New Girl in Little Cove

by Damhnait Monaghan

  Trudy didn’t respond when I posed the question a second time, so I dropped a worksheet on her desk.

  “I’m not doing that,” she said.

  I put another worksheet on top of the first and she muttered something. We repeated our little ditto sheet dance a third time. Then I picked up the three worksheets from her desk and made a show of straightening them into a tidy pile.

  “Oh,” I said, smiling sweetly as I placed the pile on her desk. “I forgot to mention that the worksheets have to be completed in Mr. Donovan’s office. He said he couldn’t wait to see who’d be keeping him company first. I guess it’s you, Trudy.”

  Trudy blanched. “Yes, miss,” she said. “I mean, oui.”

  It was the first time I’d ever heard her say anything in French. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be the last.

  Little victories like these, some accomplished on my own, some with Patrick’s guidance, helped me get through my first month at St. Jude’s. I was also discovering that Patrick was a bit of a maverick. Instead of traditional parent-teacher meetings, St. Jude’s held an informal session on the last Friday of every month.

  “I lures ’em in here with tea and cake,” Patrick explained, rubbing his hands together like some kind of evil magician. “But then, once they’re here, bam, we talks to them about their youngsters.” Judy told me that parents tended to gravitate towards the teachers of core subjects like math and science, but that attendance at the monthly meetings was mandatory for all teachers.

  I stood alone in the cafeteria on that first Friday-night session while parents and some students mingled with Doug, Judy, Patrick and even Sister Mary Catherine. The edge of my name tag began to curl away from my top, as if it, too, wanted nothing to do with me. As I patted it back down, I found myself wondering why I was even wearing a name tag when everyone within a fifty-mile radius seemed to know who I was, even if they couldn’t pronounce my surname properly.

  I bristled when angry Roy Sullivan from the gas station arrived, but he made a beeline for Doug, and within seconds they were deep in animated conversation. I mentally reviewed my class lists. Sam Sullivan was a sweet, shy boy in my grade ten class. Could this be his father? Surely not. Then I saw Calvin on the other side of the room, stooped over, listening intently to a middle-aged woman. At one point he looked over at me, then quickly away again. But the woman’s eyes had followed his, and after a minute, mother and son crossed the room.

  “Miss,” said Calvin. “Me mudder wants a word.”

  She launched straight in. “Tell me now, is he behaving in class?”

  Calvin kept his gaze down, a scuffed brown shoe digging into the floor. I looked at his mother’s neat skirt, sturdy shoes, and faded but impeccably ironed blouse. Her hopeful look was the decider.

  “Calvin is trying,” I said. Very trying, I didn’t add.

  He looked up, puzzled, and mouthed, “T’anks.”

  “Calvin, you go on, now,” his mother said. “I’ve got more to say that you don’t need to hear.”

  We watched him lope off, then Mrs. Piercey said, “Calvin is the last of my youngsters at the school. Now, tell me, Miss O’Brine, will it be third time lucky this year?”

  I said I didn’t understand.

  “It’s Calvin’s third year in grade nine. French is one of the subjects that holds him back.”

  “How old is Calvin?”

  “Seventeen.”

  How did she get him to stay in school when I couldn’t even get him to say bonjour? Mrs. Piercey was obviously a persuasive woman.

  “Mr. Donovan wanted to put him up to grade ten this year, but I said he’s got to get there on his own steam.”

  It felt to me like Calvin had run out of steam a long time ago.

  “Mrs. Piercey,” I said, struggling to find the right words. “Do you think it’s in Calvin’s best interest to stay at school? He doesn’t seem very happy here.”

  “Happy?” She frowned. “My dear, happy don’t get you a job. Calvin’s staying here ’til he gets his piece of paper and that’s all.” She gripped my arm tight. “There’s a young fella up our road who quit school and you know what he’s at every day?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s hauling wood. I wants better than that for Calvin.”

