by Lori Lansens
Sharla looked up into her Mum Addy’s eyes. “I’m afraid of Emilio.”
Addy didn’t understand.
Sharla wiped her eyes. “I thought it was only my Mum coming.”
“Your Mum?”
Sharla nodded. “I seen it was Emilio’s grey van.”
Addy felt her stomach drop as she understood that Sharla’d guessed wrong what the special surprise was. She eased herself into the chair and made Sharla look at her. “Sharla. Honey. Your Mama isn’t coming for Christmas.”
“You said though.”
“No, Honey. I never did say your Mama was coming but I think that’s what you thought when I said about the special present.”
“It’s something else?”
“It’s something else.”
“Can it be my Mum too?”
“No, my little girl, it can’t be.”
Addy did not believe Sharla’s mother would ever return to Chatham. Even if Collette did come back, she wouldn’t stay long. Addy thought it would be worse for Sharla to know the truth than to infrequently remember her mother as a lost love. She squeezed the little girl to her bosom but Sharla pulled away. “Who will have me?”
“Who will have you what?”
“Who will have me be their girl?”
“What do you mean, Honey?”
“When you die?” she asked quietly, tears filling her eyes once more. “You told Leam you’re gonna die. You told Leam you was just hanging on till you found someone to have me.” She inhaled. “Who will have me?”
Addy rubbed her face and wondered what other frightening things the poor child had heard. “Look at me, Sharla Cody. Look at me. You’re just a little girl and that’s not things you should be worrying about. All right? The only thing you should be worrying about is did I find out you ate a candy cane before breakfast today.”
Sharla smiled despite herself.
“And you should be worried about if you can find your mittens so you can go on and play outside with Lionel and Nedda for a while. You don’t be worried about nothing more than that, all right? I’ll do the worrying and the figuring things out. And from now on, Sharla, you see I’m talking to Leam, or to anybody, you wake me up, all right? Nothing in my old chatter you need to hear anyway.”
Sharla nodded.
“Now, as far as that grey van is concerned, I will let you in on a little secret. Did you see the fellow who climbed out of the van?”
Sharla shook her head and Addy was relieved. “Well, that was Santa but he likes to wear a disguise when he does his early deliveries and that’s why he drives the van ’stead of bringing the reindeers.” Addy winked. “They do make an awful clatter.”
Sharla giggled. “What’s his disguise?”
“A Red Wings hockey coat.”
Sharla looked surprised. “Still got his beard though?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And big black boots?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why ain’t his van red though?”
“Well, red’s no good disguise for Santa.”
Sharla looked around. “Is the present here now?”
Mum Addy shook her head, deciding it’d be torture for the child to know her present was hidden in the house. “Santa just dropped by to say looks like he’ll have enough room on his sleigh after all and he’ll just bring it tonight with the other things.”
Sharla grinned and hopped on one foot. Addy tickled her and said, “But I told him, I said, ‘Santa, don’t be leaving the presents under the tree out here in the living room because Sharla’s bed’s right there and I just know she’ll wake up.’”
“Where’s he gonna leave ’em?”
“I told him leave the things in my bedroom. So soon as you wake up you can come in. Even if I’m still asleep you go right ahead and jump on my bed and say, ‘It’s Christmas, Mum Addy! It’s Christmas!’”
Sharla hugged her Mum Addy and asked if she could bring candy canes outside for Lionel and Nedda. Addy took six canes from the sparse little lean-to-the-left tree on the table near the window. “I got some of that ice cream, the candy-cane one Mr. Toohey likes. So when you get cold out there you kids come in and I’ll make a Coke float out of it, all right?”
On Christmas morning, it was Addy who woke Sharla. At first Sharla was so groggy and annoyed she pushed Addy away and burrowed back under the covers. Addy laughed at that and it took a moment for Sharla to remember Santa had been to the trailer the night before and there were presents waiting for her in Mum Addy’s bedroom. She threw back her blue plaid cover and raced down the hall and squealed when she saw the packages all over her Mum’s already-made bed. She sat down on the bed and was set to open the first package when Addy stopped her. “First the special surprise.”
