Rush Home Road

by Lori Lansens

  “In fact you do. Because I don’t have any problems atall with the child at home but I’ve certainly noticed she’s none too happy being here at school.”

  Mrs. Pigot did not offer Addy a chair but sat down herself and leaned back, scratching her head. “Sharla has many problems here at school.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Are there a lot of slow learners in the family? Discipline problems?”

  “No.” Addy ground her teeth. “Sharla is quite a bright little girl and she minds me very well.”

  “Yes, well, all parents think their children are bright. I’m sure Sharla told you about the homework she didn’t hand in? The last straw, as it were?”

  “You giving six-year-olds homework?”

  “It was a simple task, a little project for the children to work on with their parents.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Sharla was the only child in the class who didn’t hand in her page. All of the other parents found time to help.” Mrs. Pigot gestured around the room, where the artwork was hung over the blackboards.

  Addy looked at the pages and the coloured-in leaves of the family trees and the names of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and understood at once. Sharla had no family. How could a six-year-old explain such a thing? She smiled at the teacher and tried not to sound angry. “Sharla’s family situation is a little more complicated than some.”

  “Well, if the girl’s ashamed of her family perhaps that’s something you should be addressing. It would certainly explain her behaviour.”

  At that moment, there was a knock at the classroom door. A smiling young woman peered inside, saying, “Excuse me, Mrs. Pigot. I didn’t know you had a guest. You have a telephone call. Shall I take a message?”

  “No. No. I’ll…” The teacher rose and bolted for the door, barely remembering to say, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Addy nodded and watched the woman go. She was sure she was right in her suspicion now, for as the woman walked away she detected the faint, though familiar, smell of gin. Addy went toward the hallway, looking up and down to make sure it was vacant. Then she crept back into the room, sat down in the chair behind the big oak desk, and carefully pulled open the first desk drawer. There, at the bottom, barely concealed, was a pint-sized bottle of liquor.

  Addy closed the drawer and went to the window, wondering what to do next. She could see Sharla outside, alone, balancing on the bike racks, looking up from time to time to watch a group of children playing dodge ball nearby. The sight made Addy want to cry. But that’s life, she thought, some people have love, friendship, and good fortune come easy, some have to work for it, and some never get it at all. Still, she wanted to give Sharla a fighting chance. Something had to be done.

  It was a full fifteen minutes before Mrs. Pigot returned. The teacher breezed back into the room and deposited herself in the chair, looking distracted and disturbed. “Where were we?”

  Addy drew a breath and surprised herself when she said, “We were just about to talk about the fact, Mrs. Pigot, that you are not fit to be within one hundred feet of a precious child let alone teacher to a whole class of them.”

  Now it was Mrs. Pigot’s turn to be shocked. “How dare you?!”

  Addy squared her shoulders. Her fury made her feel young and strong. “How dare you?! How dare you spank my child’s bare bottom! How dare you punish her for singing loud! And how dare you suggest that her being part Negro has anything to do with what you call her ‘behaviour’ problems!”

  The teacher’s jaw dropped, for she had hardly expected this. She shifted in her chair and cleared her throat, a little less sure of herself. “Sharla does have a problem with unruly behaviour, Mizz Shadd.”

  “It’s you who has the problem, Teacher. It’s you.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Pigot had grown smaller, such as happens when the bully becomes the coward.

  Addy was trembling, emboldened by her rage. “Yes. Beg my pardon and beg my patience because if I ever, ever hear again that you were anything but kind and helpful and fair with Sharla, I will have my son and his gang of big, unruly Negro friends pay you a visit and make sure it don’t happen again.”

  Mrs. Pigot was speechless. Addy leaned in a little closer. “And if I ever come into this room and smell liquor on your breath while you are teaching these children I will march into your principal’s office and tell him about that bottle of gin in your desk and I’ll make sure you’re never hired by this school board or any other. You understand? Mrs. Pigot?”

  Mrs. Pigot nodded twice and squeezed her eyes to dam a flood of tears. Addy felt cold. “I ask you if you understand me.”

