Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  My man passed away and I had no land to farm with my children. Early in my life I had noticed that when you lose something, other things can be found. I found that I could work with furs and so I put my hand to that. At first I trapped small animals, until frost got three of my toes. Then I sewed furs. I sewed muffs and hats and later I fashioned pretty jackets for the English women. I made moccasins and gauntlets and tobacco bags.

  I am now seventy-seven years old, and I live in St. Jean. I have had a very good life.

  Her words were a hollow whistle of wind passing over the top of Oliver’s life. I had noticed that when you lose something, other things can be found. Oliver looked out across the vast fields, his knees trembling. He felt numbed, as though what he’d come through today had happened to someone else.

  He walked for several hours, the miles between him and Union Plains opened up as the dwindling sunlight touched the land. The air smelled like ice, clean, scented with the new growth on fields that were about to burst and greet the summer in full swing. A meadowlark perched on a fence post, its yellow breast a flash of colour as he passed by. Man alive. It was as though he was seeing the breadth of spring for the first time, and realizing what he’d been missing. He knew that families were sitting down to the evening meal, and he thought of his own kids, the little ones seated at the play table beside the refrigerator. He was heading down the highway, going even farther south and away from them.

  SEVENTEEN

  A family gathering

  HAT EVENING an odour of woodsmoke brought Florence Dressler to her back door, and to the sight of Kornelius’s car parked alongside the Vandal house, the place lit up like a ship at sea. There was a bonfire going in the Vandals’ firepit, Emilie hovering over it, poking at the flames with a stick. Sparks flew up, sailed over the cranberry hedge and drifted towards the line of laundry Florence had hung out in the morning.

  The laundry would smell of smoke, but she lacked the will to reel it in. This lethargy, a feeling that she was wading through molasses, had slowed her down earlier in the day and she’d realized: of course. On this day eighteen years ago, a section man had failed to close a switch to a side track, and at ten o’clock in the morning a Great Northern train had come roaring through the station and into a grain car shunted onto a siding. Two men had perished, one of them being her husband.

  The Vandal house, with its tacked-on back porch, resembled a boot more than a ship at sea. How did Florence cope with being neighbour to that wild bunch? several women of the Women’s Workers Club had asked in various ways throughout the years. Monkeys swinging from clotheslines and bringing them down. Contortionists, acrobats; they chanced broken limbs while walking across a rope they’d strung between trees. They were artists painting the unripe pumpkins in the garden a glossy orange enamel. When the girls inherited their brothers’ hockey skates they painted them white.

  The Vandals went fishing and caught themselves. Fishhooks in a calf, a finger, a cheek. They swam in water-filled ditches and came home with whooping cough, pleurisy; leapt from the shed roof into snowbanks, Ida snagging her lip on one of the half-dozen clotheslines. Sara had said to Florence, Ida’s being a cry baby over needing a few little stitches. Sara, pretending to be as tough as nails, when she hadn’t got over her unreasonable fear of washing her hair without an adult being in the room. They can cry all they want, Florence thought. Give me just one of those monkeys.

  Emilie sat on a log at the edge of the garden, beside the bonfire, whipping the air with the stick. In no time, Florence would put meat on her bones. Sonny Boy and George emerged from the house and ambled off into the darkness. The interior light of Kornelius’s car came on, its dim halo illuminating the heads and shoulders of Simon and Manny. Any of the four boys would do.

  Whatever was going on over there was none of Florence’s business, but she hadn’t seen Sara all day. The playpen was still out in the yard; thank the Lord, Alvina had had the sense to bring the baby in out of the sun. The playpen pad would absorb the night dew and become a breeding ground for bacteria, for bugs to set up shop. Bugs had set up shop in the mattress of the carriage Sara had bought second-hand when Sharon was a baby, and Sara had not been able to understand why Sharon had resisted being put to bed in it. Why she awoke so often during the night crying. On Florence’s advice, Oliver had shone a flashlight into the carriage and what Florence suspected had proved to be true. Bedbugs.

