View From a Kite Page 4

  John 11:35 was a big favourite: “Jesus wept.”

  But you only got to use it once a year. No repeating. Also you could only use it if no one else had on that particular day, so if you hadn’t memorized anything, you had to get your hand up fast and spit it out before someone else got there first. My best church friend, Ruth, staked a claim on the Beatitudes every winter, Matthew 5:3-11, and blessed her way through the cold months.

  Then there were the kids who ransacked the Good Book for bits that would annoy the teacher.

  John 11:39: “Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.”

  A bit of a mouthful to memorize, but worth it for the chance to say “stinketh.”

  If they were feeling really nervy, there was always the Song of Solomon, 1:13: “A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.”

  You could count on being taken aside for a lecture after that one. In A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BOOKS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS on the last page, the Bible referred, in a tight-lipped way, to Solomon’s Song as “an allegory relating to the church.” None of the older kids were buying that. Verses with the word “harlot” were very popular with the boys. Lord knows there were enough of them. Harlot verses, not boys.

  Parents and teachers tried to get us to memorize from our Children’s Bible, purchased from a company somewhere in Minnesota, edited and vetted for impressionable—and bratty—young minds, but we all had access to the real thing and were reckless and power-mad with the knowledge that we could use it.

  I liked to dig about in the Old Testament for dramatic pause-at-the-threshold-with-your-hand-pressed-to-your-brow bits. Job 1:19: “And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

  The Old Testament is full of rantings and ravings, wars, wickedness, woe, and regular smitings. Jeremiah 48:20: “Moab is confounded; for it is broken down; howl and cry; tell it in Arnon, that Moab is spoiled!”

  Who could resist that? Howl and cry! Not me.

  What wrecked my innocent, unquestioning faith was when I happened upon old baldy, the prophet Elisha. Allow me to set the scene:

  The great prophet Elijah has just been whisked off in a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire—the whole rig catapulted straight to heaven by a whirlwind. Or—if you believe in flying saucers—off to Alpha Centauri by extraterrestrials. Elisha, who’s been following Elijah around like dogshit on the bottom of his sandal, begging a double portion of Elijah’s spirit when he gets hauled off to parts unknown, sees the chariot/saucer off, gets the spirit, inherits Elijah’s mantle—literally and figuratively—and gives it a test drive. He smites the waters of the Jordan with the mantle, the waters split in two, and back he goes to town where the sons of the prophets come out and bow down and scrape the ground with their faces, and so on. Everything Elisha ever dreamed of. Then there’s a peculiar bit where they want to go searching to see if the whirlwind dropped Elijah somewhere—on a mountain, or in a valley—and Elisha won’t let them. Suspicious behavior, and everybody’s looking at him askance.

  Finally, he agrees, and off they go, looking for three days. But of course they don’t find Elijah (either Elisha’s told the truth or he’s done a really good job hiding the body) so they come back and then want Elisha to do some miracle- working for them—since it looks like he’s it, now. He does a little miracle for them. Throws some salt in a poisonous spring and cleans it up.

  So far, so good. But wait —

  2 Kings 2:23. And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

  24. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the woods, and tare forty and two children of them.

  25. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

  I was shocked and horrified and appalled. The holy man can’t take a little teasing from a bunch of kids about his bald head so he uses his new-found power to sic two bears on them. He leaves forty-two children torn up and bloody. If not dead on the spot, they died in great pain shortly thereafter, given the general lack of paramedics, ambulances, analgesics, and antibiotics. Elisha goes merrily off to Samaria, where he begins a long and successful career prophesizing, preaching, and miracle-making. And what’s God doing about this monster, this mass murderer of little children? Nothing that I could ever find.

  After brooding about this for a couple of months I finally worked up the nerve to ask for an explanation. I got put off by the teacher, referred to the minister—who was going to have a talk with me about it but who always seemed to be too busy and kept putting it off. I finally decided they were hoping I’d forget about it and go away. I went away. But— forget? I think about it every time I see the Reverend’s fleeing hairline. Old Baldy.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Ready to go?” asks OFN.