  I admired her determination, but for the first time, I felt sorry for Calvin. A high school certificate seemed beyond his grasp, and I couldn’t think of a single job for which he’d be qualified. But I told her that I’d do what I could to help. She said goodbye and went to join Calvin on the other side of the room. He smiled down at her, took her arm and escorted her out of the room, like a true gentleman.

  Then Cynthia pitched up, tugging along the woman I’d met at the gas station. In flawless French, she introduced us to each other and we two adults beamed at her.

  “I got no clue what’s she saying,” Mrs. O’Leary said, laughing. “But all the teachers says she’s doing some good at school. That scholarship’s looking like a real possibility, so we’re going out to celebrate.” She put her arm around Cynthia, and my heart hurt as I thought about Mom in Australia. A year without her suddenly seemed really long. I decided to tell her about Cynthia and Mrs. O’Leary when she next called.

  “We’re going to Tony’s in Clayville, miss.” Cynthia’s face was alight. “They does the best pizza.”

  “Do,” I said.

  “Wha?”

  “They do the best pizza.”

  “Yes, miss, that’s what I said.”

  There were several bright pupils in the senior French class, but Cynthia was the shining star. Her accent was good, her grammar stellar. But like many of the students, her English was another story. What had she said? They does the best pizza.

  I said goodbye and wished them bon appétit, but my mind was already on a new extracurricular activity. When the last parent had left, I went looking for Doug and found him at his desk, eating an apple.

  “How’s she cutting?” he said.

  “Like the knife.”

  He grinned. “You’re learning.” Then he flicked his apple core into the garbage can, pushed aside his planner and began stacking notebooks on his desk, ready to leave.

  “Can I run something by you?” I asked.

  “Shoot.”

  “I was thinking of starting a remedial English club. You know, so the kids make less mistakes when they talk. And, I guess, when they write too.”

  “Fewer,” said Doug.

  “Pardon?”

  “You just said so the kids make less mistakes. But it’s fewer. So the kids make fewer mistakes. I guess you made a mistake there too.”

  “Oops, ha ha, you’re right.”

  “Ha ha?” Doug put down his notebooks, now giving me his full attention. “Have you mentioned this idea to Patrick?”

  “Not yet, but do you think he’ll go for it?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s a real beaut.” There was an edge to Doug’s voice that I hadn’t heard before. He stood up and roughly pushed his chair in. The legs squeaked in protest.

  “I thought you were okay, Rachel. I thought you got it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Got what?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if afraid of what he might say.

  “Doug, what is it?”

  He put up a hand as if to push away my questions. And me. Then he spoke with slow, controlled calm.

  “I sees who you are now. Little Miss Mainlander wants to help us poor dumb Newfoundlanders talk nice, is that it?”

  Prickles of heat burst on my neck and chest. “Doug,” I began. “I’m not sure what . . .”

  But he talked right over me. “Bet you didn’t know our linguistic history has roots in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, did you? Or that our dialect has been the subject of academic papers by eminent folklorists? Or that—”

  “Doug, please.” I covered my face and he stopped talking.

  Silence fell like a heavy weight between us. After a minute, I peeked out from between
my hands. Doug was leaning against the blackboard, arms folded, looking down at the floor. I lowered my hands and he looked up. Our eyes met and he crooked his finger at me.

  “Come with me.”

  Heart thudding, I followed him down the hall, walking quickly, trying to match his stride. But by the time I reached the library door, he was already inside, over at the reference shelf. He pulled out two books and put them on a study table.

  “Sit,” he said.

  I sat.

  “Read,” he said.

  And before I could say anything else, Doug left the library without saying goodbye.

  I picked up a heavy yellow hardback book—Dictionary of Newfoundland English—surprised to find they had their own dictionary. I flipped through the pages, randomly reading entries. The discourse on arse went on for two columns, and the entry for seal, and related words and expressions, lasted more than seven pages. A bazz was a blow or a slap. To blear was to utter prolonged complaints. Blearing. Is that what I’d been doing about Little Cove and its people?

