Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

  Kathy hands her the empty cardboard box, pulled from the back of the truck. “Here, you take this in. I’ll just be a second.”

  Egg shuffles to the store, the bell on the door jangling loudly. All heads turn, voices drop. Egg shrinks. It’s like stumbling into a room where she does not belong, when Japanese turns into Jap. Mrs. Crawley is there, with five of her sewing circle, their heads all tucked together. By the counter, Mrs. Gustafsson, her voice too proud to fall, says, “Not that one. It’s the sister.”

  Egg feels like something under a microscope. She backs into the door, only to have it swing open. She almost bumps into Kathy.

  “What is it?” Kathy asks.

  Kathy has not heard the voices.

  “Nothing.” Egg places the cardboard box on the counter and scoots away.

  Egg skulks by the doorway as Kathy asks for her stack of newspapers. The long aisles of Gustafsson’s are packed with canned meats, sacks of sugar, salt, and flour, and short, long, thick, thin sausages dangle behind the counter. Peach baskets line the floor, filled with apples and onions. There is a briny pickle barrel near the door. On the counter, in a glass display, sits a tray of pastries, swirls of cinnamon and marzipan. The cash register still has the old sign of Gustafsson’s Supplies. Mrs. Gustafsson stands behind the till, her smile so tight. Egg thinks, you couldn’t squeeze a penny from her. On the counter, she can see The Globe and Mail’s War in Review, a picture of a burning man. She can see the outline of his robes, the shaven head, serene repose. She picks out a word: immolation.

  This is not what she came for.

  “Kathy,” she says, “I’m going to wait outside.”

  Kathy, fingers drumming on the cardboard box at the counter, nods absently.

  Egg steps out the door. She looks down the street, to the intersection of Main and Maple.

  Evangeline lives two blocks down in a bird box house, the asphalt siding peeling from the corners. The rose bushes are all twisted vines and prickles, weaving into the iron fence that surrounds the sagging porch. Egg thinks, Rapunzel. The windows are closed, curtains drawn. This is worse than a tower with no stairs and no doors.

  Egg presses the bell.

  Evangeline Granger opens the door, wisps of hair tucked behind her ears, curled at the nape of her neck, as the notes of “Sola, Perduta, Abbandonata” float through the air. At the sight of Egg, Evangeline does not move, there is no surprise, as if she has been expecting Egg all along. There are dark circles under her beautiful eyes. Evangeline Granger holds time in the creases of her lips, in the pinch of her brow. Someone must release her.

  Egg places the photographs in front of her. Evangeline does not look at them but she reaches out and her hand strokes back Egg’s hair and she says:

  “I would have liked to have had a child. She would have been like you.”

  Then Egg knows. Evangeline loved him. She feels it, a burst of exhilaration, a discovery like the flare of a match strike, and then a plummeting realization: Evangeline, who has been kind to Egg, all for his sake. Not for her at all.

  “Why did he die?”

  There are ordinary things in ordinary life: a cup, a chair, a favourite sweater. There is the dark side of the moon that knows no light. Evangeline’s eyes are like that — a door that opens and closes.

  “I don’t know, Egg. Sometimes you just don’t know. Not even grown-ups.”

  “He fell. They said he fell.”

  Evangeline stands so still, dawn-lake still, reflecting the morning light. “I used to love it here. I used to think that it was the best place on earth, the sky so big, everything so clear. You could see a storm coming from miles away. That’s what I thought.” Evangeline’s voice is so soft, as if Egg is not even there. “We were driving out of town. Well, we were running away. Fresh start. I mean, we couldn’t stay in Bittercreek, not with me and…well. We made it past Four Corners when I saw my father chasing us. So we took the Mill Road to the trestle. We saw the train coming down, thought we could make it.”

  “You raced the train?” No one races the train.

  “No, we stopped right in front of the crossing. My father hit us from behind, pushed us up onto the track and the train hit us. All three of us. Bumpers got hitched. Funny, eh?” But Evangeline is not laughing. “Albert got thrown. They had to pry my father from the steering wheel. And I lost the baby.”

  There was a baby?

  Her hand strokes her belly and Egg understands.

