Tell

by Frances Itani

  Every woman I meet, Grania wrote, hooks rugs or knits or quilts, or all three. The quilting stitches have to be even and tiny, and the lines of the pattern perfectly spaced. I have no problem with sewing tiny stitches after all the fancy-work I did at school, but what I am learning here is to use patterns effectively. I have my own basket of pieced wool and old skirts that I’ve cut up to work on. The women around have donated another heap for my basket. I’ve also begun to knit for the baby and will make a serious effort during the winter months. That’s what I keep telling myself.

  Jim and I attended the fall fair, which was held nearby, and there were wonderful samples of knitting and quilting and needlework on display. There is a store here where we can buy most things we need, and a community hall where moving pictures are shown. There is a beautiful church at the crossroads, and another at nearby Indian River, though we might have difficulty getting there in the thick of winter—that’s the one we attend. One family in the parish is so large, they take up an entire pew on Sundays.

  I’m assured that there will be a rink nearby in winter, and hockey matches for the young people. I might get out on skates, as long as I feel well. I’ve been told, too, that a horse and sleigh can cut across the ice of the Baltic River, so we might try an adventure of that sort.

  On hot, sunny days, before and even after the school year started, the neighbouring children begged to be taken to Darnley Shore and, once, farther along to Sea View. On special “outing” days, the children were granted their wishes, and Jim and I were invited along. We went by horse and buggy, though we’ve also made excursions on foot. We took part in the final fall picnic, bringing sandwiches, building a fire on the beach, making our own tea. The shore picnics are a great treat for everyone, and if there are fishermen around, they are kind about giving us fish, usually cod and mackerel. I’m told that in spring, late May or early June, the gaspereau come in on the tide and go up the streams to spawn. The men go to the run with a lantern and even catch them with their hands, but they have to be careful of the underside, which can cut like a knife—so sharp, the fish are known as sawbellies. I would like to see such a sight.

  Just before dawn, gulls gather in the fields, swooping in and, as Jim says, “strutting large.” The wind blows here for days on end and at this moment I can see, in the distance, white tips rolling over the surface of the water. Sometimes, a dark line of seaweed is twisted in a continuous thick cord that loops for miles along the sand. On the edge of shore, just before sunset, sandpipers skim close to the waves, lift in formation, swing out over the Gulf, then veer and come back to shore. They land as one, which I find astonishing, as each seems to keep the same position within the formation. During warm weather, anytime I was out walking on the beach, I never tired of watching the sandpipers. I would like to think I have seen all faces of the sea now, but how does one ever know?

  Jim has wanted to show me his island for a long time and I’ve been happy here the past five months. We live in a place of shadow and light, and no matter which way I turn, I am startled by beauty. Sometimes I am saddened at the thought of leaving next spring, but of course I miss everyone and want to come home, too.

  I recently met another deaf woman. She attended the School for the Deaf in Halifax, although she spent her early childhood on the island. Her husband is also deaf. They were at school together, and both are a few years older than I. We have begun to visit back and forth, and we share the same sign language. The rest of the time, which is most of the time, I lip-read. Everyone I know is hard at work, but we meet at the store or sometimes at the community hall in the evenings. Most people oblige by facing me when they speak, especially if I am in a group. If they did not, I would have no way of knowing what is going on—unless Jim is with me.

  Before I end this letter, I want to tell you about an event that took place in a farmhouse farther along our road. The house is owned by Jim’s friend Mac, who lives there with his wife and two children and his father, who is sixty-four. The house has been passed down through generations. You may have trouble believing the story, but it is the talk of the neighbourhood, and I have seen the results with my own eyes.

