A Home in the Country

by Sheelagh Mawe

  Feeling just a bit sorry for her, I said as quietly as I could, ‘It’s rude to chew with your mouth open, you know.’

  Agnes gasped, ‘What’d she just say?’

  Mrs Bennings giggled a feeble little giggle and said, ‘I think you should leave table manners to Mother Slater, Sarah.’

  Knowing perfectly well I shouldn’t say another word and knowing James’ eyes across the table were begging me not to, I nevertheless felt so disgusted and upset with the events of the whole horrible day culminating in this depressingly, awful place with ugly, fat Agnes for a foster mother, I thought, What’s the use her being at the table if she isn’t going to teach these dirty little kids some manners? Turning to Agnes, I said, ‘Don’t you think you should tell that boy sitting next to you to take his elbows off the table?’

  ‘That’s enough, Sarah,’ Mrs Bennings snapped.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Agnes gasped, ‘Knew I should’ve waited and gotten me reg’lar American kids!’

  After filling and emptying her plate twice over, Mrs Bennings began hinting that she must soon leave. She stood up and looked around the table as though to assure herself that everyone was paying attention.

  ‘I’m going straight back to town now,’ she announced, ‘write up my report. Try and get a letter in the mail to these kids’ parents let them know they are finally in the kind of home they’d been praying for: a fine, decent, Catholic home in the country with kids their own age.’

  Continuing as if James and I weren’t in the room, she said, ‘I’m expecting to hear great things about James and Sarah from Mother Slater so they’d better be good and do as they’re told.’

  Turning to Agnes, she added, ‘No need for you to get up, dear. I’ll see myself out. Goodness knows I know the way by now!’

  Her hand on the screen-door handle, she paused. ‘Thank you, Agnes,’ she cooed. ‘Thank you more than I can say. Not only are you giving these kids a fine home but you saved my neck!’

  She was almost through the door when she evidently remembered something important and turned back gasping. ‘Agnes! I nearly forgot to ask. Your husband … um … Walter, isn’t it? He is … I mean … he is out of the house now, right?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s out.’ Agnes spluttered over a mouthful of food. ‘Fixed up that old cabin back in the woods for hisself and the boys and don’t come in no more but to eat.’

  Mrs Bennings smiled, waved her hand and said, ‘I knew we could count on you.’ Blowing a farewell kiss she was gone.

  Head to one side, Agnes sat motionless as Mrs Bennings went on her merry way. The kids sat motionless, too, staring down at their empty plates. Agnes frowned when she saw me studying her, taking in her sweaty face and the big hole under the arm of her ugly dress, so I looked away but I knew something. I knew she didn’t like me. Didn’t, in fact, like kids at all.

  With Mrs Bennings gone, Agnes pushed back from the table. ‘You boys take the Limey over to the cabin, get him in overalls and show him what haulin’s all about,’ she said. ‘Cathy, you and Sally get this kitchen cleaned up and no dawdlin’, hear? I want you both out haulin’, too, else how’m I supposed to feed you come winter with not a drop of rain in three weeks?’

  James followed the boys outside. Cathy and the Sally girl started carrying the dirty dishes from the table to the sink and Agnes strode into the little room next to the kitchen, the one she called her office. I was left sitting at the table alone.

  Squinting at the faded oilcloth table cover trying to make out what the original pattern might have been, I thought how perfectly ridiculous it was to call an ordinary room with only a rocking chair and a telephone in it an office. Having been in my father’s office more than once I knew perfectly well it didn’t qualify as one at all. Besides, everybody knew women didn’t have offices. Only men.

  Agnes’ voice interrupted my thoughts and I realized she wasn’t in her office after all. She was standing in the doorway between the two rooms with a big frown on her face looking down on me.

  ‘I said, is that what-all you do in England?’ she snarled. ‘Set, when there’s work waitin’ to get done? That ain’t how we do things around here.’

  I was too shocked to answer. All I could think to do was stand up and in doing so I brought the table cover up with me. I tried to smooth it back down.

