A Strange Kind of Comfort

by Gaylene Dutchyshen

  “It’s easy to be the top dog with such a pathetic loser for a best friend.” Cady waves her other hand dismissively at Sarah. “Someone who lives across the tracks and has a drunk for a dad and a mother who couldn’t stand her miserable life and ran away.”

  Sarah feels a deep shame burning inside her and a rage, too. She yanks Cady’s hand off the door and shoves her aside. She wishes she had the guts to knock Cady over and beat the shit out of her, like her brothers would do. Hot, angry tears well up and she forces her eyes wide open, unblinking, so they don’t spill over. She won’t give Cady the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Pulling open the door, she runs down the hall and back to the classroom.

  MAY

  “Hold still.” Caroline is fussing with the armhole on Sarah’s jacket, pinning on a sleeve. She pokes her with a pin — a sharp peck — and Sarah flinches. “Sorry, I’m almost done.”

  Sarah’s standing in Caroline’s sewing room, arms outstretched like a scarecrow, wearing a partially constructed gown Caroline is sewing for her graduation. They picked out the pattern and fabric together at Mavis Baylor’s store, a simple A-line dress, sleeveless, with a bolero jacket in plum purple satin. Becca’s gown is already finished and hanging in her closet; a pale pink chiffon halter-style gown with a full skirt, so light and airy it looks like it could float off the hanger and dance by itself.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about Becca,” Caroline says as she starts to pin on the second sleeve. “What’s going on with her?”

  How am I supposed to answer that?

  Sarah stayed clear of Becca for a few weeks after Cady said all those hurtful things about their friendship last fall. She needed time, too, to get over the crippling news about Becca and Jack. She avoided Becca’s phone calls and ignored her at school, unable to find it in her heart to hear Becca out; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth about the real reason for their unlikely friendship. Becca was persistent, however, and finally left a note in Sarah’s locker.

  I’ve never had a friend as true and loyal as you. Cady’s jealous because I chose you over her. Please believe me.

  And eventually Sarah did. She allowed Becca back into her life, carrying on as though nothing had ever happened.

  Becca and Jack eventually let Addie and Shorty Cornforth in on their secret and they all swore not to say a thing. Becca couldn’t risk her parents finding out. The five of them even hung out together a few times at Addie’s house when her parents weren’t home. It wasn’t easy seeing Becca curled up in Jack’s arms. Sarah told herself that Jack was no different than any other boy who fell under Becca’s spell, although she sometimes noticed Jack looking at her, trying to catch her eye. When she finally allowed herself to look at him, right into his eyes, he smiled at her in a wistful kind of way, and she wondered about that. But a romance with Jack wasn’t meant to be, despite Baba’s prediction.

  “Do you know if there’s something troubling Becca? She hardly looks at me when I’m speaking to her, or else she storms off in a huff,” Caroline is saying as she tucks in some excess fabric at Sarah’s bosom.

  Caroline’s face is so open and sincere. Sarah doesn’t want to keep lying to her but she can’t betray Becca. “I’m not sure what’s up with her. There’s a lot for her to think about, leaving home and moving away to be on her own.”

  “I’m not looking forward to her leaving either, but you don’t see me biting off her head every time I open my mouth. There’s change coming for all of us. Has she considered for one moment what my life will be like when she’s gone? How difficult it’ll be for me?” Caroline’s voice wavers as her fingers flutter over Sarah’s skin, tucking and pinning.

  What must it be like, Sarah wonders, to have a mother who’d care that you’re gone? Someone who might cry, even, when you packed your things in a suitcase and climbed aboard a Greyhound bus. She studies Caroline, bent over beneath her outstretched arm, noticing for the first time the fine lines around her eyes and the threads of silver laced through her hair. She’d noticed a sadness about Caroline lately, a heaviness in the way she seemed to go about her daily chores, as though she was marking time, waiting, like Sarah, for something besides the next long day to come along. She sensed it wasn’t easy for Caroline living with Eldon, who seldom smiled or even said as much as one kind word to her. While Sarah expected that one day she would go on to a better sort of life, she realized that Caroline would forever remain in this brick house.