  On and on I read, marvelling at the strange and wonderful words. Eventually I took the books to the deserted staff room and made a cup of tea, amazed to see it was after seven o’clock. It didn’t matter, Lucille was out. I could have read that dictionary cover to cover, but after a while, I set it aside.

  The other book was a faded folder, labelled a dissertation for a master of arts degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland. I flicked idly through it. A footnote explained that the impetus for the thesis had been a summer spent in Toronto, where the author’s dialect had been relentlessly mocked. The rationale read in part: “I determined that a substantive study of the history of the Newfoundland dialect would demonstrate that the manner in which we speak is neither wrong nor ignorant, but the result of our distinctive history, culture and geography. It is a cause for celebration, not derision.”

  The dissertation was a thoughtful analysis of Newfoundland’s distinct dialect. It was well written and persuasive; the author’s pride in the local culture gleamed through every word. I flipped back to the cover page to see who had written it. The author was Patrick Donovan.

  Shame roiled in my gut as I imagined Patrick’s reaction had I proposed a remedial English club to him. Slowly, like fog lifting from the bay, I made the connection that had eluded me until now. My snooty aversion to the local parlance and my lack of appreciation for their distinct dialect was no different than the attitude of many French-speaking purists towards the Québécois. I was no better than the French tourists who had complained to me about the Québécois accent the summer I worked in a bar in Quebec City. “Ça vient du nez,” a Parisian man had said, dismissively. “It comes from the nose.”

  At the time, I had no riposte. But I did now. And it applied equally to the accent and vocabulary of Newfoundland. “Non. Ça vient du coeur. It comes from the heart.”

  9

  Over the weekend I tried to find the right words to apologize to Doug, but when I saw him pull into the parking lot ahead of me on Monday morning, I still wasn’t sure. I decided I would have to wing it. But by the time I got out of my car, he was already at the school door.

  “Morning, Doug,” I called, racing over and grabbing his arm. “Listen, I read Patrick’s paper and—”

  He brushed my hand off his sleeve. “I’m late for a meeting with Patrick, actually.”

  He walked down the hall, then turned the corner heading in the opposite direction to Patrick’s office. Obviously, he was still mad at me. I would have to figure out a way to fix things.

  For a school as small as St. Jude’s, there were plenty of places to hide. And Doug sure knew all of them. I barely saw him all week, and when I did, he always seemed to be either deep in conversation with someone or rushing off somewhere. He left the school for lunch every day too. Then on Friday, Patrick called a brief staff meeting over lunch. I put my purse on the seat next to mine to save it for Doug, but he didn’t sit, just lounged against the wall eating a sandwich.

  That afternoon, after the final bell had rung, I headed to Doug’s classroom as soon as I could, but it was already deserted. There wasn’t much on display apart from a poster of the human anatomy on the bulletin board near his desk. A biology assignment was written on the blackboard in big, bold strokes.

  I looked up and down the hall and saw no one, so I went over to Doug’s desk. It was exceptionally tidy, the planner already turned to Monday’s date with brief lesson plans neatly jotted down for each period. Doug would have the weekend off, while I would still be planning my lessons.

  In my car, heading back to Lucille’s, I fiddled with the radio trying to get some kind of reception. Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” crackled in briefly, and I turned it off so roughly the knob came off in my hand. The hell with Doug. Had he never made a mistake? Judge not lest ye be judged. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I might not be big on religion, but I could quote chapter and verse with the best of them.

  I flung open the door at Lucille’s and stomped in, almost knocking her over.

  “My God, girl,” she said. “You looks some crooked. What’s after happening?”

  Crooked? I looked at myself in the hall mirror, rebalancing my shoulders.

  “Bad day?” she asked.

  I grunted something, then sulked past her up to my room, flopping onto the bed. After a few minutes I heard Lucille in the living room, talking on the phone, no doubt alerting the local authorities to my mood.

  Much later, when the room had grown dark, there was a soft knock at the door and Lucille stuck her head in to tell me she was going out.