  Ten days ago, there was an immense storm in the late afternoon. At once, I felt thunder in my body. The storm was more destructive than any I ever witnessed along our bay at home. Jim was home and we took refuge, as did anyone who was in the storm’s path. Mac’s family had gathered in their kitchen to wait out the weather. Mac’s father was sitting nearest the stove and had rested his arm along the edge of it, over the water reservoir, when lightning struck the roof of their house. It passed down the chimney and into the stove, and now there is a scorched line running down the wallpaper behind, to prove that this was in no way invented by anyone’s imagination. The floor beneath the woodbox splintered, so that will tell you the force of the lightning. The terrible part is that Mac’s father was badly injured because of his arm touching the edge of the stove, and now he is paralyzed on one side. From outward appearances, he looks as if he has suffered a violent stroke.

  The entire episode has had a grave effect on Mac’s family, especially when all felt quite safe indoors. People say that this storm will be talked about fifty years from now, and I believe them. It is amazing how lives can be altered by a calamity of a single moment.

  I must close now. I know you will be happy to hear our news—the baby, the move back. I have sent a letter to Mother and Father so that I can tell them myself. They should receive theirs the same day as you receive this. I will put the two in the post together.

  With love to you and Kenan. I miss you both, as always,

  Grania

  After circling the block twice, Tress returned to the tower apartment. She greeted her aunt and handed her the letter. Maggie sat down to read the news. When she looked up from the letter, she understood immediately her niece’s mood.

  “When you aren’t thinking about becoming pregnant,” she said, but her voice faltered when she saw the tears, “that’s when you’ll find out you are. You and Kenan will have children. It’s sure to happen.”

  “I’m happy for Grania and Jim,” said Tress. “I am.” She wiped her eyes, drew a breath. “And I’m relieved that they’re coming back.”

  “We all miss them,” said Maggie. “But Jim needed to return to the place where he grew up. And they’re together now, after years of being apart. As you and Kenan are. You know all about separation, you and Kenan.”

  “I know more than I care to.”

  “The war is over, Tress. Jim and Kenan have survived, and every one of us is thankful for that. I’m sure there are things to be worked out between you and Kenan, but you’ve known each other since childhood. It isn’t as if you married a stranger before the war broke out.”

  “I thought I knew him—at the time. Well, I did. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Of course you knew him. But no one was expecting war to sweep up the young men in its path. No one expected young people’s lives to be changed so suddenly, so drastically.” She paused. “Think of how much Kenan has improved. That’s something we can be sure of.”

  “He has improved, and I try to remember those early days after he came home. He wasn’t speaking then, and didn’t, for months.”

  “That was resolved, thankfully. Now he just needs more time. You need time.”

  “I try to be realistic, Aunt Maggie. I try to tell myself that the man who wakes up beside me every morning and who walks through the house is the same man who left for the war. He is and he isn’t. I don’t want to fool myself. I don’t want to live a lie. But I do want to live my life and move forward. Being in the middle of things, well …” Tress gave up trying to explain.

  “There’s some level of comfort that comes from knowing each other since childhood, is there not?”

  “Yes, but consider how you would feel if this were happening in your marriage. How well did you know Uncle Am before you decided to marry?”

  “Oh, I’d known Am and his wa
ys all my life. I knew your father, too, although he and Am were older than Nola and me. Am and I grew up on side-by-side farms, but country life is different in almost every way from town life. On the farm, we were forced to depend on the land. We were bound to it. There was a sense of that, a quiet sense, all along the line. Families knew one another, helped one another.”

  “Did you and Nola like the same things?”

  “We were as different as you and Grania are from each other,” said Maggie. “You never knew my parents; I don’t know if you’re aware that Mother was forty when I was born. At the time of Nola’s birth, she was forty-two. I assure you, no one was more surprised than she at our late arrivals.

  “When Nola and I were growing up, we were expected to help out on the farm. Gardening, weeding, row after row of lettuce, carrot, radish, beet. Mother never trusted a woman who cut up beets for canning; hers were left whole in the pot. And Nola milked our few Jerseys without complaint, but she hated the milking while she was at it. I don’t know how she deceived the cows, because those animals are quick to sense anyone who isn’t comfortable around them.”

