The County of Birches

by Judith Kalman

  At school the other girls wore the same T-strapped footwear, or loafers, but all navy or black. The boys wore brown oxfords. My red shoes were magnificent. At home I took the shoe brush and stroked them back to perfection. My shoes were undoubtedly glorious, but I knew they weren’t right. Why was something not right when it was evidently best?

  My friends were all girls. We sat at the front and in the middle of the class. Only the worst-behaved boys sat near us, placed under the teacher’s eye. Our desks were ranged in five rows, six and seven seats deep. They were solid wood with rounded edges, smooth from the rub of books and hands, and scored by the lead of wayward pencils. We didn’t use the inkwell for what it was intended. Our pens had narrow, see-through cartridges that were punctured when the casing was screwed onto the nib. Cartridges were supposed to be neater than ink bottles, but ink sometimes squirted onto the fresh white page if we weren’t careful. Some girls put their recess apples into the inkwell. The boys fiddled with crumpled-up paper they stuffed down the hole and stabbed with their pencils. When the teacher left the room they stretched their arms through the desk drawer underneath and popped the wads of paper up through the holes. We pitied them.

  My girlfriends were Carol, Gail, Mary, Kathy and Frances. Their last names were Dunn, Connelly, McGuire, Jones, Conway. A girl in the other grade three class was called Katzakis.

  “Never heard of ‘Dana’,” they said when I joined the class.

  They’d never heard of Hungary, either, but I pointed it out on a map.

  Our teacher was a small woman who was what we called Oriental because none of us could tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese and we didn’t know there are any other kinds. We could tell the ages of most of the teachers. The young ones wore their long hair piled high on their heads; the older ones wore their hair short and crimped and had thicker waists and legs. We couldn’t gauge the vintage of our teacher because she looked different, but her name tipped us off; she was a “Miss.”

  School was the place I could show I was best. The right answers were easy. “Where did Sally take Spot? Who went to the store with Dick? Where did Jane put the eraser?” Spelling every night for homework—use these words in sentences: correct, courtesy, gallant, reward.

  Some kids didn’t seem to know the obvious. How could Ronnie Everett not remember that Sally took Spot to the park? We had just finished reading about it. There was a picture of Sally kneeling beside her dog to unclasp his leash. We knew it was Sally by her blonde curly bob. Jane was taller, with brown, page-boyed hair. Ronnie Everett stood up to answer but swayed sheepishly. We spent a lot of time in class waiting for Ronnie to remember.

  My mother’s staffroom gossip was a door to the world of adults. I knew the new kindergarten teacher hired to assist my mother wasn’t in favour. She wasn’t pretty, but that couldn’t be helped, said my mother. The new teacher coughed nervously whenever the principal spoke to her. My mother said the new teacher only looked awkward; she was more capable than he thought, but Gibbs would find a way to get rid of her at the end of the year. It was a shame, said my mother. The new teacher had a bad boyfriend who also made her unhappy. It wasn’t easy being plain. When I went into the kindergarten to meet my mother after school, I saw the new teacher zipping the jackets of thirty little kids lined up in hats and boots. I felt a secret power knowing what was in store for her.

  I knew also that Miss Osborne was getting married in the spring, but I wasn’t allowed to divulge this because of Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs liked to share jokes with Miss Osborne while she stood at her classroom door watching the grade twos file in from recess. It was hard to keep my mouth shut. Miss Osborne was popular in the schoolyard too. Sometimes she was an ender for our jump ropes. In the winter, an entourage of little girls circled around her as she perambulated the schoolyard. My information was valuable currency, but I had nowhere to spend it. “If you dare breathe a word!” my mother threatened.

  My mother was afraid of a number of things. She was afraid someone would complain that her language was not good enough for the job. She was afraid Mr. Gibbs would find out from a secondary source what her opinion was of him, and it would cost her dearly. She was afraid of appearing too different from the other parents, and thus being considered unfit to teach their children. At home we were admonished not to raise our voices—not against each other, but lest the neighbours overheard. What might they think—that we were uncivilized? She was afraid, in this new world, of losing what she had gained. Although I had never done so, I worried that might inadvertently shame her, tarnish her reputation and jeopardize our safety. Sometimes, in exciting exchanges between friends, I felt welling up some piece of juicy staffroom gossip. It bubbled. I actually felt it in the flow of saliva in my mouth, and the quickened pulse of my chest. I had something very compelling to say. It was physical, this desire to disclose and entertain. I was afraid one day I would let slip the forbidden.

