Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  “What are you doing? Where are you going with that?”

  He walked away quickly, looking straight ahead. He passed by the green bench, strode jauntily down the lane to the dirt road.

  “Father, wait. Leave the tobacco behind. Someone might see you.” She followed him but the distance between them widened. She began to trot. What would people think if they saw him? She panted with the effort to keep up. The sound of her running pounded thickly inside her head. He was leaving her behind. “Wait for me. I want to come,” she called one last time. But she knew it was useless. Once he’d made up his mind, there was no use talking. She sat down heavily on the bench and wiped perspiration from her forehead. He walked swiftly down the road to the bottom of the hill where the road flattened out towards the river.

  He hesitated at the edge of the river and then turned around. He shielded his eyes with his hands. “Look here,” he called to her. “I’m not coming back, so don’t think that I am, because I’m not.”

  Tears burst and ran across her tanned broad cheeks. “And who is going to bring in your glad bulbs for winter?” she asked, hoping wildly to sway him with his beloved flowers. “I can’t. The doctor says that maybe I should get someone to pull the potatoes.”

  He waved her question away. “Where I’m going there are enough flowers to go around and I will have my own mansion, white, with a flat roof like the houses in Mexico.” He turned his back to her, faced the river and vanished. In the shadowy pockets along the river bank, the wreaths of mist uncurled and evaporated in the sun. A crayfish scuttled along the muddy river bottom sending a swirl of yellow bubbles to break at the surface.

  She felt the seconds fleeing from her. She had to do something, but what? What to do now that she was a widow? What would she do with ruined slippers and twenty-eight jars of watermelon pickles? She heard footsteps as the doctor descended the three stairs.

  “He’s dead, I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “You should have sent someone to get me. I would have come.”

  She got up from the bench and wrung her plump hands and began to pace up and down. Father, oh Father, she said to herself, you should have let me come with you for once. What am I to do without you? She searched quickly through one pocket and then another until she found a peppermint. She popped the candy into her mouth and rolled it about her tender gums. She felt the relief of its sweetness meeting her stomach. Then she felt the doctor’s warm hands, leading her back to the bench.

  Her breasts jiggled as she sat down. What could she do? A man always did that. They always left women with the consequences. He made the decisions, she was left with the mess. And all because of Eve.

  The doctor sat down beside her and stroked her arm. “I would have come,” he said once again.

  She shrugged free of his touch. “And what difference would it make to call you? You couldn’t have stopped him. He wanted to go and so he went.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” the doctor said.

  “And to think of it, one dozen two-quart sealers dills,” she said. “And I couldn’t even give him one.”

  She watched as far above her the fireball wavered and began to lose its shape. Then the top of it sank to meet the bottom and the sides of it spilled out into the morning sky.

  THE WILD PLUM TREE

  Mr. Malcolm,

  English 100

  Betty Lafrenière

  ESSAY

  The Wild Plum Tree

  It is more than a shrub but not a tree, bark is smooth when young. Inside, white sapwood, porous bark splits with age and leaves narrow tipped, fruit slightly reddish with blood flowers showy white gracing southern end of Manitoba and other provinces, of no commercial value.

  Mr. Malcolm is English 100. He is also Betty’s mathematics teacher, history teacher and language arts teacher. He is straight from Jamaica and looks to pregnant wayward girls and delinquents to teach him all they know about Manitoba.

  “Now surely,” he says, “you must know more about this subject. It was your free choice.”

  Betty shrugs, feigns indifference. The essay is the best she can do under the circumstances. The reference books in the classroom are The Book of Knowledge and Weeds, Trees and Wildflowers in Canada. Some of the girls have taken a bus down to the public library on William Avenue. But not her. What she doesn’t know, she will make up. That’s life, she tells herself.

