The Quintland Sisters(5)
Other family members, several with the other Dionne children in tow, kept coming by and rapping at the door, and we’d redirect them back outside. All day long we watched people pulling up to the farmhouse in their cars and carriages, sending eddies of dust and flies into the kitchen. I managed to doze off in my chair by the fire while Nurse Clouthier and Mme. Legros were bustling about the kitchen and shooing visitors away.
At some point late in the day, M. Dionne burst in with a photographer from the North Bay Nugget. The man’s eyes bulged out of his head when he saw the tiny girls in the crate by the oven, but he swiftly got to work and convinced Mme. Legros to lift the tiny things from their warm cocoon onto the pillow beside Mme. Dionne. Maybe it was wrong to do it, but Mme. Dionne rallied somewhat when she had her little girls around her, their heads the size of early summer apples. Had Dr. Dafoe been there, I don’t think those babies would have been moved, but I suppose M. Dionne was thinking, as we all were, that this might be the only record of his wife with five live babies, all at once. How sad. Even putting those words down in print makes me feel sick with dread.
It was dusk when Nurse Yvonne Leroux—or Ivy, as she’s insisting I call her—arrived. I’ll never forget the moment she stepped through the front door carrying a black bag and wearing her white uniform. The farmhouse has low ceilings, and the shadows licking up the whitewashed walls must have made the kitchen and the adjoining parlor look that much shabbier.
Even in that light, Ivy shone. Her dark hair, parted in the center, was styled in a twist at the top of her neck, a crisp white nurse’s cap perched on the crown of her head. I put her at three, maybe four years older than me, in her early twenties at most, but she has the poise and comportment of a grown woman, whereas I, a good half foot smaller, still feel like I’ll never fill out the frame I’ve been given. She has high cheekbones, a creamy complexion, large brown eyes, and a long nose, which seems to twitch to the right whenever she is trying to hold back a smile, which wasn’t very often today. She told me that the message she’d received from Sister Felicitas at St. Joseph’s was that a Frenchwoman from a farming family had had a difficult birth and was fighting to survive. No one had bothered to mention anything about five babies. Perhaps Dr. Dafoe assumed they’d be dead by the time the nurse could reach us. She’s a brand-new nurse, Ivy. Her class is the first to graduate from the new school at St. Joe’s, and this is her first assignment.
The babies were back in the box by the fire when she arrived. I’d been given the task of reheating the bricks and stones for the basket. I’d rigged up some twine across the stove so I could drape the other blankets over top, creating a snug, warm cocoon around the basket and the stove together.
Ivy went first to the room next door and spent several minutes with Mme. Dionne, who was sleeping peacefully after the excitement of the photograph. I heard her exchange a few words with Mme. Legros, then exclaim, “Cinq!” before she hurried back into the kitchen.
She came forward and extended a firm hand, introducing herself as Ivy, first in French, then in English. It was the first time someone other than Marie-Jeanne and Dr. Dafoe had actually spoken to me directly, let alone looked at me without faltering. “Pleased to meet you,” I mumbled and told her my name. I was trying to think how to explain what I was doing at the farmhouse, but Ivy was already gesturing at the covered basket. “May I?”
I nodded and lifted off the blanket. Ivy’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
“Gosh,” she breathed and bent down to peer at them more closely, her hands rising instinctively as if to reach inside, then dropping again to her sides. All the babies were sleeping. The bigger girls were snuggled tightly together in the upper right corner of the box. The third had been placed in the bottom right corner and was curled at the feet of her big sister. The tiniest ones were back to back, their chins tucked toward their scrawny chests. I’d been watching them through the night and most of the day. I still found them astonishing, but less grotesque than they’d seemed last night.
Finally Ivy straightened up and indicated that I could place the blanket back over top. She must have seen the anxiety in my eyes as I lifted them to meet her gaze.
“You’re doing an excellent job,” she said. “You must be exhausted.”
Then she did something unexpected—she lifted her hand and placed it on my right cheek, the good one, and gently turned my face to the light of the oil lamp, studying my left side intently but not unkindly.
“Nevus flammeus,” she murmured in the manner of a student dredging up something memorized. “Port-wine stain.” Then she must have noticed my face blushing on the right side to match the left, because she stroked the cheek she was touching and said: “Makes you special, doesn’t it.” Then she grinned so that I saw for the first time that while her front teeth were perfectly straight, the teeth farther back were small and slightly crooked, making her look like she might know a thing or two about mischief. I couldn’t help but return her smile.
She turned back to the basket and its blankets, her eyes roving over my cords and sheets. It must have looked, I realized, like a child’s play fort. She nodded, appraisingly, then set about making a few adjustments.
“What we’re aiming for is as little change in temperature as possible,” she explained. “The front door to the kitchen must remain closed, when we can see to it, and we’ll put this to use right away,” she added, taking a ceramic hot-water crock from her bag.