  ‘Cathy, give her the dish towel, let her finish up while you sweep,’ Agnes ordered. She stopped to rub her forehead and while she did, the girls stood the way the soldiers stand outside Buckingham Palace – at attention.

  Only when Agnes turned away and we heard what turned out to be the rocking chair rumbling on the wood floor next door in the office, did they start to move again.

  There was a lot of food left on the table and while they were putting it away Cathy and Sally ate the scraps Mrs Bennings had left on the side of her plate. Cathy took a bite off a chicken leg and Sally picked up half a bread roll – ugh, it had lipstick all over it – and stuffed it in one of the pockets of her overalls.

  They took food from the serving dishes, too, sliding potato salad and sliced tomatoes and beets up the sides of the bowls with their fingers and, heads turned away from the direction of the office making it clear they weren’t supposed to be taking it, stuffing it in their mouths.

  I started to ask Cathy where I should put the dishes I dried but stopped because, looking ferocious, she was shaking her head at me and pointing to the office.

  ‘Shut up,’ her lips mouthed.

  I made an ugly face at her. How was I supposed to know where to put stuff if I wasn’t allowed to ask? Cathy grabbed me by the elbow, pointed this way, then the other, and I followed her pointing finger as best I could until all the dishes were put away and the kitchen swept. She then motioned me to follow her and Sally outside.

  Agnes saw us shuffling past the office doorway and stopped her rocking to call out to me, ‘Get them shoes off, girl. We don’t waste good shoe leather around here in summertime. Cathy, run up get her a pair of your overalls. Want you all out haulin’. Sally, reach outside give that bell a ring. You know well’s I do it’s time for them boys to start in milkin’. How come I have to think of everythin’?’

  Sitting on the floor, I took my shoes and socks off as Cathy came thudding down the stairs with a pair of limp overalls in her hand. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting them at me, ‘put ’em on.’

  I looked around, ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘Right here.’

  ‘Here? I can’t. It’s rude to take your clothes off in front of other people.’

  The rocking chair stopped rocking and Agnes again filled the doorframe. My dress came off. My slip. My little gold bangle bracelet. My St Christopher medal. Interestingly, I was never to see those last two items ever again.

  Barefoot, wearing Cathy’s overalls, and fighting back tears, I followed the girls outside.

  ‘Haulin” was all about carrying empty buckets over a hill in the woods and down the other side to a well. The well didn’t have a pretty little brick wall around it surrounded by flowers like the ones in picture books. This well was just a hole in the ground with a couple of flat stones either side of it.

  To get the water out you hooked a bucket to a rope and then wound a handle attached to a pole so the bucket went deep in the hole. I leaned over the edge to see where the water was but it was so far down all I could see was a far-away kind of shine that made me dizzy.

  When you got the rope unwound as far as it would go you gave it a jiggle so the bucket at the end of it would tip over and fill up and then you wound the handle back the other way. Bringing it back up was much harder than lowering it and it took two of us, really straining, to bring it up and lift it out of the well. When our three buckets were full we carried them back up the hill with Cathy carrying not only her own bucket but one side of Sally’s as well. Agnes was waiting for us at the edge of a huge vegetable field, one foot tapping with impatience.

  ‘Full buckets,’ she roared as we arrived beside her. ‘Th
ese is half empty, Godammit. It’s my vegetables need water, not your feet. Here, take’n pour one of ’em on these here beans. You must’ve skimped ’em yesterday. Damn things is near dead. You want to eat come winter?’

  We poured where Agnes pointed and then ran back down to the well and I wondered why we couldn’t just walk. After a few more trips I asked Cathy how many more buckets we were going to have to haul, ‘… because,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of running behind you and Agnes shouting at us when we get back and my feet are getting all cut and bruised from the stones on the path and the inside of my hands are getting blisters. Look. Besides, I don’t want to haul anymore.’

  ‘More’n you can count,’ Cathy answered. ‘Soon’s we get done with the vegetables we got to haul two to the hogs and two to the cows and one to the chickens and three for inside the house.’

