sour and neglected.

  Experience Ketch was hunched over in her bed, clutching her belly. Her oldest daughter, Iris Rose, was standing next to her, dipping a rag in a bucket of water then offering it to her mother. Mrs. Ketch took the worn cloth and clenched it between her teeth, sucking and spitting while she rocked back and forth.

  Miss B. sat on the edge of the bed and held Mrs. Ketch’s hand. She talked the woman through her pains enough to get her to sit up and drink some tea. The midwife wrapped her wrinkled fingers around Mrs. Ketch’s wrist, closed her eyes and counted in French. She pinched the ends of Mrs. Ketch’s fingertips and then pulled her eyelids away from her pink, teary eyes. “Your blood’s weak.” Miss B. pushed the blankets back and pulled up Mrs. Ketch’s bloodstained skirts. Her hands kneaded their way around the tired woman’s swollen belly, feeling over her stretched skin, making the sign of the cross. After washing her hands several times, she slipped her fingers between Mrs. Ketch’s legs and shook her head. “This baby has to come today.”