Almost Eden

by Anita Horrocks

  To Mom

  “I woke up knowing already that she was gone.

  The baby robins outside my window were raising a real stink, trying to out chirp each other. “Feed me…” “Feed me first…” “No, me.”

  They had a nest tucked in the curve of the downspout, high under the eaves of our creaky old house. Not exactly the safest place Mom and Dad Robin could’ve picked to raise a family. You’d think they’d have figured that out after a thunderstorm blew their first batch out of the nest.

  Mom was the one who found Tommy on the back porch guarding a mushy lump of feathers. She cried a little. Dad says Mom would cry over a mosquito. He says it like it’s a bad thing. When she was done crying I helped her pick up three other dead baby birds from the sidewalk. She didn’t want my little sister, Lena, to see them.

  Grown-ups think they can hide things from kids. They think they can decide how much of the truth we’re old enough to take. Like we won’t figure it out on our own. Believe me, most of the time we know, even if we wish we didn’t.

  When my parents don’t want me and my sisters to know what they’re saying, they talk Plautdietsch, which is Low German. They were talking Plautdietsch last night, late. Loud enough for me and Lena to hear all the way upstairs in our room, even with the door closed and the blankets pulled over our heads.

  I didn’t want to think about that now. It was early still, too early for anyone else to be up. For a few seconds I lay in bed, my heart pounding a mile a minute, wondering what I should do. Then I couldn’t take it anymore and scrambled out from under the covers to pull on some clothes. In the bed next to mine Lena whimpered. Her baby doll cheeks were rosy with sleep.

  I didn’t really give a care if I woke anyone up or not. Anyways, there was no point trying to avoid all the creaks and groans in our stiff old house. I slipped, barefoot, down the worn staircase, through the living room and kitchen into the back porch, flipped the hook on the door, and was out.

  Tommy waited on the porch steps. Meowing, he curled around my bare leg like a furry grey muff. I stopped long enough to scratch behind his torn ear.

  “Voh scheent et?” I whispered Dad’s favorite greeting. “How shines it, Tom-cat? Someone will feed you soon.” Except Mom was the one who always put out a bowl of milk in the morning. Dad refused to feed an alley cat.

  Tommy shook off my hand and jumped up on the scaffolding next to the porch. Dad was painting the house and garage this summer. He’d gone out and rented the scaffolding and bought brushes and caulking and sandpaper and whatnot.

  The scaffolding hugged the back of the house, looking a bit like it might sprout leaves. If I squinted a little I could almost see the vines twisting and curling until the house was totally hidden, like the castle in Sleeping Beauty. Which made me laugh, thinking that, because for sure there weren’t any castles or Prince Charmings in Hope-field, capital of nowhere.

  Swinging one leg over my bike, I coasted into the alley, making sure to check if Grandma Redekop was looking out her window. Grandma’s room in the old folks’ home across the alley looked right into our backyard. Us kids couldn’t steal a pea pod out of the garden without Grandma knowing. She’d have a conniption fit if she saw me riding with no hands.

  But it was too early for Grandma yet. The sun wasn’t quite up, the sky still smeared with color. Cool morning air tickled my skin. Pedaling steadily, I let go. Loose gravel crunched under my bike tires.

  At the end of the alley I made a wide sweeping turn onto the street and headed west, guiding the bike with my knees, back straight, arms dangling. Perfectly balanced, perfectly in control.

  The first block, past the library, was easy. I’d been playing this game so long, one block didn’t even count. So what if twelve was getting a bit old to play wishing games; I didn’t give a care.

  Riding two blocks with no hands was good for a small wish–something like pancakes for breakfast, the thin ones that you roll up with a fork. My friend Jillian called them crepes, but in our house they didn’t have a fancy name. I wished for pancakes on Sundays, when Mom almost always made roll-up pancakes or waffles before church. On Saturdays–baking day–I wished for fresh cinnamon buns or may be kringel, the soft white buns tied in curly knots, still hot out of the oven so that when my sisters and I bit into them the melted butter ran down our chins.

