by David Bergen
She waited for him to speak, to ask her why she had burned towels and dresses, but he said nothing and she thought then that he was completely lacking in curiosity or that he was guided by rules that were so misshapen that he no longer understood who he was, or who she was, and she felt great pity for him.
That afternoon she was weak and she was still cramping and so she climbed the stairs to her bed to nap. She fell asleep with the autumn sun warming her feet. And she woke with the horrific thought that she had introduced death into the house through her own words. She realized that she could not tell Johan or anyone else about the miscarriage. If he asked, she would deny it. And so she was alone with this, as she was alone with her other thoughts and her questions. She had no sense of what had happened to her physically, except to understand that she had bled out a baby. She didn’t know why her body had acted in this way. She thought that it might be God punishing her for her stubbornness, and for her love of fiction, and for having pushed Johan’s head down between her legs that one time, and for having seduced him when he was not to touch her, and so she imagined that she was to blame. She prayed for forgiveness, but she felt no sense of release. She no longer had access to the Camaro or the pickup, and so she no longer had access to the library, where she might go to look up books on pregnancy. She had no wish to go to see Dr. Giesbrecht, who would have her stand naked with her face to the wall while he studied her from behind. To what end?
Two days later, still spotting and weak, she called Aunt Dolores and told her what had happened. Aunt Dolores drove out immediately. She entered Lily’s home and came straight up to the bedroom and said that she was taking Lily to the hospital.
“I’m fine, Aunt Dolores, just a little setback,” Lily said.
“Nonsense,” Aunt Dolores said. She got Lily into a sitting position, helped her dress, and then guided her down to the car.
“He doesn’t know,” Lily said.
“I’ll tell him,” Aunt Dolores said. “He has to know.”
“Please don’t. He’ll just punish me. And his mother will punish me.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Lily. Now close your eyes. Don’t think or worry.”
In the nest of the car she felt safe. The seats were leather and this was a relief, for certainly she was bleeding all over the place. She saw Aunt Dolores’s red lipstick, and her bracelets, and her pretty pale blue coat that came to her knees, and she saw Aunt Dolores’s right calf, the length of it and she thought how lovely it was to see a woman’s bare leg, and she wondered if her child had been a girl. She wanted to say that she didn’t want to see Dr. Giesbrecht, but she was too tired to talk, and she closed her eyes.
The doctor who performed the D&C was a woman with lots of black curly hair and a voice that rasped as she described the procedure to Lily. It was such a relief to have a woman touching her that Lily wanted to weep, but she was too tired. Aunt Dolores came to her after the procedure and said that she was going to take Lily to her house, where she would recuperate.
“But I have to make supper for Johan,” Lily said. “And there are dirty dishes in the sink.”
“Let him fix his own meal,” Aunt Dolores said. “Or go over to his mother’s. I’m sure she’d be happy to have her boy back. You’re coming home with me.”
At night she woke disoriented. There was a small light coming from the adjoining bathroom and the light bled into her room and revealed a large bookshelf and a television and a side table with a lamp, and Lily recognized the lamp as Marcie’s and she realized that she was in Marcie’s old bedroom. The comforter on top of her was clean and smelled of the outside air, and she saw that on the bedside table, beside the lamp, there was a bowl of tomato soup and beside the bowl, on a small plate, were several crackers and a pat of butter. She picked up one of the crackers and nibbled at it.
She stayed with Aunt Dolores for one week, and during that time, because she did not have a change of clothing, she began to wear Marcie’s clothes. She wore jeans for the first time in her life, as well as a flannel shirt, which was something Johan might wear, but not for women. It was soft to touch, and a little small for her so that the buttons were stretched across her chest. She wore a belt with the jeans and this too was strange and foreign, for suddenly she was worldly, dressed like a man, and she was surprised to discover that these clothes meant for a man should make her feel very much like a woman. It wasn’t sexual, but more like a self-consciousness, a keen awareness of how her body was shaped, and how others might see her.
