by Anne Degrace
“He probably left them,” offered Andrea after a minute. “He probably took one look at Wombat and ran.”
I BELIEVE IT was then that I really began to feel sorry for Wanda, who had begun to be absent for a day here and there, always returning with a little folded note for the teacher. Not that I became her bosom buddy or anything, but I began to look for moments in which to offer a few friendly words here and there when I thought nobody was looking. Miss McGrath noticed and took me aside.
“Good for you, Meg. I know your friendship means a lot to Wanda,” she said.
Andrea overheard. “What are you, teacher’s pet?” she said later.
From then on I did my best not to invite any comments from Miss McGrath and I avoided Wanda, but when I found Wanda standing alone in the cloakroom after everyone had gone, I told her I liked her jacket. I didn’t — it had two sets of big ugly round buttons down the front — but I did like the colour, which was a deep blue. She was struggling into it at the time, trying to pull the wide sleeves over her cast. As she looked at me I noticed for the first time how black her eyelashes were, and how perfectly they circled her eyes, almost without stopping at the corners.
“Thank you,” she said. “My dad bought it for me.”
“I thought you said he was dead.”
“I mean, he bought it for me before he died.” She turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to talk about it. Mandy came in to the cloakroom.
“What are you two talking about?” She asked.
When we replied, it was in unison. “Nothing,” we lied.
THE DAY THE news announced the execution of Pierre Laporte at the hands of the terrorists, our kitchen radio was cranked up to full volume as I ate my cornflakes. The morning was cold and wet and I walked to school feeling the weight of something I did not understand wrapped around my neck like a scarf pulled too tight. When I stepped from the slate grey morning and into the reassuring yellow light of the classroom I found on my desk a small white envelope. There were similar envelopes on the desks of each girl in the class. Thirteen envelopes. The boys were curious.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Andrea said to Maurice Landry.
My envelope contained a small card with a picture on the front of the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t like most party invitations, with balloons or birthday cakes, but looked like part of a set of hasty-notes, like the kind my mother used. Inside it said:
You are invited to a birthday party
Saturday, October 22, 12:00 – 5:00
#4 627 Thornstone Rd.
Wanda Wysnowski
“SHOULD WE GO?” Donna asked at lunch. “What if she feeds us some kind of goulash cake?”
Andrea laughed. “Wombat stew,” she said.
“Let’s ask her,” said Mandy, and I followed as my friends approached Wanda where she sat in the corner of the lunchroom eating a sandwich that, remarkably, looked just like ours. Bologna. White bread.
“We’re going to McDonald’s,” Wanda told us through her sandwich. Andrea raised her eyebrows. McDonald’s was new. It had just opened downtown a few months ago. We’d heard all about it, but none of us had been there yet. “And we’re going to see The Aristocats.” The new Disney movie. We hadn’t seen that either.
“Neat,” I said. My friends looked at me.
“Yeah, that’s really neat, Wanda,” Mandy offered.
“So you’ll come?”
“Of course we’ll come,” Mandy said again, and we all gathered around her, fawning. Our new best friend.
WE WALKED TOGETHER to Wanda’s home, a narrow townhouse with a paved frontyard.
“Maybe they don’t believe in grass in Yugoslavia,” whispered Andrea.
“Shhhh,” said Donna as I reached forward and rang the bell.
Wanda answered the door, Mrs. Wysnowski hovering behind her. Wanda was wearing a brand new pantsuit with gold buckles. “Welcome,” said Mrs. Wysnowski in an accent I supposed was Yugoslavian. She was round in shape, with a big bosom and dyed red hair and hoop earrings.
The narrow hallway opened into a small living room. The furniture looked different. Old-fashioned. On the end tables were round white mats with lace edges and embroidery of flowers and birds. In a glass cabinet in the corner stood ornate brass jugs and painted china plates. There was a piano, with framed photographs on the top. I wanted to look for Wanda’s father, to see if he looked like a spy, or dead, but before I could approach, Wanda’s mother began to speak, and I listened, transfixed by her deep voice and the way she pronounced different words. Darlings, she called us, the a elongated, the g hard. She sounded like an actress.
