No, the grass grew exactly in the shape of a star.
“Look,” she said, laughing, “this grass is growing just like Jessy. Here’s the head and body, and these are the arms and legs. See how the little arms stop just before the hands.” Mary swung her eyes over to see if Judith was laughing at the funny way this grass grew.
But Judith was not laughing. Her face cringed. A stranger had taken over Judith’s fine features. And in this light her sister seemed treacherous again, ready to pinch.
Mary looked at the bright grass, then at Mother. With a sudden certainty that made her legs quake, Mary understood. “It is Jessy!”
Chapter 12
“Mother,” she cried, “Judith buried Jessy here!” Anger flared in Mary’s throat and spread into her stomach. Her hands shook.
Mother leaned down to examine Judith, who looked up tearfully. A tear formed in the corner of Mother’s eye too, and she released Judith’s hand to wipe it away.
“It is Jessy,” Judith admitted. With a terrified look, she grabbed at Mother’s hand.
“Why?”
Judith shrugged, put her hands into her coat pockets and stared at the mud on her boots. “I buried her at the end of that chinook, when we had to close the shutters.”
“But why?” Mother repeated.
“You of all people should know why.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Why does Mary get everything?”
“That was a nasty thing to do.”
“I had to. Papa never even saw me.” Judith sounded miserable.
“That’s plain mean, Judith. Don’t blame Papa for your own shortcomings.”
Mary remembered that morning long before when Papa’s new radio was set up in the kitchen. Papa had said the day that Jessy woke up and helped with chores would be the day their troubles would end. That same day, a big storm of hail had come and drummed on the barn. And she’d searched the entire farm for Jessy, who had been pushed down into the mud.
“You got shoes for Christmas, the one thing your sister wanted, and you had to hide her homemade gift, the only thing she got.”
Judith’s eyes were glued to the ground. Huge tears rolled down her pink cheeks. “No, Mother, she had everything. She had Papa and she had you.”
“Had me? No more than you!”
“Yes, and Papa too. You know it’s true.”
Mother looked at the ground speechlessly.
As the shock of the morning’s discovery flowed through her, Mary stood stock-still. She wasn’t going to be able to forgive Judith for stealing Jessy. That was certain. That was too much to ask. Judith got the shoes, and she got the nosebag. Judith buried Jessy.
As if she couldn’t tolerate Mary’s eyes on her another moment, Judith put her face against Mother’s waist and began to sob.
Mary’s fingers tingled with rage. She saw Jessy’s face pressed down into the mud, saw the old canvas tear under Judith’s heel, saw the oat seeds leak out and sprout in the too early heat. Would this Depression never end? She was willing to bet she still had that hole in her heart, too, and wouldn’t be allowed to attend school.
Shaking herself, Mary looked around. They all stood on this spreading yellow grass under this huge living sky. Her mother and her sister and herself all seemed so small.
Mary didn’t know what to do, but suddenly, studying that sky, she did feel sure that Judith was sorry for what she had done. Mary remembered how bad she had felt after losing Jessy, and how Judith had held her and how they became instant friends. Now Judith had confessed.
“What do I say, Mother?” Mary asked.
Mother shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” said Judith, wiping her face on her sleeve and pushing away from Mother. “I was mean to do that. I’ll do anything to make it up.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to do, though. And how could Judith undo burying Jessy? There seemed to be no way back. “I’m sorry too,” Mary said.
“You’re sorry?” Judith asked anxiously.
“Yes. I was mean too.” She only said this to give herself time to think, but now that the words were out, Mary knew they were true. She’d been mean to Judith. So often she had been glad that Judith wasn’t Papa’s girl, like she was.
Judith allowed herself a small nod and a smile.
“But that’s over with, right?”
Judith, red-eyed, nodded.
“I’m sorry too,” Mother said. She stroked Judith’s head.
The barn door slammed. Mary ran back past the house to get Papa. She returned in minutes with him in tow. Judith and Mother were hugging each other. When she pulled Papa past the little mounds with their small crosses, Mary pointed at the star of short green grass and said, “Look, Papa, we found Jessy.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” he said, patting her head.
Mary stamped her foot. “No! It is her growing here, Papa! See? Head, arms, legs, just like you made her.” With both hands she followed the outline of the blunt green star on the ground. “See? Our troubles are over, like you said.”
“I never said our troubles were over!”
“Jessy helped with chores, like you said. She started seeding the new crop.”
“Oh, that,” said Mother, with an intake of breath, nodding. “I remember.”
“Can someone let me in on this?”
Papa looked at Mother. Raising her eyebrows, she said, “The two of them are friends now, Ray. You can hardly deny that.” Bent over Judith, she rocked them both back and forth. Their bodies made a red knot in the red light.
Judith looked sideways at Mary and tried a smile.
Mary beamed back at her. Were all their troubles over? Not really. But some were. At the least, she and Judith would go to school together as friends.
“You’re not angry?” Judith asked. She pushed away from Mother again, delicate as an antelope ready to spring away up the valley.
Mary almost said, “Yes,” but then shook her head. She’d never give up Judith now, not for the world. Judith’s face relaxed into a beautiful pinkness, a perfect flower under a sky that had never looked quite so clear. “Look, Papa,” said Mary, “it’s a real blue sky finally too.”
“Angry at what?” Papa asked, glancing at each of them in turn.
Mother held out one of her hands. “Come here,” she said. She leaned down to hug Mary and squeezed Judith with her other arm. “You two are so precious to me.” Letting them go, Mother straightened up. She was taller than Mary remembered. One of her fine hands reached down for the handle of her basket.
