Childhood

by André Alexis

I looked through the hedge and saw Irene Schwartz lazily dropping a rubber ball on a wobbly pane of slate.

  – What’re you doing? I asked.

  – Nothing, she answered.

  – You live here?

  – Yes, she said and went back to the rubber ball and slate. Not a promising beginning.

  – You’re not supposed to play in the hedge, she said. It could wither.

  – It won’t wither.

  – My mother said it will.

  I withdrew from the hedge in disgust. That was the problem with young girls, there was more amusement in counting centipedes.

  After a while, Irene herself poked through the hedge.

  – Boy from next door? she called.

  – What?

  – We have juice and cookies at my house.

  * * *

  —

  I’d heard stories about Mrs Schwartz before I met her or Irene. First, there was no man in the house. Then, they kept a candle in their back window, an inexplicable candle, lit at night. Why?

  My grandmother disliked them entirely, and the Goodman girls thought Mrs Schwartz must be a witch, a real witch with children trapped in the basement, and jars of human fingers.

  So, I was wary when we met.

  Irene was almost as tall as I. Her hair was short and wavy, her eyes light blue, and her ears stuck out.

  We entered their kitchen through the back door. I sat at the table, beside a window. The window was open, but the place smelled of apples, and there was something simmering on the stove.

  – Can we have some cookies, please? Irene shouted.

  And Mrs Schwartz came in. She said

  – Irene, who’s your friend?

  – The boy from next door.

  – And does the boy next door have a name?

  – I don’t know.

  I struggled with the silence before answering.

  – Thomas, I said.

  – Thomas…You’re Katarina’s son, aren’t you?

  – I guess so.

  – How nice to meet you. We’ll have to have cookies and lemonade to celebrate.

  Nothing in Mrs Schwartz’s demeanour either confirmed or controverted her being a witch. She was kind and attentive, but what better tack to choose with children you wanted to eat?

  Her appearance was suggestive of neither good nor evil. She was slender and red-headed. Her shoulders sloped slightly. Her nose was narrow, but not overlong, and her eyes were blue.

  Once the lemonade was finished, she shook my hand, firmly, and invited me back.

  * * *

  —

  My second impression of Mrs Schwartz was more striking.

  On a gloomy day, sunless, the air smelling of rain and tar, Irene and I were outside, jumping to

  Peach porridge hot,

  Peach porridge cold,

  Peach porridge in the pot,

  Nine days old.

  How many bowlsful do you want?

  We were neither of us very good. I spent most of the time half-heartedly watching Irene, the way her dress billowed. And when the rain came, we ran inside, where her mother was frantically closing windows and turning off the lights.

  While Irene and I dried our heads, Mrs Schwartz put candles on the window sills.

  – Lightning, she said.

  It was dark as night outside. We sat in the living room, trying to ignore the lightning, listening to the thunder. I could smell my wet clothes, the candles, the house itself.

  Mrs Schwartz, frightened by the weather, talked on and on: rain is good for the garden, thunder is the voice of God, we are all water…

  She also told two stories, one about a certain Mr Smith, the other about a certain Mr Jones.4

  To this day, I remember the sound of her voice, the way she held her cigarettes, the flickering candlelight.

  There was something reassuring in her fear of lightning.

  Were it not for Lillian Schwartz, the world of my childhood might have been one-dimensional in time. I knew nothing of my grandmother, save what I observed, and nothing at all about my mother.

  It’s through Lillian Schwartz that I learned the small things I know about Edna and Katarina MacMillan, the details that give their deaths, years apart though they were, even deeper resonance in my imagination.

  And yet, in remembering her, I most vividly remember things that Lillian Schwartz remembered. She herself doesn’t always figure in the memories I have of her. This makes proper order a little difficult. I feel I should proceed as follows:

  Edna MacMillan........................1

  End of the Dickens Society of Lambton County........................1.1

  The Death of Her Husband........................1.2

  Katarina MacMillan......................2

  She Is Good......................2.1

  She Is Fearless......................2.2

  Mrs Schwartz and the Candle at Night......................3

  But I may be slipping into poetry.

  1 Edna MacMillan

  Apparently, my grandmother wasn’t always slovenly. In Lillian’s memory, she was conscientious and efficient.

  Her life, but for the years in Trinidad, was lived in Petrolia, and Petrolia crushed everything else from her so thoroughly that I could not have guessed her origins were anything but Canadian.5

  She began teaching in her twenties and infected countless children with the verse of Archibald Lampman. She retired at sixty-five, just in time to take care of her grandson, Thomas MacMillan, myself.

  For years, her home was a haven to the Dickens Society of Lambton County. That is, she was host to a group of women from Petrolia, Oil City, and Oil Springs who met on Grove Street to eat plum pudding, whatever the season, and discuss the novels of Charles Dickens.

  The novels, scrupulously chosen by my grandmother, were parsed to within an inch of their lives and made to yield the secrets of character.

