October 10th 1914
Dear Kenneth
To be truthful it's all a bit of a whirlwind of facts for me. Father gave me the Morgan book on expecting for basic facts and I rather be ignorant. I know I have to understand but really you do not want to know the details. Honestly.
I'm almost in the second trimester. Barely, but I am. Not much has changed about my body. I am not even showing unless you truly looking at me and well, undergarments help greatly at hiding things. My clothing mostly fits the same, maybe I had to move a hook on my waistband here and there but that is all. I still get nauseous here and there, and still cannot manage a lot of food in the mornings.
The second is supposed to be full of changes, according to Morgan, I should be able to feel movement by 18-20 weeks. They count it by weeks also, though I don't know what I am...I try not to think of it.
I know it is a full forty weeks
They say if you are going to announce it to your family to wait until 12 weeks, and of course you never truly announce it to anyone other than family and close friends. Though really who would I announce it to?" Really it's an odd concept to announce even in different circumstances?
I do go out, Mother and I walk to the Manse, and I do visit Mrs Anderson and her little boy a few times a week. I help her clean up and run errands sometimes. I bring her milk and eggs and a loaf of Susan's bread. We go to church on Sundays of course. I try to ignore the whispers by the girls I used to go to school with. Mother doesn't leave my side unless Rosemary is near me, but the older ladies are no different from the younger ones.
You'll have to ask my father about Christmas most likely, but I would feel bad about leaving Mother with Jem away, but at the same time it would be nice to see you. Though I couldn't travel alone, not that distance? So someone will have to come with me?
I hope that this letter makes you feel better l and not so worried about my state. I do apologize if I talk too much about Hades sometimes or can't be cheerful all the time. I try to be I try to see the bright side of the day, but sometimes. Sometimes I just want to cry. And I do cry.
Your little cousin Bruce was over with Mrs Meredith, he told me to say hello to you and asked me if we were cousins, if I had married you. I had forgotten your mother is related to Rosemary.
I told him I guess that I was his cousin now by our marriage.
He proceeded to ask why we didn't live together like other married couples and if we would have babies like married people do. Thankfully I didn't have to answer because Mrs Meredith hushed him. It was rather sweet at the end of the day.
Also, I think you would make a wonderful lawyer, I'm sure they still do enough writing that you use both of your talents.
Yours Rilla
October rolls through with the fall of the leaves over the Island and the air gets cooler with each passing day and week.
Two months she has been married, and the letters go back and forth between the island and Toronto as often as they can. Her mother and Susan fix her clothing each week, a tweak here and a tweak there. Letting out waists on skirts and dresses. Her stomach settles slightly but upon the disappearance of ever-present nausea. She finds her body changing more each day. It feels hard, and she can't ignore it. It's sloped and curving outwards more at night, while in the morning it's flatter.
Still, she goes to church on Sunday standing between her parents and if he is home Shirley accompanies them as well, but most usually it is just her parents and Susan.
This Sunday, it was Una who sticks by her side for most of the afterparty of the church.
"We've been trying to get a junior Red Cross group started, but it keeps falling about," Una mentions to her. "It is rather useless and trying when you spend so much time into something only for it to not work out. We might as well just sew by ourselves it be easier." She sighs and takes a drink of tea.
"I'm not much help but you always welcome to sew stuff at Ingleside?" Rilla says unsure of what else to say. "Not that anyone else would ever come but…it be nice to sew something for the cause?"
"I didn't think you would be up for it?" Una admits quietly.
Rilla mainly shrugs. She isn't but, she misses friends and her old life before that evening.
"I might take you up on that, has to be better than endless gossip," Una says quietly and Rilla can only sigh. She missed gossip, she missed her friends.
She feels tears fall down her face and before Una can even say anything Rilla is rushing out of the hall beneath the church.
"Can I go see Mrs. Anderson?" Rilla asks her parents, not wanting to make them leave if she wants to.
"If you wish to?" Her mother says after a moment. "Is everything alright?"
"Yes, I just…am feeling overwhelmed?" Rilla says quietly and Mother nods her head.
"Just be home for dinner please?" Mother says quietly and kisses her forehead worried.
"I will, thank you," Rilla says kissing her mother's cheek before turning and racing out of the church. It doesn't take her long to leave the town and head down the road that leads to the Andersons.
