by David Bergen
She dreamed of being consumed by a fire at night. She dreamed of dying in a snowstorm. She dreamed of drowning. She woke from these dreams, gasping, ecstatic to be alive. She thought of the movement of time, and she thought of contingency, for this is a word she had come to know recently.
She sang to herself when making Johan’s supper. Her step was light, her face shone.
Johan must have noticed, but he said nothing. Did nothing. Dolores noticed. On one of their Tuesday mornings, driving to Winnipeg on this day to have lunch, she asked Lily if she was pregnant.
“Oh, no.” Lily laughed. “How could I be?”
“You have that glow. I know it. Something else is making you happy.”
Lily said that this was true.
“It’s better then, with Johan?”
“No. Not Johan.” She said that it was Frantz. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
“Oh, Lily. Oh,” she said. “This is what happens. And you love him, this big man?”
“I do. But I love Johan too. But Johan is gone.”
Dolores said that love was a strange thing. It didn’t follow the rules. She asked if she and Frantz were having sex.
Lily said that the most amazing thing about her, Dolores, was that she didn’t beat around the bush. “You just spit it out, and then we have to look at it. The spit.”
“The problem with growing up in your world, Lily, is that you’ve had to learn to lie, and you’ve had to learn to hide things, and there’s this dirty pleasure you get from lying and hiding things. And you don’t even know that it’s coming around to hit you on the back of the head. That’s the problem with religion and rules. They lead to moral clumsiness. You might as well pack your bags and run off with ugly Frantz.”
“Oh, I couldn’t Aunt Dolores. Johan, everyone, would be devastated. And he’s not ugly. I don’t see that anymore.”
“Oh, Lily, you think Johan doesn’t know? You think he’s stupid? You be careful. I’m worried for you.”
Lily smiled sleepily, for the conversation, the ease, the heat in the car, these were all comforting. She felt better now that she had confessed.
“You should tell him. It’s not too late.”
“Johan? Never. He’d kill me.”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“You’re right. It’s not true.”
On this day they went to the Pancake House where Lily ordered waffles with white sauce. The waitress didn’t know white sauce, and Lily wondered how it was possible that she didn’t know about white sauce and waffles.
“The world is not what you think it is,” Dolores said.
Lily said that Frantz was teaching her about the world. She said this bluntly. Why wouldn’t he? He knew the world. She was learning. She said that there were only two people who spoke to her, “You and Frantz. And I love you both.”
Dolores was nibbling at a grilled cinnamon bun. “Once on the lips, twice on the hips,” she said. “Your uncle likes me to be thin.”
“You are thin, Aunt Dolores,” Lily said. “Johan liked me thin as well. Frantz likes meat. This is what he says. And I believe that all of his girlfriends were fat.” She said that in order to remain safe, both from herself and from others, she imagined two Lilys. And she watched them. “Oh, there’s Lily walking across the yard. Oh, there’s Lily tucking into farmer sausage. And there she is putting on jeans. And oh, there’s Lily lying to Johan. And Lily talking with Frantz. And Lily with her long hair down and her shoulders bare. And I see it all from above like I was Jesus, and I forgive Lily. I do.”
And then one night, after she had returned from Frantz’s shack, creeping into bed, shivering from the outside air, Johan came into her room and stood in the dark and looked down on her. She saw his shadow and his shape. She heard his breathing. He said nothing. She was frightened and so said nothing as well.
At breakfast he did not look at her. He ate and wiped the egg yolk from his plate with a loose piece of her homemade bread and he stuffed it into his mouth and finished his coffee and pushed away and left. At lunch he repeated the same actions: sit down, eat, leave. And again at supper, so that she was like a keeper of some sorts, feeding a wild animal.
The following night she heard him standing outside her door, only this time he did not enter. She heard a whisper of something, and then he was gone. In the morning she saw five dollars lying on the floor. He had pushed it under the door. He always came to find her after she had been with Frantz. And always there would be money on the floor the following morning. Sometimes a few dollars, other times more. One time, a fifty-dollar bill.
Another woman might have burned the money. She kept it. She put it away, and within several months she had a fair amount of cash in her little box, a box that she stored under her bed. She did not say anything to Frantz, whom she still ran to in the evenings, across the white snow. He asked her if everything was okay, and she said that she was confused and tired and she didn’t know anymore. She cried a little. He made her tea. She drank it. And then left him. She could not tell Frantz about the money. Why would she tell anyone? It would only be shameful. Though on a Tuesday while having coffee with Dolores she said that she knew a woman in the church—she couldn’t say her name—whose husband paid her to have sex with another man. As if it made him stronger and her weaker. “This girl thinks that money and sex go hand in hand. That sex produces profit. And so sex is valuable, but at the same time it becomes less valuable. That’s what Caroline said. Oh. I shouldn’t have said her name.”
“I didn’t hear it,” Dolores said. And she asked if this Caroline was in danger.
