“However strong the allegations against the character of Olympia Biddeford, which in his pleadings have been made by the counsel for the respondents; however clearly the respondents have shown themselves to be careful caretakers of the infant boy; however injurious it may be to the boy to be separated from the only parents he has ever known, the court is bound to say that the respondents have failed to satisfy the court as to the future education and well-being of the boy.”
Beside her, Tucker seizes her hand. She looks at Tucker and then over at the respondents’ table. Sears sits impassively, studying the handle of his briefcase. Albertine and Telesphore appear not to understand what has been said, even though they seem to sense something amiss. Albertine looks wildly all about her.
“The court,” Littlefield continues, “however much it may be loath, in this particular instance, to do so, cannot allow a boy to remain in a household in which he may, in future, by influence of his guardians or by persons influential to the guardians, or by circumstances beyond the guardians’ control, such as poverty or undue influence of community, commit crimes against the state.”
A cry pierces the chamber. Littlefield looks up from his brief. Albertine, her hands in the air, cries,
“Non! Non! Non!”
Littlefield does not ask for order, as if he has realized that it is the right of the woman to disrupt the court. Albertine turns and grabs her husband’s arm.
“In addition,” Littlefield continues, “the court is bound to acknowledge that the guardians in this case, Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc, though blameless, received the child into their care as a result of an unlawful separation of the child from the natural mother. The court is therefore presented, in this case, with a dual charge: to redress the wrong that was done both to the infant child and to its natural mother, Olympia Biddeford; and to ensure the continuing nurture of this child by guaranteeing, insofar as the court or any institution can guarantee the future, its healthful security and education.”
Telesphore puts his head in his hands. Albertine flings her head back against her chair.
“I therefore issue the following decree, endorsed upon the writ of habeas corpus.”
Albertine begins to sob, a deep, continuous sound.
Littlefield, obviously rattled, clears his throat. “On ten March
1904
, this cause having been heard upon the returns and amended return, suggestions and further suggestions, filed by the respective parties, and remaining of record, and upon the evidence, written and oral, adduced before the court, it is considered that the within named infant, Pierre Francis Haskell, has been unlawfully restrained of his liberty and detained by the parties to whom the within writ is directed, or any or either of them, and that the said infant be remanded and restored to his mother, Olympia Biddeford, in the said writ named.”
“He is yours,” Tucker says beside her.
“Bailiff,” says Judge Littlefield, removing his glasses and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Bring in the boy.”
Sears is on his feet. “Your Honor, may the mother and father say a last farewell to the boy?”
Littlefield pinches the bridge of his nose. “The foster parents may say good-bye to the boy, but I forbid them to upset him. If Mrs. Bolduc and her husband cannot control themselves, I will have them removed from the chamber. I do not wish a spectacle on my hands.”
“Your Honor,” says Sears, “may Mr. and Mrs. Bolduc bid farewell to the boy in private?”
“No, the court cannot permit that. What happens shall happen before all.”
• • •
The door at the back of the chamber opens, and the bailiff appears with his charge. The boy is dressed in a navy coat and cap, with long gray stockings leading into the same broken leather shoes. With eyes wide, he glances around, perhaps slightly apprehensive, but excited, as if sensing an outing. Olympia watches as Albertine, with extraordinary selflessness, attempts to compose herself so as not to frighten the boy. She stands and slips the rosary into the pocket of her black suit. Telesphore, behind her, stands with his shoulders severely slumped, as though his back were broken. Sears steps out into the aisle and moves around the table behind Telesphore.
The bailiff brings the boy past Haskell, who holds himself as if at church or at some solemn occasion requiring respect. The resemblance between the boy and the father is so acute that Olympia thinks that all must now see. The boy looks quizzically at Olympia and Tucker and Littlefield and then, midway down the aisle, spots his foster mother.
“Maman,” he cries, breaking loose. “Maman.”
He runs on fat legs along the aisle to Albertine. With an instinctive gesture, long practiced, Albertine bends and picks up the boy and holds him tightly to her breast. He burrows into the wool of Albertine’s suit. And then she holds him slightly away from her, his legs hooked around her waist, his arms around her neck. She speaks to the boy in French, and he cocks his head slightly to the side, as if pondering his mother’s instructions. But when he looks at his mother’s face again — red and swollen — Olympia can see that he senses something is not as it should be. Albertine turns and hands the boy to Telesphore, who buries his huge head in the boy’s neck, unwilling to have the child see his devastation. With a quick kiss on the cheek, he gives his foster son back to Albertine. The sleeves of Albertine’s misshapen suit envelop the child. Her hat slides off her head. The entire room seems on the verge of some large and terrible explosion.
And then, though minutes pass — and it is too soon, even Olympia can feel that it is too soon — Albertine is forced to help the boy slide down off her body. She turns him around so that he is facing Olympia.
Albertine fixes Olympia with a stony look. Her face is puffed and raw. The boy, bewildered, does not move. The aisle might be a chasm. The bailiff once again takes the boy’s hand.
“Maman?” the boy calls over his shoulder, questioning.
It seems an obscenity to Olympia to hold out her own arms in Albertine’s presence, but she must welcome the boy somehow. She crouches down so that she is his height. She says his name.
“Pierre.”
The boy studies this new person before him. Why has his mother told him to go with her? Perhaps she is a friend of his mother’s? But if she is a friend, why are Maman and Papa crying?
“Maman?” he calls again over his shoulder.
Olympia reaches out a hand and touches the boy. Tentatively, he moves in closer to her.
A terrible sob — elemental and primitive — escapes Albertine.
The boy freezes, as if suddenly comprehending the meaning of the small tableau.
