4

Edie came through the clinic door. It was the first time I’d seen her resemble other kids I saw around town, those grumpy-looking youngsters who were always trying to show the world how pissed off they were.

“All done,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

In the back of the taxi, she handed me a sheet of paper with a set of instructions. One pill now, another in six hours. Pills for everything nowadays, even this. The sheet warned of bleeding, cramping, nausea, vomiting, weakness, fatigue—all the things that would take place while that Colin was off skateboarding or doing whatever else he fancied.

I asked the driver to take us to the supermarket and made Edie wait in the car while I grabbed what we would need to get us through—overnight maxi-pads, a bottle of Advil, a heating pad, and ginger ale for her; a flask of whisky and two packs of Rothmans for me. Then to my place for a change of clothes and my pills. I raced around my apartment, every nerve firing at full tilt in anticipation of the two days ahead of me. What if she had some kind of reaction to the drugs? What if she bled to death in her bed? I wiped a trickle of sweat from the side of my face and settled myself. How mothers shouldered such burdens I hadn’t a clue.

When we got home, I laid out the supplies on her dresser, then grabbed a garbage bag and placed it on the floor in front of her toilet. I wasn’t about to add scrubbing blood and barf off that snow-white tile to this day, thank you very much. I tucked another garbage bag under her sheets and told her to wear old underwear and pyjamas, ones her mother wouldn’t miss if we had to pitch them in the garbage.

Edie laughed. “I’m starting to think that maybe you used to work for the Mafia. Body-disposal division.”

“I just don’t want to have a conversation with your mother about a bloody mattress when she gets home.” I took one last look around her room. “Okay, I dare say you’re all set up.”

“Frances, you look like you’re going to have a heart attack. Go do what you need to do. I’ll be fine, I swear.”

I left her door half-open and started down the hallway, then stopped and went back. “Edie, your mother being suddenly called away today. That’s some dumb luck, hey?”

“Sometimes the dice just roll your way,” she said and closed her eyes.

I could feel my energy starting to flag as I walked to the kitchen to take stock of our food supply. There was enough to last us through any disaster. If she was hungry later, I’d make one of her favourites—grilled cheese or maybe chicken tacos. Three o’clock and I still wasn’t through the laundry. I stood folding the plush towels and was suddenly so tired that I could barely keep myself upright. I dropped the last one in the basket and walked down the hall toward the guest room. I took off my clothes, slid between the cool sheets, and for the first time in my working life, slept away an afternoon.

It was almost seven when I woke up. Edie. I bolted out of bed and found her coming out of her bathroom. She walked across her room slowly, taking careful little steps, a sure sign to me that she was hurting.

“What can I do for you?”

She climbed into her bed, wincing with pain. “Could you rub my back a little?”

“Here, scooch over.” I sat on the edge of the bed and placed the flat of my hand on her lower back, which was hot and damp from the heating pad. I rubbed the heel of my hand up and down the tight muscles and felt them give way. “Want something to eat?”

“Maybe.”

“How about I make you some toast with peanut butter?”

“Okay.”

I went to the kitchen intent on making toast but somehow wound up on the back patio. I puffed and sipped and realized this was the happiest day I’d had since I didn’t know when—maybe since I was Edie’s age. The chance to tend to a child I loved, to be the back rubber and toast maker, the keeper of secrets, the makeshift mother, felt like an unexpected gift.

The sun had set, and the evening was growing cold. I stepped back into the kitchen, then brought a tray to her room, where she was scrolling through her phone.

“Here, try this, and if that goes well, maybe some dinner.”

“I don’t feel that bad now, just a bit crampy. But the bleeding is well underway. It’s like a horror movie down there.” She nibbled at her toast, then gathered up her devices. “I’m making a move. All this time in bed is making me sad.”

She wrapped herself in her duvet and shuffled off like a penguin. I started to pick up after her, then tossed the whole lot back on the floor and closed the door. When I got to the kitchen, she was frowning and wagging a pack of cigarettes at me. I ignored her and started in on our dinner.

Edie took a bite of the grilled cheese sandwich I’d made for her, then pushed it aside. She watched intently as I ate mine, washed down with sips of whisky.