Sharla looked at the presents, wondering which it might be. Addy said, “No, Honey, the special one’s in the closet.”
“In the closet?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why Santa put it in the closet?”
“Well, because it was too big to put on the bed.”
“He put these other on the bed?” she asked, looking askance.
“Of course.”
“How’d he do that with you under the covers?”
“He just did.”
“How’d the bed get made though?”
“It just did.”
“He make the bed with you in it?”
Addy glanced around mysteriously, then whispered, “Santa’s a magical man, Sharla, and magic’s a thing not to question. Now you want to get up and go look in that closet or not?”
Sharla rose and went to the closet. She opened the door slowly, her eye drawn immediately to the large colour console with the huge ribbon and bow on the screen. She could barely say the words. “A television.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Sharla was quiet for a long time before she said, “I never heard of Santa bringing no one a television before.”
“Guess you musta been extra, extra good this year.”
Sharla turned around. Her face was flushed, her forehead creased. “Maybe I did some bad things though.”
“Oh, no doubt you did, Child. But you were mostly good, and I know that to be true.”
Sharla grinned as it sunk in. “Santa brought a television for me?”
“Well, I hope you’ll share it with me just a little.”
“I will,” she said.
Peas
ADDY COULD NOT HELP but think of her first baby when she learned she was pregnant with her second. She’d been fifteen years old and horrified, that first time, that people would notice her swelling middle and guess at her misfortune. The second time, at twenty-four, she sewed five maternity blouses and wore them long before she needed to. She hoped strangers might inquire if she was expecting a baby, so she could tell them yes she was. Addy felt blessed to be having a child, and so grateful that God wasn’t going to punish her after all that she never complained about her sore back or swollen feet and never told anyone the baby kicked her hard enough one night she thought it had broken her rib.
Mose was away working for much of Addy’s pregnancy, but when he was home he tidied their little apartment and shopped at the market, and reminded Addy every day—as if the forty pounds she’d gained wasn’t reminder enough—that she had a baby coming and needed to take care of herself. There were days when Addy wished Mose was back on the train, for all his tidying and hovering and advising truly did pluck her nerves.
The child born to Addy and Mose that warm September night was a tiny, wrinkled baby girl. Mose thought the infant, with her wide black eyes and gaping mouth, looked like an insect, though he’d never say such a thing to his wife. He also wouldn’t tell Addy that he’d nearly dropped the bleating bundle when the doctor placed her in his arms and whispered the word deformity. The doctor had pulled back the blanket to show him where a web of soft skin joined the large toe and the second toe together on each of the baby’s tiny feet. Mose looked down and felt rel
ieved. The webbed toes looked strange, but Mose thought the doctor’d been exaggerating when he said deformity and he reckoned Beatrice, named for Addy’s childhood friend, would get along just fine in life with webs between her toes.
Beatrice grew from baby to toddler and took her first steps on the worn red carpet in their tiny apartment on William Street. She was barefoot and Mose could see the way the peculiar web of skin spread out between her round brown toes. “Look, Addy. Her feet look like a chicken.” He scooped the baby up in his arms and made her squeal when he blew on her soft warm belly. “You’re a chicken, Beatrice. You’re Daddy’s chicken!”
Addy’d laughed at that. “Chickens don’t have webbed feet! You’re thinking of ducks!”
Mose laughed too but he kept calling Beatrice Chicken or Chick and after a while Addy was calling her Chicken or Chick and soon no one called the little girl Beatrice at all. As Chick grew, Addy felt quietly jealous of the bond between her husband and daughter and envied the pure way Mose loved Chick. Chick was a different child, difficult and demanding, when Mose was gone, and Mose was always gone.
