Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

  Tonight will be Uncle Vanya, with Stacey Norman and Jonathan Heap. Every year Mr. Parkinson stages Our Town for the Christmas play but since he ploughed his car into the stockyard, a Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle jammed beneath his brake pedal, Miss Chapman has stepped in with the Russians. Miss Chapman is swigging Mrs. Crawley’s fresh eggnog, so innocent in a tiny Dixie cup. Mrs. Crawley is never skimpy when it comes to the rum, her flask tucked in her purse. Mrs. Crawley is the wife of Principal Crawley, and even if her table is beside Reverend Samuels and the Bittercreek United Church she can do whatever she pleases.

  Mrs. Biddles has a stack of Dixie cups in her hand. Egg takes note of this and thinks maybe it is best that Mama couldn’t come. Rum is not her drink anyway.

  Egg sees Miss — no, Ms. Chapman — by the door, her arms crossed, behind a cloud of smoke. Ms. Chapman’s cigarette glows, like an all-seeing eye. Egg doesn’t know what to make of Ms. Chapman. Ms. Chapman has come from Outside Bittercreek. Surely things must be done differently there. But Ms. Chapman saw Martin Fisken push little Jimmy Simpson from the swing set and she didn’t even give him a glare. Didn’t that say something about right and wrong? Egg thinks of all the bad things in the world. Maybe God is like that — a lunch monitor who doesn’t really care.

  From her perch on the scaffold, Egg can see Kathy and Stacey below her, by the girls’ basketball table. They lean together, their foreheads almost touching. Egg scoots down and slips behind the curtain. It’s not spying if you are just there, hiding from the bully gang. It’s not spying if people talk so loud you can’t help but hear.

  Kathy groans. “It’s like that Twilight Zone where the kid holds the entire town hostage and no one can get out.”

  “No, no, no. We’re the one where everyone else is pig-ugly and no one understands that we’re the beautiful people.”

  “We’re still stuck until the end of the year.”

  Stacey lights up. “Then Paris. Or New York. Or —”

  “Coal River. Or Calgary.”

  “We’ll get out of here, Kathy. The scout from the east, maybe even a basketball scholarship — remember what Coach Wagner said.”

  Egg’s ears prick up. What could they mean? Kathy leaving? But Mama and Papa…Egg feels like someone is standing on her chest.

  Egg peeps out between the curtains. Stacey’s hand is on Kathy’s shoulder.

  As she gazes across the auditorium, Egg catches sight of Pet Stinton and the townie gang by the edge of the assembly. Pet is staring at Kathy but Kathy doesn’t see. Kathy and Stacey stand close, too close, and if Egg can see this, so can Pet Stinton. Kathy is not careful. Kathy is never careful.

  Egg pops between Kathy and Stacey. “Martin’s after me!” she cries, and she tells herself this is only half a lie. Martin is always after her. It’s not like crying wolf at all.

  Kathy looks around, bristling, as Stacey’s arm slides around Egg. “Then you stay with us. You’ll be safe.” Egg catches the scent of Stacey’s Love’s Baby Soft.

  With relief, Egg sees that Pet Stinton has turned her attention to the stage, to the Shepherd who has knocked over the Baby Jesus cradle and conked Mother Mary on her head with his curly staff.

  For the rest of the pageant, the angels sing off-key, heralding the coming Kingdom as the papier mâché Bethlehem star crashes onto the stage. Mr. Jolean conducts his motley orchestra, his arms frantically windmilling in a desperate attempt to keep the chaos at bay, but Egg’s thoughts are elsewhere. The scholarship, the end of high school for Kathy. And Stacey. The thought comes unbidden to her, of Reverend Samuels’s last sermon, his fists slamming on the pulpit, quoting Leviticus and Romans. When Egg went into Gustafsson’s for Kathy’s Christmas surprise, she heard Mrs. Gustafsson say that Raymond was chased out of Bittercreek by Douglas Fisken and his gang.

  The curtain falls and the lights come up to a collective sigh. Stacey must make her way backstage to the dressing rooms for her Uncle Vanya, where Kathy will be helping with the pulleys and winches. Egg watches Kathy follow Stacey to the stage. Stacey is pretty and kind, her shoes come all the way from Toronto from the Eaton’s catalogue. Egg knows that Stacey is taking her sister away, away from her family, away from Bittercreek. She wants to call Kathy back but as she opens her mouth, she sees Martin Fisken by the edge of the steps. Egg tucks in her shoulders and runs — behind the stacked chairs, behind the pageant sign, down the long hallway, rushing past Miss Granger and Mrs. Ayslin who whisper by the fountain. A panic stitch digs into her side. Everything is changing too fast.

