Prairie Ostrich

by Tamai Kobayashi

  Egg crouches under the kitchen table, watching her sister pace. She tucks her knees up under her chin. Her Mama stands at the kitchen sink, her hands in the sudsy water. How still her Mama is. How silent, as she soaks the dishes, as she eavesdrops on Kathy in the living room. Egg traces the speckles in the linoleum. Her Mama knows what is happening, that Kathy loves Stacey, that Stacey is gone. But Mama believes in Jesus. Egg wants so much to ask about Leviticus and Romans, of God’s love in Darwin, Australia.

  The door slams. Egg turns to see Kathy through the door window, turning up her collar, rushing into the night.

  “Shikata ga nai,” her mother sighs.

  Egg remembers her parents at the kitchen table, their voices low, the sky a wraparound cloak of twilight. Japanese is the talk of the midnight table. English is to fit in. Japanese is only her father’s occasional ahra-ma, a sigh and a mutter, a code that Egg does not understand.

  She must write this down but her notebook is in her room. She runs upstairs.

  At her mother’s bedroom, she pauses. The door is slightly ajar. Egg can see the dark blue curtains that frame the frost-tinted window. Her hand presses lightly against the worn right panel and the door swings open. A heavy mahogany dresser with a three-panelled mirror sits to her left with a clutter of small fluted bottles of azure and emerald on the tray. It is the mirrors that draw her into the room, their reflections of the screen by the closet, that odd angle of the side table. Egg turns. The bed seems so large. Egg remembers bouncing on the moufu, that falling that is almost flying, a game of trampoline.

  On the side table, there is a picture of Albert, Kathy, Papa, Mama, and Egg, a snapshot from their visit to the Japanese Garden in Lethbridge. It was only last fall that they were walking across the wooden bridge, gazing at the stone garden. Egg remembers the sculpted pines, the bell that rang so clear, the teahouse, golden yellow cypress — how the space lit up the second the sun shone through! Egg stares at the photograph. She can see Mama’s dust trail on the picture frame, her fingertips against the glass.

  In Lethbridge they had stopped at Nakashima’s Japanese Food and Sundries. At least once a year, Papa would stop by Nakashima’s but this was the first time that Egg had gone along. She wandered the aisles — all the names she could not understand. Lethbridge, with so many Japanese-Canadian beet farmers, because of the war. The ghost war, the one you don’t read in history books, the shadow war with words like “evacuation,” “work camps,” and “internment.” The war you know, but you never hear, the whispers of grown-ups as they turn away.

  With her fist, Egg brushes away the dust, and places the picture back on the table. She shifts, her toe hitting — something. Beneath the table, she finds the box.

  Her Mama’s tansu. The scored dark wood, with dented iron plates on the corners and edges, black metallic handles that curve and swoop. The chest is as long as her arm, as deep as an ostrich egg.

  A secret in a box.

  Egg opens the lid.

  A tin of Sakuma Drops in the corner, beside a wooden toy train and an old ticket stub. Egg picks up the tin and shakes it: empty. Tucked in the side, almost out of view, between a brown sheet of carefully folded, almost translucent paper, there is a black and white photograph, creased at the edges.

  Egg draws out the sheet. It is so old she can feel the fibres of the page clinging to her fingertips like grains of sand. The paper falls away. The photograph is stiff, a dry glossy card that has lost its sheen, an image that has yellowed with age.

  In the photograph there is a girl that looks like Mama, but like a young Mama, young as Egg, and a boy like Albert but it can’t be Albert because how can Albert be older than Mama? Behind them, there is a train station with a crowd of men in uniforms — soldiers, Egg thinks — and a big burst of steam by the engine. Flags wave, caught in their frenzy, and the glint of metal, a white hot light on the shoulders of the men. Albert, no, not Albert, the one like Albert, he stands close to Mama as if to shield her from the frantic crowd.

  The war, Egg thinks.

  In the movies, war is about big men with big guns and words so twisted that their meaning is lost. Egg can’t figure it out. Even the Dictionary is no help. In the movies the baby-faced boy dies and even if they say that war is bad, you can’t help looking at all the explosions. Die die die. They play war in the schoolyard. But this photograph is not about bombs, or guns, or tanks or planes. Her Mama is scared and everyone is saying goodbye.

  But the boy? Where is he now?