One afternoon she went with Dolores to do some grocery shopping at Penner Foods. She wore her head covering, but everything else she wore was of the world: jeans, a button-down shirt, boots that were Marcie’s. She sensed that folks were looking at her, and judging her, and she hid behind her aunt as they walked the aisles. She saw one of Johan’s sisters, Katerina, at the far end of the pasta aisle, but it was too late to change direction and so she cast her eyes upon the floor and did not look up as she passed Katerina by. There came a hiss and several words of condemnation, but then her aunt spoke and said that Lily just wanted to be left alone. “Go back to your village,” Aunt Dolores said, and she took Lily’s arm and pulled her along.
In the car later, Aunt Dolores sighed and asked if Lily was okay.
“I think I should go back home,” Lily said.
“Are you sure?” her aunt asked. “You know that you can choose.”
The idea of choosing was foreign and made no sense to her. She wondered if Aunt Dolores was speaking in the voice of the devil, if she had been sent to tempt her. She looked at her aunt, sitting so naturally behind the wheel of her Cutlass, speaking so certainly of choosing, and she wanted to believe that this was true, that she could choose, but she was overwhelmed by the possibility that she might choose poorly.
That night she watched television with her uncle. A program about a girl growing up in the old days, on the prairies, and the hardships involved, and the family who were kind to one another, and it reminded her of her own childhood, only the girl in the television show had a very strong voice, and she went to dances and her father played the fiddle. And so, it wasn’t like her life at all.
The following morning she woke to the sound of voices, and she heard Johan speaking to her Aunt Dolores. They were out on the front driveway. She watched from her upstairs window, and she saw Johan standing beside his pickup, moving his arms around, and talking. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, and she wished that she might, for she had not heard anything from his mouth in a long time. And then he climbed back into his pickup and drove off. He seemed angry, but this was not new, for he had been angry in the last while, using his large body to make his points. It always frightened her, his anger, and she went out of her way to appease him. But now she could not appease him. Nor did she want to, and this frightened her, the stubbornness she was experiencing, and the taste of inevitability in her mouth.
And so she went home. And, again, the hole opened up in Lily’s heart. She fed it with the books that Aunt Dolores had given her. She fed it with doubt. And she fed it with rebellion and anger. And when the hole was full, and there was nothing else to put into it, she continued to feed it, until it spilled over and infected her mind and her body. This was what selfishness felt like, she thought.
And then Johan’s brother returned. In celebration, the family held a large supper and invited folks from the church. Mr. Gerbrandt slaughtered a hog, and the whole process—the sledgehammer on the hog’s head, the slicing of the belly, the blood and guts, the digging of the pit, the lighting of the coals, the settling in of the hog carcass onto the hot coals—all of this was pure pleasure for those who bent to the task. Margaret chipped in with lighting the coals, and Katerina and her mother made coleslaw and baked potatoes and plum platz. Folks arrived. The air smelled of smoked meat. Wooden tables were set up outside. Leaves the colour of ripe pumpkins fell onto the tabletops and someone said t
hat this was God’s tablecloth and wasn’t it beautiful. Lawn chairs were sprung. Grace was said. A song was sung. And they ate.
Lily was present, but she was like a ghost amongst the flesh and forms of real people. She ate some pork on a homemade bun, and she ate a pickle, and she found a seat on a bale of straw off to the side. Johan finally appeared, and he took some coleslaw and some raspberry Freshie and he stood in a circle of men his age and they talked about motors. And cars. Frantz, who had not wanted this party, walked around in his clumsy manner, his head bowed slightly, and nodded at the various members of the community, who treated him kindly and told him that it was an answer to prayer. He nodded. Smiled. Ate. And then went over to Lily and introduced himself.
Because Frantz was not baptized, and therefore was not a member of the church, he was allowed to speak to her. He stood over her, and she saw that he was huge, and that he was awkward, and she wondered if it was true that he was a lover of many women, something that she had heard from the mouths of the women in church. Earlier. When she still went to church. Of course, she didn’t ask him this question. She just thought it. And she thought that he was less arrogant than Johan, her husband. For when she stood, he said, “That’s not necessary.”