  “Yes,” the teacher whispered without opening her eyes.

  Addy nodded and left the room, pausing for a moment in the hall. After she’d calmed herself a little, she went outside and found Sharla still balancing on the bike racks. “I got a surprise, Honey.”

  “What?” Sharla blinked against the sun.

  “We’re going to have our supper in a restaurant tonight.”

  “We are?” Sharla said, and clapped her hands. Living out at Lakeview without a car, they had not the opportunity to eat out and no extra money anyway. But Addy thought Sharla deserved a treat today and maybe she herself did too. She had twenty-four dollars in her vinyl purse, which would buy them the fish-dinner special at The Satellite Restaurant downtown and leave enough for the taxi ride home. She knew Sharla’d have a hard time choosing between pudding and Jell-O for dessert, and she smiled to herself thinking how she’d order whatever Sharla didn’t and give it to her as an extra surprise.

  The restaurant was crowded but there was room for two by the window with a view of the Thames River. The pretty young waitress took great pleasure in showing them to their table, laying Sharla’s linen napkin across her lap and saying, “What would you like to drink this evening, Miss?”

  “Coke, Miss,” Sharla answered.

  “Milk,” Addy corrected, and winked at the young girl. “Please.”

  “Please,” Sharla repeated in the exact tone and timbre.

  The girl winked back and smiled at Sharla, saying, “You ladies should know you have the best table in the house.”

  Sharla waited until the waitress had taken their order and walked away before she whispered, “We got the best table, Mum Addy.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Addy said, looking out at the river.

  “Ain’t we in a restaurant though?”

  “Of course we are.”

  “But she said best in the house.”

  “Sometimes we call a restaurant a house.”

  “And sometimes we call a house a restaurant?”

  “No, Honey. Doesn’t work the other way around.”

  “Why?”

  “Just doesn’t.”

  Addy had glanced around the room when they came in and noticed an older Negro couple dining on the other side of the room. She’d given them a second look and then a third. There was something familiar about the couple, though she was certain she didn’t know them. She couldn’t help staring though, and wondering. It was the man, his nose, and the profile of his chin. She’d seen him somewhere maybe. She turned around again when Sharla’s voice rose above a polite octave.

  “Mu-um?!” Sharla said for the fourteenth time.

  “Let’s mind our manners, Young Lady. We don’t raise our voices in public. Remember what we said about yelling?”

  Sharla nodded solemnly. “Yelling’s only for emergencies.” She held up two fingers and counted down. “If the trailer’s on fire or if you’re cut’n’bleedin’.”

  “That’s right. Now what was it you wanted to ask me?”

  “Why doesn’t it work the other way around?”

  “What, Honey?”

  Addy was distracted again and could not bring herself to look away from the profile of the man on the other side of the room. He was around her age, she guessed, maybe a few years younger. Maybe she’d delivered bread to him whe
n she was working for The Oakwood. Maybe he’d even worked at the bakery. He hadn’t been on the bread ovens. No. That man was shorter and rounder. But something. Something.

  Sharla was frustrated, trying to whisper and still get Addy’s attention. “Mu-um?”

  Addy turned back and laughed and squeezed Sharla’s arm with affection and said, “I’m sorry, Honey. I’m not being very good company, am I?”

  “No,” Sharla answered shortly, “you’re just looking over there and you’re not talking to me too.”

  Addy and Sharla ate their fish dinner and pronounced it the best they’d ever had. Addy broached the subject of Mrs. Pigot gingerly, and when she saw Sharla still didn’t want to talk about her, she promised, “Don’t worry, Sharla. Mrs. Pigot’s not gonna be spanking you any more. She’s gonna be nice to you from now on.”

  “She is?”

  “Mmm-hmm. You tell me if she isn’t because she and I, we made a kind of agreement.”

  “To be nice to me?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “And Prasora too?”

  “I think she’s gonna be nicer to all the children from now on.”

