“Those jumelles!” Sophie shouts, suddenly awake just as I am about to fall asleep. “Your cactuses! I know their names. Their names are Discernment and Fear—when the eyeballs on the first one, Discernment, have properly grieved, the tears will flow down and water the second. Then all its spikes—I see them unfold—they’re bound to flower brave and unafraid.”

Trust Sophie to bring up the notion of fear and bravery now, in the small of the night, just as I begin to feel lulled by the sound of raindrops tapping the taut orb of our tent. I snuggle down into our rumpled old sleeping bag. I do not feel one little bit like leaving by morning’s first light. But the time has come.

20 Babies

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

EARLY MORNING.

Mont Royal. Montreal, Quebec

I WAKE WHILE IT IS STILL DARK, to hard rain and one of my lonely fits. I have to meet Harold at dawn—yesterday they finally cleaned him up at the hospital and pronounced him fit to go home with a new bandage on his head. Between my flute-bruised cheek and his bandage we’re going to look a fine pair on the road to Quebec. Damn this damp cold. If my shoulder sticks out of the sleeping bag, I can’t tell the difference between the air and the chill of my own dread. My twisting wakes Sophie. I lie still, trying not to annoy her, concentrating on our tent with its seams and folds, transparent as all the fragile shelters we raise to enfold ourselves: our cocoons, our membrane-wheels….

“Go back to sleep!”

Our tents, our veils and parasols…What exactly did I write to Henrietta Wolfe upon discovering umbrellas in Paris? I have seen that letter somewhere recently—yes—the words are coming back…

Dear Madam,

The people in Paris use umbrellas to defend themselves from the hot sun, and something of the same kind to secure them from the snow and rain—I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced into England, where there are such frequent showers, and especially in the country, where they can be expanded without any inconvenience….

How my mother scoffed at this!

I have never understood her resistance. Why would she—a sensible Englishwoman—scorn something so useful, given how much rain fell in London and Blackheath?

Granted, she had no sun and the Parisian way of shading one’s face from the light simply did not apply to the English. But rain! Why did my mother not even consider enjoying such elegant respite from our nearly constant rain?

I hear her now: “Anyone foolish enough to raise half a silk balloon over his head every step he takes would certainly be the laughing stock of the whole country for being so unfit and cowardly as to be scared of a raindrop.”

Am I really scared of a raindrop?