The Birth House (28 page)

epilogue

Electricity Comes to Scots Bay

T
wenty-two years after the first electric streetlights were lit in Canning, power poles have finally found their way up North Mountain to the last community on the line—Scots Bay. Mr. Joseph Berch of Kings County Electric said, “It’s been an enormous undertaking and we are grateful to the people of Scots Bay for their patience and understanding.” Many homes, as well as the Union Church, the Seaside Centre and the Scots Bay School can expect to have electricity by the end of the month.

The Canning Register,
July 4, 1944

T
HERE WASN’T MUCH CALL
for three-masted schooners after the war. The shipyard went to waste, and Father spent his days knocking on other men’s doors, looking to help them with “whatever needs doing.” It wasn’t so much that he needed a job, it was just that he couldn’t stop moving. Right up to his death, I never saw him sitting with his hands folded in his lap, quiet. People came and left the Bay, more leaving than staying, feeling there was something better out in the world for them, something bigger. Those of us who stayed behind still can’t say this place is on the way to anything else, we just call it home.

My home on Spider Hill, this birth house, has seen her share of life and babies. Of course, there’s fewer of them now that every other place has a car parked out front and every other young man has gone to war again. Most of those boys were born in my house; they are my sons too. Still, women come to me for “whatever needs doing,” a bottle of Miss B.’s cough syrup, a cup of tea with mitts, a few minutes’ rest with her feet up and my hands on her belly to say, “Everything’s fine, just fine.” Some of them, when the time comes, have gotten quite good at waiting too long to go to the hospital, their husbands roaring them up the road and to my door. I never mind it.

Mabel had two more here…

Bertine had a boy.

Precious married Sam Gower…and was soon carrying twins.

Pregnant or not, the Occasional Knitters never miss a Wednesday night.

No woman or child shall be turned away.

There have been those who have stayed here a day, a week and even a month or more.
Every woman needs a sanctuary.
Judith left Boston and ran away to Paris with a poet, leaving Rachael heartsick. The poor girl came to Scots Bay and hid herself up in the ell chamber, filling it with her sadness and painting after painting of the dark, brooding sea.

And Wrennie, my little moss-baby, grew up caring for the women as much as I did. She was happy to sit by the bed, holding a young mother’s hand, or to share her dolls with two little girls who had lost their home in a fire. Always a beautiful girl, she’s outgrown her honest eyes, not quite sure how to tame the fire that sits in her heart, a fire that can send any man begging at her window. At twenty-eight, she’s gone to Boston and back so many times I’ve lost count.

Every summer, Charlie arrives with Maxine, smiling and happy to have his wife by his side. I always expect them about this time of year, when the weather gets hot in Boston and “the goddammed molasses has started to ooze from the cracks in the sidewalks of Beantown again.” When Max is in the Bay, you can be sure the rum and talk won’t stop flowing ’til she’s gone. She always comes bearing gifts. “What kind of auntie would I be if I didn’t bring plenty of books for Wrennie and plenty of hooch for Mommy?” And so Wrennie was raised on healthy doses of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as brown bread, black raspberries and shad.

When Wrennie was five, Max brought her a hand-cranked Victrola. Wrennie giggled and laughed, “Auntie Max, that’s the funniest flower I’ve ever seen!” But when Max made it go and the music started, Wrennie fell in love. She spun around the room, holding out her arms, eyes closed. Tangos, waltzes, the Charleston, she loved them all. Long summer nights all through July and August, we’d drag Wrennie’s “singing flower” out to the porch, and people from all around the Bay would come and listen, sometimes dancing in the dooryard.

Hart has remained my dancing partner. Always my lover, never my husband. He still asks for my hand from time to time, but never complains when I say I prefer it this way. Even as the Widow Bigelow lay in bed dying, she scolded me and blamed my refusals on my being born different, on my having lived with Miss B. or on my being “the girl who went to Boston.” I should have told her it was more that I didn’t want to end up like her—having married and lost two husbands, two brothers, two Bigelow men. I think Miss B. would have a good laugh over it all.
That Missy Austen always seemed to be endin’ her books with a weddin’. Catherine marryin’ Henry, Miss Bennett marryin’ Mr. Darcy, then
fin
, the end. Seems to me what she’s sayin’ is that once you’re hitched, it might as well be the end.

I plan to stay just far enough from Hart to keep it all from ending. He can have his mother’s rattly old house of rooster red. I’ll stay perched up here on Spider Hill, catching a baby or two when they come, singing Miss B.’s lullabies, writing poems on old grocery receipts and keeping Hart company when he happens by.

Tonight he’ll make his way up the hill, tired but wanting, home from the Dulsin’ tide. In the dusk I can see people gathered together, some in skiffs on the water, others in a large circle around the church. They are waiting for a twinkling, a rapture. They are waiting for the lights to go on in the Bay.

Notes from the Willow Book

The Moon owns the willow

The Midwife’s Garden

A
is for anise, sweet relief for the bowels

B
is the butcher’s broom to shrink the womb down

C
is for cayenne; its heat stays the blood

D
andelion greens should be boiled some good

E
is for eggs, one a day cooked ’til hard

F
ennel brings mother’s milk and a woman’s blood

G
’s the gooseberry, for pie or for jam

H
yssop, tansy, and mugwort for taking a bath

I
’s the Irish Moss for blanc mange and stew

J
uniper without berries is for making tea too

K
is for kelp, when it’s dried it will keep

L
abrador tea if you’re needing some sleep

M
is for mustard, on her belly makes her bleed

N
’s for the nettle, just the leaves, not the seed

O
nions to the feet will bring down a fever

P
ennyroyal’s tincture makes a tiny baby leave her

Q
ueen Anne’s lace is poison, it’s not caraway

R
ed raspberry tea should be drunk every day

S
is for sage, which makes the milk go

T
histle, that’s blessed, makes the milk flow

U
nicorn, false, with bed and capsicum

V
ery good at keeping the babe inside his mum

W
intergreen tea is best made in the spring

X
-cept for making jam, for the berries you must bring

Y
is for yew, its stone will bring strife

Z
est comes from lemons, oranges and life!

