by Sasha Troyan
At last my skirt is full and I turn back. I walk slowly, holding my skirt with both hands, my eyes fixed on the strawberries. I don’t want any to spill. When I look up, the sky is mauve and the grass almost turquoise. Granny is sleeping with her back leaning against a tree. Her dress has slid up and I can see her knees which look very white. Her hands rest in her lap. The wind blows and one of her stockings drifts away a few feet. In the shadow of the tree her face looks very pale. She never goes in the sun because she says it’s bad for your skin. Her hat lies face down on the grass. I place one hand on her arm as I always do and whisper into her ear, “Granny.” She does not move. I say it again much louder. I lean closer. I can smell her powder and her cream. I shake her. “Granny. Granny. Granny. Granny,” I scream.
Strawberries lie all around her, even on her, in her lap and sprinkled in her hair. I sit down beside her and rest my head on her shoulder. I can hear her heart fluttering. It flutters louder and louder, but there’s no pulse in her neck and I realize that it’s my own heart I’m hearing.
Shadows drift across the grass. The sky darkens and the grass becomes wet and soon my dress is damp. The birds are quiet, the garden hushed and still. The dew on Granny’s arm feels cold. If I don’t move, not even to brush away the grass tickling my leg, everything will be all right. Then Max comes sniffing around us. He puts his wet nose between Granny and me, and I push him away, but he keeps circling us. He flops down beside us and begins to howl. I tell him to stop being a stupid dog, shut his mouth. Then I get up because I see something glimmering in the grass. It’s Granny’s silver lighter. When I look over at Granny, she looks like another lady.
I run down the hill, but then I stop and walk back up. Granny is very heavy and I only attach the stockings to the front hooks. I slip on her shoes. I pull down the skirt of her dress over her knees. I’m about to place her hat on her head when the wind blows, making it somersault through the air. I run after it, catching it just before it touches the ground. Three streaks of pink run from Granny’s jaw to her chest, as if she had drawn her hand down her neck. I dig a hole beneath the laburnum tree and hide the last two cigarettes inside.
All I can see, lying flat on the bottom of my canoe, is the sky and the branches overhanging the river. I listen to the sound of water lapping against the sides of my boat. I don’t know how long I’ve been floating. I try not to think of Granny.
I sit up. Now I can see mansions that seem to be made out of pink and gray paper glued together. I float beneath trees that do not hang over the river but lean away, as if they don’t like the river, or cannot bear to see their own reflections.
I’m hungry, but all I have is one old caranbar. I suck on it slowly. I’m now drifting down a narrow bend which finally ends in a pond filled with mud. There is nothing to do but climb out. I let the air out of my canoe and then I fold it up and place it under one arm.
I walk along the road singing a French song I learned in ski school. “Un kilomèters à pied ça use, ça use. Un kilomèters à pied ça use les souliers. Deux kilomèters à pied ça use ça use.” I walk along a very big highway. I don’t know where I’m going. Cars keep passing me. A man in a gray bakery van stops and asks me if I need a lift, but I say “non, merci” and he drives on. The smell of the baguettes stays in the air. I try to smell it for as long as I can.
I walk and walk until my legs are sore.
A police van pulls up beside me.
“Où tu vas comme ça?” the policeman who sits behind the wheel asks.
“Je vais voir ma grandmère,” I say.
“Et où elle habites, ta grandmère?” he asks.
“Pres d’Estouy,” I say.
“Mais c’est trèsloin. Allez, on va t’emmener,” he says.
I climb into the car.
I stare at their backs. The policeman who sits behind the wheel keeps twisting his neck to see me. The other policeman is talking, but I can’t hear what he says because he’s got the radio on and it’s all static. He keeps waving his hands in the air.
“Why were you running away?” The policeman who keeps looking back at me asks.
“I wasn’t,” I say. I stare through the window at the poplars. The wind blows through them turning them silver. “I just wanted to go down the river in my canoe.”