  “But you see, I asked for six pages, at least,” he says. He wears pastel colours. Pale green polyester pants, a pinkish tie against a coral-coloured shirt. She ignores him, looks out the dusty window down into the city. The rapid darting of traffic intrigues her. Where are all these people going to, coming from? And why? It seems pointless. She saw shadows in the graveyard last night. She’d sat on the radiator in her room looking out and thought, how appropriate: a graveyard in the back yard of the home for wayward girls. They were all burying things, their past, their present, the things that came out of them. And she saw shadows down there, lithe phantoms sprinting from tree to tree, leaping up from the hard granite stones. Today, several of the tombstones are toppled into the grass. The praying virgin with her blind eyes and reverent posture, hands held up in frozen supplication, lies on one side.

  “Did you not understand my instructions then?” the teacher asks.

  “Yes, Mr. Malcolm, I understood your instructions.” She wants only to be left alone.

  “Mr. Jackson.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jackson.” His name is Malcolm P. Jackson. You have never heard the sound of a mob, he has told them. He’d sat on the desk in front of them, swinging his knees in and out, like a young child needing to urinate. I was a boy when I once heard such a mob. It was like the sound of a swarm of angry bees growing louder and louder. Let me tell you, it was not a pleasant sound. Angry people. A mob rushing along the street. I was very young but I learned quickly to be afraid of the mob.

  “Well then, if you knew the instructions, why have you handed me this?” He holds up the single sheet of paper. The classroom has grown quiet. The girls stop talking to listen.

  “Because I felt like it.”

  Several of the girls titter. Betty has not said this for their benefit. She only needs, wants, to be left on her own. A detention is a way to accomplish this end. Mr. Jackson sets the paper down, takes a piece of yellow chalk from his shirt pocket and rolls it from hand to hand.

  “My dear girl. Listen. In my country, education is a privilege. Only the cleverest people go beyond grade school. Our parents made great sacrifices for us. We’re grateful. With us, it is never a question, whether we feel like it or not; we do it.”

  “If you’re so smart,” someone says, “then why are you here with us?”

  He pretends he hasn’t heard, but the muscles in his jaw contract suddenly as though he just bit into a stone.

  Betty wants no part of their taunting. She wants to be away from them all, to be able to sift through all the information she has gathered, to make some order of it.

  “Surely you could do better than this,” he persists. “There must be more you could write about the wild plum tree.”

  Even now, she smells the fruit of it. The tart flavour, taut skin splitting in her mouth, the slippery membrane of its meat, a piece of slime at the bottom of a quart sealer jar of homemade wine coming suddenly into her mouth like a great clot of blood. There is too much to say about the wild plum tree. The assignment has paralyzed her.

  “Yes, Chocolate Drop. I’m sure there is.” She uses the girls’ private name for Mr. Jackson.

  His nostrils flare. The room grows silent. Then laughter erupts, spills over. “Chocolate Drop,” a girl says and then they all say, “Chocolate Drop.”

  His eyes dart about the room. Betty continues to stand before the window, toying with the frayed cord on the Venetian blind. Thousands of girls have stood at this very same window and played with this cord. It’s marked with their anguish, their boredom and frustrations.

  “Well um,” Mr. Jackson says, bouncing the c
halk from palm to palm. “Well um.” The palms of his hands are tinged pink. The skin has been worn away. It’s from masturbating, flogging his meat, the girls say. He clutches at his crotch frequently in the classroom. Adjusts his testicles before he sits down on the edge of the desk to confront them.

  “Who needs you, Chocolate Drop?” a girl asks.

  “Well, Miss,” Mr. Jackson says to Betty, “you see what you have instigated? You may call me what you like. What can one expect from Satan’s daughter?”

  Betty yanks the frayed cord. It snaps free and falls to the floor. Several of the girls leave their desks. Mr. Jackson turns and faces them quickly. “Well um,” he says. “That will be ten pages now. You seem to think she is a humorous person. Do you think ten pages is also funny?”

  They groan. “You can’t make us do ten pages,” a tall girl with angry grey eyes says.

  He strides to his desk, pulls open a drawer and takes out a wooden ruler. “Ten pages, I said.” He bangs the ruler against his desk.

  “Fuck off,” the tall girl says.

