Leaning, Leaning Over Water

by Frances Itani

  “Do your father and mother have birth control?” said Mimi. She caught me off guard.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “In our church,” she said, “the priest doesn’t allow.” She wasn’t sure how he managed this but the numbers of people in her house were proof of his interference. “My father used to say,” she said—and she crossed herself the way the Catholics did on the bus whenever they passed a graveyard or a church—”it’s the priest’s fault and the fault of Monsieur Duplessis.”

  I knew about Mr. Duplessis but I had never heard my parents talk about birth control. It had not occurred to me that the priest and Monsieur Duplessis and birth control might be connected. It was hard enough to imagine the details of what Mimi said my parents did to each other in bed.

  “Like Adam and Eve,” she said. “Everybody does it. It’s only a sin if you’re not married.” She added glumly, “My mother and Bee-Bee do it. At night I hear them.”

  The aunts had not let go of the miracle and continued to discuss it around the big table. Pierrette’s role did not seem to be important any more; she’d only reported what she had seen. The woman in the rapids now belonged to everyone. It was as if by repeating every detail, more would be known.

  “Her eyes were open.”

  “Pierrette said so. She can see that far.”

  “Not me. I can’t see my own two feet.”

  “How long was her hair?”

  “Not long, not short.”

  “It was medium,” said Pierrette, from the kitchen counter.

  “And dark?”

  “Everything was in mist.”

  “And her hand. You’re sure it was the left?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “It was a warning. It has to be.”

  The aunts sat back in their chairs.

  Grand-mere said, “The way grasshoppers spit tobacco, that’s a miracle.”

  They all looked at her. I sneaked a glance at her tiny wrists and thought of my Giant Ant, Aunt Lucy King, who had the big bones.

  “A warning,” Pierrette said. “Not that kind of miracle, Grand-mère.”

  The oldest aunt said, “The warning was probably for me—for my sins. I should never have given in to Robert. He wouldn’t have left me.” She pronounced his name Ro-by-er.

  Everyone laughed.

  “That was so long ago I’m surprised you remember,” said Tante Florence.

  “Well, you shouldn’t walk around upstairs in your brassiere with only a towel over your shoulders when there’s a man in the house,” the oldest aunt said. “It was probably a warning for you to stay out of trouble.”

  “Bee-Bee? I’m not worried,” said Tante Florence.

  Mimi’s mother made a face.

  Bee-Bee came into the room as if he’d been summoned, and they all clammed up.

  A scent of cedar lingered over the upstairs landing of Mimi’s big house. Along the railing, hope chests belonging to the aunts were lined up in a row. Pierrette’s was there, too, full to the lid and threatening to overflow. One by one the unmarried aunts had been slipping fingers into pressed and folded layers, transferring items from their own hoards over to Pierrette’s. No one else had the initial P so they did not give up monogrammed pillowcases and sheets, but they parted with satin half-slips and linen tea towels and brightly pastel mules for Pierrette’s feet.

  There was an alcove on the landing, too. A narrow curtain had been hung from a sawed-off broomstick and behind the curtain were a mirror, a sink with an open drain and a bucket underneath. There was a sink downstairs, too, in the kitchen, a bucket under that. Water was carted continuously into the house, up and down stairs; and slop-water—as Bee-Bee called it—carried back out.

  Mimi’s mother and the aunts were getting ready to go to a movie at the Laurier Theatre, in Hull, and Mimi and I were sitting on the lid of Pierrette’s hope chest as they took turns darting in and out of the alcove in multiple states of undress. Sometimes Mimi and I went to a movie in Ottawa with Lyd on Saturday afternoons but we’d never been to one in Hull, because of the fire. Seventy-eight children dead: the Laurier Palace, Montreal, January 9, 1927. We knew the date as well as we knew our own birthdays. It was the date after which no child below the age of sixteen was permitted to attend a movie in the Province of Quebec. We talked about the fire as if it had happened three weeks, and not almost three decades, ago.

  “Some of the children were little,” said Mimi. “I hope they were baptized.”

