“How is your first day going?” Evangeline asks.
Egg bites her lip. “Mrs. Syms is my teacher now.”
Evangeline sighs. It is then Egg knows that Mrs. Syms has not fooled everyone.
“First day is always the longest.” Evangeline places her hand on Egg’s shoulder, the lightest touch. Egg can see the crescent moons on fingernails bitten to the quick. “But it’s not forever,” Evangeline adds.
Grown-ups always say this. It doesn’t help. Like “you’ll understand when you get older.” Like a cookie jar placed just out of her reach.
But Evangeline, her jagged nails, her soothing voice, she has always been kind. She smiles with a warmth that spreads to her eyes, and asks, “What colour would you like today?” They walk behind the counter where Evangeline keeps her rainbow of lollipops, stashed behind the stamps and her stack of blank book slips. Last year, on the bad days, Evangeline would slip a candy to her. Egg does not think it strange that the school librarian would know her bad days. She has read of guardian angels and Evangeline is everything angelic.
Evangeline, Evangeline, Egg wants to sing her name.
Click click click. She twirls the candy against the back of her teeth. Evangeline is showing her two new books: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler — a strange title, Egg thinks — and A Wrinkle in Time.
Click. Her tongue will be purple.
“How is your family?” Evangeline asks.
Egg’s throat tightens. She thinks of Papa, exiled to the ostrich barn, and how could she explain Mama? Her tears almost rise, her chest so full. It is too much to be on the outside, the only Japanese family on the prairie with Albert dead and Kathy with the snap buttons and herself with the lunch box onigiri. Everything is upside down and jumbled. Yet Evangeline, her brown eyes and lollipops, Egg wants to tell her — no, she wants to run away, to hide behind the wooden cart. Here, in the library, Egg wants the books to swallow her.
“Perfect,” she says.
As Evangeline turns to her stacks, Egg realizes that no one must know, of Mama’s whiskey, of Papa’s cot, of Martin chasing her, taunting jap jap jap. Egg thinks of Pandora, of all the evils in the world contained in one box. A secret. She will not be like Pandora. She will bury it.
Evangeline Granger looks so much like a storybook heroine, like Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie. Her family has been in Bittercreek since before the railroad. There is even a road, off Four Corners, named after the first Granger in the territory. Evangeline, daughter of Old Man Granger, the sourest man east of the Rockies. She is like a pioneer girl in a bonnet. Egg, on her tiptoes, so much wants to ask her how it is to be normal, how it is to be white.
…
At the end of the day, the bell rings through the corridors. The bus will be leaving soon. At her desk, Egg sits, as her fellow students rush out of the classroom. She bites her lip. She will not be the goat, not this year. She will wait and run just before the bus pulls out of the parking lot. Then Martin Fisken will not be able to catch her. She’s been practising all summer long.
She looks down at her legs and taps her feet together. If she were taller, she’d be able to run like the ostriches. She tries to imagine her legs growing, pulled long like taffy. Egg knows you must be careful what you wish for — that’s in the stories as well. As the last of the class bolts out the door, she grabs her bag and rises.
At the door, she looks up and down the hall. Now she will take the long way, into the high school corridor, that is her plan. She dashes down the hallways, by the rows and rows of lockers, through labyrinthine twists and turns. Her footsteps echo, bouncing against the glass and granite and the dull concrete.
She stops. She looks down the empty passageway, the light a watery fluorescence.
She is lost.
“Hey squirt.”
Egg jerks her head up but it is only Raymond, who smiles when he calls her that.
“What are you doing up here?” he asks. “Are you looking for your sister?”
Egg nods. Raymond, in his city shirt, should be on Soul Train, not trapped in this dust bowl of Bittercreek. He gazes at her and for a moment Egg wonders if Kathy has spoken to him about her — the weak one. The small one. The stupid one who can barely talk in class.
Raymond leans forward. “When I had Mrs. Syms, she scared the bejesus out of me. She still does. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom. I swear, all year I looked like a penguin,” and he walks for her, his knees locked together. They laugh and Egg wonders. A part of her is amazed that he would give that away, a story that makes him look so weak. Is there a word for that? Egg gazes at his dark eyes and fine features, as he waves goodbye and makes his way down the hall. He is the only boy that she would call beautiful. She knows that Doug Fisken calls him sissyface, the football team snickers when he walks down the hall. Egg wants to catch up to him and ask him why.
