“Yes,” Mika says and smiles because she can’t think of anything else to say.
A flurry of moving limbs, the flash of purple eyeshadow, as one of the granddaughters enters the kitchen, pulls open cupboard doors. She is not one of Mika’s favourite granddaughters. Mika thinks she tries too hard all the time to be different, not to fit in. “When do we eat?” she asks. “I’m starving.”
Mika turns, catches sight of something flying past the window, a man? Sometimes she sees something similar, just as she turns, something flitting from room to room.
“We’re waiting for the men,” she says. She lifts the pan of cabbage rolls from the oven and sets them on the counter. More tomato juice. That will save them from drying out.
The granddaughter slouches down into the chair, pouting. “Waiting for the men? What for? Why should we have to wait?”
“Because,” Mika says. “Because they’ll be hungry from working so hard. And because I say so.” Why does the mother let this one wear so much make-up? “Now, would you please be a good girl and go down to the basement and bring up a jar of tomato juice?”
Mika fingers the tattered photograph. She pulls it from her apron pocket and sets it on the table. She smoothes it with the palm of her hand. I had one who used to loosen the caps on my pear preserves so the syrup would ferment. She used to drink it, the fermented juice. The only way I found out was when she broke a jar and cut her hand. I think she still has the scar.
“What have you got there?” The daughter-in-law picks up the photograph, squints at it.
A monument. A rocket-shaped stone. Why would anyone want to take a picture of such a thing? And then not write on the back to say what it is. She sits down in the granddaughter’s place. “It’s the strangest thing,” Mika hears herself say, “but in Russia, they once buried a woman who wasn’t dead.”
Mika continues to tell the story, her voice gathering strength, rising up in the kitchen along with the smoky-sweet smell of ham, cooked cabbage. Heat radiates from the granddaughter’s body as she sets the tomato juice down on the table. She will interrupt, Mika thinks, ask about food and when is it time for eating. But she is surprised when this one lingers, stands in the doorway fiddling with the strings of an apron dangling from a hook, stands there in the doorway, listening.
Sandra Birdsell was born in Manitoba and, until recently, has spent most of her life in Winnipeg. Her first novel, The Missing Child (1989), won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel, The Chrome Suite (1992), and her most recent collection of short fiction, The Two-Headed Calf (1997), were both shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Her two previous short story collections, Night Travellers and Ladies of the House, were reissued in 1987 as Agassiz Stories. Her most recent novel, The Russländer (2001), won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction, the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year, and the Regina Book Award, and was a finalist for The Giller Prize.
Sandra Birdsell’s fiction has been anthologized and has appeared in literary journals and Saturday Night magazine.
She lives in Regina.
Agassiz Stories Page 34