“Non!”
he cries, pushing Olympia’s hand away. He runs back to his mother, who bends double over him, sheltering him in the folds of her skirt.
A long moment passes.
“Bailiff,” says Littlefield with obvious reluctance.
The bailiff, his face red, clearly hating this job, awkwardly reaches in to try to snatch the boy.
“Mr. Sears,” says Littlefield. “Please speak to your client.”
Sears reaches around Telesphore and touches Albertine on the arm.
Albertine straightens, then bends to face the boy. She speaks to him and points to Olympia. The child is silent. Albertine tilts her foster son’s chin upward so that she and he are gazing directly into each other’s eyes.
From across the aisle, Olympia can see the look that passes between mother and child — a look that will have to last a lifetime, a lifetime of lost days, a lifetime of days that must now always be something less.
Olympia glances up at Tucker, who has gone gray in the face with this responsibility. She searches down the aisle for Haskell, who stands tight-lipped, his hands folded in front of him. And then she dares to look again at Albertine Bolduc, who in this moment will lose the child who has been her son. The anguish is more than any woman should be forced to endure, more than another woman can bear to watch.
“No,” says Olympia.
The bailiff glances up at Olympia and then over at Littlefield.
Olympia stands. “Do not.”
Tucker puts a hand on her arm.
“Miss Biddeford?” Littlefield asks with some bewilderment.
“I withdraw my petition,” Olympia says quickly.
“But Miss Biddeford, a judgment has been entered on your behalf.”
“I will not take him,” she says.
“Miss Biddeford.”
“I cannot.”
Albertine is cradling the boy. Olympia turns and walks briskly down the aisle past Haskell, who does not speak or attempt to stop her. She moves through the massive doors of the chamber and out into the stone hallway with its bronze busts. Her heels clicking loudly, she walks the length of the hallway to the door of the courthouse and opens it. She flinches, having forgotten the mob that has been waiting for her. Quickly now, so as not to lose her resolve, she makes her way blindly through the reporters and the men with signs. She emerges onto the sidewalk, turns, and moves as fast as she can to the next corner. And it is only then, with the crowd behind her and all her life before her, that she truly understands what she was meant to have known from the very beginning.
He is not hers. He was never hers.
Y
OU MUST NOT
hold your breath. You must breathe each time you get the pain.”
The girl grunts with a sound hardly human. The thin blond hair is wet and matted against her forehead. Both the calico shift and the bedclothes are rough and wrinkled with perspiration. If it were not so near the end, Olympia would change them yet again.
Occasionally, the girl’s father, in overalls and woolen shirt, his face unshaven, comes to the door and looks in, though he seems to do this out of duty and not from any desire to see his daughter. Olympia prays that the child to come is not the product of the father and the girl. Earlier, the girl told Olympia she was fifteen, which Olympia guesses is correct. There seems not to have been a mother for at least a decade.
The girl grunts again and pulls on the sheet that has been tied to the post at the foot of the bed for this purpose. Olympia anoints the girl’s vulva with lard and gently examines the progress being made by the descent of the head. Earlier, Olympia covered the horsehair mattress with a sheet of rubber and then spread old newspapers all along that to absorb the birth matter. She has brought with her clean flannels, scissors, coarse sewing cotton, muslin, and a paper of safety pins, all of which she has laid out upon the only table in the room. She has washed the girl’s nipples with a solution of strong green tea and made her a birthing skirt out of yet another clean sheet. Olympia soaks the washcloth in the ice-cold water the father has been bringing from the well, wrings it out, and places it on the girl’s forehead.
“Go look out onto the road,” Olympia says to the father, who seems to need occupation. “He must be coming soon.”
Olympia fears that the girl’s pelvis will be too narrow. Olympia could possibly manage the birth herself, but she would rather that Haskell were here with his greater experience and his forceps. Already the girl has been in labor for twenty hours, and her strength is nearly depleted.
Olympia glances around the room. Some attempt, she can see, has been made at cheer, although the girl is clearly not a skilled housekeeper. Faded red curtains, misshapen from many washings, are fastened onto the two windows of the room with small nails hammered into the frames. On the floor is an oiled cloth, the design of which has nearly been erased by wear. A knitted blanket, with several holes, is folded at the foot of the bed, away from the mess of the birth. But even these touches of human habitation cannot hide the rude truth of the room, one of only two in this small cabin so far from town. The walls are not plastered, and the beams of the peaked roof are exposed. With no wardrobe, the girl and the man hang their clothes on wooden pegs. Outside, Olympia can hear the bleating of sheep, a constant but not unpleasant sound.
And then she hears another sound, a motor, distant at first, fading away altogether and then louder as it makes its way up the rutted dirt road. The girl is lucky in giving birth this week; in another week, the roads will be so muddy that no motorcar will make it at all. Olympia sees a flash of scarlet and beige and waits for the familiar thunk of the automobile door.
Haskell enters the house without knocking, a habit he cannot break even when they go visiting.
“Olympia,” he says when he comes into the bedroom. He sets down his satchel and slips off his coat. He puts his hand on her shoulder. It is his need, Olympia knows, to reassure himself that she is still there, even after all these years.
“She is wanting to bear down,” Olympia says. “But her pelvis, I think, is too narrow.”
“How far along is she?”
“Past half a dollar.”
Haskell walks to the table where the basin is, rolls his cuffs, and washes his hands, exclaiming at how icy the water is. Olympia glances at his broad back. His hair is graying some now, even though his beard is still walnut. He walks to the other side of the bed and looks down at the girl, who is so exhausted that she falls asleep between the pains. Through the window, Haskell and Olympia can see the father standing beside the Pope-Hartford, clearly more interested in the motorcar than in the progress of his daughter.