Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  There was the crunch of wheels against the gravel path. A woman came around the rock garden pushing a stroller with a small child in it. She hesitated for a moment, framed by the tall red brick building which dominated the skyline behind her. When she saw Betty on the bench, she started towards her. The baby was fat and wore just a diaper and plastic pants. He leaned back into the stroller and looked dazed by the heat, asleep with his eyes open. As they grew closer, he looked at Betty, but without expression, as though she were part of the bench.

  The feeling that made Betty want to eat lunch in the park also made her want to try to make something happen in the baby’s face. She leaned towards the child and smiled. The baby’s eyes flickered briefly and then he poked listlessly at the plastic balls attached to the front of the stroller. The woman came alongside Betty and stopped, interpreting the smile as an invitation to visit. She was tall and stringy. She wore a red elastic tank top that squashed her small breasts flat. Her legs and arms were tanned, but a puffy bulge of white stomach squeezed overtop her jean shorts.

  “Sure is hot,” the woman said.

  “Hotter than yesterday,” Betty said. She’d learned how to small talk from listening to Mr. Garvey and Rose over lunch, and the customers thought she was mature for seventeen because she could engage them in pleasant but meaningless chatter.

  “And here it is, the end of August. You’d think we’d be getting some relief by now,” the woman said.

  “The forecast is for more of this tomorrow.”

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” the woman said with a look of mock despair. “I’m in an apartment. Top floor and no air conditioning. Tigger’s got the worst heat rash.”

  “Who?”

  She laughed and motioned to the baby. “It’s what we call him,” she said. “His real name is Brian, but I don’t think he knows it. We used to have a cat named Tigger.” She pushed the stroller back and forth on the gravel path with short movements. The child’s head jerked forward and backwards into the canvas stroller. Stupid broad, Betty said silently, feeling that careless motion, feeling sudden anger.

  “It was a tabby cat. A grey tabby, you know the kind,” the woman said. “They look like tigers? I really liked it. We had to take it with us when we went camping in the Whiteshell last year and it got away on me.”

  “That’s too bad,” Betty said. She was sorry that she’d smiled at the baby.

  “It ran into the bush the first day we got there. You know what happened to it? It went wild,” the woman said, not waiting for an answer. “Apparently cats do this. Dogs don’t, but the camp warden said it happens all the time with cats. Then the wardens have to hunt the cats down in late fall and shoot them,” she said with a certain smug satisfaction.

  They use them for target practice, I’ll bet, Betty told herself. “That’s terrible.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to feel sorry for them,” the woman said. “They’re wild and I mean wild. You can’t come near them. It’s a kindness really to shoot them because they’d just freeze to death when winter came. Anyway, I’m looking for another one. And when I saw you sitting here, I thought I’d come over and see if you might know of someone who’s giving kittens away.”

  “No I don’t, sorry.”

  “Tigger here needs a pet, don’t you, sweetie?” She squatted in front of the stroller and prodded the flaccid child in the chest in an attempt to make him smile.

  Betty saw the skin on the inside of the woman’s thighs as she squatted. It was darker, as though it was permanently stained. The insides of her own legs were not like that. Brown pubic hair curled outwards from the woman’s denim shorts. Her tanned hand rested on the stroller and Betty saw that she wore a wide gold band. The woman was married then and could know who the baby’s father was. More and more Betty wondered who the father of her own baby might be.

  “Who was it?” Mika, Betty’s mother, had asked. She wanted to know, hoping, Betty realized, to pressure them into marriage.

  “I don’t know,” Betty said. It was true. She didn’t know. It could have been the tall blue-eyed man, the one who was training to be an RCMP. She’d first seen him sitting in the vestibule of the hotel when she passed by the window. She knew what the men who sat there watching women pass by were like, the bets they made, the words they used: bitch, cunt, whore. But when the patrol car pulled alongside her one night and the young one laughingly threatened to arrest her for wearing a tight sweater, she laughed too, because they were in uniform and she disassociated them from the hotel men. They offered to give her a lift home and she accepted, anticipating with mild glee Mika’s frantic reaction about what the neighbours would think when they saw her. But the men didn’t take her straight home. They took her instead into the country to an abandoned farmhouse. The young one led her into the house and told her to lie down and then she understood. All she felt was anger at her own stupidity and saw this as the penalty to be paid for it. He entered her while the older man stood watch in the doorway. She saw the moon resting upon his shoulder. Sometimes when she was on a bus or sitting on the veranda smoking, she would think about this and cry out involuntarily. When people stared at her strangely she’d realize that she’d let the interior pass through to the exterior and had exclaimed loudly and so she would count to herself, the number of stairs in a building, the seconds it took for a light to change from red to green, to prevent it from happening. But more and more she was letting herself think and when she counted the days, months, she was certain that it had been the RCMP man who had gotten her pregnant.

  “Well, if you do hear of someone who is giving away a kitten, could you let me know?” the woman said. “I’ll give you my number.”

  “You can if you want to, but I don’t know many people in the city. I’m new here.”

