Fifteen November 1970 #2
Sally began to push, Kiju’s song in accompaniment.
It was strange to hear the song within the confines of a room, the walls separating us from the natural world that had been so important to the experience.
In between pushes, Sally hummed along or tried to sing a few words before the effort of birth took her breath away.
A couple of pushes later, I also began singing. Finally, I could see the head.
“Almost there, Sally. Almost there.”
Kiju and I went quiet to allow the baby the time to get used to the world outside the womb.
Sally gave one last push, and with a loud groan she gave birth to a baby girl, just as she said she would.
I held her on my arm, her tiny head thick with birth fluid nestled in my hand and her feet curled into the inside of my elbow.
I bent my other hand into a cone and used it to suck out any substance remaining from the act of moving from mother to the world.
And then she cried, her face scrunched, red with confusion or anger or maybe both.
She cried loud and strong and stretched her little arms and legs as far as she could.
I held her up for Sally to see before I placed the girl on Sally’s bare chest. Sally whispered in her tiny ear and Kiju watched with pride as I washed my hands in the warm water.
Then Kiju cut the cord, physically separating mother and child.
“Next time, I will show you how to cut the cord. It’s a big responsibility separating mother and child.”
I nodded and got a clean washcloth and dipped it in the warm water and washed the baby girl before wrapping her in the soft leather Kiju had prepared and handing her back to her mother.
“I’ll go get Big Ben,” I said as I gathered the bloody towels and prepared to take them downstairs.
“No, I’ll go get him, you stay here and make sure Sally isn’t so enthralled with that beautiful girl that she forgets to drink her tea.
” She looked over at the new mother, who paid no attention to us.
I wasn’t even sure if she knew we were still in the room.
Kiju smiled and went down the stairs first. I followed and set the tea on the wood stove to steep.
I rinsed the knife gently in the sink. The knife, so simple in design, unremarkable to anyone else, held our history.
Its own birth was unknown, passed down from mother to daughter for longer than even Kiju had memory.
The knife and the tree brought us into this world.
Generations of women had held it in their capable hands, gripping the moosehide, separating the child from the mother.
This simple tool connected me to generations of women before me.
I wish I could remember the feelings I had then.
It wouldn’t be long until another knife stole that memory and left fear in its wake.
When Ben came in, his sons in tow, baby girl Faye had already started to suckle. All those boys in one room, taking turns looking down at their sister, touching her gently, running their small fingers along her soft eyebrows, putting their fingers out, waiting for her to grasp.
“You did well, Aliet. I’m proud of you. Kiju told me that we have the honour of being your first delivery,” Ben said, then kissed his wife and smiled at the baby. “What on earth am I going to do with a daughter?”
We all laughed before Kiju and I left the room, quietly closing the door behind us.
The next day was unseasonably warm, as if Mother Nature understood that a celebration of warmth was a good way to welcome baby Faye.
I was standing out in the backyard spying on the river as it wandered down to the ocean, the towels from Faye’s birth washed and hung to dry, my tea warm in my hands, when Kiju came up behind me. I jumped at the sound of her voice.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.
I can imagine where your mind is.” She smiled at me and wrapped her arm around my waist, resting her head, full of thick grey hair, on my arm.
“I think we’ll head out tomorrow, get the nine o’clock train and get home in time for a late lunch.
” She let go of my waist and turned back toward the house before I could say a word.
“Ben just told me that John will be home later this afternoon. Good that we don’t leave until tomorrow. ”
I looked toward the river, the halfway point between this house and John’s, the place where we would meet, where we would talk or just sit there in the quiet watching the water as it rushed toward the bay.
Inside, Sally was up, feeding the baby in the chair by the window. The older boys had gone off to school and Ben had taken the youngest, strapped to his back, and gone out to check on a small fishing weir he had, hoping for something for supper. Faye made quiet sucking sounds and yawned.
I waited by the window, pretending to be reading, but none of the words seemed to stick. Each time I heard the sound of gravel under tires, I’d look out the window.
