by Vicki Delany
“How?”
“Start by going to the pool. Play around in the shallow end if that’s what you want. Swim one length and then get out.”
“I’m not allowed to drive, as you well know. My sister and her husband are busy this time of year. I can’t ask them to take me into town.”
“Good excuse. But not good enough. You’re not destitute, I suspect. There’s no public transit in the county, but there are taxis. No matter, swimming was just a suggestion. What about going for a walk?”
“I could do that.”
“Good. I’d like to see you once a week. Let’s say every Monday morning at ten.”
“I don’t know if my brother-in-law can drive me that often.”
“Don’t bother then,” she snapped. “I have patients in Emerg who could use my time. It’s not me who can’t work. It’s not me with the headaches. It’s not me who doesn’t want to fork out ten bucks for a taxi to the hospital.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” I shouted. “I’ve been poked and prodded and analyzed and examined and drugged and MRIed and CAT-scanned. And he’s still there, always there.”
“I don’t recall doing any of those things to you today. I merely suggested you enjoy a bit of time walking in the woods or at the beach.” She got to her feet and came around the desk. She opened the door, and the sounds of a busy hospital came rushing in. “I’ve had patients who’ve struggled for years, decades, to overcome TBI. And they have, eventually. It’s been three months since your injury, Hannah. Don’t give up. Now, I have seriously ill people to see. I’ll be here next week. Monday at ten. If you want to come.”
It wasn’t until I was looking out the window of Jake’s truck heading into town that I realized I’d said, “He is always there.” Not it or the pain. Hopefully, Doctor Mansour didn’t notice the slip. Otherwise, she’d be sending me to a psychiatrist.
Main Street, Picton, is Main Street Canada as it used to be. Small shops, a drug store, a post office, a handful of restaurants, an artist co-op, a gas station, a coffee shop at each end. Even a busy independent bookstore. On this spring morning, the locals were out in force, shopping, taking a break from work, preparing for the tourist hordes that would descend the minute school got out. The library’s located next to the restored Regent Theater and is a beautiful building in itself, with a stone façade and a small patch of lawn, a bed of flowers, and benches and tables out front.
Jake dropped me at the library steps and went to find parking. He had business in the restaurants in town, and we’d arranged to meet when he was finished. I liked Jake, and I’d always thought he liked me. But over the few weeks coolness was settling in, and I knew he was thinking I’d overstayed my welcome. Egged on, I was sure, by his mother.
I didn’t really care much about the history of this area, but I thought it might help me win points with Jake if I showed an interest things he was interested in.
Not as if I had anything better to do.
I climbed the steps into the library. It was the first time I’d been in public, alone, since…I feared everyone in the place would look up and gasp at the sight of me. Instead they focused their attention on computers or book stacks. A woman behind the counter gave me a welcoming smile as I popped an audio book into the return bin. She said nothing, and I glanced around. It wasn’t a big library, but it looked cozy.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for some information on the first settlement of the area.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” she said. “Follow me.”
We went through glass doors into a room at the back. Four people were sitting around a card table, playing bridge. They shifted their chairs aside to clear us a bit of room. “This is our local history and genealogy section,” the librarian said. “We have plenty of information on the earliest settlers, the Loyalists. Are you wanting anything in particular?”
“An introduction, perhaps. I’m…uh, I’m new to the area.”
“Welcome,” she said.
“Welcome,” the bridge players chorused, without looking up from their hands. “Pass,” the solitary male said with a heavy sigh.
“Three spades.”
“Three spades!”
The librarian pulled two books off the shelf. “These would be a good start. Why don’t you come up to the desk and I’ll make out a library card for you.” I didn’t like to tell her I needed books with lots of pictures.
“I’m only visiting,” I said. “I have my sister’s card. Is that okay?”
“Of course.”
I passed over Joanne’s library card. The librarian’s eyebrows might have lifted into her hairline as she read the name, but she said nothing.
“There you go, Ms. Manning.” She handed me a slip of paper and my books. “Hope you find what you need.”
I turned at the bottom of the stairs to see the librarian bustling across the room to the bridge players. I had no doubt what news she had to impart.
Jake sat on a bench outside, face tilted toward the sun. He glanced at the books I carried as we walked to the truck. “History?”
“I thought this might help me place some of the things I’m learning from the letters in your old boxes,” I said, clambering into the truck and fastening my seat belt. I flicked through the books. Small font and not many pictures. “Joanne said the shop was built by the original settlers.”
“My father family’s been here since 1784.” Picton’s a small town and we were soon driving through the countryside. “The British government evacuated everyone who’d stayed loyal during the American Revolution and gave them land in Canada. They even freed slaves who’d worked or fought for the British and gave them passage out. The Loyalists got good land and lots of it. Land of their own, enough to make a living. The authorities helped the first couple of years with seeds and supplies and equipment to get the settlers established. Then they were on their own. They had a hard time of it in the early years. Few of them were farmers, and they found themselves in the wilderness with nothing much in the way of farming implements or tools. But over the years they did well, most of them. Marysburgh, were we live, was called Fifth Town at first.”
