“No, it’s nasty.” Egg looks down at her feet.
Kathy throws the spruce cones into the fire. They give a good spark. She says, “You have to think of Mama like she’s sick.”
“When is she going to get better?”
“Soon.” But Egg can see that Kathy is gazing into the dark of the woods, nodding her head, as if she is trying to convince herself.
Egg bites her lip. “Is it because of Albert?”
“Yes…and no. You’ll understand when you get older.”
Egg is about to ask another why but she sees her sister’s face, the line between Kathy’s eyebrows that deepens when she is troubled. Albert never had that line. Kathy was the serious one, the one who buys the groceries at Gustafsson’s and flushes out the ostrich puke that sinks to the bottom of the trough. Last year it was Kathy who came in for Egg’s Parent-Teacher Interview. She had convinced Mrs. Figgis not to hold Egg back with the first-year runts.
Kathy turns up her collar and pats her pockets for her cigarettes. Her face is lit in the glow of her lighter, cupped in her hands as she shields the flame.
It isn’t fair, Egg thinks, and she wants her sister to know, but as she opens her mouth, a rumble from the trail ricochets down the coulee. She can make out the dancing headlights that have veered off the trail. A powder-blue Chevy pulls up beside their truck. Egg squints. The bright beams flash off and Kathy is already at the door, leaning into the open window. Egg would know that car anywhere.
“Stacey!” she calls out. She sees a pale arm wave from the window.
Egg doesn’t know why her Mama hates Stacey Norman so much. Stacey’s family is white and respectable. They grow yellow fields of canola by the flat plains and they have rose bushes instead of a vegetable garden. They go to church every Sunday but Mama calls them Episcopalians. Egg thinks that Mama doesn’t trust any words that have so many vowels.
Kathy is always softer with Stacey around, as if the world lights up for her. Like Egg’s honeybee lamp that makes the light go gold. When Kathy opens the door for Stacey, Egg realizes that Stacey makes her sister into a gentleman. Stacey Norman is a Damsel Fair.
When Stacey steps out of her car, it is as if she has stepped out of a magazine. Her clothes, all the way from Eighth Avenue Eaton’s, have a glamour that seems out of place in Bittercreek. Stacey’s hair catches the firelight, like summer canola at dusk. As they approach, Egg hears Kathy mutter “detention,” “rat Crawley,” and Stacey’s sympathetic reply.
Stacey’s hand lights on Kathy’s shoulder but she comes to Egg. She bends down to Egg’s height and brushes back Egg’s tumbled hair from her forehead.
“Oh, Egg. I heard what happened today. Are you all right?”
Egg shrugs.
“Well, maybe this will make the day better.” Stacey places a stick of rock candy in Egg’s hands.
“Wow! Thanks!”
Stacey always brings Egg rock candy after she visits her cousins in Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is a Wonder of the World and rock candy is the best candy ever. Egg tears off the clear wrapping. It is a pink stick with a white centre — it has letters that go through the middle so it’s like eating the alphabet. A sweet, crunchy alphabet that makes her mouth water.
Kathy and Stacey walk around the firepit. Their fingers entwine, fleetingly, such a hesitant touch that Egg pays it no mind. They are friends, Egg thinks, best friends. If only she could have a friend like that, how wonderful it would be. She snaps off a chunk of candy with a satisfying crack. They did not have rock candy in the Secret Annex. Anne Frank was so lonely; all she had was her diary. She was surrounded by her family, yet so alone. Egg wraps up her stick for later. If Anne were here, Egg would share it with her. Kathy has read to her of Anne’s escape by railway. Kathy has told her that even the smallest can win. If you believe enough, you can do anything.
Darkness fills the coulee, this valley, like a river. On the upper slope, a pale glow touches the crest, like the very edge of frost. Egg feels her goosebumps against sudden chill. Dusk dances on the horizon as the stars, awakening, blink open against the dark blue canvas of the night.
…
Egg sits in her bed, under the blankets, playing a game of Tent. Tent is like Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence. But Tent can go anywhere. Tent is invisible.
Evel Knievel is back from his journey to the crawl space. Flashlight is with him. Sometimes Flashlight is the death-ray villain. In a story you have to have a villain, or some kind of fight. Egg pushes back the blanket. Sometimes Tent can get stuffy.
