The Birth House

Part 1 begins with an excerpt from a written history of Dora’s family that tells the story of how the Rares came to live in Nova Scotia. In 1760, a ship of Scottish immigrants was shipwrecked in the Bay of Fundy. During the hard winter, they settled the town of Scots Bay in the mountains. The daughter of the captain, Annie MacIsaac, fell in love with a native Mi’kmaq man she called Silent Rare. One day, Silent was out fishing and failed to come home on time. Annie called, promising a thousand sons if he came home safely. The moon heard this, took pity on her, and brought Silent back safely with a song. Ever since then, all Rare children have been male.

Dora is the first and only daughter in five generations of the Rare family. As a result, some people believe she is a faerie child; without a good explanation, the people of the Bay find it easier “to call it witchery and be done with it” (5). It doesn’t help that Dora was born with black hair (harkening back to her Mi’kmaq ancestry) and a caul over her face.

Due to superstitions, Dora is blamed for strange happenings in the town, such as “when Laird Jessep’s Highland heifer gave birth to a three-legged albino calf” (5). Her classmates taunt her just as they taunt Miss B., the local midwife. This shared mistrust makes Dora and Miss B. good friends. Most days, Dora wakes up and prays to the air “I want, I wish, I wait for something to happen to me” (6).

One day, Dora sees a carriage racing up the road on her way back from her Aunt Fran’s. Miss Babineau and Tom Ketch, a boy about Dora’s age, are on their way to help Tom’s mother with a birth. Miss B. needs assistance and brings Dora along. Although Dora is 17 and has been visiting Miss B. for years, she has never helped “catch a baby” (7). Miss B., who is Cajun from Louisiana, says it’s time Dora started to learn. Miss B. is said to be a witch by some and an angel by others, but most families respect her highly. The whole town helps her because she’s delivered almost all the babies there.

On the way, Miss B. asks Tom about his mother’s condition. Even though Mrs. Experience Ketch was in pain and heavily pregnant, Mr. Brady Ketch made her do hard work at the farm and then beat her. As soon as his father left, Tom went to fetch Miss B. to help. The Ketch family has 12 children already.

Dora likes Tom even though her mother doesn’t like to speak of the Ketch family; she doesn’t want Dora to turn out like Mrs. Ketch. The Ketches live in Deer Glen and make their living brewing and selling moonshine. They also act as guides for out-of-town men who want to hunt the legendary white doe in the Scots Bay woods. This operation is mostly a swindle, as Miss B. takes care of the white doe.

The Ketch house is dark and dirty, smelling “sour and neglected” (10). Experience is in bed, where her young daughter Iris Rose is attending to her. Miss B. helps Experience through the pain and assesses her pregnancy, announcing “this baby has to come today,” even though it is too soon (11).

Experience says she doesn’t want the baby. Iris Rose asks her mother to cooperate, showing that she is “as much mother as she is child” already (11). Through labor, Experience prays to die. Dora is surprised by the bitter smell, the pain, and the struggle of birth. Eventually, the baby is born, tiny and pale. Experience refuses to hold the baby or even look at him, so Dora takes him. She promises to take the baby home with her instead.

However, the baby was born too soon and starts to turn blue and breathe shallowly. Dora begs Miss B. to tell her how to save him, but there is nothing she can do. Miss B. says: “Some babies ain’t meant for this world. All you can do is keep him safe until his angel comes” (14). 

The Ketch baby dies not long after birth. Brady Ketch demands to see the baby and threatens Miss B. when he realizes the boy is dead. Miss B. orders three days of rest for Experience, but Brady demands that they “fix” his wife so she can work. When he is rebuffed, he says that “Dr. Thomas, down Canning way, he’d know how to make her right” (17).

Miss B. and Dora leave and take the dead baby boy back to Miss B.’s cabin, where they give him a proper burial. Miss B. leads Dora into the woods behind her house to “le jardin des morts”—the garden of the dead (18). It is a wooded grove with a likeness of the Virgin Mary carved into a tree with strings, shells, and lace hung in the branches so that it appears magical.

Miss B. and Dora remove their shoes because they “can’t let no outside world touch Mary’s ground” (19). Under the trees is a trap door leading to a seemingly bottomless pit. Miss B. lowers the tiny butter box casket into the dark and tells Dora to name the baby “so he knows he’s been born” (18). Dora names him Darcy after Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

Dora wonders if Mrs. Ketch somehow knew the baby would die and therefore pushed it away. She thinks what a disgusting mess birth is and how it is wrongly called a miracle. Instead, she thinks, the miracle is how a mother comes to love a newborn, “this thing that made her wish she was dead” (20). 

Dora is the only girl among six men, and she sees how her mother is nervous for her brothers—“it’s the war” (22). Dora has been going to see Miss B. every Saturday since the death of Darcy. She tried to confide in her mother, but Mrs. Rare was too upset by the story. Dora is the only guest Miss B. ever has, except when people seek her out for help. The people of Scots Bay have a superstition: “never break bread with midwives or witches” or risk being cursed (24). The most superstitious are the women of the White Rose Temperance Society—women who have grown children and who feel they no longer need Miss B.

Dora likes the fuss Miss B. makes when she visits, “serving lavender tea and beignets” (25). Miss B. talks about her great-grandfather, a “traiteur” or faith healer from Acadie. Her great-grandfather visited Miss B. in a dream and taught her to be a traiteur.

During Dora’s visit, an automobile approaches the house. Miss B. reads her tea leaves, which tell her trouble is coming, and then tells Dora to hide in the loft. The visitor is Dr. Gilbert Thomas. Miss B. makes a show of welcoming him with coffee, although he is obviously uncomfortable. He explains that he is a doctor of obstetrics and has come to bring real medicine to the women of the area, saying that midwives “have had to serve in place of science for too long” (29).

Dr. Thomas reveals the reason he has come: He needs Miss B’s help opening a maternity home at the bottom of the mountain. The home is being financed by the Farmer’s Assurance Company of King’s County, an insurance company that will sell “Mother’s Share” insurance policies (31). Dr. Thomas promises Miss B. five dollars for every woman she refers to him.

Miss B. is skeptical and asks what happens if a mother wants to have a home birth, which confuses Dr. Thomas. He then refers to Experience Ketch and says that he was called to care for her after her difficult birth. Miss B. denies knowledge of the birth and protects Dora’s whereabouts when Dr. Thomas says he is looking for her, since he heard she’d been at the birth. Dr. Thomas then threatens Miss B. with criminal charges for “failing to obtain reasonable assistance during childbirth” if she doesn’t bring mothers to him (34). Miss B. shows him the many beads around her neck, one for each baby she’s delivered, and dismisses the doctor.

Later, Dora conceals Dr. Thomas’s intentions from her mother and writes in her journal about a recurring nightmare. In it, she falls into the hold in le jardin des morts and sees Darcy. He is healthy, but the Virgin Mary takes him away, down the mountain, to Dr. Thomas.

A few days later, Miss B. teaches Dora how to make coltsfoot cough drops and use an apple peel to foretell her future. She sees “a pretty little house, a fat silk purse and the strength of a hunter’s bow” (37). Miss B. refuses to explain the prophecy, but Dora wonders if it refers to Tom Ketch.

Dora’s family tell her that she thinks “on things too long, especially for a woman” (39). Her Aunt Fran brings medical journals that discourage women from reading fiction since the thoughts it causes “cannot be other than impure and sensual” (39). After reading this, Dora’s father burns her novels, which include Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice.

In the winter, the Rare siblings sleep “all piled together” for warmth in one room (41). However, this year the sleeping arrangement makes Dora’s father uncomfortable, and he wants to send her to her Aunt Fran’s for the winter. Dora overhears a conversation in which her father expresses concern that “she’s getting to be the age where she might be considered, someone might think…” (42).

Although Dora is a virgin and has never been kissed, she lost her innocence the day her father “showed me I was no longer a child” (41). While playing with her brothers in Lady’s Cove, they all went swimming naked as they always had. Dora’s father got mad at her but not her brothers and “acted as if it made him sick just to look” at her (44). Although Dora feels herself becoming a woman, she is happy not to be “as far gone as Grace Hutner,” the local flirt who has slept with many boys, including two of Dora’s brothers (44).

To make up for her burned books, Dora steals a few from the library. She also steals and reads Aunt Fran’s scientific journal about women’s health. The journal discourages female masturbation, saying it causes headaches, hysteria, and many other conditions, as well as making women look ugly. Dora is skeptical; she prefers to call it “practicing patience” and equates the act to poetry (46).

Dora writes in her journal that Dr. Thomas will host a Ladies Tea event with the women of Scots Bay and present a lecture on “Morality and Women’s Health” (47). She decides she doesn’t like doctors.

Dora attends Dr. Thomas’s lecture with her Aunt Fran, although her younger cousin Precious is not allowed to attend. Grace and her mother also attend. They arrive at the Canning Maternity Home, which “looks as if it sprang up, white and clean, from nowhere” (52). Mrs. Dr. Thomas, who is pregnant herself, shows the women around the maternity hospital before taking them to the delivery room for tea.

Dr. Thomas explains all the new technology and tools he has for assisting with births. These include “pituitrin and chloroform, a mother’s two best friends” (57). He also shows them surgical knives and forceps “not to frighten you, but to show you the path of modern medicine. These things hasten childbirth and put the labor process into the doctor’s hands. He has complete control” (57).

Some of the women agree that faster, less painful births would be a positive step. Dr. Thomas explains the insurance policy, but Dora challenges him about cost despite being scolded by Aunt Fran. Dr. Thomas silences these fears by asking the White Rose Temperance Society to pay for mothers who cannot afford it.

When the tea is over, Dr. Thomas pulls Aunt Fran and Dora aside to thank them for coming, then implies that he has met Dora before. When she protests, he teases that she is “hiding all sorts of surprises” (60).