  It was at the centre of the Dickens Society that she flourished.

  That’s not to say my grandmother was blameless in either of the misfortunes that soured her life: the dissolution of the Dickens Society; the death of her husband. Her temper was always erratic. She could be mean-spirited and unyielding, and she was prone to bouts of “sensitivity” that made the company of others intolerable.

  In her old age, these aspects of her personality grew more pronounced, but they didn’t come out of the blue.

  * * *

  —

  1.1 End of the Dickens Society of Lambton County

  As far as reading groups go, the Dickens Society seems to have been successful. It existed from 1946 to 1949, turbulent years for the world, difficult years for Petrolia.

  The women met on the first Tuesday of every month, in the evening.

  – Your grandmother’s house always smelled of plum pudding and rose water…

  Lillian Schwartz’s mother, Edwina Martin, “Eedy” to my grandmother’s “Eddy,” was a faithful participant and, in consequence, so was Lillian. Her father was not expected to “work all day and mind the child at night.”

  It was on these evenings, under the aegis of the Dickens Society, that Katarina and Lillian became friends. They were both eight years of age when the group began. They had the run of the house, as long as they kept out from under my grandfather’s feet.

  Though the women were, individually, conservative, the reading group itself was lively. They had opinions and ideas that they put boldly forth, goaded by my grandmother’s dandelion brandy. They were even, at times, almost raucous in their sympathies and loathings for Abel Magwitch, say, or Bill Sykes.

  Then my grandfather would come in to quiet them.

  – Ladies, please!

  And their voices would subside, and then
rise again until it was nine o’clock, time to go home.

  Though Lillian was too young to appreciate its causes, the Society’s passions left an impression.

  Aside from my grandmother and Lillian’s mother, there were two women from Oil City (one of whom smelled of rose water) and two sisters: Mrs Ellen Benjamin (Oil Springs) and Mrs Margaret Grossman (Petrolia).

  Mrs Ellen, who was wealthy, read the novels and occasionally gave an opinion, but it seems she was there to humour her sister, whom she treated with scorn.

  – How can you be so stupid? she’d hiss

  or

  – That’s the silliest thing you’ve said yet.

  Her words had a withering effect on her sister. A timid woman to begin with, Mrs Margaret rarely volunteered an idea that was not an echo of her sister’s. Even at that, she stroked her amethyst brooch before speaking and the fingers on her right hand were almost always bandaged.

  Most of the women disliked Mrs Ellen’s high-handedness. They resented her jabs at her sister’s intelligence. None of the others had wealthy husbands or swank pearls, and they took Mrs Ellen’s condescension personally.

  – She doesn’t think her own farts stink

  is how Lillian’s mother expressed it.

  My grandmother, on the other hand, unequivocally took Mrs Ellen’s side. She couldn’t stand spinelessness. She bullied Mrs Margaret almost as often as Mrs Ellen did, dismissing her opinions even when she might have agreed with them.

  * * *

  —

  In the winter of 1948, at what was to be the Society’s last full meeting, the novel in question was that most dangerous of books: Our Mutual Friend.

  Lillian and Katarina were bored. They’d spent most of the evening trying to sip from the tumblers of brandy while the Society argued.

  And there seems to have been a great deal to argue about.

  Mr Wrayburn was too much this or too that. He was wealthy, but his character was clouded. He was anti-Semitic, but he was noble. He was noble, but indolent. He was indolent, but charming. And, though the ending was happy, there was much doubt as to his value as a husband.

  Mrs Ellen, who took affront at this insult to a wealthy man, began to berate the poor. The poor who – like a certain Mr Grossman, the janitor at St Philip’s – weren’t any fitter for marriage, with their mothballs, penny candles, and kerosene lamps.

  – But, said Mrs Margaret, a man isn’t a change purse.

  – What do you know about change purses? her sister answered. Two sticks to rub together you haven’t got.

  Mrs Margaret meekly repeated her point as her sister and my grandmother mounted their assault.

  – You’re taking this personally, you silly woman.

  And the young girls watched in amazement as the Society lost itself in personal invective.

  – To hell with money!

  – To hell with Oil City!

  After which, there was no turning back. Such foul language. Even in jest, it was an insult to my grandmother’s home.

  The other women were giddy with daring. They battered Mrs Ellen so thoroughly that she sat as though starched, facing them only with the scorn of the outnumbered.

  During all this, Mrs Margaret sat patiently, mindless of the catastrophe, repeating her one simple note

  – A man isn’t a purse…as if it were still a question of Dickens and change purses.

  – Be quiet, my grandmother said her voice almost lost amidst the voices around her, no one quite sure whom it was she wanted quiet.

  Then, as Mrs Margaret was about to speak, my grandmother stood up and slapped the woman’s face.

  The others sat stunned while Mrs Margaret repeated her

  – But…but…but…

  Mrs Ellen rose and put on her coat.

  – You see? she said to Mrs Margaret.

  She helped her sister up from the chair, on with her coat, and, without another word, they walked out of the house.