  “They were crushed,” I said. “Most of them.” I imagined miniature bones trampled by feet.

  “Their dresses burned,” said Mimi. “Their arms and wrists. Sister showed us a picture in a book. The roof collapsed, and I saw a shoe.”

  “Their lungs would have filled with smoke first,” I said. I was thinking of the drills Father had put us through: Shout “FIRE! FIRE!” Drop to the floor. Crawl to the nearest window. Meet across the road by the river and stay put. NEVER GO BACK INSIDE.

  “The fire would have been a good time for a miracle,” Mimi said. “But it didn’t happen. Someone could have appeared and told the children to stay calm. Someone could have led them to the exit. Or two people, maybe.”

  “Even if they’d just walked through the flames,” I said. “If they hadn’t run, they’d still be alive. They’d be old now.”

  “No one knows when a miracle will happen and save someone,” said Mimi. “It has to happen by surprise.”

  I thought of the five thousand. Could they have known that they were about to be fed with five loaves and two fishes? Did Daniel know that God would send an angel to shut the mouths of the lions? You always had to be ready, because something might take place right under your nose and you might miss it.

  “What about Monsieur CÔté, next door?” I said. “He might wake up suddenly and find out he’s had a close brush with communism. That could be a miracle.” I’d heard Father say that even your next-door neighbour could be a Communist. He said that what a man hoped for was a house to drive up to where he could park his car at the curb and know his family was safe inside; where he could walk down a street and be greeted by a handshake and the warm touch of an old friend. But we had no car and no curb; only a dirt road. We had no neighbours, either, on chemin Brébeuf, but Mimi did, on her street. She and I had been watching Monsieur Cote ever since the day Father had talked about the Communists.

  “Or Madame Chenier, by the bus stop,” said Mimi. “Her stomach is as big as a watermelon but there’s no baby inside. Everybody says it’s a tumour that’s so heavy she has to hold it up with her hands when she walks. Maybe she’ll wake up one morning and her stomach will be flat.”

  “You two are morbid,” Mimi’s mother said. She was wearing a tight skirt with a pleat at the bottom, a thin peach cardigan buttoned down the back. “Pick out my earrings,” she said to Mimi and Mimi slid off the hope chest and disappeared into her mother’s room.

  The aunts came out of their rooms, dressed for the movie and the bus ride to Hull. Mimi returned with white chiclet clip-ons for her mother.

  “Don’t play outside too late, you two,” said Mimi’s mother. “Grand-mère is in her room. She wants to sleep. Pierrette’s around, I think, and Bee-Bee’s here. Anyway, Henri and the Bride are always at the back of the house if you can’t find anyone.”

  It was one of those warm-breath summer evenings. We could hear sounds from far away, and yet everything seemed enclosed. We could have walked from one end of the village to the other and it would have been the same. Heaviness and stillness. Everything stopped. No one behind screen doors making the slightest effort to move. The insides of houses were purposely in shadow; it was too early for lights.

  Some of Mimi’s friends from her street wandered into the backyard and we soon had enough for hide-and-seek. We determined that the stoop would be home-free and we set out our territory: two yards—front and back—Mimi’s and the Côté’s; the line of trees; the sheds; the veranda. We chanted Am-Stram-Gram and worked
our way down to the Côté boy, the only one left. I wondered if he was a little Communist. “You’re it,” we shouted in his face, and scattered. Mimi and I raced past the Bride’s English garden and around to the front of the house.

  “We should stick together,” Mimi said. “Let’s go inside. We can sneak upstairs and come down the back way. Quick!”

  We opened the screen and tried not to make a noise. Pressed ourselves against the wall when we heard the counting stop, and waited. Mimi pointed at the stairs and gestured at me to run up first. She slipped behind a door as I tiptoed up to the landing. The place seemed deserted, uninhabited, without the aunts coming in and out of their rooms. But Bee-Bee came out of Mimi’s mother’s room, suddenly, and filled the doorway.