  The waitress set the desserts before them and surprised Addy by bringing both Jell-O and pudding for Sharla. Sharla clapped and took a spoonful of each, letting them melt together in her mouth as she watched the waitress walk away. “That waitress is really nice to me.”

  “Yes she is, Honey.”

  Sharla licked her spoon clean of pudding, then announced casually, “Collette used to be a waitress.”

  Addy bristled because Collette’s name had not come up in weeks. “Did she?”

  Sharla nodded and said no more. Addy didn’t ask questions. She knew Collette was never coming home and thought it might be easier for Sharla if they didn’t talk about her at all. She was about to ask Sharla how her pudding was when she felt eyes on the back of her head and turned around to see whose. The couple she’d been watching were at the coat stand, the man helping the woman into her jacket. He was looking at Addy with the same curious expression she’d trained on him. So they did know each other. But the man also seemed unsure of the nature of their acquaintance. He nodded to Addy and she nodded back. The woman said something to her husband and he just shook his head.

  When the couple was gone, Addy felt relieved and couldn’t say why. The nice waitress called them a taxicab. Addy left the girl a larger than usual tip, squeezed her arm, and whispered, “Thank you for being so nice to the child.” The waitress squeezed back and said, “No problem, Ma’am. She’s a sweetie.”

  Addy took Sharla’s hand and thought, yes she is, as they climbed into the taxi. The driver was one Addy knew and she didn’t even have to say where she wanted to go. He asked, “Nice dinner at The Satellite, Mizz Shadd?”

  “Very nice, thank you, Calvin. We had the fish,” she answered, smiling.

  “We had the best table in the house,” Sharla added.

  Addy leaned forward. “Why aren’t you taking Wellington Street, Calvin?”

  “Accident, Ma’am. It’s all blocked off.”

  “Accident? Oh, my.”

  “Driver slammed into that big oak near Gilbert’s gas station on Harvey. Car’s a wreck.”

  “Oh no. But that oak’s way off the road.” Addy glanced beside her, glad that Sharla was looking out the window and not paying attention to the conversation. She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. “He must have been driving some speed. Was he hurt?”

  “She. Teacher over at the school there on Princess Street.”

  Addy’s heart seized. She struggled for breath before she asked in a whisper, “Mrs. Pigot?”

  Calvin took his eyes from the road to look at her. “How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t. Oh, Lord.”

  Calvin glanced into the rear-view to make sure Sharla wasn’t listening and added through the side of his mouth, “Drunk as a skunk, too. And it wasn’t five o’clock when it happened so they figure she must have been tippin’ ’er back at school.”

  Addy could barely whisper, “Was she killed?”

  “Hardly a scratch. Isn’t that the way?”

  Addy paused to take it in, then nodded. That was the way. “She’ll lose her job though, won’t she?”

  Calvin nodded. Addy felt relieved, but ashamed too. Why hadn’t she gone straight to the principal and told him about the bottle of gin? What if the drunken teacher had run into some innocent person instead of an oak tree? Why had Addy threatened and frightened the woman instead of trying to reason with her? In the end, was she just a bully too?

  The wind was strong that night. It howled through the trees and tore down branches and knocked over garbage cans and kicked them around the mud lane. Addy slept not a wink. She couldn’t help but think that old as she was she still had so many lessons to learn. And she knew that she’d die before she learned them all. She thought of Mrs. Pigot and how the woman’s worst sin was likely just ignorance.

  In the morning Addy made sausage and eggs. She was drying the dishes when Sharla asked, “Who’s gonna be my new teacher?”

  “New teacher?”

  “’Cause of Mrs. Pigot hitting that oak.”

  “I didn’t know you were listening to me and Calvin, Sharla. I didn’t want you to hear all about that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s a distressing thing when a person’s in a car accident.”

  “Because she’s drunk as a skunk?”

  “Don’t you ever be repeating a thing like that, Sharla,” Addy said sharply. “You understand me? Ever.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “That woman must have a tortured soul to do the things she does.”