  “We fool ourselves into believing there’s a plan,” Caroline continues. “We think there’s a pattern set out for our life that will come together like the pieces of this dress, pinned and stitched together.” She jerks at the seam under Sarah’s arm, spears her with another pin. “But then something happens and life goes veering off in a completely different direction without you even knowing how it happened and suddenly the dress is never finished and you’re sitting there with all these swatches you’re not sure what to do with.” Caroline stands back and carefully pulls the pinned-up jacket from Sarah’s shoulders then eases out her arms, one at a time. Her eyes are bright, on the verge of tears. “Nothing turns out like it’s supposed to.”

  Sarah understands. Her own life completely changed course after Patrick was killed and her mother left. In time, she came to realize there was really only one thing to do when life dealt her such a blow. Just get back up and move on.

  “My baba always told me if there’s a hill in front of me, I’m meant to climb it. What’s the sense in turning back? The hill will still be there.”

  “It’s just that sometimes it’s so much easier to stay there at the bottom,” Caroline says. “It takes too much effort to go on.”

  Sarah doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t say so. She wants to know what’s on the other side of every hill she comes to, even if she has to wait until the time is right to trek over.

  Later that week, Sarah is at Baba’s farm, helping her plant the garden, when a car pulls up. Baba puts a hand to her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun, and leans on her rake. They’ve almost finished planting the corn, three wizened seeds in each of sixty shallow hollows. Baba tested the soil this morning before they got started, pulling her bare foot out of her rubber boot and burying it in the dirt to her ankle. “Is good. Warm enough. We plant today,” she said.

  A man climbs out and helps a woman, holding an infant wrapped in a white blanket, out of the car. He walks over, stepping carefully between the rows marked with seed packets slipped onto sticks. “Mrs. Petrenko?” His voice cracks and he licks his lips. “Are you the chudesnytsia? The one who helps people?”

  Baba nods and sets down her hoe. “Ya, that’s me.”

  “We’re here about my wife. Her mother and I don’t know what to do. She cries all the time and doesn’t seem to care at all about the baby. Leaves him in the cradle and closes herself up in our room, lays in bed all day without saying a word. This can’t keep going on.”

  Baba nods. “Come,” she says. “I see this before. Many times. I help her.” She turns to Sarah. “You finish here then come up to house. I want you should watch.”

  Sarah throws the last of the seeds into the holes, covers them with a thin layer of soil then picks up the empty corn seed packet, impales it on the last whittled stick, and stabs it into the ground. When she gets to the house, the man is sitting in a chair, holding the sleeping baby, while the woman stands behind him, clutching the back of the chair. Her skin is the colour of skim milk, her lips the same bluish hue as the hollows under her eyes. She glances around the room, eyes unfocused, until she notices Sarah.

  “Who are you?” she whispers and it’s spooky, the way she looks. Waxy, not quite alive.

  “Sarah, get my basket.” Baba drags a chair into the middle of the kitchen so it faces away from the window. After asking a few questions, she leads the woman to the chair then melts the amber wax over the candle, pours it into the water and begins to chant the mysterious words Sarah’s heard before.

  Sarah first rememb
ers the ritual when Baba used it for Charlie. It was after their mother left. He was three years old and had started wetting the bed. Night after night, she would hear him whimpering and her father cursing under his breath while he changed the soaked sheets. After a while, he just left the sheets until morning and made Charlie climb into bed with Sarah. She can still remember the faint smell of pee and the jarring touch of Charlie’s chilly toes creeping up her calves until they nestled behind her warm knees.

  One day when they were at Baba’s, Sarah told her about Charlie’s nightly accidents. Baba sat him in a chair in the middle of her kitchen while she melted wax with a candle, recited strange words, and waved a knife in the air. After she was finished, she took the water she used and poured it under a tree, telling Sarah it must be poured where no one could step on it. When their father came to pick them up, Brian told him about it. Their father started hollering and waving his arms, telling Baba he wouldn’t have any of her hoodoo-voodoo around his kids. Baba just sat there calmly, shelling her peas until he yelled himself out, then said, “Just wait. You see how it helps.” And it did. Charlie never wet the bed again.

