be silent. I swear.”
I left her on the stairs, peeking through the broken, crooked pickets of the banister.
Miss B. and I turned back the straw mattress and tied sheets to the bedposts. She tugged hard at them. “See now, Mrs. Ketch, you know what’s to do … when the time comes, you gots to hold on for dear life and push that baby out.” Miss B. motioned for me to steady Mrs. Ketch’s shaking knees. “And it’s comin’ fast and hard as high tide on a full moon. Pousser!”
Mrs. Ketch bent her chin to her chest, the veins on her neck throbbing. “Let me die, dear Lord. Please let me die.”
Miss B. laughed. “How many times you been through this, thirteen, fourteen? You should know by now, the Lord ain’t like most men, He ain’t gonna just take you home when you ask for it …”
Just last Sunday Reverend Norton went on and on about the trespasses of Eve, pounding his fist on the pulpit, his face all red and puffed up as he spit to the side between the words original and sin. While he talked at good length about the evils of temptation and the curse Eve had brought upon all women, he never mentioned the stink of it. I never imagined that “the woman’s tithe for the civilized world” would smell so rusted, so bitter.
I kept the fire in the stove going, unpacked clean sheets from Miss B.’s bag, did whatever she told me to do, but no matter how busy I made myself, my stomach ached and my hands felt heavy and useless. I don’t think my nervousness came from it being my first birth, or even from seeing such pain and struggle in a woman, but more from hearing the sadness, the wanting, in Mrs. Ketch’s cries. Nothing we did seemed to help. She sobbed and cursed, her wailing and Miss B.’s coaxing going on for an hour or more, I’d guess, or at least long enough for Mrs. Ketch to give up on a miracle and have a baby boy.
He was a sad, tiny thing. His flesh was like onion skin; the blue of his veins showed right through. If I had looked any harder at his weak little body, I think I might have seen his heart. Miss B. bundled him up in flannel sheets and handed him to Mrs. Ketch. “Hold him, now, put your chest to his so he knows what it’s like to be alive.” But Experience Ketch didn’t want her baby. She didn’t want to hold him or look at him or have him anywhere near. “Get that thing away from me. I got twelve more than I can handle anyways.”
I couldn’t stand it. I took him from Miss B. and pulled him close. I whispered in his ear, “I’ll take you home with me. I’ll take you for my own.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Iris Rose run up the stairs. I turned to Miss B. “He’s looking so blue, his arms, his legs, his chest. His breath is barely there.”
“He’s born too soon.” She made the sign of the cross on his wrinkled brow. “If he’d been born three, four weeks later, I could spoon alder tea with brandy in his mouth, make a bed for him in the warmin’ box of the cookstove and hope he pinked up, but as it is …”
I stopped her from going on. “Tell me what to do. I have to try.”
Miss B. shook her head. “If you can’t see him through to the other side, then you should just go on home. Mary and the angels will soon take care of him. I have to see to his mama.”
I sat in the corner and held tight to the dying child.
Miss B. wrapped a blanket around us. “Some babies ain’t meant for this world. All you can do is keep him safe until his angel comes.”
“There’s nothing else I can do?”
She leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Pray for him, and pray for this house too.”
BETWEEN MY PRAYERS and Miss B.’s spooning porridge into Mrs. Ketch’s mouth, the baby died. It was almost dawn when Brady Ketch came home. He stomped through the house, drunk and demanding to be fed. “Experience Ketch, get outta that bed and get me some food.” The poor woman tried to get up, as if nothing had troubled her at all, but Miss B. held her down. “You need rest. Lobelia tea and rest, then more tea and more rest. At least three days to get your strength, but a week would be best. If you don’t, you gonna bleed ‘til you’re dead.”
Mr. Ketch staggered, reaching for the bundle of blankets I was holding in my arms. “Let me have a look-see there, girl. What’d we get this time, wife? Another boy, I hope. Girls don’t eat as much, but they take their toll every-ways else. I don’t trust nothin’ that can’t piss standin’ up.” He pinned me against the wall, his dark mouth leaving the skunky smell of his breath in my face. “Ain’t you pretty … you Judah Rare’s girl, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your daddy’s got the right idea. How’d he manage to get all boys and just one pretty little thing like you? Bet you come in handy when your mama gets tired. He’s one lucky son of a bitch, I’d say.”
Mrs. Ketch hissed at her husband. “Leave her be, Brady.”
He pulled back the blankets to look at the child. “I’m just lookin’ at what’s mine.”
I stood still while he pinched at the baby’s thin, blue cheeks. “Hey there, little critter, ain’t you gonna say ‘hello’ to your—” He stopped and pulled his hand away, his curiosity giving way to confusion and then to anger. He turned and stared at Miss B. “What’d you do to it?” Before she could answer, he grabbed her by her shoulders. “Looks to me like you killed my child and put my wife half-dead on her back.” Brady Ketch slid his hands around Miss B.’s throat, slipping his fingers through her rosary beads. “What’s to keep me from taking you back in the glen and snappin’ your wattled old witch’s neck?”
An iron skillet lay on the floor by the cookstove. A doorstop shaped like a dog sat in the corner, one ear and the snout of its nose chipped away. I could’ve killed Brady Ketch and not felt a minute’s worth of guilt. “God sees what you do, Mr. Ketch.”
He let go of Miss B. and made his way back to me, smiling, leaning into my body and stroking my hair. “Now, don’t you worry, little girl. Miss Babineau knows I’d never mean her any real harm. It’s just sometimes a woman needs a man to set her right. Says so in the Bible.”
Miss B. started packing up her bag. “See that she gets her rest. Three days off her feet, no less.” She moved towards the door. “Come on, Dora.”
“That won’t do.” Mr. Ketch stood in front of the door. “She can’t just take to bed for days whenever she feels like it. There’s things that need to get done around here. You gotta fix her. Now.”
Miss B. stared at him. “I told you, she needs bedrest. Three days and she’ll be good as new.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “That Dr. Thomas, down Canning way, he’d know how to make her right. When Tommy snapped his wrist, the doc fixed it up so he could use it right away. Tied it up nice and clean, give him a few pills, and Tom was chopping wood that afternoon.”
“And you can afford a fancy doctor always runnin’ up the mountain to fix your family?”
Brady pretended to hold a rifle in his arms, pointing his finger past Miss B. and out the window. He clucked his tongue in his mouth and moved his hands as if to cock the gun. “Let’s just say the doc and I … we have a gentleman’s agreement when it comes to that sweet white doe everyone’s always lookin’ to bag.” He grinned as he slowly changed position, now pointing at Miss B.’s heart, squinting one eye to take aim. “And don’t think I don’t know where to find her.”
Miss B. pushed his arm away and started again for the door. “Well, ain’t that fine.”
Brady opened the door and shoved Miss B. onto the stoop. As I started to hand the child’s body to him, Miss B. called out to Mrs. Ketch.
“You send Tom to get