  Egg takes the wooden train and climbs onto the bed. She stretches it out before her, up to the overhead light. She feels the bounce on the mattress like the rocking of a railcar. She can just make out the writing, carved into the side of the train as she bounces. Bounce, bounce, bounce —

  “Egg!” Mama cries from the doorway.

  Egg jerks, she falls from the bed. Her hands clutch the train — crack — as she snaps it in two.

  Mama stares at her.

  Egg tastes the blood: she has bitten her tongue.

  “Get out!” her Mama screams, towering over her. Her eyes are hard and her voice — Egg has never heard her voice like that before.

  Egg runs to her room and scuttles under the bed. In her panic she has run with the train that she has snapped. She stares at it. She has broken it. She has broken the family.

  Snow

  Snow

  Snow

  The evening falls yet the clouds are still luminous, holding twilight. The windows of the barn glow golden, the snowflakes caught in the halo.

  Hello world. Egg taps her fingers against the glass.

  Egg sits in her room, gazing out her window. She places her palm against the glass and breathes, frosting the pane.

  She takes her hand away. Her print. Not a shadow, not a silhouette.

  What is that?

  A sign.

  She will begin her practice today. She has been weak. She has been silly. She will start again for the test is soon to come. Like Job. Like the survival of the fittest.

  She has to bring Mama out of the well. The whale has swallowed her, like Jonah. She doesn’t know quite how to do it but she will find a way. Trial and error, they say. Practice makes perfect.

  …

  Kathy reads the current events in The Globe and Mail shipped in just for her, ever since Egg can remember. Kathy’s current events are not so current — she picks up the stack on Saturday and reads the week all in one sitting. Something called “Watergate” in big black letters, along with “Vietnam.” Watergate is in a place called Washington, and Vietnam is the war that has gone on forever. It’s all on the six o’clock news, right after Gilligan’s Island, and it’s a far-away-ever-after that burns and burns and burns.

  The photograph is in The Globe and Mail. It is an old photo, taken on June 8, 1972, outside the small village of Trang Bang, twenty-two miles outside Saigon. It is a picture of a country road, cropped fields on either side, smoke obscuring the grey distance. The photograph is not just the road, nor the field, nor the soldiers but the children, running, screaming, and at the centre, the girl, naked and burning. For Egg, an unfamiliar word: napalm.

  After school, she decides that she will not wait for the end of Kathy’s basketball practice. Egg will make her own way home. The road will be enough.

  There are prairie tall tales, storms that pancake houses, a truck thrown into a tree, cows frozen milking ice cream, and ducks that fly away with a slough. The wind, however, is no joke and Egg shivers as she walks.

  She stuffs her gloves on top of two fence posts by the Morgan’s lot, a goodbye-hello and how-dee-do that bleakens the relentless white. Pinch your eyes to crush the glare. The air is brittle, Egg thinks. Her breath freezes, a cloud on her lips.

  Here, on the road outside Bittercreek, the two fence posts, with the world in retreat, the horizon receding like an early-morning dream. The snow, the sky, the storm, the sudden, muffled quality of the air.

  She slides out of her coat. This, too, she c
an leave behind.

  Egg picks up a mound of snow with her bare hands, feeling the bite, the burn against her skin. The crystals melt, dissolving.

  Metamorphosis.

  Again and again, she plunges her hands into the snowbank. White mitts.

  It doesn’t hurt at all, no. It doesn’t hurt at all.

  …

  Kathy finds her, a mile from the house. Egg gives no clear answers as she is bathed and then bundled. Kathy sits her in the kitchen, surrounded by buckets of hot water, beneath a mountain of blankets. There is not a word about the lost coat and mittens.

  Egg can’t quite feel her ears but she tells no one.

  Egg counts one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. It is a trick that Kathy taught her, to tag the thunder to that electric flash, distance and velocity, the speed of sound to light. Egg blinks back the steam and readies herself but Kathy only pulls up a chair and settles in.

  “You going to tell me, Egg?”

  “What?”

  Kathy rubs her eyes, the furrow between her brows deepening. “Why?”

  “Dunno.” The mist from the buckets fog Egg’s glasses as they slide down. Nose sweat.

  “Nekoneko was worried.” Kathy’s eyes chase the shadows in the china bureau. “Nekoneko was alone.”