  “So Kathy lied.” Egg is almost crying. “She’s going to go to Hell.”

  “No,” Evangeline shakes her head. “Oh, Egg,” she holds her and Egg can feel the tremor, the flutter deep inside. “No one’s going to Hell.” Evangeline’s eyes hold the stars, as she strokes back Egg’s hair. She says, “Sometimes it isn’t about good and evil, it’s about good and good. We try the best we can. And we try to make that enough.”

  …

  With one last glance at Evangeline, Egg closes the door behind her.

  Superman works alone. He has a cape and everything. His only weakness is kryptonite, from his home planet of Krypton. Superman, exiled, saved from his dying world by his mother and father, who loved him, loved him more than anything, loved him and sacrificed themselves so that he could be saved. Egg puzzles this over. What does it mean when your greatest vulnerability comes from those you love the best? His fortress is called Solitude. The strongest man alive and he is still lonely.

  Egg thinks Rumpelstiltskin wanted to be found. It must be lonely sometimes, spinning straw into gold, in the middle of a dark forest. He didn’t want to hide anymore. She thinks he just wanted a family and maybe if someone knew him by his one true name, they would love him. It’s like hide-and-seek and you wait and wait and if no one comes, that is sad. If someone comes, your stomach squishes, and then — ta-da! — what a relief! But if you hide and hide and then finally someone sees you as you really are and they don’t love you, that is the worst thing. That is the worst.

  Egg sits on the curb and twists her shoelaces. Now she has evidence of Albert, the mystery of her older, bigger brother. She has evidence but in the beginning the question was different, the mystery isn’t the same. Claudia Kincaid solved the puzzle in the Mixed-Up Files and she became Changed but Egg’s all a muddle in her brain.

  Was it all wrong? Maybe Albert never had any answers anyway.

  The Moral of the Story:

  Evangeline loved Albert but she couldn’t save him. What’s the point of love if you can’t save anyone? What’s the point of anything?

  Maybe it’s a trick from the very beginning, a game that you can never win, like the carnival prizes down at the Stampede.

  Nothing changes. Newton tells you that.

  Egg rambles down Main, her foot kicking a fist-sized rock down the street. With one great jump-kick, she knocks the stone off the side of Nelson’s Barber Shop, a ricochet down Maple. She thinks of the burning man on The Globe and Mail. She thinks of Newton, his equal and opposites. Maybe good and evil are like that. Maybe there is a balance to the universe and it all works out in the end.

  “Get her!”

  Egg nearly jumps out of her skin at the sight of Glenda, Chuckie, and Martin Fisken. She tears off, down between the brick-tar-sheet houses, scrambling through the fences, a long scratch from the wire. Her heart skips as Fiskens’ dog bursts from out of nowhere, as it chases her down the length of the fence. She ducks through the backyard, a cacophony of shouts and squeals, through the maze of sheets hanging from the Geary clothesline, the sting in her eyes and panic’s stitch in her side. Run run run over the garden patch, the green crunch as she crashes through the string and wire, down through the alley by the hardware fence.

  The gate, though, is locked.

  The voices shrill behind her.

  Egg throws herself high, toes digging into the mesh, arms hauling up, the swing of the fence takes her weight, but higher, she scrambles higher, lifts herself, leaning over the bar, almost there —

  They gra
b her ankle, pull her down, pull her back, the wire cutting into her gut, even as she kick kick kicks, there are too many hands — then down, thrown down to the ground.

  Egg blinks through her tears.

  Glenda, Chuckie, and Martin Fisken.

  They hold a gopher, speared through the eye. Jelly glaze. But it moves. Egg can see that the gopher is covered with maggots and it moves.

  That’s when she begins to scream.

  …

  Egg blinks. There is a red dot in the sky. No, a yellow spot. If she closes her eyes, the red dot takes its place.

  If she closes her eyes, the world goes away.

  Slowly she sits up and holds out her arms, the raised welts, her bloodied scratches. Her skin is on fire. She thinks of the well and closes her eyes.

  The dark. The welcoming dark.

  I’ve killed the sun.

