A Home in the Country

by Sheelagh Mawe

  At the top of the stairs we walked straight ahead into a room that had a double bed pushed against one wall and a single bed against another. In a corner was a kind of alcove and inside that stood another little bed. The wood floors were bare and I winced walking across them on my battered feet. There were no pictures on the wall or curtains at the window of that room.

  There was another door at the top of the stairs, which was closed. The space between the two doors was where Sally put the bucket.

  Just as Agnes had demonstrated earlier how to manoeuvre her fence, she now demonstrated the use of the bucket. My exhausted, tear-swollen eyes widened as I watched her hoist up the skirt of her dress, squat over it and, with a sigh of satisfaction, empty her bladder. The noise was amazing, louder than twin taps filling a deep bathtub.

  In the bedroom, Agnes lifted the suitcases onto the big bed, opened them, and gasped with anger.

  ‘Why, there ain’t nothin’ worth two dimes in here!’ she spluttered. ‘Just a bunch of wore out summer stuff. Looks like Miss England’s gonna freeze come winter, don’t it? Don’t see no boots. No leggin’s. No coats. No gloves. No damn all.’

  She set the suitcases on the floor with a thump of disgust and began pulling her dress over her head, shocking me all over again. This time at the sight of a naked adult, the first I’d ever seen. Did everyone have hair there, I wondered? How disgusting. It was only then that I realized something that had escaped me when she was using the bucket: Agnes wasn’t wearing any underwear! Not even knickers!

  ‘You wet the bed, girl?’ she asked me, pulling a rag of a nightgown over her head.

  Before I could think of a polite way to remind her that I was nearly six, she grabbed me by the shoulders and began to shake me. ‘Around here we answer when we’re asked a question,’ she panted. ‘And it’s “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am” to me. And it’s “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” to him. You got that?’

  I started to nod my head again but remembered just in time and gasped, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she glowered and, pulling back the sheet of the big bed, motioned me to get in. ‘You’re sleepin’ with me,’ she said. ‘Slide on over to the wall. Any thrashin’ around and you’re on the floor. Cathy, turn out that light and start in prayin’.’

  I had to sleep with her? In the same bed? But … I couldn’t. I wouldn’t! I’d never slept in the same bed with anyone – except occasionally Mummy when I was sick – in my whole life.

  ‘I … I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,’ I quavered. ‘And … I have to find my nightie. Have you seen it?’

  Agnes picked me up, tossed me on the bed, and saying, ‘We don’t got no bathroom nor time for brushing teeth around here,’ pulled off my overalls and tossed them on the floor. The light went out.

  While I was busy making sure I was as close to the wall as I could get, Cathy and Sally began droning the rosary. Agnes’ foot crossed the bed and kicked me. ‘Pray,’ she growled. ‘I said you’d get religion.’

  It wasn’t easy getting the whole rosary past the lump in my throat, but at least it was dark and I didn’t have to worry about any of them seeing my tears.

  FIVE

  As we continued delving ever deeper into our pasts, a diversion that was beginning to consume us almost to the exclusion of our own families, James and I found ourselves reverting to the way we talked back then and the vocabulary we used, or rather, I should say, that Agnes used, in those far-off days.

  For example, her term for walking was, lollygaggin’ – something she would not put up with.

  ‘Too much work around here for you-all to be lollygaggin’ along like you got all day,’ she’d roar. ‘Move it! Get haulin’! Feed them hogs! Pull them weeds! Churn that butter! Bring in them cows! Feed them hens! Collect them eggs! Clean up this room! Hang out that wash! Iron up his shirts! Mop that floor!’

  The only nice thing that ever happened, the only time we could walk instead of run, was when our turn came around to go to the store, and even then we ran until we were out of sight of the house. A ‘turn’ came around every six days unless we did something to make Agnes angry – mad – in which case someone else got it and we had to wait another long six days. Agnes had to watch herself there, though, not to be mad at all of us at once thereby leaving her with nobody to send. It happened once. She compromised by sending Sally, saying the kid was so dumb she didn’t know the difference between a treat and a punishment and in this instance she was being punished.

