ONE
The Stone That Swallowed a Stone
Tatamagouche, 1846
TO BEGIN WITH, she was born in a log cabin in New Annan, Nova Scotia, on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. The region was once inhabited by the Micmac Nation, but by the day of her birth-August 6, 1846-the area's name was the only part of the Micmacs to survive. Even this was a corruption. Those Native Canadians had called the regionTakeumegooch, a word that means "at the place that lies across." Unable to pronounce this word, the Scotch settlers revised it so it sat much easier on the tongue: Tatamagouche. This would be Anna Swan's first encounter with revisionist history; much more would come.
Neither of her parents resembled the sort of people who could spawn a baby twenty-eight inches long. Alexander Swan was an average-sized émigré from Dumfries while his wife was a tiny thing whose largest attributes were the dimples on her knees. Their first child's single peculiarity had been his complete disinterest in the world, as if he had known he was destined to live less than fifteen months. He died in the crib, and his grave was still soft when Alexander came to his wife in the middle of the night. "The best cure for grief is hope," he whispered; ten months later, his wife was so swollen with his hope that she found herself restricted to bed.
Ann Swan was so large that Alexander believed they were having twins. Boys, he decided, as if his authority was all it took. Two mighty oxen to help with the farm. The theory gained spiritual endorsement from the Reverend Blackwood, the white-haired clergyman who had recently taken residence at the Willow Church. Educated in both medicine and vanity, it was assumed he would be called to oversee the birth-and until that moment, the arthritic reverend had only overseen the births of men. Anna's mother did not believe she was having either boys or twins-but no one was listening to her. No one was watching her at all as she lolled in bed: it was expected that she suffer in silence.
"Pregnancy is a blessing," said Alexander. "To complain is to be ungrateful in the eyes of God." So even though Ann Swan knew something was very different about her second baby, she kept it to herself. By April she felt she had swallowed a stone; by May she imagined the stone had swallowed a stone. In June she wondered if the baby, like Athena, would spring from her fully grown. In July she became convinced she would never survive the ordeal. She should not have given birth until September, but by the middle of summer she knew she could no longer endure the weight of her husband's hope. On the sixth day of August, while attempting to make herself porridge, her water broke and ran like a river down her leg. The subsequent cramps were so cruel that she fell against the rough timber walls of the cabin. Clawing at the logs for support, she drew jagged splinters that stuck into her palm. Yet even then she remained silent, gripping the pain between her teeth as a horse chews on a bit.
"I'll get the Reverend!" said Alexander, and he raced from the cabin. Ann Swan didn't object. She couldn't. If she opened her mouth, she was certain to scream. On hands and knees, those hard splinters still in her fist, she crawled to the bed on her own even as she listened to the sounds of Alexander riding away. The cramps whipped her insides into a froth. Her jaw began to ache. Her poor teeth, weak from a bad diet, jiggled in her gums. As she wrapped herself in her quilt, her head knocked against the wall. Barely a tap really, but in her torment it felt like a great crash. She lost her stamina. Having locked away her fury for seven months, three weeks, and five days, she finally released a howl that gave voice to the storm.
She was still screaming when the men returned. It curdled the blood. The Reverend hobbled inside, but Anna's father remained with the horse. He would stay outside the rest of the night.
The moment he saw the pregnant woman, the Reverend understood he had come to the moment when God would test his skill. Sprawled on her back, her great belly bubbled. With trembling hands, the Reverend boiled water, sterilized his tools, and poured warm whiskey down the mother's throat. He tried to pray but suspected God wouldn't hear him over the screams.
Ann Swan began to push. For a few moments, it seemed they were in crisis: the baby had crowned, but her shoulders were too wide for the narrow opening of the womb. Then the world fell silent as Ann Swan lost her scream.
She lay unconscious while Anna herself sat halfway into the world. Forceps would be needed to yank the baby free, but the arthritic reverend could barely pick up the tool. With nothing but his bare hands, he grabbed Anna by the head and wrestled with her stubborn womb until, at last, in a miraculous moment, the stone that had swallowed a stone finally shot free. The force knocked the Reverend onto the ground; he was so prepared for twins that he peered into the empty womb, convinced something vital had been lost.