We would go to McDonald’s, she explained, and then to the movie. We would take the bus. Since my parents had a car, a Ford station wagon with green leather seats, I had never taken the bus, and I was excited by the prospect.
“I bet they don’t even have a car,” said Donna in my left ear, but I pretended not to hear her.
“After the movie we’ll come back here for presents and birthday cake,” said Mrs. Wysnowski. I had placed my present with the others on the table in the hallway, and now I felt bad about my choice. My mother had asked me, when we went shopping at the mall, did I want to get her the Nancy Drew book or the plastic troll necklace set. Trolls were the newest thing, squat dolls with pug noses and coloured hair. We collected them, but I didn’t yet have the necklace. “The Nancy Drew,” I had said.
There, in that small townhouse, I thought suddenly about what thirteen McDonald’s lunches and thirteen movie tickets must cost, imagining my mother’s voice in my ear. When I had asked her if we could go to McDonald’s she had said it was too expensive. But our house was a lot richer-looking than Wanda’s.
“How can they afford this?” I asked Donna. She looked at me like I was crazy.
“Who cares?” she said.
McDonald’s was everything we hoped it would be: perfectly formed patties completely unlike our backyard barbecue hamburgers, French fries shaped like small square pencils. We thought the little packets of ketchup and mustard were cute, and we tucked some away in our pockets. We didn’t really speak to Wanda but talked and laughed among ourselves. Still, as we walked the two blocks to the Elgin Theatre and nudged and jostled one another, she walked in the thick of us, smiling, and stood beside me while her mother paid at the box office.
“Thanks for coming,” Wanda said to me as we waited.
Wanda sat beside me in the theatre. When the movie drew to a close, she took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re nice to me,” she said.
Back at the Wysnowski’s, Wanda beamed as she blew out the candles, the flames reflected in the decorative buckles on the front pockets of her pantsuit. We ate chocolate cake made from a cake mix, and stirred our melting ice cream into the crumbs as we sat crowded around the dining-room table. We played Pass the Spoon, a game in which each girl would put something from her plate — ice cream, cake, candles — on the spoon until it was piled so high that it spilled. The girl holding the spoon when that happened had to eat everything that had dropped, candles and all. Just before it got to Wanda, one girl reached for the salt and pepper in the centre of the table and dowsed the pile liberally. As Wanda took the spoon, the inevitable happened.
“That wasn’t fair,” I said to the girl, and everyone looked at me. “It’s just supposed to be stuff from our plates.” The table was quiet.
“That’s right,” said Mandy after a moment. “You don’t have to eat it, Womba.”
That’s what she said: Womba. She had begun to say Wombat, she told me later, then caught herself and tried to change it to Wanda. I looked at Wanda, still holding the spoon. She was smiling, frozen. Mrs. Wysnowski came in from the kitchen, then, wiping her hands on a towel. She wore an apron that was embroidered like the doilies on her coffee tables.
“Ready f
or presents?”
We left the shambles of the table and tumbled into the tiny living room, a tangle of elbows and knees as we all found places on the floor. I tried to peer up at the photographs on the piano again to find out what Yugoslavians looked like, especially Wanda’s father, but I couldn’t really see. The presents were in a pile in the centre of the floor. It took a little while to open so many presents, and, as we had been taught, we all said things like “wow” and “neat-o” as each was unwrapped. When Wanda opened Nancy Drew and the Secret of Shadow Ranch, she held it to her chest.
“My favourite,” she said.
“I hope you haven’t read it.”
“No, but I really want to. Thank you, Meg.”
THE FOUR OF us walked home from the party in relative silence. We were full of hamburgers and popcorn and cake. I was feeling queasy.
“She’s not so bad,” ventured Donna.
“Nah,” agreed Mandy.
“Did you really call her Womba?” Donna looked at her sideways, suppressing a laugh so that it exploded into a snort. The others started laughing then, the way we often do, sometimes close to peeing ourselves before we manage to stop. I laughed a little, but my stomach didn’t like it. As I turned off to my own street, I thought of Wanda and the way she squeezed my hand in the movie theatre. I rubbed the hand against my pantleg.
