Flying With Amelia

by Anne Degrace

  My room is off the kitchen. It was a storage room before. There is just a small, high window. The cot is better than what we slept on in steerage, but not as good as the ones at the Home. Mr. Brust found a mirror for me in the barn, with just a small crack in the corner, and it sits on a dresser that has three drawers. I have my own brush and comb, and I’ve put them on top of the dresser, which I don’t have to share with anyone.

  Yesterday, I picked up some bright leaves from under a huge, spreading tree — they are brilliant red, and unlike anything at home — and I put them in a jar from the kitchen. Mrs. Brust smiled when she gave me the jar.

  “They’re maple leaves,” she told me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I never seen anything quite so red.”

  “I used to pick them all the time,” she said.

  “Don’t you anymore?” I asked, then shut my lips together because we were told not to talk too much or make ourselves a nuisance.

  You could have knocked me over with a feather when she looked at me like she was thinking hard and said: “Would you like to call me Auntie Ruth?” I’d been at the Brusts’ almost a fortnight, calling her ma’am. But then a look came across her face, like the sun gone out. “But when Mr. Brust can hear, it would be better to call me Mrs. Brust,” she said.

  “What about — ?” and I looked towards the old lady’s room. Auntie Ruth — it’ll be a job getting used to that — put her hand on her hip and looked at the door for so long, I thought she forgot the question. But: “Mrs. Calloway,” she said at last. “You’ll call her Mrs. Calloway.”

  At that moment Mr. Brust — or at least the sound of his boots — was heard at the door, and Auntie Ruth pulled her hand away from the leaf she was touching.

  “I’ll get the tea, and then you can wheel in Mu — Mrs. Calloway,” she said. “Go get some butter from the cold cellar.”

  I don’t much like Mr. Brust. When he’s in the house, it’s as if the house holds its breath, and when he’s not there, it lets its breath out, the way you do when you drop a glass and then catch it before it hits the floor. He only speaks to me when he has to. “Those two brown hens is both broody,” he’ll say, not looking at me at all. “Make sure they got some water close by.” But sometimes I’ll catch him looking at me when I straighten up from some chore. He looks and he looks, and then he turns away.

  Olive

  WHEN THE GIRL, Winnie, comes into my room in the mornings, the shy smile she gives me reaches into me and pulls on something. It’s as if I’m remembering some distant thing, but I can’t quite bring it to the surface. She is strong for her age, and has that ruddy-cheeked complexion you see on English girls. I was curious about her past.

  “Where were you living before you came here?” I asked her. She startled slightly. Perhaps she was surprised by the bluntness of my question. “I’m too old to beat around the bush,” I told her. “I could die any moment.”

  “You wouldn’t really?”

  “I might, if you don’t tell me something about yourself soon,” I retorted, and she smiled with real humour. I could see her teeth weren’t very good, but that didn’t change the way her smile brightened the room.

  “The Home. They taught us how to behave, and how to talk properly, not like a ragamuffin — that’s what Miss Bexley called us. My best friend was Emmie,” she paused. “Before that, East London,” she said. I patted the bed and she sat down timidly. “I lived with my mum and two little sisters, Molly and Katie, and my brother George. We had a flat where you walked up three flights, and I would carry George, and Mum would carry Katie, and Molly would carry herself. We were waiting for my dad to get back, but he never.”

  “Never got back? From where?”

  There was a long pause. “Don’t know,” she said at last. “But then Mum got a letter and she cried, and then I went to the Home.”

  “Just you?”

  “I don’t know what became of the others.”

  She sounded so wistful, so lonely, that I felt compelled to tell a story of my own, to share something in common.

  “My first husband came from Britain,” I told her.

  “Really?”

  “From Ireland, actually. A place called Waterford. Oh, he was a wonderful man. Tom. His name was Tom.”

