That's My Baby

by Frances Itani

  JAN. 1/97

  4 a.m. can’t sleep, warm milk, hot coffee, bed, up again, stared out window into dark, lie down, can’t sleep, hear pulse in ear, loud and fast, rapid heartbeat, something wrong, should I call ambulance?

  8 a.m. toast—half piece, jam, tea, oatmeal, spoon peanut butter

  9 a.m. stranger scrambled egg, ate because she nagged. She wished me Happy New Year.

  12:30 p.m. drank cup of chicken soup, tasteless, crackers (2), tea, apple

  5 p.m. frozen dinner, heated in m-wave, pasta, veal, some leftovers

  9 p.m. prune juice

  MAR. 17/97

  3 a.m. shot of whisky, stared out window at snow, fell into bed

  5 a.m. warm milk, sleep, no sleep

  9 a.m. milky tea, whole pot, made porridge, hate porridge, supposed to be good for me

  10 a.m. coffee, left tap on in bathroom just for a minute? flooded floor, sopped up with towels

  11 a.m. coffee

  12:45 p.m. bread and butter, can’t be bothered with lunch, slice of cheese

  5 p.m. coffee with baked potato, chicken breast, ate half, carrots and peas mixed

  9 p.m. coffee, bed, up at 11, warm milk, can’t sleep

  MAY 22/97

  H brought homemade butter tarts last night while visiting. I ate 6 for breakfast.

  10 a.m. tea, strong, no milk

  12:25 p.m. opened tin Campbell’s soup

  4 p.m. Meals on Wheels arrives—white sauce popular with someone, not me. Chicken. Brussels sprouts.

  9 p.m. ice cream, cherry-vanilla, glass wine, throat lozenge, more wine

  11 p.m. warm milk, tried to pay bill, messed up chequebook, cheques missing, accounts mixed up, maybe tell H?

  In the midst of the lists of food, she has interrupted herself, as if she suddenly thought of this.

  Baby turkeys: Don’t let their feet touch wet ground. Make sure there’s wire underfoot. Or bring them inside. My father made a mistake thinking he could raise a few in a small pen behind shed. Neighbours on street weren’t happy. He brought them into the house in cardboard box on a rainy night. The rest of us asleep. Baby turkeys ran around kitchen all night because they got out of box. Shit everywhere in the morning. Good thing door to next room was shut. Huge fight between my parents after everyone got up. The usual yelling and shouting, recriminations and outcries. Ned left for school early, good for him, he escaped.

  JUNE 17/97

  Phone rang. Let it ring. Cried. Can’t stop crying.

  Phone rang again. Again. Again. Picked up, couldn’t understand what woman was saying.

  Phoned H—don’t know who the woman was. Maybe call was important.

  Can’t stop crying. H says she’ll come over. Put Meals on Wheels dinner in fridge

  Two glasses wine

  JULY 23/97

  7 p.m. Man came to door, looked at me through window, didn’t let him in, didn’t answer bell, hid purse in oven. He did not look like good provider.

  Called H. Help!

  AUG. 7/97

  Skipped breakfast—drank tea

  1 p.m. stood at window after stranger left, opened tuna, ate out of can

  1:50 p.m. stood beside freezer, ate entire package frozen cookies

  5 p.m. no hunger after cookies, thought I’d be sick, sucked lozenge

  11 p.m. cream of wheat, hankering for, still constipated

  SEP. 11/97

  6 a.m. Coffee. Tea. Coffee again.

  2 p.m. Lettuce-tomato sandwich

  5 p.m. Meals on W, don’t like dinner, white sauce on fish, stranger said eat it anyway

  DEC. 31/97

  Breakfast—leftover Chr. turkey white meat

  Lunch—leftover turkey dark meat, heated gravy, cranberries resemble blood pellets

  Supper—leftover dressing, 2 cherry tomatoes, green beans. H arrived with dinner but I’d eaten. Forgot she was bringing dinner tonight.

  Bed—warm milk after H left, no sleep, never sleep, do I sleep? Mixed up pills. Might have taken twice, maybe three times, better not mention to strangers. Definitely not to H. If I do, she’ll return, take pills away.

  FEB. 14/98

  Stranger brought candy hearts for treat, cinnamon taste. Ate red hearts for breakfast.

