Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

This one she will call Esmeralda.

  …

  Today is a D day. D days start off wrong — like don’t and dumb and doorknob. D days and Mama can’t get up from bed and Kathy is a grouch. D is dead and damn and dump and ditch.

  D day and Egg must be careful. She rubs the outline of Albert’s silver dollar stashed safely in her pocket. At least she has a plan.

  In the science room, the glass display holds the skeletons of prairie dogs and field mice. A stuffed fox, with a red-devil grin, stands above the chemistry cabinets with the sign: “Danger. Mixing Explosives May Be Harmful To Your Health.” In the science room, the granite floor is a cold, speckled grey. On the long side-counter there are lines and lines of Bunsen burners and test tubes. Jars and jars of impaled and drowning potatoes clutter the shelf by the window. It hurts Egg’s eyes just to look at them. Potatoes have eyes. She tries not to think of this.

  This is the most dangerous time for Egg, the second half of lunch break. Martin Fisken, along with the rest of the townies, is back from his house, after The Buck Shot Show. With the rain, all the students are corralled in the halls and the common rooms. Students sit at the tables, textbooks open.

  Today, Egg will try the science room. Martin has spotted her in the library too many times before.

  The science room sparkles with a crisp, clean glamour. It’s all falling stars and comet tails, prism rainbows with a Reach for the Future poster that reminds her of the Jetsons. A model of the Solar System dangles from the ceiling with icy Pluto banished to the corner. Jupiter is the Roman name for Zeus, the Greek God of Thunder. Jupiter has a spot. At the centre of the science room, the Earth spins. A segment slides out to reveal a pie-cut of crust, mantle, and core.

  Science is the very big and the very small. The glass cases of butterflies pinned to the whiteboard. The jewel eyes of dragonflies. The gossamer wings of cicadas.

  Egg bows her head over these tiny crucifixions. They are the Jesuses of the insect world, a sacrifice for science. Troubled, she turns away.

  Egg wants something solid, not this crash and bang of plates and shifts and continental drifts. In the science room, a model of the volcano smoulders in the corner. Egg knows that volcanoes, like dinosaurs, can go extinct, but she has seen the pictures of Pompeii. The science room is not at all like the library. Science strips and bares but the library builds on words, like an abracadabra that becomes an adventure. Egg has read the Young Reader’s Guide to Science but that is more like a story: Galileo recanting in the face of the Inquisition. But Galileo won after all because science is like that. Facts are not lies. Facts win out in the end. It bothers Egg though, how could the Bible be wrong? She will have to ask Mrs. MacDonnell about that. Mrs. MacDonnell does not like questions. Anything less than blind faith makes a heretic and heretics burn. There is the black and white of it but Egg doesn’t understand; there is black and white and good and evil — but where does the Japanese fit in?

  Did Galileo burn?

  Egg picks her way through the chrome taps and microscopes, weaving her way through the crowd. At least with so many people about, it is easier to hide. She skulks by the beaker cabinet then dashes by the dinosaur dino-rama. A crowd of Mr. Gooch’s keeners heads her way so Egg crawls underneath the film strip table. Camouflage, like on the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

  The bottom of the table holds an impressive array of chewing gum, wads of pink Bubble-Deelight and green smears of Minty Freeze. Rumour is that Bubble-Deelight is filled with spiders’ eggs so Egg scoots deeper, far from the edge. Spiders have eight legs so they are not insects. Egg knows there are rules for everything. With the Young Reader’s Guide to Science, Egg can tell you about the planets and the constellations and sometimes, at night, she can look out of her window and see Orion’s Belt. The universe is vast, this she knows. The Big Bang is so huge, you can’t even imagine it and the speed of light is the fastest thing ever.

  “Has anyone seen that stupid Egghead?” Martin’s voice rings out.

  Egg freezes. She can see Martin Fisken’s sneakers by the dino-rama but she is safe under the film strip table. When she peeps at the clock above the door, she knows that there are thirty more minutes until the bell rings. An eternity.

