Outside the kitchen door, I stopped short when I heard her words: “And when they found her father, he was soaked with blood. A piece of sharp metal had slashed his jugular vein and he bled to death in minutes. When the ambulance attendant opened the car door, there was so much blood that it gushed all over his shoes.”
I took a step backward and reached out one hand to steady myself against the wall.
“Her mother wasn’t much better. The passenger door crushed her to a pulp and the broken glass cut her to ribbons. The funeral home recommended cremation because there was nothing they could do to restore her face. Said she didn’t even look human.”
The floor under my feet began to slant sideways, and I felt my gorge rise. I fled to the bathroom and vomited until my stomach felt as if it had been scraped out with a dull knife. When Mrs. Sampson came to find me, I told her I wasn’t feeling well and went straight to bed.
Now I blocked the awful memory. This wasn’t about me; it was about Wynona.
I opened my eyes again, but I had no idea what to say. I was powerless to deal with the level of pain and abuse that she had experienced in her short life. When it came to helping others, I felt totally inadequate.
“Now, Wynona, my dear child.” Keeping my eyes on her face rather than her wrists, I forced myself to squeeze her hands affectionately. “You can’t harm yourself, because that won’t help your pain. It will only make things worse.”
Remembering my brief flirtation with an eating disorder, I knew this to be true.
“How could my life get any worse.” She wasn’t asking a question; she was making a statement.
I sat paralyzed for a moment, staring at her silently, simply willing her to feel better. I must be able to give her some reason to believe that there was a better life in store. A few platitudes passed through my head, but they seemed so shallow that I dismissed them immediately.
“When did you last eat something?”
“I dunno, maybe yesterday. Before I heard about Rocky.”
“I have a big pot of beef stew on the stove, and I want you to spend the night if your father won’t mind.”
Wynona snorted. Even that sound was small and pathetic. “He’s drunk. He won’t even know I’m gone.” Her eyes were tearless, like black stones.
Her life was so unfathomably cruel that it would be insulting to pretend I understood. But at least we could offer food, and warmth, and our company.
“Why don’t you wash your hands, and help me mix up a batch of baking powder biscuits? After supper I’ll read you girls another one of the Paddy books, Danny the Meadow Mouse.”
February 3, 1925
We have no fresh food now except a few root vegetables in the cellar. I’m thankful that I put up so many sealers of cucumbers and cabbage although we tire of the taste of vinegar. Thankfully we have a sufficient quantity of sauerkraut, so we need not fear the perils of scurvy. Today I made soup with a thawed hambone and a pound of dried peas. Tomorrow I will boil a piece of dried whitefish in salt water, make a cream sauce, and open yet another tin of beans.
We still have sardines, but we need sugar, rice, raisins, dried prunes, macaroni, cornstarch, molasses, yeast cakes, and pipe tobacco. George allows himself only one-half pipe in the evenings. Thankfully we are not short of tea as I drink many cups each day both for warmth and for comfort.
We must also set aside a few tins of food for unexpected visitors. Our door is always left open. The distances are so vast and the weather so unpredictable it would unthinkable to lock one’s doors against travellers in peril. There is no fear of theft. Indian, half-breed, and white man alike observe the sanctity of ownership. The only rule for unseen visitors is to leave the woodbox filled and the dishes washed.
George bought a hundred-pound sack of flour in the autumn, and I bake bread weekly. My challenge is to keep the dough warm for twenty-four hours in order that the yeast will rise. At last I hit upon the idea of tucking my loaves into bed. I wrap them in tea towels and blankets, place them in the chair beside the stove, and cover all with George’s buffalo coat. In the morning they have risen nicely. Baking bread is now “a cinch.” I believe this is a reference to cinching one’s saddle.
After visiting one of his bachelor friends, George brought home a china crock filled with a disgusting mess, grey and foul-smelling.
“For the love of Mike, what is that stuff?” I asked. I was about to throw it to the chickens when George laughed and told me it is something called sourdough. I was persuaded to try it and, sure, it is not bad, similar to soda bread.