“Oh no. No danger. No. I don’t think so. The money is strange though. Like a message.”
“Of course it’s a message. This Caroline doesn’t have her own money?”
“A little. Not much. She’s accruing some.”
“The money from her husband.”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t work?”
“She works with the layers, she gathers eggs, she mucks out the barn, she makes three meals a day, but that’s not for money.”
Dolores was quiet, and then she said that she would be going away for a few weeks. “My head is confused, my chest is heavy, and the doctor feels I could use some help.”
“Will you have visitors?”
“Henry will come.”
“How do you know? I mean. How do you know you should go there? To that place?”
“Ha, well, you just know. You’re underground. The world is dark. You’re sad all the time. That’s how.”
“I’m not sad all the time.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“Just sometimes.”
“Yes. I know.” Dolores said that their house was always open. “You can come live with us.”
Lily said that she would wait. She was waiting for something, but didn’t know what it was.
The elders called a meeting with Lily. She refused to go. It was Mr. Gerbrandt who told her about the meeting, and it was to Mr. Gerbrandt that she said no. She felt sorry for him. No one had ever said no to him before, except perhaps Frantz, and now here was Lily saying an outright no.
“It is for your marriage,” Mr. Gerbrandt said. “Think of Johan.”
“I do think of him. I miss him.”
“Come back then. Come back to the Church.”
She shook her head. She said that the Church and her marriage were two different things. People were confusing what was real with what was made up. “My marriage is real. The Church is made up.”
“That is blasphemy.”
“No, it’s true. If the Church cared so much, it wouldn’t come between a husband and a wife.”
“Are you coming between the husband and the wife? Is Frantz coming between the marriage?”
She bowed her head. She said that Frantz w
as Frantz. She said that now that she was shunned, the elders had no power over her. There would be no meeting.
Even so, the following evening there was a knock at the door, and when she opened it, four of the men from the church were standing before her, along with Mr. Gerbrandt. They entered the house and sat at the table and she served them tea. And even as she poured the tea and laid the cups in front of them, she was aware of the absurdity of her graciousness, and her hospitality. It was as if she could not stop herself. Just as she could not stop herself from running to Frantz in the middle of the night. She was out of control. She thought they should know this, and so she told them. She said, “I am a lost cause. Whatever you say won’t help. I am impulsive, and my heart has slipped to the lowest depths. I am Lot’s wife. You might as well drink your tea and go.”
Mr. Gerbrandt told her to stop. He said that she was digging herself a path to hell.
“I don’t care,” Lily said. “I know that I should care, but I don’t.”
The youngest man, the one with the pink lips, the one who had had the final word the last time she had been paid a visit, said that she was loved, and there was always forgiveness for those who were loved. “We love you, Lily,” he said.
She looked at this young man with his pink lips and she knew that he believed what he said, and she was moved. She said, “Thank you for telling me this. I will consider your love.” She smiled at him, and he bowed his head.
She realized that he found her attractive. That her energy, her nature, was compelling him to look at her in a new way. How strange to confuse moral judgement with sexual attraction. She told the men that they were perplexed in their hearts. She said, “You are afraid of my behaviour because my actions and my words lay bare your secret thoughts. I tell the truth. You hide truth from yourselves. This frightens you.”
They didn’t listen. They waited for her to finish and then one of the older men read a passage from the Bible, and another man prayed, and then Mr. Gerbrandt prayed, and then the men left, and all that remained were the half-empty teacups on the table.
And then one day she cut off her hair, hair that she had had since her birth. She took scissors from the cutlery drawer and she stood before the bathroom mirror and she held her hair with her left hand and with her right hand she began to cut. She chopped away for a long time, for there was an abundance of hair, and when she was done, the hair was lying on the linoleum, which was the same colour as her hair. She gathered it up and put it in a plastic bag and the next day she burned it in the fireplace. Now when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, for this was the only mirror in the house, she had to look twice to know that this was Lily, for her head looked smaller, and she thought she looked like a child. She had always worn her hair pinned back, but now that she no longer had an abundance of hair behind her head, her face seemed more prominent, and her ears more conspicuous, even though there were shags of hair covering her ears. She saw her eyes and her jaw and she turned sideways to study her profile, but this was difficult because she had to twist her eyes sideways as well, and she saw mostly her nose and her mouth and her forehead. Her long hair had been pure adornment, even when pulled up into a bun, and it had been all a piece, very important, a cross between vanity and modesty, with vanity winning out, as if to say: I have the most beautiful hair in the world, but I’m not going to show you. She was more aware of her mouth now, and she made faces at herself, and she pouted, and she thought that she might ask Aunt Dolores for some lipstick, light coloured, so as not to alarm herself or anyone else. Johan surely noticed her short hair, but he said nothing. That night, he came into her room and she wondered what he would want, but he only held her head and he ran his fingers over her skull. Then he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling and he cried, something that she’d not seen him do ever. Cry.
