Dedication
For my Mom
Epigraph
To an Insignificant Flower Obscurely Blooming in a Lonely Wild
. . . And though thou seem’st a weedling wild,
Wild and neglected like to me,
Thou still art dear to Nature’s child,
And I will stop to notice thee.
For oft, like thee, in wild retreat,
Array’d in humble garb like thee,
There’s many a seeming weed proves sweet,
As sweet as garden-flowers can be.
And, like to thee, each seeming weed
Flowers unregarded; like to thee,
Without improvement, runs to seed,
Wild and neglected like to me.
—John Clare
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part I: Controlling Weeds Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part II: Transplanting out of Season Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part III: The Families of Flowers Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Part IV: Planting Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Joanna Goodman
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
1950
He who plants a seed plants life. This is something Maggie’s father always says, quoting from his prized Yearbooks of Agriculture 1940–48. He doesn’t just dispense seeds; he is devoted to them the way a preacher is devoted to God. He’s known in their town as the Seed Man—a vainglorious title, but it has a noble ring. Maggie loves being the Seed Man’s daughter. It gives her an air of prestige—at least it did, once. Much like the province in which she lives, where the French and English are perpetually vying for the upper hand, her family also has two very distinct sides. Maggie understood early on that a stake had to be planted, an allegiance made. She aligned with her father, and he with her.
When she was very young, he used to read to her from his impressive collection of horticulture books. Her favorite was The Gardener’s Bug Book. There was a poem on the first page, which she knew by heart. The rose-bug on the rose is evil; so are those who see the rose-bug, not the rose. While other children were lulled to sleep with fairy tales, her bedtime stories were about seeds and gardening—Johnny Appleseed carrying his seeds from the cider presses of Pennsylvania, walking hundreds of miles tending his orchards, sharing the wealth of his apples with the settlers and the Indians; or Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who planted peas in his monastery garden and studied the traits of each generation, and whose records, her father claimed, were the foundation of our current knowledge of genetics and heredity. Such triumphs, her father pointed out, always begin with a single seed.
“How do you make the seeds you sell?” she once asked him.
He looked at her as though he was offended, and replied, “I don’t make the seeds, Maggie. The flowers do.”
It’s their potential for beauty he admires most: the graceful stem that has yet to grow, the shape of the leaf and color of the flower, the abundance of the fruit. Looking at the plainest seed in the palm of his hand, he understands the miracle that will come to pass as it fulfills its purpose.
He also appreciates the predictability of seeds. The corn seed, for instance, always produces a mature plant in ninety days. Her father likes being able to rely on such things, although occasionally his plants are imperfect or deformed and it troubles him deeply, keeps him up pacing through the night, as though the seed itself has betrayed him.
Always a source of comfort to her as a child, his stories mean even more to her now as she tries to quiet herself to sleep in this strange bed, strange body. At sixteen, Maggie has a seed of her own growing inside her and it’s almost fully ripened. The baby moves and kicks with gusto, pressing its feet and elbows against the walls of her belly, reminding her of her terrible transgression, the shame it’s caused and the way it’s upheaved her comfortable life.
Outside, the sky has gone dark. She came up for an afternoon nap, but it must be suppertime by now and she’s still wide awake. She lays a hand on her belly and instantly feels the unnerving acrobatics beneath her palm. At least she isn’t alone in this place anymore.
Her aunt calls out for supper and Maggie stretches. She reluctantly turns on the lamp, eases herself off the bed, and goes downstairs to face them.
A platter of roast beef is set down on the table for Sunday dinner, alongside dishes of carrots, potatoes, peas. A bottle of wine is opened for the grown-ups. Fresh baked bread, soft butter, salt, and pepper. Her parents are here visiting. Maggie is happy to see her father. She misses him, even though he’s different with her. She can tell he’s making an effort, but there’s a shadow in his blue eyes now whenever he looks at her, which isn’t often enough. His attempt at forgiveness lacks conviction. He can’t quite overcome his sense of betrayal.
Maggie watches her uncle ceremoniously sharpen his knife and carve thin pink slices of beef that bleed onto the white porcelain. Her sisters blather and giggle together, excluding her. Someone asks if there’s horseradish. And then Maggie feels a gush of warm liquid between her legs, just as her mother is saying, “Tabarnac, I forgot the horseradish.”
Maggie’s dress is soaked. Her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. She wants to slink away from the table and run to the washroom, but the rush of liquid doesn’t let up. “I peed,” she blurts, standing. The liquid is still pouring from between her legs, surprisingly odorless, puddling on her aunt’s wood floor.
She turns to her mother in a panic. Her sisters are all staring at her splotched dress with bewildered expressions. At last, Aunt Deda cries out, “Her water broke!”
