Childhood

by André Alexis

  2 Katarina MacMillan

  In some versions of her father’s death, Katarina insisted it was her mother who pushed him under the car.

  In others, she was there, twelve years old, a horrified witness.

  In still others, she was in school, called from the classroom by Mr Lapierre, his hand on her shoulder as he bent down to whisper, so softly she didn’t know who died.

  My mother wasn’t a liar, you understand. That would have been too easy. Rather, over the years, she told innumerable versions of the incidents that upset her.

  I take the number of renditions, and their variety, as proof her father’s death was especially traumatic. Her imagination wouldn’t let it be.

  My mother’s life was so full of commotion, I’m grateful she found the calm to parturate. Still, the decision to have me at all is typically contrary. It shows her romantic streak, her intense but intermittent regard for Love, Family, and Home.

  What am I saying? I’m less than grateful where my birth is concerned, but I can imagine my mother’s wilful joy at the thought of me.

  All the more surprising, then, that the young girl Lillian Schwartz remembered is someone else entirely, a good friend, constant and fearless.

  I saw her in that light first.

  * * *

  —

  Whenever I asked if my mother’s Petrolia was like the one I inhabited, Mrs Schwartz’s response was

  – Nothing changes.

  If I pressed her about this or that, a new building, say, or a fancy house, she would say

  – Plus ça change…an idea I wouldn’t understand for decades, if I understand it at all.

  I wanted to visit the places my mother visited, to discover whatever there might be of Katarina in them, instinctively feeling that Petrolia, the town itself, its trees and bridges, fields and houses, was our point of contact. So, it was a disappointment to learn that Lillian Schwartz didn’t know as much about my mother’s childhood as I’d hoped.

  Still, they were in the same class at St Philip’s, Lillian and Katarina, with girls named Eunice and boys named Michael.

  – Five Michaels in Grade Three alone.

  Their teachers, including my grandmother, were strict and Catholic.

  They attended St Philip’s Church, towed by their mothers.

  (My grandmother Catholic? That was a revelation.)

  Their homes were certainly different.

  Lillian was the youngest of four children, and though the sibling nearest her in age was seven years older, there was company. There were others on whom her mother could dote; four to take the weight of their parents’ care.

  Mr Martin, fourteen years a postman at Lillian’s birth, a postman thirty-six years when he died, was a loving man. He was short and portly, and his hair was inevitably brush-cut. He had a voice from God, though, a beautiful tenor with which he sang the children to sleep. It was one of Mrs Schwartz’s regrets that, at the proud age of ten, she made him stop because she was too old for lullabies.

  Mrs Martin, whose relationship with my grandmother did not survive the death of the Dickens Society, was more circumspect with Katarina. She understood how it might be difficult to live with Edna MacMillan. She was even sympathetic, but she saw something of Edna in Katarina and was put off.

  – Just you wait, she said, till Katarina’s tired of playing goody-goody.

  Mrs Martin was wary of a certain tendency in Negroes, a tendency that was sure to show itself, however good Katarina might appear on the surface. Katarina was even darker than Edna, and look at Edna…she had hoodwinked people into treating her white, and no good came of that, just you ask poor Mrs Margaret, who, by the by, didn’t deserve to be slapped and kicked.

  – Once bitten, twice shy.

  2.1 She Is Good

  My mother first revealed her generosity at the age of eleven, when both girls had a crush on Michael Stone.

  Michael lived two streets west of Grove. He also attended St Philip’s. He was not physically remarkable or even particularly cute, but he was gentler than the other boys in Grade Seven.

  He may not even have been so gentle. It’s just that his glasses, their frames, suggested a kind of gentleness, and he was painfully self-conscious, as you might expect from a boy who couldn’t see without his glasses.

  They suspected him of “having a past,” an extraordinary suspicion to have of an eleven-year-old. His lack of interest in girls they took for proof of a tragic side.

  The girls discovered their shared interest in Michael as they went over the list of their classmates, deciding whom they liked and whom they didn’t.

  It was a ritual they performed weekly, sometimes daily.

  – Cindy?

  – She’s okay.

  – Pauline?

  – I like her.

  – Me too.

  – Donna?

  – I like her.

  – Did you see how she…?

  And when it came to the third or fourth Michael, the one who sat beside the window, Katarina said

  – He’s a dream.

  Lillian said

  – He’s such a dream.

  They spent hours deciding who liked him most. Did Kata like him more than Terry Johnson? A little. Did Lillian like him more than Frank Moore? A little.

  – Would you…(kiss)

  – Would you?

  – And would you…(kiss in public)

  – No! Would you?

  – Maybe…circumstances permitting…

  After intense consideration, Kata decided it was Lillian who really cared for Michael.

  Not only did she withdraw from the race for his affection, but she managed to persuade Lillian that the thing she and Michael needed was “time alone.” She was so persuasive that Lillian, who hadn’t realized how deep her feelings were, began to anticipate her moments with him.

