Bitter, Sweet

by Laura Best

  “Should we leave her slippers on?” I asked, but Jesse did not answer. Instead he began folding the quilt around Mama’s feet. I knew that Mama would say it was a darn shame to be burying her slippers like that when surely someone else could get some use from them.

  The slippers were new—well, not really new, but new to Mama. We bought them at a rummage sale one day when Reese Buchanan took me and Flora into town. Once we counted up the change we had there wasn’t quite enough, so Reese chipped in a nickel. “They’ll look real nice on Isadora,” he said.

  They looked like ballerina slippers, and for a brief moment I pretended that they were magical and perhaps had the power to make Mama well again. It was a silly thing to pretend, but Mama always said that some days it was hard enough to live with what is, let alone ignoring what could be.

  Mama slid the pink slippers on her bare feet, giggling like a young girl and clicking her feet together. “We should celebrate,” she said. “It’s not every day a woman gets a pair of fancy pink slippers to wear.”

  So we all dressed up in silly getups—Davey wearing one of Mama’s pots on his head and spinning the broomstick around and around like a baton, Flora with a sheet wrapped around her body, calling herself the Queen of Sheba and making movements like she was belly dancing as she per–formed for Mama. Jesse put on one of Mama’s dresses and tied an apron around his head, and I wore a pair of pants and a shirt and stuck some old hay in under a straw hat.

  Before we put on the parade that day, Jesse took a piece of coal from the firebox and we all blackened out our front teeth. We had so much fun as we rubbed the black coal on our teeth. I don’t know why making out that we didn’t have any teeth seemed so funny to us, because most of Mama’s teeth were rotted down to stubs. Why she did not suffer toothaches all the while she was sick I could not for the life of me figure out. Many nights, after hearing her walk the floor, I’d climb out of bed and find her holding a warm towel to her jaw. But that was before she got the sickness.

  “Kiss me, darling,” Flora said, removing the sheet from her mouth and giving us a black toothy smile.

  “Who’s doing all the laughing?” Mama called from her bedroom.

  “It’s only the woodland fairies!” Davey hollered back from outside her bedroom door while we tried our best to stifle our laughs without smudging coal all over our face and hands.

  “Well then, fairies,” Mama said with a slight air of indignation, “you’d best go back to Fairyland before my children come home and find you in their place. They are the best children in the world and can’t be replaced, even by magical woodland fairies.” Hearing the sweet musical sound in her voice filled my heart with joy.

  “Not until we sprinkle the house with fairy dust for good luck,” Davey replied, smiling at all of us as he clowned around with Mama.

  “Sprinkle it quickly,” said Mama, “because I’m about as far out of luck as I can get. Sprinkle it and then go back to that hollow stump in the woods where you live.”

  Mama and Davey shared many secrets about the fairies. Mama said that with her being Irish it was only natural for her to believe. But she also said that Gran Hannah, her grandmother on her father’s side, was of Mi’kmaq decent and had sometimes spoken of the little people as well, so she’d gotten a double dose of it.

  Mama believed that Gran Hannah had possessed some kind of special powers. There were many things that Mama saw and heard while growing up that made her think this way. She could remember waking up one morning with Gran Hannah bedside her in bed. Gran Hannah’s arms were folded across her chest and her eyes were wide open, but when Mama called out to her she would not wake up. Thinking she had died through the night, Mama ran to get her mother, but when they returned Gran Hannah was just getting up, stretching and yawning as if waking from a peaceful sleep.

  “What was wrong with you?” Mama asked her.

  “I went on a little trip,” Gran Hannah said, smiling, “to see my ancestors, the old men and women who were here first. They are waiting to gather us all up when we die.”

  Mama said she knew that Gran Hannah was not of this world as she lay on the bed. “She had no breath,” Mama said firmly. “She came back from the dead. She had to have.”

  Mama watched Gran Hannah with suspicion for years afterward, not knowing why, only that she felt some need to learn the truth about who her grandmother really was. Gran Hannah died before Mama ever found out that truth, but not before she had passed on many of her secrets.

  Sometimes when the wind whistled in around the windows at night, Mama would crawl up on the bed beside me, pull the curtain back, and peek out into the darkness. “Do you hear that?” she’d ask, smiling as she tapped on the windowpane. “That’s Gran Hannah whistling at us.”

  Davey knocked on the door and asked Mama if she was ready. Jesse and I were as excited as Flora and Davey, giggling and tittering, trying to keep our lips from covering our teeth and at the same time not wanting the coal to mix with our saliva and make a horrible taste in our mouths. “Ready, willing, and waiting,” Mama answered.

  Flora pushed open the bedroom door. Mama was sit–ting up on top of the bed with her pretty pink slippers displayed on top of a little white pillow like they were valuable artifacts from a museum.

  “Presenting…” Davey said in his best master of ceremonies voice, “for your very own entertainment…the Burbidge tribe!” Mama laughed at his choice of words to describe her children, secretly pleased of her Mi’kmaq lineage even though her own father had been ashamed to admit it. We spent that rainy afternoon entertaining Mama in her bed–room, celebrating the pink slippers and the fact that she was there to wear them. Mama always liked to find some reason to celebrate because, she said, it sure beat crying your heart out over things you had no control over. Mama could find reasons to celebrate most anything. She said that celebrating was the same as counting your blessing out loud, really loud. She also said that we’d be more likely to remember a celebration than some whispered thank you we made to our Father in heaven at the supper table or while bent down at the foot of our beds.

