The Unfinished Child (17 page)

The room began to spin. She rolled onto her back and tried to pinpoint a spot on the ceiling to stop the room from moving, but to no avail. She’d just have to wait it out and try not to vomit in the process. She groaned when the dizziness became almost too much to bear. When would it end? When would the oblivion come?

Margaret stared at the freshly
tilled fields outside the asylum bus window. How much cheerier they looked when she was heading home. In the months to come canola would brighten the landscape with its bright yellow blossoms. Or mustard. Last year the farmer had planted corn. But what did it matter? She would never recognize beauty again, just like her brother, Johnny, would never grow new fingers. Some things couldn’t be fixed. Like Carolyn. Pregnant. The shock was in realizing that her situation could become worse.

For twelve years Margaret had been riding this bus, trying to believe her visits mattered and that she could make something right from this terrible circumstance. How naïve she’d been. A person could not put a child in a place like that and then pretend that showing up made any kind of a difference. Once a month she brought her daughter a rose and, in good weather, took her outside. She was there one day out of thirty. Twelve days in a year. For the other 353 days, Carolyn was obviously defenceless. Prey for vultures. Margaret grit her teeth. Without moving, she seemed to stagger.

The bus window felt cool against her forehead. Her mouth tasted sour, as if she hadn’t brushed her teeth in a week. She closed her eyes and once again felt the stones press into her back under a cloudless sky. She saw her farmhouse hazy in the heat, felt Stuart’s body heavy upon her.
See you around.
That’s what he’d said when he righted himself. He’d never said he was sorry. Not that that would have made it better, but just to hear an apology might have lessened her pain.

A tear fell onto the window ledge. She hadn’t escaped after all. She’d left Mayburn because she suspected her mother’s shame had turned into loathing; her mother wouldn’t look at her anymore. In her eyes, Margaret was the country girl who’d let that privileged boy take what he wanted. And what if he came back? What if he’d told his friends? Her mother, grey by the time she was thirty, couldn’t stand that some people got away with taking things that weren’t theirs to take, but she also knew that to confront the issue would tear her husband apart. So her normally curt replies to her daughter were replaced by stony silences. As time passed and the silence between them continued, it became obvious to Margaret that her mother would rather be alone than have her daughter nearby.

Margaret told others she needed more than what a small farming community could offer. Edmonton in the year 1943 was an attractive place to a country girl. Margaret knew she could live a decent life there and have some independence despite the constant talk of war that dominated most conversations. She was already used to the long, hard winters, and she never tired of taking the streetcar around the city, enjoying an anonymity that she’d never known before.

Donald Harrington was a real estate broker. He ate at the same small restaurant across from the teachers college, where Margaret sometimes treated herself to a bowl of soup and a slice of bread and where she ended up working on the weekends because they were short-staffed and she needed the extra money.

She didn’t notice him at first because he was quiet and minded his own business, not like some of the young men who immediately assumed a warm familiarity simply because she put food in front of them. No, Donald was courteous and polite at all times, and he tipped generously. One day, his tip was almost equal to the cost of his meal. As he was leaving the restaurant, she ran after him.

“Excuse me, sir, but you’ve left too much money.” She extended her hand with his change.

He refused to take it. “Please, it’s for you. The meal was delicious, and I enjoyed it.” He smiled and she took a step back when she noted his perfect teeth. Then he nodded his head and put his hat on before taking his leave.

When he came in the next time, she watched him more closely. Once again he was alone and sat with the newspaper spread on the table beside him. His shoes were polished and the cuffs and collar of his shirt were starched and clean. His dark hair was closely cropped with a clean part down the left side of his scalp, and he was clean-shaven. His cheeks were blemished with either acne or chicken pox scars that looked like shallow caves above his whiskered jaw. When she took his order she noted how blue his eyes looked in the sunlight that streamed through the large front window.

