One cold winter morning, when Jim had been gone for nine days, Johannah and Vinnie waited, as they did twice a day, every day, in the food line with the others at the kitchen tent on Grosse Île, for the thin soup to be ladled out as usual by the server into cold tin bowls that took any heat away from the gruel in a moment. Johannah was growing bigger each day, almost alarmingly so. She had suffered a few bouts of morning sickness. Thankfully that had passed, but her feet were swollen and the long food lines were hard on her. Soon Vinnie would have to bring her meals to her. But this morning, the French server noticed her and stopped them.
“Donnelly?”
Johannah nodded and he reached under the table for a burlap sack and gave it to her, keeping it low and passing it without flourish in front of the others. He told her it was from “votre mari,” and this was no sooner done than he ignored Johannah and Vinnie totally to keep spooning his anemic offering to the others.
Knowing that Jim was safe, she wanted to shout with relief. But knowing that discretion was in order, Johannah made little of it, put the sack under her shawl and returned to their lodgings.
“He’s all right!” she whispered as they left the tent.
Back in their own space, she and Vinnie pulled the curtains across and, opening the sack, pulled out their prize. A full roasted capon chicken! And also some cooked potatoes and carrots and a small loaf of oat bread, plus a short sharp knife with which to cut it.
“Such wonderful things!” Vinnie exclaimed for both of them.
“Oh my God, we will feast like royalty.”
And their conversation was reduced to moans and sighs as they ate well beyond their fill.
Throughout the next month, the special food came to them in the small sacks, a small roast of beef or leg of lamb two or three times a week, and they found private places behind the sheds or in the latrines to eat unseen. No one questioned them about it, but both of them stayed healthy and strong and Johannah’s belly continued to grow.
A few more miserable ships came into quarantine before the river froze. Though in constant conflict with filth and contagion, the camp’s inhabitants found a routine of life and with occasional acts of kindness they were kept, all of them, just above desperation. Vinnie played football with some mates he had met on the ship and others found in quarantine, and when a large puddle froze on the flats, local workers showed them how to set up goals and knock a stone around on the smooth icy surface with sticks. Johannah was able to borrow books to read from women with whom she made friends. They commented kindly on her swelling belly and she told them her husband had been able to go on ahead and she would join him after quarantine. She even found paper and a pencil and began to draw designs of the house she hoped one day to build with Jim. She quietly described it to Lucy inside her and promised to keep the pictures to show her when she decided to join them on the outside.
It was a lean Christmas in the camp but spirited in that so many of the immigrants were devout, and the passengers of the Naparima were that much closer to the end of quarantine in the early spring. They had the crossing of the sea behind them, like Moses and his people, and before them was the future of a promised land.
Late that fall and into the winter, a hundred men had worked on the railway bed that cut through the Quebec forest and would soon open western land to settlement. Jim had arrived and joined the line of labourers looking for jobs and they approached a young hiring clerk in a waistcoat and old top hat who reminded him for a sad moment of Mick. The clerk sat at a table near the end of the track, writing down workers’ names, hiring some on the spot and telling others to come back, but there was never an argument. Most of the navvies in line were older, hard-bitten men, Irish and French. In the distance, the team was laying down track. Jim had watched them with interest, having never seen rail track being laid before. He was about to know the process intimately, though, for the clerk hired him then and there.
Construction of the regional rail line continued through the bitter winter, like no winter he had ever experienced in Ireland for cold and snow, needing pick axes more than shovels to break the diamond-hard ground, but the pay was 20 percent higher at that time of year and they lived in crowded but cozy log cabins. The monotonous process was to create the elevated bed, lay cross ties and fill, then ten men would pick up and drop each long rail onto the ties, and it would be riveted to the last one. Then twenty spikes each side of the rail, one man holding, one man hammering them down with a sledge, three or four blows to drive them to the hilt tight against the apron base of the rail.
“Sure you’ve a keen eye, Quinn,” Jim complimented his partner at the end of an hour’s labour—not once had the hammer missed the nail head or grazed his hand. Quinn was a big man, grizzled and red faced. Despite having worked there for five weeks, Jim had never teamed with him before.
“Doing it so long I can do it in my sleep. Where you from then, Donnelly?”
“Borrisokane…Tipperary.”
“Really? I’m from Birr!”
“Birr! We were neighbours. Well, good to meet you.”
They shook and the man from Birr’s hand was like a vice. An acquaintance of Quinn’s came up to them. He was a large mean-looking piece of work, even bigger than Quinn.