Ann Swan remained in poor health for days. Afraid she might die, Alexander gave her name to their daughter and steeled himself for the widower's life. But he had no talent for prophecy: he had been wrong about having twins, and he was wrong about this. Ann Swan was back on her feet by Thanksgiving; by the following fall, she was swollen with another stone. She would have ten more children, but none would ever make her cry with the same fury as her first daughter, eighteen pounds and twenty-eight inches in length. Ann Swan gave birth to the rest of her children in silence; it could be said she never found her scream.
* * *
THE REVEREND BLACKWOOD had lost his unblemished record of male births, but he had gained something of greater worth: the certainty that, in the course of drawing Anna into the world, God had guided his arthritic hands. Or rather his formerly arthritic hands: he swore that his arthritis had completely disappeared. It was this that convinced him of divine involvement, and when he spread the word of the birth, he went so far as to suggest that Anna might someday prove to be a saint.
The mere suggestion of this meant that as the months passed the Swans found themselves under attack. Everyone wanted to see the Future Saint, as she was known, and they bought their way inside with gifts of butter, preserves, and jugs of moonshine. People came to the farm and waylaid the family in the streets. Not one person who lived on the shores of the Northumberland Strait thought it strange to pay a visit to a family they had never met. This was a corner of the world where a barn raising was cause for delight; the appearance of a Future Saint inspired apoplectic joy.
Private by nature, Alexander Swan hated the attention, and at the start of Anna's fourth summer, he went down to the gates of the farm with some lumber and paint. There, in the swelter of the June sun, he erected a sign whose message was as short as it was blunt:
ALL PILGRIMS WILL BE SHOT
"Not very charitable," remarked Ann Swan.
"I couldn't agree more," said a voice. While Alexander had been erecting his sign, a witness had appeared on a dappled horse. Elaborately bearded, he was nearly bald everywhere else. "Nope," he decided. "Not very charitable at all."
"I'm giving them fair warning," said Alexander. "You ask me, that's charity enough."
"People are traveling a great distance to see her."
"Only 'cause their heads are muddled. I don't need them tramping through my house."
The stranger leaned in closer. "Maybe you need to put her somewhere else. Give her a proper venue so your house can stay in peace."
Ann Swan examined the man a little more closely. His beard wasn't the only thing that was elaborate. His clothes, while dusty, were finer than any she had seen. Even the horse seemed to have a regal countenance, as if it were used to carrying kings. "You aren't from around here," she declared.
"H. P. Ingalls," said the man. "I'm from New York."
Alexander tapped the sign. "You obey signs in New York?"
"Nobody obeys anything in New York." H. P. Ingalls grinned. "I represent a man who has interest in promoting human curiosities. Word is, that's a good way to describe your daughter." He winked at Ann Swan. "Given that you survived her birth, I'd say it describes you, too."
Ann Swan laughed.
"Get out of here," said Alexander.
"There would be money involved, of course."
Alexander swiped at the New Yorker with his hammer. "Get off my land."
"You write if you ever change your mind," said H. P. Ingalls. Two cards appeared as if by magic in his hand. He gave one to Alexander; perhaps knowing it would be destroyed, he slipped the second to Ann Swan.
Alexander indeed tore up the card. The next day, he changed the sign.
ALL PILGRIMS AND NEW YORKERS WILL BE SHOT
It was entirely true that the Swans were not rich. Alexander farmed in the warm weather and cut timber when it was cold. It was a humble life, and Anna's appetite-for food, for clothes, for furniture-was growing all the time. Yet Alexander would never take money for something he believed to be a lie. To him, she was a girl, not a miracle. Anna's mother wasn't sure she agreed. She was already looking into the future, down the road toward all the days and years to come. Her daughter would always be the inadvertent flagship of an otherwise average armada. She's a big boat in a small pond, thought Ann. Don't we have a duty to let her set sail?
It's possible that Ann Swan would have swallowed these thoughts just as she had swallowed the pain of pregnancy. But that Christmas, during a spirit of celebration, Alexander finally cracked open those jugs of moonshine that had been donated after Anna's birth. They had turned to rotgut, and a terrible sickness seized him just as the new year began. Burnt by fever, he was suddenly confined to bed. With him unable to work, the family found themselves spiraling closer to poverty. Now there was no choice; as the March frost clung to the fields, Ann Swan dabbed the sweat from her husband's fevered brow with the complete understanding that the time had come. She may have lost her scream, but that didn't mean she had lost her voice.
"I'm taking Annie to Halifax" she declared.