  We were both startled but he recovered first. “Hide-andseek?” he said, and I nodded. “Quick,” he said. “In here. I’ll hide you.”

  He opened the door to a room I had never been in. There were two dressers, a large cardboard box, a sofa, a desk and a tiny chair. It might have been a sitting room, or a storeroom for extra furniture. I turned around and saw Mimi, who’d followed me upstairs.

  “You’ll be safe here,” Bee-Bee said. “I’ll go down and scout out who’s around the stoop and I’ll tell you when to run for it.” He slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

  The room was dim; the blind had been pulled and the overhead light was off. I smelled must, old wood; the room was probably never used. A long time seemed to go by. Bee-Bee finally reappeared and said, “Everyone’s gone, they must have gotten fed up. Now I have to take you hostage and lead you downstairs.”

  He had tea towels in one hand and rope in the other. “Turn around,” he said.

  We hesitated, but shrugged and turned. We’d often played with Bee-Bee, but not like this. He gagged each of us, in turn, and tied the knot at the back of our heads. Mimi and I looked at each other over the gags and tried to laugh.

  “Hands behind your backs,” he said.

  He tied us both at the wrists and told us to lie on the floor on our stomachs. Then he tied our feet up behind us and attached the rope to our bound wrists. He was working slowly, tightening the knots as he moved from one to the other. Mimi and I could barely see each other. The rope was rough and made my wrists uncomfortable when I tried to shift. My arms had begun to ache even though they hadn’t been in that position very long. Bee-Bee was breathing quickly, his eyes bright and darting as he checked the ropes. He pulled a loose end tightly between my ankles and my wrists, and pain shot through one of my legs. He was silent, alert, all his attention focused on the way he was tying us, every knot checked and rechecked. I felt tears coming into my eyes but did not want to cry. I tried to see Mimi but she had gone limp and would not look at me.

  “There,” said Bee-Bee. He stood over us, massive, from where we lay at his feet. He seemed pleased with himself, and excited. “Don’t be cowards. You’re only hostages for a few minutes. Then I’ll come back and let you go.” His legs moved away and I heard him leave the room and shut the door.

  We waited, but the house was silent. There was no sound from the yard below; the children had gone. I could barely hear the river outside—the fast wash at the end of the rapids. Mimi made noises through her gag. My teeth were biting into the towel and I made a noise in reply. There was nothing we could do. I was tied so securely I couldn’t even inch my way along the floor.

  He’ll come back, I said to myself. It’s only a stupid game. He’ll come in here and untie us and we’ll rub our wrists and ankles and then we’ll be free.

  I wanted to go home. I had to be back by dark. With the blind down I couldn’t tell how late it was. A long time went by. I heard a gasp and tried to turn my head. Bee-Bee was leaning against the door in the shadows. His mouth was open and his eyes were drooped half-closed and his breath was coming out of him in strange bursts. I realized with a sickening lurch in my chest that he’d never left. He looked down at me without saying anything and turned his back and this time he did go out. I watched him pull the door shut behind him. It was impossible to know how long he’d been in the room.

  I tried to think where Grand-mère’s room was, below. I traced the rooms of the house, upstairs and down, in my head, and realized that it was the front of the house we were in, not the back. Mimi had come to life and was trying to move, trying to roll herself in some awkward way against the chair near her body. I didn’t want to cry because Bee-Bee would come back any minute and he would call us babies if we cried, and it would all be a big joke.

  But he didn’t come back.

  I knew my mother and father would be angry. I began to believe that we might never be free. No one would find us and Bee-Bee wouldn’t tell anyone where we were. I thought of the stories Georgie-Porgie had told us last New Year’s, the ones about old skeletons turning to dust in silent rooms. When someone would finally come and nudge the skeleton with a shoe, the skull, with its empty eye sockets, would fall off.

  Maybe Lyd and Eddie would miss me and start looking. They would come to Mimi’s big house and demand to go through all the rooms. But Lyd and Eddie would never look for me. Eddie would be reading comics at home, and Lyd would be playing records or reading her new Nancy Drew.