  If I wanted my wishes to come true, I had to make them reasonable, not? I had to wish for things that “conditions favor.” I’d learned that from reading The Little Prince.

  Two blocks took me past the Mennonite Brethren church, which was right by where my school was, too. There was only one elementary school in Hopefield, and one high school. But there were six other Mennonite churches and one Lutheran church, too. We went to the MB. So did most of my friends, or else the Bergthaler Mennonite or Grace Mennonite. A few were Sommerfelders. Jillian was the only one I knew who went to the Lutheran church.

  I wished to make it another block, and another. Conditions favored my wish.

  Three blocks with no hands meant I could make a bigger wish. Once I wished for an A on a social studies test–and got it. So what if I usually did; I was worried about that test, and my wish came true. So did the one where I wished that my sister Beth would break out in zits. Served her right. Just because she was four years older didn’t give her the right to boss me around all the time.

  Beth broke out in zits just before the Young People’s campfire night where she was going with this guy she really liked. I’d felt a little bad about that one. I even asked God to forgive me. I didn’t say sorry to Beth, though, so probably I still owed God one.

  If I made it all the way from our house to the swimming pool, I could wish for anything my heart desired. It could be as unreasonable and far out as I wanted.

  To get there I had to ride four blocks, go around two corners, over the railway tracks, down another two blocks, through a dip at the park entrance, and along the dirt road to the far end of the park. So far I’d never gotten farther than the railway tracks. This morning I wasn’t even headed in that direction. I’d already passed the school and was almost up to Hippies Hangout, where my friends and I went almost every day after school to buy penny candy.

  HONNNK!

  Holy Moses. Talk about a heart attack. I grabbed the handlebars and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop. The driver glared at me, then backed the rest of the way out of his driveway and drove off. Like it was my fault that he didn’t see me there in the middle of the road. Fuy.

  Riding a bike with no hands was mostly pretty easy. Avoiding all the things that got in the way was the hard part.

  I kept going, only now I was shaking too much to let go of the handlebars. Anyways, there were only fifteen blocks from one end of Hopefield to the other, so I was almost as far as I could go already. At the last intersection at the very end of town, I stopped. On this side of Valley Avenue, on one corner, was the old folks’ home, the one that was the last stop before the cemetery a half-mile down the road. After that were fields of grain, rapeseed, and alfalfa. Lots of potatoes and beets and onions and corn, too. Hopefield was in the middle of one big garden that rolled north right up to Winnipeg and south to the U.S. border.

  On the other corner on this side of Valley Avenue was a service station, still locked up tight so early in the morning. But across from the service station at the very edge of town, crouched an ugly squat building. Hunkered up against the floodway like a cornered cat, trying to hide. I liked that word. Hunkered. It fit perfect.

  Lights flicked on here and there. Somewhere in that building was my mother. A shiver ran through me. Never mind how hard I tried not to think about it; I knew for sure that this time, she was there because of me.

  I wondered if they made her wear a straitjacket. />
  Probably not, I told myself. Mom wasn’t really crazy that way

  On the way home I rode down my friend Jillian’s street, but it was way too early yet to knock on the door. Besides which, Jillian had slept over at Sadie’s last night.

  I should’ve seen it coming. Even if Mom had promised. Weeks ago already, when I’d first asked if I could have a pajama party on the last day of school. I’d waited until she was in a good mood, peeling vegetables for supper and singing along with the Johnny Appleseed record she’d put on the hi-fi for Lena. Mom got all excited when I asked.

  “What a good idea!” She clapped her hands together. “We’ll clean out the front porch for you and your friends. What do you want me to cook for everyone? Borscht maybe?” she teased.

  “Fuy,” I grimaced, which made Mom laugh. I knew a few words of my own in Plautdietsch. “Can we make pizza? With homemade sausage?”