  She hugs her knees and begins her list:

  a – armadillo

  b – baboon

  c – crocodile

  d – dugong

  e – elephant

  f – flamingo

  g – giraffe

  h – hippopotamus

  i – ibis

  j – jellyfish

  k – kangaroo

  l – llama

  m – monkey

  n –

  none

  never

  no

  n n n n n n n n n

  There is no Dictionary beneath the table. Egg is stuck. Nnnnnn on her tongue. Few animals start with the letter n. N is a tricky one: knolls, knots, and gnarls try to hide the n away. Nnnnnn. She counts the passing penny loafers and sneakers, but the nnnn presses anxiously against her throat.

  The Dictionary has the answers.

  She darts from beneath the table, away from the fossilized bones of the science room, the whiteboard displays of genus and species. She rushes along the corridor, under the harsh fluorescent lights of the hallway, past the lunchroom. The staccato notes from the music room echo behind her, until at last, she reaches the library. She slips through the swing of the doors and ducks under the sight of Miss Granger, who, distracted by her Dewey decimals, does not see her shadow flit into the aisle of Afghanistan. Egg’s fingers brush the spines of the books as she tiptoes to Upper Volta.

  She taps her feet. Everything will be all right.

  A crackle fills the air. Evangeline Granger has turned on the radio to the lulling tones of the midday CBC. Now Egg knows that the library is really empty for the radio is Miss Granger’s secret indulgence. Home free, Egg sighs, but the words seem hollow.

  After an blurt of static, the CBC announces the next segment of “Babbino” and “Callas,” but Egg pays it no mind. Her thoughts are all about how to avoid Martin Fisken and his gang but the voice from the radio catches her — a voice that sings and soars and Egg must listen. She holds the notes like a flutter in her chest, a sudden fullness that she can barely contain; she feels prickles behind her ears, a chill on the back of her neck. The song rises and falls like a wind that cradles and caresses. She thinks of mermaids singing, of whales calling in the deep, even the ostriches wooh-wooh-wooohhh.

  A song to wash out all the bad in the world.

  A song to make it all better.

  Egg pushes the book cart aside and peers out between the gap in the book stand. Behind the counter, Evangeline Granger is frozen, her cheeks blanching, like a watercolour left out in the rain. Egg’s throat clutches as she watches Evangeline’s tears. She knows she should not be a witness to this but she must do something. The song, so like a spell, has cast Evangeline into her private sorrow. Egg must free Evangeline, so much like a fairy tale princess. Evangeline, who gives her lollipops on bad days.

  Egg thinks of Mama’s mints that she has borrowed. She has stowed them carefully in her coat pocket. That is something, a small comfort she can give. A thunderbolt hits her — it’s a chance for her to be a Hero! Without a second thought, she dashes towards her classroom.

  Egg pokes her head through the doorway. Her classroom is empty. It seems smaller with everyone gone. She spies her coat hanging on the hook at the back of the class and runs to it. Her fingers scrabble for the mints at the bottom of her inside pocket. She clutches them in her palm, the white powder floating in the air, that smell of freshness, of green.

  Yes, this is perfect.

  A hand grabs hold of her throat and she is thrown against the wall. The mints tumble from her hand.

  Egg can hear the crunch of the candy beneath Martin Fisken’s feet. Behind him, Chuckie and Brendan sneer.

  “Wait,” Egg shouts, and roots in her pocket. She pulls ou
t Albert’s silver dollar and holds it out to Martin so that it catches the light. Her plan. She feels her heels touch the floor as he takes the coin and releases her.

  “Wow,” Chuckie says, “that’s a real silver dollar.”

  Martin slides it into his pocket. Egg’s shoulders fall with relief. But Martin’s hand smashes into her chest. The silver dollar — there is not even time enough for unfair — the wind is knocked out of her.

  Martin smiles. Egg can see his tooth, the pointed one as he grins tightly, like a fox, like a devil.

  …

  Egg is cold. She is wet. She is blind.

  She doesn’t like these things. She can’t get out. It’s dark and it’s like forever.

  …

  After an eternity, the locker opens and Kathy is there. The light is such a relief, as Kathy rubs the warmth back into Egg’s shaking arms. Kathy wraps up Egg’s bleeding knuckles with her handkerchief. Kathy’s look, so full of pity, so full of rage but Egg can still hear the silent admonishment, something like Oh, Egg . . .

  “I’m sorry Kathy.”

  Couldn’t you fit in for once in your life?