  There wasn’t much to be seen through those windows to spark the curiosity of anyone going past the Vandal house. Two living-room windows through which a person might see the pictures of flying geese in salmon-coloured frames hanging above the sofa. Where Kornelius usually parked himself and read newspapers while waiting for Katy. He was too cheap to purchase his own, Sara said, and so he asked her to save them for when he picked her and the children up for church. Dived into the newspapers first thing, whenever they came to visit.

  Sara had appropriated the colour of the flying-geese picture frames for the living-room and dining-room walls, and during the evenings, in the light of the floor lamp, they glowed like twilight and were cozy, but throughout the day the colour was muddy and draining.

  The hotel’s going to be shut down, Alvina had said to Florence earlier in the day. She’d come over to the hedge with Patsy Anne on her hip, her large flat eyes fearful and hurt-looking as she glanced up at the bedroom window above the back porch. Her eyes asking, now what are we supposed to do?

  I know, Florence said. She had heard earlier, when she’d gone to the store for her mail. Everyone in town knew about the man who’d come to take inventory of the hotel, telling Cecil that he now owned the contents. He’d gone through the place with a clipboard that very morning, counting, sticking pieces of paper onto items.

  How’s your dad taking it? Florence asked, and noted the evasive look in Alvina’s eyes.

  Who knows? she said with a shrug. Then she said, Anyway, I called my dad’s brother and my aunt Katy. Florence knew that Alvina wasn’t telling her everything.

  Because they had visitors, the Vandals had eaten supper in the dining room. There was a sunset going on when they sat down, and lambent light swam across the salmon-coloured walls, mirroring the children’s quivering determination not to notice that their parents’ chairs were vacant.

  Throughout the meal they felt the prod of silence, Romeo’s exacting politeness in the presence of Katy and Kornelius. Yes sir, no madame, he said, refusing to pick up any thread of conversation either of them offered. Refusing to eat anything other than the food Claudette had brought with them on the train. There was an embarrassing moment when Katy and Kornelius bowed their heads and prayed before eating. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, Oliver might have said, if he’d been present. Sonny Boy commented sotto voce to George that Romeo looked as though he was passing hot coals.

  What’s that, eh? Romeo asked, his cheeks becoming the colour of cranberries. By cracky, don’t you be a wise guy, he added, unusually surly. He shook his fork at Sonny but really he wanted to speak his mind to Kornelius. He’d promised Claudette to remain silent, so instead he said to Sonny, If you’re so smart, why don’t you bring back your daddy’s livelihood, eh?

  I can tell time, Ruby said later, following Claudette around the kitchen with adoring eyes as she and Alvina cleared up after the evening meal, which had been held late in hope that Oliver would arrive home. It’s 7:22, Ruby announced. Oliver should have eaten supper by now and returned to work. The atmosphere in the house was like a mousetrap set to go off.

  Ruby was being a pain, Alvina thought. She’d been unwilling or unable to explain how Sharon’s dress had wound up in the cistern, and Alvina had let it go because she didn’t want to think of either of the girls being so close to danger as to throw the dress down the hatch. The water man forgot to close the lid, Ruby said accusingly. A mistake he’d made in his worry over the little ones being left to fend for themselves. Alvina shuddered as she thought of the terrifying seconds just before Sharon had come s
tumbling out through the door of the backyard shed.

  Huum, Claudette replied absent-mindedly, and patted Ruby on the head. Claudette’s hair was a cloud of auburn, her cheeks highly rouged, the skin of her eyebrows shiny from being shaved, the brows painted on in black. The sleeveless dress she wore was patterned with crimson flowers, her ears glittering with rhinestone earrings. In contrast to Alvina’s grey cardigan sweater and pleated skirt, Claudette was a lit-up Christmas tree, a fact Sara had sometimes pointed out.

  Claudette and Romeo had surprised them, Simon and Manny the first to spot them coming down the street from the train station, Romeo having left the packing house early in order to catch the four o’clock. Did you check the basement to see if his gun’s there? he blurted upon entering the house, and then, seeing the fear in Alvina’s eyes, was sorry for having asked. He affected a nonchalance as he went down the stairs into the basement. When he returned moments later, he said, I thought maybe your dad went squirrel-shooting. Give your uncle a kiss. His eyes watered and he smelled of hops and his cheek was feverish when Ruby kissed it. Mad money, he said to Alvina, and gave her a dollar. Just don’t go getting mad at me.

