Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  Near to being forty. The words were jolting—not that she wasn’t well aware of her age, but that someone else had noticed. Throughout the years her neighbour, Florence, had correctly guessed the sicknesses that befell Sara’s children—chicken pox, red and German measles, scarlet fever. Pinworms. Florence didn’t have children, but Sara had to admit she was good with them. Just as Katy was good with her own children, and tried to train Sara to be good with hers. Speak softly and they’ll need to be quiet to listen. Yell and you’ll only need to yell louder and louder. Spare the rod, you’ll spoil the child. But Sara’s children were unlike other people’s children. This was plain as day, starting with Alvina, whose crying as an infant went on for as long as four hours at a time, and she cried so loudly Florence could hear her bawling clear across the yard, and came to investigate.

  She came calling in mid-afternoon and caught Sara by surprise, the unexpected sound of her knock raising Sara’s heartbeat and riveting her to the floor. Who? Who is it? She and Oliver had been living in the house for six months, and this was the first knock. A flood of relief sent her bounding to the door as Florence announced herself. Sara pulled out the bread-knife she’d wedged behind the door’s frame, unmindful of her frowziness until Florence stepped into the room.

  Throughout the winter Sara had watched Florence plodding back and forth between her woodpile and the back door, going off on errands downtown or returning. A widow. A woman only ten years older than she was, who’d lost her husband in a train accident. The plain-faced Florence was strongly built but moved slowly, resolutely, her perpetually sloped shoulders looking as though her sorrow were water she carried in two brimming pails—a stoicism Sara was firmly acquainted with, having seen it in the bodies and faces of the women she’d known in Russia.

  When Florence stepped into the house, it became a home. Sara’s home, her first visitor. A guest. The woman’s cheerful greeting trailed off as she saw the knife in Sara’s hand.

  Oliver’s going to get a lock, Sara said, knowing that anticipating a lock for the door sounded strange and perhaps unfriendly. She knew the custom of not locking doors in Union Plains. Her parents and grandparents hadn’t locked their doors in Russia, either, not until the troubles started. And then what use was a lock? It was easily broken. But not before a warning, the shoving and pounding that would alert a person to escape through the back door, or a window.

  I’ve brought coffee, Florence said, indicating the bundle she carried, her eyes taking in the bathrobe Sara was wearing in mid-afternoon, the fact that her hair hadn’t been combed. Then Florence looked about for someplace to set the pot, the table in the centre of the room being taken up by a large basin of water, a stack of folded diapers and a quilted pad.

  I would have come sooner, Florence said, but I noticed that you’ve had people coming and going. I’m dying to see the wee girl. Her eyes came to rest on the piano, with a look of surprise.

  My sisters were here, Sara explained. But there’s colds at home now, and so they won’t come back until that’s over. Her voice was barely a whisper, as she hadn’t used it much since Katy and Annie had left. Except to sing when Alvina wouldn’t stop crying. She’d tried swaddling Alvina the way Katy had done, binding her in a blanket with her arms tight to her sides, and then walking the length of the room and back, rocking, jiggling, singing. As Katy had shown her, but with-out receiving the same results. Alvina had cried herself hoarse, and stopped only to drink greedily from a bottle of warm water for a moment, and then spat out the nipple and resumed howling. Hour upon hour.

  Florence unwrapped the coffee pot and set it on the water boiler of the cookstove, then folded the blanket and presented it to Sara. For the baby, she said. And noticed the basket on the floor beside the stove, Alvina tucked down into it, asleep. May I have a peek at her? she asked.

  She’s sleeping, Sara said, and thought, please don’t wake her up. She received the blanket and felt the usual flush of shyness. Although she tried not to appear shy, it was always so near to the surface. She unfolded the blanket knowing that she was meant to admire it, but couldn’t think what to say, and so she draped it over the basket, then realized that it looked as though she wanted to deny Florence even a glimpse of Alvina.

  She stood for a moment gazing down at the covered basket. The baby doesn’t like me, she heard herself say, speaking what had just occurred to her. Alvina obstinately refused to be comforted. I can’t make her stop crying, she said to Florence. I don’t have a hand with children, she thought, with a flutter of panic.

