by Joanne Weber
Water, dirty water, is in Ladymint, pushing me out, telling me to go. The water will take me where I need to go. Go with the water.
I struggle to push these thoughts away, and open the door to the new ice that has crusted over the melted snow on the front steps. As I start my car, leaving my children to prepare themselves for school, I tell myself: They will be all right.
A few blocks down the road in the humming car, however, I know that the water will not leave me. Later, I call Murray, the first time in nine years. I crisply suggest we meet in Davidson to discuss a reunion with Anna and Paula.
He is sitting in the far corner, almost a decade older, heavier, his face more lined, and his hair grey, and I have Unbidden Thoughts: He is my beloved, and I am his. These words spring open a cache of love that has remained between us after all these years. I try to remember my mother’s cautionary words, Joanne you are too impulsive, but the rhythm of water carries me closer to him, pushing me along with a shoebox under my arm.
He weeps when he sees the photographs. The girls at four and five, six and seven, eight and nine, ten and eleven. The rhyme lobs itself into my head and churns me as if I am on a merry-go-round. After coffee, I finally sign to him, the first time in nine years. “Can we start again?”
That evening, I drive in silence. There is a hum inside my head. It says, accusingly: You’ve been stupid, impulsive, and careless. What do you know of this man whom you haven’t seen in nine years? How can you possibly make a decision to reunite with him in a split second in that restaurant?
I arrive home in silence, convinced that water has invaded my home and it is time to get out. I tell myself: This is all I know. I think: It is enough for me.
My father’s face sags just before we leave for Regina. He says: “You really don’t have a place to live.”
I say: “Yes, we do, Dad. It’s just not ready yet. It’s not Murray’s fault that the tenants trashed the house.”
He insists: “You don’t have a home.” And turns away. His eyes are pained. They seem to say: This man is still not able to give you what you need after nine years. How can you be so naïve?
I try to settle myself with: I can always leave if I don’t like it. And I say: “We’ll be in our home soon. Soon as we get the carpets cleaned. I’m sure there are no lice left in the house.” I add: “And we’ll redo the bathrooms.”
My father nods, his eyes on the ground, his mouth drawn downward with worry, about to give up his role as surrogate father to Anna and Paula whom he’s cradled in his arms since their birth.
In Regina, I lug a backpack while the girls carry their suitcases into the hotel lobby where Murray is waiting for us, his arms opened wide. The girls nod stiffly as he rushes toward us, grabbing our bags. He fusses after the girls, as they’re hungry, tired, and nervous. He phones room service for a late night pizza.
Ladymint appears before me the way I left her that morning, sullen, quiet in the early October morning, surrounded by brown patches of grass and dying juniper bushes. Her gaping mouth, the living room window now uncovered, accuses. I dispel her by promising myself an early morning swim before the girls get up for school. But I can’t help thinking, already: I am homeless. I curl myself around a pillow, my back to Murray in the hotel room, casting an eye on the girls sleeping in the double bed next to ours. Already, the strangeness of what I’ve done prohibits me from turning to him, sliding into his arms. I think: Not yet.
The light under the hotel room door lures me with its: You can leave anytime if you ever should have to.
I think: Not yet.
Three
THERE ARE FOOTPRINTS ON THE CEILING in Murray’s house in Regina. I am lying on the couch, trying to decipher the size and style of the shoes. I give up at the colour of the soles. The ceiling is smudged with greyness anyway. I try wiping off the footprints with a damp cloth, but some of it stays, and I slump on the couch. Have I been too impulsive in reconciling with Murray and moving to Regina?
The couch was a serious disappointment for both of us. In his hasty passion, Murray once pushed my bra down behind the cushions. Afterwards, we stood before the mirror. Murray had his hand on my shoulder, with a backward glance at the couch. Soon, our bodies became a ship of dreams sailing to nowhere, only because of my perverse need to run away from people whom I love.