  He walks swiftly to her and whacks her across the face with the ruler. Smiles fade, all movement is suspended. A red welt rises on the girl’s cheek. “And who else wishes to express themselves in such a manner?” he asks. The girls one by one return to their desks.

  “You heard her,” Betty says. “Go fuck yourself in Jamaica and leave us alone.” A flood of tension is released suddenly. She feels the teacher’s wooden ruler bounce off her shoulder blade. The girls laugh and call out their individual hate names for Mr. Jackson. An eraser bounces off the wall beside his head. He backs slowly over to the classroom door and stands with one hand on the knob. His lips are flecked with spittle. “Ten pages, you naughty spoiled children. When you can control yourselves, we will continue this class,” he says and flees.

  Control yourselves. Is it lack of control then, that has brought them all to this place? The windowpane is cool against Betty’s forehead as she looks down into the street. A young man cuts through the cemetery, hands plunged deep into his pockets; he walks with his shoulders hunched up, a cigarette hangs from his mouth. He glances up at the window where she stands and is gone.

  Notes for essay on wild plum tree

  Mr. Malcolm, English 100

  the beginning

  Suddenly you face across the street where once there was only a coulee with bulrushes, twitch grass four feet high, God and Indian arrowheads, a brand new house.

  But first, machines squashed frogs and garter snakes and a pen once lost and never found and then ploughed them beneath tons of landfill from a field where they also discovered the skeletons part of which Laurence brought to school. (the skull)

  Then, when the four-and-a-half-member family move into that new house, the dark-haired woman has a bump in front so she is probably pregnant (being the oldest of six teaches you to watch for those things); the beginning ends.

  through yellowing lace curtains

  I have always watched

  the games of others

  hiding and seeking the waning sun

  shadows the mourning dove’s

  spotted grey

  bird sounds temper the shrill play

  sounds

  that strike my note

  of sorrow

  I have not found anything good

  in tomorrow

  notes before the beginning

  Leaves (somewhat hairy) of the dog mustard plant, which, like the mother of seven, originated in Europe and was first found in Canada at Emerson in 1922, tickle bare legs when walking in the coulee. And their flower, clusters of pale yellow stain white organdy, which also scratches bare legs when walking, sitting, standing, period. When you wander with Laurence in the coulee, he carries your shoes and you can feel the spongy ground and make it squeeze up between our toes and then he shows you his hidden pool

  and in the deep pool

  melted snow yellows

  bright all the dead grasses

  pink granite stones and your face

  rising and falling as feet dipped clean

  drip the surface and make you wrinkle

  Russian pigweed stands as high as you because you are eight, but Laurence’s head is a little above it. The plant is like the two of you, one plant and two different kinds of flowers, male and female.

  And God is also in the coulee, moving before you. You can feel His breath on your body, coming through the organdy you have worn especially for Him because it is Sunday.

  And Laurence, even though he does not go to any church, is of the same plant that nods in the same breath. But for some reason, the mother of seven doesn’t think so which is why you walk among the Russian pigweed, so she can’t see you and get angry and send you down the road to your grandfather’s house to get a lesson in the Bible.

  God you were

  there inside

  my knees and elbows

  scratched raw

  crawling from imaginary

  Indians

  would take my yellow hair

  make a belt or something, God

  your voice

  fades faster than games

  of Indians don’t last

  forever

  “Betty uses foul language and shows disrespect for the property of the institution,” the social worker says. She reads from the teacher’s report. She wears black cat’s-eyes-shaped glasses and adjusts them before she speaks again. Betty can feel her father’s shyness of this woman, his eagerness to appease and have everyone agree quickly that everything will be fine so that he can go home and report to Mika with a clear conscience that he’s done his best. He sits on a chair beside Betty. They face the social worker’s desk beneath the window. The room is a basement room. The window is at street level and Betty watches and counts the feet of people who pass by on the sidewalk.

  “If you won’t adhere to the rules of this institution, what choice will we have, but to ask you to leave it?”