“What does a bit of grass prove?” Papa asked.
“Come on,” said Mother. “Let’s get ready for church.”
They moved toward the house. It was a dark block in the light. Its roof wedged up into the sky. On the peak of the roof balanced the risen sun. It seemed ready to fall off to either side, thought Mary, but that sun was burning with the strength of spring. It wouldn’t fall off.
She wanted to go to town, to school, to sing in church.
She wanted to run, anywhere, everywhere.
The long shadow of the house lay on the ground. They stood at its edge. Mary ran off the shadow, wondering if light could ever make noise. If it could, this sunrise would be swishing and frothing around them like new milk. The valley was a wide bowl that contained all it could, right up to the brim of its graceful sides. Just then a pair of snow geese glided by overhead, their white feathers gathering the valley’s glow. Mary could hear their wings slice through the soft spring air. Honking, the birds turned and flapped away over the Arm. Joining hands and flying over the red-tinted ground, Mary and Judith skipped circles around their parents.
Mother and Papa were walking away slowly, talking quietly. A gentle breeze pushed Mother’s dress so it fluttered away from her legs. It was another warm morning.
“Wait,” said Judith. “Let’s stash the eggs. Then Joseph can hunt them down.”
They ran into the shadow where their parents walked and chos
e two eggs.
Judith clamped her eyelids shut. “You go first,” she said.
Mary didn’t know where to hide her egg. It was a beauty, sky blue, one of Judith’s best. Only a really good spot could do it justice. A prairie dog squeaked from the burrows, inviting Mary out toward the brown mounds of dog town. She ran out to the two little angels’ mounds. Where should I hide this egg? Mary wondered. Looking down, she knew. She placed the egg gently on Jessy’s green face. It was an eye of blue to help her see the sky. The sky arced lovely and clean above them.
Clamping her hands over her eyes, smiling with joy, Mary called out, “Your turn!”
A minute or so went by. “Done!”
Mary dropped her hands. Now her parents were sitting on the back step of the house, holding the basket between them. They were looking up at the blue sky. Running home to them, Mary and Judith each picked up two more eggs.
“Hurry now,” said Mother. “I can hear your brother waking up already. And it’s time to get the tea going.”
Breathless, the girls nodded and ran off again.
“Mary! Got your eyes closed?”
“Bet your muddy boots I do!”
The basket emptied slowly. Mary ran faster, hiding eggs in clever places like mouse tunnels in the grass or on top of fence posts. Judith was busy out at the prairie-dog town. After she had set an egg in an empty flower tub, Mary watched Mother and Papa jump up, grab a handful of brightly colored eggs each and run away to hide them.
Only two eggs were left, a fine green one Judith had painted and a milky blue one of Mary’s. Mary reached for them just as Joseph pushed his uncombed head out the back door. Grinning into his sleepy face, she hid them behind her and backed away. At the corral, where Clyde munched placidly on his breakfast as if nothing ever happened, she set her eggs in the dead weeds by the water trough. Ears forward, Clyde sniffed them and shook his head. The eggs did not smell like hay or sugar or carrots or apples or grass, or like the oats he so loved.
Mary squinted up into his long mild face and stroked a finger across his velvet lip. Smiling, she returned to the house. Her sister and mother and father sat waiting for her on the sun-washed front steps. Soon they’d hitch up the buggy and go to town.
Her brother ran around the corner of the house. He was shaking the empty egg basket. “I wanted to hide them too!” he said, beginning to pout.
“There’s none left to hide,” Judith said. Her arms spread out to embrace the valley.
“True,” said Mary, giggling up at the bright blue sky, “but there’s lots left to find. And every last one of them is stashed in a very good spot.”
Acknowledgements
In the early 1990s, my father-in-law, John Doerksen, who had been a prairie farm boy himself during the Great Depression of the 1930s, told me the kernel of this story. I thought about that little oat-filled doll all summer. What family situation would produce the chain of events he described? What would make a child bury her sister’s doll? I pried for more details. John claimed it had happened to people a few farms over from where he lived. He had no other details to give. Finally I sat down and wrote out my own explanation. I believe he was proud of my attempt, although he did not survive to read the book.
I can’t (really, I can’t) let this book go to press without thanking my wife, Karen, who read less-readable versions but always believed. Likewise, my friend Fred Meissner read and commented on the text with a poet’s heart. In this group I must include Maggie de Vries at Orca Book Publishers, whose iron will and light touch graces each page.
I’d also like to thank Heather Marshall and Debbie Culbertson and Professor Keith Harder for believing in this book and doing everything they could to help get it to the public. Thank you to Neil Hultin for those juicy bits of historical detail. Thanks in particular to my snap-happy sister, Theresa, for the photo shoot in Calgary, and thanks generally both to Karen’s family and my own family for their interest over the years.
Finally, I haven’t forgotten the friends who have read or listened to the story and have been moved, as I have, by Mary and Judith and a homemade doll with no nose or hair.
And thank you too, Reader, whether your nose be satisfactory, whether your hair is coming in or falling out. May you be moved as well.
Joseph Simons was an avid reader as a child and remains one to this day. He is intimately acquainted with farm life, right down to the calluses on his hands. He loves Saskatchewan, where he lived in the early 1980s, except for the winters, which, he says, “Demand another kind of thinking about one’s place in the world.” Still, even in those winters, Joseph rode his bike to work every day. He based Under a Living Sky on a story that his late father-in-law told him, a story that he could not shake. Under a Living Sky is his first book. Visit him at www.josephsimons.ca.
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