by Trilby Kent
“Why do you still wear your ring, if you’re not living together?” she asked.
Mr. Peterson blinked, but kept his eyes on the road ahead. “We’re separated,” he said. “Not divorced.”
“What’s the difference?”
“It’s not permanent.” He corrected himself. “It might not be permanent. And taking it off feels like throwing away a big part of my life. Ten years, almost.”
They’d stopped in front of a building that looked as if it had once been a factory. In front of the main door, spindly trees stood to attention in large barrels. The windows were long and anonymous and stared blindly across the expressway. Ana had never known someone who lived like this: in a big building with other people on floors above and below them. People with different families, different languages, different-smelling food, different religions, all packed in together. Like a prison, or a hospital or a boarding school.
“This is it. I’ll leave the car here—it shouldn’t take me long to find Papillon, and then I’ll drive you home.”
They took the stairs up to the second floor and followed a corridor lit by flickering strip lights to the far end of the building. Brass numbers were screwed to the painted door. Inside, the loft was mostly empty: two white sofas and a floating kitchen counter, a glass coffee table and a desk with a dining chair pushed against it—the seat clearly too high to fit underneath. There was a rolled-up newspaper on the counter and a mug next to a book splayed facedown on the coffee table.
“Cool,” said Ana, because she felt she ought to.
“Most of my stuff’s in boxes in the bedroom. Give me half a sec.”
When he returned, she said, “The furniture isn’t yours?”
“This stuff? No way. It belongs to my landlord. Like I said, it’s all in boxes.”
“You should change things around. Move the sofa so you get light from the window. And bring the desk here so that you can sit at it properly. Have the chair by the counter instead…where do you eat?”
For a moment Mr. Peterson looked sheepish, like a little boy who had been caught chasing ants with a magnifying glass.
“I order in a lot. Usually I eat in bed and read.”
Ana nodded. “But then your room will smell like takeout,” she said. She saw that he was embarrassed. “I know, because I do the same. My dad can’t cook, and we don’t talk much, so I eat upstairs sometimes. Or at Suvi’s.”
“Right.” Mr. Peterson looked around the room, nodding to himself as he mulled her suggestions. “OK,” he said. “Let’s do it. Give me a hand with the sofa?”
When they had finished, Ana said, “Will your landlord mind?”
“Who cares? In fact, I think I might make a habit of staying in hotels from now on just so that I can change the furniture around for the heck of it. Like The Borrowers—oh wait, let me guess, you haven’t read that one, either. Anyway, the place works better now. You were right.”
“It could use a little color.” She unzipped her backpack. “Here. We had to do a Moroccan table for United Nations Day. Suvi got it from the dollar store—she won’t mind.” It’s not like she’s talking to me, anyway. “I’ll say I must have dropped it somewhere.”
The shawl was thin, woven with cheap, crinkly gold thread, with green and white beads knotted into the tassels. She draped it over the back of the sofa.
“Now you can pretend you live in a souk,” she said.
“Or a harem.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. It’s nice. Thanks.” He gestured to the book on the counter. “We’d better get going. Traffic going north is a drag this time of day. Your dad will worry.”
“No, he won’t. He assumes I’m at Suvi’s. I think he prefers it that way.”
Mr. Peterson straightened one corner of the shawl. “In that case,” he said, “I didn’t have time for lunch today. Do you like dim sum?”
She told him about the cayua and about Tomas de Molli and Popi and Sue. What it was like trying to figure out a new country all alone.
“We’re learning about the settlers in history,” she said, plucking a spring roll from the sweating foil box. “We have to choose a person who had to do with settling the New World and make a poster. Like Jacques Cartier—only I think someone’s taken him already.”
“Do Virginia Dare,” Mr Peterson said, and disappeared into the bedroom. He emerged a minute later with a comic book and handed it to her. She brushed the grease from her fingers and examined the cover. Daughter of the New World read the title in outrageous bold letters. Beneath it, a picture of a girl in a white nightdress carrying a torch through a dark forest.
“Can I borrow this?”
“Sure. Just don’t cut it up for your bristol board. It’s from the sixties. Belonged to my big brother.” He scraped the last of the fried rice onto his plate. “I should probably return it some time.”
“Thanks. It looks better than my last project.”
“The essay about your family?” Mr. Peterson smiled. “I guess you kind of walked into that.”
It was the photograph of the girls in braids and hats that had done it. One of Sean’s friends had drawn mustaches on them during lunch break, not minutes after the reports had been posted on the classroom wall.
“Children of the Corn! Children of the Corn!” Sean had howled after her in the cafeteria, while Fraser Kwan and Jack Thurloe pelted her with sweet corn from the salad bar. Since then, there had been daily jibes about Bibles and quilting, wagons and polygamy. Most of their references meant nothing to her, and that somehow made it worse.
“How are your folks finding it?” asked Mr. Peterson. “It must be even harder for them, in some ways.”
“My father works all day,” she said. “He says if his hands are busy his mind is peaceful.” I worry every time he leaves the house that something will happen to him, that he won’t return.
