The Birth House

Dora shows Archer a medical article about improving the odds of conception through loving congress and mutual desire. He laughs at this theory and prefers frequent sex to improve the chances of conception.

She no longer finds the act so painful if she concentrates on “the chance that it might bring forth a child” (221). She also prays to Miss B. to ask her to call on Mary to call on God to bring her a baby, as it’s “the only sort of prayer I imagine might be appropriate during intimate relations” (221).

At the Occasional Knitters Society meeting, Sadie Loomer tells the group that she went to visit Ginny Jessup. She found the baby crying under the kitchen table and Ginny “sitting at the table, holding her head, her eyes all dark and sore” (222). When asked what was wrong, she cried and threw Sadie out.

Dora visits Ginny and finds that the house is filthy, the laundry is not done, and the baby is asleep in a dirty basket. In Dora’s eyes, “she holds the look of a used-up wife” (224). Ginny explains that she’s tired, the baby is always underfoot, and she has no family to help her. Besides that, Laird wants another baby. Dora invites her to tea and promises to be her family instead. She also determines the baby has colic and uses a recipe from Miss B. to treat him while Ginny naps. She prescribes tea and rest and promises to come back the next day to help.

Dora writes to Borden to tell him that their brother Charlie has gone to Boston, having gone first to help after Halifax but then deciding to stay for a woman. She also sends socks from the Occasional Knitters Society.

Ginny Jessup joins the Occasional Knitters Society. They turn their discussion from how to get pregnant to how to prevent pregnancy. Dora digs out Miss B.’s jar of Beaver Brew and explains that it prevents pregnancy. She gives some to Bertine, who doesn’t want another child yet. The other women all ask for some as well, although Ginny is the most reluctant. They toast: “To tea with mitts!” (231).

The next Saturday, Dora sees Dr. Thomas at the store in Canning. She overhears him speaking poorly about the people of Scots Bay, saying that “there’s not much sense or civility to be found in that place. Too many marriages with too few names” (231). Dora greets him and he looks her up and down “as if he hopes to forget that he knew me” (232). He then warns her to stay away from Ginny Jessup as she has “no business handing out questionable home remedies to her. Especially the kind that sends her husband” angrily to the doctor (232). He also warns her that contraception is illegal.

Dora says that “the secrets a woman chooses to keep between her sheets are not your business” (233). In return, Dr. Thomas threatens to tell everyone that she is a diagnosed “hysterical, reckless woman who encourages women to deceive their husbands” (233). He asks whether Archer is seeing to her well-being and trying to give her a baby, saying: “I could tell him what you require. I could tell anyone” (233). In response, Dora dumps a 2-gallon drum of molasses over his head. The newspaper reports the story as: “Hysterical Woman Attacks Local Doctor” (234).

Dora and Archer have dinner with Hart and the Widow Bigelow, who still treats Dora as something of a housekeeper. Archer showers his mother with compliments, annoying Dora, until the end of the meal, when he reveals that he has something to talk over with her.

Hart is dismissive, asking how he means to “swindle money from the pockets of the hard-working peoples of Kings County this time” (236). Archer explains that he wants to set up windmills on the ridge of the mountain, which is too windy to grow more than cabbages, and bring electricity to the whole town. Dora is disheartened, as the windmills will need to be built around their house, and she wonders if “once again, he’s making a promise he can’t keep” (239).

Archer answers an advertisement from a magazine offering build-it-yourself windmill replicas. He sets himself up in the barn to build one, not allowing Dora or anyone in to see his progress. When she and Hart peek through a crack in the boards, they see him assembling a tiny windmill, the size of a toy, and a dollhouse. Dora notices how devoted Archer is to the windmill and realizes that, baby or not, she’ll “never be cause enough for shivering in the cold or going without supper” (241).

After two days, Archer finishes building and comes to get Dora. The windmill spins, powering electric lights throughout the dollhouse. Archer is ecstatic. 

The White Rose Temperance Society hosts a tea with Archer as the special guest to demonstrate his windmill. He explains the advantages that electricity could bring to their farms and to the women as well, showing advertisements for electric sewing machines, radiators, and more. He promises that if they support him, he will electrify the town.

By morning, most of the town has paid Archer for this promise. He packs his model and leaves to find investors for his project. As he leaves, Dora tries to tell him she thinks she might be pregnant, but he cuts her off and departs.

Later, Dora writes in her journal that she had been mistaken, as she has started menstruating. News from the war says that many have been killed, although Albert and Borden are safe. She also receives a package from Charlie and the woman he stayed in Boston for, Maxine Cabott. They send her a book of Emily Dickinson poetry, though Maxine laments “she’d probably prefer something racier, like Balzac or Lawrence, but some postal clerk would confiscate it in the name of Comstockery and virtue” (247). 

Precious comes for dinner with Dora and begs to have her tea leaves read. She is pining for her sweetheart, Sam Gower, who just went off to join the war. Dora obliges and shows precious how to hold the cup in her left hand and turn it over a saucer, waiting for three minutes to let the leaves settle.

In the tea leaves, Dora sees a hand, which means “someone you know will need your helping hands” (249). She also sees a ribbon and an ear, which means “someone thinks highly of you and soon you will get news from far away” (249).

Precious reveals that she wants to marry Sam when he returns, though Dora warns her not to marry too quickly. Precious objects that Dora married Archer at just 18. Dora explains that, as an only child of wealthy parents, she Precious the luxury of taking her time to decide who to marry.

At Precious’s insistence, Dora starts to read her own tea leaves, but they are interrupted by Brady Ketch, who barges in with his daughter Iris Rose. He leaves her, telling Dora: “fix her or kill her, I don’t care” (251).

Precious and Dora see that Iris Rose she is heavily pregnant and in labor. Dora recalls seeing her on the day she helped Miss B. deliver Darcy; Iris Rose was a little girl. Today, her face is bruised and bloody; she has been beaten by her father, who supposedly sells her to men for sex. Precious is frightened and tries to leave, but Dora tells her to stay and help. Dora talks Iris Rose through her labor pains and prepares her for delivery.

The labor is hard, and Iris Rose grows exhausted. Finally, Dora decides to try “quilling,” which is a method Miss B. learned from the Atchafalaya Indians (254). It involves blowing a quill or feather with red pepper and blowing this in the mother’s face. The mother will “think her head’s on fire, but when she lets it go, she lets the babe go” (254).

This method works, and Iris Rose delivers a baby girl.