  There isn’t a lot to take, one small suitcase with a few clothes and my journal. After three months I’m finally getting out for a weekend. Assured there are no dance halls or boys within twenty miles of Aunt Edith’s house, Dr. Robichaud has decided to allow me a mite of freedom. A taxi takes me the forty miles to Aunt Edith’s house, wickedly expensive I guess, but it’s a long, exhausting trip by bus, with a two-hour wait in Sydney between buses. George can’t get away to drive me, though he will take me back on Sunday. The motion of the car immediately puts me to sleep, though I wake up just before we drive onto Boularderie Island. I think it smells different, I think it’s the smell of the sea that wakes me, running in through the St. Andrews Channel. The San is perched on a point that juts into and splits Sydney harbour, and Sydney harbour stinks. Even the seaweed on the rocks in Sydney harbour smells like the steel plant to me, like the orange and grey clouds of smoke that drift over the landscape.

  Home looks shabby, the new growth isn’t high enough yet to cover things. The old barn is full of swallows and is falling down. The house needs paint. Aunt Edith sits me on the porch and tucks an afghan around me.

  “Fresh air, dolly. That’s what you need.” She brings out a tray of gingerbread and cups of tea.

  “You don’t have to wait on me,” I tell her. “I’m much better. I can help you cook and clean.”

  “Bedrest,” she admonishes. “The doctors said you were to rest.”

  “I’ve been in bed for three months straight. I’m rested to a state of jelly.” But she isn’t listening. She drifts off, a habit that Dr. Robichaud hasn’t picked up on during their phone conversations and that I have decided is none of his business. He probably thinks it’s respectful silence or something.

  I sip the tea. Stone cold. She likely made it this morning with the gingerbread. The gingerbread is perfect. She still makes the best gingerbread on the island and probably will when all her marbles have rolled away. The scent of new lilacs drifts across the porch. The bushes are as big as trees, a whole bank of them, woody and bare at the bottom, purple and white and cloudy at the top. From the upstairs bedrooms they look almost solid; you’d think you could step out and lie down on them.

  Aunt Edith drifts back.

  “Where’s Robert?” she asks. “I want him to fix the barn roof. He said he would fix the barn roof.”

  “Coming later,” I lie. If he is fixing anything it is barns in hell. She never remembers what happened.

  She was nineteen when he came along, more like a second mother to him than a sister. She’ll be sixty-eight next winter and her arteries are getting pretty stiff. The blood just doesn’t go where it ought to. When I first came to live with her it bothered me, her asking for him, but I got used to it.

&nbs
p; She nods off and begins to snore, a soft flapping of old throat flesh. I slide out from under the afghan, multicoloured granny squares that are making me sweat in the sun, and carry the tray back to the kitchen. It doesn’t look too bad, she could keep up a kitchen in her sleep. The parlour is dusty and the plants are mostly dead. There are more granny squares, piled up on a corner table and stacked on chair arms. The organ lid is up and a toothbrush and a tube of Crest toothpaste lie across the yellowing keys. I pick them up and take them to the bathroom upstairs. The tub is full of laundry, but everything else looks all right. Sometimes she forgets to flush and the plumbing backs up. There are fresh sheets on the bed in my room, over the blankets and pillows. I strip the bed and remake it. Open the drawers cautiously—sometimes she puts food in them, or kindling, but there’s nothing unusual this time. I close the door and lie down on the bed for a nap. All my energy has leaked away to nowhere and I want to sleep for a week on a bed of lilacs.

  Aunt Edith had been disappointed in love. She’d been engaged, but then he’d run away and never been heard from again. Edith keeps his picture on top of the organ along with one of her and Robert in their Sunday best when Robert graduated from high school, a studio portrait of Robert and Mama in wedding finery, and one of me as a baby: dimples and curls, in a smocked pink dress that barely reaches the bottom of my diaper, embroidered socks, and white kid-leather shoes. Fattest legs you ever saw. It’s a wonder I could bend them at the knee.