When I came home Mum was in the kitchen, Dad drinking a rum & Coke and watching the news. The reporter was talking about the FLQ, and whether James Cross would be freed. A photograph released by the terrorists showed a balding man bound with his hands behind his back.
“Wanda called you,” Mum called as I stood in the doorway to the den, watching Dad watching the television. “Hi dear,” he said, not turning to look at me. He didn’t ask me if I’d had fun at the party.
“Did you hear me?” Mum called again.
“Yeah.”
I wondered why Wanda would call me. Maybe I forgot something at her house, I thought. I had to look up her number, and to do that I had to be able to spell Wysnowski. I tried a few possibilities before I found the number and began dialling. It seemed as if the dial had scarcely completed its final rotation when the receiver at the other end was picked up. “Hello?” came Wanda’s voice.
“It’s Meg. You called me?” I may have sounded short, impatient. I could hear her voice falter.
“I just wanted to say thank you for coming. It was really . . . nice to have you.” She sounded formal, foreign. I thought of the embroidered doilies, the photographs on the piano.
“Sure,” I said. There was silence, the telephone wire thick between us.
“See you tomorrow at school?” She sounded hopeful.
“Sure,” I said again. When I hung up the phone my damp hand had left a mark on the handle that evaporated as I gazed at the silent telephone.
On Monday I walked to school as usual with Donna, Andrea, and Mandy. We talked about The Aristocats. We discussed McDonald’s, and how they said that soon there would be one in every country in the World. It seemed impossible to us.
“Even in Yugoslavia?” I asked, and although I meant it, my friends took it as a joke about Wanda.
“They could call it McWombat’s,” laughed Andrea.
Around the room were tacked last week’s art projects, put up on Friday, I supposed, after we’d gone home. They were wax and paint pictures, Hallowe’en scenes drawn in crayon painted over with black paint so the wax came through. Wanda’s scarecrow looked happy, a big smile across its yellow face. At the bottom of the picture she had written her name in black magic marker. Wanda.
When the bell rang and we took our seats I sat, as usual, at my desk between Andrea’s and Wanda’s. As I looked at the board I could feel Wanda’s eyes on me. After a moment I glanced at her and smiled, then looked quickly down at the open reader in front of me. I kept my eyes on my work until the morning recess bell rang.
It was a beautiful day, a last gasp before November would take hold and the sky would descend into a relentless grey winter. I left the classroom ahead of Wanda, running slightly to catch up to my friends, who were discussing Hallowe’en. Wanda was behind us somewhere.
“I’m going as a hippie,” Andrea was saying. “My sister’s got all the clothes.”
“You’re supposed to go as something scary,” Mandy protested.
“What about going as a wombat? That’s really scary!” Andrea said. I turned to see Wanda behind us. She brushed past us, running.
I walked with my friends to the maple tree, from which point we could see into the boys’ yard, another reason why the tree was a favourite spot. There, we speculated on who was cute and who wasn’t. We accused one another of liking a boy, or being liked.
“Maurice Landry likes you,” Donna said, planting an elbow in my rib cage.
“No he doesn’t,” I said. “Besides, he’s short.” They waited. “And he looks like a retard,” I said, pushing up my glasses, and Andrea nodded approvingly.
As the bell rang Andrea ran ahead, followed after a moment by Mandy and Donna. I didn’t feel like running, my feet heavy in my shoes. Wanda was walking from the other side of the playground, alone, and I entered the classroom before she did. I sat at my desk, Andrea grinning beside me, but I couldn’t figure out what the joke was. Wanda came in and sat down.
I could hear a few of the boys begin to laugh, then a small commotion as people turned in their seats. I turned as well. Under Wanda’s scarecrow someone had crossed out Wanda and written Wombat.
Miss McGrath didn’t notice; I almost wished she would. I didn’t look at Andrea or Wanda or anyone for the rest of the morning. At lunchtime I ate my sandwich in the lunchroom and then went straight outside, the way we were supposed to. Wanda was standing by herself watching the Double Dutchers.