“And your mom?” Mr. Peterson stifled a belch, clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back on the sofa. He’d long since untucked his shirt from his jeans.
An image flashed into Ana’s mind: the woman at the barbecue. Her nose, her squint, her hair dark and loose. The image that led nowhere, to a dead end. Page expired.
“She’s dead.”
She hadn’t needed to say that. Why had she said that? Had she wanted him to feel sorry for her? Mr. Peterson’s hands dropped to his sides and his face slackened.
“Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry, Ana.”
“It’s OK.”
She was acting, and she knew it. Dead had never meant anything; it certainly didn’t feel of anything. But Mr. Peterson didn’t know that. Ana looked down at her lap. A moment later she felt the sofa cushions shift beneath her as he leaned forward, placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Was it recent? Is that why you came here?” His voice was soft. Outside, the sky gleamed black-blue as a bruise. There were tea lights on the coffee table, and their reflection shone like fireflies in the tall glass windows.
“In a way.” She forced herself to look at him. His hand remained on her shoulder. “It’s OK, really.”
He nodded. Then he cleared his throat, and she felt his hand lift from her shoulder.
“I thought you said you were going away this weekend,” he said. “If that’s the case”—it sounded as if perhaps he didn’t believe her or, perhaps, as if he hoped it wasn’t true—“I should take you home.”
“I can get the subway.” Stop it, Ana. Stop being pathetic. What are you doing?
“Don’t be silly—it’ll take as long to drive you to the station as it would to get you home. Just past Monarch Park, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll box up what’s left and you can take it back for your dad. I’ll bet it’ll be just what he fancies after a day at the coal face.” He reached for the piled takeout boxes. “You can tell him you ordered these at Suvi’s, OK?”
Something about the paper—the yellow hue and rough edges, the deep, irregular imprint of the type—fel
t as though it belonged to someone else. Her name looked awkward in the box marked “Infant.” That had been her: an insentient, mewling, burping grub wrapped in toweling, cradled in her mother’s arms. The other names seemed equally foreign. Miloh Abram Doerksen. Helena Alma Doerksen, née Rempel. Who had they been? And what had happened to Anneli Marie Doerksen?
Ana looked at her father, sitting in the seat opposite and staring out the window at the flat, green countryside sliding past. Toronto-Fallowfield-Aylmer, their tickets said.
“Why do we need this?” she asked, lifting the birth certificate.
“As identification. Proof of who we are.”
“Is this about Mama?”
“They are family. They or their neighbors may be able to help us find her.”
Ana chewed her lip. She was too close now to tell him. Let him find her his way. She would get to her first.
“Do you think they’re looking for us?” she said at last. “Susanna and Justina? Frank Reimer?”
“They are there. We are here.” Her father looked at her quickly, then away. “I like to think they are praying for us.”
The man who greeted them at the station had a red face and heavily whiskered jowls, a slumping belly straining the suspenders on his breeches and brown hands the size of spades. He led them through a small parking lot past SUVs and camper vans to a quiet lane where his pickup was parked.
“Johan is your mother’s cousin,” said her father.
“Our mothers were cousins,” corrected the man, heaving himself into the front seat. “On the Rempel side.”
He didn’t speak much, this Johan, although he whistled as he drove them onto a main road.
They turned down a rutted path that reminded Ana of the driveway to Colony Felicidad, where she used to sit with the older girls selling lemons and limes. Here, the bushels were filled with apples and squashes, the last of the summer corn and bundles of dried lavender.
“I hope you’re hungry,” said Johan. “Katherina’s been cooking since Thursday.”
The Rempels had four children: a girl and three boys. Elizabeth, their daughter, was the eldest.
“I’ll be fourteen in April,” she told Ana, as the family sat down around the long kitchen table.
“I’ll be fifteen in July,” said Ana. “So we’ll both be the same age for three months.”
This seemed to please Elizabeth. She kept cutting glances at the green bandana Ana had used to cover her head, but whether they were looks of judgment or envy Ana couldn’t tell.
They said a silent grace and then Katherina rose to help their guests to a meal of roast chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. Slices of yellow dairy butter were lifted onto steaming wholemeal buns that Katherina and her daughter had baked that morning. A pumpkin pie was cooling on the windowsill, and tall jugs of lemonade sweated condensation on the tablecloth. Ana noticed her father eyeing the spread as if in a dream and felt a sudden pang of guilt.
“Eat as much as you like,” said Katherina to Ana with a kind look that nevertheless made her feel self-conscious. Tall girl, Katherina was probably thinking. One more growth spurt and she’d be as tall as Johan. Good thing I don’t have to feed her. “I’ll make up a hamper for you before you go. Usually I’d freeze the extras but you should take them home with you.”
“Thank you,” said Ana.
She did not know how to talk to these people. Her people. It should have been easy, but why? They were strangers to her, their customs the rituals of a faraway place. She ate in silence, listening to the adults make safe, polite conversation that skirted the real reason for the visit. Even now, Ana wasn’t entirely sure what that reason was. She waited until the men had finished eating before bowing her head in another silent grace. Then she helped Elizabeth to clear the table.