  “You can make anything you want, even Italian pizza with Mennonite sausage. We’ll make you the best pajama party ever!” She laughed again, swinging me around the kitchen and singing, “Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and rain and an appleseed. Yes, He’s been good to me.”

  We sang and twirled and sang until we were both laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Every time I thought I’d be able to stop laughing finally, Mom would break into another song like “She’s Too Fat for Me,” or “Auch du Lieber Augustine.”

  Dad shook his head when he came home and we were still singing. “Calm down once, Esther,” he said to Mom.

  “Oh, you calm down,” she laughed, going back to her vegetables.

  That should have been my first clue. Mom was in too good a mood.

  I’d invited everyone–Naomi, Heather, Joy, and Eleanor. And my best friends Sadie Heppner and Jillian Robb. I’d been best friends with Jillian all the way since her family moved to Hopefield three years ago, almost at the end of grade 3. It was 1967, because her first day in school was the same day as the pioneer pageant to celebrate Canada’s 100th birthday. Everyone in the whole school was supposed to get dressed up like pioneers to honor our forefathers.

  Jillian showed up in a cowgirl outfit, with a holster and gun and everything.

  Our teacher, Mrs. Bergen, took her gun away. She said there was no such thing as a cowgirl, at least not around here. Besides which, guns had no place in a pacifist community, and she would be speaking to Jillian’s parents.

  That was during my Annie Oakley phase, so I was pretty sure Mrs. Bergen was wrong about there not being such a thing as a cowgirl. Only I never dared say so. Not to Mrs. Bergen. I told Jillian, though. I told her I wished I’d thought of being a cowgirl instead of wearing a stupid itchy bonnet and ugly long dress.

  We’d been best friends ever since. It made me feel special to have a best friend who came from somewhere else. I was born in Hopefield, and so were all my other friends. And their parents, and even most of their grandparents, too. Or else close by in one of the dozens of little villages around here.

  Anyways, for weeks already Jillian and Sadie and I had planned what we would do at my pajama party–swimming first, then pizza and records.

  Last weekend I’d cleaned out the front porch all by myself because Mom had one of her sick headaches. I even scrubbed the bathroom and kept Lena out of the house and everything so Mom could have a sleep. And Beth had done the shopping and bought chips and pop and pizza mix and sausage for us. Everything was ready.

  I tried not to worry too much yet. I just had to make sure to help out around the house and not fight with Beth or Lena or anything, and then Mom would be okay again, not?

  And I knew for sure she’d be happy when I brought my report card home. I thought I might even get a B in German, my worst subject ever. Der, die, das–what kind of language has three different ways of saying “the?”

  In grade 4 once, I’d brought home a big fat F on my report card. Mom had been pretty good about it. “Never mind, Elsie,” she said. “It’s only one bad grade. You’ll do better next time. Lookit, you got As and Bs in almost every other subject.”

  “I hate German! Why do we have to take it?”

  “German is part of your heritage, part of who you are.” Mom was rolling out dough to make ammonia cookies for Christmas. “Aren’t you interested even a little bit in the language your ancestors spoke when they came here?”

  I already knew the story. I already knew how my great-great-grandfather’s family and a bunch of other Mennonites came here to Manitoba from Russia way back in 1874, because the government needed farmers so bad they were giving away land for next to nothing. And how the government promised them they could practice their religion and teach German to their children in school and everything. I’d known all of that and more, for as long as I could remember.

  “That was a hundred years ago! Things are different now.”

  “Many things are different. Not everything. Sometimes it takes people a long time to change.”

  I’ll say. Mennonites weren’t big on change. We’d only almost lived here since Canada was born and we still had to learn German in school. No wonder people were so surprised when they found out we didn’t all still wear long dresses and kerchiefs like the Hutterites.

  Mom sighed. “I wanted to make sure my kids learned to speak good English. Now maybe I’m sorry that your father and I didn’t speak more German to you when you were little.”

