by Anne Degrace
Joyce caught Audrey up as she ran by and tickled her under the arms until she squirmed. She put her down, and Audrey continued running up to the corner, knowing she was not allowed past the stop sign. Joyce sighed. “Summer camps let you go home after,” she said. “I just don’t know what the answer is. But this can’t go on. It has to stop somewhere.”
ALTHOUGH I HAD not been working Sundays I was asked to work a few extra shifts because more of the staff had been let go. It was hard to leave Audrey, even in Natsumi’s good hands, but the extra money would be welcome.
After breakfast cleanup I had a break before starting lunch, and so I wandered outside into the warm July sunshine. It really was lovely here, with its sparkling lake and rolling mountains. So much greener than around Kamloops. I breathed in the scent of pines and fresh-cut grass; Jerry was mowing the east side of the grounds, and the sound of that must have drowned out the sound of voices from the front of the Dormitory where I saw, as I came around the side of the building, a group of men and kerchiefed women — clearly the parents of the children — clustered against the fence. Some were singing in Russian; a small table had been set up with a loaf of bread, a dish of salt, and a pitcher of water. The children stood in a group on the other side, singing or standing quietly. I looked for Vera, but didn’t see her. I stayed in the shadow of the building, watching, a heaviness in my chest. I couldn’t understand the words, but the sound was beautiful, and sad.
After a while the singing stopped and the parents began to pass packages through the gaps between the fence and the gate, and, in the case of larger packages, toss them over to be caught by waiting hands. As the children approached to kiss their parents through the chain links of the fence, I saw Vera standing apart. Beyond her stood Mr. Neilson and Mrs. Doerksen, who chatted under the shade of the tall cluster of trees in the corner of the yard. I wanted to approach Vera, but for some reason I didn’t want to do it when they could see me, so I waited. Before long the parents began to move away, and there was the sound of car engines starting, doors closing. It must have been the saddest sound in the world for those children.
The kids drifted back across the yard, and the matron and principal collected the packages and then moved on towards the administration office. When I touched Vera gently on the shoulder, she didn’t move.
“She didn’t come?” I asked her, keeping my voice soft.
“No.”
“Did you write to her, Vera?”
Vera looked down and mumbled something. I squatted down, then, in front of her so that I could see her face. “I didn’t hear what you said,” I told her.
“My mama can’t read,” she said, her voice small.
“Oh, honey.” I took her into my arms, that slight little body, and held her while she cried. After a while she wiped her face and straightened up.
“I have to go,” she said.
I held her hand for a moment longer, and then a thought occurred to me. “Write to her anyway,” I said. “It will make you feel better to write to her. There will be someone who can read your letter to your mother. And she’ll know you’re thinking of her. That’s the most important thing.”
I KNEW I’D get a week’s holiday at the end of August, one year since I began my job at the Dormitory, and I couldn’t wait. I had plans to spend every day with Audrey at the beach, and with some of the extra money I’d been making I thought we might even take the bus to Nelson and buy some fall clothes for her, and something for me, as well. But that was still a month away. Today was just another working day.
It had never occurred to me that there might be a day when Natsumi would not be able to look after Audrey. She came to the door with eyes red-rimmed and feverish, her robe wrapped around her. I told her I’d just go and tell them I couldn’t work, and then I’d be back. I could make her dinner for a change. But Natsumi assured me she had plenty of food, and insisted I stay away.
“I don’t want you or Audrey to get sick,” she said.
I thanked Natsumi and told her I hoped she’d feel better soon, then turned to lead Audrey down the walk, rehearsing in my head my speech to Mr. Neilson in which I would introduce my well-behaved daughter and make a case to keep her with me for the day; if I missed even a day’s pay, our trip to Nelson for new clothes wasn’t going to be possible. But Audrey had other ideas. I felt her hand wrench itself from mine and looked down to see the face of my lovely daughter transformed in an ugly contortion of rage.
“I. Want. Obaasan!” she screamed, and stomped her foot on the walk. I looked over my shoulder; Natsumi had closed the door and probably gone back to bed.
“Honey, Mrs. Sato is sick. She can’t look after you today. Would you like to come with Mummy to work?”
“I want OBAASAN.” And with that she sat on the walk with her arms crossed and wouldn’t move. When I tried to pick her up, she went limp. I tried to lift her by her armpits, but I couldn’t get any purchase. I was going to be late for work. I grabbed her wrist, my hand tight around it, and pulled her roughly to her feet.
My daughter was screaming. I was afraid Natsumi would come back out with the noise, or someone would hear my badly behaved child. It was very early. I was sure she was waking up the neighbourhood, and what would they think of me? I was afraid I’d lose my job, but more than that, I was afraid I’d lose my child, should someone report that, as a single mother, I was an unfit one.
“Audrey. Please,” I said through gritted teeth. I leaned down. “Be quiet and come.”
“No!” she yelled, and struck out, her small fist hitting the tender part of my breast. I hauled her up by her wrist, wrenching it, and with my other hand whacked her hard across her bottom, something I had never done, but that had certainly been done to me often enough as a child. There was a moment of silence during which she sucked in her breath, and I waited for the scream I knew was coming, angry and ashamed all at once. But I wasn’t expecting what came next.