  The runaway fiancé is pale and poetic-looking, with curly sideburns and a long nose. A face for suffering, I think. He probably ran off to Rome and starved himself to death, writing tormented poetry and having affairs with cruel, dark-eyed young men. I keep these speculations to myself, naturally. Aunt Edith would smack me for saying such things. She’s always insisted he’d been killed in the war. Which war, she wouldn’t say—his disappearance having occurred some time after the Big One and long before the Big Two.

  “Hush,” said Mama, when I sorted out the dates at age twelve. “It doesn’t hurt us to go along with her. Maybe he was killed in the Second World War.”

  “Long after he ran away to Rome.”

  “What makes you think he went to Rome?”

  “Where else would he run to?” It seemed so obvious. “Moncton?” I snickered at the thought.

  “Hush,” she said again. “There’s nothing wrong with Moncton. It’s a fine place. The Magnetic Hill is in Moncton. Take this laundry upstairs and put it away for me.”

  That was Mama’s response whenever she didn’t approve of my train of conversation. Give me a chore to do at the other end of the house. I put sock balls in drawers, towels in the hall closet, and gingerly unloaded my parents’ underwear onto their bed—taking care to not accidentally touch any crotches— and left it for her to deal with.

  When I wake up dusk has filled the room, and I’m not sure where I am. I’ve slept the afternoon away. For a moment I panic, thinking I’ve missed the school bus—then remember it’s the weekend and I haven’t been taking that bus for months. High School belongs to another life. Dead and gone. School is lessons done in my hospital bed, and mailed away to Halifax. Instead of hanging out at the bowling alley, or the Diana Sweets Restaurant, I go up to the Men’s Common Room once a week with four other women from Ward B and play cards. All of us in our best bathrobes, buttoned and wrapped to our necks. Behaving in the oddest way, silly courtesies and flirty looks over the cards. And that’s the men.

  I could easily sneak away from Aunt Edith and hitch a ride to a dance at Little Bras d’Or this weekend if I wanted, but do I want to? People around here all know who I am, country people know everything about everybody all the time. I’d have to explain what I was doing out, how I was doing, what I was doing, how my mother is doing, when I saw her last, how she looked, how Edith is doing. Half the people will be scared to come near me, in case I cough. The other half will be brave enough to be nice to me, to chat, and ask me to dance—but only the slow ones, only the waltzes—or else they’ll fuss and try to make me sit all evening. I could handle all that if I had a drink, but nobody will give me a drink in case I fall down and dent a lung.

  Better to stay home, read Blake, and eat beans with Edith. I can smell them through the floor grate, so I get up and go downstairs. Edith is busy in the pantry and the table is set for four. I slip the extra cutlery back in the drawer, then go to give her a hand. Yellow-eyed beans and molasses bread, everything hot and delicious, the smell so homey it could break your heart if you were that soft.

  “Aren’t Robert and Emma coming tonight?”

  “Next weekend.” Lies fall off my tongue so easily, now. I ask her about her garden and listen to her complain about George, who was supposed to have tilled it three weeks ago and keeps putting it off—rain or a bad back or some such weak excuse. When we finish I clear the table and bring her tea. She sips, spooning sugar onto the table while I do the dishes. Something’s going to have to be done about Edith. She’s getting worse, any day she could do something dramatic, something wildly dangerous. I try to think back to her behaviour before I went to the hospital, but I’d been so tired and sick before I left, I can’t remember very clearly. She was odd, and forgetful, but she’s always seemed like that to me. There is fire to worry about. Suppose she leaves something burning? What if she wanders off? George and Elizabeth keep a close eye on her, but, but, but. If we send her to a home, she’ll die. I’m quite sure without her kitchen and all those granny squares she’ll dry up and crumble like last year’s maple leaves. Maybe I could hire someone to stay with her. Who? How would we pay? I haven’t the faintest idea what Edith does for money.

