Ivy saw the look of bewilderment on Charlie’s face and it made her smile. “It’ll be all right, Charlie,” she said. “I’m not a little kid anymore. If you come by tomorrow, you’ll probably find me writing about what happened today. I’m writing my life story, you know. And today feels like another chapter.”
“Am I going to be in your story?”
“Why?” Ivy asked. “Are you part of my life?”
“Maybe I’d like to be,” Charlie said.
For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes, until Ivy, understanding what he meant, had to look away.
Charlie gave a little laugh and broke the spell. “Aren’t I already part of your family?” he asked. “I mean, sort of? On account of your father?”
He put his hand over hers where it lay between them on the seat. When she didn’t immediately snatch it away, he curled his fingers around hers and kept them there all the way home.
The bus dropped them off in Larkin just before midnight. The moon had disappeared behind heavy cloud and the night was very dark. The gas station had closed. A heavy shroud of insects all but obliterated the light from the single bulb at the front of the building.
Charlie had arranged to stay overnight at Delbert’s, where he’d left his bike, but he’d promised first to walk Ivy back to 54 Arthur Road.
The lamp was on in the living room window; Maud was waiting up for her. When Ivy opened the front door and saw her sitting there, she wondered if it might have crossed her grandmother’s mind that she would not return.
She heard the soft plop of Merlin’s feet as he jumped to the floor, leaving the warmth of Maud’s lap to come and wind himself around her legs.
***
One month after Ivy’s sixteenth birthday, and three months after they’d last spoken, a letter arrived from Frannie.
She was still living with Gloria and Johnny (those true angels), an arrangement that would last only until she could find work. Any day now she expected to hear of an audition for another play, and she thought it would be a very good idea for Ivy to stay with her grandmother for a while longer.
Ivy was quick to reply, typing her letter, with only a few mistakes.
54 Arthur Road
Larkin, Ontario
October 3, 1934
Dear Mother,
I was very ghappy to receive your letter last Wednesday. Please keep writing to me and I will always write back. If you would send me your address, I wouldn’t have to send my letters in care of the bakeshop.
I have an after-school job now, helping out in the office of the Larkin Courier. One of my teachers told me they were looking for someone. I am mostly just tidying up, but it makes me feel like a real writer, just to walk through the door. Nnow that I have my own typewriter (one day I will tell you that funny story), I am going to be writing a weekly column of school news for the Courier.
pPromise me that you will take care of yourself, and please do not worry about me. Grandmother and I get along fine. She says that I am good for her. And Charlie Bayliss has asked me to be his girl.
Your loving,
Ivy.
Author’s Note
Over the years, such books as Hugh Garner’s Cabbagetown and Bernice Thurman Hunter’s Booky series for children have fuelled my interest in the lives of everyday Canadians during the Great Depression. I was fortunate to have been born a decade after the worst of it was over, but I have always been fascinated by the stories of those who lived through it.
There was the young boy, barely into his teens, who had to quit school for a factory job in order to help support a large family, where the only other income was the dollar a day his father earned by cutting wood. There were the housewives who used to beg the butcher for bones for dogs they didn’t have, because dog bones were free. In the cities, some folks scooped up manure after the delivery horse had gone down the street in order to fertilize tiny kitchen gardens. They relied on the windowsill in the wintertime to keep the milk cold; in the summer they would resort to a sink filled with cold water. Everyone had his own story of hardship of some kind.
I first learned the story of the original “Ivy” in letters she wrote to me when I was researching a book of local history. She was by that time in her eighties and living in California. Her real name was Nellie. When she was a young girl she used to spend a few weeks every summer with her father, a peddler, roaming the countryside in a horse-drawn caravan. As I read Nellie’s letters I tried to imagine that unusual home-on-wheels, “all fitted out inside so’s a body could live there.”
It had been a hard life for the father, but his daughter had only happy memories of those barefoot summers. Her story was the inspiration behind Growing Up Ivy.
Selected Reading
Bonisteel, Roy. There Was a Time. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1991.
Braithwaite, Max. The Hungry Thirties: 1930–1940. Canada’s Illustrated Heritage. Toronto: Natural Science of Canada, 1977.
Broadfoot, Barry. Ten Lost Years, 1929–1939: Memories of the Canadians Who Survived the Depression. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997.
Garner, Hugh. Cabbagetown: The Classic Novel of the Depression in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., 1968.
Green, Bob. Eavesdroppings: Stories from Small Towns When Sin Was Fun. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2006.
Heron, George. Child of the Great Depression: Growing Up in Downtown Toronto During the 1930s. (Self-published) Select Press, 2005.
Hunter, Bernice Thurman. As Ever, Booky. Richmond Hill, ON: Scholastic-TAB Publications, 1985.
Hunter, Bernice Thurman. That Scatterbrain Booky. Richmond Hill, ON: Scholastic-TAB Publications, 1981.
Mallory, Enid. The Remarkable Years: Canadians Remember the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2001.
Swerdferger, Rowat. C. The Way It Was. Kingston, ON: Brown and Martin, 1977.
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