She slides down the hall in her slippery socks and places her ear on Mama’s door. Mama’s breathing is deep and even. She is asleep and Kathy is out with the truck, no doubt with Stacey, so the coast is clear. Egg skips down to the kitchen and pulls out the magnifying glass and turns to the cellar.
The tall, grey cellar door, scarred and warped with many seasons, stands beside the pantry. A long rough gouge scores the wood across the bottom length. A black stain mars the upper corner. Egg can feel the icy draft rushing through the gap over the threshold, the eerie whistle that it makes. It breathes, she thinks, quelling the twist in her stomach. She grasps the knob, feels the shock of cold metal against her palm, and pushes the door open. A wave of frigid air washes over her. In the darkness of the stairwell, she gropes for the cord — click — the bald electric blub flickers on.
She raises the magnifying glass with a flourish. “Begone all monsters!” she wants to shout but it only comes out in a squeak.
Nothing.
A centipede scurries across the wall and Egg almost screams. It’s all those legs. It scares her so much that she even pees a little.
Cautiously she makes her way down, hand on the dusty, wooden banister. With every step the stairway seems to lengthen. Every creak is an announcement that she is here, an intruder in this sunken realm of darkness, of silent creeping things. Her skin crawls against the damp, the seeping, insinuating chill. She stumbles and throws her hand against the wall — feels the crumbling red granules of the brick — and she rubs her palm against her shirt to get rid of that tacky, clinging grit. There is a peculiar smell of root cellars and rough woven sacks, of musty dark corners and things best left forgotten.
A crate of Mama’s whiskey sits by the bottom of the stairs between a bag of rotting onions and a box of sprouting potatoes. Strange tools clutter the space — a sickle, a long saw, a scythe, the rusting wheels of a broken baler. In the far corner of the basement, there is what looks like a table, covered with a ragged sheet.
She need only take a few steps and the table will be within her reach. Stories of mummies with their brains picked out through their noses and the Curse of King Tut’s Tomb run through her head. Then she thinks of Marie Curie from her Young Reader’s Guide to Science. Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and the theory of radioactivity. She won two Noble Prizes but she paid the ultimate price. Egg thinks of the bravery of Marie Curie, so she reaches out her hand and steps forward.
She grabs the sheet. With one tug, it falls to the floor.
In front of her, there is a figure-eight rail with a roundabout and tunnel, even a country station stop. The forest is caught by a loop of track. Tiny figures stand on the platform, motionless, frozen in time. This is Albert’s train set, Egg realizes, but he will never come for it now. It strikes her as sad, these patient figures, this abandoned track. As she runs her finger along the line of rail, she thinks of Albert’s train by the railway trestle. Character is destiny. But Albert’s train was an accident. Can destiny be an accident?
She thinks of Anne and her rescue. Kathy read it to her, of Anne in the last freight car, of the train hitch that came undone. Egg can almost imagine it, the thin black lines of the tracks against the white snow, the crystalline frost that had broken the link.
Ta-da! There are miracles after all.
Egg picks up a girl in a red dress, no bigger than her thumbnail, and places it in her palm, clenching it in her fist. She knows that Anne’s escape was miraculous but so many got left behind. What happened to them? Kathy has told her that the Nazis “came to power” (how did they come to power?) and they persecuted the Jews, but then the war was won and it was happily ever after. Egg knows that bad things happen but how did something go so wrong — not just one wrong but a whole bunch of wrongs? What did all the good people do? Anne, all the way up in Amsterdam, had to go into hiding.
Egg plucks the toy station master from the platform and slips him into the freight car.
“What are you doing down here?”
Egg jumps.
Kathy stands at the foot of the stairs. Her glare could set the room on fire. “Where did you find this?”
Egg blinks. It was here all the time, she wants to say, but is that what Kathy is asking?
In this light, Kathy seems all edges. The naked electric bulb cuts shadows darkly and casts deep hollows under her eyes.
“It was Albert’s, wasn’t it?” Egg balances the freight car in one hand, with the steam engine in the other.
Kathy’s mouth opens but she does not say a word.