Soon she began to look for his tall, lean frame, and he didn’t disappoint her. One Saturday evening, the dark storm clouds that had gathered throughout the afternoon opened to release a heavy downpour just as she was leaving work. Donald offered to walk her to her rooming house. She shyly accepted.

Donald was a city boy, born and raised. His father was a senior banker at the Toronto Dominion and his mother was his father’s full-time hostess, managing their social calendar. They were middle-upper class, believing themselves to be more upper than middle, and Margaret’s humble origins made her feel awkward around them. It was almost as if they spoke another language from the one she was fluent in.

Margaret left teachers college six months into her tenure when she married Donald. With that one move, Margaret Galloway became Margaret Harrington, and when she took her husband’s name she felt confident that she’d left Mayburn and Stuart Jenkins far behind. By saying, “I do,” she boxed her childhood nightmare, put a sturdy lid on it, and finally was able to store it away.

Or so she had thought.

The asylum bus
ground its gears as it entered the city limits and slowed for a red light. Margaret removed her white gloves and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Once again she saw her fifteen-year-old self, silent and unmoving. Then that girl’s body changed and turned into Carolyn’s. Margaret pulled the cord for the next stop. She was still miles away from her home, but she felt ready to vomit. She needed some fresh air to rid her clothes of the scent of that place.

When her feet hit the pavement she set a brisk pace. What could she do with her anger? She’d been silent for so long. Donald was a good father. He was adored by James and Rebecca, and he adored them in kind. He had become the man she’d wanted him to be—honest and good. Patient with the children. Talking about Carolyn would be like detonating a bomb in their quiet cul-de-sac. Especially now, given the circumstances.

A baby. Would that child be her responsibility too?

The scent of lilacs was heavy in the air. Another season of growth was ahead, but all Margaret could think about was the young child growing within her daughter’s body, awkward and bent, like her father’s failed attempt to graft two different kinds of apple saplings. Down syndrome and pregnancy—she shivered involuntarily. Nothing good could come of it.

Her low heels rang loudly on the sidewalk as she increased her pace until she was almost running. Not all injustices could be brushed aside, she knew that. But they couldn’t all be spoken either. She needed to be careful. She’d succumbed to darkness once before, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be graced with another recovery. In truth, she was scared to death by the image of her unwashed and uncaring self hiding from the world beneath the sheets. She’d abandoned one child in her life, what on earth would she do with that child’s baby?

Dr. Maclean clasped the pen
tightly in his hand and bent over the notebook on his desk. The light outside was fading, so he switched on the desk lamp and moved to the edge of his seat and began to write.

Carolyn Jane Harrington, age sixteen, went into labour spontaneously on July 10, 1963. A low cervical Caesarean section was performed under spinal anaesthesia and a five pound, two ounce, apparently normal, female infant was delivered. Pomeroy sterilization was performed.

The mother is a mongoloid and the father is unknown.

Dr. Cooper of the Pediatric Department of the University of Alberta had been forewarned of our situation and was eager to be involved in the case. He was immediately called upon and was on hand to aid in the delivery. You can imagine our surprise to discover that the infant appears to be normal. Further testing over time will determine the extent of her mental capacity.

He stopped writing because to continue would mean going on at length. For now, all he needed to record was the birth. Carolyn had come through the procedure without incident and her sterilization meant another pregnancy would be out of the question. The infant had been taken to a special room for observation. Both he and Dr. Cooper had agreed that it would be detrimental to her survival to place her with the other infants in the main ward. He looked around the book-lined shelves of his office. Took in the dull light coming in from the small window. Everything felt shabby now. The board’s quick fix to Carolyn’s situation was to make sure she could never get pregnant again.
What? She was never sterilized?
The board’s response to the investigation into the identity of the baby’s father, which had turned up nothing, was to ask if the family would press charges. They might have well said,
Can we sweep it under the rug?
For all Dr. Maclean knew, that man was still working here.

And so was he.

