Mumma fidgets in her seat, the kids in the back seat too quiet. The girls distinctly noiseless since the car pulled out of the driveway before sunrise. They sit in a row as if they were in church, no, at the table after dinner, listening to their parents talk in Chinese. Alertness skips about their eyes. Out of the corners, six widening irises watch Dad’s driving gloves gripping the wheel. The breeze coming in through Dad’s little triangular window blows his hair in brilliantined strands of hot black tar.
“Stop. Pull over, stop the car, Dad,” Mumma hollers, Tom’s head jutting back and forth like a chicken. The gloves squeeze tighter on the steering wheel. Three heads in the backseat pull back slightly, become rigid atop their scrawny necks as Dad frowns in the rear view mirror. He checks his side mirror, the rear view mirror again, then shoulder checks wildly, as if he has blind spots crammed into every inch of glass. Mumma fumbles in her tote bag for an empty paper bag, as Dad methodically raises the signal arm with his left hand, then veers onto the shoulder. The soles of Mumma’s sandals skid on the gravel as she pulls on Tom’s arm. They just make it away from the back of the car. Lucky, this time.
“Gosh, that throwing up, it must have been like Agatha Christie’s, And Then There Were None. Someone was going to be next, but who?”
“Ho-ho, what a funny man. It wasn’t so much the sick, as the tension. Sitting in the middle, over the hump, I remember Mumma, keeping an eye on the one most likely to, but, still pretending like this was the best time ever, she would turn to the rest of us. With the windows open, her permy curls would shoot out in front of her forehead, her voice seemed to broadcast, disembodied, from the thickest, wiry curl: ‘We’re almost there.’ And then she’d smile. We knew she had no idea where there was. She had no idea where here was. She would fold and unfold maps, Avon lady smile painted on her face, and we squirmed.
“Which was much easier than thinking, even for one moment, about Dad, the scary driver. There’s something about the long blare of another car’s horn when you’re travelling at highway speed that you never forget. Just thinking about it makes me feel nauseated, like the grim reaper’s scythe casually nicking the back of my shirt. On occasion, we pitched from side to side, a boat in a storm. And forty minutes after he finished driving for the day, Dad’s hands still curled like they were gripping the steering wheel. Scary driver, we kids knew what the finger meant before anyone told us.”
“Your Dad wasn’t driving any more by the time I met you. But he had such a small stature, I can’t imagine he would have had a very easy time of it, driving those big old American cars.”
“Well, Dad got a lot smaller by the time you met him. He learned to drive from the salesman who sold him his first car. Four circuits around the lot, Dad in the driver’s seat, as the salesman sat with his arm over the front seat, pointing out the controls. In those days, after the war, getting your driver’s license was a matter of paying a fee, no practical test, no test for whether you understood the rules of the road. He did, but still. And never had an accident, but still.”
“Good grief, Charlie Brown. But seriously, I think we should go to Saskatchewan. Those stories mean so much to you. I’d love to see the land, the country. And this time, for you, with air conditioning.”
“Right. See the country. What a great idea, from the man who’s never been on a real road trip. Gas station johns, seedy motels. You’d be disappointed. Worse, I’ll be disappointed: what if a road trip meets, or, even worse, exceeds your expectations? I would lose all respect for you, clucking and cooing over those motel bathroom condiments.”
“Like?”
“Tiny, stinky, little soaps wrapped in cheap shiny paper. Waxy paper ice buckets printed with a faux wood pattern. Plastic cups wrapped in plastic film. You know, no hair dryers, no white terry bathrobe, no room service, no mini-bar fridge. They’re very old, some of the motels, extremely retro. What if you like all that stuff, what if you go all gaga over motel road trips? Maybe they’ll be like a Pandora’s Tacky Sister’s Box that I’ll have wished you kept shut.”
“Let’s leave tomorrow.”