  “Oh, too bad, Tigger should have a pet. Shouldn’t you, Tigger, eh? What do you say?” She tickled his armpit fiercely. “Come on, what do you say?”

  Betty saw his head wobble slightly on its thin stem-like neck. He squirmed. Then Betty saw his mouth crinkle, move into a wide smile that did not reach into his eyes. What choice did he have but to smile? The woman is stupid, she told herself.

  “How old is he?” Betty asked.

  “Thirteen months in October.” The woman got up, brushed a strand of hair from her forehead and surveyed the park with dark nervous eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll do once he starts walking. What this park needs is a wading pool for the little kids. A playground. This place has become such a hangout.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Betty said. “Everyone says that, but I live right across from here and I’ve never had any trouble.”

  The woman turned the stroller around sharply and began to walk back in the direction that she’d come. “And I wonder why,” she said over her shoulder. “I just wonder why.”

  Betty watched as the woman lifted the stroller from the gravel path onto the sidewalk. Behind them, the tall red brick building jutted up from among the houses conspicuously and Betty counted floors, the fifth, the window on the corner. That had been her room, where she’d spent the winter and spring behind the glass looking down at the streets. Her baby had been a boy too. He’d been a big child, a coke and chocolate bar baby, the nurse had said. She thought he’d break her pelvic bones when he came. It’s like menstrual cramps, Mika had said as she bent over the bread pan, her fists working the dough throughout their conversation, only it’s a hundred times worse.

  “I’m sorry,” Betty said. She watched as Mika’s fist plunged into the swollen bread dough. It fizzled and sank. No calamity or illness interfered with Mika’s work.

  “You’re sorry,” Mika said. “Good.” There was perspiration in the fine hair above her top lip. The cords in her neck were strung tightly. “But what will that change, tell me?” She took the knife, sliced the dough into two and then once again. She held up a piece of it and formed a loaf. “It’s not a mass or a tumour, you know. If you cut it, it will bleed.”

  “What do you want m
e to do?”

  “Give it up. It’s the sensible thing to do.” She plopped the loaf into the greased pan and began to form the second.

  “But what if I want to keep it?”

  “You? Keep it? What do you know about children?”

  “What did you know?”

  “Listen,” Mika said. “It’s going to hurt. Like menstrual cramps, only a hundred times worse; as it should. But if you keep the baby, the trouble only begins. Children are a constant pain.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She led Betty into the bedroom and gathered several limp cotton smocks from the back of the closet and pushed them down into a shopping bag in a furtive way as though they were shameful depressing items. “Be sensible. Don’t ruin your life,” she said. “Give it up.”

  “I don’t know,” Betty said.

  “Well, do what you want, but don’t bring it home to me,” Mika said.

  Mika had never used the word baby. So when the nurse placed the baby into the crook of Betty’s arm, she was surprised at its warmth and heaviness and the soft curve of its reddish-blond head beneath her hand.

  The feeling that came to her, that had made her want to eat lunch in the park, vanished. The sandwich Rose had made tasted like cardboard. She got up from the bench, counted the number of strokes it took to brush crumbs from her lap. She felt as though she carried an egg around inside her. An egg with a crack in it, starting from the top and going down to the bottom. It would split open.

  Betty meets Del in the park and the two young women walk down Arlington Street to Portage Avenue where they’ll catch a bus downtown. The park has become the centre for their friendship. They go there often to sit and listen to the city. Occasionally, they talk with the boys who also gather there. And often, through a series of body movements, a secret language with one of the young men, Del sends messages, and like a tawny urgent cat, she sidles into the shaded back portion of the park to some boy’s blanket. But not Betty. She has learned her lesson and nothing interferes with her goal to flee this city as soon as possible. The means to do this takes shape in the metal tea can in the bottom bureau drawer.

  As they near Portage Avenue, Betty becomes aware of a car moving alongside them, slowly. She turns to look. It’s the man from the drugstore and his scruffy child. He salutes the women in a showy manner, stops the car and rolls down the window.

  “You girls look like you could use a lift. Going far?”

  A thousand miles, Betty thinks.

  “That depends,” Del says. She flashes a golden dimpled smile. “He’s cute,” she whispers.

  “Cute like a snake.”

  “Depends on what?” he asks.

  “Who owns the kid?”

  “He’s mine, but I’m not married, if that’s what’s stopping you.”

  “What can go wrong with a kid along?” Del asks and they get into the car.

  They drive around the city for two hours, a listless aimless way. His name is Dave Reimer, they learn. He is a single parent. He does not say to them, I am a single parent. He is reluctant, almost ashamed to speak about it at any length. She took off, is all he says. But Del has an easy way of talking about intimate or personal things that is not in keeping with the times and once people get over their initial shock, they respond to her. Dave tells her Rocky’s mother left when he was a year old. With some guy on a motorcycle. The sympathy in Del’s green eyes is innocent and genuine.

