Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

  She sleeps.

  …

  Egg opens her eyes. The moonlight falls through her window. The curtains waver, stirred by the faintest draft in this quiet, quiet dark.

  Quiet. But no. That sound.

  Egg sits up.

  She hears a cry from down the hall. Mama’s room. Egg darts to her door, the shock of the cold floor on her bare feet making her run faster and faster, a tiptoe mouse scurry to the bedroom down the hall. She pauses at her Mama’s door and peeks through the crack.

  Mama slumps by the side of the bed, her back to Egg. Her hands are clasped in prayer.

  “Why, Albert?” Mama sobs.

  Egg steps back, steps away. She thinks of her father in the ostrich barn, of Kathy — Egg jerks towards the shadows of her sister’s open bedroom door — Kathy is still out with Stacey. Mama cries, Mama cries but Egg cannot go to her. Egg is frozen, like the Vast Open Plains of the Northern Tundra. First day of school and Albert was not with them. Albert will never be with them. He has been dead for three months, two weeks, and five days — such a long, long time. Now they are all broken apart and Mama’s lost and drifting and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will never be able to put them back together again.

  Egg runs back to her room, to her bed. She pulls the covers over her head. She does not want to see, she does not want to hear. She feels her heart shrivel up in her chest, a small, hard thing, not like the blue whale at all. The blue whale will not help her; not even the speed of light will bring Albert back. She curls and tucks her knees up to her chin and thinks of the stolen mints from the drawer, the matches from her Papa’s tool box. She cannot be good. And if she is not good, then she is damned.

  Egg knows that Mama wants Albert. But Egg is alive and Albert isn’t.

  October

  Time crawls in the classroom. It is not even lunchtime and it already feels like forever. As Egg looks out the window, she can see the low-lying clouds streaking against a duller grey. The trees have begun shedding their leaves, the fields fading slowly to yellow. Egg wiggles in her chair. She’s placed The Mixed-Up Files and A Wrinkle in Time on the corner of her desk for her lunchtime library trek.

  Egg likes Claudia and Jamie in the From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, their idea to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, although Egg would have chosen the big Eaton’s in Calgary instead. It’s a good story — research — if ever she should run away. Money and a good bed: these are important. Egg thinks that the most important thing about running away is not the away part. The most important thing is the destination, the running to, or it all just becomes about running and that’s another kind of stuck. Also, violin cases are handy to pack your clothes.

  Stories are imagination. Stories aren’t real. But stories tell us something, don’t they, even if they are fiction? That’s what troubles Egg. That Claudia Kincaid is so real.

  In math, she raises her hand to go to the bathroom.

  Egg takes the long way around. You’re not supposed to take the long way around, but sometimes, especially during junior recess, Egg takes the hallway into the high school wing. Kathy has a new English teacher called Miss Chapman who has a whole bunch of new words that Egg is trying to wrap her head around. She likes onomatopoeia but oxymoron makes her laugh. Kathy says that Egg collects words like dogs collect bones. As Egg peers into Miss Chapman’s classroom, she sees this new teacher at the front of her class.

  The older you get, you either fatten or you shrivel, that’s what Kathy says. Egg watches Miss Chapman at the blackboard; her writing slants and slashes — the y’s drop like daggers and the v’s leap off the slate. Dostoyevsky Tolstoy Chekhov. Miss Chapman stands rigid, in a charcoal dress, her midnight-black hair in a blunt bowl cut. Her fingernails are ruby red, stark against the chalk. Snow White’s stepmother. Egg can see that Miss Chapman is not shrunken nor shrivelled but compressed and contained. The forces of gravity are working on Miss Chapman. She could go off at any second.

  Grown-ups are a mystery. Principal Crawley has a thin mustache, beady eyes, and a weasel’s twitch. Vice Principal Geary is always clutching his pockets, his fingers thick as sausages. Everyone knows that Vice Principal Geary will come in drunk at least once during the semester and blubber during the Easter play. It is best to stay away from his bratwurst fingers. Mrs. Ayslin, skittish in her long summer sleeves, is always hovering on the edge of the teacher’s assembly. Mrs. Ayslin will sport a shiner after Christmas break, always running into a wall, a door, whatever is handy, everyone knows.