Egg stuffs a small figure into the cargo car but Kathy snatches it from her. “What are you doing?” Kathy demands. She stares at the small toy in her hand and, just as suddenly, throws it back to Egg.
“There were so many people on the train with no food or water. I just wanted to see how many could fit in.” Egg holds out the boxcar. “It looks like Anne’s train.”
Kathy stares at her sister, the figures, the train. Suddenly, Egg can see her shrinking, not like her big sister at all. Egg feels a plummet, like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, the sounds all crashing, close and yet so far, a strange and undefinable terror of all the things that she will never understand.
Kathy blurts, “Do the kids at school tell you, you stink like an ostrich?”
“I’ve been ostrichized.” Egg holds up a small figure. “You see, they had to wear yellow stars.”
Kathy steps back. Her voice is dry, as it splinters. “Go to bed, Egg.”
Egg tries to understand. “Are you mad because it’s Albert’s?”
“Go to bed, Goddamnit!”
Egg runs up the stairs. It’s not fair. Just because Kathy is big-sister-bossy-the-cow does not mean she is right. Why is she so angry anyway?
Albert knows. He has left the clues. Why else the train track and this girl in the lonely dark?
Egg places the small figure of the girl in the red dress on her bedside table, in the golden light of her honeybee lamp. This one, she will be safe in the annex. This one, so small and fragile, just like Anne Frank.
…
In the library Egg sits below Ancient History with the Oxford on her lap. Today is an S day: silly, sappy, sacrosanct. Everyone needs an S day. Kathy has been having a whole slew of S days; her smile never leaves her face. Egg likes the word spilth. Splosh and splutter are also her favourites, even if you can only have one favourite. S makes the most sense in the alphabet. It is most like itself, that’s why snakes begin with the letter S, why small s and capital S stay the same. Rivers meander into s’s and eternity is two s’s kissing. Egg calls it kissing even though they are lying down.
The opposite of s is o and that is why SOS is like that. When you need help. O you fall into. O is a surprise. O and zero equal each other.
X is another story altogether.
Martin Fisken got into a fight with Ronald Grimchuk. Martin got hurt real bad. Egg gave him a candy from her lunch but he only stepped on it and kicked it away. Bullies are like that. Sometimes mad is all they got. Martin boasted that his name was called on The Buck Shot Show because he wrote in for his birthday. Only townies can see The Buck Shot Show during lunchtime. Egg doesn’t know what the big deal is anyway.
This was after Martin showed his pen-is to the girls in the schoolyard. Egg called it a pen-is but he said it was called a pee-nis because pee comes out of it. Egg thinks that is gross, like swishing jello through your teeth, spitting it out, then drinking it. She knows that S - E - X is two people mashing up against each other and making babies. Egg thinks that something is wrong with Martin’s pen-is. It’s all wrinkly and ugly.
S - E - X is called Original Sin but Egg doesn’t understand why it is a sin to make babies.
She thinks that if there are rules, people should tell you them, else you just get into trouble and it’s really not your fault. How are you supposed to not talk about something if they don’t tell you what to not talk about? Then Mrs. MacDonnell just starts turning
red and it’s out the door for you.
…
Time crawls in Mrs. Syms’s afternoon class. It is after lunch and Egg’s head feels heavy. Insects with exoskeletons, with the bones on the outside. Egg wonders how you can make insects boring.
There is a knock on the door and thirty-two heads look up.
A blond puffball that is Mrs. Jonas’s head pops into the classroom. Behind her trails a shadow. At the blackboard, Mrs. Syms stiffens, the chalk snaps in her fingers, and she goes to the door.
The class is strangely silent, strangely still.
When Mrs. Syms turns, she holds a girl in front of her.
But oh, what a girl! She is so much bigger and older and from another country. Her skin is dark brown, like earth after rain, and she is wrapped up in orange and gold. The other girls in the class smirk and whisper — jealous, Egg thinks. But this one, she seems so soft, so warm that Egg wants to curl up beside her.
“Now. We have a guest. A late. Addition.” Mrs. Syms does not sound pleased. Mrs. Syms sounds as if she is swallowing a three-foot pickerel. “Tell them your name, child. Quickly, the class is waiting.”