  It sounds as though your baby could have colic, Florence said. I gathered as much from the way she cries. I can hear her clear across the yard. I could set my clock by that girl.

  Katy had said gas. Alvina’s stomach became a hard small melon and she drew her legs up against it. Katy had taken a tiny sliver of candle wax and slid it in and out of Alvina’s rectum to make her expel the gas, but that hadn’t worked.

  I’m sure she has colic, Florence said, with more conviction. She came from a large family and knew about babies and what could ail them. Union Plains’ only store sold gripe water, she said, a teaspoon of that sometimes helped. She won’t always cry. They usually grow out of it when they reach three months.

  Colic, Sara repeated, wanting to remember the word for the next time Katy came over.

  I’m sure the coffee’s still hot, Florence said, her attention drawn across the room to wall shelves holding battered tin pots and various crockery, a row of cups and bowls Oliver had brought home from the hotel.

  I have not cupboards, Sara said apologetically, following Florence’s gaze. She tucked her hair behind her ears and smoothed the front of Oliver’s plaid bathrobe, knowing that she had just brought attention to her frowzy appearance, and not improved it.

  Rome wasn’t built in a day, Florence said, leaving Sara confused as to what she meant.

  Sara looked around the room wanting to see it through Florence’s eyes. The bleached cotton window curtains she’d spent hours embroidering looked absurdly earnest. But she was satisfied with the red braided oval mat at the centre of the room, its colour vibrating against the green floor—which she should not have painted, Oliver said, given that she was expecting. He’d heard someone once say that women expecting should not paint. And so she’d painted with the windows and doors open, snow blowing into the room. What was worse, paint fumes or the cold? But sometimes she wondered, with a stab of guilt, was that why Alvina cried so much? Because she had painted?

  I’ll come back another time, Florence said. You may keep the coffee pot. It’s a wedding gift, she explained. I’m a member of the Women’s Workers Club, we do the same for all newlyweds.

  Yes, Sara had heard that from Oliver. And she’d also heard that, for a first baby, the women threw a shower in the Anglican church basement. While she didn’t want one, she’d come to expect it would happen, and had thought and thought about what she might wear and what she would say. Thinking that she would ask Annie, her young sister, to make another smock. She suspected now that once the women found out how pregnant she was, they’d decided against it.

  Please stay—I want to wash my hair, Sara blurted, surprising herself and Florence with the request. Would you? Please? she added, almost apologetically. She’d been trying to wash her hair when the knock came at the door, had shoved the knife in the frame to give her courage.

  Of course, of course, Florence said, barely concealing her curiosity.

  Danke, Sara said, the word uttered in relief. She rushed over to the shelves to cover her embarrassment at having spoken German, and took down a cup. Then she pulled a chair out from the table, indicating that Florence should sit down. Moments later she returned from the stove, the cup brimming with steaming coffee she’d poured from the shiny new pot.

  Do you have other family? Florence asked, as Sara rubbed a bar of soap through her wet hair. Other than the two women Florence had seen coming and going.

  They’re in the old country, Sara said
, groping blindly for the dipper beside the basin and then rinsing the soap from her hair. Doing it quickly, imagining someone entering the room, a knife plunging into her back. An arm around her neck, and being thrown onto the floor. A man wanting more than a taste of the soup on the stove.

  My hair is so—Sara stumbled for words, snatched up a diaper from the pile and dabbed at her eyes to clear them. My hair is so heavy, she said, turning to Florence, meaning that her hair was oily. Usually I wash it when Oliver’s here, but today I couldn’t wait.

  Your house is looking very nice, Florence said, and then a whimper rose from the basket beside the stove. Within moments Alvina was howling, and Florence pushed Sara aside to rescue her, picked her up and put her across her shoulder. Florence rocked, jiggled, sang, just as Sara tried to do, and miraculously, Alvina grew silent.