“Next time I would advise you not to go so far,” the other policeman says. His nose is as red as Aunt Ethel’s cheeks.
“Your parents must be very worried about you,” he says.
“My mother’s dead,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Your father will be waiting for you, then?”
“He’s dead too,” I say. “They both died of scarlet fever. I’m an orphan.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“They died too, and even my governess,” I say. “I live with my grandmother.”
We are all seated in the living room: Aunt Ethel and Mummy and the doctor and the two policemen. Through the open door, I can see Juliet playing hide and seek with Al. Al is hidden behind a bush and Juliet is pretending not to be able to see her. I watch Juliet come around the bush where Al is hiding. She says very loudly, her words drifting over to us, “I think I’ll have to give up. You just hide too well for me.”
The doctor is holding Mummy’s hand. Her face is sad. The last of the sunlight catches the top of her head. Everything in the room gleams, the gold bearings of the curtains, the flower bowl, even aunt Ethel’s needles.
“I see you,” Juliet shouts, catching Al in her arms, as Al jumps out from behind the bush. “I’ve found you.”
The policemen stand and shake hands, then the doctor sees them out.
“It’s my turn now,” Juliet says. “No peeking. Keep your eyes closed.”
I slip out the living room, walk slowly up the stairs to my room. It’s too early to sleep. I run my hand over the wallpaper and pop as many bumps as I can. Soon there aren’t any left within my reach.
I wait and wait to feel Granny tickle the bottom of my foot, but she never comes. Later, Al climbs up into my bunk bed. She writes across my palm that she knows where Juliet hid the canoe. Next time we’ll escape together. But I’m thinking about Granny, wondering if she called me while I was picking the strawberries.
Sixteen
The pink and yellow flowers of the curtains seem to be slowly circling, swirling, drifting off into the air. I have the feeling, even though I’m lying as still as I can on my back, that I’m floating. Everything is floating except for my head which aches. The slightest movement makes it throb. At times, I manage to escape. I float outside of my body and look down from one corner. Yes, that’s me with the long arms and legs and the brown hair and green eyes.
When I close my eyes, I feel as if I’m drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into the water. It’s a pleasant feeling, except that for a moment I wonder if I’m dying. I know that I’m ill. From time to time, my body trembles and my teeth chatter and I’m terribly cold and wish someone would pile blankets over me. Then the next moment, I’m so hot, my face is covered with perspiration and the sheet sticks to my back and I would give anything for a cool cloth.
I don’t see Juliet enter the room. Suddenly I feel her wide rough hand upon my forehead. She rolls me over, first one way, then the other. I’m conscious of cool clean sheets. “You have a good sleep,” she says.
Later I’m aware of her sitting by the window. Gradually, I can make out the outline of her back and head, the ladder of the chair. She’s darning.
She leans out the window and smokes.
Still later I hear voices. A man’s. I think it’s my father standing in the doorway, but then I hear the doctor say, “There’s nothing to worry about. Children often have high fevers.” I let myself drop again. It feels a bit like falling without landing. I watch shadows grow, then shrink.
Sometimes I think it’s been four or five hours since Juliet’s come in but when I ask her, she says it’s only been half an hour. At other times, I think she�
�s just been out of the room for a minute and it’s been several hours. Sometimes I can feel that someone is standing in the doorway, but it’s too much trouble to open my eyes. Several times I’m sure I can sense my father’s presence. I recognize each hand: mother’s which is soft and smells of her cream, Al’s which is always sticky with jam or honey or something she has eaten, Juliet’s which is wide and heavy. Once I even felt Ethel’s small dry hand. It smells of peppermint. I keep waiting to feel Granny’s hand, so different from all the others, heavy because of her rings, but light. I thought I felt her tickle the bottom of my foot, but it was Max. He likes to sleep at the bottom of my bed. Juliet shoos him off and he lies on the blue carpet, but as soon as her footsteps have faded he jumps back up.