  We didn’t go to the store every day to buy things. ‘Are you nuts?’ Cathy exclaimed when I asked why we hardly ever did. ‘Agnes only buys stuff she can’t figure how to grow or make her own self. Stuff like coffee, sugar, flour, yeast.

  ‘Why she sends us every day,’ she elaborated, ‘is on account of the store ain’t just a store, see. It’s a Post Office as well and we need to pick up her mail. Mail she ’spects from her kids every day but don’t hardly never get.’

  James and I hadn’t been living with Agnes a week when we learned that receiving a letter from England was one of the worst things that could happen to us. It made Agnes go what Cathy called ‘crazy-mad’, and we both lost our turns to go to the store the following week.

  Cathy explained why. ‘You-all gettin’ mail when she don’t is bad enough on account of it makes her out a liar, bein’ she’s all the time sayin’ that war you got goin’ on over there is how come her mail don’t get through. But James takin’ and openin’ and readin’ his like he done was what got him that black eye. That was just plain dumb.’

  ‘But Mummy addressed it to him,’ I protested.

  Cathy shrugged. ‘Don’t mean he gets to open it,’ she growled.

  ‘If any letters come from England when it’s my turn to go to the store I shan’t tell Agnes about them,’ I said. ‘I’ll just hide them until James can read them to me and then I’ll tear them up in little pieces and throw them away and she’ll never know.’

  Cathy said she would, too, know. She said, ‘That day James took and opened his I heard her on the telephone tellin’ Bill – Bill being the man who owned the store – that any time mail comes in from England he was to give her a call and let her know about it.’

  I thought about that a moment before saying, ‘I don’t care who she told what because just as soon as I can get some money for a stamp I’m going to write and tell my parents what a wicked, beastly woman Agnes is and they’ll write to someone, Mrs Roosevelt probably, and we’ll get taken someplace else.’

  Cathy said we wouldn’t neither. She said, ‘When Agnes got done tellin’ Bill about the mail comin’ in from England, she told him no mail was to go out neither. Not ’less it had her handwritin’ on the outside.’

  ‘You’re just making that up because you and Danny don’t get any mail from anyone,’ I glowered. ‘Not ever.’

  ‘You’re dumber even than I thought,’ Cathy sighed, in a pitying kind of way. ‘How’re me and Danny supposed to get mail bein’ we’re orphans?’

  ‘If you were nice orphans I expect you would,’ I said. ‘And anyway, who cares? If I can’t send a letter I’ll think of some other way to get away from this beastly, horrible place because no matter what, I’m not staying and neither is James.’

  ‘Don’t much matter what you figure to do,’ Cathy said over a yawn, ‘You’re way too little for it to count.’

  Some days I hated her more than others, that Cathy.

  To get to the store, you followed the path to the well, then kept on going. After the well, I noticed that the path seemed wider and friendlier with fewer rocks, some nice cool patches of moss to step on and, depending on the season, pretty clumps of wild flowers.

  The path ended at the back of the store and there you had to be extra careful where you walked in your bare feet. There were broken bottles, mouldering newspapers, an ancient bed spring, rusty cans, and old tyres everywhere. There was even a nasty, pee-stained mattress with a big black hole burned in the middle of it,
which none of us could ever pass without wondering if anyone had been on it when the fire started and got burned alive.

  The first time I went to the store, Cathy went with me to show me the way and we ran all the way there and back even though Cathy knew perfectly well that Agnes never, ever went past the well.

  ‘Why do you run the whole way when you don’t have to?’ I once asked her. ‘Agnes can’t see you once you get over the hill.’

  ‘Bein’ away from Agnes to where I can’t watch her face and try’n figure what’s comin’ next scares me worse than bein’ up close and gettin’ beat up,’ Cathy said. ‘I run so’s I can get back’n keep a eye on her.’

  ‘I don’t see what good keeping an eye on her does because you do, too, know what’s coming next,’ I reasoned. ‘She’s going to shout – yell – at you and beat the shit out of you is what’s coming next.’

  When you got around to the front of the store you saw it was on a paved road, not a dirt one, and that there was a row of little houses opposite where you could see people out in their gardens – yards – acting normal. Normal being our definition of the way people acted who knew nothing about a wicked, fat old woman called Agnes living back in the woods who was cruel and beat up little kids. Some days you could even hear radio music coming from those houses.