To entertain myself in the long evenings, I read seed catalogues. They are beautiful things, holding all the hope and promise of spring. A dozen bulletins have arrived from the Beaverlodge Experimental Farm. The director Mr. William Albright and his wife Eva came from Ontario back in 1913, and they have been working ever since to determine what plant varieties will thrive here. From him, we can order plantings for gooseberry bushes and caraganas. He claims that his currants will yield fifteen pounds to the bush!
Mr. Albright is a true northern advocate who travels around the district on horseback and gives encouraging talks to the weary homesteaders. “This land is not for lotus-eaters,” says he. “This is a country for workers with moral qualities that make the northern races famous!”
Days remaining: 184.
19
February
Our two rooms seemed to shrink as February wore on. I had new sympathy for pioneer parents, trapped in their tiny cabins with numerous children.
Bridget was growing bored of staying inside. “Gosh, if this keeps up I won’t live long enough to die!” she said plaintively.
In a flash of inspiration, I hauled the rain barrel into the kitchen and filled it with buckets of snow. This provided more fun than any sandbox. The snow stayed cool enough so that it didn’t turn into water, but it was soft and sticky. Bridget stood on a footstool beside the barrel and created castles and roads until her little hands turned blue.
When she tired of the snow barrel, we read the Paddy books, over and over. I found an old atlas and we looked at the different countries. “Mama, what are people from Peru called? Perunes?”
We made crafts out of toilet-paper rolls and pine cones and buttons and lace. We played Snap until I thought my nerves would snap. I taught her to play Twenty Questions, and was delighted when my brilliant child stumped me with pterodactyl because I didn’t think she even knew the word. We tried I Spy but soon gave up because there was so little to see in our small world. We couldn’t even play the piano since our fingers quickly turned numb in The Cold Part.
In desperation I decided to teach her to read. She already knew her letters, so I made a short list of words and started with the old chestnut, C-A-T. After I explained how to sound it out, I gave her a list of consonants and told her to switch out the first letter. She started at the top: Buh — aah — tuh. “Hey, Mama! That spells BAT!” she shouted. “I know how to read two words already! BAT and CAT!”
She continued down the list of words at lightning speed: “F-A-T, fat. R-A-T, rat. S-A-T, sat. Mama, I can read!”
I taught Bridget what she needed to know in case I was sick or hurt. I didn’t even mention the other possibility, the one that starts with D.
“Never, never go outside, whatever happens,” I warned her. “Stay in the house and keep the fire going, and eat whatever doesn’t need to be cooked, cereal and raisins and crackers. Wynona will find us before too long.” Secretly, I wondered how long. We hadn’t seen her for two weeks.
“Don’t worry, Mama, you can count on me.” She patted my shoulder, and I was oddly reassured.
We celebrated Bridget’s fifth birthday in February. I sewed her a ruffled bib apron from pink flowered cotton, and she wore it while we baked my great-aunt’s favourite, angel food cake, because, as I explained, Bridget was my angel.
The Five Roses Cook Book had two recipes for Angel Food, the first with eleven egg whites, and the second with two.
The book explained: Owing to the high cost, and in some parts of the country great scarcity of eggs, alternative recipes are given. Well, thank goodness for that, I said to myself, as I couldn’t spare eleven precious eggs.
This was more elaborate than anything I had tried yet. I set one cup of milk into a pan of water and heated it to boiling. Bridget stirred the dry ingredients together five times, as the recipe directed: one cup flour, one cup sugar, three teaspoons baking powder and a pinch of salt. She sifted so merrily that a cloud of white flour circled her curly dark head like a halo.
Into the dry ingredients I poured the hot milk, then folded in two stiff egg whites before pouring the batter into a pan and popping it into a moderate oven. When it had risen satisfactorily and a broom straw inserted into the centre came out clean, I took out the pan and set it on a damp dishtowel.