It was around the time Chick started going to school that Addy realized she was not likely to have another child. She ached at the thought she would never hold another baby of her own. Or nurse a baby at her breast, or rock a cranky infant to sleep for the fifth night in a row and not even mind. She searched her memory, wishing she could recall the details of Chick growing from newborn to now. All she could really remember about Chick being a baby was a sweet powder smell and short perfect sleeps.
Mose felt sick when he realized he would not be home for his daughter’s sixth birthday. He’d tried to arrange the days off months in advance of the late-September date, and he wished now his employers had not been so reassuring it could be done. Addy’d be disappointed, but not cross, he knew. Still, his little Chicken would have her sixth birthday party without him. She’d weep when he told her, and cling to his neck, and beg, “Stay, Daddy, please. Stay, Daddy, please.”
Mose hoped that’s all Chick would do, for she was given to surprising dramatics. The pattern was unpredictable and all the more frustrating for that. For it wasn’t each time, but often, when Chick didn’t get her way, she’d throw herself down on the floor and kick her legs until she brought up her supper. Addy would watch and, not knowing what else to do and not wanting to get the ammonia out for the second time in a week, give in and give Chick whatever it was she wanted. Mose hoped there would not be a scene about the birthday, and just to put the odds in his favour, he’d bought her an extra-special present.
He’d first seen the doll in the window of a toy shop in Montreal. He’d gone in and asked the clerk, “Combien d’argent pour la poupée dans la fenêtre?” The cost of the beautiful porcelain doll was a week’s wages. Addy’d be mortified, for much as she loved her daughter, she fretted they were spoiling their only child. Ruining was the word she used.
It took three trips across the country before Mose had squirrelled away enough money from his porter tips to buy the doll. In addition to the doll, he’d come home that time with a pair of wheat sheaf salt’n’pepper shakers from Saskatchewan. Addy’d made a fuss about how well crafted and handsome they were. She didn’t have the heart to tell her good husband that after nine years together she was running out of space for the knick-knacks and was weary from the dusting. She’d started stashing some of the older ones in boxes and hiding them in a drawer. The fact was she wouldn’t be sorry if during one of Chick’s tantrums a few got knocked over and broke beyond repair.
Mose had been anxious to show Addy the special present but had to wait until Chick had gone off with her Uncle Sammy. He grinned as he brought the parcel to the sofa and quietly took off the paper in which it was wrapped. He lifted the doll from the satin-lined box and passed it carefully to his wife. Addy turned the doll over, examining the perfect detail of costume and features. She cleared her throat, returned the doll to the box, and whispered so as not to wake Chick, “Take it back.”
Mose’s grin left him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Take it back, Mose.”
“Why would I take it back?”
“Because that’s no present for a six-year-old girl.”
Mose laughed. “She’ll love this doll!”
Addy narrowed her eyes. “How much that doll cost, Mose?” Mose shrugged and told her less than half the price he’d paid. She knew he was lying. “That’s too much to spend on a six-year-old girl.”
“Well it’s said and done now.”
“Take it back, Mose.”
“I can’t take it back, Addy. The place I bought it’s in Montreal.”
“You’re stopping over next trip. Pick out something else.”
“Her birthday’s in four days.”
“Well go on downtown why don’t you then. Try Gray’s Place. Or see if Lyal Mulhern doesn’t have some nice little something in his shop.”
“I’m giving her the doll, Addy.”
“Keep your voice down, Mose. You’ll wake her up.”
“I’m giving her the doll.”
“You’re spoiling her, Mose. You’re ruining her.”
“It’s just a doll, Woman!”
“She’ll break it.”
“What if she does?! Will the world end?!”
Addy took a deep breath, determined to talk some sense into the man’s thick head. “It’s a thing to be looked at, Mose. Not played with. That doll won’t last a week. Think of the money wasted. We’re saving up to buy a car!”