  Kathy wraps her jacket around Egg and holds her. “It’s all right, sweetie.” But her gentleness is too much, all of Egg’s fear, locked and twisted in the dark, releases in a sob as Kathy holds her, rocking, just holds her.

  …

  Boom, swoosh, boom. Egg must run to keep up with Kathy’s stride, as they cross the schoolyard. Kathy seems like a force of nature, a whirlwind of energy. Egg can’t keep her eyes off her, the muscle twitching in her jaw, the scanning gaze, that dagger focus. She thinks Kathy needs a thunderbolt, or wings that can span her fury. By the jungle gym Kathy swoops in, three quick strides and she has Martin Fisken by the collar, his feet barely touching the ground.

  Kathy’s voice is low and steady. “Now what did I say about staying away from my little sister?”

  Martin can barely stutter before Kathy grabs his back and yanks his underwear, lifting him off the ground for an astral wedgie. He screams, his eyes bulging. Kathy pulls him up to the jungle gym hook by his underwear and leaves him to hang. Kathy’s hand pats Egg’s shoulder as the other kids look on in awe and amazement.

  Egg glances back at her wonderstruck classmates, up at her looming sister. Kathy looks a thousand feet tall. Egg trots to keep up with her long stride. As they approach the doors, she slips her hand into Kathy’s palm and feels the answering squeeze.

  Kathy, with a grudging smile, tells her, “It’ll be okay. I promise, Egg.”

  She promises.

  …

  In bed, Egg pulls the blanket over her head as Mama and Kathy yell in the kitchen, Mama calling up Jesus to turn the other cheek and Kathy shouting to Hell with all of that. Egg bites her hand. Hell. H E double hockey sticks. Her knuckles still bleed from the inside of the locker. Kathy has gotten a week’s detention for stringing up Martin Fisken but she just shrugs it off. How can she be so brave? Now Mama is saying she doesn’t like Kathy’s attitude, how she dresses, or how she hangs out with Stacey Norman and, last of all, how Mama’s whiskey has gone missing.

  Egg curls deeper under her covers.

  It is her fault. Reverend Samuels always says that things happen for a reason. It is her fault for Mama and Kathy screaming at each other, Papa in the ostrich barn, and Albert in Heaven.

  And she has lost the silver dollar. Albert’s silver dollar. Her plan was a complete failure. She takes out her notebook and writes:

  Not Fair! Not Fair!

  She scribbles a circle on the page. Round and round in frustration, until the pencil gouges into the paper, round and round until the tip breaks. Stab, stab, stab, into the centre.

  Egg stares at the hole on the page. She will not cry. She places her forehead against the notebook.

  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

  Her tears blot the sheet. With her eyes full of tears, her fingers fumble for the broken head of the pencil. With the stub of lead, she writes:

  Money did not work with Martin.

  Plan did not work.

  The hurt is what he is after.

  …

  She slides off the bed, imagining some kind of abyss, or chasm. The edge of the world, the end of it. She wants to plummet and shatter, the whole day broken, her whole life wrong. She falls, eyes closed, feels the vertiginous drop, that spike of fear. Her back hits the floor, a bump on the back of her head. There. With a slow roll, she scoots under the bed.

  Egg clutches Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and the Young Reader’s Guide to Science. She wants to know how to survive the worst things. Her eyes are blurry but she tells no one. She can’t read the blackboard and Mrs. Syms thinks she is stupid, but a four-eyes ostrich Egghead is just too much in Bittercreek, the laws of nature would not allow it. Egg squints and tries to read about Newton and the apples and the oranges in the Young Reader’s Guide to Science. There is no equal opposite force at rest or in motion. This is the law of everything. Egg yawns. She gazes at the photograph of Anne Frank at the back of the book and rubs stars into her eyes. There is a secret, some kind of code that will make everything better. She has looked around and everyone seems to know it, some kind of key, or sign, or something. In the beginning was the Word and the end will be Revelation. If she stares long enough at the photo, Anne Frank will tell her. Egg is patient. Good things come to those who wait.

  Wonder Woman has magical bracelets that deflect bullets and she carries the Lasso of Truth. But you can see her through her invisible plane, sitting upright and everything in her golden wonder bra all in the middle of the air. Egg wants to be a superhero but not like Wonder Woman. Every superhero has a fatal flaw that the Greeks call hubris. Pride is what the lions have, on their golden fields of Savannah. Mutual of Omaha tells us so. The king of the beasts, they tell us, but if there are kings, then there are queens and knights and sacrificial pawns and pride that goes before the Fall.