  Maggie recalled, while she was speaking, ragged edges around the garden where she had pulled at wildflowers that sprouted there: butter-and-eggs, brown-eyed Susans, campion, blue chicory that left a mark like rope burn down her palm when she tried to snap the stalks. She gathered the chicory anyway, and put her fistful of flowers in water in a jam jar on the dresser she shared with Nola.

  “There was no ice in summer, so we couldn’t keep perishables for long, but we had plenty of eggs. Father would come in and say, ‘What’s for supper?’ and Mother would laugh and say, ‘Let’s have eggs.’ We ate the hens, too. Nola didn’t mind sneaking into the henhouse after dark and reaching up from below to pick a hen clean off its roost. I didn’t care for the hens, but I did like being outside with Father, while Nola preferred to help Mother in the kitchen. During haying, when Father and I and the crew stopped to eat in the shade at the side of the wagon, it was Nola who carried our dinner out to us in the fields. A five-pound pail of honey, rounds of cheese that Mother had soaked in vinegar, a loaf of bread for each man. I can hardly believe, now, that I ate half a loaf, myself.

  “When we were older, we went to dances and parties at the homes of neighbouring families. Card nights, too. Sometimes, parties were held at our place. There were plenty of dances, especially during winter months. Neighbours arrived by horse and cutter or in big sleighs. My mother sang if there were musicians around. And Am was always in the background, somewhere. He did pay me attention.”

  Maggie thought of a sudden storm, the sky blackening, wind whipping her hair, Am grabbing her by the hand and running with her to safety. The laughter and exhilaration. The force of the wind around them. They stood in the doorway of the barn and watched the storm, and Maggie turned and saw a wisp, a shape of something … a man, a movement, a ghost. The shape disappeared. When she told her mother later, her mother shivered and whispered, “Forerunner,” between her teeth. After that, she always said that Maggie had the second sight.

  “When did Nola move to Oswego?”

  “She swore she’d get away from farm work and made a plan to study at the Ontario Business College in Toronto. She left, all right, when she was eighteen, but it was to move across Lake Ontario. By then, Am and I were married. Nola’s husband, Dan, worked at the docks when steam barges used to criss-cross the lake with loads of barley. The barges left from Lazier’s Dock right here in town. It was Dan who enticed my sister to move with him across the lake to the state of New York.

  “Father didn’t want her to marry Dan, and he was blunt about his reasons why. He had once been delayed in town here, on tax business, and had to stay over. Rather than taking a room at a hotel, he accepted an invitation to stay at the home of Dan’s parents—Dan was a young boy at the time. At suppertime, Father looked on while Dan and his brothers and sisters heaped their plates with food and disappeared to their bedrooms or to different rooms of the house. He could hear bursts of laughter and conversation coming from here, there and everywhere. Dan’s parents were unconcerned. Years later, when Nola declared that she would marry Dan, Father said he didn’t want his daughter marrying into a family of people who wandered around at mealtime, setting their plates down in any room of the house. None of that worried Nola. I think Father was more concerned about her being far from home than he was about supper plates in the bedrooms. And he was right. We didn’t see her often. Of course, she and Dan returned for Father’s funeral.”

  Maggie stopped, as if her family stories were escaping from someone else’s lips. “That was a long time ago,” she said abruptly.

  But Tress wanted more. “Why did you and Uncle Am move to town? No one in the family ever says a word about that.”

  Maggie was quiet for a moment. “Probably because we moved here when you were too young to remember. That’s old news now. Your father had already bought the hotel. He’s the one who heard about the job of looking after this building. He sent word to Am at the farm and told him to come to town quickly so he could apply. Told him the job included this apartment—the only one in the building. When I first saw it, the place appealed to me. Even in the middle of town. I like the daytime activity—I feel as if I’m connected to life that goes on below. And then, after five o’clock, the building becomes so peaceful there’s scarcely a noise to be heard. Unless Am is wandering around, doing his work.”