Later, much later, the doctor reappears. This time he’s alone. He sits down on the edge of my bed. He has to bend his head because of the top bunk bed. “How are you feeling?” he says.
“All right.”
“I remember when my grandmother died,” he says. “I was so upset because we were supposed to go on a picnic the very next day. I had looked forward to it for weeks and weeks.”
I stare at his narrow face. Even his nose and his eyes are narrow.
“What was her name?” I ask.
“Anne,” he says.
“Granny’s name was Whilelmina.”
“I was very angry with her for a long time,” he goes on. “I thought that somehow she could have chosen not to die.”
“But she couldn’t,” I say.
“No,” he says. “She couldn’t.”
I close my eyes and pretend that I’m floating down the river in my canoe. I don’t hear the doctor tiptoe out.
In the night I awaken to singing. It’s Juliet. Her voice is hoarse as if she has been singing for a long time. Then it sounds like she’s talking to someone. She’s having an argument. “I’m not going to go through this again. Do you understand?” She stomps around. I’m sure that the floorboards over Granny’s room are shaking. I picture her room with the shutters open and the moonlight across the red rug and the waterlily couch, Tiger stretched across Granny’s empty pillow.
Seventeen
I can’t tell if it’s morning or evening. Juliet is still sitting in the same chair, but she’s reading her book. Each time she turns a page it sounds very loud, as if I were wearing Al’s hearing aid. “Well, I’ll be—I never would have guessed,” she says, throwing her mystery down. It lands with a small thud which wakes Max, who is lying on the blue carpet. A mystery is no good if Juliet can’t figure out who did it.
“Juliet,” I say, sitting up.
“Are you feeling better?” she asks, turning round her chair.
“Juliet, did Daddy come while I was sick?”
“No, but I think he called quite a few times.”
Juliet does a few steps in front of the window as if she were rehearsing a dance, then sits down again.
“Juliet, did you really dance on points when you were a little girl?”
“Yes,” she says, stretching her legs out and staring at her feet.
I try to imagine a tiny Juliet with dark curly hair and chubby legs wearing a bright red tutu and red toe shoes. She comes onto the stage carrying a tambourine with red ribbons. She pirouettes across the stage and everyone applauds except for her five brothers, who look bored, sitting in the front row.
“Tell me some more stories about your brothers,” I say.
“You must be feeling better if you’re asking me all these questions.”
“Where are they? Do they all live in London?”
“John and Matthew and Luke live close to London, a little ways away,” she says, bending over and picking up her mystery. There’s a picture of an ax and a sword on the cover.
“And the other two?”
“They died. Arthur died when I was four. Jared, the day after the war ended. He was walking across the beach and there were mines. Blew him to pieces.”
I try to imagine her brother blown into tiny pieces, but I can’t. Just the beach and the sand and the gray sea. I can imagine the sound of the sea because of the river. The river reminds me of Granny. I keep expecting her to step into my room. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. I picture her standing in the doorway wearing her mauve dress with the pleated skirt, fixing the cuffs of her sleeves.
“I’m going to bring you a nice bowl of consommé,” Juliet says.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ve got to eat something,” she says, slowly getting up, still looking down though at the pale blue carpet with the white crosses, as if she could see her brother there.
“How long have I been sick?” I ask, expecting her to say three weeks, but she says that it has been only one day and one night.
As soon as she leaves the room, I throw back the sheet and slowly stand up. For a moment the floor seems to heave, but I steady myself on the bunk bed. I take a few steps across the blue carpet. I feel different, lighter and taller, as if I had grown while in bed.
Al and I are lying on a blanket with the branches of the willow tree over our heads so it looks like we’ve got green hair. Whenever Ethel or Mummy look my way, I let the branches drop and I’m hidden by a screen of green.
Every few minutes they get up to move their chairs and the white table into the shade. They’ve hardly said a word. Mum said something about being unable to find her place, and Ethel something about being afraid she’s running out of beads.
That’s because Al and I have her beads. We collected all the ones we could find and put them in a jar.