  The first time I saw all that activity I stopped in my tracks and stared I was so surprised.

  ‘What?’ Cathy asked, exasperated.

  ‘When Mrs Bennings brought us out here we didn’t pass any houses or people for miles and miles and I thought nobody lived out here but us.’

  Cathy had a way of rolling her eyes when she thought she was the only person in the world who knew anything. She rolled them then.

  ‘’Course there’s people,’ she glowered. ‘There’s people everywhere. Used to be we even had comp’ny at the house once in a while like Agnes’ sister, Martha, and her husband and such.’

  I was going to ask why they didn’t come anymore but just then a pretty young mother came around the side of one of the houses with two dear little girls and they were all giggling.

  Sighing with envy, I said, ‘I do wish we’d been sent over there to live with that sweet, pretty lady instead of nasty, fat old Agnes.’

  Cathy looked the little group over, her eyes narrowing as though she was studying some disgusting species of bug. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I got me a way sweeter, prettier Mommy than her picked out and we live in a way prettier house.’

  ‘If you were as clever as you think you are,’ I told her, narrowing my own eyes, ‘you would have realized – figured out – by now that kids like us aren’t allowed to pick who we want to live with. We have to go where we’re sent. Anyway, where is she, this sweet, pretty, perfect mother you have picked out?’

  ‘Next time you go poop, take a look in that old Sears catalogue hangin’ on the nail, page eighty-nine, and you’ll see her,’ Cathy said, looking happy for once. ‘She’s wearin’ a real pretty dress and high-heeled shoes and she’s fixin’ pancakes at an electric stove, and …’ she paused to be sure she had my full attention, ‘our kitchen’s got frilly curtains at the window.

  ‘We all got real pretty mommies picked out in that there catalogue,’ she continued after she was sure I had been impressed by the curtains, ‘and you better never rip out page eighty-nine to wipe your butt, else look out.’

  I felt so sorry for her. I said, ‘You can’t pick out real live mothers from pictures.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Cathy countered. ‘Then if pictures don’t count, that picture of your mother Agnes took out of your suitcase that time don’t count neither.’

  ‘Yes, it does!’

  ‘Then how come you’re here, huh?’ Cathy taunted. ‘Your mother ain’t takin’ care of you, is she? Heck, she din’t even want you in the house.’

  ‘Just you wait and you’ll see,’ I howled, so mad I felt like crying. ‘Any day now the war will be over and Alf from the ship will come and take us home and that frilly lady making pancakes is never going – ain’t never gonna – come find you.’

  ‘So what?’ Cathy jeered. ‘I don’t need nobody comin’ to find me. All I got to do is grow up and then I can go find her my own self, so shut your big trap!’

  The inside of the store was as messy as the outside and we kids loved every inch of it, right down to the way it smelled with its combined odours of tobacco smoke, coffee, smoked hams, beer, chicken feed, pickles and the unwashed smell of Bill himself. A mix so pungent that the kids who hadn’t been to the store on any given day could smell it hours later on the one who had.

  The first time I went to the store, Cathy told me that if I said yes to everything Bill said and laughed at all his corny jokes, he’d let me pick out a piece of candy from the candy case. For free!

  Holy smoke!

  On the days it wasn’t your turn to go to the store, that candy case was all we could think about, with each of us knowing exactly which piece we were going to choose when our turn came around again.

  There was another time I went to the store with Cathy because – on account of – Agnes was canning fruit and needed more sugar than either one of us could carry by ourselves.

  Naturally, we ran all the way and when we crashed through the ancient screen door, Bill looked up and said, ‘Danged if that don’t beat all. We got England in the mail today and Miss England herself runnin’ through the door.’

  He was waving a letter over his head with Mummy’s handwriting on it that I was expected to jump for. It made me wonder which adult I hated most. My mother for writing when her letters got me in trouble and all she ever talked about was how thrilled she and Daddy were that we were living in a lovely home in the country with such wonderful, wonderful people. Or Bill, who wouldn’t give me the candy I’d been drooling over and dreaming about for days if I didn’t keep jumping up and down like a flea reaching for it.