  “What happened? Did he die?” Winnie asked, and then she put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry for what? I like people to be frank when they speak. And it’s a reasonable question.” I paused, and the image of Tom when I first met him came to me with such force and swiftness that I had to take a breath before I could continue. “He worked for my father as a gardener,” I admitted. “We eloped.”

  Winnie was still sitting, fingers on her lips, as if she were afraid of what she might say.

  “My father was a lawyer. Toronto. We were fairly well off. He would never have agreed to my marrying the gardener. Do you know — ? I don’t know if it was his good looks or the lovely way he spoke that did it. Or his gentle nature. He was such a kind man. But it really was love at first sight, just like they say. He’d come across on one of those coffin ships from Ireland with his family when he was about your age. His mother died on the way. I think it changed him — well, it would, wouldn’t it? Oh! Now it’s my turn to be sorry.”

  A tear had slipped down Winnie’s face; no doubt she was thinking of her own mother. But, “please go on,” she said. “It’s nice here, with you.”

  I played with the coverlet with my old fingers, thinking of the hand they’d once held. “Well, it’s not a happy ending. Tom caught fever and died when Ruth was just a baby. He was never well, really, after the hunger of the crossing.”

  I looked up. The look on Winnie’s face could break your heart.

  “But there — it was such a long time ago. And we had two lovely years together. I always wanted to find his brothers and sisters, but do you know, I never did. He struck out on his own quite young, there was not much for them in St. John’s, and it’s such a very big county. He told me they had scattered across the country, like the leaves of that lovely maple in the yard.” We both looked at the tree, crimson as blood. “Sometimes I think if Ruth had known her aunts and uncles and maybe even cousins, she’d have been a happier girl.”

  We were both quiet for a few moments, the air between us full of dust motes as the sun streamed in the window. And then she seemed to shake herself out of some place she was imagining and stood, all business. “Hadn’t I better get you up?” she said. “Auntie Ruth will have your breakfast ready.”

  As Winnie pulled back the coverlet and helped me move my twisted legs, I reflected on that. “Auntie Ruth,” I said.

  “Is it all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. And you must call me Granny Olive.”

  “Even when Mr. Brust can hear?” she asked, and her question gave me pause. But then she was helping me into my chair, my bones protesting, and the ache of them took every thought from my head. By the time I was dressed and at the table I truly felt ready to go back to bed, thinking: I am not long for this world, and that’s the simple truth.

  There is no mention of the girl attending school. Of course, I am grateful for her help and company, and so I suppose I am selfish when I say nothing, not that it would make any difference. But I can see the loneliness in the girl. It’s in the way she holds herself, as if she were feeling very small against a vast, unfriendly landscape. The way that, when I ask her about herself she behaves like a dog wanting friendship, but afraid of the boot.

  So that morning at breakfast I thumped my cane on the floor for attention and then said, in my clearest voice: “It’s too much to come to the table. I want to eat in my room. I want the girl to eat with me.”

  Albert looked up and saw me, something he rarely does. He was reading the farm news, ignoring all of us in his
usual manner. Ruth, who had been gazing through the window over her half-finished plate, looked at me as if I’d landed from another country. I could see her mouth trying to formulate words while she looked at that son-in-law of mine, as if gauging which words would least offend.

  My daughter. When Ruth wanted to marry Albert I had my doubts. I could see the Albert he’d become in the impatience in his voice if she was tardy getting ready, could see the future Ruth in the way she’d hurry, not to keep him waiting at the door. But I also told my girl a hundred times that her decisions were her own to make, and that I wouldn’t interfere, no matter what. I wouldn’t interfere the way my own parents had with me, not speaking to me — or their grandchild — until after Tom was cold in the ground. Although the truth is, it was my parents’ influence in the end, along with the very real fear of life as a young widowed mother, that made me marry Richard. It took another death to make me find myself.

  Regret is a terrible thing.

  Now, I wonder if, in a way, Ruth married her own father — the one she remembers. Perhaps, left to ourselves and our human weaknesses, we just keep repeating the story we know best.