  11 a.m. egg—tried soft-boiled, mess on plate, too runny, hate runny eggs

  12 noon—tea, sugar, did I ever take sugar in tea? Don’t tell H. She’ll think I’m batty.

  1:30 p.m. phone rang, man on phone told me my credit card cancelled. How will I pay for anything? Called H.

  Hanora remembers Billie’s upset over the cancellation of her credit card, which she had used in the past for phone orders. Payment of her bills became erratic, and was finally forgotten completely. When Hanora arrived to help solve the problem, Billie was angry. She shouted as if she believed Hanora was responsible for the cancellation. In fact, Hanora had no idea that Billie still owned a credit card. Hanora rooted through desk files and found old statements, unpaid. Billie calmed down when shown the unpaid balances and ever-increasing interest charges. She declared that she would cut up her card. Which made no difference, as it had already been cancelled.

  Billie yanked the card from her wallet, pulled scissors from a drawer and sat at the end of the kitchen table. Slowly, deliberately, she snipped away until the card was an array of tiny chips. She glared at Hanora, forgot the fragmented plastic strewn over the end of the table and rested her bare arm on top.

  When Hanora got up to leave, promising to settle the bill from Billie’s bank account, Billie was in no way grateful. She raised an arm to rest her chin in her hand so she could stare at the door while Hanora exited. The lower part of Billie’s arm was imprinted with a kaleidoscope of coloured plastic pieces, all pressed to her skin. These did not fall off when she raised her arm. If she noticed she didn’t let on, and Hanora was beyond telling her.

  Billie stayed like that, glaring, the plastic chips attached to her skin while she watched Hanora put on her coat.

  “Goodbye,” she said coldly. A single chip dropped off her arm and fell back onto the table. She looked down and brushed it to the floor as Hanora left.

  HANORA leafs through more pages. On and on goes Billie’s recorded history. Every item of food she chewed, every drink that passed through her lips—all have been listed on rough scraps of paper, scrunched-up pages torn from scribblers, intact notebooks. Some pages have a half-sucked lozenge stuck to them, as if Billie hurriedly removed the lozenge from her mouth and dropped it into the drawer.

  Her penmanship is sometimes frantic, sometimes heavily scored or traced over and over for emphasis. Many pages have Hanora’s phone number scribbled along the top or bottom, underlined, as if Billie was desperate to remember how to make contact.

  How long has Billie’s memory been slipping away?

  She has written a history of eating. Of sustenance.

  A history of insomnia.

  A history of tears.

  And fears.

  On paper, as if to make herself real, Billie has been doing whatever she could, in futile attempts to preserve her sense of self.

  1939

  THE LADY CHAMPLAIN

  RUNNING. THAT’S THE WAY IT FELT. RUNNING up and down stairs, in and out of corridors, exploring the outer deck, running into people they’d just met. Trying to see everything at once: every room, lounge, café, in the daylight and in the dark. Becoming accustomed to the roll of the ship. Seeing the occasional puddle of emesis at the bottom of stairwells, quickly cleaned up by staff. Knowing that passengers with mal de mer were begging to have weak tea or broth brought to their cabins.

  Hanora and Billie tried to remember names, including their own.

  There they were, on the Liste des Passagers:

  Miss Hanora Oak

  Miss Billie Read

  For their first dinner, they were led to a table for six, their seating for the duration of the voyage. The dining room was two decks high in the centre, adorned with ironwork along the upper walls. Ma
rble stairs led down and into the room from two directions. Grand, everything grand.

  An American woman named Ruth was seated at their table. She greeted them as if she had recently suffered a grievous circumstance. Hanora was fascinated by the way her face saddened, the way her mouth exhaled a soft breath, the way she tilted her head and mourned her way into conversation. In fact, once past the mournful greeting, she was surprisingly cheerful. She was not much older than Billie, and said she planned to disembark in Plymouth, where her husband, a British pilot in the RAF, would travel to meet her. She’d been in Boston visiting family and was now returning to her marital home in the north of England. She was slim and wore a black dress, black stockings, black shoes. The only adornment was an emerald-and-diamond ring on her left hand. When Hanora admired the ring, Ruth said it had been put there by her husband and she had not removed it since. He wore a wedding band, she said. But she wore the emerald and diamond.

