Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  “Guess what, Truda? You have a new baby brother. I’ve named him Peter. Isn’t that wonderful?” Static on the telephone wire, it was the sparrows bouncing on the wire outside the window, making Mika’s words break into fragments … guess … baby … wonder. …

  I said. I said. I said. I said. The sparrows one after another fluttered from the wire. It shivered, a silver arc, then it straightened and dissolved into the sky. Silence.

  I said, don’t leave me here. When are you coming to get me?

  “Have you got nothing to say? Cat’s got your tongue?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s a little thing,” the farm woman said. “Once you come she’ll find her tongue again. We didn’t want to worry you. It’s a little thing and you have your hands full with the new baby.”

  After that, the rain began falling, making everything blurred around the edges and so she missed seeing her mother’s face at the car window. She had stood crying in the house, looking out across the yard at the road through a rain-spattered window and it was the flood. That’s what made everything so wet. That and her crying. The rain came and the road past the house dissolved and oozed black dirt into deep waterfilled gulleys on each side. A man pushed the car down the road away from the farm. They couldn’t stop and come for her because of the new baby, the slippery road, the rain, the flood, her crying. Even though it was her seventh birthday, and they’d promised to come, they didn’t stop. And so she didn’t get to see her mother’s white moonshaped face at the car window. Look, look, she’s waving, someone said. But Truda doubted it. See, there’s your mother, girl. Stop crying for once. Don’t you know, water attracts water? But she couldn’t stop crying and so her two weeks’ stay turned into three months and then another three months. Crying made everything worse. She’d ruined her eyes.

  Ooowee, oowee, the gull inside her chest cried. Ooowee.

  “Did you know that this land was once all under water?” Betty asked. “Once upon a time it was a large lake.”

  Happy Birthday to you, crying made everything worse. But she’d discovered that crayons and paper made it better. Drawing was a bird moving against a clean sky the way you wanted it to.

  “Hey, you sleeping?”

  “Next time, take me with you,” Truda said. “I don’t want to go to the farm. I’ll run away if they make me stay there. Next time —”

  Betty laughed and slid her arm beneath Truda’s neck, pulling her head onto her shoulder. “What’s this next time business? We probably won’t have another flood. And even if we do, we have the dikes now. So forget about the flood once and for all and listen. Thousands of years ago, this was all lake. Lake Agassiz.” Betty sat up and pointed across the fields. “A hundred miles away is the nearest shoreline. In the Pembina Hills. Miss Janzen showed us on a map at school.”

  “Will it ever come back?” Like the flood, a trickle first across the basement floor and later, a rushing waterfall and sealers bobbing about in the muddy water.

  Betty gathered the egg cartons up and got to her feet. “No, it won’t come back. Not in a million years. We’ve got nothing to worry about.” She pulled Truda’s ear. They crossed planks that led across the ditch to the yellow cottage. They stopped outside the gate.

  “Like it out here?” Betty asked.

  “Yes.” The sun didn’t hurt her eyes the way she thought it would.

  “Good. Wait until the flax is blooming. It looks just like a lake too.”

  “There is a lake out there. I can hear waves.”

  “It’s all in your head, believe me,” Betty said. “Now wait right here. I won’t be long.”

  Truda waited. She leaned into the fence and looked at the lake. It jumped forward and channels of water tipped down the highway towards her. It was all in her head but she could smell fish and see shells and sand. The gulls flew low, crossing and crisscrossing each other’s flight paths. She could see their black feet tucked up against white-grey bottoms. She looked down and saw milky water receding before her feet, leaving wet crescent marks on the ends of her navy sneakers. Beige sand, dappled with curious flat grey pebbles, rounded perfectly smooth, was left in the water’s wake. She stooped, picked several pebbles and dropped them into her pocket before the white frothy water rushed backup, cold, overtop her shoes and then up around her ankles. She lifted her eyes to the lake. The gulls cried with joy and bounced their solid bodies against its surface. It was like nothing she had ever drawn. Her own gull rose. She felt the cold water around her calves, at her knees and then it swirled about her thighs. She took a deep breath and dove under. The farm was gone and her imagination was a tree growing inside and green leaves unfolding one by one.