  I summoned my strongest voice. “Besides,” I said, “I will be nearer the commode.”

  “Are you sure, Mother,” Ruth asked, her voice too loud as usual, her words spaced evenly as if she were talking to a small child.

  Albert, who is mortally embarrassed by anything related to old ladies and normal bodily functions, flushed, and snapped the pages of the paper. “Suit yourself,” he said, and that was that.

  Winnie, standing in the doorway with a dishtowel in her hands, gave me a look I took to be grateful. Albert gave her a look that sent a small chill through me. Ruth began clearing up, eyes intent on her work. I looked back at Winnie, but she’d disappeared through the doorway.

  Winnie

  MR. BRUST TOLD me I had to learn to milk Bella. He tied her and put the stool under her and then he started washing Bella’s udder with warm water, and he was rubbing and rubbing but when he looked up at me to make sure I was watching, he wasn’t looking at my face, and I crossed my arms. Then he showed me how to pull on her teats, one from the front and one from the back, pushing up and then pulling down, and right away warm milk squirted, frothy, into the bucket.

  “Now, you,” he said, but when I tried nothing happened at first, and he pulled a box over beside my stool and leaned over and put his hands on top of mine to show me the way to do it. I could feel his breath at my ear, and I didn’t want to look at him. Auntie Ruth called from the house, and he got up quickly, knocking over the box.

  “You just keep doing that,” he told me, and left in a hurry.

  It took me a long time to milk that cow; Mr. Brust had told me to make sure each part was empty or Bella could get sick, and so I did my best. When I finished, my arms ached so I could barely lift them. Mr. Brust came in and took the milk, and I hurried out, because Granny Olive would be waiting for me, wondering why I had taken so long to get her up.

  I got better after that at milking, but I never liked it, and I don’t think Bella ever liked me. One morning she was quiet for a change — perhaps she’d gotten used to me — and I fell asleep against her warm flank; it was very early, and I’d had a bad night’s sleep, unable to get warm in my bed with the weather turning colder. I would have to ask for another blanket, I remember thinking, and then there was Mr. Brust, shaking me awake.

  “Wake up, girl. Cow won’t get milked if you don’t pull her teat,” he said. He was standing above me, but he wasn’t looking at my face or at the cow’s udder. I hunched my shoulders around and got back to work without looking up, but before he moved away I could feel Mr. Brust’s hand on my hair, as if he had some of it between his fingers for the feel of it. I kept working, and he went away. My hands shook as I pulled at Bella’s udder, so that I pulled hard to steady them and she shifted her feet and whipped me with her tail.

  I left the bucket for Mr. Brust to separate, hurrying to be gone before he came back. When I came into the kitchen, Auntie Ruth looked up from the stove. Mr. Brust wasn’t at the table. “All finished the milking, then?” she said, and I looked down. “Was Albert working in the barn when you were there?”

  I didn’t answer. She sat down heavily in the chair while I stood, waiting. I knew I should be getting Granny Olive’s tray ready. Auntie Ruth seemed nervous. “Are you happy here, Winnie?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I told her, suddenly afraid. They told us at the Home we could be sent back. I missed my mum, but she was dead, and there was nothing but the Home for me there, and all that ocean to cross. Then Mr. Brust came in, and Auntie Ruth got up quickly and started putting his breakfast on a plate: eggs, sausages, biscuits, and jam.

  “Winnie, you’d better go get Mrs. Calloway up,” she said over her shoulder. I didn’t look at Mr. Brust. I put together the tray for Granny Olive with a bowl of porridge for me, working alongside Auntie Ruth, who slipped a fresh biscuit onto the tray with the tea and porridge. Granny has trouble chewing, so I knew the biscuit was for me. She’d put a dollop of jam inside.

  Granny Olive was awake when I came in, with her hands folded on the top of her blankets. “Do you want to sit in your chair?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “Breakfast will be cold by the time I get myself out of here and into there,” she said, but she sounded chipper. “Breakfast in bed! How sinful! Here,” she patted the bed, “sit beside me.”