  All these years! Sara called out to the ceiling now, her jaw so tight she could barely form the words. Sometimes she felt as though she’d only just had Alvina, and yet all these years had flown by in a blur of nine more children and keeping this old house going. She’d rescued a house that truly was abandoned, she discovered from the courthouse records in Alexander Morris. When Alvina was just four months, she’d bundled her up, walked to the highway, hitched a ride on the bus, somehow managed to make herself understood to the clerk. I’m not dumb! she wanted to shout as loudly as he shouted at her. Her planned triumph was diluted when her brother-in-law insisted on seeing the records for himself before he would plunk down the money for the amount of taxes owing. Then, every step of the way, she’d had to argue and reason and persuade Oliver that the changes to the house were necessary, take it upon herself to arrange for a carpenter to build a room onto the front of the house, a porch onto the kitchen. A place where, in summer, she could fill a washtub with water to bathe the children, wheel out the wringer washer and do the laundry. When the piano’s wavering and uncertain tune made it unwelcome in the living room, there was space for it in the porch, along with the mound of footwear, broken toys, sleds, scooters and other paraphernalia of all their varied lives.

  While Oliver escaped to the army in the war, she skimped and hoarded the pay the army sent to her. A cellar was dug out beneath the house and a coal-burning furnace installed, a potato bin, shelves built for the hundreds of jars of preserves she canned each year. She raised the roof to accommodate a second floor, and by the time the fifth child arrived, the rough split-log exterior was covered with cedar siding and whitewashed, the window frames trimmed with red. The abandoned house had become a reasonable facsimile of the other houses in Union Plains.

  And what was all that for?

  And what was the purpose of giving birth to ten selfish and obstinate children who sometimes made fun of the way she talked, scoffed at any advice she tried to give them? They pilfered her chocolate bars, the treats Oliver sometimes brought home because he knew she craved dark chocolate. It was an insult that she had to hide them or else she wouldn’t get a taste, not even a measly crumb would be left in the wrapper. As if her sweet tooth didn’t count. I’m a person too, she sometimes told her kids, the notion as startling to her as it was to them; her need for dark chocolate pronounced because it was something about herself she knew for certain—I like dark chocolate. All these years her body had betrayed her again and again, no matter what jellies or appliances she used. What great lesson was she meant to learn from that?

  Yes, yes, I know. I’m supposed to try and become a mountain flower, she muttered. Trials and troubles are sent to shape a person, yes, yes, yes, according to the gospel of her acquaintance Coral.

  She laughed wryly, a rat-a-tat-tat sound. As if I haven’t learned enough by now. I’d rather be a common weed, a dandelion, she’d once said to Coral, and she thought now, yes! Why not? Why not be satisfied to be a dandelion like everyone else, rather than try to become a rare and exquisite blossom that only God and the mountain goats would ever see? A velvety and brightly spotted lady’s slipper, which every year, near to Easter, she could count on appearing in the window of a Winnipeg flower shop. The blossoms resembled a purse more than a slipper, and they were susceptible to sucking insects, the store clerk said.

  She raised an arm now, opened her palm to shield her eyes against the brightness in the room, and was caught for a moment by her freckled firmness. It was a lithe, narrow arm that seemed to belong to someone else, a girl’s arm, it didn’t match her face. What a shock to glimpse her face in the store window before she’d had a chance to arrange it! That washed-out person is not me, but yes, it was. And then there was Alice Bouchard’s kewpie-doll face looking out the window through her reflection.

  Again the image of Alice emerging from the store gripped her. Alice’s self-containment as she set her parcels into the trunk of the car. The lid coming down in a solid muffled thud! spoke of more money than you could shake a stick at.

  Okay, okay, she whispered to the ceiling, wanting to steady her breathing. Okay. Her chest rose in a shudder, and she wiped her nose on the back of her arm, frowning as she noticed the collection of dried insects in the light fixture, the grey footprints on the ceiling’s fresh white paint, going from one end of it to the other. The kids couldn’t or wouldn’t say how the footprints had got there. She thought she heard someone coming along the hall, raised her head and saw Alice Bouchard’s latest endowment of second-hand shoes on the floor, and once again she was struck through with a bolt of pain that left her gasping.