  Baba’s told Sarah many stories about the ancient ritual and how it cures what she calls fear-sickness. A folk tradition from the old country, it passed from mothers to daughters for generations. Baba had hoped to teach the skill to Sarah’s mother (she was the more sensitive of Baba’s two daughters) and she’d expected Olivia to pass the practice on to Sarah one day. Her dream faded after Olivia left, but Baba pinned her hopes on teaching Sarah the ritual herself.

  Sarah has watched the healing ceremony many times, but she can’t speak Ukrainian, she’s told Baba, and how would she memorize the chants and prayers? She also believes she isn’t religious enough; the only time Sarah attends Mass is when she stays over at Baba’s. Besides, Sarah once told her she wasn’t interested in learning some ritual from the Dark Ages. Baba shook her head sadly, then resigned herself to showing Sarah which wild plants and roots to harvest from the woods. How to blend them with herbs and flowers from the garden to ease pain in the joints or the misery of a colicky baby.

  When Baba is finished, the woman is as limp as a puppet on strings, her eyes closed, her head lolling to one side. The baby is awake, mewling and rooting at the man’s shirt. He stands up and shakes the woman gently by the shoulder, rousing her, and she opens her eyes as if from a deep sleep. Baba shuffles to the cupboard and pulls out a small jar, then she measures crushed powder and fragrant leaves from various jars into it with a spoon before securing the lid and handing it to the man.

  “One teaspoon in one cup hot water. Twice a day. Take maybe two weeks, maybe less, she be better.” She strokes the baby under her chin with a crooked finger. “She be happy with this one after that.”

  “How does it work?” Sarah asks after they leave. “I mean, what’s so magic about pouring melted wax into holy water?”

  Baba frowns. “Not magic.” Then she shrugs her shoulders. “Is not for me to question. Is God, working. The heart, it hears. It heals.”

  “Well, I don’t get it,” Sarah says. “That woman didn’t seem to be aware of anything.”

  “Ah, but her husband. He did,” Baba says wisely.

  Sarah dips her fingers into the bowl and pulls out the molten chunk of wax. It sits on her palm, a lump still warm, the colour of mulled apple cider, shaped like a droplet of rain.

  JUNE

  A train rumbles by, rattling Sarah’s bedroom window and breaking her concentration. She’s trying to study but her mind keeps wandering. There are only two weeks left of class before exams and everyone at school’s been talking about summer jobs and plans for the fall. The clap of train wheels rolling over the track reminds Sarah that everyone is hurtling forward toward bright and certain futures while she’s being left behind, a single boxcar sitting off alone on the siding. Becca, like all the kids from UE, is off to university. Addie and nearly everyone else are going to community college or moving to the city to find jobs. Even some of the farm boys are leaving to get their aggie diplomas before they come back to stay. Just four years, she tells herself, four years until Charlie is as old as she is now; then she’ll leave, head west maybe, the only direction it seems anyone from Ross Prairie ever goes.

  As the sound of the train fades away, she hears a noise in the hallway and looks up from her notes to see Becca, eyes spilling over with tears, standing in the doorway. She’s holding a dented red coffee tin in both hands.

  “I hate her,” she cries. “I really, really hate her.”

  “What’s happened? Tell me! What’s wrong?”

  “Look at this! She found it and now she knows! She said I’m never to see him again but I won’t do it. I’m not going to give him up because she says so.” Becca wrenches the lid from the can and tosses out a scrap of crumpled paper.

  Sunday, 10:00. Can’t wait to be in your arms. B

  “Jack and I leave notes for each other and hide them in this can under a rock at the edge of the stone pile. She must have followed me there.” Becca puts her hands on her cheeks and shakes her head furiously. “I don’t know how she knew but she was out there, snooping around, and she found it. I’ve never seen her so mad in my life! She was pacing in circles, breathing so hard you’d think she’d raced to town and back. She reached up and yanked at her own hair. I’ve never seen her like that. She’s crazy!”