“Good God, Frances,” she said. “Smoking, drinking. Got any weed on you? Maybe we can score some crystal meth later.”

“I don’t know what crystal meth is. You better not either.”

“I don’t do drugs. I’m not that stupid. Well, stupid enough to get pregnant, I guess.”

I took another bite of my delicious sandwich. Twelve-dollar cheese was indeed far better than the three-dollar blocks in my fridge. “Not stupid. Unlucky, maybe, but not stupid.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think I did the right thing?”

“That’s not for me to say, my love. It doesn’t matter what I think or anyone else. Only you.”

“But it matters to me what you think.”

I stopped eating. “Why?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because. You’re like my sweet aunt or something. If I didn’t have you around, what would I do? Go to my bitch mother? I don’t think so.”

“Edie, she’s not a bitch,” I said, so earnestly that anyone would’ve thought I was telling the truth. “One day you might need her, so go a bit easy, hey?”

“Yeah, I hear you. I don’t necessarily agree with you, but I hear you.”

She gathered up the duvet and flopped on the couch in the adjoining family room—the great room, Mrs. Cleary called it.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

“Ah, yes. A woman of many mysteries, me.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s that stint with the Mafia you mentioned earlier.”

She laughed. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I swallowed the last of my whisky and sat at her feet. “Edie, you’ve your whole life ahead of you. What good would come from having a baby now? For either of you. So yes, I think you absolutely did the right thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“Okay, but if it were you, what would you have done? Tell me.”

Something in her face, something in the tone of her voice, made her seem older and me feel younger, as if we were meeting somewhere in the middle of time. I wanted to tell her everything, unload it all. About the day my child was born, that horrible day and the horrible days that came after. I’d ask her, “Do you think I did the right thing?” And I wanted to tell her that I was dying and what I was planning to do about it. I’d ask her what she would do if she were in my situation, as if we were two friends facing similar predicaments. Certainly, the alcohol and the pulsing squid in my head were giving me permission to speak freely. But as the words began to form in my mouth, Edie pressed her toes lightly against my leg, something she hadn’t done since she was a little girl, an old signal for me to wrap my hands around her cold feet, and I let the words dissolve on my tongue.

“It’s hard to know,” I said. “We just didn’t have many options when I was your age.”

“Yeah, it must have been so hard back then. Much easier now, right?”

I reached for her feet. “Yes, Edie, everything’s easier now.”

She put on a movie that I tried to watch, but I was too distracted. There’d been a moment earlier in the day, in the taxi coming back from the clinic, when I feared we were undertaking something dark, like we were co-conspirators in some seedy venture. But looking at her lying on her side on the couch, as cozy as could be, laughing and having what appeared to be a grand old time, I wondered if half the girls in her class were at home doing the very same thing. The more I watched her, the more uneasy I felt. When she got up to go to bed, I was relieved to be free of her. I was irritated, almost angry. There she was, safe and snug in her beautiful bed, being watched over by someone who loved her, shaping her own fate while she slept just by swallowing a few magic beans. She’d asked me for help but hadn’t asked permission from a single soul but herself. And tomorrow it would be business as usual, her future secured. Entitled.

I wiped down the kitchen and wiped it down all over again just to stop thinking about her, then went to bed. I turned out the light, but I was too stirred up to sleep. That time tunnel was open again, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop myself from travelling through it.

BY THE TIME I arrived at the Sisters of Mercy Home, the heavy mist had turned to sheets of cold rain. I was green from the bus fumes, an added misery piled onto the relentless nausea I’d been suffering for two months. I banged the brass knocker three times. A wizened nun finally opened the door, but not until I was soaked through to the skin.

“Come in, child, and wipe your feet.”

I stepped into the porch, shivering and dripping all over the floor, my eyes locked on the drops of water splashing down on the slate tiles. Disgrace.

The old nun wrung her hands and stepped away from me as if unwanted pregnancy were contagious, then led me to an office at the end of a dark, narrow hallway.

“Wait here,” she said and closed the door.

A few minutes later, another nun came in, dismissing the first one with a flap of her hand.

“I’m Sister Bernadette,” she said. “I was expecting you an hour ago.”