  At the end of the two hours, Del has joined Dave in the front seat and Rocky has climbed over into the back seat and bounces on the seat beside Betty, showing no signs of being tired although it’s ten o’clock. They cross the river several times. It seems to Betty that they’ve been driving in circles. When Dave crosses the river once again, this time it’s over an older rusting bridge, and they enter what appears to be the old section of Winnipeg. The street they travel on ends in the river. The lights of city centre across the river bank are reflected back in the dark water. At the last moment, Dave swings the car to the right and they bump along a rutted dirt road. He turns off his headlights. Ahead, at the end of the road beside the dark still river, is a tall building. It looms up at them suddenly, white like the billowing sails of some ancient ship.

  “Time to put the kid away,” Dave says. He turns off the engine.

  “Where are we?” Del is nervous, uncertain.

  Dave motions to the tall building. “It’s home. Rocky and me live here.” It’s an abandoned grain elevator.

  They pass through the black slit of the sliding door and Dave pushes it closed. He switches on his flashlight. The circle of light flickers, barely dents the dark interior. The building smells dankly of urine, wood, gunny sacks and something else. Betty doesn’t know what.

  “Here.” Dave guides them up a little step. The floor suddenly sways beneath their feet. Betty reaches wildly, finds a railing and hangs on. “It’s just the lift,” Dave says. Then she hears the squeal of metal, the squeaking protest of wood beneath her feet. Pulleys clank. The smell of rope is strong. She’s being drawn upwards. The air grows warmer and smells faintly of straw. She still doesn’t believe he lives here. The lift carries them up and up and then it stops.

  “This is it,” Dave says. He carries Rocky in his arms and shines the light for them. The light touches a small room. Betty catches sight of a rumpled bed and then clothing hanging on pegs. Dave sets Rocky down and squats. He strikes a match. It flickers and then a glow spreads outwards from the camper’s lantern on the floor. He moves across planks that bow beneath his weight, kneels once again and another lantern sputters, hisses and spreads its light. Betty looks about the room. There’s a narrow cot in one corner, a grey sleeping bag on the floor beside it. Nails hold clothing on the wall and the floor is spread with what looks and smells like dirty laundry. Dave shuffles through it, moves it from his path as he crosses the room. A cardboard box beside the cot is filled to overflowing with toys. On the other side of the room a large wooden spool is used as a table. She’s seen the spools in the ditches along the highways. They hold hydro or telephone wire. The spool is scattered with pop and beer bottles, some paperback books and a carton of cookies.

  Del stands transfixed. Then suddenly for some reason, she takes it upon herself to take charge of Rocky. She croons over him and pulls his Mickey Mouse T-shirt off over his head. “Look at his curly eyelashes. They’re so long. Isn’t he cute?”

  Betty studies the child’s face and wonders what it is she’s missed. She feels nothing but impatience to be away from this place. She crosses the planks and goes over to Dave. He squats, adjusting the flame in the lantern. Her footsteps are suddenly hollow. Dave holds up the lantern. She sees the foot of black space on either side of the planks. Her skin crawls. “God.”

  Dave grins. “Isn’t that something?” He searches behind him on the floor, holds up a pop bottle and then lets it drop into the black space. Seconds later, Betty hears the dull thud of it hitting the earthen floor below.

  “That goes down into the grain bins. I keep boards over it all the time. There’re ladders going down to the bottom, though. If I couldn’t use the lift, I could climb down.”

  A grain elevator. In the centre of the city. The air is thick and stifling hot. “What about Rocky? Aren’t you worried that he’ll fall?”

  “I thought of that,” Dave says. He crosses back over the planks and gathers up Rocky, who is naked now except for his sagging plastic pants. Dave takes a leather harness down from a nail on the wall and slips Rocky’s arms into the harness. He buckles it in the back. Rocky doesn’t struggle or seem to mind. He carries Rocky to the bed and puts him into it. There’s a rope lying on the floor, looped about the leg of the cot. He picks up the rope and snaps it to the fastener on the back of the harness.

  “Houdini couldn’t get out of that one.” He reaches beneath the cot and pulls out a box of beer. He opens three and motions the way to them back across the planks. A tiny window is nailed over with sacking at the far end of the room. Below the window on the floor ar
e cushions from a discarded couch. Dave motions for them to sit down. Betty thinks of bugs and the bites on Rocky’s arms and is reluctant. But Del sits down immediately, seeming not to notice the smell or the heat.

  “Why don’t you open a window? God, it’s hot,” Betty says.

  Dave sits down beside Del. “Can’t. The mosquitoes are hell.”

  She’s impatient to be gone. He’s brought them both here for a reason. She’s anxious to get it over with. “Why do you live here? It’s a shitty place for a kid to live.”

  “I live here because I love it, right?”

  “Come and sit down,” Del says. “We didn’t have anything better to do anyway.”

  Betty does so reluctantly. Dave motions towards the child who is sleeping, curled and asleep so suddenly. “Children’s Aid is looking for him. They want to put him into a foster home.”

  “How come?” Del asks.

  “Because. They say I can’t look after him properly. When Rocky’s mother took off, my mother babysat for me. But she’s working now herself. She can’t do it anymore.”