  “I’m not.” I knew enough, maybe not so much as some of my friends did. Mark Giesbrecht and Pete Wiens and Sadie Heppner still spoke Plautdietsch with their parents at home. But mostly the only kids who used German in school were the farm kids like Mark, or the Mexican Mennonite kids. And for sure it wasn’t the kind of German you’d use in church.

  “Kleenex Krahn called Jillian a schnoddanaze at recess. Sadie said it meant know-it-all, but then Mark told us it really meant–”

  “Kleenex Krahn?” Mom waved the cookie cutter at me.

  Oops. “Everyone calls her that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what everyone else does. I don’t want you teasing other kids. Understood?”

  “Sorry. Anyways, I’m Canadian. Not Dutch or German or Russian or whatever. Shouldn’t I learn French if I want to be a good Canadian? Jillian got to take French before she came here.”

  Mom sighed one of her I-hope-I-won’t-be-disappointed-in-you sighs. “Nah yo” she said. “There are people, turtles, and three-cornered files.”

  Which didn’t make any sense at all, but was just the kind of thing Mom was all the time saying. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “It takes all kinds to make a world.” Mom turned back to her dough and said something else in Low German that I didn’t understand. I got the message, though, so I shut up while I was still ahead yet.

  Anyways, the High German we learned in school, and that the old people spoke in church, wasn’t anything like the Plautdietsch Mom and Dad used at home. Not to us kids so much, but for sure when my grandparents and aunts and uncles got together, which was pretty much every Sunday, holiday, birthday, and any other old time. Then everyone talked at once. Most of the time it sounded like they were arguing, but then they’d laugh and when I asked them what was so funny they’d chuckle and say, “It’s not the same in English.”

  Plautdietsch was a loud language. My family was a loud family.

  But even if we didn’t understand most of the words, we kids caught on to a lot more than the grown-ups thought we did.

  I didn’t need anyone to tell me that my mom and dad had been arguing about me last night, about me and my party that never happened because Mom never felt better all week. Yesterday, the last day of school, she never made it to breakfast even.

  When Dad came down in the morning, he’d poured himself a cup of coffee and said, “Nah, meyahl. No pajama party in this house tonight. Your mother’s not up to it.”

  “But, Dad!” I protested. “Mom said! She likes my friends to come over. We�
�ll be quiet. I promise. Quiet as mice.”

  Dad snorted. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  I looked to Beth for help, but she just shook her head at me.

  “Everyone’s already invited!”

  “Then uninvite them,” Dad said. “You can have your party another time.”

  “Isaak, she’s been looking forward to this for days already.” Mom’s soft voice was almost a whisper. She leaned against the doorframe, squinting into the bright kitchen. I felt a sharp pang of guilt at how awful she looked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Mom said. “Let her have her party.”

  I turned back to Dad hopefully, but he never even looked at me. He jumped to his feet and went to help Mom. Even leaning on the doorframe she was wobbling a little, dabbing at the tears in her eyes with a Kleenex.

  “Esther, come back to bed.” Dad guided Mom out of the room.

  As soon as they were gone, Beth got up and stood over me, glaring hard enough to bore a hole through me with her eyes. “You listen and you listen good.” She leaned forward, practically in my face. “Leave it alone already.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “So what. Life’s not fair, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet. Think about Mom for once.”

  Everything was ruined. I had to tell my friends that the party was off. “My Mom’s sick,” I said.

  “What’s she got?” asked Sadie.

  Only I didn’t want to say she had a headache because that sounded like it was nothing, and I couldn’t say what she really had because it was too hard to explain. Besides which, I didn’t understand it even. So I mumbled something about how it just wasn’t going to work out this time.

  Jillian said we could all go to her house except her parents planned to be out of town overnight. So then Sadie invited her for a sleepover, and Jillian said she’d ask if she could have a pajama party at her place next weekend. After school let out we all went swimming together like always, but it wasn’t the same. For sure it didn’t feel like the last day of school is supposed to feel.