  To pay Cathy back for saying I couldn’t count, I sat down with my back to her in a patch of shade next to the well.

  ‘You better move your backside ’less you want old Agnes down here movin’ it for you,’ Cathy warned.

  ‘I’m tired. I’m resting,’ I said, putting my head down on my knees to show how very tired I was.

  ‘Yeah?’ Cathy marvelled. ‘Well, guess what? You ain’t here to rest. You’re here to work. Want to know somethin’ else? She’s expectin’ you and that brother of yours to work harder’n us on account of you’re bigger’n us.’

  She looked at me sideways. ‘Not but that either one of you is near big enough, you ask me. Not near as big as Annie and Billy was and that’s what she’d been countin’ on.’

  More than anything else just then I would have liked to scream and shout and hit that hateful little girl. And cry. But I wouldn’t. What, and have her call me a crybaby? No, indeed I would not. Never, never, never.

  But then … where was that terrible howling noise coming from? Not Cathy or Sally, both staring at me with round, startled eyes.

  It was me!

  All the time I’d been hauling I kept thinking I’d look up and see my mother, or perhaps Alf, coming towards me saying, ‘There you are! I told you the war would be over soon, didn’t I? Come on, it’s time to go home now.’

  But no matter how often I looked up – quickly, so I’d see them before they saw me – they never came. And that’s when I began to suspect they probably never would.

  ‘You keep up that racket and she’ll give you something to bawl about, I tell you what,’ Cathy growled. ‘She’ll beat you till the shit comes out of you, is what she’ll do.’

  She squatted down beside me and started talking like a tired old lady who knows everything. ‘I knew it’d go like this,’ she sighed. ‘Did when Sally and Andy first come. Takin’ up my good time with their cryin’…. Gettin’ cuts and blisters and sores…. Wantin’ to talk and ask dumb questions the live long day like as if I’m God and know everythin’.’

  She sighed again. ‘It’s gonna go worse with you two,’ she went on, ‘on account of she’s worse. Every day a little bit worse. Been like that ever since Annie and Billy got took away.’

  I stopped crying to ask who Annie and Billy were but Cathy didn’t answer and I suddenly saw why. It was because the whole time she’d been squatting beside me talking she’d been peeing and watching it trickle down the slight incline on which we perched.

  Standing, Cathy hitched the straps of her overalls back over her shoulders and told me I ought to go, too. She said, ‘Agnes gets goin’ later on she won’t let you, and then she’ll get to beat you up for makin’ a puddle.’

  ‘I haven’t made a puddle since I was a baby,’ I said with a toss of my head. ‘And it’s rude to pull your pants down so other people can see your bottom.’

  And then I started crying even harder than before and I was just so disappointed in myself. But every time Cathy said something there was more and more to be frightened about. Especially the bit about Agnes getting worse every day. How bad could worse get?

  Cathy turned away from me. ‘Come on, Sally,’ she called. ‘Let’s just leave her cry. We need to get these buckets up to them damn vegetables ’fore she comes wantin’ to know where we’re at.’

  I stopped crying the instant they left because I realized I was alone and what if Agnes did come looking for me and beat the shit out of me – could that really happen? – like Cathy said she would.

  I ran to catch up with them even though my feet hurt even worse than before, but I thought I’d feel safer being with them than by myself. When I got to where I could see them up ahead, I changed my mind again and decided to wait but Cathy had seen me and called out that Agnes had gone in to fix supper and we needed to get a move on. Getting a move on meant hauling eight more buckets from the well and distributing them, then putting the buckets away in the barn.

  In the barn two cows were tied up and James was sitting on a little stool trying to get milk out of one of them. Danny and Andy were leaning against the wall laughing so hard they were doubled over but James wasn’t. He was frowning and biting his lip not to cry.

  Cathy was furious. ‘You mean all this time you two been fallin’ around laughin’ when you know good and well she’ll be after you with the pitchfork that milk don’t get up to the house right quick? Jesus! Get out the way, James, let Danny finish up.’