Nicole, her youngest sister, begins to wail. Maman and Deda spring into action. The men slide away from the table, dumbstruck and meek. They wait awkwardly for instructions from the women.
“She’s in labor,” Maman says calmly.
“Now?” Maggie’s father says, glancing over at the mighty roast beef sitting freshly carved in the center of the long pine table. “She’s not due for another month.”
“These things can’t be conveniently arranged,” Maman snaps. “You’d better call Dr. Cullen. Tell him we’ll meet him at the hospital.”
“What’s happening?” Maggie asks. No one has prepared her for this moment.
Deda rushes over and throws her pillowy arm over Maggie’s shoulder. “It’s fine, cocotte,” she soothes. “The baby’s early, that’s all.”
No one ever says “your baby.” It’s always “the baby.” Even Maggie thinks of it as “the baby.” And yet in spite of all the havoc it’s caused, she’s not quite ready to let it go. She’s come to think of it as an ally or a talisman, though not so much as her future child. She’s still too young for that, can’t really connect to the concept of motherhood. She doesn’t have to anyway. The baby coming tonight really only means one thing to her: she’ll be free from imprisonment at her aunt and uncle’s farm. She can finally go home.
She feels a contraction and lets out a roar of pain.
“It’s coming,” her mother says. It’s coming.
Part I
Controlling Weeds
1948–1950
The growth of perennial weeds, particularly of a fleshy kind, can be discouraged by allowing them to grow happily till just about to flower and then harvesting them and laying them back again thickly on the surface of the roots . . .
—Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners
Chapter 1
1948
“Admit it, Seed Man, you voted for Duplessis!”
A boom of laughter drifts up to the attic where Maggie is weighing and counting seeds. Premier Duplessis has just been reelected and there’s a buzz in the store. She dumps a handful of seeds on the scale, straining to hear what’s being said downstairs. “Come on, Seed Man!” one of the farmers teases. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”
Maggie abandons counting and crouches at the top of the stairwell to eavesdrop. She’s been working for her father on weekends since she turned twelve two years ago, weighing and packaging seeds in small paper envelopes. It can be a tedious task, especially because the larger seeds have to be counted individually, but she doesn’t mind. She loves being at her father’s store; it’s her favorite place in the world. She plans to work downstairs on the sales floor one day, and then take over when he retires.
His store is called Superior Seeds/Semences Supérieures, and it’s about halfway between Cowansville and Dunham, the small town where they live about fifty-five miles southeast of Montreal. The name on the sign outside the store is written in French and English because her father says that’s the way things work in Quebec if you want to prosper in business. You can’t exclude anyone.
Maggie creeps down a few more stairs to get closer to the action. The store is damp and smells of fertilizer, a scent she adores. Arriving on Saturday mornings, she always inhales deeply and sometimes digs her hands inside the cool dirt where new seeds are germinating in small clay pots, just so the earthy smell will stay on her fingers for the rest of the day. To Maggie, this is where happiness is found.
The store stocks basic things like fertilizers and insecticides, but Maggie’s father prides himself on an impressive selection of rare seeds that can’t be found elsewhere in the area. Vain enough to think of himself as a dispenser of life, he is redeemed by his sheer commitment to his work. He manages to straddle a fine line between ridicule and respect, and the farmers come to him not just for their seeds but also for his expertise in all matters rural and political. On a day like today, his store is as much a gathering place as it is a business. The back wall is lined with row upon row of tiny square drawers, all of them filled with seeds. There are giant barrels of corn, wheat, barley, oats, and tobacco for the farmers. On the floor, there are sacks of sheep manure, Fertosan, bonemeal, RA-PID-GRO. Beside those there is a wooden display rack for the trees and shrubs, as well as gardening tools, lawn sprinklers, and hoses. The shelves are crowded with powder packs and spray cans of DDT, Nico-fume, larvicide, malathion dust, Slug-Em. There is nothing a farmer or a gardener can’t find.
“The day I vote Union Nationale is the day I close down this store,” her father declares, full of bravado, the upturned ends of his moustache seeming to emphasize his point.
Her father has a magnetic way about him. He’s as handsome as a movie star, with his blue eyes and Hollywood moustache. His hair is thinning—always has been, ever since his twenties—but baldness gives him a certain dignified air, somehow enhances his sophistication in her eyes. He wears linen suits during the summer and tweed jackets with fedoras in winter, and he smokes House of Lords cigars that stink up the house with that wonderful fatherly smell. Even his name, Wellington Hughes, sounds impressive.
Wellington thrusts his chin out in his stubborn, prideful way and says, “The man is a gangster and a dictator.” He speaks in fluent French, being a great proponent of bilingualism as a business tool.
