The Birth House

by Ami McKay

  I began to put him off, staying awake until he was too tired to bother with me, knitting socks for the war effort, mending clothes, baking bread. I held on to at least one, maybe two nights a week that way, nights where I was free from my “obligations as a wife.” It made the other days of the week bearable, even if it didn’t stop his complaining.

  One night became “excusable,” especially if I said I was having my courses. Two nights was sometimes possible, but never in a row. Putting him off for three nights in one week has left me without a husband.

  Not quite three months after our wedding day, he was waiting in the parlour, legs slung over the end of the couch, rolling an empty pickle jar on the floor with his lazy fingers. “Well, how-do-ye-do, there she is, Mrs. Dora Bigelow…” He got up and came towards me, grabbing at me, trying to kiss me. “Come on, Dorrie, how about I take you to bed and you act like a proper wife.”

  “Please, Archer, not when you’re like this.”

  He pulled on my arm, and tore at the buttons on the front of my blouse. “Come on, you ungrateful little whore.” He put his face close to mine, spitting the bitter, skunky smell of the Ketch brothers’ overripe brew. “Wait, I forgot…you don’t know how to be a whore, let alone a proper wife. I might as well have married Grace Hutner.” He grabbed at my waist, pulling me into an awkward waltz around the room. “You remember Gracie, don’t ya, Dora? Beautiful Gracie…now there’s a girl who knew the way to a man’s heart.” I pulled free of him, but he came back at me, shouting, “Mother might have disowned me, and I’d have wound up poor, but at least Gracie would have let me crawl on top of her every night until I felt like a man.” He made a fist and raised it high in the air. As he swung to hit me, he missed, punching a hole in the parlour wall.

  I ran through the kitchen and locked myself in our bedroom, wedging the back of Miss B.’s rocking chair under the doorknob. He kicked and pounded at the door until the walls shook. “Just answer this, Mrs. Bigelow…how is it that a wife can’t find one bit of pleasure in her own husband?” I could hear him pacing through the house, then coming back to the bedroom door, beating it with every word he said. “Let…me…in, and I’ll give it hard to you, dear…then we’ll see if you dare cry about it.”

  Finally I heard the door slam shut and the sound of a horse being whipped and whistled down the road.

  Several people asked after Archer at church. Mother, the Widow Bigelow, Aunt Fran and Precious, even Reverend Pineo. I had considered missing services, but my absence would have sent Mother straight to the house looking for me. I had planned to say that Archer wasn’t feeling well. (This was certainly the truth the last time I saw him.) But rather than going down the list of symptoms I’d rehearsed (sore throat, slight fever, night sweats and chills…probably just a cold), I concocted an elaborate tale from an advertisement I’d seen in one of Archer’s copies of Vaughn’s Almanac, telling them my dear husband had decided to travel across all of Nova Scotia, selling Bibles.

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  “I truly feel it’s the best thing he could do, a kind of service almost, rather than work, bringing people hope…in these troubled times.”

  Reverend Pineo gave a solemn nod, tucking his Bible under his arm so he could reach both his hands out to me in a gesture of comfort. “The Good Book is blessed balm for any soul. I’ll be sure to pray for him, Dora. I’ll pray for welcome, open doors and a safe return.”

  I’m bound for hell.

  Still, the idea of Archer gone drumming isn’t all that far-fetched. Not a week had gone by after the wedding when he started spreading the pages of the Halifax Journal and Vaughn’s Almanac all over the kitchen table during mealtimes. He’d point to this or that, soup dripping from his spoon, exclaiming, “There she is, Dorrie, the next big thing!” and whatever it was, from transistor radios, electric appliances or fire insurance to brooms and brushes, he was going to sell it. Every week another box would arrive, the samples and sales manuals piled high in a room at the top of the stairs, each one replaced with something else, soon forgotten. At least with my imagined excuse no one will expect to see him anytime soon, and when he does come home, I can be as surprised as anyone else.