  * * *

  My friend Frances tugged her striped stocking cap lower on her forehead. The wind whipped snow into our faces. We twirled around to cheat its lash. “Miss Taylor has a coat like Mrs. Atkinson.” She sniffed from the cold.

  “No she doesn’t,” argued precise Carol. “Miss Taylor’s coat is grey; Mrs. Atkinson’s is white.”

  “So, they’re still the same coat.”

  “Mrs. Atkinson went to Bermuda at Christmas with her sister,” Kathy contributed, “and they went snorkelling underwater.”

  “Who says?”

  “She did. She told her class, and my sister Wendy has her.”

  “So,” said Mary, “I’ve seen Mrs. Atkinson’s sister in the parking lot. You wouldn’t think she’s her sister. She looks so pretty.”

  I swerved to put the wind at my back, and the pom-pom at the end of my windsock of a hat batted me in the mouth. As I walked backwards facing my friends my heart raced expectantly. What I knew about Mrs. Atkinson’s sister would trump any parking lot sighting. My mother had said Mrs. Atkinson took her sister to Bermuda to help her feel better after she’d lost her baby. Lost her baby! No, my mother said, not that kind of lost, the baby wasn’t real yet.

  My wind-smacked cheeks didn’t show the flush I knew was on them. I swallowed hard to contain my information but my voice jumped ahead of me.

  “Why would Mrs. Atkinson go to Bermuda with a sister? That’s weird,” I challenged the panel marching me back.

  Kathy shrugged. “Sisters do stuff together.”

  “Yeah, but what if they have husbands?” said Carol.

  I thought my heart would burst, I was that close to telling. The temptation was unbearable. I swung around so I was walking abreast of my friends. Snow pelted my eyelids. “Mrs. Atkinson’s sister is a Miss. She’s Miss Carlisle.”

  I could feel sweat under my acrylic hat brim despite the windy wet. My heart slowed in relief. There, I’d said it. I’d managed to say it without crossing the line.

  I knew the limits of what I was allowed. I was allowed to enter the kindergarten at the end of the day if I wanted to. This meant I might finger the toys as long as I didn’t rearrange them. I might chat with the other teacher, or draw on the blackboard behind my mother’s chair. These were privileges, I knew, for having a mother in the school. But I couldn’t count on her to bail me out of a predicament. She’d made that clear. I had to watch my step just like the rest.

  I watched myself a lot. In the mirror, I saw the perfect red leather that housed each of my careful steps. I had matched it with a red sweater that had round plastic buttons. The collar of my white blouse sat overtop. Watching what I said was as carefully pieced together. Daily I honed my self-censor, balancing between what I wanted to say and what I could not.

  * * *

  Mr. Gibbs was one of the few men in the school. He was big, handsome, with short thick hair of no colour. His heavy moustache matched. Way up from his height we felt the sting of his blue eyes always watchful and suspicious, as though just because we were kids we were bound to be up to some
thing. He barked his instructions. When he smiled we thought of the slick-haired villain in a silent movie, tying the heroine to the track. My mother said, how this man had come to run a school for little children was beyond her. He had been a sergeant in the army once upon a time. I was sensitive to once-upon-a-times and had no trouble grasping metamorphosis. The other men were Mr. Wainright, the gym teacher, and Mr. James, who unaccountably taught grade four. Mr. Burgess headed up the grade sevens because they were the oldest and needed a firm hand. Otherwise there was only Mr. Beaudry, the custodian. There were three classes at each grade except kindergarten, making Mr. Gibbs’s staff of women around twenty.

  We were used to women. Men were a shadowy presence. We met our friends’ fathers on weekends as they sat behind the wheel of a car to drop us off at Brownies or swimming. We weren’t expected to speak to them while we giggled with our friends in the back seat. My piano teacher was Mr. Hansen. He had a quiet voice and a soft accent my mother said was Dutch. Mr. Hansen came to our house. He smelled of shaving cream and wore rumpled shiny grey suits. He leaned over me from behind and covered my hands on the keys to show me what I was doing wrong. Mr. Hansen’s touch was as neutral as water.