“Why don’t you show Ana the barn?” suggested Katherina, as the last of the dishes were brought in. “I’ll bring you some pie later.”
“They’re only two weeks old, so they’ve got to stay with their mother. If you’d come a few weeks from now, I could have let you take one back with you.”
Ana heard the kittens mewing before she saw them, squirming against their mother’s sprawling belly, partly covered by a thicket of hay. Two were white and two were ginger, and it was hard to tell which paw, tail, or hind legs belonged to which, they were so entangled in their sweet-smelling nest.
“They’re really cute. Are you going to sell them?”
“Papa says we’ll have to. They’ll be a nuisance otherwise. I’m going to give one to my friend, but we’ll put a sign up for the rest.”
“Which one will your friend get?”
“The little guy with stripes.” Elizabeth pointed to one of the ginger kittens. “He’s the runt, so no one else will want him. And that way he can still see his mother.”
They watched as the mother cat began to wash one of the kittens, thoroughly but lovingly, ignoring the squeaked objections and licking its fur into punkish peaks.
“Mother says your mother and my father are related somehow. Why didn’t she come with you?”
“We’re looking for her. She’s not here, though—she went to the city.”
“Is she hiding?”
“I don’t know.” Ana felt the other girl’s curiosity billowing. “Have you ever heard of Virginia Dare?” Elizabeth shook her head. “She was the first baby born in America after the settlers arrived. The colony where she lived was wiped out, but no one knows if it was a massacre, or if they all starved to death, or what. They just disappeared. And supposedly Virginia Dare was the only one who survived.”
“But your community wasn’t wiped out.”
“No.”
“I heard Mother say life is pretty hard down there.” Ana frowned. “She said it’s easier to stray off the path in a lawless country. We don’t have so many temptations here.”
“My mother didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Elizabeth blushed. “She said, knowing her parents, your mother must be a good person. Maybe she didn’t run away for bad reasons. Maybe she was running away from them.”
Ana decided then that Elizabeth wasn’t so bad. She remembered the look on Suvi’s face as she and Mischa left school without her, and suddenly she wished with all her heart that she could stay here, on this farm, with this girl for a friend.
The barn door opened behind them, and the girls turned to see Katherina balancing two plates on her arm.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. “Come back to the house when you’re ready.”
It was early, still nighttime, when she heard the voices downstairs. In the bed next to her, blanket tugged up around her ears, Elizabeth snored softly.
Ana slid out of bed and tiptoed across the room. Through the crack around the door, she could tell that a light was on in the hallway. She tested the door handle, eased it open.
Padding toward the bathroom, she hesitated at the top of the stairs. Someone was sitting at the kitchen table—she could only make out part of a pajama leg—and someone else was at the stove, pouring coffee. She recognized her father’s voice, so low that she could barely make out the words.
“So he told them?” It was Johan who was pouring the coffee. “He told the police about what happened in Moth?”
A pause, then the sound of a mug set on the table. “He did it to show he meant business.”
Ana held her breath, straining to hear the rest.
“But the gun is at the bottom of the lake,” said Johan. “Ten years. There is no evidence.”
“There is if Gerhard decided to tell them. That’s what he wanted me to know.” Muffled words. Then, “He was furious with Agustín. Shot after him into the forest, said afterward that it was wolves, he was defending the livestock.”
“You shouldn’t have gone after him when he was in that state.”
“No. But I did.”
“Then what?”
“Agustín wasn’t badly hurt, but his wife found out,
naturally. Raised a stink and went straight to the police. When some officers turned up the next morning, Gerhard convinced them that he’d thought it was wolves. Paid some money to hush it all up. But he also must have said something about me to make them interested. They came back the next day, asked questions. If they had taken me, she would have been left with no one. So we had to run.”
Ana crouched down to peer through the railing. Her father had his back to her. Leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he put his head into his hands.
“The dog was my warning. He told me he’d asked nicely, but there was only so much time before it would become obvious about Maria’s baby. He needed my decision before that. I told him no. So, he thought he’d frighten me…” A sound that could have been laughter, or a sob. “We got it off the roof before she saw. But I couldn’t protect her forever. After the police came, that was obvious.”
“She’s safe now. You both are.”
“My daughter…” Ana swallowed. She had not heard her father sound like this before. “First to lose her mother. Then to lose everything she has known, to come to this place. Who knows what she learns at that school? You see the way the children speak and dress—”
“That doesn’t matter. She is kind. She is intelligent. She is a good daughter. She will be fine.”
“It’s all my fault. One mistake, so long ago, and still now…I’m trying to makes things right.”
“We know that.”
Ana drew herself away from the staircase and scuttled back to Elizabeth’s room. The black sky outside was turning silver, and she thought of the kittens in the barn: safe and blind and unaware that soon they would be taken away.
They departed soon after breakfast the next day. Ana sat in the back of the pickup with the hamper that Katherina had prepared balancing on her knees, while her father embraced Johan and exchanged good-byes. The boys were playing on the lawn, tumbling over one another like puppies.