She knocks on the door, hearing the baby cry from inside and someone tells her to come in, she lets herself in.
"Was I expecting you today?" Minnie asks looking at Rilla who shakes her head.
"No I was just in the area," Rilla tells her looking around already deciding that maybe it was good that she came around. She was still in her green Sunday best…Little Jim screaming his lungs out.
"Can you hold him just for a moment, I just need to use the toilet and he refuses to be put down," Minnie says thrusting the child at her and racing out to the side of the house.
Rilla looks at the infant, still bald and red in the face, but he quiets instantly as she holds him by the armpits, her hands and knuckles barely holding his neck in place. He was heavier than he looked and his little limbs had small rolls and crevices.
"Dear girl, he doesn't have the plague, you can hold him a bit closer to you," Minnie says coming back from the washroom, only to laugh as she sees Rilla frozen.
"Come here, sit down and cradle him in your arms, best learn now," she tells the younger girl and fixes her son's head and neck. "There we go Jims, that feels better doesn't it?"
"Why is he looking at me like that?" Rilla asks as the little boy stares at her.
"He probably enjoys your hair colour, and he won't bite you, he has no teeth so you don't have to look so afraid of him."
"What if he throws up on me?" Rilla looks at her.
"Then he throws up on you, and if you're lucky he won't let his bottom go while you're holding him, that little man can rival any grown man." Minnie laughs and Rilla looks at her wanting to toss the baby back at her. "Oh don't look so indignant Rilla Ford, you have three older brothers I am sure you have heard it all at some point in time"
"My brothers are gentlemen, thank you very much," Rilla grumbles as she looks at the infant.
"I highly doubt even the men of Ingleside have never had a gas contest," Minnie teases her.
"He does look like a little old man looking like that." Rilla looks at him, still mightily uncomfortable about both the subject and child.
"He's my grumpy old man, but that little frown gets me all of the time," Minnie says lovingly.
"Were you ever scared?" Rilla asks quietly.
"Oh, love of course I was," Minnie says rushing to comfort her. "I was terrified and I wanted him dearly."
"I don't know if I can do this Minnie, and Mother says I don't have to, but it's everything that terrifies me. What the book tells me what will happen, I don't know if I want to…" Rilla cries, sobs wracking her body heavy enough that Minnie takes the baby from her, laying him down in the nearby basket, she envelopes the younger girl into a large hug.
"It will be all right, you will see. I know it's frightening and scary, it's scary for everyone but it's scarier when it was never asked for and even I can understand that, just let it out." She says rubbing the girl's back until her sobs lessen and she seems to have fallen into a tear-induced sleep.
When Rilla wakes up, she finds her father's voice speaking to Mrs Anderson
"What time is it?" She mumbles rubbing her eyes. "Dinner!"
"I had the neighbour telephone and tell them you fell asleep, your father just stopped by to take you home though," Minnie tells her explaining.
"Oh thank you, I'm sorry I fell asleep," she looks at her father and then at the floor.
"It happens, your mother once fell asleep in church," her father chuckles. "Come you can ride home with me."
"Is that even…safe?" Rilla asks unsure.
"For right now it is, if you were further along then I would not suggest it," Her Father says after a short moment of thought.
"Oh, that makes sense I guess," Rilla says. "Thank you for the afternoon, and sorry for falling asleep on you," she turns to Mrs. Anderson and carefully reaches out and traces down the chubby cheek of Jims Anderson. To the surprise of everyone around her. She lets her Father help her mount the horse, scrunching her skirts to sit astride around her knees before he jumps behind her.
There are plates waiting for her father and her as she gets home, Susan and Mother having eaten already without her. She picks at it, not particularly hungry but nibbles to please her father.
"Is your stomach still queasy?" He asks her noticing.
"I guess? I just…if I eat too much I feel sick, if I don't eat I feel sick. It just easier to not eat a lot?" Rilla tells him. "Is that even normal? I don't know anything really?"
"That is partly my fault, I should have…I just didn't," Her father sighs. "With everything, I didn't want to bring forth more gossip by having the other doctor come in, but at the same time I have neglected your health."
"I'm fine, I'm just tired, and my stomach is never settled," Rilla tells him.
"Forgive me, but there is more than that, and I should at the very least examine you at the very least," Father says shaking his head. "It's nothing invasive, I promise."