“Donnelly. This is Kavanaugh. He’s from across the county line in Limerick. Hey Kavanaugh, the lad’s come for the three wishes and the treasure. He’s from Borrisokane.”
“Borrisokane? That shite hole? You poor bastard.”
It was Quinn who took offense. “You can’t talk to the lad like that, so far from home.”
“What’s it to you? I’ll talk to him any way I want.”
“You’re an awful rude bollocks.”
“You just found out? But I always knew you were an arsehole.”
Quinn swung a seriously deadly shovel at Kavanaugh, barely missing his head and almost clipping Jim. Kavanaugh moved in and punched him in the face. The two men got into a clutch and went at it, wrestling and pounding each other’s faces with their fists. Despite the frivolity of this encounter and the question of where the men got the energy for this contest near the end of a hard day, Jim felt his blood rise, for it had been a while since he had been in a good fight.
“Gentlemen. They’ll fire you,” Jim tried to tell them, but they were hearing none of it. As Quinn began losing badly to the bigger man, the French foreman and two burly assistants approached.
“Separez ces putains de Paddies! Virez les deux!”
With substantial effort, the assistants pulled Quinn and Kavanaugh from each other’s embrace and dragged them off. The foreman studied Jim to gauge the level of his involvement in the skirmish, if any. Jim lowered his eyes and went back to work with great enthusiasm, keeping to himself.
It was one of the first mild nights of late winter when a gentle southwestern breeze began to soften the snow on the ground and Johannah could hear the water under the river ice around Grosse Île and catch the first muddy scent of spring, which would mean their release from quarantine. Close after midnight, she had her first hard contraction. It was much too soon—she wasn’t due for several more weeks—but her water breaking confirmed it was true. Vinnie lay on his mat on the other side of their small pile of belongings.
“Vinnie. Vinnie? I think they’re coming.”
Vinnie awoke terrified. “The babies? What do I do? All right. I’m here. You’ll be all right. Jesus, save us.”
“Vinnie. Listen to me. The babies are too soon. We need to find the doctor.”
The Catholic doctor, a hurried little man with a Sligo accent, had examined her very briefly when they first arrived, declaring all was well.
“Right!” Vinnie hurried out of the shed.
Through increasingly strong contractions, Johannah’s hands gripped the edge of the pallet with all her might. They were coming faster now, and stronger, and she cried out and attempted to push the children closer to freedom. Where was Vinnie, where was the doctor? And why was her man not here?
Finally, the sheet was pulled back from outside their enclosure and Vinnie’s face appeared. Behind him was a tall grey-haired man with a trim beard carrying a medical bag. Vinnie looked worried as he spoke.
“Johannah? This is Dr. Davis. I’m sorry, Johannah. I couldn’t find the Catholic doctor.”
“Doctor. It’s too soon. I’m not due yet.”
“Babies usually know what they’re doing, ma’am. You look healthy and strong. You’ll be fine. I’m sorry I’m not of your faith but I’ve asked Sister Patricia to assist me.”
He placed a towel as a pillow under her head and gave her a reassuring smile. Johannah cried out as another contraction hit. Inside the sheeted enclosure, Dr. Davis spread out a towel and unpacked his bag. The nun came to assist him, bringing hot water, towels and a warmed blanket. Vinnie waited outside.
After the doctor had examined Johannah, he spoke to her calmly, firmly. “Johannah, you are fully open and ready to give birth. I know it’s early but it’ll be all right. We need you to push now.”
And she did so with all her might. The first little head crowned and then came out fully and stopped there. The child would come no farther. Dr. Davis ran his fingers around the head and down the neck.
“Stop pushing now, Johannah,” he told her and with great effort she tried to hold back. “Johannah? Listen to me. The cord is around the baby’s neck. I can free it if you release the pressure. You have to stop pushing. Understand? I know it’s hard. Let the baby move back.”
Johannah found the only thing harder than pushing was not pushing, but she held back against all her instincts, breathing in and out until she saw stars. The doctor worked his two fingers down the back of the head of the child and was able to take hold of the umbilical cord between them and pull up enough of the loop to slide it over the child’s head. The cord went back inside and the child was now freed from his constraint to continue his earthbound journey. Johannah was free to push and the birth proceeded quickly. A moment later a strong little wavering voice announced its owner’s arrival.
“The first one is a boy,” Dr. Davis informed her as he tied off and severed the cord with a scalpel. Johannah saw him lift the tiny infant, not much bigger than one of the doctor’s strong hands, and pass him gently to Sister Patricia, who wrapped him up like a silkworm in a warm sheet. The nun handed the baby to Vinnie outside the curtain.