The girl does not say a word.
Mrs. Syms huffs and puffs. “It’s Kuldeep.” Egg can see Mrs. Syms’s teeth when she says this.
The pickerel wriggles in Mrs. Syms’s gullet and her talons are out as she pushes Kuldeep to the back of the class. The corner desk is pulled from the back corner, dragged beside Egg. Egg sits up, back straight, biting down on her lip. She could almost squeal with delight.
As Mrs. Syms turns away, Egg steals a glance at Kuldeep. Kuldeep’s hands are folded over a copy of Charlotte’s Web and two new notebooks. Egg scans Kuldeep’s desk; there is no pencil case. Egg places her best HB yellow pencil (no bite marks) on the edge of Kuldeep’s desk and slides it carefully towards Kuldeep’s hands.
Kuldeep’s eyes widen, her head dipping into the slightest bow.
Egg’s stomach does cartwheels.
At recess Egg shows Kuldeep the girl’s washroom, the water fountain, the glass doors to the library. As Egg chatters about the jungle gym, the school bus, and the lunchroom, the sound bounces off the cavernous walls of the hallway. She launches into how bats use echolocation in the dark, how the Young Reader’s Guide to Science explains this. Kuldeep takes in the yard, the green, the long grey line of withering maples, all with her great brown eyes. She looks so lost and alone that Egg wants to take her hand and tell her everything will be okay. But Egg’s words tumble faster and faster, about the bully gang and never to eat the Wednesday lunch special and how the Mutual of Omaha shows you that camouflage is the best defence. Egg tells her about the library and Anne Frank and the running speed of ostriches. Gravity is a force of nature and the speed of light is the fastest ever.
As Egg catches her breath, Martin and Chuckie run in front of them in their game of Cowboys and Indians. Bang bang and you’re dead, and the sprawling hit and stagger that drags out across the playground. But the cowboys always get up again. Cowboys never lose because they are the good guys.
There is a chill in Egg’s stomach. Kuldeep is an Indian and what does she make of this game? Bang bang and Egg can see that Kuldeep is sad. It’s just a game, she wants to say, but something is wrong and she doesn’t have the words. Charlotte saved Wilbur with letters spun from a spider’s web, so surely Egg could so the same. Egg reaches out for Kuldeep’s hand. Her fingers hesitate. They touch and the shock of Kuldeep’s flesh rushes to Egg’s core. Kuldeep’s eyes are the warmest brown but Egg feels that Kuldeep does not fit into this washed-out, wind-scored desert. The light is harsh, the air unkind.
A ball hurls towards Kuldeep and without a thought, Egg steps out and smacks it away. Amazed, she stares at her hand, feels the sting against her palm, savours it. She blinks. Character is destiny.
Yes, she can change. She can be the strong one.
…
That night, Egg climbs into the barn loft and pulls her notebook from beneath the safety of her shirt. Egg thinks about the scientific method from her Young Reader’s Guide to Science. The scientific method always begins with a question. Stories are like that, they are a big “what if?” Stories and science make sense of the world. That is why the story of Galileo makes more sense to her than the science of Galileo. The story makes him alive. Like Claudia Kincaid running away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. But Anne Frank is different. She is real. Anne Frank tells you how the world is so you know that you’re not the only one who is lonely or misunderstood. She tells you hang in there because the railway train will come to the rescue. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Egg writes down:
Kuldeep.
Did she come from a war?
Can she talk at all?
What does she like?
How can I make her smile?
Egg puts down her pencil and rubs her head. She knows what she needs. She needs to be Popular. If she were Popular, she wouldn’t have to worry about Martin. If she were Popular, she would be able to help Kuldeep. If she were Popular, Mama and Papa would not miss Albert so much and they would not be so sad.
Below her, the ostriches scratch and flare as they kick at the grill and hiss at the bars. The ostriches, with their black plume and white edge feathers. They come all the way from Africa, southern “blacks” her father calls them. She knows about the Indian reservations; Vice Principal Geary said they have their own schools called Residentials. Egg wonders why there aren’t any Indians in Bittercreek now. She has read about apart-hate, even though Kathy has tried to hide The Globe and Mail from her. Kathy picks up her stack of newspapers every week from Gustafsson’s store. She says that Current Events are not kid’s stuff, yet Kathy has read the Globe for as long as Egg can remember. Egg knows that Kathy tries to shield her from the world but the world is all around her.
