“The Family Way is a compelling story about a dark but significant past that few Nova Scotians are alive to remember. Laura Best’s intriguing narrative shines a light on the challenges of a family exposed to the devious couple who ran the Ideal Maternity Home…. Best weaves the tragedy of the Butterbox Babies throughout the plot to captivate readers from start to finish. Enlightening history ideal for middle-grade readers.”
–Bette Cahill, award-winning journalist and author of Butterbox Babies
“This richly detailed historical novel explores issues of morality and prejudice when a young girl stumbles upon a secret of unimaginable horror. I enjoyed every page of this beautifully written story.”
–Valerie Sherrard, author of The Rise and Fall of Derek Cowell
“Compelling characters and a pitch-perfect story about a young girl with a hardscrabble life, a bossy mother, and one good friend. As events draw Tulia ever more deeply into the ominous underside of the Ideal Maternity Home, she journeys from denial to horrified acceptance—and courageous action.”
–Jill MacLean, Ann Connor Brimer Award–winning author
“Compellingly written and original in concept.”
–Canadian Review of Materials, highly recommended
“In this touching sequel to Flying With a Broken Wing, author Laura Best continues Cammie’s story, this time focusing more on her search for identity and her quest to confront the ghosts of her past…. A moving story that holds multiple surprises for Cammie and for readers.”
–Atlantic Books Today
“A charismatic protagonist and captivating setting make Flying with a Broken Wing a worthwhile read.”
–CM Magazine
Copyright © 2021 Laura Best
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NB1518
Printed and bound in Canada
Editor: Penelope Jackson
Editor for the Press: Whitney Moran
Design: Heather Bryan
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The family way / Laura Best.
Names: Best, Laura (Laura A.), author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200386794 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200386808 | ISBN 9781771089340 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771089395 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8603.E777 F36 2021 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
The Family Way is set in a time—the 1930s—and a place—rural Nova Scotia, Canada—when hurtful words used to describe certain members of a community would have been common. In this book, the word “Indian” is sometimes used by white characters to refer to the character of Finny Paul, who is Indigenous. This word is both offensive and hurtful, and is an example of overt racism. Today, we use more respectful words like Indigenous, Mi’kmaq, or First Nations.
The writer and publisher include the term to accurately reflect the time and place in which this story is set, as well as to authentically demonstrate the difficult realities for Indigenous peoples at that time. We hope its inclusion does not cause any hurt to readers.
We see this as an opportunity for discussion, and for learning, as we Settler Canadians make a conscious effort to reckon with our own racist histories and become better allies to the Indigenous peoples who have lived here for thousands of years.
If it wasn’t for Finny Paul I’d have spent a lonely childhood at the old farmhouse in East Chester, just Ma and me. Ma seemed married to that treadle sewing machine of hers, closed up in the sewing room for hours on end as she stitched up outfits for paying customers. Not to mention all the diapers and gowns Mrs. Young put in orders for on a fairly regular basis, as if Ma wasn’t entitled to having some free time away from the maternity home. Ma was driven like that, always taking on more, determined to never be beholden to other people the way she was right after Daddy died.
I’m not by nature an overly curious person, but it was hard for me to mind my own business when Finny was around. He had a way of drawing me into his schemes. I should state that I rarely went along willingly. Ma would have boxed my ears for sure if she ever found out. In Finny’s mind there were some serious wrongs taking place at the maternity home just down the road from us and no matter how hard I tried to convince him otherwise, he wouldn’t give in. I’d plead for Finny to leave good enough alone. All I wanted was for life to go along smoothly until I was old enough to move as far away from East Chester as I could.
While Finny’s curiosity often annoyed me, without him I surely would never have found out the truth about Becky. For certain Ma never intended on letting it pass her lips. She’d have gone to her grave without telling me what really went on. And as much as I’d always disliked deceit, what started out as this family’s secret grew over time until I was the one left with the biggest secret of all.
“It’s time to toughen your knuckles, Tulia May, there’s a mound of dirty diapers waiting for us. Hurry along so we can get an early start.” Ma stood in front of the hallway mirror and quickly fixed her hair. I could tell she’d been fretting over the amount of grey she’d been seeing lately even though she hadn’t said anything. Seemed to me she never gave it a second thought until someone in town mistook her to be my grandmother. You see, Ma was older than everyone else’s mother, her turning forty-nine the year I was born. While I would never have said a word about it to Ma, her age did little for my popularity among my school friends—not that I ever cared about being popular. That was more Becky’s department than mine. By the time I came along Ma was a grandma herself. If that’s not enough to make your kid a laughingstock at school, I don’t know what is.