  “Certainly, she’s going to follow the rules and regulations,” Maurice says. “There’s no maybe about it.”

  He plays with the brim of his hat and looks down at the floor. He’s put on his suit and tie and taken the bus in from the country especially for this meeting. He’s deeply embarrassed. He cannot bring himself to say the words “pregnant” and “social worker.”

  The woman writes something on her pad. Betty wonders if she is writing “Father is co-operative,” or “Supportive father.” With whom and of whom?

  “What about rules regarding hitting students with rulers?” Betty asks.

  “Listen here,” Maurice says, suddenly irritated. “What makes you think you can ask that, eh? You’re not in any position here to ask questions.”

  “And what position am I in?”

  Maurice is flustered. He twirls the hat between his thick brown fingers, clears his throat several times.

  The social worker gets up quickly. “I think the two of you need to talk alone. It’s important that we reach an understanding today.” The door closes behind her. Maurice relaxes. He wipes his brow, sits up straighter and looks about the room for the first time. The walls are cement block, unpainted. There are no pictures. “This here place is not so bad,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re griping about.”

  A black mongrel zigzags across the boulevard and sidewalk. It stops and looks down into the room, sniffs and then continues on its way.

  “You don’t have to live here. I hate it.”

  “Well now, that wasn’t our doing, was it?” Maurice says. It’s the closest he’s come to mentioning her pregnancy. “Anyway, it’s a darn sight better than being out on the street because, believe you me, that’s where you’re headed if you don’t shape up.”

  Betty stifles the urge to laugh. Shape up. She is rapidly shaping up. She knows that her parents’ number one concern is her shape. They’re afraid that she might be expelled from the home and shame them with her bulging presence in the community. It’s the only reason for
his trip into the city. She knows she’s been cut off, that she can’t look to either of her parents for anything.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I’ll be okay now. It’s just been hard to adjust.”

  Maurice brightens. He looks at her with a wide smile, his eyes uneasy though, carefully avoiding looking at her stomach. “Adjust, absolutely. I can understand that. Certainly it takes time to get used to new situations.”

  “Losing your home is a new situation all right.”

  “Eh?” His hands stop in mid-air.

  “I feel as though I have no home.” For one second she wants to fling herself at him, bury her face into his shoulder and hold on.

  Maurice works furiously as he flicks nonexistent lint from his hat.

  “Well, that’s not quite so,” he says. “You’ve still got a home. You’re only here for a few more months, that’s all. Once it’s over, it’s over.” He stands up and puts his hat on, adjusts the brim. “You’ve learned.”

  I am learning to control myself, no more fucking. “In a few more months, I’ll have my baby.” She wants him to think about this.

  “On that score your mother and I agree. You can’t bring the bastard home.” He takes his wallet from his pocket. “Just in case you need something,” he says and hands her several bills. His hands are shaking. She takes the money from him. Everything is okay, taken care of, he’ll tell Mika. You know, it’s not easy, it takes time to adjust to these things. All she needed was a little talk and a little time. He’s in a hurry, anxious to be away.

  “I have to go,” she says.

  The door closes behind him. She waits. She sees his feet pass by on the sidewalk along with the feet of another person, strangers passing by.

  notes for the essay Bible lessons at Opah’s

  Opah means Grandfather. Omah means Grandmother. (This is for the benefit of Mr. Malcolm, English 100, the Chocolate Drop who came directly from Jamaica and wants to know everything he can about Canada.)

  The lesson for today, Opah says, is: HOW GOD LED HIS PEOPLE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT. But then he forgets and his sky-blue eyes melt into the horizon and he speaks of hundreds of people gathering around twenty-eight train cars in Russia. They are coming, these people, like the dog mustard, only a year later, to spread out across the fields of southern Manitoba. Faith is the Victory, Faith is the Victory, Opah hums, wiping tears from his face and Omah comes out from the pantry wiping hands of flour onto her apron. There is a boy in the garden, she says. When she goes to call him in, he runs away, she explains, worried.