  Danny and James changed places and the milk started gushing out of that cow as though he had turned on a tap. I was fascinated and asked if I could have a turn but Cathy wouldn’t let me. ‘Milkin’ ain’t for fun,’ she glowered, ‘It’s work. Like everythin’ else around here.’

  She turned on Danny again, ‘What you think you was doin’ teachin’ him on Suzy anyways when everyone knows she’s the meanest damn cow in the county? Lucky for you she didn’t take and butt him clean out the barn and break both his arms like she done Billy that one time.’

  ‘Shut up and stop bein’ so damn bossy,’ Danny told her. ‘You sound worse’n Agnes and it wasn’t my fault. I started him on ole Clara but he never did get the hang of it so I told Andy to finish up with her while I tried teachin’ him on Suzy. How was I s’posed to know he’d be such a dumb jerk, huh?’

  ‘It’s you the jerk!’ Cathy fumed.

  Danny bunched up his fist to hit her but just then a bell started clanging and he relaxed his fist.

  ‘Bell means we got to go in to supper,’ Cathy said.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I sniffled. ‘Please tell her … Agnes … I’d rather just stay outside for now, thank you.’

  ‘Tell her that and you’re liable to stay out all night,’ Cathy snorted. ‘Shut up in the barn here with crazy Suzy and ole Clara.’

  I wasn’t sure what liable meant but I thought I’d better go in with the others.

  At the back of the house stood a rickety wooden stand with a basin of water on it – dirty brown water with bits of leaves and grass floating on its surface. The kids dipped their fingertips in it, rubbed at their eyes, then dried their fingers by rubbing them, fronts and backs, on their overall legs. James and I did the same.

  An old man with a bald head and glasses was sitting hunched over a newspaper at the table in the kitchen when we walked in. Agnes didn’t introduce us but I was pretty sure it was Mr Slater. I was glad to see he didn’t look the least little bit like my father.

  The food set out for supper wasn’t at all like the huge spread of homegrown, homemade food that had sent Mrs Bennings into such raptures earlier.

  For supper there was just a soup bowl in front of each chair and beside it a slice of bread and half a glass of milk. In each bowl floated a chicken’s foot, its talons curled in on themselves. What were we supposed to do with them?

  Ignoring the steam curling up from their bowls, the other kids plunged their fingers into the hot soup, pulled out the feet and started gnawing them. James copied them but had to stop almost at once to pull fragments of bone from between his teeth. I thought I’d just roll my bread into little balls and eat those and then ask for a second helping of pudding.

&nbs
p; When all the bowls but mine were empty, Agnes reached across the table, took it and handed it to Cathy. ‘Feed it to the hogs,’ she said.

  Next to the sink stood a bucket where we’d poured the dirty, greasy dishwater and various inedible food scraps after lunch. Cathy added my soup to the mix. Poor hogs, I thought, feeling sorry for them while wondering if ‘hogs’ was American for pigs.

  There was no pudding and you didn’t have to wait to be excused from the table in that house. As soon as you finished eating you just got up and left. That first night James was a bit uncertain as to the procedure and waited to follow Andy. They were sidling behind the man’s chair when he reached up and touched James’ elbow.

  ‘How’s the war goin’, son?’ he asked.

  James blinked. He didn’t know how the war was going.

  ‘You know, the one you got goin’ on over in England,’ the man persisted.

  ‘Godammit it, Walter,’ Agnes growled. ‘He ain’t here to stand around gabbin’ about no war. What’s he know anyways? Let him finish his work and get on over to the cabin.’

  We dispersed, much as we had after lunch, with the boys and Mr Slater going to the cabin – a small square wooden building we had passed many times in the woods while hauling water – Agnes to her rocker in the office, and the girls to the sink. When the last dish was put away and the floor swept, we lined up in front of her.

  ‘Get your backsides on up to bed,’ she said. ‘Cathy, you and what’s-her-name take them suitcases up with you. Sally bring in the pot.’

  Sally disappeared outside and came back carrying a white enamel bucket nearly as big as herself. Clanking behind Cathy and me on the stairs with it, she yelped as at each step the bucket swiped her shins.