The Clay Girl

by Heather Tucker

“What does it mean?”

  She checks a big book. “Pearl.”

  “That’s nice, I guess.”

  Jasper pokes, Oyster insides aren’t near as good as shiny dolphins.

  “Well, merciful heavens, look what’s been hiding in your name all along.” She spells A-R-I. “It means lion. It can also mean eagle.” She lifts my chin. “Ari Lioneagle. Suits you.”

  Pleasant Cove’s grade three/four teacher has paint splatters on her white runners and hair bursting wind-happy red.

  “Mrs. Brown,” says Auntie Mary, “this is my niece, Ari.”

  “Well, aren’t you a bright penny.”

  “Your turkeys are spectacular.”

  “Pardon?”

  I point to the apple turkeys with marshmallow heads lining the windowsill.

  “So happens, I’m one short.” She plunks me down with supplies. “Trace your hand on the paper then cut it out.”

  They walk to the door for some shushed-up hallway talk.

  Mrs. Brown comes back, situating her bottom into a chair. “Your auntie will be back at three thirty. How about you and I get to know each other before the others arrive. What were you learning at your old school?”

  “Well . . . I didn’t have much time for regular school ’cause . . . I was in Siberia hunting pandas.”

  “And did you catch any?”

  “No, ma’am. They’re good hiders.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well . . . my daddy got sick with frostbite so I captured some wild huskies and made a sled out of a crashed airplane door and mushed him across the tundra to a hospital in Mexico.”

  Mrs. Brown snatches me from my chair like a lizard takes a fly. “Glory beaver, you’re a story weaver.”

  Her chest clouds under my cheek. Jasper, look at all her goodness poking out the sides of the chair.

  My stick loops in the water, churning out sister-mail. Dearest Jennah, June, Jacquie, Jory, and Jillianne: Moral Corruption is turning out to be a stupendous place to wait out the glorious revampment of the Appletons. I’ve got a job earning a whole dollar a week collecting shore treasures with my best-ever friend Sadie O’Shaughnessy.

  The aunties’ old barn is a skyfish gallery, where driftwood becomes mystical beings with sea-glass eyes and red dirt changes into turtles swimming from the sides of shiny pots.

  There’s more musical wonder here than at the First Pentecostal on Hallelujah-Jesus-is-Risen Sunday. Huey and Jake fiddle and have me clogging out the Lioneagle dance. It all sets a body wondering why the Almighty is so spit-faced mad at the aunties for the less beans horrification.

  Sadie settles on the rock beside me. “Sending story waves to your sisters again?”

  “Yeah.” I open my hand in the little rock pool. “Have a swim, Jasper.”

  “Jasper’s magic, ain’t that right, Ari? Can he rides in my pocket for a while?” Sadie knows about pocket friends. She lives two plots over with Huey Butters and his Missus. Huey and the Missus go together like a strong mast and a fat-bottomed boat, a perfect pair for stormy seas. Sadie told me they had a son never returned from war, one lost to the sea, and a wee girl buried in the churchyard. The Butters’ house is filled with a half-dozen of other people’s kids. Sadie says it’s the best place she’s ever stayed and, like me, she’s stayed around a lot.

  Day’s end lands me in a forest-scented room where logs sleeping one atop the other make my walls. The ocean hush, hush, hushes up over the cliff, sneaking along the grass, through the window and into my breath. I wonder if the dragon hid me inside his mountain and no one knows where I am. Not that I want to be found, just maybe wanting to know that some persons notice I’m missing.

  Auntie Nia asks, “Having trouble sleeping?”

  I say yes because that brings honey-vanilla chamomile tea and a story about Ari Lioneagle’s adventuring. Then, a whispered prayer, you’re a treasure girl, and nothing that anybody did, nothing that happened was ever your fault.

  “Is there a God of our Mothers?”

  Auntie Nia sparkles in the moonspill from the window. “Of course. You’ve seen her breath on the morning grass.” She unburies my face from its stressload of hair. “Sleep now.”

  “Auntie, walruses know secrets.”

  “Aye, they do. Listen and they’ll whisper you to dreams.”