Egg thinks of the atmosphere, because if you are on another planet, you have a different atmosphere. She imagines herself somewhere else, someone else. But if she were someone else would she still be Egg?
If she could swim in the oceans like the big blue whale, would she still be herself? And what happens when you dream? In her dream the stairs go down but she tumbles up and the tornado comes and she’s not afraid at all in this world that feels so real. When you sleep you have another life. Or is each dreaming a life of its own? Dreams are like kaleidoscopes — one twist and it’s all different. Life can be like that too. One twist and it’s all different.
No one talks about Albert. When Old Man Granger died, the whole town came out for his funeral. He was a man so mean he’d knock the shortening out of a biscuit, knock it two provinces across. Hornet mean. Buzzard mean. Even Mrs. Biddle, who has no teeth and could hardly walk, came to his funeral, and she came all the way from South Corner. Evangeline had missed her own father’s funeral because she had gotten sick and was in the hospital. Egg forgot about that. There had been too many things to deal with. It was around the same time as Albert’s accident at the railway trestle.
No one came to Albert’s funeral. Well, Jack Henry and Dolores Henderson did, but where were all of Albert’s friends?
Egg knows that when you’re dead, your body goes into the ground and your soul goes into Heaven. But first there is Judgment. Reverend Samuels is big on Judgment. Kathy says that the Bible is begats and beholds and all about slave management. Egg thinks about Albert, and Heaven and the Ten Commandments. Sometimes she sees Kathy looking around the schoolyard and she knows that Kathy is searching for him, like she can’t quite believe he is gone. Kathy never looks into his room and she never says his name. Egg thinks it must be like looking for your shadow and it’s not there anymore. Albert was Kathy’s big brother first, with barely a year between them. It was always Albert and Kathy, Kathy and Albert, the balance of opposites that kept the family’s orbit tight. Egg wonders if a part of Kathy is mad at Albert but that doesn’t make sense. It’s not his fault he is dead. Albert was the boy, he was the important one, he was everything. Egg misses him but mostly she can’t make sense of it all. How can dead be forever? She forgets sometimes and has to remind herself that dead is a hole in the ground. Dead is Mama raising Jesus in a baptism of whiskey and Papa in the ostrich barn and he won’t come out.
Olly olly oxen free. Egg coughs. She holds a twist in her gut, a sudden, stabbing ache. She misses him. She squats, her knees against her chest. If she is still enough she can hold everything together.
Albert is over. Albert is done. Everything so bad since the railway trestle accident. Egg sits up as she blinks back her tears. Maybe it’s not about being Japanese at all. Maybe it’s about Albert, maybe that’s when everything went wrong.
She pulls Tent over her and feels the air close and clinging. She sits in the comforting dark and tries to imagine herself different. Miss Granger says there is no limit to the imagination. Egg opens her eyes and she is still the same.
It is hard to make the imagination stick.
…
Mama is Not-Mama without Albert.
Yes. She loved him the best.
…
Jack-o’-lanterns, dancing skeletons, black cats, and witches — the school hallways are a nightmarish panorama of stark blacks and garish oranges. The Halloween Bash is in full swing with the requisite bedsheets and broomst
icks, the corridors chock-o-block with cowboys and princesses as an echoey “Monster Mash” groans through the PA system.
Tonight, Egg can wear the Casper the Friendly Ghost mask (there are several Caspers roaming the halls — twenty-five cents at Gustafsson’s General Store). Her old bedsheet, with a slit for her head, falls in a perfectly ghostly fashion. It is comforting behind the plastic mask, even if the nose holes are too small and her breath sounds like she has run the track seven times. With the cut-out eyes, the world seems close and contained. Kathy has dropped her off at the library entrance before joining the older years in the gym dance so Egg blends with the smaller ghouls, pirates, and hobos as they make their way to the doors of the library that swing open to the dark maw of the Haunted House.