“What’s not?” she asked.
“To stand. To be polite.”
“I’m not being polite,” she said. “I don’t want a sore neck.”
He said that he was pleased to meet the wife of his little brother.
She said that she was pleased to meet the prodigal son. And when she said this she was sorry, for this was insolence.
But he just smiled and said that it was a fearful thing to come home to a roast pig and smiling faces and to know that everything was expected now.
“It is,” she said.
“My father wanted this.”
“He loves you.”
“Not sure about that. He’s worried about jewels and heaven and such.”
“And you?”
“Not a bit.”
This was shocking for Lily. Even though she had been shunned, and even though she was angry, she still held to some of the beliefs of her youth. And one of them was heaven.
Frantz said that he was going to step away. He said that they had said enough words. And so he did exactly that, and he walked over to the food table and took another helping of pork. His sister Margaret found him and threw herself at him, holding his arm, and going up on tiptoes to say something in his ear. Frantz laughed.
Lily did not speak to him again for a month. She saw him around the farm, and she saw him leave the yard in his father’s pickup, and she saw him sitting outside his shack, smoking. She waved at him. He waved back. But they did not speak at that time. This would come later, one day in the egg room. She was stacking flats when he entered. She heard him, but did not turn. He rolled his cart into the centre of the room and then trudged about heavily. She could smell feed on his overalls, and there was also a hint of coffee, which must have bled from his large mouth. Ever since the homecoming barbecue she had heard the family talking about Frantz. She heard again of his wayward ways, and heard that he had squandered whatever money he had. She knew that his return home signified something, though what it signified she could not say. She also knew that Johan resented his brother’s return, for now there was another son in the family, and though Frantz might not have returned to claim anything, Johan feared that he would want a section of the farm, and he would want the egg quota, and the patriarch, Mr. Gerbrandt, who was overjoyed that his eldest son had returned, might indeed be willing to give Frantz whatever he wanted. Again, Lily gleaned much of this from watching and listening. She saw the change in Johan when Frantz was near. She saw that Johan became sullen. She heard the sisters talking. She once overheard Johan talking to his mother about how Frantz had tricks and he was still errant and how was it that their father could not see the trickery. She could have shared her views of Frantz with Johan, but Johan of course did not speak to her, and he might not have agreed with Lily’s view of Frantz. Which was that Frantz was not interested in the farm, and he was not interested in the egg quota, and he was home for only a brief stay and then he would leave again. She hadn’t heard this from Frantz’s mouth, but she knew it as one senses frost before it arrives early, or as one knows that if you beat a dog often enough, it will learn to cower at the slightest gesture.
Frantz was ugly. This was so. It had always been so, and it still was, and it was a mystery to Lily how a man as ugly as Frantz might have managed to attract the many women he was rumoured to have seduced. She discovered, after several weeks working in the barn with Frantz—for this is where he spent his time—that she had become accustomed to his fierce looks, and so his ugliness no longer surprised her, in fact she had become more curious than repulsed by his size and his strange physical qualities. He stood over six and a half feet, and his neck was wide and short and there were times when she studied him that he appeared to have no neck at all. The overalls he wore were too small for him, and so this made him appear even larger. His feet were wide and long and once, when he had left his boots in the egg room, she had stood and looked down at them and realized that she might be able to fit both of her feet into one of them. If he had the weight and fearsomeness of a giant, his nature was that of a child. She had never seen him angry, and she had never seen him strike out in any way at anything, unlike Johan, who was impatient and, when he still spoke with her, might raise his voice if she didn’t anticipate his desire for ketchup with his meatloaf, or a new bar of soap in the shower. Where Frantz was meek and soft, Johan was demanding and hard. And so she learned that meekness and kindness was also a form of seduction.
When Frantz spoke to her in the egg room, she thought that he had simply cleared his throat. But then he cleared his throat again and she realized that he was speaking to her.
“I got myself a dog,” he said.
