The Birth House. Ami McKay

B. took my hand, pulled me out of the house and started walking down the road. “It’s gonna be just fine. Don’t you worry.”

      I should know by now, once Marie Babineau’s mind’s made up, there’s no saying no.

      The walk was cold and long. By mid-December the trees are naked, the Bay has turned the colour of lead and the winds have changed, pushing the grass down, ignoring our lives as it cuts the breath short and shallow, forcing us to move from fire to fire. Mabel’s house sits along the main road where it branches off towards Cape Split, just after the shipyard and Hardy Tupper’s blacksmith shop. It’s no different than all the other Thorpe houses in the Bay, framed straight and square like a saltbox, with one chimney poking up through the middle of the roof. This is how the Thorpes are too, plain living and dependable, every last one.

      Once inside, Miss B. was quick to push Mabel’s husband, Porter, and their two small children out the door and off to stay with his sister’s family down the road. “That wife of yours has to think on this baby now. The little ones won’t know why she’s not actin’ herself, and dear Mabel can’t do what she needs to if she’s frettin’ over givin’ them a fright.”

      Her belly almost too wide between them, Mabel leaned towards her shy, quiet husband, giving him an awkward kiss on the cheek. She tousled the hair on her little girls’ heads saying, “You be some good for your auntie. Mind your daddy and say your pleases and thank-yous.” Two little strawberry-blond heads nodded together as they looked up at their mother, smiling, reaching out their hands to rub the roundness of her one last time. At four and five they are perfect stair steps, both freckle-faced and as sweet-natured as their mother. Big as a barn and nearly ready to drop, Mabel Thorpe still made motherhood look easy. Miss B. says, “It’s a mama’s faith what keeps her children right. I’m not talkin’ ‘bout the churchgoin’ kind, neither. Miss Mabel’s got faith in goodness. Tell me you can’t help but believe in it too just by lookin’ at her.”

      Soon after they left, two of Mabel’s neighbours, Bertine Tupper and Sadie Loomer, arrived. Miss B. greeted them by kissing their cheeks and teasing them about the difference in their heights. “Well, if it ain’t the broom and the bucket.” Bertine’s as tall and sturdy as you’d expect a blacksmith’s wife to be, while Sadie, though wiry and rough as a sailor with her talk, isn’t much taller than my youngest brothers. They came through the door cradling baskets filled with tiny quilts, cradle blankets and baked goods. Miss B. cooed over Bertine’s knitting, smoothing the folds with her blue-lined hands. “L’amour de maman. A mother’s love.” Then she set us all to work, even Mabel. “It’s too early to be puttin’ yourself to bed, little mama. You know right well you gots to keep on movin’ so’s you can open up them bones.” Mabel didn’t argue. She busied herself with her friends, moving back and forth between sifting flour and gripping the edge of the kitchen table when her pains grew too hard.

      From three different outports in Newfoundland, Mabel, Bertine and Sadie all came to the Bay about the same time. They’re what Aunt Fran calls women from away. She says it means they couldn’t find husbands in their own villages, so they had to find a way to get “hitched” to men from somewhere else. “Newfoundland may as well be the moon the way those women act sometimes. When you’ve got no family to speak of, no one knows who you really are. I suppose that’s what they want, running off like that from home, like they’ve got something to hide.” I think they’re wonderful, and even brave, sitting together at church socials, laughing louder than Aunt Fran thinks they should. They seem more like sisters (or at least how I imagine sisters might be).

      Miss B. called to me. “Dora, go out and fetch us some fresh eggs. It’s time to make the groanin’ cake.”

      Some say the groaning cake, or kimbly, brings good fortune to the new child. These days, most people save the tradition for when the mother’s churched. The first Sunday she can get out of bed and take the baby to services, the father stands outside the church door and hands each mother in the community a little cake wrapped in brown paper and red ribbon. Mabel wanted to do it the old way, where the mother breaks the eggs and mixes the batter herself just before the baby comes. “It fills the house right up with sweetness. That’s the way my mother and all her sisters did it back home.”

      Bertine nodded in agreement. “My granny always said just the smell of it baking cuts the pain.”

      Sadie added, “As soon as you think a baby’s coming, it’s time to tie lavender to the bedposts, put an axe under the bed and a cake in the oven.”

      Miss B. smiled as she lifted the cozy off the teapot. “The scent of a good groanin’ cake, a cuppa hot Mother’s Tea and time. Most times that’s all a mama needs on the day her baby comes.” She handed Mabel a cup. “Plenty of time to do whatever she needs, tell whatever story’s on her mind, time enough to say all her prayers.”

      As the afternoon wore on, Mabel became more and more quiet, stopping every once in a while to hold her stomach and let out a groan. After her water broke all down her legs and she got to where she couldn’t hold a spoon in her hands or a smile on her face, Miss B. led her back to the bedroom. She unpacked three glass jars from her bag, sterilized scissors, scorched muslin and castor oil. She sang and prayed over them, and after that, over anything else she touched. It was getting dark now, so I lit a few lamps and brought them into the room.

      Sadie and Bertine took turns telling Mabel gossip as they pulled a clean nightdress over Mabel’s round belly.

      “And then Bertine gots her foot tappin’. You know the way she does when she thinks she’s been lied to, says, ‘well, isn’t that interesting’—an’ all that.”

      Mabel paced back and forth, trying to keep her mind from her pain.

      “I just thought it was awful interesting that Mrs. Trude Hutner would say she already knew whats how to thrum a pair of mitts when you know right well she’s never knitted a proper mitt, nor sock, nor a bloody thimble for her thumb. These women around here like to think they know it all … she wouldn’t have to stuff the Canning Register down her husband’s boots if she knew to make a proper sock.”

      Sadie’s half Bertine’s size, but it didn’t stop her from teasing. “Shut it now, Bertine, and let me tell it right. No one wants to hear about your blessed wonderful socks … again.”

      Mabel reached for the bedpost, groaning with pain. “Here it comes.”

      Miss B. clutched at the rosary beads around her neck. “Hold on to it, don’t you go pushin’ just yet.” Sadie and Bertine rushed to their friend, holding her up on either side. With every moan Mabel let out, they did their best to comfort her, saying, “You’ll be fine, just a little while longer, you’ll be fine,” but when her pains came in waves, each one following on top of the next, they gave up their words. Miss B. closed her eyes and listened. “There’s a sound that creeps up … it’s like no other sound I ever heard. When it pulls at the hairs on the back of your neck, that’s how you knows it’s time.”

      Miss B. asked me to bring in a bowl of warm water and a clean towel. She spread blankets on the floor, making a soft nest at Mabel’s feet. “You gotta get on your knees now, dear, it’s time you gonna push.” Bertine and Sadie got down on the floor with her, giving Mabel their shoulders to hold on to. Miss B. sprinkled a few drops of castor oil in the water, prayed over the bowl, wrang out the steaming cloth and placed it against the red, bulging skin between Mabel’s legs. She looked at me and motioned to a small stool beside her bag. “Bring that stool and come hold this for me. Keep it close and warm so she don’t tear.”

      Mabel cried out as the next pains began. Miss B. knelt beside me. I started to move to change places with her, but she whispered in my ear, “You stay put.” She looked up at Mabel. “Now we push, little mama, now we push.”

      It was tight and round where I held the cloth, and as I pulled my hand away, I could see the dark of the baby’s hair. As she pushed, Mabel’s body seemed to open up as wide and full as her wailing. When the baby’s head moved out into the light, I saw that its face was starting to turn blue. Miss B. whispered