Alder

To clear the liver and cut the hives. Brew up a pot of weak red alder tea. Give in drops to the newborn. Keeps a babe from turning yellow.

Althea

(
mortification root
) A spirit puller. Calls good spirits into the home.

Angel Water

For calling an angel down when a mama’s two moontimes late. Boil up: black stick, pennyroyal, wild carrot seeds. Add a pinch of borax, a pinch of gunpowder. Mix with whiskey, drink, and wait.

Barley

Scatter by the door to keep evil away. If you want love, drink a cup of barley water every day.
Barley and onions in a bath will surely bring a person back.

Bay

Write your wishes on leaves of bay, burn them and they’ll come true the same day.

Beans

Three blue beans in a blue bladder. Rattle, bladder, rattle.
Sing three times in one breath to chase the haints away.

Beaver Brew

A dose (straight or with tea) keeps a woman clear from babies for one moontime. Steep the oysters of beavers in gin. Set out in the light of three full moons.

Birthwort

Holds a mother against illness. Take a bath with its juice and a snake’s bite will never do you harm.

Borage

The seeds and leaves make a mama give more milk. Cures a broken heart.

Breech

Means trouble to mama and child. Best to get the babe to done turn on its own. Try: tipping the mama, having her do the elephant walk, giving her a cold belly, singing the babe a sweet song, Mother’s Tea with pasque flower.

Brown Flour Coffee

Turns sickness. Set a pint of flour on the stove until it gets right dry—stir and roast it down dark, like coffee. Put two tablespoons in a pint of boiling water. Scald in milk. Make sweet with honey.

Cabbage

Takes soreness out of hot breasts. Steam the leaves. Let cool. Place on a mama’s tits. Plant cabbage first after a marriage to bring luck and love.

Camphor

Use as a rub for croup or aching skin. Mix with the wash to scare off fleas and bedbugs.

Caul

A babe with a caul sees more than us all.
Brings the gift of sight. Saves a man from drowning.

Castor Oil

(Palma Christi)
Brings healing wherever it’s given to the body.
My hands are His hands My hands are His Hands Palma Christi Palma Christi The Hand of Christ

Cayenne

(
capsicum
)

See also
Quilling.
Brings strength to the womb. Useful for yellow babes.

Childbed Fever

Brought on by unclean hands.
Always wash before you pray.

Coltsfoot

(
son-before-the-father
)

Nothing works better to tame an angry throat. Don’t plant the coltsfoot in your garden unless that’s all you want there. You’ll see yellow buttons peeking out between rocks and ditches long before the leaves come on, the son-before-the-father
.
Make note of where you saw it in the spring so you can come back to it. Cook leaves down, strain, add sugar, then boil until a drop of the syrup turns hard in cold water.

Comfrey

Cures the whites when put in a douche.

Dead Needle

To make sure of death. Push a clean needle in the flesh of the left arm. If it comes back dark, they’s alive. If it comes back polished, they’s dead.

Devil’s Bit

(
scabiosa
)

Brew the flowers to keep her courses regular and clean. Smells like honey.
So sweet the Devil bit off the root of the first plant to try to take it away from us.

Dill

For colicky babes, rub the child’s belly with dill seed oil. Makes them sweet again. For hiccups, boil seeds in wine and breathe in the scent.

Dulse

(
Neptune’s girdle
)

Puts salt in the veins. Keeps the blood strong for another year.
Careful! Can arouse a man’s desires.

Fennel

Brings milk to a mama’s breasts. Boil leaves with barley and drink as tea. Makes the flow creamy and good.

Feverfew

(
maydeweed
)

Make tea with the leaves. Good for a lady who frets. Simmer plant and flowers in water for a sitz bath for a lady’s private parts. Gives strength to the womb. Best to keep it on its own in the garden. Bees don’t have nothing to do with it. Good for a
Moon Elixir
.

Fiddlehead Fern

Break the first frond you see in the spring. Keeps a toothache away for a year.

Flax

Make tea with seeds, lemon and honey—for coughs and sore throats.

Groaning Cake

(
kimbly, gateau a la mélasse)

2 cups molasses

1 cup boiling milk

1 tsp baking powder

3-1/2 cups flour, sifted

4 eggs

1 cup butter

1 tbsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 cup raisins (or grated apple)

Headache

Simple
—Walk backwards half a mile, slow as a snail.

Sick—
Take catnip tea. Make a plaster of cayenne pepper and vinegar, apply to brow, then sleep it off.

A rumour is about as hard to unspread as butter.

High Tide Tea

To ease menstrual pains and keep the courses regular.

Three days before her courses are due, a lady should begin to drink this tea:

One part burdock

One part seaweed

Three parts fennel seed

One part wild carrot seed

Tie herbs into a muslin pouch and steep in boiling water. Twice daily, preferably at the high tides. Not to be taken by ladies wanting to get with child.

Irish Moss

For blanc mange and quieting a troubled belly. Boil one tsp dried plant in a cup of water. Drink twice a day.

Lady’s Mantle

Our dear Lady’s mantle give her tears between the dawn and the dew. Kneel before her between your courses, sip them up with your tongue, and a child she’ll bring to you.