  Auntie Nia makes clattery kitchen noise to let me know I’m welcome on the morning hunt. She says I’ve an eye for the creatures hiding in the driftwood that the sea ladies leave for us overnight. “Does the sun’s mother yell at him for spilling all this colour?”

  Her pale eyes soak up the rainbows filling the new-day ocean. “It’s her who kicks him out of bed saying, ‘Make me another pretty picture.’”

  “The sun has a nice mother, eh.” I push up a smooth curve of wood, taller than me. “Look, a dancing porpoise.”

  “Is there any better find to start the day? Let’s go spill some colour on it.”

  Back at Skyfish, Auntie Nia sets to coaxing an ocean fairy out of an arch of driftwood with sandpapery hands, two Band-Aids covering yesterday’s nicks.

  Mummy’s hands were like the row of pink pencil crayons at Ted’s Hobby Shop, sharp and perfect.

  Jasper rides the turn of Auntie Mary’s wheel as her mucky hands birth a pot. The clay bits she trims away are mine. Sometimes a fat chunk, like an extra serving of cake, drops my way and Auntie winks. It feels live-earth as I pat it flat. I make stars or moons or suns with tin cutters, fancying them up with pearly shell bits, sea-smoothed glass and glazes. Auntie tucks them in the kiln whenever there’s room and you just never know what surprises will come out. Big mitts protect her hands as she lifts out a tray.

  “Your pots are spectacular, Auntie.”

  Nia says, “Because Mary knows the clay has the spirit of a child in it.”

  “Like a ghost?”

  “No, it’s mouldable, a ball of possibilities. And clay absorbs water, same as you soaking up everything in your path. And with a little added grit, but not too much, the clay becomes stronger.”

  “Will you teach me?”

  “After this order is shipped, we’ll start lessons. You’re going to make a great potter.”

  Yellow balloons float from my belly to my heart. “Really?”

  “Look at these.” Mary shuffles the bits on a tray. “They’re pretty enough to sell. What are you going to do with them?”

  “They’re for my birthday. I’m just waiting on something from Huey.”

  I unpocket the agreed-upon dollar for twelve brass rings and fishing line. Huey pushes back my hand. “No need, dolly. I got the materials for free. It just took a little bend and solder.”

  Mrs. Butters snatches up the dollar, tucking it between her sugar-sack mammers. “Now, girlie, what’s you a doin’?”

  “Making presents. Auntie Mary read me The Hobbit. They give gifts on their birthdays.”

  Before the clock reaches bedtime, twelve chimes hang from the rafters. They tinkle fairy-like when the oldest foster, Jake, opens the door, all tired and fish-soaked. He looks up. “That’s a pretty sound to come home to.” He loads a bowl with down-home stew and opens a homework book. Music always taps in his foot and sweetness stirs in his butterscotch eyes. Jasper says I’ll marry him when I’m filled out as beautiful as Jennah. He looks up from his book. “Come out on the boat Saturday, if you like. I’ll show you a family of pilots.”

  “Won’t they be drowned by then?”

  His cheeks pink like raspberry ice cream. “They’re a kind of whale.”

  “Do they fly?”

  “In their own way.”

  Mrs. Butters’ busy hands turn out a warm sock. “Huey will see you safe home, now.”

  Sadie takes one hand and Huey the other and we set sail. The big night speaks in rustles and hoots asking for a song to light
the road home and we oblige.

  Her eyes they shone like the diamonds

  You’d think she was queen of the land

  And her hair hung over her shoulder

  tied up with a black velvet band

  THREE

  I know about letters that get folded into pockets.

  Auntie Mary’s braid paints my cheek as she leans over the couch to my hiding cave. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Are you sending me back?”

  “Auntie Elsie just wanted us to know that Jacquie’s okay.”

  “The bustard?”

  She hands me a tiny square. “She had a boy.” The picture turns circles in my hand. I know it takes a while for hatchlings to feather-up, but this situation looks more like a baby than a bustard. Auntie lifts her soft self into the corner. “He’s gone to live with a nice family and Jacquie still managed to pass her year.”

  “Jacquie has a baby?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “Auntie Dolores said she had a bustard in her.”

