Leaning, Leaning Over Water Read online

  “Jennifer,” her lips mouthed.

  Eddie picked up the bottle and he thumped it too. I thought of how he would never be a part of what Lyd and I would have to go through.

  Lyd looked at the red blob on Eddie’s plate and made a face. I tried not to laugh. I was still mad at Father for forcing me to get rid of the rosary.

  “Blood”“ I said to myself. Lyd is waiting for blood to come out of her and after it happens to her it’s going to happen to me. We’ll be forced to wear lumpy pads between our legs like the ones in the box in the bathroom cupboard, and everything will be a huge mess. A red mess, I thought. Siren Red.

  I looked at Mother and I knew then that there were things she knew that she had never told us. Dark, I thought. The Moor. Mother knew about periods and she knew about having babies and she never talked to us about either.

  Then I remembered the name book and spear-loved maiden, and I felt fierce again. I thought of my beads coiled in the cavity of dirt beside the river. I looked at Father and said to myself: “Whenever I want to, I’ll go right back to shore and dig up the rosary. I’ll dig it up and I’ll run each painted bead through my fingers. Not right away but when I need to, so I’ll be ready for whatever happens in my life. For whatever tries to take me by surprise.”

  SPIRIT SPIDERS

  1954

  Lyd insisted that she could hear spiders, and the apparent truth of this caused me anxiety whenever she claimed one was in the room. Certainly, during the summers, the porch housed its share. But we’d be sitting in the living room or the kitchen and she’d announce in a sing-song voice, “There’s one in here,” and Eddie and I would freeze position and scan ceiling and walls. Of course there would be a spider. A big grey one looming high on the wall over someone’s head. Living that close to the river, there was always a fat spider looming.

  “Spirit spiders.” That’s what Lyd called the ones she could hear. “It’s speaking to me,” she’d say. “Someone just crawled up from the dead.”

  Just as there were spiders in our porch in St. Pierre, there were plenty of spiders at Grampa King’s farm in Ontario, three miles out of Darley. Granny Tracks, on Mother’s side, lived in town. When we made our annual train trip during the summer of 1954, we slept at the King farm, as always. There were more beds at the farm for the five of us. We visited Granny Tracks for day visits, town visits. Occasionally, Mother stayed overnight in town, and Father borrowed Grampa King’s Ford to pick her up and bring her back the next day.

  I loved being at the farm, outside of Darley. Each morning I rose with the rooster’s crow and raised the blind to stare straight across at the stone barn, with its tufts of hay protruding from the open haymow. I looked down to the dirt yard below, where hens were already scratching about, and listened closely, hoping that no one else was up before me. There were curtains across the entrances to each of the bedrooms, and I tiptoed past these to make my way downstairs. I had to go through the dining room and down another step and into the long kitchen, past the stove with its water reservoir and the shelf where the sad-irons were kept, and let myself out through the screen door. I walked over to the milkhouse, which smelled of old and fresh milk, sweet and sour mixed, and hoisted myself up to the open platform and sat, waiting, until the others were up. Sometimes, I tried to spot the turkeys, which were temperamental and seemed to lie in wait just so they could chase me.

  At the end of Grampa’s dusty lane, the railway tracks ran parallel to the gravel road. The roundhouse, with its indoor turntable and monstrous engines, was another half-mile past the end of the lane. Every day at noon, no matter where I was, I listened for the roundhouse whistle.

  We had no grandmother at the farm because Grandma King had died before any of us was born. There was only one photo of her, and in that photo the camera had cut her off at the knees. A kindness, Aunt Lucy said, because of the size of Grandma’s feet. Our father denied the long-foot story and said that his sister Lucy was full of it. The reason there was only one photo of Grandma King was because she’d had a goitre protruding from her neck.

  “She ran from the camera all her life,” said Father. “Her feet were absolutely normal. Lucy turned into a giant on her own steam.”

  It was true that Aunt Lucy had inherited the long-foot gene. She knew we called her the Giant Ant but this didn’t bother her one bit. She had even managed to find a husband taller than herself, Uncle Wash.

  Lyd said it would take a miracle to unravel the family history. If Grandma King had had a goitre, why had the camera cut her off at the knees instead of the head?