She was a soft-bodied, hard-faced woman with lined paper-white skin and light blue irises, like a husky dog in a black veil. She stood in front of her desk, hands behind her back, and looked me over. She welcomed me with a curt speech about the grace of Almighty God, the charity of strangers, and my need to atone for carnal sins. I’d have my own room at the top of the house, and I was expected to keep it clean and tidy. I was also expected to be up at seven for morning prayers. Then she flapped her hand in my direction, and I picked up my bag and closed the door behind me.

As I climbed the stairs to my room, I realized this strange place was now my home. There was no turning back, and a nervous dread came over me. I changed into dry clothes and had a look around my small, spartan room. White walls, bare pine floorboards, a tiny window, and a black metal bed topped with a thin mattress with a set of folded sheets and a knitted blanket placed neatly at the end. There was a single wooden chair next to a low dresser coated in chipped white paint; a mottled oval mirror hung on the wall above it. I made the bed and sat on it, bone-tired and scared half to death. A woman appeared at the door, dark hair clipped short, dressed in a white shirt and jeans. A small gold cross dangled from a string of black leather wrapped around her neck. She was Sister Barb, and she welcomed me with a smile and a tray of food—a bowl of beef broth, dry crackers, and a glass of orange juice. “I know Sister Bernadette can be a bit stern at times,” she said. “Just remember there’s no shame in being human. Don’t worry, Frances. We’ll take very good care of you here.” And I believed her.

The home sat in a meadow on the outskirts of a small inland town I’d never heard of. Nothing but flat land and boulders and the long gravel drive that led to the highway. At night I would stand under the blue-black sky, millions of stars scattered above me, not a sound to be heard, and long for the water—the rhythm of the pounding waves, the smell of the ribbons of kelp on the shore, the noise of the gulls wheeling over the dark schools of fish. But mostly I missed Annie.

There were four other girls at the home, each one as miserable as I was, but it seemed as if their shared predicament was a bonding force. They were warm and friendly and so at ease with one another—bickering and bantering and shoring up whenever the need arose. I did my best to be social, as much as my nerves allowed—smiling and nodding and giving brief polite answers to any questions that came my way.

Sister Bernadette had strict rules about contact with friends on the outside. “Now is the time for reflection and prayer, not for consorting with those whose influence likely landed you here in the first place,” she said when I asked her to mail a letter to Annie the morning after I arrived. I was allowed to use the phone in her office once a week, but only to call my mother. She would sit at her desk while my mother asked me about my health and if I was keeping up with my reading, then reach for the receiver once I’d said goodbye. Sister Bernadette would offer my mother an assessment of my progress. “Frances is quiet and obedient, I’ll say that for her. And please God, she’ll leave with better morals than what she came in with.” Then Sister Bernadette would hang up the phone and command me to kneel and beg God’s forgiveness. I loathed her.

Eventually I fell into the routine of the home. Sister Barb was one of those newfangled plain-clothes nuns we’d only heard about in Safe Harbour. She had a degree in social work from Memorial University, and it was her job to oversee all things related to pregnancy, from sickeningly detailed classes on childbirth to swift and discreet adoptions. Sister Bernadette, on the other hand, showed little interest in the baby side of things. She was on a quest for our souls. Daily prayers and catechism classes and an hour of silent kneeling before dinner. Lectures on moral hygiene and the joys of repentance and sacrifice, along with endless “purifying tasks,” as if bleaching a toilet would spare us from eternal damnation. The irony of it was that I found I liked the cleaning. A mop, a broom, a damp sponge, or whatever else was on hand had the power to turn chaos into order before my eyes, which I found unexpectedly satisfying. And it helped to pass the time. But mostly I liked the calming effect it had on me. As I worked, I was able to think of nothing but the task in front of me. One by one, any worries I had fell away until my head felt emptied out. Cleaning was like medicine for my troubled mind, and I volunteered for every chore going.

The other girls complained about the home non-stop. The eerie quiet, the early mornings, the isolation, the fire and brimstone. As each pregnancy advanced, the complaints were more about swollen ankles, stretch marks, and aching, heavy breasts. I found my rapidly changing body horrifying. I was almost paralyzed by my fear of giving birth, and every time the baby moved, my heart banged wildly against my ribs and I’d start looking for something to scrub.