  The muscles in my legs had cramped and I had pins and needles in my arms. It was so dark inside now, I could only see the curve of Mimi’s body, though I was aware of the warmth of her, in the room.

  We heard footsteps on the stairs and someone walking towards the alcove at the end of the hall. Mimi’s body made a rolling lunge, knocking over the chair. It fell, resting against the edge of the desk. The overhead light went on and we looked up at Henri’s Bride who was blinking at us from the doorway.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God, what’s going on? Dah’ling!” she called, at the top of her lungs, “Dah’ling! Come quick.” She ran out of the room and we heard her pounding on a wall. A door opened from the back part of the house and Henri limped along the hallway and stood looking down at us.

  It took the two of them ten minutes to cut the rope, to untie us knot by knot, and they were furious. When my limbs were free I found I couldn’t stand. I had to rub at my legs and arms and wait until the blood started moving again. Mimi was hiccuping; her whole body was shaking and she couldn’t make it stop.

  “That fool,” said Henri. “He has his nerve touching you like this.” He and the Bride exchanged looks.

  By this time, Pierrette had come in and they told her what had happened. She led us both downstairs and said, “Where the hell is he? I knew he was a creep the way he looked at me the first time our mother brought him home. And ever since,” she added.

  She softened when she talked to us and she asked us what he had done.

  “He gagged us and tied us up,” said Mimi. “He said it was just for fun. We were playing hide-and-seek and he told us the other kids had gone home. He was supposed to come back and untie us but he didn’t come back.” She did not say that Bee-Bee had stayed in the room.

  “He didn’t do anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Go on up to the store,” she said. “Tell the Bull I said to give you a melorol. Tell him I’ll be there later. Hurry up, before it’s dark. Trude can go home from the store. Mimi, you wait there with Ferdinand until I come.” She put an arm around each of us. “You’re okay,” she said. “You’re not hurt.” She looked at Henri and the Bride over our heads and added, “I’m staying right here until I find the S-O-B.”

  Mimi and I went to the stoop and ran down the steps and out of the yard. We didn’t want to bump into Bee-Bee.

  “Bee-Bee’s in trouble,” she said. “Because it wasn’t like playing. Pierrette’s going to tell our mother, I can tell. Are you going to tell your mother?”

  “No,” I said, and at that moment I was certain that I never would. It was something to do with my own mother and father; what Mimi told me they did. It was Mother’s face, sometimes, after I’d heard her and father argue b
ehind their closed door; her red-rimmed eyes, a look as if something were missing, as if we were not enough for her, as if she already had some sorrow of her own.

  And it was remembering Bee-Bee’s face, above us, when he’d been leaning into the door while Mimi and I were lying on the floor. The knowledge that he’d been in the room with us for a long time and we hadn’t known. That was worse than being tied up. All of this together, I knew I would not be able to describe or explain.

  When we reached the end of the street and headed up rue Principale, we slowed to a walk. The sun had begun to set and the nine o’clock curfew would soon sound from the Catholic school. We looked back in the direction of the river. We were still rubbing at our wrists, at the faint streaks of red that had been left by the rope.

  “My mother says, ‘Smile if it kills you,’“ I said, and we both forced a terrible smile.

  “Maybe the woman in the rapids was giving a warning, after all,” said Mimi. “A warning about le beau-père, the stepfather. We’ll never get a bathroom now, if everyone’s mad.”

  Just then we paused and tilted our heads. Flocks of purple martins preparing to settle for the night had begun to swing over us like dark nets in the sky. In the distance, they rose and fell and rose again. And then, we watched their sudden singular descent as they vanished remarkably and all at once into the clump of trees beyond our cove. We waited until we were sure they would not rise again and we continued on to the new store owned by Ferdinand the Bull. This time, however, we did not call out as we did on other evenings, vying for the sighting of the birds, hoping to be the first to shout out: “My wedding! My wedding!”

  SISTERS

  1953

  “A boy after Mass,” Mimi said—it was her turn with the oar—“told me the nuns bury dead babies behind the convent, in the woods.”