  Egg clutches the stuffed cat in her arms, one-eyed Kitty who never blinks. “I was practising.”

  “What?”

  “For the march from Auschwitz.”

  Egg holds herself, like the bolt before the strike. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, but Kathy only says, “You could have frozen to death.”

  “Who is Osamu?”

  Now it is Kathy’s turn to hold. “Who told you that name?”

  Egg shrugs.

  Kathy sighs. “Mama’s brother. He died in the war.”

  It all goes back to the war.

  “Kathy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mama’s stuck in bed because of me,” Egg says simply.

  Kathy looks tired. “No, Egg, it’s because…after Christmas . . .” Kathy sighs. “Go up and say hello.”

  Egg shuffles to the stairs and looks back at her sister. Kathy is as close to grown-up as you can get. Bossy-the-cow Kathy who thinks she knows everything. Grown-ups never tell you the whole story. They never tell you that dead is the old cat rotting in the copse with maggots rolling around in the eyes; they give you stories of angels and puffy-cloud Heaven. Grown-ups lie. They give you bits and pieces, they say “look how pretty” even when it is not — and then they make you smile over a lie that you know isn’t the whole truth.

  Egg hovers over the threshold of Mama’s doorway. Ever since Egg broke the train, Mama gazes blankly at the walls. Not even the whiskey will get her up. It’s like a staring contest where no one wins.

  I was only trying to help, Egg thinks, but now I’ve made it worse.

  “Mama?” Egg whispers, “I’m home.” She thinks of Anne, in the Secret Annex. Margot was the mother’s favourite daughter, smart, prim, and perfect.

  She searches her mother’s face for some kind of recognition. Mama’s face against the white sheets is so deathly pale. Egg knows that the speed of light is the fastest ever, that the blue whale roams the seas, filling the oceans with song. She knows that Anne Frank sings on Broadway and that God smited Darwin, Australia. Her Mama’s like an iceberg, broken and drifting. Most of all, with that look, Egg knows that Mama hates her.

  …

  In geography, Egg learns that there are seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, and Antarctica. Mrs. Syms says continents are land masses but Europe and Asia — shouldn’t they be one whole continent? Egg has some questions but she knows that Mrs. Syms does not like questions. Egg smooths out the map. It takes up her entire desk. A map is a wondrous thing. Why, you could walk from China to Portugal, from Portugal to the very bottom of Africa! What about a railroad? From the Yukon to the Patagonias! In front of her like this, it is as if you could jump from Calgary to Vancouver. Edmonton is a fingernail away.

  As she colours in all the blue, someone smacks her elbow and the crayon scrawls into Greenland.

  “Hey!” Egg looks up.

  Martin stands beside her, all smiles, like a jack-in-the-box monkey.

  At lunchtime, Egg slips into her empty classroom. She carefully peels her single slice cheese from the plastic wrapper and places the sticky slab onto Martin’s chair. She hates the single slice. Sweaty cheese. With a glance at the clock, she hides behind her coat, which hangs from her hook at the back of the classroom. Her backpack covers her feet. This is the perfect disguise. Camouflage. Just like in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

  The bell rings and her stomach is jello.

  As the class tumbles in, Egg peeks through her sleeve. She sees Martin take his seat. When Mrs. Syms strolls into the classroom and faces the blackboard, Egg slips to her desk.

  At the end of the class, Martin stands and it is Glenda who points and says, “Eww, cheese butt!”

  The class bursts out laughing. Egg watches as the tips of his ears turn red, burning down like a fuse until his face is flush in anger.

  Martin catches her smiling.

  His teeth are bared and Egg thinks, oh no.

  At recess, Egg runs to the parking lot, quick-quack-quick, ahead of Martin. She hides behind the stunted bushes, tucks, makes herself small, her teeth chattering.

  At the parking lot exit, Mrs. Ayslin and her husband push out the big doors that slap so heavy behind you. Mrs. Ayslin looks about to cry, her face crumbling behind her dark glasses. Mr. Ayslin’s burly hand grips Mrs. Ayslin’s arm too tight, pushing her to the car. Egg can see his teeth when he speaks, his lips curling as if he is about to swallow her whole, his whole body shove shove shove, his whole body wrong. Something is pressing at the back of Egg’s eyes, a roar that fills up her ears. Mr. Ayslin’s hand is up, threatening, but Mrs. Ayslin is broken already, her glasses knocked to the ground. Roughly, he grabs her thin wrist and pulls, as if to snap her in two. Egg can see Martin coming up from beside the parking lot wall but all the scaredy sweat has run out of her. Her tongue clings to the roof of her mouth and her chest itches but Egg runs between the cars and darts in front of Mr. Ayslin. He towers above her, the smell of musk, all bully beef and ham-fisted. Egg points her finger at him and shouts, “Bad dog, bad dog! Go pick on someone your own size!”