  Becca, too, is pacing, back and forth from the bed to the door. “‘Oh no, you can’t. I forbid you from seeing Jack Bilyk,’” she says in a falsetto, mimicking her mother, shaking her halo of curls. “Well, I don’t give a rat’s ass if she’ll allow it or not. I’m in love with him and she’s not going to stop us from being together.”

  Sarah finally gets up and puts a hand on Becca’s shoulder. “You better calm down yourself. Come, sit, and tell me everything.”

  Becca came home from school, she says, to find the battered coffee can sitting in the centre of the table, the lid off, the can empty. Her mother appeared from the shadows in the dining room, eyes fiery with rage, waving the note. She knew it was for Jack and she wanted to know how long Becca had been sneaking around with him. Since the fall, Becca said, not that it was any of her business. But Caroline kept grilling her, demanding to know where they’d been meeting. When Becca sat down at the table, refusing to speak, Caroline picked up a book and pitched it at her. Then she came over and tipped her right out of the chair. Becca cried out, threatening to tell her father, but that only made Caroline crazier.

  “She demanded to know if we were sleeping together. ‘You’ve spent the night with him, haven’t you? That time in November, when you said you were at Sarah’s, you were with him for the whole night. How many other times, Becca? How many?’ That’s what put her over the edge.”

  “Talk about overreacting,” Sarah says softly.

  “It’s crazy. Why go completely off the deep end about it? Why does she care so much about an old feud between our fathers? I mean, chill out already. I don’t understand. She acts civil enough to Anna; I don’t know what the big deal is.”

  Sarah doesn’t understand, either. It seems completely out of character for Caroline to get so upset about it.

  “So, is it all right if I spend the night? Can I stay until I figure out what I should do?”

  Sarah nods. She doesn’t imagine it will be long before Caroline or Mr. Webb comes to town looking for her. She wonders what Caroline will think, what she will say when she sees Sarah and realizes she’s known all along about Jack and Becca; how Caroline will feel to find out Sarah’s been lying, too.

  On afternoon break on the last day of exams, Bobby Boychuk is sauntering up and down the hall, telling everyone within earshot where the book-burner is going to be tonight, oblivious to a frowning Mr. Lawson, who is standing in the door to room 5. Bobby might as well be wearing one of those sandwich boards, advertising the whereabouts of the party. Sarah won’t be surprised if Lawson reports it and everyone gets ticketed at the party for d
rinking underage and having open liquor.

  “You going to the book-burner?” Addie shoves the last of her binders into a huge canvas bag and zips it.

  “What do you think?” Becca glares at Addie and slams shut the locker door with her hip.

  She isn’t going to the book-burning party. Her father came to collect her later on the day she showed up at Sarah’s with the can. He knocked on the door and told Sarah that Becca had to leave, his face stone cold, and went to wait in his truck until Becca came down; he followed her car home. Becca explained later that Caroline thought it best not to tell Eldon about Becca and Jack, but that Caroline had grounded her anyway. Becca’s been begging to go to the party, insisting that Jack isn’t likely to be there, but Caroline’s held firm and Becca can’t go.

  “She’s still grounded, but I’m going,” Sarah says, stepping between them. “And I’m still coming to your house after school like we planned,” she adds, nodding at Becca.

  Addie rolls her eyes. She’s been losing patience with Becca for the past few weeks, complaining she’s tired of hearing her moan about Jack and how much she misses him. And Becca’s been telling Sarah how she thinks Addie’s selfish, rambling on about summer and fun, not caring at all about poor Becca’s world turned over. Sarah’s been getting a stretched-apart feeling from them, each pulling her in the opposite direction, wanting her to choose sides, pick one of them over the other, and she refuses to do it.

  * * *

  When Sarah gets to Becca’s after school, Caroline stares at her blankly then turns back to whatever she is stirring on the stove. Her hair is fastened at the nape of her neck; the ponytail makes her look like a child, vulnerable in some way, and Sarah feels a hard finger of regret for her part in Caroline’s obvious heartache. The counters are cluttered, dishes piled everywhere, and the top of the dining-room table looks as though a canister has been filled there — that puff of flour that settles after it’s poured out of the bag — so thick and white is the dust.