  THE WEDNESDAY CIRCLE

  etty crosses the double planks that span the ditch in front of Joys’ yard. Most people have only one plank. But Mrs. Joy needs two. Mrs. Joy is a possible candidate for the circus. Like sleeping with an elephant, Betty’s father says often. But Mr. and Mrs. Joy, the egg people, don’t sleep together. Betty knows this even though she’s never gone further than inside their stale-smelling kitchen.

  The highway is a smeltering strip of gunmetal grey at her back. It leads to another town like the one she lives in. If you kept on going south, you would get to a place called Pembina in the States and a small dark tavern where a woman will serve underage kids beer. Laurence, Betty’s friend, knows about this. But if you turn from the highway and go west, there are dozens of villages and then the Pembina Hills which Betty has seen on one occasion, a school trip to the man-made lake at Morden. Home of the rich and the godly, Betty’s father calls these villages. Wish the godly would stay home. Can’t get a seat in the parlour on Friday nights.

  Beyond her lies a field in summer fallow and a dirt road rising to a slight incline and then falling as it meets the highway. Before her is the Joys’ crumbling yellow cottage, flanked on all sides by greying bales of straw which have swollen and broken free from their bindings and are scattered about the yard. Behind the cottage is the machine shed. Behind the machine shed and bumping up against the prairie is the chicken coop.

  Because Mika, Betty’s mother, sends her for the eggs instead of having them delivered by Mr. Joy, she gets them cheaper.

  Betty balances the egg cartons beneath her chin and pushes open the gate. It shrieks on its rusty hinges. The noise doesn’t affect her as it usually does. Usually, the noise is like a door opening into a dark room and she is filled with dread. Today, she is prepared for it. Today is the day for the Wednesday Circle. The church ladies are meeting at her home. Even now, they’re there in the dining room, sitting in a circle with their Bibles in their laps. It’s like women and children in the centre. And arrows flying. Wagons are going up in flames and smoke. The goodness and matronly wisdom of the Wednesday Circle is a newly discovered thing. She belongs with them now. They can reach out to protect her even here, by just being what they are. And although she wants nothing to happen today, she is prepared for the worst.

  “Come on in,” Mrs. Joy calls from the kitchen.

  Betty sets the egg cartons down on the steps and enters the house. Mrs. Joy’s kitchen resembles a Woolworth store. There are porcelain dogs and cats in every corner on knick-knack shelves. Once upon a time, she used to love looking at those figurines but now she thinks they’re ugly.

  The woman sits in her specially made chair which is two chairs wired together. Her legs are stretched out in front resting up on another chair. Out of habit, Betty’s heart constricts because she knows the signs. Mrs. Joy is not up to walking back to the chicken coop with her. And that’s how it all began.

  “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world,” her mind recites.

  These verses rise unbidden. She has memorized one hundred of them and won a trip to a summer Bible camp at Lake Winnipeg. She has for the first time seen the ocean on the prairie and tried to walk on water. The waves have lifted and pulled her out where her feet couldn’t touch the sandy bottom and she has been swept beneath that mighty s
ea and heard the roaring of the waves in her head and felt the sting of fish water in her nostrils. Like a bubble of froth she is swept beneath the water, back and forth by the motion of the waves. She is drowning. What happens is just as she’s heard. Her whole life flashes by. Her head becomes a movie screen playing back every lie and swearing, malicious and unkind deeds, thoughts, words. There is not one thing that makes her look justified for having done or said them. And then her foot touches a rock and she pushes herself forward in desperation, hoping it’s the right direction.