  And, as usual, Mama was right. I couldn’t think of a single thing to be thankful for while we were wrapping Mama in the quilt, but I could remember the smile on her face each time we had a celebration.

  Mama said a coffin was too expensive, not to mention that there would be too many questions asked if we tried to get one. The last thing Mama wanted was for anyone, especially the government, to know our family business. Instead, she told us to just wrap her in that quilt.

  “It’s a pretty enough quilt,” she said.

  But shortly after Mama closed her eyes for the last time, Jesse had a better idea. He scrounged up some lumber from the walls of the rundown old pig house and nailed the boards together.

  “Do you think Mama will mind, Pru?” he asked.

  “I bet she wouldn’t mind one bit,” I said.

  Mama had planned everything out just right—even her sickness—because she hadn’t wanted Flora and Davey to be afraid once it came time to do everything. She’d spent as much time talking about her death as she did planning out how we were to survive once God took her back with him. Jesse dug the hole that night beneath the light of the full moon and later he said it was as if it was meant to happen when it did, the way the moon had given him just enough light to work by. Except what Jesse didn’t know was that Mama had planned it all out herself, made sure it happened when she’d wanted it to. Jesse didn’t know but I did and I also knew I would never tell.

  Jesse kept jabbering away after he came in from digging and I imagined that the moon had somehow gotten into him and it was building itself up into a huge combustible ball right in the centre of him. His eyes had grown in size, and his pupils had opened up like deep dark holes. I knew Jesse had been looking to me to agree with him, to tell him that yes, everything did seem to be just right, but I’d been too numb, my brain crammed full from trying to remember all the last-minute things that Mama had told m
e those final few weeks when she was living.

  We buried Mama early in the morning, before the sun had time to push its golden head up over the earth. Jesse and I should have felt guilty for making the little ones get up from their beds at that hour when they had only fallen asleep a few short hours before, but Jesse said we couldn’t risk someone coming by. He said the morning was the best time. I could see the logic in what he was saying. Besides, when Mama was alive and well she’d sit and wait for the sun to bring a start to another day, so that part seemed right.

  I read from the Bible because Flora and Davey thought Mama wouldn’t go to heaven if I didn’t. I read the part about there being a time and a purpose for everything, which I thought seemed fitting considering everything Mama had gone through that last while. Davey and Flora cried while I tried to make my voice sound strong. Mama would be counting on me. I couldn’t let her down.

  Chapter Four

  Mrs. McFarland was the one who told Mama about the baby bonus and the fact that she’d have to make sure we were registered for school in order to get her fair share of the money the government was sending out.

  “Just fill out the form and those cheques are as good as in the mail. Right up ’til they’re sixteen,” said Mrs. McFarland. “It’s kind of like finding a gold mine.”

  “It might help to keep some of them in school,” said Mama.

  “Almost makes a person feel like having more.” Mrs. McFarland let out a girlish laugh. Mama laughed politely and said she was more than satisfied with the family she had.

  “What’s she doing here all the time?” Jesse asked, which wasn’t at all fair considering that company never showed up at our door, except for Reese Buchanan. And it wasn’t as if Mrs. McFarland was there all that often, at least not in the beginning. “And I’m not a baby,” Jesse said, folding his arms at his chest. “So what’s all this talk about baby bonuses?”

  Mama smiled and said, “They have to call it something. And if it’s free money coming from the government they can call it whatever they please.”

  “It’s not free,” said Jesse. “I’ve got to go to school.”

  We were all sent off to school for the very first time that fall, each of us carrying a lard kettle packed with bread and molasses. Flora had her red hair done up in pigtails, which were held in place by rubber jar rings that were too old and worn for canning. It was all Mama had to fasten them in place, and Flora had her heart set on pigtails for that first day. The pigtails flipped and flopped whenever Flora shook her head, which was often, as she liked the way they felt swishing back and forth. Davey was excited about going to school, but then again, Davey liked going any place so long as he was on the move. It didn’t seem to bother him that he had to get up each morning and wash his hands and face before leaving the house. Jesse walked all grumpy the first day, kicking his lard kettle down the dirt road all the way to school. I expected the lid to come flying off and his bread and molasses to end up strewn in the dirt, but it didn’t. I think Jesse almost expected it as well, as he seemed to kick it with more spite the closer we got to the schoolhouse.

  I could scarcely contain the excitement I felt at knowing I’d soon be reading and writing and learning more things than I ever thought imaginable. There were so many things I longed to know, so many strange places in the world to learn about, it hardly seemed possible. But the moment I stepped over the threshold and into the schoolhouse I wanted to turn around and run for home. There was scarcely a face I recognized in the crowd. I saw two girls whispering in the corner and thought they must be talking about me: Pru Burbidge, the nobody girl, the girl who arrived at school carrying her lard kettle without a scribbler or pencil in sight.