I thought about places I’d been and what happened when newcomers arrived en mass. “Were the people living here okay with that?”
Jake laughed. It was the old Jake, the one I’d always liked. “No one here to object. Not even many Indians. You know the Tyendenga Reserve on the mainland? The Mohawks? Even it’s a Loyalist settlement. The Iroquois fought for the British and lost their land when the Americans won. Ontario, what they called Upper Canada back then, was barely settled. The French were in Quebec, and the English and some French in the Maritimes, but no one inhabited Ontario except for trappers and fur traders and scattered groups of Natives. It was Loyalists, refugees from the States, who opened up Ontario.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. Refugees. Always refugees.
“See that flag?” Jake pointed as we drove past a lovely old house. It was painted a pale blue and had a wide wraparound porch and steep roof. A woman was in the yard, bent over a mountain of dead foliage and brown leaves. The flag that flapped in the stiff breeze looked like the Union Jack. But something was not quite right.
“I’ve seen a few flags like that around. They’re missing one of the stripes.” I hadn’t even bothered to ask why. And I thought I could still be a reporter?
“That’s the Loyalist flag. The Union Jack as it was then. Some of the old families like to fly it. Some of the tourist places, too.” I remembered the sign on the highway as you came into Picton: A Proud Loyalist Town.
“I have some books,” he said. “You can borrow them when you leave.”
And that was the end of that conversation.
It had been a tiring excursion. When we got home, I took my library books to the wingback
chair in the living room and studied the maps and pictures of the history of Prince Edward County.
***
Joanne and Jake and the workers came in at noon. I’d decided the least I could do to help out around the farm was to get their lunch. I tossed baby greens with home-made oil and vinegar dressing, made up a stack of ham and cheese sandwiches, and reheated potato and squash soup Joanne had put up in the fall. We gathered around the kitchen table—big enough to seat twelve. The workers dug in with enthusiasm while I picked at a bit of lettuce. I thought of my visit yesterday to Doctor Mansour, chastising me for failing to help myself to get well. What did she know? She was a real bossy boots, I’d decided. But weren’t all doctors, brain doctors for sure?
I nibbled on the edges of a sandwich.
Joanne talked about tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, and the new breeds she wanted to try this year. Next weekend, she said, would be seedling sale day. Hundreds of people would be coming to the farm, most of them, one hoped, to buy tomato plants. As they ate she assigned Liz, Allison, and Connor their tasks. Tables had to be set up in and out of the greenhouse, plants laid out, labels and prices prepared, planting and growing instructions photocopied. All while the regular work of the farm went on.
Liz had brought a carrot cake she’d made and passed slices around. I accepted a sliver and ate half of it. My sister gave me an approving smile.
I really did feel like a five-year-old sometimes.
Did I want to get well? the doctor had asked.
I’d thought it a silly question at the time. But sometimes it was nice to be like a kid again. No worries, no responsibilities. An adult looking out to make sure you ate your vegetables.
I got up to clear the table, and Connor leapt to his feet. “I’ll give you a hand,” he said.
He loaded the dishwasher while the others filed back out to the greenhouse and fields.
“Thanks,” I said, “But you shouldn’t be helping me, in the house. Joanne’s not paying you to do housework.”
“Consider it a freebie.” He studied his watch. “Hum, I’ll tack on an extra two minutes and forty-three seconds at the end of the day to make up for it.”
I laughed and began putting sandwich ingredients away. “Do you like it? Here, on the farm? Think it’s what you want to do with your life?”
He shut the dishwasher door and leaned against it. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied me. A tattoo curled around his right bicep and disappeared into the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Early days yet. But so far, yeah. I travelled a bit, with the army. Saw some things. Things I didn’t like. Saw a world I don’t like. Some of the same places you’ve been, I hear.” He shrugged and looked away. “I’m ready to settle down. Start a family maybe. And a farm like this one seems a pretty good place to do that.” He laughed with embarrassment. “Assuming I can find a woman who’d actually want to settle down with me.” He looked at his watch again. It was a good one, with numerous dials and knobs and all the bells and whistles. “Wow, now I owe your sister three minutes and fifty-one seconds. Better get back at it.”
He left the kitchen quickly, crossed through the office and out the porch door. I went to the French doors and a minute later he came into sight, heading for the tomato fields.
It was a lovely day. The tulips were in full bloom, scatterings of yellow and pink across the lawn, their faces open to the sun.
Spring is a wonderful thing. One day the grass is brown and the trees are bare. The next, it’s as though a paint brush dipped in green has been wiped across the lawns and fields and full-grown leaves tacked onto the maples. A baby tucked into its cradle in the evening, heading for high school the next morning.
I decided to venture out for a walk. Not go far, just get some air. Like the bossy doctor had suggested. I thought of Hila, who no doubt spent all of her time in the house.
I popped my cell phone into my sweater pocket and went to put on my hiking boots.