She said that it was okay, it was just her hair, and it was not as if she had cut off her head. She laughed then because he took everything so seriously and she sat up on the side of the bed and looked down at him. Did she hate him? She didn’t think so.
Frantz was confused, and he said it was the saddest thing. She said that no, it wasn’t sad. It was necessary. And so he said fine fine, it is your hair, and she said yes, it is mine. He said that she looked like a boy now, and it was strange to observe her head. She did not tell him that Johan had cried over her head the night before.
Gretchen, when she saw Lily’s short hair, said that she loved it, so young she looked now, and she touched her head and said that she would fix the rough edges. And so Lily sat in Gretchen and Carlos’s kitchen, on a stool, and let Gretchen fix up the edges around the ears and at the back of the neck. Gretchen held up a mirror for her and Lily studied herself and said that it was all good. Carlos was present as well, hovering in the background, singing a tune, sweeping up the hair and remarking on its colour, to which Gretchen responded with a look of exasperation.
The next day, out in the yard, Carlos met her and pointed at her hair and said that it was as if she had changed one pair of boots for another, or something to that effect. This was in the yard, near the barn, when he handed her a poem written on a piece of paper, a poem that he had translated, he said, and she took it and she wondered if all men were the same, that they saw in a woman something to be taken, or they imagined that words were a form of invitation. She was not afraid of him though, even when he noticed her short hair and said that he liked it, for now he could see her ears and her jaw. My head is smaller, she said, and for some reason she removed her hat to show him. He smiled and said that her head was the perfect size. She put her hat back on and wondered once again if she had been flirting with Carlos. He had a strong face, and he was better looking than Johan, and inevitably more handsome than Frantz, but more than his good looks, his nature was soft and pliable and she wasn’t sure if this was because he spoke English like a child, and therefore she might be deceived by his nature, or if she felt safe because there was Gretchen, his wife, who lived with him and kept him.
Later that week, in the evening, she dressed quietly and slipped out of the house and crept across the yard to his shack. She entered without knocking. The room had been cleared out. His books, his clothes, his bedding, all was gone. The dog was gone as well. She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked for a note. There was nothing. She thought that she might faint. She lay back on the mattress and she smelled his smell.
She thought that he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, and she realized that if he had left a note, his mother might have found it, or Johan, or the sisters, and they would have destroyed it.
He would contact her, she was certain, and when two weeks had passed, and she had not heard from him, she thought he was dead. And then she heard from one of the girls that Frantz had gone back to South America, where he had a wife and a child. This was Margaret, who was not supposed to talk to Lily, but did anyway, because she was full of spite and gossip and she knew that Lily would suffer and it gave Margaret pleasure to see Lily suffer. When Margaret said this, Lily laughed and said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Margaret shrugged. She tossed her head. She said that it was a surprise to all, but it was true. Her brother was lost, but they were praying for him. “He won’t come back. My mother won’t allow it.”
At supper Lily watched carefully to see if Johan would look at her, or indicate some smugness, but he just ate and pushed back from the table and went upstairs. That night she heard him moving about, to the bathroom and back again. When she no longer heard him, and thought he must be sleeping, she packed a bag, a small suitcase. She lay on the bed, fully clothed, and she waited. She sat up at one point and almost stood, but then she fell back against the bed. When she opened her eyes it was much later, and she knew that she had slept. She stood and took her bag and in the dark she crept downstairs and put on her coat and gloves and a hat and picked up her bag and stepped outside. She walked up the driveway to the main road
and she turned west. A car passed her and perhaps because she did not put out a hand, it did not stop. A north wind blew and it was remorselessly cold. She decided that she would have to be more forthright, and so when she saw headlights coming towards her she moved close to the pavement and she pushed out her hand and she waved. It was a pickup. It blew past her and she lowered her hand. The brake lights on the pickup came on and the truck pulled over and then the reverse lights and the pickup was coming back for her. She panicked. She could still run. But she didn’t. The pickup stopped, the passenger side window went down and a voice told her to get in. She did. She placed the suitcase at her feet, closed the door, and felt the heat in the cab.
It was a young man, Clive was his name, and he came from Tourond. He worked at the window factory as a mechanic, and he’d been called in to fix a machine. “I love the nights there,” he said, “All the machines standing still and waiting.” He asked her name. She told him. He asked her where she was going. She said the city.
“Long trip,” he said. “Especially at night. You could freeze to death.”
“I won’t,” she said.
He was quiet for a time. Then he said, “You have a plane to catch?”
“No.”
“Someone to see?”
“No someone.”
He nodded. She saw only half of his face, but it seemed pleasant. Clean-shaven. A baseball cap. A nice jaw. He said that he wasn’t going to the city. And he couldn’t leave her out in the cold. He asked if she wanted to come to his place till morning, and then she could continue her trip. Or he or his wife would drive her to the city. He said that his wife would have no problem with this.