  The unexpected arrival of Romeo and Claudette failed to draw Sara downstairs. When Katy and Kornelius got there she had dressed and wound up her hair, but had remained in her room. Katy cooked some rice soup and took it up to her. She had brought a canned chicken, a jar of potato salad and buns. At the sight of the food, Claudette grew flustered. You and me were thinking along the same lines, she said with a bashful smile, and produced a package of coconut-coated marshmallows from a shopping bag, and several pounds of bacon, which she went on to fry to a crisp, along with two dozen eggs she scrambled in the grease.

  Everything will turn out all right, wait and see, Claudette reassured Alvina once again as they washed and dried the supper dishes. Ruby sat on a chair beside the radio, thinking, She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes, when she comes. And we’ll all go out to greet her when she comes. There were footsteps in the room above, Aunt Katy walking to and fro saying, Ja, ja.

  Alvina was unaccustomed to such blatant optimism and she thought Claudette was charming but naive. As much as she doubted that everything would turn out all right, she was grateful to her aunt for making the effort. Ida hung around in the doorway, looking for a chance to horn in on the adult talk, and Alvina shooed her off to the dining-room table to do her homework, and Ruby outside to play with Manny and Simon.

  Claudette poured two mugs of coffee and took a flask from her handbag. She carefully measured a scant cap of rum into each of the mugs and then indicated that Alvina should join her at the table. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, she said, and winked. As soon as the meal was finished, Romeo had rushed from the house to go to the hotel. He’d said he wanted to see for himself that an inventory had been done. And to be there on the chance Oliver showed up. To get sauced, Claudette said. She sat down at the table and leaned back into her chair. The chalkiness of her deodorized armpits glowed white as she ran her fingers through her tousled curls. Then she lit a cigarette and set it into a saucer. That’s it, the kitchen’s closed, she announced.

  Which meant that she was prepared to spend the next several hours visiting, while all hell broke loose around her, and she expected Alvina would do the same. Alvina had already put Patsy Anne and Sharon to bed on the floor in the girls’ room, Patsy having graduated from her crib in Sara’s room because Katy and Sara needed to talk. She still had to tuck the others in, read to them, listen to their prayers, set out their clothing for the next day of school. Simon required tutoring in arithmetic to recuperate from his test, Manny needed a good talking to about the dangers of playing with matches, although she had not found any matches on him. Claudette pushed the mug of spiked coffee towards her, her eyebrows arching towards the ceiling as the murmuring of Katy’s and Sara’s voices rose.

  That morning Oliver had gone for a stroll and failed to come back. Oh my Lord, Sara had exclaimed, when Emilie returned from the hotel with the news. The girl didn’t say that she’d been there once before, or that she’d seen him going along the path to the river that morning. The decrepits swore on their hearts that he hadn’t been there. A city slicker driving a flashy Caddie had come in looking for Oliver and had then gone through the hotel as though he owned it, making notes on paper. I do own it, he’d said to Cecil. Everything inside it, that is. Including the chairs you old geezers are sitting on.

  Sara had grown strangely serene. Like an exhausted boxer, relieved when a referee steps into the ring and halts the match. The bedroom closet doors were open and their shelves in disarray. Scattered around her on the bed were the letters she and Oliver had exchanged during their almost two years of separation.

  In the silence of the day she had gone in search of nuances, a tone, something she might have missed years ago when her understanding of English was lacking. She looked for evidence that Oliver had been unfaithful, and found none. She looked for signs that he took her for a ninny, or that she had read more romance into the lines than he’d intended, and found herself lost in his lilting voice and beautiful script; its flourishes and curlicues were the movement of his body across the page as he composed who he was at that particular moment. She was entranced by his account of the people he’d come to know, could picture them and hear their voices; his descriptions of the destruction that still existed twenty-five years after the explosion at the Halifax harbour were captivating and vivid. His writing mirrored the way he stood with his hand at his waist, its palm turned up, as though he were on stage, about to give a performance.