“. . . if it’s Wanda let her in, and we’ll sock her in the chin . . . ”
But Wanda wasn’t skipping. She was just standing there. When I approached I saw she was crying.
“Hi Wanda,” I said, quietly. I don’t know what I thought I would say. I just wanted to be with her. I was not prepared for what she did next.
She hugged me.
I stood, arms straight at my sides, not moving. Maybe that’s what they do in Yugoslavia, I thought as I waited to be released. It was certainly not something you did as a ten-year-old in our neighbourhood in 1970.
“Meg, what are you doing?” came Andrea’s voice from behind me. She said it like she had just caught me eating slugs. Wanda let go of me, stepping away.
“That’s really gross. What are you, lezzies?”
I didn’t know for sure what a lezzie was, but it sounded like something I didn’t want to be. I thought I might have heard the word from Andrea’s sister, but I couldn’t remember exactly, and I thought it might be when two girls got married, and I knew that this was something that was not normal. I knew that being normal was the most important thing.
Then I looked at Andrea, and knew suddenly that it was Andrea who had crossed out Wanda’s name on the drawing.
I might have stood up for Wanda then, might have stood by her and told Andrea I thought she was mean. I might have made excuses to my friends: she was upset, that’s all, I might have said. But then Wanda reached out and took my hand in a gesture that was complicit. Her hand felt warm, sweaty. I felt their gaze on our joined hands and pulled away.
“It’s just that she was crying,” I said, too late. Then: “I don’t even like her.”
I walked away. I walked away from Wanda, who, the day after James Cross was freed by the terrorists, would change schools, taking two buses to get there every day. And I walked away from Andrea, who later became my main tormentor when I got fitted for braces, an abuse that continued through junior high.
I walked to the maple tree and leaned against its trunk, my right
hand pressed against its bark. I was trying to lose the tingle of warmth from the hand that had been held in Wanda’s. The bark was rough and cool, but the sensation remained.
TEN
THE LANGUAGE OF BONES
·1985·
THE WIND IS always present. It blows across the shifting plates of summer ice, slate and cobalt and the many shades of white; it sweeps across the tundra of Herschel Island, laying flat Arctic lupine, lousewort and vetch. Terns ride its currents or let the wind hold them, motionless, in the air. A polar bear lifts its nose, trying to discern the scent and sound of ring-necked seals through the steady blow off the Beaufort Sea.
I walk under the high distant sun of a Northern evening, the wind flattening my clothing against my body. When it blows like this, the mosquitoes are gone, at least. I am wide awake, despite the long day of sifting soil and cataloguing tiny fragments at the excavation site, and insufficient sleep. Barry, my supervisor, says it’s hard for any Southerner to adjust to twenty-four-hour Northern light, and I’ve felt eerily awake most of the time since I got here. It’s wearing, though; I can feel it fraying my edges, this wakefulness, and light and wind.
Ahead is the Inuvialuit graveyard, my destination. The wind, undulating across tussock and scrub, looks as though it might blow away the weatherworn pickets that surround the knot of graves. I put my head down and push against it, moving forward towards the past, and it pushes back as if to say: who are you to go digging things up?
BEFORE I LEFT for Herschel Island, I took the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria to see my folks. As soon as I arrived, “Nina — I was getting worried,” my mother said, hugging me briefly. “We were waiting for you. Drop your things — there’s just time to get to the graveyard.”
It was the anniversary of my younger sister Lucy’s death, and I had forgotten. How could I? A hot wave of guilt washed over me, and I mumbled apologies for being late. I didn’t tell my parents the truth: that in my excitement, I had imagined a family dinner in which we’d talk about my upcoming summer dig up north; my dad would be proud, I’d thought, my mother anxious, both of them excited with me. We’d get out the atlas and I’d trace the route north to the top of the Yukon. Now, in the shadow of Lucy’s sad anniversary, my own impending departure to what was merely a different geography seemed unremarkable.