In the relief of lying against Murray’s side nine years later, I realize: I wanted his body so badly that I have followed him in my dreams and in my waking intuitions. During all the years of my wandering, I must have always known I was going to come back to him someday, to the home I always had with him.
I lie in bed now, holding a copy of Jane Eyre. The cover features the back of a young woman’s head. I can see the freckles on her upper back, the lace straps of a chemise, and the untidy curls pinned up. I’ve always thought of Jane as an unattractive and prim governess, not as someone who’d be caught in her undergarments, but the publisher clearly wants to increase Jane’s sex appeal, although her appeal lies in her sharp wit, intelligence, and wisdom, certainly nineteenth century virtues.
The school librarian handed me a well-worn Jane Eyre when I was fifteen and wandering about alone in the library at noon hour. She said: “It’s about an English governess who falls in love with her master.”
As I turned the pages, I began to hear the slamming of the windows, the strange scream from the upper floor, and the sudden scuffling of footsteps. I had some idea from the Stranger at Green Knowe that houses were haunted, their walls contained mysteries, and their windows opened onto the pasts of their inhabitants, but I’d seen sound in Jane Eyre, and now I heard more sounds in the classroom: the sudden roar of a teacher chastising a student, a thud made by the dropping of a book on a desk. The school became alive with sound, as I began to watch students walk, pick up books, scribble furiously in notebooks, and throw pencils carelessly on the ribbed wooden floor beneath my feet, and soon, McLurg High School became more my home than the one I lived in, where I could not understand the chatter of my sisters and brother, nor the muted conversations between my parents. My own house became alive at night only because of the strange sounds Jane heard in the dark: the hair-raising wails, and the sudden slam of a door. In the day, I began to dream of rooms I would inhabit in the school. The first thing I would do is to tear down the walls. I’d have to see everywhere at once. No more chasing people from room to room, trying to follow the trail of their sounds. I’d be able to see sound emanating from a physical place: from an open mouth, from the dropping of a book, from a suddenly upset cup.
The only difficulty that I could see with the gutted school is that I would have no furniture of my own. I planned to tear out lockers from the girls’ changing room to make way for an oak vanity table and a large mirror. The shower, built to accommodate six girls at a time, would become a gigantic claw foot bathtub. My bedroom would be in the English room — my favourite subject. I’d sleep under posters of Shakespeare and grammar exhorting subject verb object. The old school would be mine, because nobody else lived there, not even the ghosts of former students, and I thought: I could hear everything in this house, because I could see everything. If I stood before it in any light, at any time of the day, I might see Jane Eyre moving from window to window with a candlestick. I would even see Grace Poole slam a window shut in the midst of an eerie scream.
Now, I lie awake with Jane Eyre spread open on my chest. All that pours through my mind is how quiet Murray’s house is, even with the spirits of former tenants lurking in every tight little corner, hiding in rooms large and small. I can’t hear anything. There is no sound in this house that I can see.
From the kitchen doorway the next morning, I study my two bedraggled daughters, still in their T-shirts and pyjama pants, and Murray, wrapped in his velour bathrobe, chatting at the breakfast table. Waiting. I can see their mouths move, the low hum of words sliding back and forth, an easy chatter, its intimacy, fluidity in contrast to my contrived system of nods and assurances. I snatc
h a tea towel. I am going to do something about this inequality right now. I am going to right it, balance it, and restore it somehow. I sign to Murray: “I won’t be using my voice with you or the girls anymore.”
Murray signs back: “That’s not fair. The girls don’t know sign very well.”
My hands fly: “They’re too dependent on my voice in communicating with me. They need to be forced to use sign language.”
Murray’s sign back: “You should’ve taught them when they were little.”
I sign, in answer: “My hand . . . I couldn’t . . . you know, the carpal tunnel.”
And his: “Well, it’s not fair that you spring it on them like this, right now.”
And mine: “Well, it’s not fair to me to have to live like this.”
And his: “Well, you say it takes ten years to become fluent — only if we sign all day and nothing else. Besides, that carpal tunnel in your wrist isn’t any better, is it?”