She waited, and then turned. He was standing behind his cart, looking down at her. He wore a baseball cap that said John Deere and his awesome face was spotted with stubble and his hands were folded on top of the flats on his cart and she thought that the eggs might get crushed, but all seemed fine and safe. He shuffled his feet.
“It’s a Lab,” he said.
“Your mother doesn’t like dogs,” she said. This was an accepted fact—Mrs. Gerbrandt hated dogs.
He shrugged. “I decided. The dog will sleep in my shack. I’ll feed it. It’s a hunting dog.”
“Do you hunt?” she asked.
“I plan to.”
She smiled slightly. “You’ll need a gun,” she said.
“I plan to get one.”
“And a hunting license?”
“I plan to.”
“Sounds like you have plans,” she said.
He smiled. “My brother thinks I shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t get a gun? Or shouldn’t get a license? Or shouldn’t have plans.”
“All three.”
“He probably didn’t want you to get a dog either.”
“He didn’t.”
“But you did.”
Though he was five years older than Johan, he looked younger, and his eyes had lines at the corners that made it appear that he was constantly smiling, even when he wasn’t. He liked to announce his life to folks, as he had done with the dog just now. Lily thought that he might not be as simple as he appeared, or as Johan and his family wanted him to appear.
He said that he would show her the dog.
“Not now,” she said. “I have to go start supper for Johan. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Johan’s crazy,” he said.
“Oh I don’t know.”
“No no, not crazy like that. He’s crazy not to talk to you. Not to eat with you.”
“We eat together,” Lily said. She was defensive.
He agreed with her by nodding his bi
g head. Then he turned away and left her alone.
That night she sat across from Johan and studied his face as he ate. He liked to cut the kernels off of his cob of corn, and he was doing that now, concentrating on sliding his knife down towards the plate. He bit his upper lip as he worked, as if he might be performing a very serious operation. When he was done he took a piece of butter and dropped it into the pile of corn. He looked up at her, and caught her watching. She ducked her head. She heard him eating, the corn crunching in his teeth.
She held a silent conversation in her head, for this is how she managed herself. She would tell Johan that Frantz had talked to her, and Johan would say that she shouldn’t listen to anything Frantz said. She would say that Frantz was gentle and meant no harm and then she would ask why Johan hated him. I don’t hate him, Johan would say, and she would answer that it seemed so, or perhaps he was jealous of his older brother. I feel nothing, Johan would say. Nothing. She would say then that Frantz had a dog and he wanted to hunt, and Johan would say that all his life Frantz has wanted. And he gets. And he gets. And she would say that Frantz thought Johan was crazy not to love her. And Johan would say that their marriage had nothing to do with Frantz. And he would tell her to stay away from his brother.
This is what she thought as they finished the meal. Her mind awhirl. She rose and collected the dirty dishes. Was she crazy? She scraped the leftovers, bones from the roast and scraps of gravy and potatoes, into a container and snapped on a lid. She set it aside by the sink. She heard Johan rise from the table. Into the foyer where he put on his boots and jacket. The door opened. The door closed. She saw him pass under the yard light and move towards his parents’ house. Ever since Frantz’s return, Johan visited his parents in the evening. Shared dessert with them. Drank coffee. Made sure that Frantz did not bury himself too deeply in the father’s affections.
When she had finished the dishes she wiped the counter, and then picked up the container with the leftovers and she pulled on her boots and slipped into her parka and she went outside in the cold night air and she squeaked across the snow towards the shack and knocked. No answer. She knocked again, and she called out and she heard the whine of the dog. She opened the door and stepped inside. The smell of wood smoke. One room with a bed, and a little table upon which there was a lamp and few pieces of paper and a pencil and some books. The dog lay beside the stove. It rose and wagged its rump. She kneeled and put the container down and held the dog’s head and said, “Hey boy. Or are you a girl? Hey. Hey. You sweet thing.” The dog’s tongue was wet and warm and Lily’s face got a cleaning. She pulled back and picked up the container of leftovers and snapped open the lid and held it for the dog. And it was gone. The container clattered to the floor.