  Of course, Mother worries about my being alone. She asked if I might want to come home with her until Archer returns, but I can’t see going from this quiet, empty place to being crowded between Father and the boys. Why don’t you pack your bags and come home, Dorrie? She’s given up. Thinks he’s gone for good. Three days he’s been gone, and she’s supposing I expected too much, played at something I had no business with. I don’t feel half as sorry for myself as I do for her. She had such hopes for this marriage. With every day he stays gone, there’ll be another woman who will start to wonder, telling the person next to her—in the church pew, in a knitting circle, at the market—that she knew it was bound to turn out this way, that Dora Rare certainly wasn’t pretty, or resourceful, or confident, or come-from-money-proud enough to be Archer Bigelow’s match. Like Miss B. always said, No matter what you do—somebody, somewheres, knew that you would. Three months a wife and I couldn’t be happy with what I had. Rest assured, by the time Archer comes home (if he comes home), I’ll have it all figured out, and there’ll be nothing more to worry about.

  21

  BERTINE TUPPER CAME to the house, pulling her youngest child along by the arm, the little girl dragging a rag doll behind, all three of them topped with red knit caps, looking like a lopsided chain of paper dolls. She came through the door without a knock, her loud, cheerful “hello” ringing into the kitchen ahead of her. She sat the girl and a lumpy, faded flour sack on the table and smiled at me as if I should have been expecting her.

  “Was walking lunch out to Hardy, and little Lucy decided she couldn’t go home until she’d been inside your pretty new house. Can’t believe it’s October already and I hadn’t stopped by for a proper visit. Now’s as good a time as any.” She tugged the wool cap from her child’s head, Lucy’s hair sticking up all over. “Looks like I found her under a basket, doesn’t she?” Bertine soon gave up on trying to smooth Lucy’s wispy curls and turned her attention to the bag, bringing out a yeasty, sweet-smelling loaf of bread. “Good enough for tea, I’d say. Still warm, too.” She sat down in the parlour and took Lucy into her lap. The child began to tug at Bertine’s sweater, wanting to nurse. “Well, don’t just stand there, Dora, how many hands you think I gots?”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting…”

  “That’s not the right answer.” She wrinkled her brow and grinned. “First I say, ‘How many hands you think I gots?’ and then you say, ‘One less than you need, my dear. Let me make you some tea.’ Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” She snorted, her hearty laughter shaking her whole body, Lucy’s cheeks bouncing, her lips sucking hard to hold on to Bertine’s breast. “Sweet baby Jesus, Luce—watch your teeth there, dearie.”

  I took the kettle off the stove and poured it into a fresh pot. “Raspberry leaf fine with you?”

  “Mmmm…smells just like Miss B.’s.” She slipped her pinky in the corner of Lucy’s mouth, then tickled under the little girl’s chubby chin. “I’ve got to get on with weaning this child, she’ll be two next month.” Lucy blinked back at her mother and smiled. “Of course, you know as soon as I do, the next one’ll come along. Once the milk dries up, I’m ripe for the picking.”

  We sat in the parlour, taking our tea, Bertine knitting away on a pair of mitts, Lucy stealing back and forth between our laps, brushing behind the curtains. Before I could notice, she was standing on Archer’s sitting chair, parading her rag doll across its high back, then sticking its limp arm through the hole Archer left in the wall. She laughed and giggled as she pushed the doll’s head into the hole, as if they were on a grand adventure, searching for hidden treasure.

  Bertine apologized, pulling at Lucy, trying to get her out of the chair. “Come down now, Luce. I think it’s time Dolly had her
nap.” She settled Lucy and her doll on the chesterfield, curling them up together in the corner, then sat back down in her chair. “Never saw a mouse hole up that high. Some big too. You got a rat?”

  I gave a nervous laugh and made an excuse. “The funniest thing happened, I was trying to hang a picture and…” I made a wide, grinning face at Lucy, hoping she would start giggling again and Bertine would forget what she had asked.

  “And?” Bertine’s foot started to tap under her skirt.

  I pulled my apron in front of my face, popping my head above it occasionally to grin at Lucy. “And the hammer went right through the plaster.”

  Lucy kicked and squealed with laughter.