The girls are watching. I can see from the stricken looks on their faces that they understand some of it.
Finally, Murray signs: “Joanne, the pancakes are burning.”
I slam the frying pan upon an unheated burner and turn toward them again. I sign: “They won’t sign. They don’t have to.”
Murray signs back gently: “Of course they’ll talk to you. It’s easier for them.”
I sign back, less gently: “But it is even easier for them to talk to you than to me.”
And Murray, steadily: “Joanne, you’re exaggerating.”
And me: “It’s about functioning in a group, a family, not in pairs or couples, a family.”
Murray has already turned toward Anna to hear what she has just said. Paula is looking down at her plate. I think: It is too late. The intimacy has already sprung its shoots around Murray and our daughters. Its vines are enclosing them in a bower which I cannot enter. The whispers, easy talk, intimate mumbling, sudden bursts of laughter, the jostling and embraces between father and daughters, have made me a spectator.
I try to remind myself: I can detach and not care about anything that goes on around me. I can become absorbed by the steady wash of images, nonsensical fragments of conversation, a theatre of the absurd, an aimless, empty, feckless, hollow, inconsequential, insignificant, insubstantial, nonsensical, black hole. Absurdity is a benign force offering to absorb my bones, to settle me into a warm and dark sleep. If only I liked the theatre of the absurd.
I whisk the plate of pancakes to the dining room table. I can feel their eyes on me as I walk briskly into the kitchen and stand before the window. Why, there are stains on the kitchen cupboard. I reach for the dishcloth crumpled in the sink.
“No, not that one. A clean one.” Murray. In the doorway. Inflamed by Murray’s correct guess at my intent, I slap the dishrag on the kitchen counter.
He says: “Joanne, sit down. Talk to me.”
I shake my head and rush to the sink. If I scrub the kitchen right now, this very instant, it will become my domain. I begin to snatch the dishes piled in the drying rack, sending up a great clatter.
Murray says, loudly: “Joanne. Sit down. Look at me.”
I sit on the kitchen chair, hands folded in my lap, while Murray scoots his chair over. Finally, his open knees squeeze my legs.
He asks: “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. If I speak again, I’ll turn into an animal. I’ll lean forward in this cramped, hot kitchen, and sink my teeth into Murray’s throat. I’ll threaten to leave him, flail my arms about, or let loose an endless stream of profanities, while he sits immovably, his arms folded.
He tries to take me into his arms. He says, soothingly: “Now, I don’t want you to do that again.”
In tears, I look up at him through the strands of my hair, now limp with sweat, and nod, vigorously. I have become a contrite little fox with dainty, limp paws. I see myself walk up the stairs to lie alone on our great bed, my tail twitching from under the quilt. I throw my arms around Murray and say: “I love you. I will do better next time,” and then, “I’m very, very deaf. I know that my speech is nearly perfect and that I’m an excellent lip reader in one-on-one situations, but I need sign language in our home.”
Murray touches my arm. “Why don’t you wear your FM system more often?”
I shake him off. “I still need to lipread. The FM doesn’t allow me to hear the way you guys can hear.”
“Well, it would help.”
I stand firm. “Can’t you see I’m losing Anna and Paula? I can’t have a relationship with them if you are going to be around. I need equal access to them.”
“I’ve never discouraged Anna and Paula from talking to you.”
“It’s the group dynamics, Murray. God, you don’t get it.”
I turn away and go upstairs, leaving them to eat the cold and sodden pancakes. Jane Eyre lies on the night table, its spine already cracked. The novel is Jane’s long journey to find a home where she can lay her head. Where she can live forever and never have to move again. Thornfield Hall. I glance at the winter rain skittering down the panes of our bedroom window and snuggle down to read, thinking: I did this to myself.
Four
A WEEK LATER, I HEAR: “I feel like you’re not my mother anymore.” Anna. We’re sitting on her bed. Only because she beckons me to come in. My heart thudding. She actually wants to talk. To me. She’s still here. She’s still my daughter. The one I had in North Battleford.