  Miraculously, it is. She bounces forward from the depths to where she can tiptoe to safety, keeping her nose above the waves. She runs panting with fear to her cabin. She pulls the blankets over her. She tells no one. But that evening in the chapel during devotions, the rustling wind in the poplars against the screen causes her to think of God. When they all sing, “Love Lifted Me,” the sunset parts the clouds above the water so there is a crack of gold where angels hover, watching. So she goes forward to the altar with several others and has her name written in the Book of Life. They tell her the angels are clapping and she thinks she can hear them there at that crack of gold which is the door to heaven. She confesses every sin she’s been shown in the water except for one. For some reason, it wasn’t there in the movie. And they are such gentle, smiling nice people who have never done what she’s done. So she can’t bring herself to tell them that Mr. Joy puts his hands in her pants.

  “Rainin’ today, ain’t it, child?” Mrs. Joy asks.

  “No, not yet,” Betty says. “It’s very muggy.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she says.

  “Are your legs sore?” Betty asks.

  “Oh Lord, yes, how they ache,” Mrs. Joy says and rolls her eyes back into her head. Her jersey dress is a tent stretched across her knees. She cradles a cookie tin in her lap.

  “That’s too bad,” Betty says.

  A chuckle comes from deep inside her mammoth chest. “You sound just like your mother,” she says. “And you’re looking more and more like her each time I see you. You’re just like an opal, always changing.”

  God’s precious jewels, Mrs. Joy calls them when she visits Mika. She lines them up verbally, Betty and her sisters and brothers, comparing chins, noses. This one here, she says about Betty, she’s an opal. You oughta keep a watch over that one. Always changing. But it just goes to show, His mysteries does He perform. Not one of them the same.

  “Thank you,” Betty says, but she hates being told she looks like her mother. Mika has hazel eyes and brown hair. She is blonde and blue-eyed like her Aunt Elizabeth.

  “Well, you know where the egg pail is,” Mrs. Joy says, dismissing her with a flutter of her pudgy hand.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Betty asks.

  “Not today, girl. It aches me so to walk. You collect the eggs and then you jest find Mr. Joy and you pay him. He gets it in the end anyhow.”

  Betty looks around the kitchen. His jacket is missing from its hook on the wall. She goes over to the corner by the window and feigns interest in the porcelain figures. She picks one up, sets it down. His truck is not in the yard.

  “Where is he?”

  “Went to town for something,” Mrs. Joy says. “But I thought he’d be back by now. Doesn’t matter though, jest leave the money in the back porch.”

  The egg pail thumps against her leg as she crosses the yard to the chicken coop. She walks towards the cluttered wire enclosure, past the machine shed. The doors are open wide. The hens scratch and dip their heads in her direction as she approaches. Hope rises like an erratic kite as she passes the shed and there are no sounds coming from it. She stamps her feet and the hens scatter before her, then circle around and approach her from behind, silently. She quickly gathers three dozen of the warm, straw-flecked eggs, and then steps free of the stifling smelly coop out into the fresh moist air. She is almost home-free. She won’t have to face anything today. It has begun to rain. Large spatters spot her white blouse, feel cool on her back. She sets the pail down on the ground beside the egg cartons and begins to transfer the eggs.

  “Here, you don’t have to do that outside.” His sudden voice, as she fills the egg cartons, brings blood to her face, threatens to pitch her forward over the pail.

  He strides across the yard from the shed. “Haven’t got enough sense to come in out of the rain,” he says. “Don’t you know you’ll melt? Be nothing left of you but a puddle.”

  He carries the pail, she carries the cartons. He has told her: Mrs. Joy is fat and lazy, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. I would like six little ones running around my place too, but Mrs. Joy is fat and lazy. His thin hand has gone from patting her on the head with affection, to playfully slapping her on the behind, graduated then to tickling her armpits and ribs and twice now, his hands have been inside her underpants.

  “Be not afraid,” a verse leaps into her head. “For I am with you.” She will put her plan into action. The Wednesday Circle women are strong and mighty. She knows them all, they’re her mother’s friends. She’ll just go to them and say, Mr. Joy feels me up, and that will be the end of it.