When Albert was alive, the whole family would drive to their different neighbours for treats: Mama would chat with Dolores Henderson on the south border of the property, Papa and Jack Henry would have a beer on the west. Then Kathy would trek over to Stacey’s and Albert would drop into town and they would all end up at the school for the Bash. But that is all over now. Tonight Mama is chasing phantoms with a bottle and Papa watches Griszelda, who is off her feed. Egg, in the Haunted House, steps under the cotton batten cobwebs strung over the aisles. A string of patio lanterns, decorated with shrieking black cats, their backs arched in cardboard terror, light the way. At the long table Egg thrusts her hands into bowls of cold boiled spaghetti and peeled grapes — innards and eyeballs. Barry Greenwood, with ketchup blood and plastic fangs, shoves her aside in his rush to get at the jello mould — “Look, I’m eating brains!” Egg’s gaze travels over to the counter but Miss Granger is not there. Miss Chapman leans against the back shelves, her arms crossed. She is in her perfectly normal everyday clothes with her red lipstick and polished fingernails, yet she seems the spookiest of them all.
Egg scans the room. The witch’s cauldron (on a fire made from strips of red and pink tissue paper) sits by the Halloween book display of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Dracula, and Algebra for Everyone. Bobbing for apples she will do without because she thinks of all the spit. Halloween is an odd thing, when villains become heroes and monsters roam the earth. Free candy is the best, even though Vice Principal Geary lurches down the hallway in a big wig and a polka-dot pantsuit as he doles out fistfuls of candies from his plastic pumpkin bin. His red nose is not a part of the costume.
Martin Fisken waves his wooden sword at Jimmy Simpson’s head as he climbs onto a chair by the centre table. His skull-and-crossbones eye patch looks fancy; his luxurious vest is all city, a purple velveteen that sparkles with silver buttons.
Egg darts towards Upper Volta and the book cart. Even ghosts need to disappear sometimes. As she slips into the aisle, the stack of games by the witch’s cauldron catches her eye. She stares. The box with two hands on a planchette against a background of stars — it is a Ouiji board. Before she even knows it she is at the cauldron, tucking the box under her bedsheet and darting behind the book cart. There, she has done it. Now she is a ghost and a thief.
…
In the darkness of the crawl space, Egg sits, as still as she can be. Below her, her father sleeps, restless in his cot, his snores filling the barn above the stamping and shuffling of the ostriches. Silently, she closes the shutter of the window. From beneath her ghost sheet, she pulls out the Ouiji box and unfolds the board. She lays it by the wooden crate, in front of her pile of precious TV Guides. The draft from the window brushes over her arms. Egg shivers. Carefully she places the planchette below the ornate letters of the alphabet, the gothic swirls and sharp angles, between the Hello and Goodbye. It’s just a game, she tells herself, but her belly tickles and her throat is dry. Before she lights the candle with the matches from Mama’s drawer, her eyes scan the space: her crate, the blanket, Evel Knievel watching from the ledge. Egg knows to conjure spirits there must be something more.
She scoots to the corner, to the ladder. The rungs lead down into a darkness that seems without end; even the candlelight cannot penetrate here. Egg steps into the shadow, moving by touch alone. It feels as if she is over a vast abyss, like the underwater divers in her Young Reader’s Guide to Science. Her hands grasp the ladder as her foot slips, uncertain of the next step. Her toe points, a kick to find the next rung. Step. Step. She almost stumbles at the bottom of the ladder but her feet land on the solid dirt floor. Papa’s snore, deep and even, fills the barn, above the gentle cooing of the chicks.
She reaches out to the shadows. She knows that Albert’s boxes are right here but she thinks of all the things in the unknown dark.
A low chirp trills from the hatchling pen.
The chicks sit, bundled in the corner of the pen, a mass of fuzz. Only one has ventured from the clutch, its head rising, tilted, like a question mark.
“Esmeralda, go to sleep,” Egg hisses. She looks hurriedly behind her. No ghosties, she thinks with relief.
Her father’s wood stove casts a faint, cheerless glow. He does not stir beneath the clump of blankets coiled around his body. Cautiously, Egg opens a cardboard box and peers inside. Papa has kept everything, the trophies, the ribbons, the baby boots, and the baseball jersey, lucky number nine. No, not this box. She spies the suitcase. The squeak of the hinges makes her heart stop.
Esmeralda peeps.
“Shhh.”
Inside the suitcase, she can make out Albert’s plastic Roman soldiers, yellow and blue, his golden tie, the one for town. She feels the cool, stippled surface of his coin collection and his beloved Tetsuwan Atom key chain, the one all the way from Japan.