  It’s grown-ups who play pretend most of all.

  Miss Chapman’s voice pierces the air. “Now why does Ivan Ilyich feel such torment? He’s dying, but why at that moment?”

  All heads are bowed.

  “Debbie.”

  Debbie Duncan, Kathy’s friend. Debbie’s mum takes in the wash for the Crawleys and Stintons and Fiskens. Her father is nowhere to be found.

  Debbie falters, “Sorry, Mrs. Chapman. I wasn’t —”

  “That’s Ms. Ms. Chapman,” she cuts in, “and no, you weren’t.”

  Egg stares at the curve of Ms. Chapman’s eyebrows, the twist of her lips. Ms. Chapman, from outside Bittercreek. They do things differently there.

  Ms. Chapman’s head swivels and snaps. “Kathy. What about Ivan Ilyich? His torment?”

  Kathy unfurls herself from her don’t-pick-me slouch. “Ah, it’s the world that he’s in, it’s so hypocritical, and it’s — he had his chance but he blew it.” Chapman turns, a dismissal but Kathy continues, “It doesn’t seem fair though, like he only had this one chance then —”

  “Fair has nothing to do with it.” Chapman clicks and rattles. “Irrevocable moments. But he chooses, he chooses not to save himself. Character is destiny,” she proclaims. She whips out her last statement and slams it down like a cosmic gavel.

  Character is destiny. Egg furrows her brow. How is that so? Character is character and destiny is destiny. That’s why they have different words. Kathy has told her that metaphors are lies that tell the truth but what’s the truth in that?

  At the end of the day, Egg slaps the blackboard brushes together by the pencil sharpener. She doesn’t mind the chores. This keeps her out of harm’s way until the school bus pickup and maybe Mrs. Syms won’t be so mean. Fresh pencil smell but the chalk dust makes her sneeze. Egg likes to sneeze. The heart stops when you sneeze, that’s why you say “Bless you.” She empties the cylindrical sharpener and pokes her fingers through the different sized holes. The sharpener is like the sausage maker down at Gustafsson’s, only in reverse. Reverse and opposite are kind of like the same but not.

  Egg dashes to the open doors of the school bus. Mr. Johnston, the bus driver, must be in the teacher’s lounge scrounging up a cup of coffee and maybe even one of Mrs. McCracken’s homemade butter biscuits. Egg scans the schoolyard. Martin Fisken is nowhere in sight. But she can see Kathy on the basketball court, showing off for Stacey. All the rest of the bus kids are far to the other side of the yard, by the picnic tables or on the jungle gym; their squeals bounce off the concrete. Egg looks back at her sister, at Stacey, who waits on the sidelines. The late autumn light blazes behind them, two silhouettes made smaller by the crush of the sky. Kathy holds the ball in her hands, standing in the free throw circle. Egg watches, waits for her sister to take that shot. But the shot never comes. Why, Egg wonders, why is Kathy just standing there? Egg feels a sudden sense of things beyond her grasp. She wants to call out to her sister, to shout some warning, for Kathy seems so lost and alone. But Kathy is not alone. Stacey slowly walks onto the court. It seems to Egg that it takes Stacey a long time to reach her sister. Kathy, head down, stares at the ground, her body small, as if she has folded something precious, tucked it up inside herself and hidden it away. She stands so still. But Stacey just walks out to Kathy and places her hands on Kathy’s face, brings her chin up. Egg sees the ball fall away, bump bump bump bump bump. It rolls unevenly across the court
.

  The afternoon light, the shift and flare. Egg can’t tell exactly what she has seen.

  Mr. Johnston’s whistle blasts as he strides towards the bus, the spring in his step sloshing the coffee over the rim of his mug. He stuffs a shortbread cookie in his mouth, as he jangles the keys. The kids come streaming from the yard, pouring off the jungle gym. They run towards the bus, all shouts and screams. The floor jounces beneath Egg’s feet. She looks back to the basketball court. But the moment has passed and Kathy and Stacey have already joined the raucous line to the bus doors.

  Mr. Johnston pulls the lever and then they are off.