  I wasn’t sure I could face another Friday evening on my own. I sat up abruptly, causing the bed to bounce and shake.

  “Where do you go on Friday evenings, Lucille?”

  “Hooking,” she said.

  She’s a hooker? No. I tried to figure out what she could possibly mean.

  “Want to come?” she asked. “Might do you good to get out.”

  “Lucille, when you say hooking . . .”

  “Rugs,” she said. “We hooks rugs. What did you think?”

  I thought it best not to answer. “Like this one?” I tapped a foot on the cozy rug beside the bed.

  “Yis. And we makes quilts like the one you’re sitting on.”

  “Who’s we?” I asked.

  “The Holy Dusters.”

  “Is that a euphemism?”

  Lucille laughed. “We cleans the church together,” she said. “I don’t know where the name came from, but I’ve been a Holy Duster these twenty years.”

  “They don’t have staff to do that?”

  “The Church provides for us. It’s only right we does our bit for her.”

  I agreed to come along and we set off into the dark evening. Lucille steamed ahead while I dawdled, admiring the abundant stars, shining like sequins on a black velvet cape.

  Finally, Lucille shouted back up the road at me. “Come on, if you’re coming.”

  I walked quickly to catch up. “Sorry,” I said, whispering for some reason. “We don’t have stars like that in Toronto.”

  “Stars is stars, sure,” she said.

  But as I crept along, head back and eyes skyward, I couldn’t agree with Lucille. These stars were like the ones at our summer cottage. These stars were magical.

  We stopped outside a small orange house surrounded by a white picket fence.

  “No sulking in here, now,” Lucille said. “These women are my dearest friends, more like sisters, they are.”

  I stiffened at her words. Lucille was telling me off. But I had to admit, I kind of deserved it.

  When we reached the side door, Lucille didn’t knock but went straight in, after giving the door a hard shove. I followed her into the kitchen, where three women were surrounded by strips of colourful wool and fabric. Each of them held a wooden frame on her lap.

  “Now me duckies,” said Lucille. “I hope ye all brought your
patience because I brought Rachel.”

  “We’re some glad you did,” said the woman nearest the door. She had a large purple birthmark, like Gorbachev’s, covering one side of her face, but what stood out for me was her welcoming smile. “Hello, Rachel,” she said. “I’m Biddy Cormack and this is my house. Lucille and I went to school together. Don’t pay her no mind.”

  Lucille took off her coat and hung it on a hook. I followed suit. Biddy introduced the other women, Flossie and Annie, who were obviously sisters.

  “Right then, Rachel,” said Biddy. “Do you want to start in on your own piece or just watch us and have a natter?”

  I said I would watch and sat down beside Lucille on the daybed. “How do you do it?” I asked.

  “You fits a piece of burlap sack between the top and bottom, see?” She touched the material trapped between the two sides of the frame. The bottom third of the burlap was covered in various shades of blue with scattered grey flecks. Sketched crudely above and waiting to be filled in was a fisherman, standing in a dory with his back to us.

  “Watch now,” said Lucille. “I takes the hook”—she held up a small metal hook with a wooden handle—“and I holds it like a pencil, luh, or how you might hold a bit of chalk. Then I puts the length of wool in my other hand underneath.” She became bossier then. “Coopy down underneath now, Rachel girl, and take a peek.”

  I knelt on the floor and tilted my head to look up under the frame. The tiny holes in the burlap shone in the light. When the tip of the hook broke through, Lucille said, “I dips down with the hook, see? And I pulls the wool through.” Lucille was a fantastic cook, and now I could see she was also an excellent teacher and craftswoman.

  I sat back down beside her. She held the wool in her left hand and fed it smoothly through her callused fingers. The tip bobbed in and out of the burlap, bringing a wool loop through each time. When she reached the end of the strip of wool, she put a fresh one under the frame and started again. Lucille worked quickly and methodically, the hook moving across the burlap in neat, even rows.