I let out a big sigh. “Oh Ma, it’s a Saturday, not to mention summer vacation. I’ve got things to do.”
“And you’ve got six more weeks in your summer vacation to do whatever those things are,” she scoffed. “It’s not going to kill you to help out in a pinch. You’ve helped out plenty of times in the past. I don’t need to remind you that Mrs. Young has been good to us.”
Ma was right about that. Before she started working out at the maternity home, we didn’t have two cents to jingle on a tombstone. Mrs. Young even gave Ma the old jalopy that had been sitting out at the maternity home rusting away. She hired John Burke to get it up and running and even gave Ma some driving lessons to get her started. Regardless of all that, I have to say that scrubbing stinky diapers was pretty low on the list of things I wanted to do on a Saturday.
“The quintuplets can wait another day,” Ma stated as she reached for her handbag.
A new batch of magazine clippings had arrived in the mail yesterday from Aunt Maggie. I was anxious to get them pasted into my scrapbook and Ma knew it. She didn’t approve of me saving pictures of the world’s most famous babies, although she did allow me to glue a double-page magazine photo of them on my bedroom wall. That was only because it covered the crack in the plaster and helped keep the cold from coming in during the winter.
“It’s unnatural, the way they’ve got them penned in like animals,” Ma said, a sentiment she’d repeated more than once since I’d started the scrapbook.
“Quintland, Ma, they happen to live in Quintland, and I bet you’d be looking at them too if you were there.” By the photos I’d seen, the quintuplets didn’t want for a thing—something not many could say during the Depression years. I didn’t see what the big deal was. Ma just liked to be difficult.
“Magnolia had no business getting you hooked on all that,” she added as if there was something criminal in my having a pastime.
“I’ve got to have something to do,” I shot back. It wasn’t as if I had anything resembling a social life. Most of the girls at school were standoffish and kept to themselves. You were only allowed into their group if you were friends with Catherine Haley, whose popularity could only be attributed to the fact that she wasn’t someone you wanted to cross. I’d grown up with most of them and although I never found a best friend among them, I got along with all of them fairly well. It was a matter of never taking sides, of being impartial during their disputes, knowing that eventually all disagreements would be forgotten.
The unpopular girls spent their time jumping through barrel hoops to impress Catherine and hoping to get invited into her group. I managed to remain on the outside of both groups and for the most part was ignored. I did sometimes hang out with Hope Steward and Marlee Fuller, who’d been told in no uncertain terms that they’d never be invited into the popular group, something they spent their time lamenting. I’d commiserate with them on the odd occasion but truthfully I didn’t care about that foolishness.
“There’s plenty to do around the house if you’re looking for a pastime. Now don’t drag your heels, Tulia,” said Ma, waiting to close the door behind us.
Up until a year ago I used to go to the maternity home every Saturday morning. But then something came over Ma and suddenly she didn’t want me tagging along as often. She claimed she didn’t want me influenced in a bad way because the maternity home was no place for impressionable young girls to be hanging out—Mrs. Jefferson’s words, not Ma’s. Thanks to that comment, Ma started leaving me home with a long list of chores that needed to be done. But that Saturday Ma was in a real bind. It had been a drizzly, rainy week. While she was able to dry some of the diapers on makeshift lines in the laundry room, the diaper situation would soon be dire. That didn’t even count all the gowns and sheets that needed washing. The nursery being filled with babies most of the time meant there was an endless need for all these things.
An unpleasant odour met us in the doorway when we entered the laundry room. If people think babies smell good they should try washing mounds of dirty diapers for a change. We carried water and filled up the washing machines. When Ma first came to work at the maternity home, Mrs. Young bought another washing machine to keep up with all the laundry that was accumulating from the growing population of babies. Ma being Ma, she still insisted on each diaper being scoured on the scrub board before putting them into the machines for a second go around. No one would ever say that Naomi Thompson didn’t make those diapers down at the maternity home sparkle.
Holding my breath, I pushed several diapers into the washtub and started scrubbing while Ma put a load of gowns and crib sheets into the washing machines. She had been right about one thing: my knuckles could have stood some toughening up. It didn’t take long before I felt a sting as two round blisters formed on my right hand.