  At the house Egg rushes to her room and slides under the bed with a pencil and paper, pushing the bits of Lego and rolling the dinky cars away. Character is destiny. That means if you change who you are, you change what happens. Metamorphosis. Egg thinks of Claudia Kincaid in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Claudia needed a mystery to uncover, to complete her adventure. Claudia needed a mystery to solve, to come back changed.

  This makes Egg wonder.

  Kathy says fairy tales are stories told to children so they can learn about the world. The Moral of the Story is Don’t be So Stupid like in Little Red Riding Hood or Don’t be So Greedy like in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Egg’s favourite story is Rumpelstiltskin. You would think the hero would be the queen but she didn’t do anything, just cried until Rumpel came around and saved her butt. He was the one who could spin straw into gold. The king was the evil one, telling her that if she didn’t spin the straw into gold he would kill her, and he got all the gold in the end. Kathy says that is called Capitalism.

  Egg is not quite sure what the Moral of the Story is.

  In an adventure tale, you can be a Hero or a Damsel Fair. But not both. Girls are never heroes. In an adventure story, someone is saved. The dragon is slain. The moral is that good triumphs over evil, just like in real life.

  The Greeks didn’t have morals. Or maybe it’s just Get Out of the Way of the Gods. Egg thinks that the story of Job in the Bible is like that. He is rewarded in the end with a new wife and new kids but what about the old wife and old kids? They didn’t do anything wrong and they were smoted, just like that. What if Job liked his old wife better? And Egg wonders what the old wife thought about how things turned out.

  Her Mama clinks the glasses in the kitchen. Egg tries to think about Albert’s story. There doesn’t seem to be a moral except Stay Off the Train Tracks and You Won’t Be Hit and Flung into the River. You can only have a moral at the very end. That’s when you know how the story turns out.

  Egg looks down at her paper. There are so many ideas but they are all jumbled up in her brain. Her notebook helps. Anne Frank wrote down all her thoughts in her diary and she made it into her best friend, Kitty. She put up posters of her favourite film stars in the Secret Annex and made family trees of People in History. She even read books of folks Egg has never heard of — all to make sense of what was happening to her and her family.

  Egg bites her lip. If her life were a story, what would she write?

  Once upon a time

  There was a family

  With ostriches

  They were Japanese

  Not the ostriches.

  Egg pauses. She thinks, people die all the time. You make up a story to make sense of the world. But what if the world doesn’t make sense?

  No no no. The world must make sense. Like Our Father who Art in Heaven. Like Character is Destiny. There must be some kind of clue, some kind of sign. Yes, there must be. She just needs more facts. Like a scientist. Like a detective.

  Egg stares down at the page. Stories are harder than they seem. She flips over the sheet and begins to write I promise to be good over and over again, filling the lines with her scrawl. It is her pact with the world. She knows that it only comes true if you believe it. It only becomes real when you write it down.

  …

  Egg crouches in the shadows of the kitchen table. It’s like the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom — the cheetahs and the leopards on the Vast Open Plains of the Serengeti. Egg likes the part about the mama cheetahs romping with her cubs in the tall grasses, climbing into the low spreading, branching arms of the acacia trees. The papa cheetahs are nowhere to be found. That’s just the way it is. Egg looks away at the stalking, at the poor gazelles and impalas, but she knows the facts of life. Here, beneath the kitchen table, as Egg weaves her body around the legs of the kitchen chairs, it is like playing hide-and-seek with herself but tonight she is watching Mama. It’s like the empirical method that way. Mama, with her bluebird apron, the steam fogging the window, the click-clack of forks and spoons settling in the big sink, the splosh of dishes as Mama submerges them in the sudsy water.

  Mama’s thick black hair is cut to a no-nonsense bob. Her bangs fall over her eyes as she leans over the sink and scrubs the big pot. Scratch scratch scratch — Egg doesn’t like the sound of the bristle brush. The grey at Mama’s temples came after Albert’s accident. Mama’s hair was once as long and as thick as a rope, just like a fairy tale Rapunzel, a once upon a time of sleepy tuck-ins, of good nights, of Mama’s long, black strands flowing through Egg’s fingers, like water, like wind.

  After Albert’s funeral Mama cut her hair so that’s the end of that.

  Mama wipes her hands on the apron. Mama’s hands always surprise Egg. They are swift and delicate, flitting like a small bird.