  As Egg hears Kathy stamp up the stairs, she grabs her blue Ninny Blankie from the top of the bed and scuttles underneath again. Her door gives a creak as it opens. Egg can see her sister’s scuffed up sneakers — and then Kathy’s head after she drops to her knees and looks under the bed.

  “Come on, Egg,” Kathy says, “let’s get out of here.”

  …

  Kathy drives the truck down the trail as Egg bounces on the seat beside her. With the windows rolled down, Egg feels the wind through her hair, the roar in her ears. On this gravel strip, the rocks spray upwards, flung from the roll of the tires, ringing a metallic melody of pings and rattles. To the west, the foothills rise over the late autumn evening, as the sky rolls with clouds, a fistful of sunlight punching through. Distance is a smear on the horizon.

  The dusk floats down, flattening the fields for as far as the eye can see.

  They are going to the coulee.

  Egg feels the descent before she sees it, the truck speeding faster. The silver glint of sage sparkles on the slope with a burst of yellow cactus flowers amidst the crop of prickles. It always surprises Egg, this rift in the plain, the sudden drop. As they descend, the horizon rises and the sun flashes in the grooves of the ridge — then a darkness as the coulee swallows them. Kathy clicks on her headlights.

  “Woooo,” Egg howls, as the bump at the bottom of the trail jolts her out of her seat and she sails off the vinyl, floating for a moment in the cab of the truck. Every speck on the windshield, every scratch on the dash seems vital, important. The dangling green Little Tree on the rear-view mirror, the glint of Kathy’s key chain with her peace sign pendant. Egg can see the smallest detail. There is the faint scent of day-old skunk wafting from the roadside, mixing with the synthetic pine. Her skin tingles. She feels the lift, the air surrounds her — she is free.

  Egg is defying gravity.

  “— ooo!” She lands hard on the edge of the weathered vinyl, a small bounce as the spring jabs against her tailbone.

  She winces but the flight is worth it.

 
; Kathy cranks up the radio against the din of gravel. The uneven trail rocks them from side to side. Cat Stevens on the dial, with the strum of his guitar. Kathy and Egg begin to sing “Oh Very Young,” away from the house, the barn, the town. They skid across what was once a riverbed to the bottom of the coulee. Egg wonders why the song is so sad when they are so very young. It is a sweet kind of sadness that melts on your tongue and lingers.

  At the foot of the coulee Kathy parks the truck beneath the spread of mottled cottonwoods. Kathy slams the door behind her with a satisfying thud. Egg scrambles towards the firepit, her foot catching on a raised root.

  “Help me get some kindling,” Kathy hollers. As an afterthought she adds, “But don’t go too far.”

  Beneath the cottonwoods, Egg gathers twigs and, cautiously in the crook of her arm, brittle thistles. She pulls at a sprig of sage. Her feet rustle through the carpet of diamond-shaped leaves. At the tallest tree, she places her hand on the thick, fissured bark. She winds through the trunks, to the stand of white spruce. She picks up the slender cones, her feet crunching through the leaves to the mouldy damp below.

  Kathy stacks a loose pyramid of deadfall branches in the firepit and scatters Egg’s tinder inside. She shifts the logs, pushing them further from the pit. Egg watches as Kathy lights the kindling — the flash as the match head strikes the side of the Redbird box — and blows the embers into a smoky spiral. In the fire, the nettles crackle, the snap-spark as the burrs curl against the heat, succumbing to the flame. Egg rubs the grit off her palms, the slight indent of needle and pine. Her hands hold the scent of sage. She sits on the log, hands to the fire as she wiggles her fingers against the dancing light.

  Kathy slaps her hands together, brushing off the dirt. She hunkers down next to Egg.

  “Egg?”

  “Hm?”

  “What did you do with the whiskey?”

  Egg hugs her fists to her chest. So this is why Kathy has brought her here, away from the house, away from Mama. “I poured it down the drain,” she peeps.

  Kathy sighs. “Well, at least you didn’t drink it.” Her voice is caught between relief and exasperation.