  * * *

  —

  The remaining members of the Dickens Society were, understandably, nervous in my grandmother’s company from then on.

  They gathered on a few more occasions, but without enthusiasm, and they made no effort to replace the two sisters.

  Three years after it began, the Society died a quiet but undignified death.

  For years afterwards, stories of my grandmother’s disgrace were widespread. She had spit at Mrs Ellen; she had damaged Mrs Ellen’s automobile; she had pinched Mrs Margaret; she had bitten Mrs Margaret; she had thrown dishes; she had thrown food. Was she really fit to teach young children? She wasn’t “all there,” now was she?

  The Dickens Society of Lambton County expired in the early months of 1949, and its death must have been a humiliating thing for my grandmother.

  It was a humiliating thing for me as well.

  I finally understood why some of the adults treated me with exaggerated sympathy or exaggerated scorn, why the janitor at St Philip’s could not stand the sight of me.

  * * *

  —

  1.2 The Death of Her Husband

  My grandfather, for whom I was named, is something of an enigma. I never heard the sound of his voice. I never felt his touch and, until my grandmother’s death, I had no idea what he looked like.

  The only marks of his passage were the signatures he left in his books.

  It was like following a stranger down the aisles of a library, stopping to look at the books he’s touched (Lucretius, Liddell’s Lexicon, a complete Shakespeare, a book on gardening), speaking to those with whom he has spoken (my mother, my grandmother, Mrs Schwartz).

  – What did he say? What was he like?

  – I can’t remember…

  – I don’t remember…

  – He was kind…

  What can you know of someone like that? He seems to have been a man of wide, if musty, learning. The signature in his books is always faint, as if in apology. The dandelion wine and the dandelion brandy were his idea, though they were more pernicious in my grandmother’s life than they were in his.

  (I do feel something of his presence in myself, but it’s unclassifiable, a subtraction of other presences.)

  For me, the most remarkable thing about him is that, for almost thirty years, from 1922 until his death in 1950, he lived with my grandmother, not an uncomplicated woman.

  Of course, she loved him.

  * * *

  —

  The particulars of my grandfather’s death, of which there appear to have been witnesses, are as follows:

  It was a sunny day. (Sunlight circa 1950.)

  My grandparents were at a corner on Petrolia Street.

  My grandparents were speaking of something.

  My grandfather stepped off the curb.

  He was struck by a car.

  It would be tidy to leave it at that: a chain of events with drama, atmosphere, tension, and surprise. But the things that make this death a wound are in the possible circumstances around the moment, in the details of the details:

  It was a sunny day. An odd fact, provided by Mrs Schwartz. I take it to mean that my grandfather’s vision was not impaired by natural phenomena. He might have seen the car coming, if only he’d looked up, or looked in the right direction. Something, or someone, prevented his looking, or distracted him from it altogether. There was no real darkness, but the door is open for another kind of dark.

  My grandparents were at a corner on Petrolia Street. Being from Petrolia, there’s nothing unusual about that. They were at a place they knew intimately, crossing from here to there on a street they must have crossed thousands of times, each crossing but this one unfateful. There was nothing ominous about where they stood, but how many times thereafter must my gran
dmother have asked herself: Why here? What if we’d crossed farther on?

  My grandparents were speaking of something. Again, what could be more innocent? They would have exchanged a world’s worth of words in their life together. But what if she were scolding him? What if it was she who drew his attention from the street? Well, then, there’s the darkness: cloud cover provided by my grandmother herself.

  My grandfather stepped off the curb. In one version of the world, this is the fateful instant in three lives: my grandmother’s, my mother’s, and mine. As my grandfather steps down and turns his head towards his wife to say “What?” or “Really, Edna, I…” three small miseries take shape: my grandmother’s years of loneliness and guilt, my mother’s intense rebellion, and my own childhood. Our lives break off from that moment, as neatly as if he were stepping down on a pane of glass. And then…

  He was struck by a car. my grandfather died.

  Like all good stories, it sounds so plausible. How wonderful to imagine that, but for a misstep, our lives might have taken a happier course, that my grandmother loved me, but she was distracted by stronger emotions.

  Thomas: (wistfully) Gosh! If only the old man had looked where he was going…

  The thing is, it won’t wash, even for me who wishes it.

  Edna MacMillan must certainly have gone through hell watching the man she loved die on the street. (She had married late, at thirty, old enough to know why she wanted him, and, at fifty-eight, she was old enough to know what she was losing.) It may even have driven her to more excessive drink or begun a rift between her and her daughter.

  But all this is just modest guessing, and the details are so clearly speculative they make a paltry, therapeutic fiction.

  Who’s to say our lives would have been happier with my grandfather alive? How can I know what my grandmother felt (guilt? relief? nothing at all?)? She never spoke to me of her Thomas’s death.

  Though I feel this death’s importance for our lives, the only things I know about it are: sun, street, talk, step, car, death.