  Mr. Ayslin looks surprised, that’s for sure.

  Mrs. Ayslin blinks, her mouth a silent O. She blinks as if the light is too bright, a sudden dazzle, like the wind barrelling down the foothills and Rockies, like the flash of spider thunder crackling up the dark summer sky.

  She closes her mouth.

  “I’ll take you in, Egg,” Mrs. Ayslin says.

  And so Mrs. Ayslin takes Egg inside for cookies, her hand gripping too hard on Egg’s shoulder but Egg doesn’t mind. Chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk too and there’s no way Martin can catch her now.

  Egg tells Mrs. Ayslin of the blue whales, their mysterious migration, of bumblebee bats in the jungles of Thailand. The biggest mammal and the smallest mammal, they all fit in the world. It’s in the National Geographic. Egg tells her so.

  March

  It is the ultimate double bill: Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, playing for a limited engagement, and Egg can barely stand it. Chinook Ridge, squatting at the tail end of Calgary, is a beacon for all the southern towns, two strip malls that were slapped together, united under aluminum. But Chinook Ridge has a bowling alley at one end and the cinema at the other, along with Sears, Zellers, and $1.49 day Woodward’s. The food court is new, along with the office tower. Chinook Ridge and everyone comes to the March Break double bill, ever since anyone can remember.

  Egg rides in with Kathy, bouncing on the edge of the front seat, humming along with bands like Electric Light Orchestra and Bachman Turner Overdrive. She knows that three is a magical number. She taps her feet, squirming with excitement. Winter crisp, t
he snapping freeze after a lulling Chinook. Kathy is cautious at the wheel but Egg doesn’t have a care. Last year at the Chinook Ridge she saw the world upside down in The Poseidon Adventure and she survived it. Rattling in the rusted truck, Egg sees the barren fields fall away to the first dribbles of strip malls and gas stations as they ride up Highway Two. She can see the Chinook marquee:

  Now Playing

  Earthquake and The Towering Inferno

  The Shake and Bake Combo!

  At the cinema Egg steps under the canopy of glittering lights and slaps down her fifty cents at the counter. Even sourpuss Kathy has to smile. They walk through the double-mirrored hall. The foyer is cavernous, enveloped by flowing curtains and faded posters of Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. Giant kettles disgorge eruptions of popcorn and there is a gallon of soda pop bigger than her head! Milk Duds! Wigwags! Twizzlers! The pings and whistles of pinball machines! But Egg rushes forward, up the stairs, then down the hall, this maze of tunnels, the release of vaulted ceilings, the dizzying curve of the spiral staircase. Egg tugs Kathy’s hand, pulling her over the threshold, into the theatre. At the front, there are big box speakers for the Sensurround effects. They scramble into their seats (“Not too close to the screen,” Kathy says), Egg bouncing on her springy cushion just as the lights fade, the curtains open and — hush — down into the dark.

  …

  The lights come up and Kathy isn’t beside her. Egg goes through the stuttering lights, the clatter and clang of the hall. She catches the whiff of stale buttered popcorn, that edge of rancid sweetness. Too many people and Egg is lost, it’s all elbows and stomachs with big brass buckles and Egg pushed to the wall because she can’t even stop. Finally Egg edges through to the doors and opens them with a heave.

  The last light of the day glows in a torrent of red behind a band of low-lying clouds.

  The parking lot is so big and all the cars look the same.

  Egg runs to the side of the building.

  Kathy stands in the middle of the parking lot, the light pole beside her. The snow is falling gently, giving the air a hush, a stillness that muffles the city sounds — the cars on MacLeod, the chatter of people leaving the mall. Egg can see the sign on the pole, the letter M, almost floating in the play of shadows, the swirl of snowflakes as they burst from the heavy grey of dusk into the halo of light.