Egg knows that the world has categories, an order, an agenda. For everything there is a time and there is a place, in Heaven and on Earth, a plan for the weak and the mighty, from the greatest, most brightest star to the smallest, most tiniest atom. The world holds the big blue whale and the bumblebee bat. That means somewhere, in the middle, there must be a place for her.
…
Egg cradles the bundle on her lap as the school bus rolls over the ruts and rises of the gravel road. She is extra careful today, extra small. It is the end-of-the-week Show and Tell and she wants so much for Kuldeep to like her surprise.
As she walks to her desk she gives Kuldeep a big smile and it doesn’t matter that Martin almost trips her. First is spelling and then mathematics. Egg squirms in her seat. This day is taking forever but the bundle is safe under her desk. Last week Mrs. Syms had said no more toys after Mary Margaret McDougall brought in her Baby Alive, Newborn Baby Tenderlove, and a Wake Up Thumbelina. Barry Greenwood shattered his Klackers, cutting his chin on the very first try, and was sent to the nurse’s office. At the jungle gym, Martin and Chuckie snapped little Jimmy Simpson’s Stretch Armstrong in two in a tug of war at recess, so it was a disaster all around. But this week Egg knows that her Show and Tell is different. Her Show and Tell is Science.
In the last period, Mrs. Syms calls out Egg’s name and Egg takes the long walk to the front of the class with a bundle in her arms. As she turns to face her classmates, her stomach jumps up in her throat. There is a spasm in her belly and she feels like she has to pee. Mrs. Syms stifles a yawn as she straightens her desk, her ruler in hand, poised and ready for any infraction. Egg takes a deep breath and uncovers the newspaper wrapping.
The egg is almost as large as Egg’s head, a cream-coloured orb that dwarfs her hand. At the base, a small segment has cracked away to a jagged edge. Here, the thickness of the shell can be seen. Monstrously huge and vaguely reptilian, she holds it before her. The class, in spite of itself, leans forward and Mrs. Syms actually puts down her ruler.
Egg begins by telling her classmates that ostriches have a claw
and a kick that could break the jaw of a lion. Ostriches vomit in their water trough and the smell would make your nose hairs fall out.
“Ewwww,” the class shrieks.
Ostriches can run up to forty miles an hour and their knees bend the opposite way. They are over eight feet tall and have two different kinds of eyelids. Egg’s voice shakes only a little as she tells the class that the ostrich egg is the biggest in all the world — almost five pounds, like twenty-four chicken eggs. Ostriches can live for up to seventy years and they eat stones to grind up the food in their stomachs. Sometimes they stargaze, their necks bent backwards. They twirl but no one knows why.
At the end Egg leans forward and caps it all off with, “When they’re chicks, they have to eat poop!” as her classmates explode into giggles.
She gives everyone a piece of the white tendril fluffs but to Kuldeep she hands a whole back tail plume. “For you,” Egg chirps. Kuldeep seems not to have understood a word but her eyes sparkle. There is the smallest nod. And then a miracle: a smile.
…
Egg jumps off the last steps of the school bus, her arms out, an airplane. She’s Popular, she’s Popular! The world has changed in some small way. Even the sky looks different; the clouds tumble, and have flyaway wisps — like feathers, Egg thinks, like wings. The wind tousles her hair, the air is brisk against her cheeks. She stands straight. Why, she has even grown taller, she can feel it!
She runs down the line of the pens, her arms stretched out.
“Wooh woooh wooooooh” she cries.
She stops in her tracks. She wants something special for Monday and she knows just the thing.
Her father rakes the outside pens. Egg knows that he will take at least ten minutes by the grill. She sneaks into the barn through the gate, past the barred enclosures, to Albert’s boxes. She knows where the suitcase is, the one with the golden tie. His lucky one. The one he used to wear to town.
Prairie Ostrich Page 8