  …

  Mrs. Syms walks by Egg’s desk and peers at her sheet of abc’s. The lesson is penmanship and Mrs. Syms frowns at Egg’s chicken scratches. At the corner of the page, she sees Egg’s drawing and looks at Egg as if she has sprouted wings. “It’s a sphinx,” Egg explains, “from the Greek myths.”

  “My God,” she shudders. “What have you been reading? The Greeks!” Mrs. Syms shivers, “who eat their children and marry their mothers!”

  She glares at her, as if she’s killed Baby Jesus.

  Mrs. Syms believes. But in a hard, cold way that hates everything around her. It’s like she wants the cross, the crown of thorns, wants it more than love. Her love is God’s avenging sword.

  Mrs. Syms sits at her desk, rattling her pencils. “Children,” she says, “let’s begin the last chapter of Charlotte’s Web.”

  Egg picks up her book and wiggles with delight. This is her favourite part of the story, where Charlotte is finally seen, after all the toil and trouble, Charlotte finally gets her reward.

  Mrs. Syms begins reading, recounting Wilbur’s triumph and salvation before the Judges, but as she reads on, Egg shifts. This is not how the story goes. The words tumble from Mrs. Syms’s mouth, lies of how sickly Charlotte becomes, and finally how she dies, so alone in the empty fairgrounds.

  Egg sits rigid in her chair. She knows the story. Charlotte doesn’t die. Kathy has told her. Kathy wouldn’t lie. It’s a story and you can’t change the end of a story. That’s where the moral is. Good things come to those who wait. The righteous are victorious. The little engine that could.

  Mrs. Syms closes the book, a murderer with a smile on her face.

  Egg is burning Hellfire.

  “No.”

  Mrs. Syms looks up in surprise. “Egg —”

  Egg stands on her chair, finger pointing at Mrs. Syms. “No, no, no! Liar, liar!” Egg is screaming, the words spewing out of her, like poison. She doesn’t know what she says, doesn’t care as she grabs her Anne Frank from the desk and runs to the library because the library has all the answers, because the dictionary says what is what and the words will never lie. Egg slides into the lowest shelf and pulls the book cart in front of her. Anne Frank will tell her. Egg knows that endings are important.

  She flips to the back of the book, the part that she has never read, the part that Kathy tells her at bedtime. She reads that Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That she never went to America, that she isn’t singing on Broadway, that she will never be the actress that she always wanted to be. Egg knows then that Kathy lies, that perversion means upside down and that Kathy is a pervert of lies and lies. How many lies does it take to make a liar? Egg’s eyes burn, tears stream down her cheeks. The world cannot be like this. Egg rushes to the history shelves and scans the volumes, the heavy, ponderous tomes. The shelf of World War II. She tumbles the books into the aisle, the pages opening to maps, to black and white photographs. The Yellow Star falls open to a map of extermination and concentration camps. She reads about death, the Final Solution. The words jumble and betray. Not even the Dictionary can make sense of this world. There is something horrifically scientific about it. Zyklon B. What would Newton say about this? And God? Death in a railcar. Death in a shallow pit. Death, so naked and so alone. Charlotte. Anne. Cold death burnt to ashes.

  Bad things happen and you cannot help it. Bad things happen and there is no why.

  Egg stares at the photograph on the back of the Diary of a Young Girl, gazes into the luminous eyes of the young girl, hands clasped before her. No, there are no more books from Anne Frank. There will be no more. “I’m sorry,” Egg sobs. “I’m sorry.”

  She runs out of the library, down the hall, but Mrs. Syms’s raven’s claws reach out for her and it is down down down the long echoing hall to the Principal’s office for her.

  …

  Mrs. Jonas, the secretary, attacks the typewriter clacketty clack like she is playing Beethoven. Mrs. Jonas pops pink baby aspirins like she’s popping chicklets. She calls her makeup “war paint” and she has the lipstick to prove it. As Egg sits outside Principal Crawley’s office, Egg watches Mrs. Jonas carefully. Clacketty clack don’t look back and zing of the carriage return. Mrs. Jonas has all her fingers going at once. There is a whole symphony there, the words beneath the music. Egg wonders about Miss Granger and the music she hears inside. Miss Granger would never call lipstick “war paint.”