  She walks behind him, her heart pounding. He has an oil rag hanging from his back pocket and his boots are caked with clay, adding inches to his height.

  “I’m waiting for my parts,” he says over his shoulder. “Can’t do anything until I get that truck fixed.” Sometimes he talks to her as though she were an adult. Sometimes as though she were ten again and just coming for the eggs for the first time. How old are you, he’d asked the last time and was surprised when she said, fourteen. My sunshine has grown up.

  They enter the machine shed and he slides the doors closed behind them, first one and then the other, leaving a sliver of daylight beaming through where the doors join. A single light bulb dangles from a wire, shedding a circle of weak yellow light above the truck, not enough to clear the darkness from the corners.

  “Okay-dokey,” he says and puts the pail of eggs on the workbench. “You can work here. I’ve got things to do.” He goes over to the truck, disappears beneath its raised hood.

  Then he’s back at the workbench, searching through his toolbox. “Seen you with your boyfriend the other day,” he says. “That Anderson boy.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she says.

  “I saw you,” he says. His usual bantering tone is missing. “The two of you were in the coulee.” Then his breath is warm on the side of her face as he reaches across her. His arm knocks against her breast, sending pain shooting through her chest. I need a bra, she has told Mika. Whatever for? Wear an undershirt if you think you really need to.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to hang around in the coulee with your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she says. “I told you.”

  He sees her flushed cheeks, senses her discomfort. “Aha,” he says. “So he is. You can’t fool me.”

  She moves away from him. Begins to stack the cartons up against her chest, protection against his nudgings. Why is it that everyone but her own mother notices that she has breasts now?

  “Don’t rush off,” he says. “Wait until the rain passes.” The sound of it on the tin roof is like small pebbles being dropped one by one.

  He takes the cartons from her and sets them back on the workbench. He smiles and she can see that perfect decayed circle between his front teeth. His hair is completely grey even though he’s not as old as her father. He starts to walk past her, back towards the truck and then suddenly he grasps her about the waist and begins to tickle her ribs. She is slammed up against him and gasping for breath. His whiskers prickle against her neck. She tastes the bitterness of his flannel shirt.

  She pushes away. “Stop.”

  He holds her tighter. “You’re so pretty,” he says. “No wonder the boys are chasing you. When I’m working in here, know what I’m thinking all the time?”

  “Let me go.” She continues to push against his bony arms.

  “I�
�m thinking about all the things I could do to you.”

  Against her will, she has been curious to know. She feels desire rising when he speaks of what he would like to do. He has drawn vivid word-pictures that she likes to reconstruct until her face burns. Only it isn’t Mr. Joy in the pictures, it’s Laurence. It’s what made her pull aside her underpants so he could fumble inside her moist crevice with his grease-stained fingers.

  “Show me your tits,” he whispers into her neck. “I’ll give you a dollar if you do.”

  She knows the only way out of this is to tell. When the whole thing is laid out before the Wednesday Circle, she will become whiter than snow. “No,” she says.

  “What do you mean, no,” he says, jabbing her in the ribs once again.

  “I’m going to tell,” she says. “You can’t make me do anything anymore because I’m going to tell on you.” She feels as though a rock has been taken from her stomach. He is ugly. He is like a salamander dropping from the sky after a rainstorm into a mincemeat pail. She doesn’t know how she could ever have liked him.

  “Make you?” he says. “Make you? Listen here, girlie, I’ve only done what you wanted me to do.”

  She knows this to be true and not true. She isn’t certain how she has come to accept and even expect his fondling. It has happened over a course of four years, gradually, like growing.

  She walks to the double doors where the light shines through. “Open them, please,” she says.

  “Open them yourself,” he says. She can feel the presence of the Wednesday Circle. The promise of their womanly strength is like a lamp unto her feet. They will surround her and protect her. Freedom from his word-pictures will make her a new person.