“I hate you, Mummy!”
What are the worst words a mother can hear? It must surely be these. She’s only a child, I know that, but still it was a knife to the heart. Somehow I managed to calm myself, and Audrey as well, and we made our way to the Dormitory, but her words remained a dark weight in my chest. She was sulky beside me, but held my hand as I told her what fun it would be to come to work with Mummy, not at all sure that Mr. Neilson would allow it.
As it turned out, Mr. Neilson said that Audrey could stay through breakfast, and by then he’d have called in one of the other girls to replace me. By now Audrey appeared to have forgotten about her tantrum, and was content to sit at one of the prep tables in the kitchen with a big bowl, a couple of measuring cups and spoons, and some flour and split peas, “cooking.” When she started humming “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” I knew she’d be fine, and I set to work quickly, aware I’d lost three-quarters of an hour from my morning. There was a noise at the door, and I looked up to see Vera in the doorway. She took a step inside.
“I came earlier, but you weren’t here,” she said. I hadn’t seen her since visiting day. “I wrote the letter,” she told me proudly.
“Good,” I said, but I didn’t have time to talk with her; there was far too much to do. “Come, help me with the oatmeal. I need you to stir while I get things together.”
Vera didn’t move. “Who’s that?” she asked, pointing.
“That’s my daughter, Audrey. Audrey, this is Vera.”
Audrey looked up from her measuring cups briefly but went back to her play. Then, “Mummy, I’m hungry,” she said. “Obaasan always gives me an orange.”
I didn’t think. I just went to the cupboard, got out an orange, peeled it, and gave it to her. Anything to keep her busy. I could smell the oatmeal burning, and I rushed to the stove. “Vera, what are you doing standing there? Come on, now, I need your help,” I said without looking up, exasperated. When I finally did loo
k up, Vera was still in the doorway, her eyes narrowed.
“I’m not supposed to be working here today. I just came to find you,” she said in a flat voice. Then she left.
I made it through the morning, and in spite of everything had breakfast on the table when the children came in. I had two helpers for cleanup; perhaps there had been a mixup. In any case, neither helper was Vera, and I thought to look for her but I could see that Audrey was at the end of her ability to be quiet and civil. We needed to go home. I felt as if I’d lived a week in that morning.
On the way out the gate with my daughter by the hand, Mr. Neilson stopped me. “Bernice, you’ve been a fine employee,” he began. Then he stopped, and put an envelope in my hand. “It’s because of the cutbacks,” he said. “I’ll be happy to write you a reference.”
NATSUMI GOT MUCH sicker before she began to get better. I found another woman to look after Audrey on Joyce’s recommendation, but Audrey didn’t like her: she didn’t play clapping games, Audrey said, and she only ever ate with a fork. It didn’t matter; I had only a few shifts left, and I promised Audrey that if she would go to Mrs. Barton’s until the end of the week, we’d have a picnic on the beach, and we’d bring Natsumi, chopsticks and all.
It was the morning of my first day of unemployment when Audrey and I walked to the store to buy things for our picnic. I didn’t know what I would do about all the questions in my head about our future, but this much I could do. Audrey skipped ahead of me, delighted to have me for the whole day, and a picnic with Natsumi besides. It was a sunny August morning in that delicious time before the summer heat takes over, when you can still feel the breeze off the lake while the sun warms your skin. For the moment, I put aside worries of the future to just enjoy what I had.
When we came into the store, the bell on the door jingling, Joyce looked up from the newspaper she was reading from the top of the stack that had just been delivered. She tapped her fingernail on an article on the front page.
“This one of yours?” she asked.
Doukhobor Mother Suicides At Gilpin, the headline read. I took the paper and sat down on the stool, feeling my heart thud in my chest.
A 32-year-old Freedomite widow whose nine-year-old daughter is held at the provincial government’s special “school” at New Denver hanged herself in her home in Gilpin on Wednesday. A letter from her daughter was found near the body of Mrs. Florence Potapoff. The letter, say authorities, described the girl’s loneliness and desire for a visit. Gilpin is one of the farthest Freedomite communities from the school, making travel difficult. Mrs. Potapoff lived alone.
I looked up from the paper. I could feel the tears coursing down my cheeks.
I CALLED THE Dormitory from the phone in Joyce’s store, but Vera had already been picked up by an uncle and brought home for her mother’s funeral. “The community will be there for her,” Joyce told me. “That’s what Walter says. They’re very close-knit.” I hoped so. It made me so angry, and so sad, all at once. Nothing about any of it made sense to me.
That evening Natsumi and I sat on the beach as the sky turned pink, then fiery orange, before settling into a soft dusk that glowed across the water’s surface. I glanced at Natsumi, who was gazing out across the lake. She looked beautiful. Like her name, I thought. What a lot she has seen.
Around us were the voices of children and families as they began to pack up their things, a summer’s carefree day almost over. Audrey crouched at the water’s edge looking for small things in the sand.
“She’s a happy girl,” said Natsumi. “You are very lucky.”
“Yes, she is,” I said. “Yes, we are.”