  I tensed at the sound of Mr. Gibbs’s voice heartily booming down the corridor as he shook hands with the consultant. Something about the way he filled his sandy-shaded lightweight suits made me nervous, and so did the dark pipe clenched inside strong teeth. He was the only one in the school who smoked outside the staffroom. If you were sent at lunchtime to take a note to the teachers’ lounge, the cigarette haze burned your eyes. My mother walked home for her lunch because she couldn’t stand the smoke, but she said, too, that watching Mr. Gibbs flirt with the young teachers put her off her food. He pestered them but they felt obliged to laugh and smile.

  Sometimes a teacher was a Miss although she looked like a Mrs. This was uncommon. Mrs. Dunbar, the secretary, had no husband because he was dead. Mrs. Grace, the librarian, was older too and came to staff parties unaccompanied. But to be a Miss with lines on her face, there was only Miss Armstrong like that, and Mr. Gibbs disliked her. He dropped in on her classes after he had lurked around until he heard the highest level of noise. Then he barged in and, in the din of desks and chairs being pushed back abruptly, he roared, “This class can be heard all the way down the hall!” Sure, said my mother, you mean heard from right behind the door. She thought Miss Armstrong was a good teacher and hoped she’d still be around when I reached grade five.

  I wasn’t sure why Mr. Gibbs didn’t like Miss Armstrong, but it had something to do with her being a Miss and having thick ankles and wearing pleated tartan the colour of dried blood. My mother said you needed to be slim to wear pleats. I found Miss Armstrong somewhat formidable and didn’t share my mother’s enthusiasm for having her as my teacher, but I doubted Mr. Gibbs objected to her on account of us children.

  * * *

  My mother and Mr. Gibbs had an unsteady relationship. No one was totally secure with him, but my mother felt reasonably confident. She had supporters at the school board. She managed to restrain the multiplying, squirming bodies whose little bottoms polished more of the kindergarten floor each September. She was married-untouchable, and seasoned enough to elude the bloom of his interest. But, unlike Mrs. Chandler, for instance, or Mrs. Butler, or Mrs. Harrington, who were all middle-aged and Anglo, my mother was an immigrant, and this sometimes shifted her ground.

  “Mrs. Weisz.” He pronounced our name as Wise. Others on staff had learned a decent rendition that sounded like the word “Vice,” but he avoided it. “Wise” was more ironic. “Mrs. Wise,” he smirkingly inflected, “I believe the correct usage is ‘tamper.’ We say, ‘Don’t tamper with the light switch,’ not ‘Don’t temper with it.’ It is I who have a temper.” At which cue my mother’s colleagues were expected to join in with snickers. I was amazed that my mother risked expanding her vocabulary when these pitfalls were certain. But she was, said Mrs. Chandler sympathetically, a tough cookie. “You’re a tough cookie, Mrs. Weisz, you can take it, don’t worry.” Tough cookie though she may have been, my mother burned with indignation.

  At home one afternoon the pots were clanged and banged to the stovetop. There were vicious expletives against cupboard doors that thwarted her, a garbage can that didn’t shut.

  “It’s up to me, always me,” she vented in Hungarian. “I have to put the garbage out too—only I see that it’s stinking, overflowing. I have to take care of everything.”

  It was prudent to lie low. No one else was at home. My father and sister would arrive in time for dinner. There were only me and the garbage can to catch the brunt of her wrath. Something must have happened with a parent, maybe, and the principal. Perhaps he hadn’t backed her up as she’d expected. After supper I overheard her in the bedroom with my father.

  “He has gone too far now. This is unbearable. In my classroom. Anyone could walk in and see them. What if a parent? Just me this time. But next time who? One of the children? He won’t let me forget this!”

  My mother was afraid of what she had seen. What she had witnessed was dangerous knowledge.

  “To me. On purpose. No coincidence. A slap to me in the face.”