“I’m giving Chick the doll and that’s the end of it.”
Addy couldn’t tell Mose, because she didn’t know herself, and wouldn’t figure out for a long time to come, the true reason she hated that doll. The understanding hit her one day years later when she was working at The Oakwood Bakery. Her employer, Mr. Revello, opened a small velvet box and announced to his staff that the gold necklace inside was a birthday present for his eight-year-old daughter. “For my beautiful Fiorella,” he’d said. Addy’d been within earshot of Mrs. Revello and heard her mutter to the bakery’s accountant, “I been marry him twenty year and he don’t gonna buy me nothing.” Addy realized then that she’d envied Chick’s bond with Mose because she had no such bond with her own father, but more because Mose brought her home salt’n’pepper shakers and never anything as wonderful as that porcelain doll.
Mose had left after the argument with his wife to go join his daughter, her Uncle Sammy, and Sammy’s good friend Ben across the street in the park by the river. Samuel and Ben were Chick’s favourite people, next to her Daddy and her Uncle Hamond, of course. On the short walk to the park Mose wondered if his wife was right. Maybe he had been wrong to buy the doll. It was costly, true, and they could have used the money for other things. Mose hated to argue with Addy and knew she felt the same way. They had precious few hours together, so he resolved to make things right when he got home. If Addy wanted him to take the doll back, he’d count on the fact she knew best.
It was unusually hot for late September, the kind of day that made people argue was it too early for Indian summer or not, and children were splashing in the river. Chick didn’t like swimming but would sit on the dock with her uncles and watch the other children frolic. It troubled her though, the way the children would dunk their heads, mouth, nose, and all, under the murky green water. Chick was afraid of the water. Chick was afraid of dogs and darkness and thunder too.
Chick’s sixth birthday was coming up and she was going to have a party. Her Uncle Hamond was going to bring the little Shetland pony from the farm where he used to work, and the children were all going to have rides. And her mother, though Chick wasn’t supposed to have seen, was sewing the most beautiful dress of white cotton with an eyelet lace collar and shiny pink ribbon at the waist. Her father, she knew, would bring home a special gift. There was always a special gift from her father, and a special feeling of being adored by him.
The night before her party, her mother had lai
n down in the bed beside her and said, “I can’t believe my baby’s a little girl.”
“I been a little girl for a long time, Mama.”
“That right?”
“Since I been two years old I been a little girl,” she said smartly.
“How you figure that?”
“Uncle Hamond said I was talking like a person when I was just two years old.”
“Did he?”
“Was I?”
“Yes you were.”
She’d snuggled in then, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Tell me the story, Mama.”
Addy kissed Chick’s cheeks and was glad her heart was safely contained in her chest, for she felt like it might explode with love. “Well,” she began, “your Daddy was home with me and I know that was the Lord’s doing because he wasn’t scheduled then to have his days off.”
“And I was impatient, weren’t I, Mama?”
“Yes, Chicken. You always have been an impatient child. You were up walking at nine months and talking like a person at two. Nearly four weeks before you were supposed to come into the world, you give me a good swift kick and you said, ‘Mama, you better wake up Daddy and send him down to get Mrs. Yardley because I am on my way now.’”
“Did I say that with my voice?”
“Yes you did.”
“My word voice?” Chick asked, knowing the answer.
“Your inside voice, Baby. The one with no sound that comes from here,” she said, touching Chick’s heart, “and goes straight in your Mama’s head.”
“Or straight in my Daddy’s head.”
“Or other people you love too.”
“And then what I say?”
“You said, ‘Mama, I like to do things my own way so ’stead of being upside down on you, I think I like to try being birthed with my behind coming first.’”
Chick loved that part of the story and giggled. Addy kissed Chick’s forehead and tickled her tummy. “I said, ‘Child, I’m the mother here and you weigh all of six little old pounds so you let Mrs. Yardley put you the right way now. You understand?’”