“Egg,” Kathy is suddenly beside her. “How was the day?”
Egg nods. If you don’t say anything, it’s not like you are really lying. “Miss Granger gave me the Mixed-Up Files and some Wrinkle in Time.”
“I loved those books.” But Kathy spies Egg’s dented lunch box, the long scratch where the paint is scored off. “What happened?” she asks.
Egg’s voice drops. “I fell, an accident.” She clears her throat and gallops off with, “We’re learning about the Vast Open Plains of the Northern Tundra!”
“Oh Egg,” Kathy chides, so much like a big sister, “you’ve got to be more careful.”
Egg sinks into her chest and all the words come tumbling inside her: stupid clumsy useless dumbbell. She must be as vigilant as the nestlings on the Savannah. Yes. She must be more careful.
…
Egg steps off the school bus and drags her bookbag behind her. She shuffles her feet and kicks at the gravel in the drive. She thinks of her Greek myths, of a man carrying the world on his shoulders, or the one rolling the rock uphill. She looks at the barn, the house, the field. The sun beats down on the parched grass by the shrinking slough. She feels the heat loosening, as if unravelling — this is her barn, her house, her field — and sighs a small relief that the first day of school is over. Her shoulders sag, as if all the bad of the day drains out of her.
Bye bye Martin Fisken. So long Snooty Syms.
Egg turns to the barn, holds her head up to the scent of green: alfalfa hay. It smells like Mama’s fragrant tea leaves in the black lacquered bowl. She can see her Mama through the kitchen window, the frame squeezing her smaller and smaller. The sonorous boom of the ostrich call fills the late afternoon air. Two ostriches, a black plume and a smaller brown plume weave from side to side in their outdoor pen. Their kantling dance, the awkward loping, wings stretched wide, that ridiculous bobbing head as the neck flails from side to side — Egg knows that this is ostrich S - E - X. From what Egg knows of S - E - X, she thinks it is just stupid.
She makes her way into the barn. As she opens the gate, her eyes scan the three indoor pens that line the south side. There are two pens for the adult ostriches (one for each breeding pair) and each pen has a grill that opens to the outside enclosure. The last pen is for the chicks’ run. Egg drops her bag, hears the glug glug of the jerry can, and turns. Her father fills the water trough, twisting the spout in the corner. He looks up and gives her a nod. Papa’s movements are precise, just enough and nothing extra. His features are sharp, as if cut by a razor, his frame is wiry, with a strength that compacts and contains. In her father, there are pressures of time and the patience of ages. Like the glaciers, Egg thinks, like the erratics. As she climbs onto the stool by the old wood stove, she catches the swing of her legs by hooking her ankles on the bar. She knows he likes the calm, how he wraps himself up in a cocoon of quiet. Butterflies come from cocoons. Egg knows that bears hibernate, that frogs come from tadpoles after a string of jelly eggs. Metamorphosis. The word sits on the tip of her tongue.
His cot, neatly made, is tucked in by the boxes at the back of
the barn. Albert’s boxes. Albert’s room is empty now. Like a hole where the heart used to be.
“How was your first day of school?” Papa asks.
“Good,” Egg chirps. He would expect nothing less.
Her father lays out the pellets and alfalfa in a pan to lure the first pen into the barn. He gives a piercing whistle to announce that the feed is in. The ostriches, with their awkward stick-like gait, make their way towards the pan, their necks scooping and curving. When they are all inside, her father latches the grill behind them.
Egg straightens. “Can I get the eggs? I’ll be extra careful.”
“All right.”
Egg slips off her stool and runs outside to the pens. The wind rises, lifting as it gathers force, funnelling down the foothills to roar across the plains. Tumbleweed clouds in a churning sky. Through the wire gate, she dashes to the scratched-out nest and scoops out the two large eggs, one in each arm. She braces them against her chest, cradles the bulk of them, these strange, stone-like spheres. “Metamorphosis,” she whispers. She walks back inside the barn, her footsteps slow and cautious as the wind makes mischief of her hair. She places these treasures into her father’s arms. As he wipes the eggs clean, he strokes the rough, pitted pores of the shell. He holds, feels the weight in his palm.