  If what she was experiencing was gallbladder, as Florence Dressler suggested, then it had started acting up days ago, during the bus ride home from Winnipeg. The dull pain set in as the bus left the city limits, the neon lights of the motels and hamburger joints giving way to houses whose lit windows sometimes afforded her a glimpse into rooms. The two nuns who’d been on the bus when she boarded it that morning sat in front of her, their heads almost touching as they talked in French. Unlike most of the passengers around her, the nuns seldom returned from Winnipeg carrying bags or packages, which raised the question, where had they been all day? Underneath a priest, likely, Oliver said, when she’d once posed the question, and he was serious, not teasing. Of course, they’re no better than I am, Sara thought, but the idea did not give her any satisfaction.

  Anger is a sin, Coral had said, and Sara wondered if the nuns would agree. Wasn’t there ever a time when anger was righteous? She thought of Alice Bouchard—that bitch—her hips swivelling in her pencil-narrow skirt as she went off down the street, and realized that the lingering ache was the residue of anger brought on by Alice ignoring her. Anger’s a sin, Coral had said when Sara once admitted to being short-tempered. Read the scriptures and search your heart.

  And she’d been doing just that for almost a year now; every day she read the Bible in an attempt to make herself feel bad. She’d discovered that she regretted giving herself to Oliver before they were married, regretted chasing after him, her craving for the sight of him like a toothache, a pulsating need that had her begging to accompany Katy when she delivered eggs and cream to Union Plains. To put her face up to the hotel window, hoping for a glimpse of his slim silhouette moving among the pool tables. Once she’d heard someone call to him—Oliver, it looks as though that German DP girl has an eye for you. Now, there’s an itch begging to be scratched. I made such a fool of myself, she’d confessed to Coral, her voice echoing in the grey washroom cubicle at the bus depot, its walls and doors scratched with graffiti. The air freshener on the wall above the toilet tank oozed a medicinal odour that made her throat scratchy, and she’d staved off coughing in fear that Coral would think it was a cover for crying.

  One way or another, a person reaped the results of anger, and Sara supposed this shifting dull pain that began as the bus left the parking lot and went lumbering through the city streets was her reward. Black puddles in the ditch beside the highway flashed by, the ditches being full from a recent downpour of rain. She belched into her fist and recalled the bag of Planters Peanuts she’d consumed while shopping.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love one another as you would love yourself. Huh! Easier said than done. She would never wear another pair of Alice Bouchard’s shoes, even though that would mean shopping in the kids’ department in order to find ones that would fit.

  All right, so she had committed sins that couldn’t be undone. But there were others that she could make right, according to the gospel of Coral, the bus depot’s cleaning lady, big in the derrière, a woman from Trinidad. Sara could return the scarf to Emily Ashburn, that was a start. She had been on her way to do just that when she took the bus to Winnipeg that morning.

  The scarf and a shopping list were tucked inside her handbag as she got on the bus early in the morning, the land still shining wet with dew. Half an hour later, she disembarked at the oil-stained bus depot parking lot in Winnipeg and hurried through a blue cloud of diesel exhaust into the waiting room, feeling smart and purposeful. She knew where to go in the city without needing to think about it, and felt a mixture of pity and benevolence for the country people who wandered about the depot looking lost and afraid to venture out the doors onto Graham Street.

  She anticipated the sound of Coral’s singing, the sight of the large woman pushing a broom and a pile of Dust Bane between the rows of benches, but saw instead the thin, nervous-looking cleaning woman who went about with a cigarette in her mouth as she worked. Sara figured that Coral was on the second shift and she would come upon her in the coffee shop at the end of the day.

  By one-thirty she sat on a bench beside a trolley stop, looking down at two bulging shopping bags at her feet and thinking, that’s thirty dollars’ worth. Not quite believing that she was near the end of Oliver’s money and hadn’t got to the end of her list. She’d decided against purchasing a new brassiere for Ida, although she was growing so quickly she’d soon be larger-breasted than Alvina. She’d promised Ruby a harmonica, but not if it left her short of money to buy running shoes for the boys.