"Absolutely not!" her husband said.
"I'll bring the Reverend. The pilgrims won't have to come to us. We can come to them."
"I forbid it!" spat Alexander.
"Someone has to do something," said his wife. "We're all going to end up sleeping in the rain."
The next morning, Alexander woke to find himself being nursed by a neighbor; his newest daughter was asleep in the crib. As for Anna, Ann Swan, and the Reverend Blackwood, they had already left.
They traveled across the snowy province wrapped in furs and pulled by a team of industrious dogs. Upon arriving in Halifax, the Reverend presented the Future Saint to the press, but the newspapermen didn't like the name's Catholic connection-anti-Catholic sentiment was far too ripe. And so it was that Anna Swan entered the historical record as the Infant Giantess. They said she was ninety-four pounds; they said she was four feet, seven inches tall. They assumed the Reverend Blackwood was Alexander Swan. They described Anna's mother as a woman of small size and interesting appearance.
That weekend, Haligonians filled Temperance Hall, a great meeting place near the center of town. While Ann Swan fussed with her daughter, the Reverend stood onstage and embellished the story of Anna's birth, adding such colorful details as a biblical storm, a broken carriage, and a crippled horse. Here was another one of Anna's encounters with revisionist history-but this time she, unlike the audience at Halifax, had the benefit of knowing the facts had been rearranged.
"Why isn't he telling the truth?" asked Anna.
"The truth," said her mother, "is rarely entertaining."
When she was at last brought to the stage, Anna clutched for the comfort of her mother's hand. She was almost as tall as her mother, and a murmur shot through the crowd. Distracted by the true wonder of her size, people barely heard the formerly arthritic Reverend turn the topic toward his own hands and the possible miraculous properties of Anna's touch. The price of admission, he announced, included an exhibit of Anna's possessions: the swaddling clothes, the shoes, the crib that had buckled under her tremendous weight. But for an extra fee, they could also receive her healing touch.
A dozen people came forward, including a tiny girl with brittle hair. Not yet twenty, she had a shoehorn face that was pinched tight, as if she held back some terrible pain. Anna wondered if she might collapse. But the girl with the brittle hair maintained her poise and paid her fee with the great dignity of one giving alms. She reached out and took Anna's hand.
"It's very nice to meet you," said the brittle girl.
"Hello," mumbled Anna.
There was an awkward pause as she continued to cling to Anna's hand, as if hoping to draw as much of the giant's strength as she could. "Is it working?" asked the girl. "Please: how do I know if it worked?"
She spoke with such earnestness that Anna felt a duty to respond. But while she was smart enough to know she needed to be comforting, she was ill equipped to think of a comforting thing to say. She looked to her mother, who sighed.
"You'll know soon enough," said Ann to the brittle girl.
It was as close to the truth as they could come. Ann didn't know if her daughter had miraculous powers; Anna didn't know either. They would know soon enough, too.
The visit was a great success, and they left Halifax with their pockets full of coin. The Reverend offered to invest their share of the money, and Ann Swan agreed, allowing herself to become steeped in the fantasy of wealth.
They returned to Tatamagouche to find themselves faced with a furious storm. Incensed that his will had been defied, Alexander had whipped the people into a frenzy. In a rage, he had told his neighbors the Reverend had stolen his wife and child away. He told them the man was a fraud; he told them that, far from being guided by God, the formerly arthritic Reverend had nearly killed Ann Swan on the night of Anna's birth.
If not exactly driven from the town, the Reverend found himself quietly pushed in the direction of anywhere else. He was gone by the end of the summer. He left behind all of his sermons; he also took every dollar he had promised to invest on behalf of the Swans.
"Good riddance," said Alexander. "Nothing but fruit of the poisoned tree."
"Poison or not, we needed it," Ann Swan moaned.
That night she conscripted her enormous daughter to help her tear down Alexander's sign. If pilgrims returned, they would be more than welcome. And if that New Yorker returns, said Ann Swan, he will be welcome, too.
The New Yorker would return, but not for many years. In the meantime the pilgrims, fearing Alexander's rage, stopped coming. As life returned to some new brand of normal, Anna's parents made an unspoken agreement to rewrite the story of her earliest days. It was just one more encounter with revisionist history; and since no one spoke of her past, Anna came of age remembering events that might have been part of a fevered dream.
Copyright © 2015 by Joel Fishbane