My labour began slowly, just a twinge in my lower back that went on for a day and a night, then went into full swing early on a Sunday morning. I was standing in the kitchen when I felt a warm sluice of fluid run down my leg and called out for Sister Barb. She loaded me into the car and sped down the highway to the cottage hospital.

In the delivery room, sweat-soaked and almost blind with the pain, I wailed over and over that I couldn’t do it while Sister Barb rubbed a cold wet cloth over my face.

“Frances, look at me,” she said. “This baby is coming, and you most certainly can do this. Women have been doing this since the beginning of time, and you will too.”

The doctor was sitting on a stool at the end of the bed. I could see his scaly bald head as he peered and poked around between my legs.

“One more good push and this is over,” he said. “There’s a good girl.”

I kept my eyes locked on Sister Barb’s and drew in a huge breath. I bore down for all I was worth and felt my body split apart. Then it was over, the pain miraculously gone. My legs shook and I was dizzy with exhaustion. I looked at the slick, red-skinned creature dangling in the doctor’s gloved hands. Two tiny feet with perfectly shaped toes and a round, hairy head matted with blood and gunk. The baby’s sudden cries filled the room, and I turned away. Sister Barb laid her hand on my face and beamed at me.

“Well done, Frances. God bless you, you did it. Do you want to hold her?”

I shook my head and tasted the salty mix of sweat and tears streaming down my face.

“Do you at least want to give her a name?”

“Georgina,” I said. “After my mother.”

The nurse took the baby away, and two days later, I was back in the car heading toward the home one last time. We were barely through the door when Sister Bernadette came down the hall and beckoned Sister Barb toward her office. I climbed the stairs to my room and lay down. My muscles burned, my breasts ached and leaked, and my heart felt like it was cracking in two. And I could barely keep up with my feelings. One minute I was sobbing, the next I was bubbling with rage over everything that had happened. It was exhausting, and I was terrified that I might never feel normal again.

I realized I hadn’t taken my aspirin and went downstairs for some juice. Sister Barb came into the kitchen, her face grave and slack.

“Frances, please come with me.”

I followed her down the hall and into the office, where Sister Bernadette was sitting at her desk.

“Have a seat,” she said and motioned toward the chair facing her.

I eyed the hard wooden seat, no place for my bruised flesh, and decided to remain standing. Sister Barb closed the door, then asked if I’d like a cup of tea or a glass of water, but I declined. I could tell something was up and I wanted to get right to it. Sister Barb stood in front of the window just to the right of the desk, arms crossed, eyes on the floor. Then Sister Bernadette cleared her throat and began to speak. She’d received a call from Father O’Leary. She paused and a flush of colour rose up in her white face.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but your mother has passed away.”

I turned to Sister Barb. “What does she mean, ‘passed away’?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“She’s not passed anywhere,” I said. “I talked to her two days ago.” I looked back to Sister Bernadette.

“I can only tell you what was told to me by Father O’Leary. Your mother drowned. She was found on the beach at Safe Harbour early this morning.”

There was no way my mother had drowned. Not in the water that had taken my father. She’d never go near it, not in a million years.

“Sister, I think there’s been a mistake. My mother would never swim in the sea. She just wouldn’t.” My voice sounded foreign to me, too high and loud.

Sister Barb came to me and reached for my hand. “Your mother wasn’t swimming. It appears that she took her own life.”

Sister Bernadette made the sign of the cross. “May God show mercy on her and welcome her into his kingdom.”

My legs started to tremble, and I eased myself down to the chair. I was completely baffled. For some reason, all I could focus on were the mechanics of what they were suggesting. Was I supposed to believe that my mother had somehow rowed a boat out past the shoal, then jumped over the side? Or that she’d leapt into the waves and swum out to the undertow? Most days she barely had enough energy to dress herself, let alone pull off something like this. And what about her faith? The Commandments and the deadly sins, the wrath of God and the fires of hell? Had she just cast all that into the water as well? No. Not possible. It was some other woman who’d taken her life. Some other woman lying on the beach. Just a dreadful mix-up that we needed to sort out. I was about to say so when I heard Sister Barb’s voice, and my racing thoughts came to a grinding halt. She asked me if I understood what she had just said. I looked up at her stricken face, and suddenly I understood perfectly. My mother was gone.