"All right then," Rilla tells him, not knowing what to say.
"Come by the office after your bath, it's easier without a corset on," Father says quietly.
Rilla does as he says, knocking on his office door in her kimono and cotton combination. His office is lit up with lamps and his examination table is set up for her. She hops up onto it and leans against the raised back as someone knocks and her mother comes in and smiles sadly at her and sits down next to her.
Her father seems to be gathering his wits and sets down his pen. All she sees is her name at the top of the chart that had maternity written on it.
Maternity.
Mother helps untie her robe, who chokes back a small sob at the small curve of her stomach that is already forming. Father takes a deep breath, holding a tape measure and tells her to lean back.
He measures it, jots it down and carefully feels, pressing gently around it before reaching for some metal cup mother unbuttons a few buttons that allow him better access presses the cold metal to her stomach and bends to place an ear on it. Moving it around, he nodded solemnly, before he frowned.
"What is it?" Her mother asks anxiously and he holds up his hand for another moment moving the instrument around to another place and listening again.
"Nothing it sounded like a faint third heartbeat beyond the ones I could hear but it must have been just an echo." Her Father says simply, but her mother looks at him sharply. She can't see her father's face as a reply but her mother's face seems to calm down as she realizes Rilla is watching them.
"Third?" Rilla speaks out loud. "As in two more than my own, like Nan and Di? She can't say the words."
"Twins often run on the maternal side of the family, but I do not think that is the case," Father tells her.
More notes were jotted down before he asked her to step on the scale. He frowns at the number, not enough he says under his breath. Her last growth spurt shot her up, and weight should have even out more, but it hadn't and from all the stress and nausea she was thinner than she should be in his opinion, though skinny was the fashion.
He checked her pulse and blood pressure, thankful to find them normal, if not a touch on the low side.
"Fifteen weeks," he says quietly looking at his calendar. "I have mistaken the time that has passed."
Fifteen weeks?
"But?" Rilla says frowning.
"Technically it is about thirteen and a half," Her father clarifies for her. "I didn't realize you…?"
"It's not something easily put out of my mind, every time I look at a calendar I am reminded of it…burned there forever," Rilla says quietly.
"When's the last time you slept?" Her father leans on his desk, looking tired and worn. "Through the night?"
Rilla shrugs a white shoulder. A good night was a few hours uninterrupted then up for a couple, and then bed by dawn for another couple hours.
"Have you read much of the books?" He asks her.
"A bit?" Rilla answers. "Sometimes I get angry at it though…they assume that we are happy about it. I just want it to be over with."
"Oh course," He nods his head. "I should have considered that, maybe I should have dug out Oracle, though he is a bit old-fashioned these days."
"Oracle?
"The books your mother read back when she was expecting Joy," Her Father says looking to his wife who stiffens slightly.
"Joy?"
"Your sister who didn't make it more than a few hours, we must have spoken about her before. I once thought I would never feel so helpless again after that day, and then we couldn't find you and…Jem had you in his arms. I thought I had been helpless with Joy…but that night told me I had been wrong," Father says quietly looking at her mother and then her once more.
Rilla nods her head taking it from him. "I will head up to bed now," she says looking at the clock on the shelf.
"I'll be up to say goodnight in a moment," Mother tells her and Rilla nods her head leaving the office, stopping halfway down the hall to look at an old photograph when she hears it.
"Gilbert darling, do not lie to me because you have never been caught by surprise by a set of twins, since heavens knows when?" she hears mother say not as quietly as she probably suspects she was. "Did you hear two heartbeats?"
"I don't know Anne, truly I don't I thought—I swore I heard something but I…I am too close to this and it clouds my judgement. She's fifteen Anne…a child is awful enough for her to go through and deal with….if it's…no..no I can't…"
She's never heard her father so distraught, she's seen him in low moods before. Losing patients was never easy for him as a doctor, but she never heard him as such.
She scurries up the stairs not wanting to eavesdrop more, but she can't help but examine herself in the bathroom mirror and the curve of her stomach. Most days she can ignore it, but the larger it got the more she noticed it. The more she noticed it the more she felt sick about the whole thing. The flashes came back in spades and assaulted her all over again, she threw up whatever food she ate into the toilet with tears streaming down her face.
Hope everyone is enjoying this, if you have time to leave a comment it is always greatly appreciated.