“Good, Johannah. The second is coming well. Push. That’s it.”
As if it came from another person, Johannah heard her final groan and the gasp of birth.
“Well done, Johannah. It’s a girl.”
She was delighted to hear this confirmed and she listened for Lucy’s first cry.
“Already a good head of red hair,” Dr. Davis told her.
Another moment went by and another. Johannah turned her head to see Dr. Davis working on the little grey wet child, carefully holding her upside down, patting her bottom, then turning her over, massaging her tiny chest, blowing into her face.
“Come on, little one. Breathe in for me. Breathe.”
Dr. Davis blew into the miniature mouth and nose, the opening no larger than his baby finger. But only silence continued. He turned the child away from Johannah and kept working.
“Where…? What is it…?” she asked breathlessly.
After a few more moments, her mind and body went numb as she heard the sombre voice of the nun reciting a prayer.
“Lord God of all creation, receive this life you created in love and comfort your faithful people in their time of loss…”
“Damn it, sister, wait.” And Dr. Davis worked on. “Come on, little beauty. Live.”
But the baby did not cry, and a minute later the nun continued.
“In the pain of sorrow there is consolation, in the face of despair there is hope, in the midst of death there is life...” This time Dr. Davis did not interrupt.
No, this could not be, Johannah thought. Where was her Lucy? Her breasts were full. Lucy would be hungry. Johannah called out for her and she saw Vinnie bow his head. After that, Johannah was quiet and all became a blur of anguish.
The next hours or days, she lost track, were as if Johannah existed in a guilty nightmare from which she could not awaken, one that included the ghosts of her father and mother along with this new little soul she had failed. Somehow she understood that the stillborn child would be buried immediately and Vinnie was sent to find a priest. Dr. Davis said she did not have to be present but of course she did have to and so, though she was weak, Dr. Davis made arrangements to have her carried in a chair by two men to the site. In years to follow, Johannah’s memory of the quarantine cemetery was vague and she was told later that Vinnie held the other, the boy, in his arms during the burial of his sister. Dr. Davis had provided a bottle of goat’s milk and the infant had taken to it easily. The priest, who had first baptized the dead child, then spoke the words: “O heavenly Father, whose face the angels of the little ones do always behold in heaven, grant us to believe that this child hath been taken into the safe keeping of Thy eternal love…”
Johannah stared down into the small open pit as if under a spell. Vinnie asked her if she was all right, but she could not answer. She looked out over the few rows of thin white crosses, then looked up to see out across the field where there were hundreds more, even a thousand. A thousand and more thin white crosses. A thousand and more graves. So many had made it this far only to fall here on this cruel little island. Now including her own daughter, who they put into the cold ground that day and if there had been any way that she could have crawled down in beside her to hold her, she would have done so.
Johannah lay on her mat bed for days after that, her eyes glazed and staring. Vinnie held her other baby, who was fussing and hungry in his arms. Dr. Davis had monitored the vital signs of the tiny child and, though he had come far too early, his heart was strong, lungs clear. Johannah too was medically fit. There had been little bleeding, the births went well and the single placenta was delivered intact. Johannah came physically through it all just fine. But it was the second child, the girl, who refused to breathe. Vinnie told her what she had seen: how Davis had massaged the tiny chest, blown on the little face, spoken to her. But then he told her what she had not seen: the child’s eyes did open for a second, and that was all, as Davis worked on and on to try to save her. Lucy had seen the world for that moment, that flicker of life and consciousness, and then it passed her by. A whole life in an instant. The image of anxious faces—was Johannah’s among them?—a blurry memory of earth to take with her to heaven for all eternity.
Johannah lay there with her long stare, with no interest in the surviving child, and a deep lethargy far beyond the exhaustion of childbirth. Dr. Davis took the baby from Vinnie, held him toward her and spoke gently.
“Johannah, you’ll have other daughters. Daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters. Will you try with him? He’s a fine wee tyke. Got a little crooked foot but otherwise strong as a goat. He needs you, Johannah.”
She turned her back on them. Vinnie whispered to her.
“Jim’ll be back soon. He’s been sending the food. Was only since the babes came early he wasn’t here. He’ll be back for sure! This one’s so hungry.”
But Johannah wasn’t really listening. She was thinking of that moment of life when Lucy’s eyes opened and then closed forever.
Before he left, Dr. Davis gave Vinnie a warmed bottle of cow’s milk with a rubber nipple and, in the absence of Johannah’s willingness to nurse him, the boy fed the tiny surviving twin himself.