  Just when I’d think I’d got it, he’d laugh and raise his hand still higher, and that’s when he saw the big purple lump on my forehead and laughed harder still.

  ‘What happened to you, girl?’ he wheezed. ‘You fall out the hayloft?’

  I kept jumping and reaching for the letter, I had to, while saying, ‘No, sir. I didn’t fall out the hayloft. Agnes – Mother – got very cross – mad – at me and gave me a spank— uh … lickin’. The buckle on the belt is what made that lump.’

  Right away Bill stopped laughing and from the corner of my eye I saw that Cathy wasn’t looking in the candy case anymore but at me instead, a look of scorn on her face. My legs began to shake wondering what I’d said wrong.

  ‘You standin’ there tellin’ me you give that good woman trouble to where she’s got to whup you?’ Bill glowered. ‘Shame on you. Her taking in all you no-count brats. Givin’ you a fine home.’

  Shoving the sugar across the counter, he pointed to the door. ‘Get on home now,’ he growled, ‘’fore I tan the hide offa you myself.’

  Outside, Cathy shoved me up against the side of the store and, her face right in mine, hissed, ‘It’s on account of you we din’t get no candy!’

  She was so cross – mad – her eyes were watering. She shoved me again. ‘When you gonna learn to lie, huh? You’d have said, “Yeah, I fell out the hayloft smack dab on top of a pitchfork,” he’d have said you was one fine girl and we’d be eatin’ our candy.’

  ‘It’s wicked to lie,’ I hissed back. ‘My mother said so and so did the nuns and even our priest.’

  ‘Not when you ain’t never got enough to eat, it ain’t,’ Cathy glowered.

  She turned to walk away, paused, turned back, shoved me against the wall a third time. ‘You never picked up your damn mail,’ she said, and went back in the store to get it.

  She came out waving mail, not just Mummy’s letter but another one as well, and her cheek bulging. She puffed her breath in my face. ‘Butterscotch!’ she smirked. ‘Serve you right.’

  Agnes saw the mail sticking out of Cathy’s overall bib pocket th
e minute we walked in the door and took the time to look pained. ‘Jesus!’ she sighed, ‘Not another one of them Limey letters. Wisht all I had to do was set writin’ letters while other folks minded my kids.’

  ‘There’s another one, too, ma’am, look!’ Cathy said, waving both pieces.

  Agnes snatched the mail, slipped Mummy’s in her apron pocket and ripped open the other. Almost at once her face twisted in scorn, ‘Do you beat that?’ she glowered coming to the end.

  I never did know how to answer when Agnes asked, ‘Do you beat that?’ Beat what?

  ‘Some old biddies from hereabouts, request …’ Agnes read out loud, her eyebrows arching, ‘the pleasure of my company at a Knittin’ Bee! Want me out helpin’ the Red Cross knit up stuff for them bomb victims over in England.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘The nerve of ’em when I’m already doin’ more’n my share for the war victims with Limey brats right here in my own house!’

  From the way she was looking at me, as though it was all my fault, I thought I’d better say something quickly or get slapped.

  ‘Everybody knitted in England, too,’ I said. ‘They thought it was patriotic,’ I added, trying to make it sound as if they’d all gone mad over there, too.

  I got my face slapped anyway. ‘Did I ask you?’

  Before her hand could come back the other way, I hastily added, ‘I hated it!’

  But Agnes wasn’t listening. She was thinking. ‘You can always tell when she’s thinking,’ Cathy had once explained. ‘It’s when she rolls her bottom lip between her thumb and fingers.’

  Her thinking over, Agnes let go of her lip and said, ‘You tellin’ me you know knittin’? A little kid your age? Who taught you?’

  ‘My Mummy. We knitted scarves and socks for the soldiers and sailors.’

  Agnes’ eyebrows went up. ‘And did Mum-my,’ she tried to pronounce the word as I had, ‘teach you how to turn a heel?’

  ‘She tried but I wasn’t very good at it,’ I admitted. ‘She had to help me when I got to that bit.’