The Quintland Sisters(8)
Dr. Dafoe, it seemed, spoke no French or at least had chosen not to speak a word of it since his arrival on the night of the birth. Even M. and Mme. Dionne he addressed in English, which M. Dionne clearly understood. Ivy and I slipped easily between French and English, and stuck with English when Dr. Dafoe appeared. Now, with more personnel from the hospital crowded into the main floor of the farmhouse, the balance had tipped to English.
M. Dionne went back to his wife’s bedside, and Dr. Dafoe started packing his black bag at the kitchen table. I touched his sleeve. “Can you drop me at my home?” I asked, and he blinked his small eyes behind his glasses and bobbed his head by way of assent. As I was following Dr. Dafoe out the door, Ivy called my name. The other women didn’t look up. “Emma—you’ll come back, won’t you?” She smiled her crooked smile. “Come back and rescue me as soon as you can.”
May 30, 1934
I RODE MY bicycle back out to the Dionne farmhouse this morning, unprepared for the mob of people milling around the edges of the yard like so many clucking chickens—a steady stream of bicycles, cars, and trucks coming and going. The North Bay Nugget had run the picture taken yesterday on page one. Now, hemming the Dionne property were at least three dozen men, women, and children, and not a single person I knew from Callander.
An older man I recognized as M. Dionne senior, the babies’ grandfather, was pacing the yard, spiking the air with a pitchfork and looking every bit like a bandy-legged devil roused from bed, his cottony hair standing up in a thick clump at the back. He was thundering at people to move on, but everyone was staying put, hectoring him with questions. Newspapermen clearly made up at least half of the crowd, bowler hats pushed back on their heads, some with pencils behind their ears and notebooks in their breast pockets. Others had cameras hanging heavy around their necks, their shirtsleeves rolled up in the heat. After a short while, the door to the farmhouse opened and Ivy stepped out onto the porch.
“Emma,” she called. She had one hand pulling the door closed behind her as heads craned to see inside, but she beckoned with her free hand. “Come on in,” she said.
The air in the farmhouse was even closer than yesterday. There was a heavyset girl I didn’t know working at the sink and another woman at the bedside of Mme. Dionne, who was sitting up somewhat, a bit of color returning to her plump cheeks. Ivy looked tired, but still lovely, I thought, wisps of hair curling out of her bun in the thick, damp warmth of the room.
On the floor of the kitchen, pushed against the far wall, sat a stout wooden box with two round knobs on the lid. It looked like a deep crib or coffin—roughly three feet high and two feet deep with glass set into its top. When I peeped under the blanket of the crate by the fire and saw only two babies inside, I gasped, my fingers flying to my lips. I swung around to face Ivy, but she shook her head and smiled wearily.
She gestured at the big wooden box.
“It came from Chicago early this morning,” she said, pulling me toward it and pointing to the thermometer set into its side. “It’s an incubator to keep them warm and safe from germs. It’s ancient—runs on kerosene instead of electricity.” Through the square pane of glass I could see the three little ones, curled around one another like puppies, sleeping soundly.
“They are doing okay now, but you missed the excitement earlier.”
She told me the littlest ones had turned blue and their hearts had stopped, but Dr. Dafoe, luckily, had been there when it happened and prescribed some drops of rum, retrieved from a cabinet in the adjoining room. Now Ivy and the other nurses were resorting to rum every time the fragile breathing of one of the babies showed signs of slowing to a standstill. You could see the strain in the faces of the women. The girl at the sink, Claudette, had been brought in from a nearby farm to help with the washing, and the young woman with Mme. Dionne was another sister or cousin, tasked with plumping pillows, spooning the patient her potage, joining in prayers, and doing whatever else was needed to ensure the patient remained in bed.
“She’s christened the babies,” Ivy whispered, smiling her sideways smile. “Do you want to meet them properly? You’ll like this.”
We went back to the box by the stove, and Ivy slowly lifted the blanket aside. “Madame named this one Yvonne for me,” she said, pointing to one of the largest, her face lighting up as she said it. “And the other bigger one here is Annette.”
She then walked over to the incubator and pressed a finger against the glass lid. “This here is Cécile and next to her, Marie, supposedly for Nurse Clouthier, but my guess is more likely the Holy Mother. The smallest—” Ivy looked up to watch my face. “The smallest I believe she named for you. This is émilie. That could be a variation of Emma, don’t you think?”
I looked up at Ivy, then leaned closer to peer again through the warped glass. émilie! They were still little more than wrinkled wads of skin, but after I’d spent so many hours watching them struggle for life, they’d filled my dreams the previous night.
“They are little fighters, they are,” Ivy murmured. She’d drifted back to the box and was swiftly removing one of the blanketed hot-water crocks and replacing it with a new one from the stove. “Keep it up, girls,” she whispered and adjusted their makeshift tents to cover them again.
EVERY FEW HOURS, we lift them out one by one and rub them gently with oil as if they’re clad in the finest tissue, our touch as light as air, and give them a few drops of breast milk from an eyedropper.