“Look,” he murmurs. Arm extended, he candles the egg, clicks on his flashlight, and casts the beam upward. Lit from below, he traces the thin outline of the air sac, the yellow glow of the yolk. A satisfied grunt sounds from his throat. He places the egg on the setting tray, the slight point of the shell down, with the concave curve of the air cell at the top. He pencils in the date, a bumpy scrawl.
Egg rocks back on her heels, then taps them together. When her father laughs, it is like air leaking out of him, but that was before Albert’s accident. He was bigger then, a thousand feet taller. To Egg, it seems as if he is shrinking, shrinking to fit the smallness under the beams, drawing in the shadows of the barn and the pens.
Egg would like to ask him why he won’t leave the ostrich barn but she can’t quite get out the words. It’s like her mouth is full of gumballs, so sour she can’t even spit. There are a million questions she would like to ask: Why does their family have to be so different? Why does different feel so wrong?
Was it always this way? No, not until Albert died.
The kettle whistles on the stove. Sharp.
He takes his mason jars from the box by the door and fills them with the hot water, capping the lids with a firm twist. The jars he places around the setting tray. Patiently, he wraps a rolled blanket around the edges of the tray to keep in the warmth for as long as possible: his makeshift incubator for the next forty days.
He is an ostrich Papa, Egg thinks. Albert was the boy, he was everything. The rest of us don’t matter.
“The chicks are filling up the crate, Dad,” Egg points to the male and female ostriches, their necks poking through the bars. “Gertie and Bertie, their feathers look thicker. And Griszelda —”
“Shouldn’t give them names, Egg. You know that.” There is a lilt to his voice, the slightest accent.
Egg bites her lip and repeats his old admonishment, “Can’t get too attached.”
Papa nods.
Behind him, at the back of the barn, behind the low tangle of thin wire, the ostrich chicks call from their brooder crate, a high trilling whinny. At a few weeks, their down is not quite feather, still blunted; the full majestic mass of plumage is yet to come. Egg clicks her tongue and watches as their heads perk, rising on their elongated necks like comical telescopes.
Ostrich Papa squats in front of the pen, peering at the chicks. Ostrich Papa, so close he can see only the hatchlings. Candling and turning his clutch.
Egg swallows past the tightness in her throat. “Can I run them?” she asks.
“You have to sweep the pen first,” Papa says. Egg goes to the corner that holds the rakes, pitchfork, and the spiky rust-harrow that gives her nightmares. She draws out the wide broom that has been cut to her size.
As she sweeps out the chicks’ pen, her father checks his breeders: the four small females, their brown coats dull in the afternoon light. The two black-feather ostrich males, with their ridge of white feathers, have lost some weight in this season. Their pink necks bulge as they commence their evening call. Wooh-wooh-wooohhh. Egg lays down the hessian jute and spreads the grit for their gizzards. Jute, for the traction, and the grit, to help grind the feed in their stomachs. With the hatchlings, they will have to be careful. Infection, impaction, dehydration, and diarrhea, although the loop of twine between the legs may take care of the spraddle. The losses are high with the young ones. She eyes the floor for a stray piece of straw, an errant threat that could catch in their throats — because the ostriches will eat anything. Papa has wrapped the lower sides of the chick pen with fine wire for the bars are too wide to hold them in. Egg lays out the shallow pan of feed. As she opens the side of the crate, the chicks tumble out, at times their long legs splaying underneath the weight of their bodies. The biggest ones are nearly half her size. She stands, and stares, and feels the uncomplicated pull of their companionship, their animal nature. They are innocent, after all. Their chirps are a simple me! me! me! that pulls at her heart. Palms out, she feels them pass beneath her hands, the tickle of fuzz and incipient feathers as they scamper to the pan.
…
After dinner, Mama takes one look at Egg, at the yellow husks in her hair and the smear of Godknowswhat on her forehead, and declares that it is bath time.