  I gave up on all of them and hoped I’d inherited the genes of my mother’s side, the Meaghers. They, at least, had managed to contain their growth.

  There was work to be done on the farm and Father pitched in as if he’d never left. His younger brother, Ewart, had not married, and lived a bachelor existence with Grampa King. Aunt Lucy, older and taller than both Uncle Ewart and Father, came over most days from her own farm, to help out with the meals.

  Sometimes, relations from both sides of the family mixed in, but this happened only at the farm and not often, perhaps because it wasn’t a smooth mix. One Sunday, Mother’s brother, Uncle Weylin, Aunt Arra and our cousin Georgie drove out from town, bringing Granny Tracks. Everyone shook hands, starting off in the seldom-used parlour where we all stared at the white and black knobs of the organ. I kept glancing at my uncle, trying to merge his face with the story Georgie had told us a year and a half ago, at New Year’s. Georgie had been sent to us because his father had chased his mother around the house with a butcher knife. At least Uncle Weylin hadn’t killed her, I thought. Aunt Arra was sitting right there beside him in the silent parlour.

  After a few minutes we moved rapidly to the kitchen and sat around the long wooden table Grampa King had made. A pot of tea was set at each end.

  “Save those honey pails,” Granny Tracks said, seeing three of them lined up on the kitchen counter. “Fill them with tea, almost to boiling. Carry them out to the fields when you’re working, the hottest time of day.” She paused to fold her arms across her chest. “Your body heat will rise to the outdoor temperature,” she said. “You’ll be so comfortable you’ll think you’re in the shade.”

  “What the hell is she talking about?” Grampa King said, looking at Ewart, looking at Father, knowing Granny Tracks had never lived on a farm. But Granny didn’t hear, and Mother smoothed things over while our Giant Ant loomed over each of the Meaghers with a plate of cake and fresh tea to “hot up the cups.”

  These were clearly two separate worlds and the way we behaved in one was not the way we behaved in the other. To make matters worse, Lyd sang out, “There’s one in here,” and we started giggling, looking around for spirit spiders. The adults didn’t know what we were up to and ignored us. We knew that if we couldn’t stop giggling, we’d be sent outside, the punishment for rudeness. Which was fine with us.

  There was a hired hand on the farm, too. Lome didn’t have one extra word to spare. He and Grampa King and Uncle Ewart moved in and out of the farmhouse abruptly, making brief, almost wordless exchanges. Eddie, encompassed by their male silence, tagged after them, mute. When the men spoke to Lyd and me, what they said came out as a kind of gruff joke; it was hard to tell whether they were fooling or not.

  For a brief period, Father became one of these men. We didn’t have to listen to poetry at the farm; we didn’t have to march to Tennyson or do quizzes or mental arithmetic; the barometer was not mentioned. Father bottled his deluge and released it only when he got us back to the river, back to Quebec.

  Mother still sang her songs to us at the farm, but softly, in the kitchen, when no one else was around. Grampa King’s radio was kept in the parlour, beside his chair, and Mother rarely turned it on. Only late Sunday afternoon did everyone sit together with Grampa—Lyd and Eddie and I on the floor—while he and Uncle Ewart and Lome listened to their favourite program, “Jake and the Kid.”

  I liked the hired h
and. He was the same height as Lyd but square and stocky; he was always staring down at his feet or at the ground. When drinking water was needed, he hooked the stoneboat to the tractor and let me stand on the back where I hung on to the big drums. He dragged me halfway down the dirt lane as far as the spring, speeding the tractor to make sure I could feel every rock through the vibrating soles of my feet. He looked around for me when it was time to throw slop to Grampa’s two pigs. He shielded me from assault by the rooster and threw a milkpail over its flapping body, giving me time to escape. He said to me once, “What a man can’t keep in his head, he has to make up for with his feet.” He stared at the ground. I wasn’t sure what this meant. He knew I scratched start- and finish-lines in the dirt of the farmyard and raced against Lyd’s unbeatable legs; he lent Eddie his watch with the second hand so Eddie could clock our times. The only way I ever managed to beat Lyd was to run the bare foot race across the stones along the riverbank at home. But I never stopped trying.