“You’re gonna wear a strip outta my floor wandering back and forth to that window.
Here, take this baby and put her down to nap.
” Sally handed Faye to me, and I took her into the sitting room where a bassinet had been set up for her.
Her belly full, drunk from her mother’s milk, she was sound asleep.
Her lip twitched and I wondered if babies had dreams.
Kiju was in the kitchen, preparing supper. When I looked at her, expecting her to tell me to get a knife out and prepare the potatoes, she just smiled and nodded her head toward the door. “A truck just went by. Sally thinks it might have been John.”
I got my boots on and headed for the shortcut down toward the river, the door closing tightly behind me. The rush of water as it was funnelled under the bridge drew me to her banks. The water was a familiar copper colour, the tiny waves capped in white.
I stopped for just a moment to listen to the water tumble its way around the rocks and to watch a few of the last autumn leaves meander along with the current.
I was so entranced by the rolling water and excited at the prospect of seeing John that I didn’t hear the gravel crumbling underfoot on the narrow path that led from the road to the rock where I sat.
I didn’t hear his feet meet the ground. But I felt it when he spoke, his breath sour on my neck.
“What are you doing down here all alone?”
I jumped down off the rock and turned to face him, but he was already so close. Kenneth grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him.
“Not afraid, are you?”
“Of you, pfft.” I tried to sound brave. “Better let go of me.”
“Or what? What are you going to do?”
I remembered the first time he called me a half-breed and the bloody nose I’d given him in return. I raised my free arm to do it again, but he caught it mid-swing.
“Let me go,” I said, with a little more force and a little more volume, but the sound of the river meant that no one above was going to hear me. I started to sweat, and my heart began to pound in my ears, muting the world around me.
I didn’t have time to try and twist away from his grasp before he threw me to the ground.
I landed with a thump and I felt a large stone dig into my lower back and the wind leave my body.
As I gasped for air, panicking as I tried to pull it into my useless lungs, he straddled me, his knees on my arms to hold them down.
I was still struggling to breathe when he put his face close to mine and spit.
I turned away in time that it missed going into my mouth, still agape waiting for air.
I felt the warm spit trickle down my cheek and onto my neck.
I took my first breath as he pulled a knife out from behind him, hidden somewhere in his clothes.
I tried to move my arms, but they wouldn’t budge; my legs flailed but were useless in getting him off me.
I was weak from lack of air. Fear vibrated through my body and into the ground beneath me.
He saw my fear, and he enjoyed it. With his other hand, he clasped my neck and turned my head so that I was forced to look at him. I closed my eyes.
“Open your eyes.”
I refused until I felt the steel of the knife, cold and sharp, just below my right eye.
“Maybe I’ll cut out these eyes that everyone loves so much. Then maybe they won’t think you’re so great. What do you think about that?”
I wanted to speak, to say something that would make him stop, to say something to get him off me, but somewhere I knew that there was nothing I could say, so I spit in his face, the way he had in mine.
It took all the air I had left and my last speck of energy, but I missed.
He laughed, then dragged the steel blade across the top of my cheek and down to my jaw.
I felt the skin separate and my own warm blood trickle down the side of my face, onto my neck, and cradle in my ear.
I stopped fighting and waited quietly for the moment he dragged it across my neck.
In the darkness, my eyes closed tight against what was happening to me, I could see my blood, still warm, drip off the blade and fall silently to the ground, the same way my mother’s blood flooded the dirt under the birthing tree.
I could hear him, still sitting on top of my chest, as he sniffed and coughed up phlegm and spit it, not on me this time.
His knees dug into my arms as he leaned in.
I felt the knife as it cut the buttons of my shirt.
I felt the cold air on my bare skin, but I refused to open my eyes.
I didn’t want to see him enjoying this. I kicked, but I didn’t have it in me anymore.
If I’m still, if I keep my eyes closed, if I stay still, he might get bored, I told myself.