The time had come to take the children to see God. Now, right this moment. All enrolled in school and doing well, and only Pen seemed in the middle of an awkward period, all gangly, her face growing faster than her hair, her sulkiness growing faster still. The time seemed right, to Dad. And even though Dad didn’t enjoy driving, especially dreaded driving away from home on roads he had never driven on, the way the kids were growing, the family would never line up, height-wise, quite so nicely as they did right now. Dad, Mumma, Lizzie, all the way down to the baby, a perfect wedge from Dad right down to the ground. He wanted to present that image to God, the family starting firmly at ground level ascending and ending with Dad. Rehearsing this scene in his mind, over and over, Dad’s quiet face would scream at God, “Ha. Take that.”
“Mumma, what’s ‘twnshp’? If we stay on this road, we miss ‘twnshp’. Sounds important. Maybe you should look at the map.” Dad turns his head toward Mumma as a green sedan careens past, the sound wave of its horn flaring and fading in the open car windows. Even with wind funnelling through the open windows, a close, milky odour permeates the car interior. Tom sits in the back seat behind Mumma’s head, his eyes closed. Pen flops her head back and forth between Mumma and Dad. Dad, afraid his voice will be muted by the wind, feels himself screaming. His left eye winces at the air pressure. With Mumma guiding the way, Dad takes comfort that they will see God in no time. He thinks that Mumma’s birthplace, Calgary, makes her a natural at figuring out the roads, the country. His upper lip peels skyward in the wind, showing more pink gum than he intends. During a flop to her left, Pen thinks she’s seen bits of what Dad’s head would look like as a skeleton. She buries her head into the car seat under Mumma’s shoulder.
“Can I see the map?” Lizzie asks from the back seat.
“No,” Dad replies, “Mumma’s the navigator. What about ‘twnshp’, Mumma? Can you find it on the map? Mumma?”
“Keep going, Dad,” Mumma says, taking stock of the three heads in the back seat, the breath under her arm feeling kitten warm.
“Those stories about your Dad’s family. They’re so puzzling. I don’t get them. Makes you want more, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it make you want more? What about those people in Saskatchewan?”
“Two problems with what you’re suggesting. First, they don’t speak any English. Really at all. And you know me. When the talking starts, I’m completely at sea. I know House of the Lord, and dim sum, but that spreads thin, fast.”
“What about your second cousin? We could time our trip there when he goes to visit next, he could be your translator.”
“Donny? Are you kidding? He barely understands now. Says he lost the tongue, then the understanding, he can’t even carry on a conversation with his mother anymore.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple to lose a language.”
“Hard, you mean hard, it’s not that hard. And, anyway, I think what you’re suggesting is predatory. I can’t presume to visit someone just so they will tell me stories.”
“Predatory, you mean, to claim your family history.”
“Claim? Claim. Wow. And what makes you think people want to talk about the past?”
“There, you are wrong. My Scottish Grammy, she used to love telling us stories of life on the prairies. All you had to say to her was, ‘Grammy, what was it like when you pulled water up from the ground in a bucket’ and she’d be off. Marvelous.”
“Not everyone has perky, upbeat stories. What if they’re hurtful stories, and I come along saying, ‘Would you mind picking the scab off that please, because that’s my family history and I’m here to Claim it.’ Those relatives in Saskatchewan, they aren’t plucky prairie people. They aren’t chafing at the bit to tell plucky prairie stories.”
“Of course. But —”
“Buggy whips and corsets. Buckboard wagons. And linen trousseaus. Won’t find that stuff in my family’s inventory. Maybe your famil
y history, but not mine.”
Mumma zips open the kids’ suitcase, the edge of the car trunk resting on the top of her head. Pen stands behind the car in her Ladybug Underwear undershirt, her hands balled into the cups of her armpits. Mumma rifles through, pulls out a striped tee shirt, hands it to Pen, and tucks another paper bag package into the hole of the spare tire. Raising her right hand to the lip of the trunk, Mumma discovers her head actually feels better supporting the trunk’s weight. She pulls a roll of foil wrapped mints out of her housedress pocket and hands them to her daughter. Pen thanks Mumma quietly, ducks under the clean tee shirt. Holding the trunk lid high with one hand, Mumma raises one leg flamingo to flick out the gravel underneath the heel of her sandal.