  “I wish I could say we have peace at our place,” said Tress. “Everything, every part of our lives, has changed. I’ve tried to talk to Kenan—about us, I mean—but my words sound thin and false, even to me. I know the problems have to do with the war. Sometimes I think it’s easier to bury whatever happened over there and let it stay buried. Kenan doesn’t exactly say that, but I think he feels the same. He says nothing of the war, nor do I ask.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Other things have changed, too.”

  “What things?”

  Tress tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Kenan spends much of his time in the veranda and stares out at the bay. He likes to sit by himself in the dark. I don’t think he notices when the lights are on or when they’re off. He forgets some events completely and remembers others in astonishing detail. He takes long, slow breaths before he talks. There are times when he speaks with extreme care. At other times, he becomes silent unexpectedly, as if he’s listening not only to me but to the room itself. That’s when I think he doesn’t hear me at all. I might tell him something important, and later, he’ll swear that he didn’t hear me speak. And yet, I have the feeling he’s storing everything away, every word. I tell him stories … well, I did. I made an effort to help him believe that’s he’s still a part of town life.”

  Tress did not add that Kenan did talk about matters unrelated to war. That he blurted out memories of his childhood, of growing up in Uncle Oak’s house. Memories unrelated to anything she could point to—except what was unseen and turning over in his mind. Nor did she say that he sometimes woke up in the night, shouting, reaching for her. Frantic.

  “He never used to be like this. He loved being around people; he was carefree, happy to discuss anything. Don’t you remember him dancing on the veranda of Father’s hotel? Singing while he kicked up his heels? Now he behaves as if danger will come flying around a corner of the kitchen if he takes a step toward the doorway without checking first.”

  They were both silent, and then Tress added, “We’ve had some good moments, but our old laughter together is what I miss the most.” She put her hands to her face. “So I turn away. I go out by myself or with friends because Kenan and I no longer go out together. I visit my brother Bernard. Sometimes Kay and I go to the moving pictures. Or we play cards. Or I stay and visit with Mother after meal shifts are over at the hotel.”

  Maggie was alarmed. Tress had never before gone into detail about life behind the walls of her narrow house. Now she was unable to stop.

  “Did you know tha
t when Kenan was overseas, he had two of his uniform buttons made into earrings for me? He sent them to me during his first leave in England. I can’t bring myself to wear them, Aunt Maggie. I couldn’t wear them while he was at the Front, not knowing if he was safe, and then, after he was wounded, I still couldn’t wear them. What I want to do is throw them into the bay. They’re one more reminder of the war.”

  “He probably doesn’t think about them at all,” said Maggie. “He has enough to deal with.”

  “He’d like to work outside the house. I know he would. But he doesn’t want the stares or the pity.”

  “He’s been visiting Am,” said Maggie. “That’s a good sign, maybe even a sign of healing. Am also tries to connect him back. Kenan has been coming out more and more now, even if it’s only after dark. You and I both know that many of his wounds are inside and can’t be seen.” She experienced momentary confusion, wondering if she’d referred to her husband or Tress’s.

  Tress hadn’t noticed. “Kenan reads about soldiers with shell shock all the time,” she told her aunt. “I wish he wouldn’t. What good will that do? Magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, he never stops reading. He joined the vets’ association, and that group has plenty to say. There is always a stack of papers and magazines on the floor beside his chair.”

  “Have things changed since he started keeping the books for the drugstore?”

  “He likes the job. It satisfies his sense of order, and we’re glad to have the money coming in. He’s already received the soldiers’ gratuity. That helped, though it was a one-time payout—six hundred dollars. I put it straight into the bank. We have the small pension because of his injuries, and the income I bring in from my parents at the hotel. Eventually, he’ll have to find something else. ‘One-armed work,’ he’d say if he were here. And then he’d add, sarcastically, ‘One-eyed, too.’ I hate listening to the sarcasm he sometimes aims at himself. At least he doesn’t aim it at me. But I hate to see him like this. No matter how I try to help. Sometimes I think I am living with a stranger.”