Read Dollybird for Free Online

It’s up to you.” He picked up his things.
    I didn’t really notice him leave. Going to die. Pictures were flashing through my skull, beautiful Taffy, her wide-set blue eyes red from crying, small mouth and nose twisted with fear, begging to stay in Arichat, our tiny village on Isle Madame off Nova Scotia.
    â€œThis is home, where we have family.” She’d taken turns between mad and yelling, or sad and whining with her lip out to there. “We’ll make out just fine here. You can work with my father at the mill. He’s told you he needs another foreman. And he can help out if we need it. What’s in Halifax? We’ll be all alone.”
    But that was the point. I didn’t want them watching every minute, noses in the air, judging, interfering. And my family-backward immigrants and all their kids-barely surviving on a wreck of a farm. I’d brought her to Halifax so’s we could find our own way. Now it was killing her.
    Taffy had the typhoid. The doctor left, swearing he’d never seen anything like it, and I could only watch while her whole body shook with cold even while her face was burning up. She moaned and thrashed about, occasionally waving her hand at something in the distance, whispering at ghosts there by the door, now by the table. The stench of her was unbearable, her functions out of control. I cringed to go near her, even more with guilt at my disgust.
    She would have hated the indecency of it. She hadn’t even wanted me to see her scratching behind her ears for the lice. I’d shaved off my hair to get rid of them, had even soaked my head in kerosene that left it reeking for days. But Taffy would never cut her long locks, too proud, too worried of what I might think. And she never complained about it either. Only the scratching when she thought I wasn’t looking. The lice was nothing compared to this.
    Hours after the baby was born, Taffy was finally still, her blue eyes open and empty, blonde hair spread wildly on the flat pillow. In death she was no one I knew. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I signed myself and figured I’d better do the same to her. I was no priest, but maybe my blessing her was enough to save her. Purgatory weren’t near as bad as hell. I took the amulet from around her neck to see what prayer she might have tucked inside. Instead on a tiny piece of paper she’d scrawled, Casey – courageous and brave. The baby squalled and my insides crumpled up small and dead. Before I knew it I was on my knees bawling with him.
    We cried together for a while, but his tiny voice insisted I pay attention, his problems were bigger than mine. Slowly he came into focus. At first I was kind of suspicious of him, felt like a cave man poking at something that might poke back. I knew babies, just not my own, and not without a woman there to take over at the first sign of trouble.
    â€œTaffy was ready for you,” I told him kind of quiet. “Stitched gowns out of feed sacks using these small perfect stitches. And cut up old flour sacks for diapers, said they’d be softer.” I fingered the towel he was wrapped in. “I had to bring home any rag, anything, no matter what it looked like. And she washed them, cut them into squares and quilted them. She was a genius.”
    â€œAnd I was useless to her.” The baby had gone quiet, just lay there, big-eyed, wanting an explanation for his current miserable situation. I’d begged for jobs, but no one wanted an unskilled, uneducated bohunk. Almost took the bottle from toothless old Ralph in the street out front. But I only had to think of my old man to chase that want away. I looked at the baby hard. “She worked hard to make this hellhole bearable for you. I couldn’t do nothing to help. Should have taken the job with her father. She’d have had family around to help, women to appreciate all th is.” I motioned around the room and laughed. “Mind, she