  “Careful of your head, little one,” Mama says without turning.

  Egg jerks up — her forehead smashes on the bottom of the chair. She catches the whimper in her teeth.

  “What are you doing down there?” Mama asks. She turns from the dishes, the bubbles still clinging to her fingers, and sits by the kitchen table. “Let me see that,” she coaxes, sliding Egg onto her lap. She pushes back Egg’s hair, to reveal the bump on her forehead. “You’ve got an egg-bump,” Mama says playfully and kisses the small welt lightly.

  “I’m all right,” Egg sniffs, blinking away her tears.

  Mama strokes back Egg’s tumbled hair, looping a strand behind her ears. “You’re a Murakami. A stoic through and through.”

  “What’s a stoic?”

  Mama purses her lips. She slips her hand into her apron pocket and pops a mint into Egg’s mouth. A melty mint, white on the outside, green on the inside. Egg’s favourite.

  “How come you don’t talk like Papa?”

  Her mother raises her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t really talk like Hop Sing on Ponderosa but he doesn’t talk like you either.”

  “That’s because Papa was born in Japan and I was born in Vancouver.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “In Japan. After the war.”

  Egg clicks her tongue against her front teeth to get all of the minty goodness. “How come you were in Japan?” She doesn’t want to ask about the war thing.

  Mama gazes at her and Egg can feel her hesitation. Mama says, “I got lost in the shuffle.” She follows up briskly with, “And your father, he just swept me off my feet. I mean, really — he was on a motorcycle and he almost ran me over. But he made up for that later with chocolates and nylons.” She leans in conspiratorially, “I think he pinched them from the American base where he was working. And his hair!” Mama juts out her chin and swoops her hand over her forehead, “Swept up like Elvis.”

  Egg laughs, trying to imagine her father’s hips swinging to “Jailhouse Rock.”

  Mama sighs. “He was so crazy about baseball. He wanted to be pitcher for the New York Yankees.” Her smile dwindles. “Imagine that.” Her eyes dart to the window.

  “Mama?”

  Mama blinks. She looks down at Egg. “All better?” she asks.

  Egg nods.

  Mama rises, sliding Egg from her lap. “You go play now.”

  “But I can help,” Egg says. She doesn’t want to leave her Mama, not yet. Quickly, she drags the kitchen chair to the counter where t
he dish rack sits. She pulls the towel from the oven handle and steps onto the chair. Egg totters for a moment but her Mama’s hand braces her, there, on the small of her back.

  They stand eye to eye.

  Egg’s mother gazes at her. Egg stares. Her mother’s eyes are a rich, deep brown, ringed with fine lines. She looks sad and tired. For a moment, Egg wonders if she has done anything wrong. She wonders what Albert would have said.

  The steam rises, glowing against the foggy window. The groan of the barn gate echoes across the yard. Egg waits for the throaty call of the ostriches, their Woooh woooh wooooh. Do they ever get lonely? The square glow of her father’s window shimmers like a beacon in the dark.

  Her mother’s arm reaches around Egg, pulls her close. Egg wants to ask, but she doesn’t know the question. She thinks of the cheetahs on the Serengeti, the survival of the fittest, the good and the bad and the Moral of the Story. Rapunzel, locked in the tower, but what bad did she do? Her father stole from the witch but why was she the one who was punished?

  “You can help,” Mama says. “Can you get the dinner tin from Papa?”

  Egg feels the heaviness in her chest. She wants to hold onto the warmth of the kitchen but she looks out to the barn. A shiver snakes through her belly but she quells it. She can be brave. She can do it for her Mama. With one hop, she is off the chair and halfway to the porch.

  The door slams behind her.

  Wooh-wooh-woooohhh.

  Run run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man. The field is a blur but Egg is already at the gate, pushing it open.

  “Papa,” she pants.

  Papa does not seem surprised at her sudden appearance. He holds the steaming kettle and pours the water into three shallow pans on the wood stove. A hiss as the water sputters and bubbles. The steam rises to the shadows of the beams.

  “I came to pick up your tin,” she says.

  He gestures for her to come closer as he walks to the work table. “I have something for you.” He takes the egg on the setting tray, the one that has been waiting.