Sister Barb started to speak again, but I cut her off.

“I need to go home.”

“Frances, please don’t make any decisions just now. You can stay here for a few days. Longer if you like.”

I stood up. “No. I need to go home.”

Sister Barb followed me to my room and helped me pack my things, then left me alone to rest. There was no bus until the next day, so I lay on the bed, straight and still, waiting for sadness to overtake me, but it didn’t. Instead, what came was something that I couldn’t quite put a word to, something like relief, a puzzling peace in the catastrophe I’d feared for so long.

The sun began to set and took my relief with it, leaving me in the grip of a cold fury. I was alone in the world, and it was my own mother who’d set me adrift. I finally fell asleep, cursing her and regretting giving the baby her name. But only hours later, I woke up with a tightness in my chest that I feared would kill me, a rising tide of guilt strong enough to satisfy even the good Sisters of Mercy. I opened the window and gasped at the night air. Suddenly, I could see it all through my mother’s eyes. I’d disappointed her, shamed her, and left her no choice but to send me away. I knew that my mother’s death was down to me, as surely as if I’d pushed her into the sea myself. I’d set this disaster in motion, and I saw a lifetime ahead carrying this on my back. I stood by the window, teeth chattering as the north wind blew in my face, wishing I could somehow shrivel down to nothing, slip through a crack in the floor and disappear.

In the morning, I faced Sister Bernadette for the last time. I refused the chair and stood sweating in my wool coat with my bag at my feet. I waited impatiently while she tidied some papers on her desk. Then I listened as she banged on—Jesus this, our heavenly Father that. Once again, she offered up a prayer for the pardon of my mother’s mortal sin, something about her being cut off from God’s sanctifying grace. I couldn’t bear another word from her. It was out of my mouth before it had even fully formed as a thought.

“If you think God will let someone like you in heaven, then I’d say he’ll find room for my mother.”

Her chubby hand flew up and clutched the wooden cross that hung from her neck. “What did you say to me?”

I didn’t answer.

She rose up out of her chair. “How dare you speak to me this way. When I think of the high hopes I had for you. Now I see you are no better than the others. Wanton ingrates, every one of you.”

There I was, still bleeding from giving birth, my mother’s body not yet in the ground, and she was calling me a thankless whore. It was the first time I’d ever had an urge to strike another human being, and we were both lucky I was too exhausted to even attempt it. But I had enough energy and anger to speak my mind.

“Sister, the word wanton has lots of meanings. Merciless. Inhumane. Malicious. It’s not me who’s wanton. It’s you.”

She took a step toward me, her pale eyes flashing, wild as a wolf. I picked up my bag and left her to sputter and seethe and turn to her God for comfort.

Sister Barb offered to ride with me to Safe Harbour, but I wanted no company. As I boarded the bus, she handed me a card with her name and number on it. “If you ever need anything, Frances. Anything at all.”

The whole way home, I thought about the other grief Sister Barb had warned me I would suffer—the particular agony that comes when a child is taken from its mother. But mourning the loss of my child would come much later. At that time, I had room for only the loss of my mother.

I GOT OUT OF bed and went to Mrs. Cleary’s office to look for a book. I’d had enough of my own story and wanted another to take its place in my head. I tried to find the book that Hillary had recommended the last time I was at the library, but no luck. I closed my eyes and picked one at random. On the way back to my room, I stopped at Edie’s door and saw that she was sleeping soundly. I crept to her bed and watched her for a few minutes, my insides softening. Maybe being Edie wasn’t as easy as it looked. Few things in this life ever were. Maybe there would be consequences she’d have to bear after all. Not like what I’d gone through, but an aftermath all the same. Perhaps regret would come to her somewhere down the line. I hoped not, as much for me as for her. I knew this day would be forever tangled up with her memories of me. Remember it, reflect on it, forget it, anything but regret it, I thought, and don’t think ill of the dead. I kissed her clammy forehead and closed the door.