  Inside Principal Crawley’s office, they are meeting, Kathy and Crawley. To See What Is To Be Done. Egg swings her legs, trying not to think about it. She can’t quite reach the ground.

  The door opens and Kathy steps out. Her mouth is as flat as a roadkill gopher — three days baked and pancaked by a semi.

  Egg closes her eyes. Clacketty clack, don’t look back.

  Kathy sits down beside her.

  “You think I’m stupid,” Egg blurts.

  “No, no,” but Kathy’s head barely moves.

  “Anne Frank, she wrote the book, I saw her picture. You told me, you told me she’s working in the Empire State Building.”

  Kathy opens her mouth. No words.

  Egg storms, “You told me Charlotte and Wilbur go to Las Vegas. You told me! But now everybody’s dead. They die and they die and it doesn’t help anything.” Egg’s chest heaves. Her breath comes bigger, as if she’s spilling over. “You shouldn’t lie to me, Kathy. I’ve been practising for weeks now.”

  “Practising?” Kathy looks puzzled.

  “The march to Auschwitz.”

  Kathy stares at her.

  “If you survive the worst things, nothing bad could ever happen. Not anymore.”

  “Egg.”

  Egg hears the flatness in Kathy’s voice. Dead flat, gopher flat. Mama flat. “And with your scholarship —”

  “There isn’t any scholarship. Not for me.”

  Egg bites her lip. But Kathy has to leave Bittercreek. A small voice inside her whispers, she’s staying for you, because you’re useless, because you’re weak. “I would have survived. I would have made it. Don’t you think, Kathy? Don’t you think it’s a terrible way to die?”

  “Yes, Egg. It’s a terrible way to die.”

  Kathy shuffles to her feet. “C’mon.”

  “Albert told me ostriches don’t fly.”

  “Ostriches don’t fly.”

  “Is he in Heaven?”

  Kathy lifts her head but she can’t say the words. She’s frozen, like Papa — frozen, like Mama with her whiskey. Egg’s fists ball up and she is hitting Kathy but they bounce off like Kathy’s turned to stone. Egg is crying, shouting, and she doesn’t care who sees. “Liar! Liar! You lie about everything! I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!” Egg screams and then she runs.

  By the school bus she gasps, clutching the steel mesh fence. She can feel the evil cling to her. The ink blots spreading, the stain, her soul is staining. Mrs. MacDonnell knows that she is the dirty one, the uglies have got her. The words are wrong, the day is wrong and Anne, she is lost among the thousand million miles between time and time again. Diaphanous. But you can’t be invisible with this stain. The words
slip away, away from her, they run away from ugly. The Dictionary cannot save her.

  …

  She takes her Callard’s candy tin from behind the shelf in the library and runs to Evangeline Granger’s house. She leaves it on the step with the envelope of pictures. Egg would have left One-Eyed Nekoneko with her but Kathy should have that. Someone to look out for her. Anne Frank she will take to the end.

  …

  In her secret room above the ostriches, Egg places Big Jim and Evel Knievel in front of her. Big Jim with his melted karate chop and the many pieces of Evel Knievel. Smoted, just like that. Job in the Bible, he was a righteous man but God and the Devil got in the way. God and the Devil are like opposites but not.

  Anne Frank is dead, Charlotte the spider is dead, and Albert is dead. Dead dead dead. Anne Frank in America is a made-up fake story. Lies are bad and Kathy lied.

  But that isn’t right. Kathy tried to protect her but who will protect Kathy? Leviticus and the Romans scream from the pulpit and all of Bittercreek too.

  Kathy can’t stay here and Egg is making her stay. There are things Egg can do.

  Egg can make herself invisible. It is as close to a superhero as she can get.

  She crawls out to the side shed roof and makes her way down, her comics and Anne Frank tucked under her arm.

  She has a plan.

  The wind has fallen and Egg feels the heat lifting from the earth. Dust curdles in the lines of her palms and the back of her neck itches. Across the horizon, the sky is a stone blue, a blanket that tucks in the dark. Good night, good night, Egg says.