  My head begins to ache, and my chest hurts. A stream of ants are shifting the sugar to a storeroom behind the base-boards. I smack them off the table, scoop sugar into the sink and sweep thrashing ants and grains of floor sugar into a dust-pan and toss everything out the back door. Go out and retrieve the dustpan. Fish a cigarette from my pocket and smoke it on the back step. The frogs are hysterical in the ditches. Hot-to-trot is what they mean, but it sounds like creep-creep-creep.

  The phone rings, and I hear Aunt Edith talking.

  “Elizabeth wants to talk to you.” She sticks her head out the door and gestures back towards the phone.

  “Tell her I’m on my way over to visit,” I say. “Want to come with me?”

  “Oh no, dear. Thank you.” Her head disappears and I get up and start walking down the drive. It will take me seven minutes to get to Elizabeth’s kitchen and Edith will still be on the phone when I get there. She and Elizabeth talk on the phone twice a day, every day. They can look out their windows and see the lights in each other’s houses. They go to church together; they go shopping together; they hang their laundry out at the same time on Monday mornings. Their phone calls are a kind of mutual breathing.

  “Hi, Gwen honey. Come on in and set down. You look good, sweetheart. How’re you feeling?”

  “Pretty good, now that I’m home.”

  “You walked all the way over here? Honey, are you supposed to do that?”

  “They let her out,” says George, “so she can’t be at death’s door. That, or she was too hot to handle and they had to turn her loose.” He gives me a wink.

  “I walked slow, and all that fresh air’s good for me.”

  Elizabeth pours me a cup of tea and passes a plate of cookies. “It’s not my baking day or I’d have something decent to offer you.” Decent meaning three kinds of squares and two kinds of pie.

  “These are great.” Macaroons, chocolate, crisp on the outside, oozy rich on the inside. “How’s Aunt Edith been?”

  “About the same. We keep a pretty close watch.”

  I know they do. I console myself with that when I’m fretting in my stupid, unromantic hospital bed. George goes over every morning and has a cup of tea with her. Also, he fills her woodbox, empties and re-sets her mousetraps, takes out her garbage, makes sure she hasn’t fallen during the night. And Elizabeth makes
her twice-daily calls. After her lights go out across the field George takes Spanner for a last walk and on his way back checks on the house. He has to sneak up to her pantry window to check the burners on the propane stove, and around to the side kitchen window to see if the dampers are in the proper position on the Enterprise. He makes sure the door is locked. He uses a flashlight, after she’s asleep, so she won’t be embarrassed by his checking up or frightened that he’s a burglar.

  “She’s good with the stoves, but I always check.”

  “How long can she go on?” Part of me is terrified Edith will come to harm. Part of me is self-centredly terrified I’ll lose the last thing remotely resembling home.

  “As long as God wills it,” says Elizabeth.

  Great. In other words, it’s a crap shoot.

  “Hey, Spanner.” I let him lick the cookie crumbs off my fingers, then feed him a whole macaroon when no one’s watching. I love this dog. When we were both a lot younger he would let me nap with my head on his belly and keep me company anywhere I wanted to go. His muzzle’s gone white and he’s getting deaf and blind. Still thinks he can hunt, though, still thinks he’s one hot old boy.

  “His hind legs is giving him trouble now and again,” says George, “but he’s in pretty good shape for an old fella. Like me, good to the last drop.”

  He gives me another wink. I think George is one of those old guys who corners his wife in the pantry in the middle of the day for a little kitchen-counter fun. Elizabeth is a giggler and a blusher, though never out in the real world, just in her own kitchen. It’s not as weird as it sounds. It makes you feel a little sappy, like you’re part of some Disney kiddie movie, except you know George and Elizabeth aren’t trying to manipulate your emotions for the price of admission. They just can’t help themselves. When I was a kid I used to pretend they were my grandparents and that Spanner was really my dog, the one I couldn’t keep in town, that had to be kept out on my grandparents’ farm. Spanner thinks he is George’s dog, and that I am his kid. And supplier of illicit cookies.