Maggie’s father is a very influential man in the farming community, so it’s expected he will support any politician who values, protects, and promotes agriculture the way Duplessis does. But he is also a proud Anglophone. He despises Duplessis and is quite open about it. He believes Duplessis is the one who’s kept the French uneducated and living in the dark ages. He endures his customers’ political views only because they choose to do their business at his shop and he respects their patronage and loyalty. Yet when the name Maurice Duplessis is dropped into the conversation, the color rises up in his usually pale cheeks and his voice goes up an octave or two.
“We know you voted for him, Hughes,” Jacques Blais taunts. He pronounces it Yooz. “You need his farm credits. When we prosper, you prosper, heh?”
“My business would do fine without that egomaniac in power,” Maggie’s father states emphatically.
“Takes one to know one,” Bruno Roy mutters, and all the men break out laughing.
“You Québécois have no loyalty to this country,” her father says, uttering the word “loyalty” with reverence, as though it were the noblest trait a man could possess.
“Maudit Anglais,” Blais jokes, just as the bell jangles over the front door.
The men turn to look and immediately fall silent as Clémentine Phénix enters the store. An unmistakable tension quickly replaces the jovial mood of moments earlier.
“I need some DDT,” she says, filling the store with her husky voice and controversial presence. The way she says “I need” is not so much a request as a challenge.
Maggie’s father goes over to where he keeps the pesticides. He picks up a can of DDT and wordlessly hands it to her. Something passes between them—a cryptic look, a communication—but then he quickly turns and walks away. Maybe it’s nothing more than the old territorial grudge.
The Phénix family lives in a small shack on the cornfield that borders Maggie’s property. This is very much a point of contention with her father. He feels the value of his own land is considerably diminished by its proximity to their impoverished shack. The Phénix kids own the cornfield, but it’s all they’ve got. They earn their living from sweet corn and strawberries in the summer. In the winter, Clémentine’s brother, Gabriel, works in a factory in Montreal. It’s just the three siblings living together now—Clémentine, Gabriel, and Angèle—and Clémentine’s four-year-old daughter, Georgette, from a marriage that ended in divorce. The rest of the family—their parents and two other sisters—were killed in a car accident several years ago.
Clémentine follows Wellington to the front counter, ignoring the snickers from the other customers, which she must be used to by now. Her divorce has made her a pariah in their small Catholic town, where divorce is not only a sin but also illegal. She had to go all the way to Ottawa to get it done, an unforgivable offense in the eyes of the self-righteous townsfolk like Maggie’s mother.
“I need two cans,” Clémentine says, folding her solid brown arms across her chest.
She’s suntanned and freckled, wears no makeup, and lets her long golden braid swing out behind her like a skipping rope. Maggie thinks she’s beautiful, even stripped of all the usual feminine trappings. She somehow manages to be feminine and tomboyish at the same time, her disarming
ly pretty face not the least bit undermined by a hard expression, thick, muscular arms, or the unflattering potato-sack dungarees that conceal even the possibility of a figure.
There’s something awe-inspiring about her, Maggie observes, a quiet defiance in how she handles herself with the men. She has none of the usual adornments that give women legitimacy—a husband, children, money—and yet she seems to do whatever needs to be done to manage her family and their livelihood.
“My crop is infested with rootworms,” Clémentine explains. If she’s uncomfortable with everyone’s eyes on her, she doesn’t let on.
Wellington crosses the store again and returns with another can of DDT, looking quite agitated. All of a sudden, the front door swings open and Gabriel Phénix steps inside. He swaggers over to Clémentine as all the farmers turn their attention to him.
Maggie hasn’t seen Gabriel since last summer and her breath catches when he enters. He left for Montreal as a boy last fall—she remembers him running through the field on spindly legs, his shoulders slight, his face round and cherubic—but he’s returned a man. He must be sixteen now. His blond hair is combed into a swirling lick, his gray eyes glint like razor blades, and he’s got the same pronounced cheekbones and full lips as his sister. He’s still thin enough that Maggie can count his ribs through his white cotton T-shirt, but his arms, which have muscle now and a fine thick shape, give his body a man’s breadth and substance. Watching him from her spot near the stairs, she feels something strange inside her body, like the swoosh feeling in her belly when she dives off the high rocks into Selby Lake. Whatever it is about him, she can’t seem to make her eyes look anywhere else.
“You okay?” he asks his sister. Clémentine nods and puts her hand on his chest, a signal for him to hang back and wait for her. He does, with clenched fists and a serious, insolent expression on his face, waiting to pounce in her defense if called upon.
The Home for Unwanted Girls Page 1