“If you were using the scrub board the right way that wouldn’t happen,” she sniffed.
“Why can’t we just throw them in the washing machine?”
“Because diapers need special care. Now just keep scrubbing.”
Late morning, I reached for the last pile of dirty diapers with a sense of relief. Ma hadn’t exaggerated—the mounds had been high—but the work was going better than I’d expected. I might still have time to paste some pictures in my scrapbook when I got home. The wash basket was rounded up with a stack of newly laundered diapers. Ma let out a soft grunt as she picked it up. I pushed the last of the dirty diapers into the washtub and reached for the laundry soap. The four long lines of diapers were filled every morning. In the afternoon some of the girls at the home did the ironing and folding. This was all subject to change depending upon the weather, of course. It was an endless task, all those diapers to keep clean.
As the washing machines continued to churn, I made up nonsense words to go along with the swish, swish, swishing that was vibrating a steady rhythm in my head. I was down to scrubbing the very last diaper in the pile when I heard a commotion outside. I hurried to the door in time to hear Ma shouting. A string of snow-white diapers was flapping in the breeze directly behind her. The empty wash basket was on the ground by her feet, and she looked as though she was ready to put up her dukes.
“You’d best hightail it out of here before I get a stick,” she said. When a tall, thin figure disappeared through the hardwood trees behind the maternity home, it didn’t take me being a genius to see why she was irritated. The sight of Finny Paul always ruffled her feathers—him being Evy’s son and all.
“Oh Ma, he’s not up to anything,” I called out from the doorway. “Just leave him be.”
“The nerve of his kind hanging around here,” she sputtered as she breezed in past me with the empty laundry basket now resting on her hip. “Mrs. Young would have something to say about that if she knew.”
“Maybe he has a reason for being here—ever think of that? And now you just chased him off so I guess we won’t know, will we?”
“I very much doubt he has a reason for being here,” she said, filling the washing machine one last time. “What business would he have to be out here? Up to no good, is what. Say what you want, but you can’t trust those people. I’ve seen enough in my time to know.” The diaper in her hands made a loud snap as she shook it out.
Ma’s comments annoyed me. It wasn’t that she knew anything about Finny Paul, only that his mother left my older brother, Bobby, years ago to marry Nelson Paul. And still, whenever Ma got together with Aunt Maggie, she’d dredge it all up again. You’d think she’d be over it by now.
“Imagine leaving a Thompson for a Paul,” she’d say, which had little to do with Nelson stealing Evy’s heart and a lot to do with him being a full-fledged Indian. Ma never fooled me.
When the last of the diapers were churning in the machine, there came a loud scuffing of feet on the stairs above us. Seconds later someone yelled down into the laundry room.
“It’s Donna, Mrs. Thompson…the baby…her baby’s coming.”
“Well, stop your blathering and go fetch Mrs. Young,” she called back, looking as baffled as what I was feeling.
“I can’t…Mrs. Young’s not back yet.”
“Well, go get Mr. Young, then.” I could see that Ma was getting ready to protest. Her job was to do laundry, not help deliver babies.
“I don’t know where he is…Mrs. Thompson, please, Donna needs help. She needs it now. She can’t wait for someone to fetch Mr. Young.” Panic was building in the girl’s voice. Seconds later, the upstairs thumped with the sound of more footsteps. Next came another sound resembling that of a wounded animal.
I grabbed fast to Ma’s arm. Someone had to help. “Ma,” I whispered in desperation. Sending me a look of annoyance, she sighed and shook my hand off.
“Finish up here, Tulia, and then go home,” she ordered. “Don’t wait for me. You hear? You go on home.”
I nodded, relieved down to the tips of my toes. The last thing I wanted was to witness a baby being born, especially a baby that was capable of bringing about such horrifying sounds.
Drying her wet hands on her apron, Ma pushed back her shoulders and marched up the stairs like an army soldier. If she had no idea how to help bring a baby into the world, her body language gave no indication. I hung out the last of the diapers as quickly as I could. Donna’s muffled screams could be heard all the way out by the clothesline. I tried to block out the noise. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. As I was pinning the last diaper on the line, Mrs. Young’s car came up the drive. I breathed in a sigh of relief. Everything would be okay now. Mrs. Young was here.