  “A blind hog,” Lome went on, “sometimes finds an acorn.” I thought of Grampa’s two pigs shoving against each other’s sides, grunting and snorting in the mud. What was Lome talking about? He never added a word of explanation. “Forget it,” Lyd said, “even Lome doesn’t know.”

  But Lome connected somehow with Granny Tracks. He’d joined us for tea when the Meagher and King families merged for that brief afternoon at the farm. Lome was buttering a piece of bread to go with his tea, and dropped his knife on the floor. Both he and Granny Tracks jerked upright in their chairs. “A man is coming,” they said in split-breath harmony. For a moment I thought they would lean forward and link little fingers and chant: What goes up the chimney? Smoke! May your wish and my wish never be broke!

  Lyd and I looked at each other and slipped away from the table, gasping for breath when we got outside. Eddie and Georgie were left snorting, in trouble already for laughing. Nonetheless, the rest of the day, we kept watch over the end of the lane, expecting the arrival of a stranger. When a cloud of dust appeared, we rose to our feet. A car drove up but it was only Uncle Wash, the husband of our Giant Ant, come to collect her as he did every evening, to take her home. Still, a man came.

  We had ten days left on the farm when Lome invited Lyd and me for a drive in Grampa’s Ford. He was taking salt to the cows, four miles along gravel road, in a field used for grazing. We drove in silence, Lyd and I sitting up front, the windows open, wind blowing through the car. Lome parked on the shoulder and opened the trunk. Inside were two blocks of salt, each a deep thrilling blue. He stumbled with them one at a time down the embankment and across the dry ditch, and set them close to the fence. He climbed over and pulled a cube through from below. Two cows sauntered near from the side of the field. Lome headed towards the main herd and told us to wait in the car.

  As soon as he was away from us, Lyd challenged. “I bet you can’t drive this car.”

  “I can so,” I said. But I knew I couldn’t.

  “I dare you to try.”

  “I don’t have the key. Lome took it with him.”

  “Use a bobby pin,” she said. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t dare.”

  I never used bobby pins, but in an effort to look older Lyd had recently begun to wear her hair pulled back in a roll, the Spanish look. Her head was full of pins.

  I straightened the pin and made a loop. “This will never work,” I said. “A bobby pin isn’t anything like a key.” I kept trying, aware of my disloyalty to Lome. I’d slid behind the wheel but my feet did not entirely reach the floor. I looked back over my shoulder, hoping Lome would return. He’d delivered one of the blocks and seemed small from where he was, far off by the creek where the cows were drinking and stupidly bumping one another.

  I jiggled the pin, pulling knobs I’d seen Lome pull, and pumping pedals. This was not unlike pumping the organ in Grampa King’s living room. The car choked and lunged forward. Lyd and I both shouted.

  “You stupid jerk!” she yelled. “You’re going to kill us.”

  The car was lurching forward and I steered it away from the ditch and up onto the gravel. I heard Lorne yell, even from that distance, even above the roar of the Ford. I kept steering because I didn’t know how to stop. We were moving right down the middle of the road.

  “He’s running,” Lyd said, in her sing-song voice. “He’s almost at the fence.”

  A steady pitch of curses followed the car. I didn’t know how to slow down.

  “He jumped over the fence,” Lyd said. “Jesus Cripes, you should have seen him.”

  Lorne’s moving torso suddenly filled the open window and I heard him gasping. “Hit the brake! Move your foot hard, hit the one in the middle!”

  His arms were through the window and he was helping me steer as he ran alongside. At the same time, he was trying to get the door open.

  The car stopped. Died in the silence. I looked up at Lome and saw his mouth moving, the anger knotted in his face. He heaved the door open as if he were throwing it away.

  “You want to drive the goddamned car,” he said, “you’ll drive ‘er.” He walked around to Lyd’s side and ordered her into the back.

  “I don’t know how to drive,” I said.

  “You’ll drive the goddamned car,” he said again.

  I had never heard Lome swear.

  My body all at once became small. I did not think I’d be able to see out the windshield, but of course I could; I’d been steering almost half a mile.