Well, we’ve barfed in Saskatchewan, Mumma thinks, feeling sassy using the word, barf, albeit only in her mind and to herself. On Saskatchewan, barfed on Saskatchewan, she thinks. There was no warning, no sign they would imminently cross the border. All of a sudden, bang, Welcome to Saskatchewan. Then all of a sudden, bang, up on the gravel shoulder again.
Mumma rubs her neck with her free hand, and recollects Dad’s stories. When Dad came to southern Saskatchewan with his father and all the uncles, they landed in a pile of misfortune: post-war uncertainty when national war departments at home and abroad weren’t buying any more grain to feed troops; a regional drought dried out a land that barely sustained the scraps of life already there; and a community memory still lingered of beloved young men, their own kin, coming home from the Great War and infecting townsfolk with Spanish Flu, suddenly killing hundreds of children and young adults in the area (a newspaper from the capital saying thousands dead across the province), fear shutting doors firmly on friends, on neighbours. Arriving as outsiders, aliens to this landscape of adversity, how would they survive, let alone thrive, when even the smallest blade of grass seemed to say No. Mumma remembers what Dad says: They landed in a time of misfortune so bad, the uncles stayed put. Just stayed put, for generations. Waiting for hairline cracks to plant roots that might not exist just to endure hardship, but to flourish.
The plan didn’t work for all of them. Dad’s father left Canada after a few years, returning to the home that was no longer home, to a wife no longer living. “She died of a broken heart,” Dad’s father told him, when the letter containing the news of her broken heart finally arrived. “She died of a broken heart,” Dad told Mumma, unsolicited, before she was Mumma, before he was Dad, when they were still their own names. “She died of a broken heart,” Mumma told Tom last Thanksgiving, when Teacher asked about his missing grandparents in the drawing of his family tree.
Mumma lowers but does not close the trunk lid and gives the long road in front of the car a once-over. Dad has brought them far too close to the edge, and Mumma might not manage to haul them back in time. More than ever, Mumma yearns for the instincts of a navigator, although she’s still uncertain what, exactly, that means.
Something, an absence, catches Mumma’s attention, as she flings the car trunk skyward. Eyes scan two suitcases, food box, extra paper bags. Shoe box. Shoe box? Shoe box.
The baby has gone down to the floor on one side of the back seat, and lies down with her head resting on the hump. The remaining three sit in the back seat, the hump separating them: one yet to blow and two already done.
“We’ve forgotten the shoe box, Dad,” Mumma says, closing the front passenger door behind her.
“What’s that?”
“The shoe box. All the kids’ shoes, and your dress shoes. And mine. All the shoes.”
“We can’t go back.”
“I know. I thought you should know.” Mumma wishes she had the verve, the nerve to say, Let’s call the whole thing off, Dad. Big Sign, forgetting that shoe box. She puckers her lips to one side.
Dad turns his head, “You mean the kids will be wearing rubber thongs when we get there? Dressy clothes and rubber thongs?”
“Or sneakers,” Mumma says, “whatever they have on their feet. Me too, and you too. I think we better stop, have lunch and something to drink. These kids look ready for a break.”
“We’ll stop at the next café. Maybe we can find a place to buy shoes.”
Mumma’s no longer sure Dad will be able to stop in time. Dad signals off the shoulder, readjusting the image in his mind of what he has to show to God. In the rear view mirror, the chrome grill of a red sports car looms like shark’s teeth. Dad’s mind processes the shark teeth as he passes an orange sign: “Road Construction Ahead.”
“That story your second cousin Don told us tonight, do you think that’s true?”
“What, about my grandmother?”
“Yeah, isn’t that wild, your Grammy is, like, village folklore. She was, you know, a cautionary tale. Just because she forgot and threw out ‘the stem or the end’ of the spring tonic bean. A bad reaction, and she didn’t have the antidote.”
“You find this entertaining? An amusement, a party piece?”
“No. It just seems so amazing, unreal, in light of that ‘died of a broken heart’ story you told me when we first started seeing each other. Do you think your father even knew this story?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I asked him, all he ever said was, ‘she died of a broken heart’. That’s all I know, I think that’s all he knew. He refused to go back to visit. Of course, he only had a sister left by then, and she didn’t even live in the village anymore. Dad used to get these letters in the ’60s from the Chinese government saying that his sister was unwell, needed money. Letters that didn’t even have the decency to stop coming after he heard she had died. I don’t know what he knew. And I don’t know what the real story is. Donny’s mother lived there at the time, but she was so young, just a girl. I don’t know.”