  “She was using an unkind grown-up word for a baby.”

  I remember the Montreal stress day that made my hair frazzle like a ready-to-spit porcupine. Jennah lifted the tablecloth and talked upside down. “Come on, sis. Let’s make like butter and slide on outta here.”

  Jasper suspected it was a lure, like the here kitty kitty, come get your tuna that’d turn out to be a distemper shot in the bum, but anything was better than the horrification happening around me.

  At the corner shop, Jennah bought a nickel’s worth of penny candy. She sacrificed a whole Pixie Stix and I dusted my tongue with the puckery powder. A straw of lime emptied into her mouth and Jasper laughed at her sucked-cheek fish lips. The “J” Appletons are head-swivelling pretty with yellow hair and bluebird of happiness eyes. “H” Appleton is brown and grey like Daddy.

  “Jennah, you’re a secret fairy, right?”

  “A secretary.”

  That must be just as good because with her first pay, Jennah bought me a ball, Jillianne a skipping rope, Jory a rainbow hair band, June a writing book, and she gave Jacquie a satin-eared bear. She bought herself a bunny-fluff blue sweater.

  I looked up to Jasper riding in the wave of Jennah’s sunshine hair. Two lighthouses signalled under the blue sweater. Before a boy zeroed in I asked, “What’s the trouble with Jacquie?”

  “Grown-up stuff.”

  “Is Daddy still in the river?”

  “Deep-sea fishing, sis.” We climbed the steps to the library. Jennah smiled at Scotty as he opened the door.

  “When is Daddy coming back?”

  “Go find a book. I’ll meet you here at two o’clock and we’ll go for ice cream.”

  Ice cream, too? It’s Armageddon, Jasper.

  I walked to the counter. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m looking for a book about . . .” I hushed my voice, “. . . bustards.”

  The library lady peeked over her glasses. “Would that be greater or lesser bustards?”

  With all the wailing going on I knew the situation was big. “Greater, ma’am.”

  Ten times through the book and I still couldn’t figure how such a thing had happened. Bustards were long-necked, pea-eyed birds, not even common to these parts. How one got into Jacquie’s belly was a Jesus-landing-in-Mary mystery.

  “Is Daddy ever coming out of the river?”

  “He’s not coming back, Ari. He died.” Auntie Mary smells like sun-dried pajamas as she snugs against my back. “Tell me what you remember about that day.”

  “Just . . . throwing Jinxie her ball. Daddy called, ‘Hairy, my fairy.’ From far off he saluted like in our hero soldier game—then, he . . . fell and Jennah screamed and screamed.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Because June’s Icee exploded all over her and Daddy fell in the river. Scotty wouldn’t let me go save him. Then policemen came and gave Junie a big grey blanket ’cause she was so cold and we rode in the black car even though our blue one was right there with all our groceries in it. Jennah said Daddy went fishing. He didn’t, did he?”

  “No, sweetheart. When you get a little older I’ll tell you everything I know. It’s too big a weight for a little heart.”

  “Is . . . he burning forever?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Auntie Dolores said the Devil got him.”

  She hushes my hair. “I know there’ve been so many bad things. Can you remember one thing that was good?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I remember your daddy playing the piano and singing ‘Oh! Susanna.’”

  “His made-up songs were best.”

  “Can you sing me one?”

  My voice wobbles like a calf on new legs. “Ohhh, Hariet, get your chariot. We’re going for a ride. Now, Jory, don’t worry, you can come along . . .”

  “What else?”

  “When Auntie Dolores said if I didn’t shut the hell up about Jasper she’d flush him, Daddy said to pay her no mind. He said only little girls with magic in them had seahorse friends.”

  “Where’s Jasper now?”

  “Riding Hoover’s tail.”

  “You know what I believe? Hell for your daddy isn’t burning. It’s knowing he hurt his precious girls.”

  “Can I stay here with you, forever?”

  “If forever was mine to give, but your mummy has taught me two things.”

  “Mummy teaches things?”

  “Everyone teaches us something.”

  “What did she teach you?”