  Most of the children arrived that first day carrying their supplies—wooden pencil boxes, thick white notebooks without a single word messing up the pages—and I en–vied the way they seemed to belong inside those four walls when it was obvious to me, and everyone else, that the Burbidges did not fit in at all. Miss Pinkham, our teacher, made a list of the things we’d need for school. I dreaded the thought of showing Mama the list, knowing that these things would not be free, but she did not grumble when she saw the list. Instead she asked Reese to take her to town the next day to pick up what we needed.

  You get used to seeing what other kids have, like the big box of crayons Celia Trask carried to and from school every day even though Miss Pinkham said there was no need to bring that big box of crayons every day since we only had the one day set aside for being creative. Miss Pinkham had her own box of crayons and when it came time for us to colour she would share them amongst those of us who had no crayons of our own. Each time she’d draw three or four crayons from her box I would hold my breath, hoping that she’d give me the gold crayon, the only colour in the box I ever hoped for. I wanted to colour everything gold and make it worth a million dollars. The gold crayon could make us rich, I thought. If only I could get my fingers on it.

  Amos Dory was the only one at school with an honest-to-goodness lunch box, which we were told had been sent to him by his uncle in Massachusetts. How I coveted that shiny red metal box sitting on his desk. I thought it sparkled like nothing I had ever seen before. I wanted to pick it up in my hand and let it swing freely at the end of my arm as I walked to school. I wanted to have everyone see me arriving and whisper how lucky I was. I convinced myself that if I could only touch it, run my fingers across its cool shiny surface, I would be happy. But Amos did not look like the friendly type. I knew that making this small request to him was not likely to get me any closer to my goal and would more than likely make me the brunt of cruel jokes.

  Poor Pru Burbidge can’t get her hands on Amos Dory’s lunch kettle. Poor, poor Pru Burbidge.

  Miss Pinkham would wait until we had eaten our lunches before going home for her own, secure in the knowledge that we were all safe to play on our own out– side until she returned. Some days she would put Celia Trask in charge of us, other days she would assign the task to Philip Jelly so that no one could accuse her of playing favourites.

  One day I waited until everyone else had gone outside and then took Amos’s red lunch kettle down from the shelf and held it close to my chest. The handles were still warm from Amos’s touch and the core from the Gravenstein apple he’d eaten at noon was still giving off a mouth-watering smell.

  I remembered the apple trees lined up in Basil Dory’s orchard the previous summer, laden with green apples, and how Jesse had run through the ditch and pulled off handfuls of apples and brought them out to the road for the rest of us. We’d run back home, sat down beneath our own barren apple tree, and devoured them all. Their tart–ness had sent my back teeth aching but I continued to bite and chew until their taste became bearable. Late that night I woke with pains in my stomach. I pulled my knees close to my chest and hoped they would pass quickly, wondering how something so deplorable could transform itself into something so mouth-watering in only a few short weeks.

  My stomach growled as I held the lunch kettle in my hands. The bread and molasses sandwich I’d eaten for lunch had not satisfied my hunger. I opened the lunch box quickly to get a better smell. One smell. That’s all I wanted. It seemed like such a simple thing. I only wish Celia Trask had felt the same way.

  “Thief. Thief!” Celia cried out the second I opened the lunch kettle. For the life of me, I could not figure out what she was talking about or to whom she was yelling.

  “You there, Pru Burbidge!” I spun around.

  A rush of footsteps pounded across the small porch. Everyone in the school had congregated at the door and they were all looking at me. Amos Dory navigated his way through the crowd, his feet thumping against the floor as he crossed the room toward me. I cowered as he drew near. He removed the shiny red lunch kettle from my hands, peeked inside, and pulled out a second apple.

  “You could have asked.” He dropped the apple in my hand and returned outside to play, calling the crowd of students out with him.

  I was left
standing there with the apple in my open palm. Jesse, Flora, and Davey stood in the doorway, looking at me as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.

  “I was just looking at his lunch kettle,” I explained. “I didn’t even know he had an apple.” I heard Jesse swear beneath his breath before he walked out the door.

  The next day there was another apple sitting on my desk, and each morning after that. I would take the apples home and cut them into pieces to share with Flora and Davey. Jesse wanted no part in the “pity food,” as he called it, but I was too much of a little pig to care.

  Mama thought our going to school was a fair enough trade and said it pretty much amounted to us getting paid to learn even with the inconvenience of having to find something every day to put in our lard kettles for lunch. Once the government knew we were all signed up for school the first cheque came to the post office. The welfare money Mr. Dixon had secured for Mama had sometimes run out before the end of the month, but now the government was paying Mama baby bonuses of five dollars for Flora, six dollars for Davey, and eight dollars each for Jesse and me, which amounted to even more than Mama’s welfare cheque. We were suddenly made rich, at least by our standards.

  Mama twirled herself around in the kitchen the day that first baby bonus cheque came. Kissing that little brown envelope, she kicked up her heels like a spring colt. Her dress flared out from her body like she was square dancing and being tossed about by an invisible partner. She nearly knocked into the kitchen table before she stopped.