Margaret Laurence

[1] When the baby was almost ready to be born, something went wrong and my mother had to go into hospital two weeks before the expected time.I was wakened by her crying in the night, and then I heard my father’s footsteps as he went downstairs to phone.I stood in the doorway of my room, shivering and listening, wanting to go to my mother but afraid to go lest there be some sight there more terrifying that I could bear.

[2] “Hello — Paul?” my father said, and I knew he was talking to Dr.Cates.“It’s Beth.The waters have broken, and the fetal position doesn’t seem quite — well, I’m only thinking of what happened the last time, and another like that would be — I wish she were a little huskier, damn it — she’s so — no, don’t worry, I’m quite all right.Yes, I think that would be the best thing.Okay, make it as soon as you can, will you?”

[3] He came back upstairs, looking bony and disheveled in his pyjamas, and running his fingers through his sand-colored hair.At the top of the stairs, he came face to face with Grandmother MacLeod, who was standing there in her quilted black satin dressing gown, her slight figure held straight and poised, as though she were unaware that her hair was bound grotesquely like white-feathered wings in the snare of her coarse night-time hairnet.

[4] “What is it, Ewen?”

[5] “It’s all right, Mother.Beth’s having — a little trouble.I’m going to take her into the hospital.You go back to bed.”

[6] “I told you,” Grandmother MacLeod said in her clear voice, never loud, but distinct and ringing like the tap of a sterling teaspoon on a crystal goblet, “I did tell you, Ewen, did I not, that you should have got a girl in to help her with the housework? She would have rested more.”

[7] “I couldn’t afford to get anyone in,” my father said.“If you thought she should have rested more, why didn’t you ever — oh God, I’m out of my mind tonight — just go back to bed, Mother, please.I must get back to Beth.”

[8] When my father went down to the front door to let Dr.Cates in, my need overcame my fear and I slipped into my parents’ room.My mother’s black hair, so neatly pinned up during the day, was startlingly spread across the white pillowcase.I stared at her, not speaking, and then she smiled and I rushed from the doorway and buried my head upon her.

[9] “It’s all right, honey,” she said, “Listen, Vanessa, the baby’s just going to come a little early, that’s all.You’ll be all right.Grandmother MacLeod will be here.”

[10] “How can she get the meals?” I wailed, fixing on the first thing that came to mind.“She never cooks.She doesn’t know how.”

[11] “Yes, she does,” my mother said.“She can cook as well as anyone when she has to.She’s just never had to very much, that’s all.Don’t worry — she’ll keep everything in order, and then some.”

[12] My father and Dr.Cates came in, and I had to go, without ever saying anything I had wanted to say.I went back to my own room and lay with the shadows all around me.I listened to the night murmurings that always went on in that house, sounds which never had a source, rafters and beams contracting in the dry air, perhaps, or mice in the walls, or a sparrow that had flown into the attic through the broken skylight there.After a while, although I would not have believed it possible, I slept.

[13] The next morning I questioned my father.I believed him to be not only the best doctor in Manawaka, but also the best doctor in the whole of Manitoba, if not in the entire world, and the fact that he was not the one who was looking after my mother seemed to have something sinister about it.

[14] “But it’s always done that way, Vanessa,” he explained.“Doctors never attend members of their own family.It’s because they care so much about them, you see, and — ”

[15] “And what?” I insisted, alarmed at the way he had broken off.But my father did not reply.He stood there, and then he put on that difficult smile with which adults seek to conceal pain from children.I felt terrified, and ran to him and he held me tightly.

[16] “She’s going to be fine,” he said.“Honestly she is.Nessa, don’t cry — ”

[17] Grandmother MacLeod appeared beside us, steel-spined despite her apparent fragility.She was wearing a purple silk dress and her ivory pendant.She looked as though she were all ready to go out for afternoon tea.

[18] Summer holidays were not quite over, but I did not feel like going out to play with any of the kids.I was very superstitious, and I had the feeling that if I left the house, even for a few hours, some disaster would overtake my mother.I did not, of course, mention this feeling to Grandmother MacLeod, for she did not believe in the existence of fear, of if she did, she never let on.I spent the morning morbidly in seeking hidden places in the house.There were many of these-odd-shaped nooks under the stairs, small and loosely nailed-up doors at the back of clothes closets, leading to dusty tunnels and forgotten recesses in the heart of the house where the only things actually to be seen were drab oil paintings stacked upon the rafters, and trunks full of outmoded clothing and old photograph albums.But the unseen presences in these secret places I knew to be those of every person, young or old, who had ever belonged to the house and had died, including Uncle Roderick who got killed on the Somme, and the baby who would have been my sister if only she had managed to come to life.Grandfather MacLeod, who had died a year after I was born, was present in the house in more tangible form.At the top of the main stairs hung the mammoth picture of a darkly uniformed man riding upon a horse whose prancing stance and dilated nostrils suggested that the battle was not yet over, that it might indeed continue until Judgment Day.The stern man was actually the Duke of Wellington, but at the time I believed him to be my grandfather MacLeod, still keeping an eye on thing.