So I say: “Why do you say that?” Cautious. Calm.
Anna, not so calm: “Well, Dad has taken over everything. He tells us what to eat, what clothes to wear, what to do. I want to be able to pick out my own clothes.” My daughter. She adds, firmly: “He’s too involved.”
I touch her on the shoulder. “He’s so happy to have you girls with him again. There are things he can give you that I haven’t been able to.”
I try to sound convinced. Secretly, though, I’m pleased.
My daughter says: “You should be more confident.”
Hmmm.
Murray does dominate all the conversations. I’m drowning in his wet, cold words, too much talk, talk, talk, he can hardly contain his excitement about parenting the girls, while I sit, holding my memories, my life with my daughters, a deadness expanding in me. I can’t say anything to his ideas, or his perceptions, I’m mute, as he goes on, and on.
I say: “ . . . ”
He says: “Paula is so open with her feelings, last night she was telling me about her math, how she finds it so difficult, she needs to develop confidence in herself, but Anna has dominated her all these years. We have to work on teaching Anna her boundaries.”
I think: Boundaries? I listen. I can only say: “ . . . ”
All these new discoveries Murray is making are new to me too. How is it that I never knew these things about them before? My babies? Whom I’ve been with since birth? I breastfed them, bathed them, and sang to them. I sewed their clothes, cooked their meals, and took them to parks, swimming pools, museums, libraries, playgrounds. Jazz festivals by the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon. I read to them. Every night. And our games in bed. And Anna begging me to tell her again and again the story of how she was born, how my water broke, and her father, Murray, calmly ironed his pants before we went to the hospital, and I was still in my sodden dress, sliding on to the car seat atop a plastic bag.
I was strong. I was competent, resourceful, and hardworking. I owned a consulting business. I had contracts with school boards. I gave workshops to Deaf aboriginal women. I was the miracle worker. I churned out proposal after proposal. I took my children to all the Deaf socials. Anna and Paula romped with the Hearing children of Deaf parents. And I saw Anna read for the first time. Five years old. She came to me. I was sick at home. I was lying on the bed. She sat beside me. She asked me to write a word. I did, weakly. “Cat.” She sounded it out. I was curious. I rolled over onto my queasy stomach and printed out: “See the cat.” She sounded it out.
“No way,” I said.
“Try this.” I wrote: Uncle Joe has a pig. She got, “Joe has a pig.”
“Do you know what this means?”
She nodded. We did a dance on the bed.
I want to accuse Murray: I have memories of them you’ll never have. I want to taunt him with memories. Paula at age two in the library, with a pageboy bob, opening the mockingbird book, and singing in a sweet clear soprano as she turns the pages, “Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird,” because I sang it to her every night before sleep. Anna stopping reading to listen. The library staff stopping, and the other patrons, to listen. All this talk about boundaries. Pfft, I want to say to Murray. What do you really know about the girls?
I know: Deep inside he is right. I carried Paula everywhere, like a fragile china doll. Anna stood on sturdy legs. I began to consult her more and more about decisions affecting us, as if she were a grown adult. The discrepancy was unfair. I weaned Anna at six months and Paula at two and a half years.
My mother: “But they are so well adjusted.”
My friends: “You are such a wonderful mother.”
Their daycare worker one day: “Are you married?”
I say: “The girls have no contact with their father.”
Curious daycare worker gasps: “But you look married. The girls are so grounded, not like most children from single parent families.”
But according to Murray, they aren’t grounded enough. A confusion is growing in me. I am sinking into a muddy pool of water. The house suddenly seems rank.
I complain to Murray: “There’s mould on the basement bathroom ceiling.”
Murray points out: “It’s brown mould. You can wipe it off with a Javex solution.”
I want to reply: “But I shouldn’t have to wipe it off. There’s something wrong somewhere. Too much water.” I want to say more about this water, but this is what I complain about instead: