Read The Birth House for Free Online Page B

hands and knees to study it. She crossed her chest, then drew a cross in the air. “Look at that…I sees a pretty little house, a fat silk purse and the strength of a hunter’s bow.”
    I bent down to join her. “What does it mean?”
    “Nothin’—not right now, anyways.” She patted my hand as I helped her to her feet. “You’ll knows it when it do.”
    I’d beg her to tell me more, but there’s no use in bothering Miss B. with questions. She’s said all she wanted to say. I suppose Tom Ketch is a hunter; he’s got to have a bow, living in Deer Glen and all…but there’s no pretty little house and not enough money to fill a thimble, let alone a silk purse. Miss B.’s never wrong about these things. She can tell a woman that she’s with child before the woman knows it herself. She can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, and the week the baby will arrive, most times getting it right down to the day. She can touch a person’s forehead, or hold their hand, and tell them what’s making them sick. So, even though she never said who, or even when, I can’t stop guessing at her clues and thinking over each word.

4
    T HINKING IS SOMETHING that Father says I do entirely too much of: “You think on things too long, especially for a woman.” At first I thought it was just something that fathers tell their daughters, but he’s not alone in this; Aunt Fran never seems to tire of carrying her journals of medical findings to the house and reading aloud from them during tea with Mother and me. Her latest is The Science of a New Life by Dr. John Cowan, M.D. “It’s right here, Charlotte, see? Oh, never mind your trying to read it just now, I want Dora to hear it too. I’ll just read this bit out loud. It won’t take but a minute. Let’s see…here it is…the esteemed Dr. Cowan states, ‘Closely allied to food and dress, in woman, as a producer of evil thoughts, is idleness and novel-reading. It is almost impossible for a woman to read the current “love-and-murder” literature of the day and have pure thoughts, and when the reading of such literature is associated with idleness—as it almost invariably is—a woman’s thoughts and feelings cannot be other than impure and sensual .’ There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion.”
    This past autumn she was convinced that my bout with a cold and cough was brought on by my constant attention to Wuthering Heights. She even scolded Mother for letting me read it. “Lottie, whenever I see that daughter of yours, she always has a book under her nose! It would be one thing if she was studying psalms or even a verse or two of poetry…no wonder her health’s been compromised by the slightest change in the weather.”
    Mother laughed. “Oh, Fran, with all your talk, you’d think Dora’s caught her death just by reading about the God-forsaken moors of Yorkshire.”
    She turned to me and asked, “This is the one about the moors, isn’t it, Dorrie?”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “And then there’s the one about that poor woman whose husband kept her locked in the attic…I always get them confused. Of course, I’ve got no time to read them myself, I’m so slow at it and all, but Dora’s kind enough to tell me about them from time to time. Don’t you worry about her, she’ll be back to feeling right in no time at all.”
    Aunt Fran lowered her voice. “Her cold is just the start of a greater sickness. These ‘stories,’ as you call them, will only lead her to more pain.”
    “Fran, talk plain, will you?”
    “I’m talking about derangement. ”
    “Don’t be silly!”
    She whispered. “And deviant behaviours.”
    Aunt Fran decided it was best to give Mother her copy of The Science of a New Life. “Normally, I wouldn’t lend this out. But I’ll make an exception in Dora’s case. You can’t put this sort of thing off and expect it to cure itself.”