Egg remembers a dirt road, and a path that curved into green pine, leading to a meadow. Papa, Mama, Albert, and Kathy, they were all on a rare family vacation to the interior of British Columbia, in the heart of the Rockies. Egg loved the mountains, now so close, how she could see the bands of rock ripple and fold, the groves of fruit trees and the crisp, cold lakes that mirrored the sky. At a certain bend in the road they stopped to gather fiddleheads. Ostrich heads, Albert called them.
Papa, as he closed the door to the truck, had asked, “Is it here?”
They stumbled into a meadow, to a clump of shacks that were making their way back to forest. Ghost town. Small trees jutted through the boards of what was once a verandah, their branches clawing through the sagging roof. A rusted iron hand pump sat between the grey wooden cabins. Egg stared in wonder. Who lived here, once upon a time? Where did they go? She gazed at the darkened windows, at the rotting porch sprouting bushes, a rocking chair gone to mushrooms.
It seemed sad, this lonesome place. It was someone’s home, abandoned and forgotten. Here, a door frame that held how many goodbyes. The canopy of the trees hushed in the gloom.
A deer bounded out of the thicket, darting, with a high kick, into the green woodlands.
A chattering burst of bird calls, then a sudden fall of silence.
Egg turned. Her Mama in a door frame.
“Egg!” Albert called.
In the meadow, Albert had found a rise and took Egg to the pitcher’s mound. In this mountain hollow, with a stick for his bat, and an old bird’s nest for his ball, he gave Egg pointers on the perfect pitch, the wind up, the hinge, the last-minute release.
“Make every pitch count,” he said. “Make it like you’re in the last inning, two strikes, three down, and the bases are loaded.”
She watched him, his elegant toss, how he took the ball, forwards, then back, his Tetsuwan swinging from his belt loop. He moved so quickly, with such fluid grace, his pitcher’s spin, like a pirouette.
Yes.
In the darkness of the barn, Egg holds Tetsuwan in her hand. The ostriches coo in their pens.
This is perfect.
Silently, she makes her way back up the ladder and sits in front of the Ouiji board with her offering.
She takes a deep breath, gazing at the wavering flame and the shadow dance. As she places her fingertips on the planchette, she whispers, “Albert.”
&n
bsp; The wind slithers through the gaps in the rooftop as the long beams creak and groan. Below her, the ostriches scrape and stamp, their wings twirling and blustery, with a flurry of chirps from the hatchlings.
Egg takes a shallow breath. “How do I make things right?”
An eerie calm washes over the barn. The hairs on her arms stand on end as her back stiffens. The planchette trembles. Egg’s breath catches as she watches the shadows dart across the ceiling. The wind sounds a low moan across the roof before the shutters blast open, flooding the loft with a piercing cold. Egg shrieks, her knees slam the Ouiji board, knocking over the candle. The fluttering pages of the TV Guide feel the lick of flame and erupt in a burst of light. Egg stamps the fire — out out out — and the embers float harmlessly to ashes.
Out.
Egg holds her breath but her father does not wake. He turns with a groan on the cot, the ancient springs squeaking their protest as he shifts his weight and pulls his blanket over his head.
Egg climbs out the window, slides down the roof of the side shed, almost tumbling down the ladder. Across the gravel, to the house, up the stairs, into her warm bed, she tucks under her covers without even taking off her shoes.
Her heart thunders, she is panting so loudly. She has dabbled in the Occult, sent a message into the spirit world. She wonders, what would Mrs. MacDonnell say?
She asked. And Albert answered with fire.
November
The last light of day slips away from the barren fields. The downfall wind that rolls east of the Rockies bristles and snaps, roaring unimpeded across the foothills. The seasons can change in one hour, a lazy drizzle that lashes into flurries. Early winter storm. Egg, with her chin on the window pane, watches the snow whip and whirl. She blows against the fogging glass. Her breath, captured by the pane, whitens and freezes. She looks to the barn, the silver outline of frost, a pencil-thin sheen that glistens against the dark. As she leans forward, she feels the magnifying glass in her back pocket.
She’s a detective now, even if Kathy won’t let her watch Columbo. She is looking for clues. Ever since the Ouiji board on Halloween, she knows that Albert is helping her, he is showing her the way from Heaven.
Prairie Ostrich Page 7