  The tricky part was Michael himself.

  They inflicted their attention on him, but he withstood the assault, mildly answering the most coquettish questions.

  – Do you like Lillian’s dress?

  – Are your mother’s eyes as green as yours?

  He never refused to walk home with them, but he rarely said anything. He didn’t exactly brood, but it was like brooding.

  He seemed to have no passions at all, nothing to talk about; though, on occasion, he was susceptible to boats. That is, he sometimes ventured an opinion on the subject of shipbuilding or ocean sailing. You couldn’t have called it a passion, really. He never went beyond a stifled remark on the Bluenose or the Queen Elizabeth, but that was enough for Kata.

  With what was, even for an eleven-year-old, idiosyncratic thinking, she persuaded Lillian to wear blue as often as she could: blue shoes, blue barrettes, blue socks.

  Then she herself asked Lillian’s father how it was possible to build ships in bottles. She spoke as if a ship in a bottle were the thing she wanted most in the world, though she doubted it could be done by any but an expert.

  This was the part I found most admirable. It wasn’t that Mr Martin was a difficult adult to play. He would have done anything to please the children. But the variables…First, would Mr Martin fall for her approach? (He did.) Second, could he actually build a ship in a bottle? (He could.) Third, how long would it take? (A month.) Fourth, was the bottled replica of a galleon the thing to lure Michael from his shell? (Well…)

  When the blue of Lillian’s clothes had had time to work its spell, and when Mr Martin had completed his minuscule but slightly ragged galleon, which rattled in its dark-green bottle, Katarina casually mentioned the ship as the three of them were walking home.

  Wouldn’t Michael like to see it up close?

  – Sure, he answered.

  * * *

  —

  This story fascinated me for years. Not o
nly was it about my mother, but in my mother’s tactics I saw a love of detail that I shared, though it would never have occurred to me to bring such precision to bear on personal matters.

  Given: Michael Stone, hereafter (Mst)

  Lillian Martin, hereafter (Lm)

  Variables: Mr Martin (MrM), Ships (S), Blue (B)

  Environment: Martins’ Home (MH)

  Problem: Using the elements given, and the variables at one’s disposal, how is it possible to combine (Mst) and (Lm) without adversely affecting the given environment (MH)?

  Even now, knowing my mother failed math and geography, that she would not have seen things in quite this way, I am filled with admiration.

  There is, in any intense calculation, such a longing for tranquillity that I almost pity her.

  And the result of her planning was “(Mst) + (Lm).”

  Michael Stone expectantly entered the Martins’ home looking for a ship. Neither of Lillian’s parents was there at the time, and the bottled galleon, which was usually on the mantelpiece, just happened to be in Lillian’s room.

  And when Katarina left the two of them together, on the pretext that she wanted a peanut butter sandwich but actually to watch out for Mr or Mrs Martin, Lillian and Michael did, eventually, kiss.

  Mrs Schwartz: First in a long line of disappointments.

  Thomas: But why?

  Mrs Schwartz: (mysterious smile) You’ll see.

  Though the kiss was disappointing for Lillian, it was a revelation to Michael.

  From the moment their lips touched, he was lost. He began to sweat, his glasses slipped, his face reddened, and, not knowing where else to put them, he put his hands on top of his head.

  All of which only deepened Lillian’s disappointment. And in that disappointment, there was an inkling of their misjudgement. She and Katarina had assumed Michael was gentle but dark, that his wordlessness was world-weary like the wordless men they knew from books. Now she suspected he would have come to the Martins’ without Katarina’s elaborate prompting.

  It’s not that Lillian knew Michael’s was less than a real kiss. It was her first. But the discovery that he was run-of-the-mill – not cute, not funny, not brooding – that was hard to bear.

  After that, kissing Michael was like kissing a fish.

  The thing is, Kata had done so much on Lillian’s behalf, and the intensity of Michael’s feelings wasn’t unflattering. It was a little intoxicating even. So, when their kiss finally ended and Michael was pushed from her room and persuaded to go home and Kata said

  – Tell me, tell me…

  Lillian gave a swooning account of the interlude.

  – Oh, it was so…he’s so…

  – I just knew it!

  Over the next ten months, or until the Stones left for Smiths Falls, Lillian allowed Michael to press his lips against hers, from time to time, to Katarina’s great satisfaction.

  2.2 She Is Fearless

  I wrote earlier that, in setting my life down, I thought I might be slipping into poetry.

  You would think, given my long history with the art, that I’d have made my peace with poetry. It saved me from a thrashing. My grandmother had me memorize it, a discipline she’d also imposed on Katarina. So, it is a grievance my mother and I shared.

  It is also one of the things Henry loved most in this world.

  It pains me to read it, though. It’s an abyss.

  When I first saw you, for instance, I was blissfully reading the Notebooks of Samuel Butler. You were reading the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam. I saw the book before I saw you. You held the grey covers apart, the little finger on your right hand curled up like a snail. (I adore your hands.)