[19] We had moved in with Grandmother MacLeod when the Depression got bad and she could no longer afford a housekeeper, but the MacLeod house never seemed like home to me.Its dark red brick was grown over at the front with Virginia creeper that turned crimson in the fall, until you could hardly tell brick from leaves.It boasted a small tower in which Grandmother MacLeod kept a weedy collection of anaemic ferns.The verandah was embellished with a profusion of wrought-iron scrolls, and the circular rose-window upstairs contained glass of many colors which permitted an out-looking eye to see the world as a place of absolute sapphire or emerald, or if one wished to look with a jaundiced eye, a hateful yellow.In Grandmother MacLeod’s opinion, their features gave the house style.

[20] Inside a multitude of doors led to rooms where my presence, if not actually forbidden, was not encouraged.One was Grandmother MacLeod’s bedroom, with its stale and old-smelling airs, the dim reek of medicines and lavender sachets.Here resided her monogrammed dresser silver, brush and mirror, nail-buffer and button hook and scissors, none of which must even be fingered by me now, for she meant to leave them to me in her will and intended to hand them over in the same flawless and unused condition in which they had always been kept.Here, too, were the silver-framed photographs of Uncle Roderick — as a child, as a boy, as a man in his Army uniform.The massive walnut spool bed had obviously been designed for queens or giants, and my tiny grandmother used to lie within it all day when she had migraine, contriving somehow to look like a giant queen.

[21] The living room was another alien territory where I had to tread warily, for many valuable objects sat just-so on tables and mantelpiece, and dirt must not be tracked in upon the blue Chinese carpet with its birds in eternal motionless flight and its water-lily buds caught forever just before the point of opening.My mother was always nervous when I was in this room.

[22] “Vanessa, honey,” she would say, half apologetically, “why don’t you go and play in the den, or upstairs?”

[23] “Can’t you leave her, Beth?” my father would say.“She’s not doing any harm.”

[24] “I’m only thinking of the rug,” my mother would say, glancing at Grandmother MacLeod, “and yesterday she nearly knocked the Dresden shepherdess off the mantel.I mean, she can’t help it, Ewen, she has to run around — ”

[25] “Goddamn it, I know she can’t help it,” my father would growl, glaring at the smirking face of the Dresden shepherdess.

[26] “I see no need to blaspheme, Ewen,” Grandmother MacLeod would say quietly, and then my father would say he was sorry, and I would leave.

[27] The day my mother went to the hospital, Grandmother MacLeod called me at lunchtime, and when I appeared, smudged with dust from the attic, she looked at me distastefully as though I had been a cockroach that had just crawled impertinently out of the woodwork.

[28] “For mercy’s sake, Vanessa, what have you been doing with yourself? Run and get washed this minute.Here, not that way — you use the back stairs, young lady.Get along now.Oh — your father phoned.”

[29] I swung around.“What did he say? How is she? Is the baby born?”

[30] “Curiosity killed a cat,” Grandmother MacLeod said, frowning.“I can’t understand Beth and Ewen telling you all these things, at your age.What sort of vulgar person you’ll grow up to be, I dare not think.No, it’s not born yet.Your mother’s just the same.No change.”

[31] I looked at my grandmother, not wanting to appeal to her, but unable to stop myself.“Will she — will she be all right?”

[32] Grandmother MacLeod straightened her already-straight back.“If I said definitely yes, Vanessa, that would be a lie, and the MacLeods do not tell lies, as I have tried to impress upon you before.What happens is God’s will.The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”

...

[1970]

Notes

Margaret Laurence (1926-1987): She is one of Canada’s most accomplished writers who received many awards including Canada’s most prestigious Governor General Award.The excerpt is from A Bird in the House (1970), the first collection of her Manawaka series.

Questions for discussion.

1) What did Vanessa hear one night in her sleep?

2) What did she hear her father do downstairs?

3) What did her father say to her grandmother? How did her grandmother respond to it?

4) Why did not she come upstairs at first?

5) How did her mother comfort her?

6) Who would take care of her while parents were away in hospital?

7) Was she happy about staying with Grandmother MacLeod?

8) Why was Vanessa worried about living with Grandmother at home?

9) Why did not Vanessa go out to play with other kids the first day parents were in hospital?

10) What was the talk with Grandmother MacLeod like?