  Egg rushes to the heavy outside doors, the big heave against her chest and her wince at the slap of air as they slam solidly behind her. The Chinook wind is warm against her face and she can see the arc of clouds above the horizon, the bare concrete and the balding patches of snow on the distant green.

  The trees that line the street, so naked, claw at the sky.

  Egg takes a deep breath.

  The sky is big today. Sometimes Egg can feel it, the curly clouds and the wind, like something tugging at her, the push and pull of currents, something so big that can swallow her up, swallow her like she was nothing at all. Sometimes she can see it, chasing streaks across the sky. With a sky like this she can’t help but want to spread her wings and fly.

  She tries to think of how the world must look from Heaven, all blue and shiny, perfect even. From Heaven everything must seem just right, swirling clouds and green rainforests and sandy deserts all balanced together. But up close you see the ugly. Up close is where she lives.

  Egg hears a metallic rattle from the edge of the schoolyard, like the scrape of an empty pop can when she crushes it on her heel, the drag against the hard pavement. The baseball diamond is empty; there is only the rustle of leaves caught in the mesh. But — Egg cocks her head. The echoey tin tin rattle rattle raises the hair on the back of her neck. Egg turns but they’ve already got her, two Mary-Margarets, one on each arm, and Chuckie grabs the scruff of Egg’s neck. Her glasses are knocked askew. Her hand goes up to catch them but it is too late, she’s lost them now. Her Mama will be so disappointed! Chuckie laughs, his breath smelling of sour peanut butter. Egg hates peanut butter. But that metallic rattle creeps up her spine. The sound unnerves her. What could it be?

  Martin Fisken rolls the garbage can towards her. His grin is wide like the cat in that spooky story Alice in Wonderland. Martin does not even quicken his pace; he just casually kicks the dented can towards her. Egg twists. She tries to run but they’ve got her, her feet barely touch the ground. They toss her into the can, headfirst, thud against the bottom, a sharp pain on her head, like her brain splitting open, and then the world starts rolling.

  Tumbling, her stomach heaves, the sky turning over, the grind of concrete and metal so loud, bang bang bang as they smack the tin, the sound booming inside her ears, from the back of her eyes, inside her brain. Her head hits the can, her hands scraping the metallic sides for some kind of hold. And the smell — that wet, sweet smell, so rotten — she feels that lurch in her stomach, that bitter acid burn in her throat.

  “Egg?”

  Kathy’s voice, her arms reach out, she lifts Egg, holds her. Egg clings to her through a wave of dizziness, eyes spinning, clutch in her belly, clings to her as if she is the only solid thing in the whole entire universe, as Kathy gently picks the trash from Egg’s hair, and wipes away the filth.

  Kathy whispers in her ear, “It’s all right, Egg. It’s all right.”

  There’s blood on the snap buttons and Egg leans down. Egg vomits, like something spilling out of her, the evil, the bad.

  Kathy strokes her back.

  “You’re all right.”

  Egg can see Evangeline Granger walking towards them, and Mrs. Ayslin, in tears. Stacey comes behind them with a look on her face that tells Egg that something is really, really wrong. Her eyes sting. Egg wipes away the wet on her forehead, stares at the blood smeared on her hand, that shock of red. She grabs at her shirt, at the trash caked on her arm. She doesn’t like
it and brushes harder, then rougher, at the stains, the clinging rot. Egg is sobbing, the wet and the dirt and the smell. It will never come off her, she is tainted forever. Frantic, she clutches at herself but Kathy is there, holding her.

  “You’re all right. I’ve got you,” Kathy murmurs, “I’ve got you.”

  Egg hides her face in Kathy’s shoulder, as her sister picks her up and rocks her, away from all the prying eyes. She can feel the strength in her sister’s arms, as Kathy scoops her up and takes her home.