***
The weather warmed and the sun lingered long after dinnertime and spring turned into summer. I continued to see Doctor Mansour on Monday mornings. Jake declared that his schedule wouldn’t accommodate waiting around for me and so, as the good doctor suggested, I took taxis. Omar continued to visit me when I least expected him. I didn’t venture back up to the attic to look through the boxes because, really, reading old letters is a heck of a lot of work. I looked through the library books that I’d borrowed, and Lily helped me out by reading to me when I had difficulty. Connor fell into the habit of helping with the dishes after lunch and checking off the time he was spending in the kitchen. He said nothing more about his service in the army, and I never told him about my experiences in war zones.
The root cellar was nothing but a dirty root cellar beneath a creaky old building. I had no more visions and decided that I’d been simply dreaming and had blown it all up out of proportion.
It became my custom to stroll down the road after Connor and I had done the lunch dishes and visit Hila Popalzai. Most days we would go for a walk in the woods behind the Harrisons’ property. We talked about very little.
She confided nothing about her family or her life in Afghanistan or what had brought her here, and I did not ask nor did I talk about my own time in her country. The bond of shared experiences was there, and we both knew it. It gave me, and I hope her, strength. We had no need to discuss it.
Instead, she told me she was studying online toward the continuation of her degree in mathematics. As someone who has trouble balancing my expenses sheet, I couldn’t imagine what a BSc in math would entail.
We have the impression, sometimes, that Muslim women are uneducated. Illiterate. Their minds shrouded as much as their bodies. In the course of my travels I’d met plenty of women who could put my education—a BA in Journalism from Carleton—to shame. Hila confessed that in her spare time she was trying to improve her French and German.
Only once did she say anything approaching intimacy.
“Are you free, Hannah?” The question came out of nowhere, after I’d told her that my mom had phoned the previous night. She and Dad had been to the opera—Carmen—and said that on the way home the streets were packed with people sitting on restaurant patios. The Regent Theater in Picton sometimes showed opera live via satellite from the Met, and I thought perhaps classical music in a dark setting might be a good way to start getting Hila out into the community.
“Free? I don’t know. I was free before I came here. I guess I’m still free. I can leave if I want, any time. Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she replied “What does it mean, to be free?”
I thought for a while, listening to the debris on the forest floor crunch beneath our feet. “For a woman, perhaps all freedom means is to be safe. To know that you can live your life without fearing someone’s going to belt you across the mouth with no warning or take everything you own and leave you and your children to starve. And that if they do so, the law’s there to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Is that enough?”
“I think it might be.”
We walked on. Then she said, “You are so strong.”
“I was strong. At least I thought I was. Once.”
“You will be strong again, Hannah.”
On the weekends Lily would come with us and she’d run ahead with Buddy, falling over logs, splashing through puddles, frightening squirrels and birds. Perhaps it was the glories of a Canadian spring, new life all around me; perhaps it was Hila’s sturdy quiet company; perhaps it was Lily’s boundless enthusiasm. But after the initial shock I’d had upon seeing Hila for the first time, Omar stayed away whenever I was with her.
Unfortunately he didn’t leave for good and he’d be waiting in the morning when the sun streamed through the kitchen windows or in the evening when I was tired and my guard was down.
Chapter Twelve
I never arranged to go walking with Hila. That was unnecessary. Other than into Belleville to the mosque on Fridays, she never went out. If I dropped by and she wanted to walk, then we would. If she was deep in her studies, she’d tell me so and I’d go back to the farm. If Maude was home, she’d make us tea and lay out cookies and we’d sit in the sun room, watching the birds at the feeders. I rarely saw Grant Harrison, but when I did he always smiled politely, although distantly, and inquired after my health without much interest.
It was early July and the fields and forests were green and lush in the summer sun. Joanne and Jake and their workers were hard at it, seven days a week, planting, harvesting, weeding, thinning. It became my responsibility to look after the shop. I checked that produce was in stock and kept an eye on the money box. Perhaps I’m too world-weary, but I was genuinely shocked that Joanne ran the shop on an honor system. A tin box sat on the table, under the chalk board listing prices, and customers dropped their money in. Not only that, but the box was unlocked so they could help themselves to change.
My sister told me she made more money that way. People whose arithmetic skills weren’t the best were afraid of making a mistake, so they often overpaid, just to be sure. Or they put in a big bill and didn’t bother taking out coins as change. I only half-believed her and was always surprised when I checked the box and found it stuffed with cash.
Perhaps it was the long quiet walks with Hila, perhaps the soft spring rains, perhaps being near trees as Doctor Mansour had suggested, perhaps just the passage of time, but I hadn’t had a headache for a couple of days, and I was beginning to hope Omar was leaving me.
It rained on Thursday. Joanne was happy to see it; the plants needed the water. I fixed sandwiches for lunch and as usual talk around the table was all about tomatoes and lettuce and poultry. Joanne had bought fifty baby chicks and they were growing happily in a corner of the equipment shed. Jake had made something he called a chicken tractor, that would take the birds around the farm. Let them enjoy the sunshine and fresh air and pick at weeds and insects to their hearts’ content and then they could be moved, en masse, every couple of days, to fertilize another patch of ground. In season they’d provide eggs for the shop, and come fall some of them would give up their lives to keep the family fed over the winter.