When removing a cake from the oven, place the pan on a damp cloth; and it will then come out readily without sticking.
After the cake had cooled, Bridget covered it with “water icing” — icing sugar mixed with water, dyed deep pink with food colouring. We lit five candles, and Bridget’s face was solemn as she made her wish and blew them out with one breath. “Good news, Fizzy! My wish is going to come true!”
That night after we kissed and rubbed noses, I heaved a sigh. “Five years old! You’re getting so tall now!”
“I know I am!” she replied in a serious voice. “Sometimes when I’m lying in bed, I look at my feet and say to them, ‘Hey, what are you doing way down there?’”
I had thought this part of the world quiet before, but now a deep silence descended, the earth hushed under a frozen blanket. Sometimes the stillness of the night was broken by the eerie howl of the coyotes. Each began with three short, sharp barks, then a long needle of agonized sound that carried all the sorrow of the world. Listening to them, I lay awake and my thoughts turned involuntarily, like the magnetic needle on a compass, toward Colin McKay.
For years the idea of being emotionally involved with another man made me recoil, as if I had placed my palm on the surface of the wood stove. So why couldn’t I put him out of my mind? I squeezed my eyes shut to blot out his green eyes while I reminded myself that he had robbed my great-aunt all those years. And now me. Bridget and I were living from hand to mouth so that he could fill his trailer with orchids, or buy expensive machinery, or whatever he did with his money. Or should I say my money.
Before my horrendous experience with the man who had made me pregnant — I refused to think of him as Bridget’s father — I had separated the actions from the individual, believing that if the behaviour changed, a lovable person would emerge. “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” as the saying went.
Now I believed that behaviour was a sign of the real person leaking through, like grease through a paper bag. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
The thermometer outside the back door read minus forty Celsius, the same as minus forty on the Fahrenheit scale. The wind bit through my balaclava while I was doing the morning chores. It was so cold that I had to warm up in the kitchen between each armload of firewood before dashing out to the barn again.
We missed Wynona, but it was too cold for her to make that long walk. One afternoon we heard the unfamiliar sound of a truck. Before I reached the window, Wynona’s triple knock sounded. I hurried to open the door. “Wynona! We’re so glad to see you! I hope you’re planning to spend the night!”
Bridget ran to her side and hugged her. The older girl hugged her back, but her eyes were shadowed.
“How did you get here?”
“I got a ride with Colin McKay. He dropped me off.”
My heart gave a sudden twist. “Where did you run into him?”
“He came over to see my father about a horse. At least, that’s what he said. He sure asked me a bunch of questions about you guys, though.”
“Really! What kind of questions?”
Wynona’s tone was offhand. “Oh, how are you doing, do you have enough wood, do you have enough to eat, can you get the truck started, stuff like that.”
I turned away to hide my indignation. Obviously he was trying to assuage his own guilt by checking up on us.
“I hope you told him we were just fine,” I said lightly.
“Yeah, I told him.”
Silently Bridget took Wynona’s hand and led her into the dining room, where they sat down to play Pairs with the deck of Mountie cards. Bridget had a prodigious memory, although I suspected that Wynona was letting her win.
I dropped into the rocking chair while I did a slow burn. What kind of game was Colin McKay playing? Perhaps the same one that Fizzy played with his hapless mouse victims, batting them around for his own enjoyment.
Resolving for the hundredth time to put him out of my mind, I opened the Five Roses Cook Book. This morning we had eaten our last slice of bread, and there were still twelve days until the first of March. I began to read the chapter titled “The Making of Bread”: In making bread, there is no such thing as luck. It is merely the effect that follows the use of the best flour, the best yeast, and the proper method.
Well, I had plenty of flour and shortening and several packets of quick-rising yeast I had tossed into my cart on our first shopping trip.
Three pages of instructions followed as to the proper methods of mixing, kneading, rising, and moulding: Make your dough rather slack. A soft dough makes bread more tender and appetizing, and it keeps fresh longer than if made from a stiff dough. Of course, also avoid too light a dough, which is apt to make a coarse texture and spoil the appearance of the cut loaf.