  Bertine yanked my apron out of my hands. “No talk that starts with ‘the funniest thing happened’ has ever been the truth. Those words are meant for fishing tales and husbands come home late for supper. Besides, your father built this house, put these walls together…I know it would take more than a girl, a hammer and picture hook to undo his work.” She tucked Dolly snug in the crook of Lucy’s arm. “Hush now, girls.” Lucy squirmed herself into a tight, obedient knot. Bertine gave me a stern look. “You’ve had your head stuck between a woman’s legs, pulled out her baby and God knows what bloody else. You’ve seen more of a woman than their husbands dare to look at, so I figure that makes you more honest than not.” She went back to her knitting, counting the stitches to herself before going on. “How about you try telling me what happened again…”

  Bertine was always Miss B.’s favourite of the women from away. She’d made Marie laugh out loud the day Dr. Thomas came to deliver his lecture to the White Rose Temperance Society and the rest of the ladies of the Bay, sizing him up as soon as he walked through the door of the Seaside Centre. “I’ve never seen a man so clean. Looks like he doesn’t believe in work. Almost looks sinful, doesn’t it?” She’s too young to be half as wise as Miss B., but she’s just as fierce with her honesty. So, even though I’d decided that I wanted Archer to come home, that what had happened—his hurtful words, the hole in the wall, his needing to drink himself into a rage—was mostly my fault, I confided in Bertine, sobbing as I told her everything that had happened.

  “I was tired of it, of him, I guess. I was cold to him, turned him away. He got angry with me. I don’t blame him. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not meant to be a wife. He’s not happy with me. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cry. I don’t blame him.”

  “That’s terrible, just terrible.” She handed me a handkerchief and put her arm around my shoulder.

  “I know. I should’ve let him do as he pleased.”

  Bertine gave an angry snort. “If you say that again, I’ll have to wash your mouth with tallow soap and vinegar.”

  “You think I’m right to feel this way? I tried to talk to Mother and—”

  “My mind says you have every right to feel any which way you like. Not that a man’s ever gonna understand, though.”

  “Was Hardy like this too?”

  “Hardy’s some sweet now, but he used to get all red-faced and mad over all kinds of things when we were first starting out, mostly burnt suppers or too much starch in the sheets. He changed his tune once there was a little one around.”

  “You think having a baby might settle Archer down?”

  “Never know what might come between the jigs and reels. Of course, thinking you can change a man is thoughts wasted, but there’s a bright side to everything, if you’ll only look ’til you find it. Like my mother always said, If your husband smokes, be thankful he doesn’t chew; if he smokes and chews both, be thankful he doesn’t drink; if he does all three, be thankful he won’t live long.” She started to bundle Lucy up for the walk home. “I’ll come by next Thursday, say, seven o’clock?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “What should I say we’re doing?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Hardy gets his hackles up when I start doing things for no good-God reason. Seems to him that women have to have a good-God reason for everything.”

  “How about knitting socks for the war?”

  “Perfect. That’s what Dinah Moore says when she wants to sneak off with her cousin Hank, tells her father she’s going to her sister’s house to make care packages for the soldiers…it hasn’t failed her yet. How’s the Occasional Knitters Society sound?”

  “Dinnie sneaks off with Hank?”

  “Oh my gosh, yes, they’ve been at it since the war started. Everyone thinks she’s pining after Emery Steele, but Dinnie has old Hank to keep her warm. I’ll tell you the rest next Thursday, gotta get home and get supper on the stove.”

  Hart came by in the evening to say that he’d help keep things in order while Archer’s away. At first I thought to say no, but I agreed to his caring for the team, mucking the barn and feeding the cow. I’ll do the milking, since Archer nearly always forgot and poor Buttercup never liked his tardiness or the rough way he handled her teats. I’m afraid the sound of any man’s voice might dry her up.

  Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Hart is the older of the two Bigelow brothers. Despite his crippled hand, and the fact that he’s at least thirty, there’s a willingness to his body, his step, his character that makes him seem younger than he is. He spends his days moving around the Bay, doing the work of two or even three men, helping wherever he sees a need. Most often a mess, with his curly brown hair full of hay dust, he’s happiest when he’s working, having no patience for “careless people and useless talk.”