  I helped her eat, leaving the biscuit until she waved at it and said, “Go on.”

  It was nice there with Granny Olive. The morning light slanted through the window, making squares on the floor. I stayed as long as I could that morning, hoping she would tell me more about herself, or about Auntie Ruth when she was a girl, but she never. Still, I didn’t want to leave that room, and after a bit she asked me about myself, and what I hoped to be when I grew up, and I told her I’d like to find a nice man to marry, like she did. And Granny Olive didn’t say anything to that but told me about how things were changing for women, and that someday women could become anything they wanted to be.

  “You could be a doctor,” she said.

  I had never heard of a woman being a doctor. Women were nurses, and I told her so. She shook her head. “Wait and see,” she said. “The world is changing.”

  I spent the day with housework, helping Auntie Ruth with the laundry. I didn’t like wringing out Mr. Brust’s long underwear, but Auntie Ruth wrung and shook things out and snapped them out onto the line and I just had to keep up with her. Then we made bread, and she was impatient with me when it was time to knead the dough because my arms were tired from the milking.

  “Haven’t you done this before?” she asked me.

  “No, ma’am — I mean, Auntie Ruth. I learned about cleaning. I was to learn cooking, but then I was sent over. I’d have learned before, but I was sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “The Chicken Pox. All of us in our dormitory got them. They were terrible itchy, and we had to stay in bed. And so I missed my lessons.”

  “Here,” she said, showing me how to fold and push the bread dough. “There. You’re doing better, now.” She began to prepare the pans, and as she did she started talking in a chatty sort of way, not like usual. “I had Chicken Pox when I was a girl, too. I didn’t mind so much, because my mother would sit on my bed and tell me stories. They were funny stories — about a big ginger cat. He would have all kinds of adventures, most of them involving playing tricks on a rich farmer.” She was standing with her hands folded on the counter, not doing anything, just looking out the kitchen window. “I loved those stories,” she said.

  “I always wanted a cat.” It was all I could think of to say. I felt like my arms would fall off if I pushed that dough one more time.

  “Here. We’ll let this rise again,” she said, then: “Maybe in the
spring we could get a cat. We’ll tell Albert we need one to kill mice.” She smiled at me.

  Through the kitchen window we could see Mr. Brust raking hay in the field, with Snow, the big workhorse pulling the hay rake while Mr. Brust sat on the little seat. He’d hired a boy to stook it, and I could barely make him out, distant in the field. Since Mr. Brust had hired the boy, Sam, he’d done nothing but mutter about the cost.

  Auntie Ruth looked through the glass and then ran the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a dusting of flour behind. At that moment she looked so much like my mum I thought I’d cry.

  Olive

  THE NOVEMBER WINDS smell like snow. It comes in through the cracks around windows, and down the chimney flu, and I feel less inclined to leave my bed and sit in my chair. Now that I’m taking meals in my room with Winnie, I see less of the house, and my view has become narrowed to what I can see from my window: Winnie, as she trudges out to the barn in the early mornings, the steam her breath creates, and the heat that escapes the barn when she pulls open the big door. Albert slipping in a few minutes behind her.

  I imagine Ruth looking out through the kitchen window after him, relieved to have the house to herself (because I don’t really count, after all), anxious for Winnie to hurry up and return so she can keep an eye on her. But it’s not just that. I’ve heard their conversations, Winnie and Ruth, through these walls, and I can hear in Ruth’s tone the tentative steps towards something approaching friendship with this girl. I can hear in her words her longing for her own lost child, born too early such a long time ago, now.

  When did our own closeness become so far away? There was a moment when I first came here, the very first day. A moment between us as we sat together at the kitchen table.

  “Mother,” she said, “I —”

  A confession? A warning? An admission of regret? A wish for us to be mother and daughter again, the way we once were?