Audrey stood to throw a stone into the water and, as if in answer, a fish jumped. She picked up several stones and threw them all at once using both hands, perhaps hoping for a dozen fish to jump. As the ripples receded she stood, a small, sturdy figure dark against a vast lake, waiting for that small miracle.
EIGHT
A DIFFERENT COUNTRY
·1967·
Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from Maine to Alabama to California, from ghettos, suburbs and schools, young Americans are coming to Canada to resist the draft. There is no draft in Canada. The last time they tried it was World War Two, when tens of thousands of Canadians refused to register. Faded “Oppose Conscription” signs can still be seen along the Toronto waterfront. The mayor of Montreal was jailed for urging Canadians to resist — and was re-elected from jail. No one expects a draft again.
It’s a different country, Canada.
—from the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada
WHEN JAMES OPENED his eyes the swirling shapes made no sense. Dream images flickered, then dissolved into themselves like spiderwebs, and he closed his eyes again, trying to reconstruct their tenuous patterns. Gone. Beneath him, the prickly spring grass of a downtown park; above him, a flock of starlings. Nearby, quiet voices, the tentative chords of a poorly tuned guitar, and the smell of weed. It was March, and James was grateful for the sun; if he didn’t move, but lay flat where the breeze couldn’t find him, he was actually warm. When he’d crossed the border and arrived in Toronto two weeks ago it had been snowing. He’d felt, then, as bleak as the weather, but with the shift in temperature his spirits had risen, despite a chronic feeling of disconnectedness, never mind loneliness.
A shadow passed across his face. He raised himself onto his elbows.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” said Myra, curling herself onto the ground beside him in a fluid movement. Long brown hair, floppy hat. James could smell patchouli and sweat, a pleasant, musty combination. Her arrival at his side, here where he knew almost no one, felt like a miracle.
James had met Myra yesterday, when Fig introduced them outside the Anti-Draft League office. Myra, framed in the moment like a stray sunbeam against the bright yellow office door, had surprised James by kissing him on the cheek as if they were old friends, her hoop earrings sweeping his collarbone. Her proximity, now, brought with it a pleasant rush. They didn’t talk at first, but lounged together in supine communion, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the first real spring day. A hundred yards away a girl in jeans and a suede jacket twirled on the grass to her own mental music, leather fringes sweeping the air. To James it felt a million miles — geographically and culturally — from Middleton, Delaware.
“Where are you staying?” Myra asked lazily.
“I’m at Fig’s for now. But there’s a free house I’m going to check out.” James raised himself up on his elbows. He felt conspicuous there in the park, where hair and mood seemed to flow equally; in preparation to cross the border he’d cut his own hair military short in order to make a better impression.
Myra lit a cigarette and tilted her long neck. “Fig’s, eh?”
“Yeah. I was given his address by some people. Me and a girl, we came over together in a van. We pretended we were a couple, going to a friend’s wedding. It was a Quaker group that helped us. They gave us three hundred bucks, a van, a suit, and a dress.” Myra blew smoke, then offered the cigarette to James, who shook his head. “When we gave the van back, I was told to go to the address we’d been given to use for our ‘friend’ who was getting married. Whose name, it turned out, was Gerard Samson. Who turned out to be Fig.”
Myra threw herself backwards on the grass, overcome with laughter. “Gerard!” she gasped, when she could speak. “Man, that’s just too far out. He never told me his real name.” She sat up and wiped tears from her eyes.
James found himself laughing, too. “So where did he get Fig, I wonder?”
“He told me once it had something to do with grad school. Fig’s really smart.” Myra paused to take another drag. “He dropped out in January.”
“Smart,” commented James, who had flunked out of his second year, hence his draft notice. Who am I to say? he thought.
&
nbsp; “He dropped out so he could join the movement. So he could organize, you know?” She stubbed her cigarette in the damp earth. “And anyway, I heard something went down. Like maybe he was kicked out. I don’t know; he doesn’t really talk about it.”
Myra lay down with her hat across her eyes, and after a while James thought she must have fallen asleep. But after a bit she spoke from under her hat, her voice sleepy, sexy. “Hey,” she said, lifting the hat to expose one eye. “You want some Sunshine?” She sat up and, taking in the look of incomprehension on James’s face, grinned. “You wanna trip?”
The day dissolved, then. James had tried pot before, plenty of times. This was new, the warmth of the day dispelling any apprehension. When Myra said “You can crash at my pad,” it seemed so easy. About ten minutes after she’d placed the square of paper on his tongue, he thought wildly that he’d made some terrible mistake, that he didn’t know Myra or Fig, really, and he briefly entertained the thought that they might both be agents working for the U.S. government. And then a wave washed over him — like sunshine, he thought — and separate colours became rainbows, each with their own distinct aura. He could feel his smile, and it felt larger than his face. He turned to look at Myra, and the colours of clothing of the people around him, the reds and yellows and blues, all followed along as if they did not want to be separated from him, he thought. His heart was pounding, he realized, and then Myra put her hand on his chest, sending butterflies swarming from her fingertips and into his bloodstream, where he could clearly see them coursing into all parts of his body.
“Oh, man,” he said.