  In comparison, her own handwriting was unimaginative, uncertain and spidery. It was influenced by the German Gothic script she’d been taught in a village classroom in Russia, the letters clumsy-looking as she pushed through to achieve a goal. The boys will need a wagon to deliver the papers. A cabinet maker came to measure for kitchen cupboards. Today I put up two dozen jars of pickles. Annie is a big help. Her letters were filled with accounts of the progress of home improvements; she wanted him to be part of it although he was so far away. I think I may be that way, again, she’d written, meaning that she was likely pregnant with Emilie following his most recent leave. She had not written that the bed seemed too large, that even amid the constant chatter and duties of the day her heart sometimes lurched with longing for the sound of his footstep.

  I was just a child, Sara thought. I was going around in a fury of activity from morning to night in order to keep loneliness at bay. Dog-tired but awake and staring into the darkness of the room, thinking she heard voices, feeling that the room was cavernous, its walls porous and riddled like a dried-out bone. She was a child wanting to hitch a ride out of the constant throb in her chest; out of an ochre-coloured cave on an Easter day, the sun shining on the river below while the people around her hid their faces in their hands and wept. Away from all of that, and into the polished sky beyond the cave, the get-up-and-go of a country called Canada.

  This was as far as Oliver had been able to take her. Union Plains, Manitoba. Ten children, and near to twenty years of being irritated and preoccupied by the constant buzz of jealousy. And over what? From the back Oliver still looked good, his shoulders square, his hair thick and not a single grey among the black. But when he stood sideways, that was another thing. His girth gave her a secret glee that she fed him well; he was taking on weight and less and less would she need to worry that someone might steal him away, that he might leave this little German immigrant girl who still couldn’t say the word very without it sounding like wery.

  She’d come to realize that his knowledge of the world was suspect, his wisdom a cloak he put on and took off at will. He wasn’t who she had thought he would turn out to be once she became better acquainted with the ways of the land. Like her, Oliver was a displaced person. He was out of place and out of time, as much as were the Indians she had seen haunting the periphery of Kornelius’s farm.

  I
wanted to hit that woman, Sara said to Katy, without admitting that she had tried to vandalize Alice’s car. Below, in the kitchen, Claudette and Alvina visited, while Sonny Boy and George sat out on the front steps, not speaking, waiting for the Bogg brothers to arrive and take them to Alexander Morris and a movie.

  Once Sara began to talk about Alice Bouchard she was unable to stop speaking her fears, suspicions and imaginations, unmindful all the while of the look of distaste growing in Katy’s face, as though Sara, in the telling of Oliver’s supposed indiscretion, was besmirching herself. She told Katy about the spicy odour Oliver had once brought home on his skin. She told her that she had been sorting the laundry one day and had come upon a pair of his undershorts clotted with semen, a pinch of hair stuck to it. I don’t think it was his hair, she said. It seemed finer.

  We don’t hit people, Katy interjected, warily.

  We? Sara said. You hit your children.

  I spank them, I correct them. That’s different, Katy said. I mean our enemies. We Mennonites, Christians, we’re to turn the other cheek.

  Oh yes, and where did that get us? Sara asked, meaning the Mennonites in the old country who had refused to protect themselves, and had consequently lost their lives as swiftly as those who had taken up arms in self-defence.

  From the front of the house came the sound of an approaching vehicle, then voices, as Sonny Boy and George went to meet the Bogg boys. Katy, relieved at the diversion, got up and went into the girls’ room at the front of the house to investigate. She felt short of breath in the face of Sara’s intensity, the embarrassing accusations she levelled against Oliver. She reached the window in time to see Sonny Boy and George get into the car. She watched as it went off down the road and turned at the corner. Sonny Boy didn’t attend church any more, and Sara hadn’t put her foot down, while Oliver refused to be involved. Ja, ja, Katy said, with a sigh. And so it goes.