  …

  Egg stands on the toilet seat, staring into the bathroom mirror. Her glasses are a little bent so she bares her teeth and lets out a pirate hiss — “Arghhh!” The cut above her eye has almost healed; she thinks she is more Cyclops than pirate but she doesn’t know how a Cyclops sounds. Cyclops is from Greek mythology — their monsters are the best. They have hydras which are two-headed serpents but if you cut off one head, you get two more. In D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths, Atlas holds up the sky, a punishment for his sins. The Gods give few rewards. You get to live and that’s about it, she reckons. Maybe it’s the thought that counts.

  Monster means big. Monster means ugly. Monster means different. The Dictionary says that.

  In the Greek myths, sometimes the monster was once a mortal who became horrible through a punishment. But that didn’t solve the evil. It just made it huge. Maybe that’s where all the bad comes from, Egg thinks, a bad so big that it bursts out of nowhere. And then she thinks of Papa, his exile in the ostrich barn. What bad did he do?

  “Egg!” Kathy calls.

  Egg runs down the stairs, grabs her jacket from the hook and bursts out the door. They are going to Calgary! She sees Kathy by the truck, already with her foot on the running board. Egg starts to sprint to the doors but she can’t resist a spin. A blur of colours swirl around her. She marvels at the motion, as if she is in the centre of universe, a string pulled, a release into the whirlwind. The sky over Bittercreek, the clouds caught, like on a cotton candy stick — she points, wants to show Kathy, show the world —

  “Come on, Egg,” Kathy says, “we don’t have forever.”

  Egg thinks, well, nobody has forever, and bounces onto the front seat. She taps her feet together: today she gets to sit shotgun.

  They drive through flat fields, then turn as the fields slope and slouch into the distance. Egg gazes out the window. She sees a creeping blanket of snow begin to cover the slight crests, filling in the shallow dips; a line of fence posts makes an exclamation. Look, a snowshoe hare! Egg spots the fuzzy winter coat against a barren swatch of earth and thinks the feet aren’t that big at all. The sheets of white cut starkly against an abrupt valley, the gash of a coulee. The sun is brilliant, a kaleidoscope light that bursts into three hovering beams. Kathy points out the sun dog, explaining how light passing through ice crystals (Kathy calls them diamond dust) makes that magical halo. Hexagonal, Egg must look that up in the dictionary. They drive over fields and fields — then over the hump — they can see strip malls and streets. As they wind their way into downtown Calgary, over the Bow River, towards the concrete needle that Kathy calls the Husky Tower.

  Passing the trolley buses on Eighth Avenue, Kathy pulls into the parking lot and Egg can barely sit still. On the street, Egg runs past the window displays, into Eaton’s, straight to the toy section. She can see the box, the Six Million Dollar Man action figure with the Bionic eye and fold-back skin for his Bionic arm.

  Egg glances behind her. Kathy leans over the glass case in the jewellery section, her eyes caught by all the glitter. The saleswoman behind the counter pulls out a silver box with a flourish. Inside, a golden heart locket on a velvet pillow.

  No no no, Egg thinks. All the songs say never to give your heart away. Nancy Sinatra sings “Bang Bang” on the radio and that is when Egg knows that if they can come for Raymond, they can come for Kathy too.

  …

  It is Christmas Eve and Egg wants to fly. She wants invisibility and an X-O-skeleton, super-strength, and X-ray vision. Egg wants to eat Lucky Charms for breakfast. She wants a family that eats dessert. She wants snap buttons and overalls and a jackknife and slingshot but she wouldn’t use it against animals because that would be wrong.

  But most of all she doesn’t want to be Egg anymore.

  She thinks of the carollers on Maple as they go from door to door, the lights that line Main, the glow of red, green, and yellow. Bittercreek, sprinkled with a trace of snow, like fairy dust, must look like the picture-perfect holiday card.

  Mama slumps over the kitchen table. At her feet, the bottle rolls in ever smaller circles. Egg chews her lip. She doesn’t like the sound of the glass against the floor, that hollow hollow sound. Kathy’s out with Jillian and Debbie and she’s been grumpy because Stacey’s with her cousins in Ontario. No one talks about Raymond, and that’s when Egg knows that he is gone for good.

  But Mama’s here. Papa won’t come out from the ostrich barn so it’s all up to her.

  Egg bites her knuckles and starts with armadillo and cheats with narwhal but x — she can’t think of any animal that starts with x.

  It’s not fair. She’s too small to know what to do. If Kathy were here…but then Kathy spent the day sweeping out the ostrich barn with Papa. In the first year, when the ostriches went blind, Kathy swept them out every day before school and even after basketball practice during the finals.

