The Birth House by Ami McKay Read Free Book Online

She patted Mother’s hand. “I’ve marked several pages for you. The ones that apply to her condition. ”
    Mother smiled and nodded. She no sooner put it on the dresser next to her bed than Father was ordering me to “Gather up those books of yours, Dora. Bring them out to the brush pile.” I acted as if I didn’t hear him and walked out to the pen to feed the sow. Before long I could hear the crackle of the fire, smell the smoke from dried twigs, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and all the rest. I leaned against the fence and cried. There’s no point in arguing with him. There never is. I’ll say one thing for the boys: at least they don’t cry. I’ll never understand you, Dora.

    Last night was the first night of bunking down. When I was little, I looked forward to cold December winds and the first snow, to Father closing off the upstairs and all of us children dragging our pillows, blankets and feather mattresses down to the front room. Each night we lay piled together, Mother kissing our cheeks in the order of our births—Albert, Borden, Charlie, Dora, Ezekiel, Forest and Gord—cozy and snug until the grass turned green in the spring. Although our winter sleeping arrangement has become crowded and a bit smelly in the last few years, I still love listening to Borden’s late-night storytelling: the time old Bobby One Eye paddled the riptides off Cape Split, how he and Hart Bigelow came to invent pig bladder baseball, the tale of the hidden treasure that’s never been found on Isle Haute, and the ghost of Old Cove Fisher’s lost foot.
    This year, Father didn’t seem to know what to do with me. I heard him arguing with Mother over it after breakfast.
    “Maybe she could stay at Fran’s for the winter.”
    Mother sounded upset. “Why would we send her away? Surely there’s enough room for sleeping.”
    Father lowered his voice. “She needs to act like a proper young lady.”
    “And she doesn’t?”
    “It’s just that with six boys…”
    “Judah Rare, you’re being foolish.”
    “She’s getting to the age where she might be considered, someone might think…”
    “That she’s a sweet girl who cares for her brothers?”
    “She and Charlie still hold hands whenever they walk down the road, and no matter how many times I’ve scolded her, she insists on getting in the middle of the boys when they wrestle or fight.”
    “Stop worrying over her. She’s got a pure and innocent heart. I’m almost certain she’s never even been kissed.”
    “That’s the trouble. No man wants a girl who’s always tied to her brothers. The longer we let this go on, the more people will think there’s something odd about it. Let’s send her to Fran’s. I’m sure your sister would be happy to—”
    “Yes, I’m sure Fran would be happy to make a housemaid out of my daughter. How we raise the children is our business and no one else’s. We’ll put Dora on the end after the twins, or lay her longways down by their feet, but she’s staying home and that’s that.”
    Father’s right in supposing I’ve lost my innocence, but it wasn’t by having my rose plucked in the middle of a field that hasn’t been hayed. (I can still look forward to a bit of blood on the sheets on my wedding night.) Still, a girl can lose her heart long before she gives it away. Mother’s never mentioned it, or maybe she was too busy to notice, but I remember exactly how it happened. It was the day Father showed me I was no longer a child.
    Before that day, I belonged with my brothers, I was one of them. If Borden or Albert teased me, I’d tease them right back. If Charlie put mud in my shoes, he’d find a toad under his sheets that same night. For every shove one of them gave me, I’d pinch two bruises into the fleshy part of a thigh or the back of an arm. Then Father put a stop to it. On a warm, sunny day (about the same time I started to bleed and my breasts began to feel heavy when I ran), Albert, Borden, Charlie and I