  Ruth was certain they were heading into war and missed her husband “an awful lot,” but she declared her intention to enjoy every minute at sea, especially with so many musicians aboard. “I do love to dance,” she added. “I hope the ship’s musicians are up to scratch. Do you think Duke will be persuaded to play?”

  No one knew the answer to that. But everyone was watching for the man. He appeared at that moment, descending the staircase, and was shown to his table.

  “What are your names?” Ruth looked as if she might burst into tears. “You’re awfully alike. Are you twins?”

  A quick glance, and Hanora and Billie reminded themselves of the switch.

  “I’m Hanora Oak,” said Billie. “This is my cousin Billie Read.” The two tried to be serious, turned away from each other so they wouldn’t collapse in laughter. They were saved by the arrival of the waiter, who identified himself as Hugo—white shirt, black trousers, slicked hair. He would be looking after their table the entire week. He placed menus before them, gave a slight bow and told them he’d be back. The menus were in French. Printed at the front of the menu along the bottom were the words “En mer, le 23 Mars, 1939.”

  Immediate chatter ensued. There were so many choices. Who would interpret the chef’s creations, the ones that weren’t obvious—Mousseline de Marrons, Filets de Rouget au Gratin, Coupe Rêve de Bébé? Hanora, for one. She had taught herself some French, but could not help except to say that she was certain marrons meant chestnuts.

  Hanora looked around at the other tables. The instrumentalists were in different parts of the room, most at tables for four. Hanora saw Tizol, Hodges, Cootie Williams, Tricky Sam. Ivie came in, and took her place with Duke and Rex Stewart and a woman Hanora didn’t recognize. Loud laughter was coming from the table next to Hanora’s and she turned to see Billy Taylor, the bassist, holding up pictures of steak and potatoes and pie. He was trying to show these to the waiter, even while the others at his table roared with laughter. “He can’t speak the language,” said one of his tablemates. “He cut these out of magazines because he’s afraid he’ll go hungry.” The waiter was laughing, as well. Far across the room, six nuns sat together, smiling at the eruption of noise from the musicians.

  Another person was led to their table, and Hanora again reminded herself of her new name. What she saw first was one caramel shoe, then another, and a shock of royal-blue socks. This time, the wearer of the shoes had a face. The man wore an open-necked blue shirt, sports jacket, tan trousers, no tie. He was in his thirties, six feet tall with a slouch. He folded himself into the chair next to Billie and grinned. The voice—he introduced himself as Angus—was the gravelly voice Hanora had heard on the train the night before. Billie shook hands, gave her name as Hanora and said she was happy to meet him. She leaned in closer. Hallman was forgotten.

  “Goodnight, Irene” had not faded into the noise of the train after all.

  The final companions at their table for the week were a couple in their thirties who introduced themselves as Frank and Frankie. They shrugged, saying people were usually surprised that they had the same name. Frankie was pale, the curls around her face almost white. She wore round, rimless glasses and a washed-out print dress, as if she were making every effort to impersonate an old woman. Frank had a wild look and was always laughing, always cheerful. He had genuine affection for his young-old wife, and as it turned out, the two knew every dance step invented in the past dozen years. On the dance floor later that evening, other dancers moved to the edges and left the centre clear, just to watch them do the Charleston and the Lindy Hop.

  Foxy, who considered himself a ladies’ man, was another matter. He wasn’t at their table in the dining room, but later in the evening showed an interest in all women who were unaccompanied by men. After dinner, he moved from table to table in the lounge, asking women to dance, staring at them with small black eyes. Like Frank and Frankie, Foxy knew all the steps.

  While the music played, while intrigues and encounters began to take shape, Hanora was watching faces. Every face was new. There was no chance that any relative of hers, apart from Billie, would be aboard a ship leaving New York and heading across the ocean, but she couldn’t stop looking. Searching for family had become her habit, her practice. She paid attention to expression, imagined likeness, no matter how small. She watched the many ways people relaxed into, and took for granted, the state of belonging. Not long ago, she had been one of those people. Before her last birthday, she had never given her identity a thought.