Heavens, this was complicated. The book contained various bread recipes calling for dry yeast, compressed yeast, potato yeast, and even homemade yeast. There was no quick-rising yeast back then, which is why my great-aunt’s dough had to rise for a full twenty-four hours. But hopefully I could follow the instructions on the back of the yeast packet.
I added one tablespoon of salt to three quarts of flour, then “rubbed in” two tablespoons of butter until it looked sufficiently distributed. In another bowl, I mixed one quart of lukewarm evaporated milk and water. Into this mixture went two tablespoons of sugar and dry yeast as directed on the packet.
Knead to a nice soft dough that does not stick to the hands, and let rise for two to three hours.
I moulded the dough into a ball, covered the big yellow mixing bowl with a clean dishtowel, and set it on the open oven door to rise.
The early twilight had filled the room when I lifted the towel to find a delightfully huge, shiny ball of dough. After taking from the mixing pan, knead the dough with the upper part of the palm near the wrist, not with the fingers. Lightness and whiteness depend on the proper performance of this process.
I began to work the bread dough with the heels of my hands, rather timidly at first, and then with more confidence. The dough puffed up and blisters broke on the surface. I realized that I was enjoying myself. There was something so basic and comforting about this process, handed down throughout the centuries.
Suddenly I stopped short, buried to my wrists in dough. I had my own grain, growing in the field right across the creek. I could have it ground into flour and make my own bread!
Of course, the crop didn’t legally belong to me. My thoughts returned like a boomerang to that ridiculous rental agreement.
I slapped the dough with my open hand, hearing a satisfying thwack. It made exactly the same sound as slapping someone in the face. I slapped it again, harder. Then I began to punch the dough with all my strength. My arms were so muscular now that I could really pack a punch.
Again and again I buried my fists in the dough, first the left, then the right, until my chest was heaving with the exertion. I just let him have it. The dough, that is.
Two hours later I stood at the counter slicing a loaf of homemade bread. It fell into perfect slices, fragrant and filled with air bubbles, and topped with a light golden crust. No doubt the savage beating I had give
n the dough had helped it along. As a budding cook, it was my proudest moment.
With the sharp knife in my hand, I glanced over at Wynona, who was labouring over her homework at the kitchen table. I couldn’t see her wrists because her sleeves hung to her knuckles, but I prayed she wasn’t still hurting herself.
There are different kinds of pain, I decided. There is pain like childbirth, which disappears as quickly as dew evaporating in the sun. There is pain that lingers but eventually heals, like that of a broken limb. But the pain of losing a loved one never goes away. It remains deep in one’s soul, like a chronic illness that flares up at intervals. There are good days and bad days. Wynona was clearly having a bad day.
Bridget had gone upstairs to The Cold Part to fetch me a clean dishtowel from the linen cupboard. I heard her footsteps running down the hall above our heads, then a loud crash followed by the sound of breaking glass.
A moment later she burst into the kitchen and stopped dead in the centre of the floor. Her face was paper white. She wasn’t making a sound, but tears were flowing down her cheeks. Her lips were compressed into a tight line, and her hands were bunched into fists.
“Bridget, what is it? What’s the matter?”
For a count of one, two, three, she still didn’t move. Then, with a howl of anguish, her lips flew open and what seemed like a quart of blood gushed out of her mouth. The fountain of blood flew through the air, down the front of her shirt and onto the floor.
I took one step toward her before the edges of my vision started to blacken and shrink like a piece of paper thrust into the fire. I fought to stay in the moment, like the end of the old Looney Tunes cartoon where Porky Pig tries to hold the edges open with his white-gloved hands before he says: “Th-th-that’s all, folks!”
The edge of a chair struck the back of my knees and over the sound of Bridget’s howling I heard Wynona’s voice yelling at me: “Sit here and put your head down!”
Wildwood Page 22