  Mama kicks the bottle with her foot, snorting against the table. When she turns her head, Egg can see the line of the checkered placemat against her mother’s cheek.

  Hollow hollow.

  She tries to get Mama up but grown-ups are so heavy. Mama’s words slide into each other. The liquor has her, she’s drowning in it.

  “Mama!” Egg shakes her, the shot of fear making her bold. “Mama!”

  Mama’s eyes flicker open. Her mouth gapes. Egg wrinkles her nose at the smell.

  “Come on, Mama. Let’s go upstairs.”

  They stagger to the doorway, in the darkness of the alcove. Mama’s hip hits the china bureau and Egg can hear the tinkling. Twilight scattered by crystal, the glass surfaces glinting darkly.

  Mama staggers. Egg feels like she is slipping through her fingers. She tries, she does, but Mama’s too heavy. They slide to the floor.

  The train whistle calls from a thousand miles away.

  “Osamu,” Mama slurs, “the sirens . . .”

  Egg is scared that Mama doesn’t know her.

  “Go to sleep, Mama,” Egg whispers. Mama rolls on her back, her mouth open. Egg goes to the living room and takes the comforter off the back of the big chair. At least Egg can wrap the blanket around her.

  Mama’s mouth is open and Egg doesn’t want it to be open. She doesn’t want to stay beside her and she’s afraid to go away.

  “What’s the use of it? What’s the point?” Her Mama’s voice rings with a sudden clarity. “At least your father . . .” but she trails off and Egg can’t catch any of it.

  Egg sits in the dark. She can hear beyond the creaking walls of the house, beyond the fields, and far, far, far away from Bittercreek. A coyote howls from the south field. She thinks of flying, up to the sky and beyond. In space there is no sound. Egg wonders how that must feel, so far and so alone. The blue whale, she thinks, or animal alphabets. Mama sleeps. Egg lays her head on Mama’s shoulder, listens to her mother’s beating heart. She doesn’t want to leave Mama but she must remember for the notebook. Osamu. Osamu. And the sirens.

  Egg sleeps. When she wakes she is snug under her blanket, tucked into her bed. The moonlight falls across her bed, an unearthly blue. The sirens, she remembers but the name has slipped from her lips, and is gone.

  …

  On Christmas morning Egg wakes to the smell of cinnamon. She thinks that Albert and Kathy must be downstairs with Mama making the Christmas pancakes. They always have pancakes on Christmas morning, Albert whipping the cream into a frothy peak in the big bowl. And presents! This year she wants a Six Million Dollar M
an action figure with a Bionic eye you could actually look through and —

  Then Egg remembers about Albert. This is the first Christmas without him.

  On the stairwell, she peers through the bars of the banister. Kathy is in the kitchen, making the Christmas pancakes. In the living room the tinsel glints on the tree, the presents are tucked under the pine branches.

  Egg shuffles into the kitchen and sits at the table. Kathy turns at the scrape of the chair against the floor.

  “I thought you’d be up by now.” Kathy flips the pancakes. “Merry Christmas!”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “Oh, she’s just sleeping in a little.”

  Egg can see the furrow in Kathy’s brow.

  “I made your favourite — pancakes with chocolate chips!” Kathy adds. This chirping, cheery Kathy unnerves Egg. She wants her brooding big sister back.

  “Can we do the presents before breakfast?”

  “Sure, don’t see why not.”

  Egg runs to the tree, to colourful boxes spread under the branches. She zeros in on the big red box with the tag To Egg, From Santa and tears open the wrapping, too impatient for the ribbon. She stares at the package.

  It is a Big Jim action figure.

  “Look, he has a karate board and a baseball. There’s even a dumbbell and muscle band. See, there’s a button on his back,” Kathy says, pointing at the box. “You can actually break the karate board. And he throws the baseball too.”

  Egg stares at the package. The Six Million Dollar Man has a Bionic Power Arm with grip action. He has special skin on his arm that can roll back, revealing his Bionic parts. Kathy looks expectant so Egg says, “Gee thanks. It’s just what I wanted.”

  “Well, it’s from Santa.”

  Then Egg knows that it’s Kathy who bought the presents. Mama is gone. For her there is no Christmas without Albert.

  Egg hugs the box to her chest. “It’s the best present ever, Kathy.”

  Kathy holds out another gift. “Here, this is from me.” She hands Egg the rectangular package.