  “That things never stay settled for long and from somewhere deep comes the strength to find the sunshine wherever you land.” She sits up. “Come see something.”

  I hoist my weary self onto the sofa. Auntie Mary opens a treasure album to a smiling picture of her and Auntie Nia by the shore holding a bundle.

  “You have a baby?”

  “That’s you. Grandma brought your mummy here for a rest before you were born. Mrs. Butters caught you in this very house.”

  “Shhh, listen.”

  “To what?”

  “Jasper’s sing-spinning all colour happy.”

  FOUR

  The side of the overturned skiff curves like a half-opened eye. From underneath I watch Jake hurry a silver fish twitching on the sand back into the ocean. I tuck into the shadows when he calls, “Ari!” Still, he discovers my hiding place. “Ari? Your aunts are worried stiff. Why’d you run off from school like that? Dr. Quinn?”

  My knees hide my head.

  He sits close, his niceness warming my shivers. “I near ran screaming when the Missus took me for fillings.”

  “You did no such thing.”

  “Did.” He tugs on my braid. “The freezing needle was a stinger but that was all it hurt. Come back now. We’ll make everything right.”

  Auntie Mary snatches me from Jake’s delivering hand. She scolds and scolds, then scolds more. “Don’t ever scare us like that again. All this foolishness over a dental check. I’m making an appointment for tomorrow. Now, get to your room and stay there ’til you’re told.”

  Auntie Nia comes and sits her blue-jeaned self on my bed. Her white hair, pulled into a ponytail falls like a question mark on her white blouse.

  “Sorry, Auntie.”

  “I’m not cross. I understand how you feel about dentists.” Her tongue slips her teeth out then back in. “How have you managed your checks before?”

  “Whenever the dental lady came to school I hid.”

  “Tomorrow, we’re taking a trip.”

  “To Dr. Quinn?”

  “He’s too much a monkey. My dentist is walrus kin. Believe you me, you don’t want to lose your teeth. I found out too late how to stare down my fears.”

  “You’re never scared.”

 
“Oh, Mylanta, child. Only fools are never scared.” Her steady hand lifts my quivery chin. “Some say the eyes are the windows to your heart. I think the mouth is like the door. It’s so hard to open your door if unwanted guests have ever visited.” She gathers me close. “No shame in being afraid, but lioneagles muster their courage and fly right into it.”

  On the long drive Auntie Mary is soft again. She tucks a bucket by my feet since I lost breakfast on the Skyfish path. Auntie Nia stops at every rest stop along the way for my cramps.

  Dr. Little is more a caramel walrus than a chocolate one. She lets me sit on Nia’s knee for the first look. “All I’m going to do is shine a light and have a peek. Just imagine you’re opening for a big bite of your auntie’s cinnamon buns.” When I open she smiles. “Well, who’d have thought I’d see a treasure chest open to beautiful jewels. You’ve been taking good care of your teeth.”

  “Jennah made us.”

  “Will you come over to my chair and let me have a closer look?”

  An orange cat curls where the seat dips for the bum. “Could Swish stay?”

  “He might. Usually he likes to give my friends plenty of room for the daisy spin.” She presses a button and “Pop Goes the Weasel” plays while colours spin up a giant glass tube ending in a spray of happy flowers bursting out the top. “Hop up on the chair and you can press it anytime you need a break and I promise I’ll stop before the daisies pop. Okay?”

  From the ceiling, saucy faces look down, sticking out tongues. I only have one small cavity and a grinding-down situation on my back teeth. After everything is done, the ceiling faces laugh at me. Dr. Little pats my hand. “How’re you doing, Ari?”

  “It was nothing much at all.”

  “Nothing much? You growled at the devil and he ran like a terrified chicken.”

  I hear Jasper crying. Seahorses never cry. I press the button and pop go the daises.

  All the way home Auntie Mary looks out the side window, then goes to bed without supper. My bed has wrinkles and the whole house feels wobbly. Jasper pokes, Go and say sorry for all the fuss. Their beds must have lumps, too, because they’re empty. I’m scared I’ve lost my aunties until I catch whispers coming from the sunroom. I know I shouldn’t be stealing a listen but my feet won’t move.