“So don’t you want to find out? Don’t you want to know what happened?”
In town, the baby looks up over the café at the painted sign of a tawny beige peanut and decides this is a splendid place to vomit. Still getting accustomed to her family calling her Jane some of the time, and not always “the baby” (Jane, the name her teacher and the other kids called her at playschool this past year), Jane feels like she’s woken up from her nap on Mumma and Dad’s bed, the white chenille bedspread impressing a waffle weave pattern on her hot, sticky face. But her tummy’s a queasy whirlpool and Jane’s old enough to know and say that Tummy needs a place to backtrack, and fast. No longer an infant, but still small enough, Mumma plucks the baby off the car floor and runs with her, football-style, through the centre aisle of the restaurant to the washroom at the back. One vacant cubicle makes a passable end zone for Mumma and Jane, touchdown. [Note: Mumma will remember always that Jane measured thirty-six inches, and thirty-six pounds when she started Grade 1 that September, smaller than her other children but not significantly so. The newly-graduated school nurse will call Mumma at home, asks her why Jane is so small; does Mumma have enough food available to give to Jane at mealtimes; does Mumma know about the Canada Food Guide. Since Jane’s not that much smaller than her siblings at the same age, and the school nurse never called home about the older kids, Mumma will give the young nurse an intense practical education that the new graduate’s university failed to provide. Mumma will have enough pieces of her mind left to pack back into her <59-inch frame which will prove conducive to recalling, for the rest of her life, her pissed-off fury at the school nurse who dared to question Mumma’s ability to Mumma just because she had compact kids. For her part, the school nurse will never forget how dangerous it is to walk between a cub and a Mumma bear.]
Dad kneels beside the car, his fingers running along the laches of warm, oily tar, especially thick by the front wheel wells, then feathering out, flanking both sides of the beautiful maroon car, a monster woman’s false eyelashes. The three children stand beside Dad. He stops inspecting the tar and turns to the kids’ feet. Rubber thongs that come between the first and second toe, seem to stretch the toe bones into long overreaching digits. Grey white sneakers with a hole in th
e toe, and small, red canvas slip-ons with Augie Doggie on the vamp, one stained a dark blotchy red.
Dad stands up and rubs his hands on the fronts of his pants. No shoe stores on this street, but if they watch very carefully where they eat, there should be enough money for three pairs of new shoes. Dad looks up at the peanut sign over the café, and motions the children inside.
He can’t spot Mumma anywhere, but the proprietor comes to the front of the restaurant, greets Dad enthusiastically, and begins to speak. Acknowledging each other with eye movements and barely a head turn, the three kids stand silently as the words volley back and forth over their heads. The proprietor takes them to a booth with green vinyl seats, as Mumma appears from the ladies’ room with the baby in tow, wiping her hands across the front of her tee shirt. Mumma and Dad sit near the wall on either side, settling the controversy over who gets to sit by the little wall-mounted jukebox. [Note: Mumma and Dad will always sit on the outside seats of a booth after today, even after tableside jukeboxes disappear.] The children slowly fall in line into the booth seats.
At an adjacent table, three men in dark work pants and long leather jackets drink coffee. They talk amongst themselves, and one of them smiles at Tom, who sits on the end, kicking his feet in the air.
“Hey kid. You on summer vacation?”
“Yeah.” Mumma’s head snaps in Tom’s direction. She centres her attention on Tom, her menu frozen in mid-air. Dad notices Mumma and turns casually in the direction of the men’s table.
“Where you going?” the man asks.
“I don’t know,” Tom replies, not looking at him.
“Well that’s real nice. You here for lunch, then?”
“Mm hmm,” Tom says.
“What’s your favourite, kid? What do you like to eat best?”
Tom wants to be a gentleman, knows he should make eye contact with the man like Dad taught him, but Tom can’t make himself. Instead, he slowly turns his head sideways, “I don’t know. I guess steak and potatoes.”
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