  There was another visitor along with Hart: his collie, Pepper. “Would you mind taking a look at her? She’s been limping for at least a week, and I can’t figure why. She won’t let me get hold of her to see.”

  I sat on the kitchen floor and looked her over. She had a small burr stuck between the pads of her paw, hidden under a tough mat of fur that she hadn’t been able to gnaw loose, although she’d licked the rest of her foot raw, trying to get at it. The dog turned her head at me and tried to nip, but Hart kept her calm, and with one snip of my scissors I got rid of the troublesome thing.

  He patted Pepper on the head. “Looks like I’ve witnessed Dora Bigelow’s first miraculous healing at Spider Hill. Miss Babineau would be proud.”

  I laughed as I went to the cupboard under the china cabinet, looking through Miss B.’s things I had hidden away…the Willow Book was tucked alongside jars of remedies, bundles of herbs, tallow candles, figures of the Virgin Mary and a small wooden box filled with rosary beads, the pouch with my caul sitting on top. “Don’t let word get out. I promised Archer I’d given up my witchery.” I pulled out a jar of Miss B.’s marigold–honey salve and shut the door, tight. Heals any burn or wound.

  Hart apologized for Pepper’s growling. “Sorry she got a little testy with ya.”

  “I’ve seen worse.” I bent down and rubbed the salve on her sore spot. “She may need to favour it for a few days. You should keep her inside until it heals up.” Pepper hopped up and whimpered a bit as she made her way around the kitchen, sniffing for scraps.

  Hart scratched his chin, combing his fingers at the roughness that comes with colder weather and his starting to grow a beard for winter. “Mother would have my head. She thinks Pepper’s no better than a pig.”

  I set out a bowl of water and a soup bone for the dog to chew on. “She’ll stay here, then. Doctor’s orders.”

  Over tea, I showed Hart my most recent letter from Borden, forgetting that my brother had said a few unkind things about Archer.

  I told Albert about your marriage to Archer Bigelow. He said it better than I can. “Tell Dorrie she’d best be happy when we get home or we’ll have to take Archer out to the woods to go hunting.” I added that you should tell Hart he’s in some hot water for not keeping his eyes on you!

  Hart grumbled, “You tell Borden not to worry. It seems Archie’s a new man now that he’s got you for a wife. I never would have guessed he’d be making his way, selling Bibles to the good people of Kings County.” He scratched
Pepper behind the ears and looked at me. “It’s Bibles, right? Isn’t that what you said?”

  I opened my eyes wide and tried to give a convincing stare. “That’s right.”

  He put on his coat and went to the door. “God knows Archie could sell rain barrels in the desert.”

  “That’s right.”

  I don’t think he believed me.

  ~ October 25, 1917

  Expecting that a woman might be with child after only a few months of marriage isn’t unheard of. I got my hopes up when my courses were late, but despite my daydreams of a happy home, the blood has come.

  Archer’s been gone nearly three weeks. It can’t be long before he runs out of money and needs to come home. Even if he doesn’t care for me, his mother still holds the purse strings to the rest of his inheritance. This is one time when I’m glad she wants to keep Archer in her reach.

  Bertine says, “He’s not the first man to run away from his wife. He’ll get tired of having to look for a place to rest his head, of having to explain who he is, of having to think about what comes next…he’ll find his way home.”

  Whatever it is that brings him back, I’ll welcome him with my affection, my love and my body. It’s not that I expect that anything I do will ever change him; he can do as he pleases as long as I can have the one thing I’ve always wanted. Once there’s a child inside me, nothing else will matter.

  22

  THE FIRST OFFICIAL MEETING of the Occasional Knitters Society included not only Bertine but Mabel and Sadie as well, each woman bringing her children and a basket filled with yarn and needles. Bertine set out to teach us her grandmother’s way of knitting socks. She said it had come down through her family, first from the Orkney Islands, then to Newfoundland, “and now to the Occasional Knitters of Scots Bay.”