  Lome took the key out of his pocket and handed it over. He flung Lyd’s bobby pin into the ditch. I looked to Lyd for support but she was furious about being ordered into the back, and turned away to stare out the window. I tried to concentrate as I listened to Lome’s instructions but all I could think was, I’m driving this piece of machinery and Lyd is in the back seat and Lome is forcing me to be in charge of this car. I thought of Mona in our village of St. Pierre, her little feet pushing the pedals of Roy’s big car. If Mona could do it, I could do it. I was practically bigger than she was even though she was older than my mother. I pulled out the choke and turned the key and placed my feet on the pedals, feeling them resist and then yield. Lome talked continuously in my ear. I shifted gears and jerked the car again and again. He kept on talking while I got it going smoothly. He had probably never used so many words.

  Only after I veered off the gravel road at Grampa’s turn-off without taking us into the ditch did Lorne remember to be silent again. I felt his silence fall around me and this gave me as much strength as his talking. I gripped the wheel and kept my foot evenly on the pedal and I steered the Ford, like a winning chariot, up my Grampa’s lane.

  Everyone was standing outside the back screen when I braked and jerked the car to a halt: Grampa King, Uncle Ewart, Eddie, our parents, the Giant Ant. I knew that I was in trouble.

  But Mother was in a hurry. “Pack your bag,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you and Lyd. Granny’s had a dizzy spell and we’re going to town for a few days. Eddie and your father will stay here at the farm.

  She was wearing her navy town dress and her hair was in a roll. She was preoccupied and didn’t seem to notice that I’d stepped out of the driver’s seat. Eddie raised his eyebrows in appreciation. Father, in one of his rare gestures of support, put his hand on Mother’s shoulder but she shrugged it off. Grampa King had seen me drive, I knew that. But he chose to remain silent, maybe knowing that Lome had already handled whatever there was to handle. Lorne stomped off to the barn.

  Granny Tracks lived in a narrow two-storey grey house that I thought of as the hollyhock house. There was a fence that bordered an embankment behind the garden and, higher still, trains chuffed by, passing in and out of Darley night and day.

  It was possible to stand inside Granny’s indoor veranda and touch opposite walls at the same time. The sidewalk ran so close, when people passed by outside, their feet seemed to be walking through the house. Brown linoleum sloped across the floor towards the street. The windowpanes had tiny sashes,
like doll windows. The stairs to the second floor led off the kitchen; Granny called them her tower stairs. They were so steep we could make ourselves dizzy by running up as fast as we could, hoping to pass out at the top.

  Apart from Granny’s room, there was only one other bedroom and this contained two single beds. As Granny Tracks was not used to sleeping with anyone, not in all the long years of the grief since Grandfather Meagher had died, she said that she and Mother would have the single beds. Lyd and I were to share the double in her room, a big gloomy room at the front of the house.

  Mother argued for sleeping on the couch downstairs but Granny argued back. “I want you in the same room with me,” she said. “I always get up in the night. I swear I’m going to tumble down the tower stairs. My time is coming and I’m doomed to die of dizziness. Falling down the stairs your own father refused to put a banister beside. God save his soul,” she added.

  Mother gave in but she wasn’t happy about sleeping upstairs. She helped Granny to the back bedroom, and Lyd and I changed the linen on the big bed where we were to sleep. Lyd paused as we billowed the top sheet. She tilted her head.

  “Don’t start in on the spiders,” I told her. I knew all the signs. My knees had just now begun to shake from driving Grampa’s Ford. I was realizing what I had done; remembering Lome’s anger. An image of his short legs running alongside the car as I peered up at his face kept replaying in my mind. I knew Lyd wasn’t happy about the way things had turned out—that I’d driven the car for real. Still, a part of me was glowing with triumph.

  Granny got up in the night and did not fall down the tower stairs. The next day she refused to leave her bed. She began to run a fever and Mother sent for Dr. Church. He arrived and squeezed his large old body through the doorway. He was the same age as Granny Tracks. They’d been in Darley Public School together from grade one, and Queen Victoria High. After that, Dr. Church had left for medical school in Toronto. Both he and Granny pronounced this “Ter-onna.”