As she sheds her clothes, Egg thinks metamorphosis.
In the bathtub, she ducks her head under the water and all the sounds of the house come booming, so close and so far. It is like she is inside herself. She holds her breath. A water cocoon. She knows that the blue whale is the biggest animal ever, in all of existence, even bigger than any dinosaur. At two hundred tons, its heart is as big as a car and it breathes through a blowhole. The blue whale, who can live a hundred years, older than elephants, they roam the oceans but no one knows where. What must they think of the sky, that other ocean, the harsh and alien air, something you need to live but you can’t quite live in?
Egg wonders what they dream.
Ostriches dream. They tuck their heads beneath their wings but they don’t fly. Sometimes they shudder and when the wind comes up, they dance in circles, feathers spread and spindly legs kicking. Their heads bob and weave. Egg, in the bath with her head underwater, thinks about ostriches. She wonders. No one else has an ostrich farm.
Kathy scoops her up from the tub, tousling Egg’s wet hair with her blue towel, her Ninny Blankie with the corners chewed, but that was when Egg was a baby. After teeth brushing and pjs, Kathy tucks Egg into bed. With a snap of the wrist, Kathy floats the sheet down the length of the bed and draws the edge under Egg’s chin.
Egg laughs. “You’re like a magician.”
Kathy scoops the moufu, the heavy blanket, from the foot of the bed and plops it down on Egg’s head. It is like an old game of avalanche.
Egg’s head pops from beneath the blanket. “You going out with Stacey tonight?”
“Yeah. What about it?” Kathy, straightening out the corners of the bed, has her prickles up.
Egg sighs. She knows that her sister will keep her secrets until the day she dies but they are written all over her face. “Nothing…Could you tell me a story?”
“Egg —”
“A short one. Promise not to interrupt.” Egg crosses her heart. “Hope to die.”
Kathy puffs out her cheeks.
“Or I can tell you about the Vast Open Plains of the Northern—”
“Okay, okay,” Kathy rubs her chin, “give me a sec.”
Egg sits and draws the blanket around her. “Is Papa ever coming out of the ostrich barn?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kathy?”
“Yeah?” Kathy’s hand pats the bottom of the bed for Nekoneko, Egg’s puppet Kitty. Egg can’t sleep
without Nekoneko.
“How did you get Popular?”
“Well, I don’t know that I’m Popular.”
“No one teases you, and I’ve seen you stand up for Raymond.”
“Is that what this is about? Is someone teasing you? Is it Martin?”
Egg sinks a little. “No.” She worries the corner of the moufu. “I just wish things were different.”
Kathy pulls out Nekoneko from beneath the bed and knocks off the dust. “Yeah,” she says softly.
Humpty Dumpty, Egg thinks.
“It’s time for you to go to sleep.” Kathy raises her hand to the lamp but her eyes fall to the book on the bedside table. “Hey,” she says as she picks up the worn paperback of Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. “If you want me to read this to you, don’t read ahead, okay?” She squints at Egg. “Have you been going through my room again?”
Egg hugs the book to her chest. “I just like to hold it. Let me keep it, please — I won’t read ahead, I promise. I just like to look at her picture.” Egg rubs the outline of Anne’s photograph at the back of the book and thinks of her own notebook. It’s the first day of school and her pages are blank but she is too tired and enough is enough. Egg rolls onto her back and sighs. “I would like a best friend, Kathy.”
Kathy turns off the lamp.
Egg tosses dramatically. “I can’t sleep.”
Kathy strokes Egg’s head, her fingers threading through her thick, stubborn hair. She whispers, “Just think of all the alphabet animals.”
Egg closes her eyes. The first day of school. The first September without Albert. She thinks of Mama and retreats into her blanket. “Do you think we’re broken?”
“Shh, Egg. Shh.”
Egg feels the lulling motion of Kathy’s hand stroking her hair, hears the rhythm of Kathy’s breathing. Through her window, she can see the swirl of constellations. She thinks of the big blue whale, a pod of leaping dolphins — and Raymond— she smiles. If penguin Raymond can make it through school, maybe Egghead ostriches can too.
Prairie Ostrich Page 3