Tracks

Pauline is pregnant with Napoleon’s baby. She tries desperately to abort the child, but she is unable to do so. Soon, Bernadette recognizes that Pauline is pregnant, and Pauline announces that Napoleon is the father, sealing the child’s fate. Bernadette intends to raise the child as her own. Pauline has already decided to become a nun, so this solution pleases everyone.

Pauline, we learn, lured Napoleon with love medicine from Moses Pillager. Bernadette sends Napoleon to live in the barn and helps Pauline hide her pregnancy from everyone. Though Pauline refuses to push the baby out, Bernadette saves both of their lives by pulling the baby out with spoons. Pauline imagines that the bruises on the baby’s head are the marks of “the devil’s thumbs” and that she is already “a fallen, dark thing” (136). The baby, Marie, is born on Armistice Day—November 11, 1918—as the church bells ring incessantly. Bernadette raises Marie, explaining that she is a dead relative’s baby.

Pauline goes to the convent as soon as she can walk, where she receives visions from Jesus that tell her she is white, not mixed-blood, and that she is forgiven for having had her daughter. Jesus, furthermore, tells her that she has a special mission to serve others and to discover the hiding places of his enemy (137).