  “I hate her.”

  “No, Sharla. You don’t hate anyone.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Look at me.” Addy sat down next to Sharla and took her soft face in her old hands. “I know Mrs. Pigot was mean to you, but you gotta find it in your heart to forgive her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, you carry those bad feelings around with you all your life and hate’s like salt in water, Sharla: once it gets in there it’s a hard thing to get out. You forgive Mrs. Pigot. All right?”

  “All right. But can I be glad there’s gonna be a new teacher?”

  Addy ignored the question, hurrying Sharla out the door with her school snack and warm hat. It was not unusual to hear voices from the other side and it rarely frightened her, but Addy shuddered, when she sat down at the table and everything was still, to hear a low voice whisper, “What about me, Adelaide?”

  The voice did not belong to Leam or the few others Addy spoke with from time to time. It was her father, and he asked again, “What about me? Do you forgive me, Addy?”

  Addy couldn’t answer. She rose and left the room, hoping that her father’s voice wouldn’t follow. Hoping she wouldn’t hear it again. She would never forgive him.

  Tea

  HAMOND FERGUSON HAD TAKEN Addy’s suitcase and his mother’s, of course, and begun to walk away from the train station in Chatham without a word or second glance. He kept his eyes on his boots and swung his head from side to side as Willow peppered him with questions about Olivia’s wedding. “Have to ask Mary Alice about that,” he said seven times before Willow caught on she was talking to the wrong person.

  Addy had expected Hamond to be driving a truck, seeing as Willow’d said he was a farmer, but they walked past the Chatham station and crossed two busy streets and there appeared to be no truck or wagon or any other method of transport waiting for them. Addy wondered if they were going straight to the wedding and if the roof would cave in if she dared to enter the church. She was sore and still not accustomed to the weight of Verilynn’s big boots but didn’t mind that she lagged behind. She wanted to give Hamond and Willow a little privacy in case he had a protest.

  She looked around the busy streets and marvelled at how one town could look so much like another. The little ne
ighbourhood they were heading for now looked not unlike the one where she’d lived in Detroit, or the one Morris Davies drove her through in Sandwich. She wondered if when she got to Toronto, she’d be disappointed by the sameness of it too.

  They walked down a street called Degge Street, past modest clapboard houses with tiny front yards, and backyards that were small patches of grass with wood sheds and not much else. Hamond turned when they reached the end of the street and started up the walkway of the smaller-than-the-rest corner house. Willow turned to look at Addy, as if she suddenly remembered her presence. “Hamond says it’s fine for you to stay.”

  Given the man’s expression when he first laid eyes on her, Addy was surprised by Hamond’s generosity. “He said it’s fine?”

  Willow nodded. “He said you can stay as long as you need. This is his and Mary Alice’s house. You coming inside or not?”

  Addy looked up at the little house, confused. “I thought he was a farmer.”

  Willow laughed. “He is a farmer, but he don’t own the land he farms, Child. Not many Negro landowners around here. Unless you count Rusholme, but that’s a whole different story.”

  Addy shivered at the mention of Rusholme and thought of her father. She looked down Degge Street, wondering if Wallace’s feet had trod upon this very sidewalk. She felt a rush of panic when she realized she didn’t know where the canning factory was. She’d find out though and be sure to avoid that part of town during her short stay. She reckoned Hamond Ferguson’d be able to direct her to a jeweller who’d give her a good price on her diamond-and-emerald ring. Then she could get back on the train and go. She was determined to go to Toronto, or anywhere that wasn’t here.

  Before Hamond even pulled open the front door, Addy could hear the commotion inside. There were easily a dozen women, young and old, quiet and bold, all crammed into the little sitting room. Addy could see Olivia Ferguson in her long buttery gown, her headpiece askew, a sheer veil falling over her tear-streaked face. The bride exhaled a sob and the women’s voices rose above in wails of comfort. Addy watched Willow fold into the crowd and make her way to Olivia, glad she herself had become invisible.