  Undoubtedly, there were others aboard who had been adopted. What was she to do? Ask the captain to send out a bulletin? Request adoptees to report to the editor of the ship’s paper? Would she meet, interview, find out what they knew of themselves? Ask if they had concerns, deeply personal concerns? The daily paper was printed in both English and French and reported world news and news of the stock market, but why couldn’t it turn to something more intimate?

  She did not approach the editor of the ship’s paper. Her search was her own obsession, and though at times she was tempted to tell Billie, she held back.

  She wanted no one else’s input. She’d promised herself that she would tell only Breeda and Tobe. Billie was impetuous, sometimes unpredictable. At the moment, she was having the time of her life pretending to be Hanora. Billie had left her own identity on the pier in New York. Now she was meeting people, practising new dance steps, engaging the musicians in chatter and laughter. And dancing late every night.

  At the end of the entertainment in the evenings, Hanora returned to her cabin, looked in the mirror, stretched the skin at the edges of her eyes, pulled at her cheeks and mouth, created a variety of facial expressions.

  She tried to imagine what it would be like to resemble a father more than a mother, a mother more than a father. What could that be like? To have someone to resemble? There had to be other restless souls out there. Like her own.

  She crawled under the covers and did what she did every night: forced herself to try to conjure a remembered detail about her birth mother. She told herself she would never stop trying. And she had been able to create an image in her mind. A shape, the outline of a woman’s face. The face had not a single feature. She had conjured a woman without a face.

  1998

  MARIAH BINDLE’S EARLY DIARY

  HANORA LEANS OVER THE BOX SHE HAS labelled “A,” and reaches in. Pulls out a diary with a pressboard cover, brittle, one hundred years old. Ninety-eight years, to be exact. The cover sheds tiny yellowed chips along its edges, and she’s careful as she turns the first page. If Mariah were alive today, she’d be almost 112.

  Billie is settling in at Respiro. She has care. The staff is attentive. Her chosen items of furniture won’t be moved for another week or more, which means that Hanora can begin to get back to work. Or pretend to. Maybe, just maybe it will be possible to focus. To fully concentrate on the book she plans to write.

  THIS is the overview of what Hanora has learned so far: Mariah, born in 1886, youngest of five children, grew up on the homestead on the C
anadian Shield. Throughout her childhood, she demonstrated a gift for drawing. She drew portraits of family, classmates and friends, and sketched rural scenes. She filled diaries and notebooks with sketches, along with a running commentary about various aspects of her life and the lives of others around her. When she was fifteen, a teacher named Mrs. Banco arranged Mariah’s first solo exhibit in the local one-room school. As the years passed and Mariah showed no interest in marrying—she worked steadily to help her parents on the farm as older siblings married and moved away—her mother urged her to find a way to support herself. In 1908, in her twenty-second year, she moved to Toronto, supposedly to study at a secretarial school in a private business college for young women. Instead, and contrary to the wishes of her parents (both believed she could not earn a living by painting), she found an art teacher and supported herself by helping in the kitchen in the downtown boarding house where she lived. She worked out a schedule for study and one for work. She joined an art class and began to experiment with oils. Eventually, she sailed to Europe and spent time in southern France, learning what she could, painting and meeting other artists. From there, she travelled to southwest England. In Cornwall, she delighted in the exuberance of colour. She was comfortable in St. Ives, and painted landscapes of hill, sea and sky. Her work there—her drawings of fishermen, their boats and their families—was particularly detailed.

  She returned to Canada at the end of the Great War, gratified at the serious recognition her paintings were receiving in her home country. She moved back and forth between Toronto and her parents’ farm, always painting, and returned to southwest England again during the thirties. Once more, she lived and painted in Cornwall, where she became friendly with a British artist named Lizzie. From there, she moved to Coventry, perhaps to follow Lizzie. They were residents of that city at the outset of the Second World War. During one of the bombing raids of Coventry, in April 1941, Mariah was struck by falling debris. She suffered a serious concussion and was unconscious for a time—whether hours or days, Hanora has yet to find out. Mariah remained in England for the duration of the war, and returned to Canada in early 1946, bringing her wartime diaries with her. Her papers ended up in several locations in Ontario as a consequence of moving about so much. In June 1946, on her sixtieth birthday, she died in the Eastern Hospital for the Insane in Brockville, where she’d been taken because of what was reported to be unmanageable depression and “senility.” The present-day relatives are the ones who reported these latter facts.