  As soon as you left, I pulled the Mandelshtam across the table, curious:

  There is no need for speech

  And nothing to teach;

  How sad, yet beautiful

  Is the dark brutal soul.

  I read those lines over and over, trying to imagine the two of us, heads touching, one of us speaking, or speaking them together. And then I suddenly felt lost, lost as in adrift.

  What in God’s name takes you from speech to teach, from sadness to beauty, from beauty to the soul?

  What is a “dark brutal soul” anyway?

  I understood the words, but I felt as much distress as understanding. I wondered where my understanding came from. Is it Mandelshtam who gives it sense? Do the words themselves make sense? Or is it, finally, one’s own self that understands in its own way?

  You could scratch your head over those questions for years, and the second stanza only made things worse:

  It has nothing it wants to teach

  And lacks even the power of speech,

  But like a young dolphin swims

  Where the world’s gray deeps are dim.

  End of poem.

  Now, how in the world did that young dolphin get in there? How did we go from soul to dolphin? The more I forced myself to bring “soul” and “dolphin” together, the less contact I felt with the outside world.

  I learned about my self, perhaps; that I could bring them together, that for an instant, there, my soul did swim in the dark.

  A thoroughly unpleasant experience.

  Poetry’s all well and good if you need reasons to go inside, but, as you know, I’ve always needed reasons to go out. (How often you’ve tried to turn my attention to the world, and how often I’ve resisted. Until I met you, the Ottawa Citizen was as much of the world as I could take.)

  I’m not alone, either. My grandmother should never have read a line. Lampman was her abyss of choice, when she was lucid enough to choose – not much difference between wine and poetry, now that I think of it, and she’d have been better off without either of them.

  Perhaps I missed something.

  Perhaps, to you, the poem is not abstract, but it’s the inebriating chaos that makes me nervous.

  * * *

  —

  After her father’s death, Katarina changed.

  He died when she was twelve, and one might have expected a little introspection and gloom, but it was just the opposite. While turning away from the people around her, she became more outward, more expressive, less demure.

  This was difficult for me to understand, until I met my mother.

  Katarina: (softly, because she rarely raised her voice) You’ve got hard heels. Let me see your feet. Hold still…

  Thomas: You’re hurting me.

  Katarina: That doesn’t hurt. Everyone knows children and animals don’t feel pain. Your spinal columns aren’t developed.

  That was typical of my mother. She was cutting the calluses from my heels with a straight razor. It did hurt and I resented her lack of sympathy, but my heels had cracked and bled. What could she do?

  And, oddly enough, I was so intrigued by the idea that my spinal column was undeveloped, I sat still.

  Katarina: There. Now put your socks on.

  What I mean is, as grief for her father was expressed in an unusual way, so too was her affection for me.

  And I know that surface rarely mirrors depth, but with my mother it was more so.

  * * *

  —

  At sixteen, without arguing, without even agreeing to go their own ways, Lillian and Katarina went their own ways; this though Katarina had begun to spend more time with the Martins and less with her mother.

  She and Edna had gone from dutiful tolerance to open discord.

  It would have been cruel for my mother to abandon her own home entirely. Everyone in town knew both Katarina and her mother. Where could she have gone without further dama
ging Edna MacMillan’s reputation? It had been only five years since my grandmother’s now legendary assault on Mrs Grossman. Katarina cared enough to spare her further shame.

  So, though she kept her own hours, she slept at her mother’s or, as often as was acceptable, at the Martins’.

  Time with the Martins was not a release from the predicaments of home.

  Mrs Martin never really accepted Katarina. She was even less sympathetic now that Katarina showed clear signs of being Black: keeping her own hours, neglecting her school-work, spending too much time with the Thériauxes and Maisonneuves, “the poorest families in town.”

  Lillian: They weren’t poor, they were French. Not even. The kids couldn’t speak a word of it, but their parents had French accents. My mother never trusted them. That’s just how she was, Thomas. My own father was French Canadian.

  Mrs Martin worried about the influence Katarina might have on her daughter. That was the problem. Though she never said anything directly, and never once turned her out, she did the little things that one can do to drive a point. She asked leading questions.

  – How’s your mother, Kata? Do you see much of her?

  or

  – You’re so mature for your age. Are you really thinking of leaving home? You know, we have so little room here.

  She conspicuously neglected to serve Katarina when the family was at table.

  – Oh, I didn’t realize you were staying for supper. I’m sorry, Kata.

  She constantly grumbled, to no one in particular, about the laundry that had to be done.

  You would have to have been a blockhead to misunderstand.

  Katarina was not.

  * * *

  —

  The girls’ last friendly moment came when they were sixteen.

  It was July or it was August, a warm night. The two of them were reading together.

  They read until it was late and the house was quiet.

  Mr and Mrs Martin were asleep, and Lillian herself was already in pyjamas when Kata said