Because of his need to take care of his family. Because of his fatigue at the idea of finding something new. But other doctors made moves in similar situations. Why was he still here? Had he thought he’d make a difference?

He checked his watch and saw it was late. His wife would be expecting him soon. The desk lamp was hot when he reached to turn it off, and he pulled away quickly as he felt the burn. Sucking gently on his hand to relieve the sting, he grabbed his coat and locked the office door behind him.

In the hallway he realized he wanted to see the infant once more before leaving for the night. She was being kept in a room down the corridor from the reception desk. His footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet entranceway. As he got closer, he heard the sound of a newborn’s cry coming from the child’s room. When he opened the door he found the room deserted save for the infant in the crib. Her face was purple and she’d kicked the blankets off of her. Dr. Maclean looked around in anger. When would someone have come? He saw an empty bottle by the sink and a canister of formula on the counter. Without delay he ran the water to make it warm and quickly read the instructions before measuring the appropriate amount of powder into the bottle.

He was sweating now, unnerved by the baby’s constant cries and enraged that no nurse had tended the child’s distress. He lifted the cuff of his shirt and sprinkled formula onto his inner wrist as he’d seen his own wife do. It seemed to be the right temperature.

The baby’s body felt hot to his touch. He put her onto his shoulder and tried to soothe her. Then he cradled her in the crook of his arm and placed the rubber nipple to her mouth. She gasped and choked and then, tasting the milk, began to suck deeply, stopping only to take a few extra breaths to calm her distressed breathing.

Dr. Maclean gazed at her tiny mouth and the small fingers of one hand firmly formed into a fist. This was no place for a child. Not just this child, but any child. Suddenly the cruelty of the place threatened to engulf him. The glaring contrast of having an apparently healthy baby here shone a spotlight on the faulty logic of the benefits of warehousing these people away. Who really believed in the benefits of this place?

Since discovering Carolyn’s pregnancy, he’d read everything he could get his hands on regarding Down syndrome and reproduction. He’d discovered that the
real
reason there’d been no mongoloid pregnancies before was that few mongoloid females reached a healthy reproductive age. It wasn’t, in fact, because they were unfinished children. In 1947, for example, the year Carolyn came to Poplar Grove, twenty-eight other mongoloid infants were also institutionalized. Of the twenty-nine, twenty-two had died by the time they were eight years old. Only seven were still alive. The following year, 1948, an additional eighteen mongoloids were institutionalized, and only five of those were still alive. The number of unadorned white headstones that lined the graveyard on the grounds was a clear accounting system that marked the many deaths.

In fact, the very high infant mortality rate of mongoloids who had been institutionalized was staggering. The life expectancy had risen from twelve years in 1949 to sixteen years in 1963, but still, that was if they survived the first five years of neglect and didn’t succumb to respiratory infections. Heart defects were never surgically corrected. Even now heart defects were too often seen as nature’s way of ending such a life quickly.

The introduction of antibiotics had certainly helped more children to survive the early years. One day someone must have had the bright idea that a mongoloid life might be worth preserving. God knows why, given the bleak lives most of them led behind locked doors. As far as Dr. Maclean could see, their days consisted of nothing except waiting—waiting for meals, waiting for the day to end. Not all the patients at Poplar Grove were mongoloids, only approximately thirty percent, but the other mental defectives lived similar lives of quiet hopelessness, un-bathed and unattended. The stench and chronic bickering over small possessions would depress even the most able-minded individual.

The baby finished the bottle and gradually became limp in his arms. He placed her gently into her crib, noting that her sleeper was soaked through with urine. Then he set off down the hallway in search of a nurse. The sound of a television came from the staff room and Dr. Maclean followed the noise. Inside, a nurse was sitting in a chair, her feet resting on the chair beside her, eating a sandwich. He didn’t recognize this nurse and cleared his throat to alert her of his presence. She glanced his way and then returned her gaze to the television.

“I’m on my break,” she said. “They told me when I started that I could take a half-hour dinner break.”