“She wouldn’t want us to mope,” Ethel says, looking up from her knitting.
“No,” Mummy says. “She wouldn’t.”
Ethel picks up the silver teapot, but her hand shakes so hard tea splashes the white tablecloth, the one Granny and Ethel and Mummy embroidered the summer before. It has flowers and ladybirds and butterflies, all different colors. I helped sew the ladybird at its center.
“Oh dear,” Ethel says, moving her chair back. “Look what I’ve done!”
“Oh dear,” Mummy says, resting one hand on Ethel’s arm. They both cry.
Mummy clasps Ethel’s hand and says with a slight laugh, “But we’re being ridiculous. It’s just cloth. I’m sure that—”
“Such a steady hand,” Ethel says. “Like a rock.”
“What I can’t get over is—”
“You know I think she was still smoking,” Ethel says.
“I can’t believe—” Mummy says.
“Yes, it’s hard to believe. The doctors at home advised her not to come, but you know what she’s like.”
“But she seemed—” Mummy says.
“I have very high blood pressure, you know,” Ethel says.
“Yes,” Mummy says. She places the silver teapot, the teacups, the bowl of sugar, and the pitcher of milk on the lawn. She lifts the tablecloth off the table. “I’ll just run in and soak it.”
“Let me do it,” Ethel says. “After all it’s my fault.”
“No, no,” Mummy says.
I let the green curtain drop. Al’s pretending to be dead. She lies still in the grass. I tickle her, but she doesn’t move. Not even when I take a blade of grass and brush her neck. It makes me think of the time Dad climbed onto the top bunk and took the tip of his belt and let it brush Al’s cheek and she kept brushing her cheek and Dad and I laughed.
“There,” Mummy says. “It didn’t take a minute. I’m sure it will come out.”
“We haven’t seen the doctor today,” Ethel says.
“No,” Mummy says.
“Such a nice man,” Ethel says.
“I feel so guilty for not being here when—” Mummy says.
“Oh but there was nothing you could do.” Ethel stands, bends over, and replaces the teapot, the tea cups and the pitcher of milk on the table.
“What about him?” Ethel asks lowering her voice. “Has he been calling again?”
“He says he’s coming to t
he funeral,” Mummy answers. “He was very fond of her despite their differences.”
“To think that I don’t even have to change the date of my ticket to S. A.,” Ethel says.
“As if it were all planned, as if she knew,” Mummy says. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to take the plane? We could travel together that way. It would be so much quicker.”
“Oh no, my dear,” Ethel says. “I cannot abide planes.”
“Come over here, girls,” Mummy calls. We push back the willow tree’s branches and walk across the grass. I feel so tall and thin. I don’t know what to do with my arms. They seem to be swinging the wrong way. Mummy hugs each of us with one arm.
“You’re almost too big to sit on my lap.”
“We are too big,” I say.
“Well,” Mummy says. “Not if you sit one at a time.”
We take turns sitting on her lap.
“Gabriel has really shot up,” Ethel says.
“No, I haven’t,” I say, jumping up from Mummy’s lap before she finds me too heavy.
I walk over to the bridge which has lost its side. Now there’s only a plank to walk across. I stare through the water at the wood. Already one piece has broken off and floated a short distance.
Later I see Ethel, teapot in hand, going from flower to flower. The silver teapot flashes in the sun. I follow her, and she keeps pouring tea onto the flowers. She says tea leaves are good for them. She pours from the teapot even when there is no tea left. If I were younger, I might think she was playing pretend.
Eighteen
Al’s dressed up as a nurse. She’s wearing a little white cap with a red edge, an apron, and a stethoscope.
“Lie down again,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. Her voice stays on one note because she had to take her hearing aids out to put in the stethoscope. She can’t say stethoscope.
“Cough,” she says, but I don’t.
“Now turn your head.” She peers into my right ear. “I’m going to test your reflexes.” She produces a little hammer from her black bag and hits my knees.