  I wanted to go in to her. I wanted to assure her that we were safe here. Nothing could happen. This was a free world, a new world. Here it was safe to be Jewish, to have an accent, and to speak your mind. That’s what it said in the law. My sister at the university told me these things. But my mother would have shaken me off. She mistrusted all authorities.

  I was more afraid of my mother’s anguish than of any threat from Mr. Gibbs. It brought us too close to what she had escaped. Suddenly the past was beside us, brushing us with terror. It was after dinner, but I felt starved. My hunger was gnawing and frightful. Her fear crazed me.

  There was often noise in our family. We didn’t always realize why. A trap door would trigger open, the atmosphere become charged. We yelled at each other a lot before it was over.

  I seemed to be shouting now. “There are no more socks! I have no socks for tomorrow! Brown socks! Who needs brown socks? I can’t wear brown socks with my tunic!”

  I was infuriated by her fear, so misplaced. Was she blind? Was she stupid? There were no Nazis here, just a blustering principal. How could she not know this? I believed it like a faith: the badness was over. It lay behind us with the past.

  The next day in the corridor I regarded Mr. Gibbs with contempt. He left his trace of pipe odour behind him in the halls to remind us of his presence. He filled his pressed suits tightly to show off his strength. He flashed his teeth in his smile, framed each request as an order. He was the first man I had met who presented his maleness before his intellect. There was something pathetic in this, like Billy Tait the class bully, a meanness that begged to be punished.

  My mother saw in the petty tyrant an evil it was her duty to suppress. We heard at supper one evening how she had gone in to see the principal, closing the door behind her.

  “Mr. Gibbs,” she began. She looked at him across his desk. She said that because he was sitting they could see eye to eye. “Mr. Gibbs,” she repeated, “you are the principal. You are in charge. This is a school, Mr. Gibbs. I have only a classroom, but it is my classroom. My classroom, Mr. Gibbs. You are the principal. You have an office. Next time, Mr. Gibbs, use your office.”

  I imagined her turning on her flats, daring to expose her back.

  My mother had mustered all her resources for this sally, leaving her shaken. When I arrived home after school, she was already in the La-Z-Boy with a compress on her forehead. She didn’t feel she had fought back, although that was how it struck me. She didn’t feel powerful. For my mother, each day, each tussle was a struggle of equal bearing to keep herself upright.

  * * *

  Mr. Gibbs didn’t live in our suburb, but somewhere in the city. It was a shock, therefore, to see him on the weekend, in one of those tweed caps that snapped together in the front. I was swinging
a drawstring bag that held my ballet slippers. I loved this bag. It was encrusted with clear, multicoloured beads. As I swung it open-armed, the beads caught the light.

  The recent snow had frozen over, making the sidewalks treacherous for grown-ups. We children loved it. You could shave five minutes off your walk-home time if you slid. Slide over two sidewalk squares. Running start, slide over three sidewalk squares. Swing your bag, running start, gli-s-s-ade—I liked the French word for it better. It was like ballet.

  Mr. Gibbs had just closed the door of a honey brick duplex and was descending its stairs carefully, holding onto the black railing. He reached the last step before I registered who he was. A reflex, I felt as though I’d done something wrong.

  No running in the halls!

  And where do you think you’re going?

  I wanted to turn around and pretend I hadn’t seen him, but it was Saturday, I remembered. It was Saturday, I was allowed where I pleased. What was he doing here? He was the one out of place. This wasn’t fair, we had a right to our free days, our school-less days, our Mr. Gibbs-not-hanging-over-our-heads days. He caught sight of me as he glanced up from the bottom step. My bag, still swinging from the last slide, bounced ice-light from its surface like a toy mace. I stood my ground while he advanced.

  “Hello, Mr. Gibbs.”

  He hesitated briefly, then touched the brim of his hat. “Dana. You’re looking jolly.”

  Jolly?!

  We sized each other up. He was wearing a short leather coat belted at the waist. It made him look thick in the middle.

  “Where’re you off to then?” he asked.

  And a lizard sprang unbidden from my mouth, its forked tongue vibrating. “None of your business!”

  Aghast, I turned rigid with fear, rooted to the spot. I felt I’d turned into one of those sooty, icy stands of snow that lined the street all winter.