That's My Baby

by Frances Itani

  And now I must remember—Lizzie will be checking—that in our house we have at the ready, day and night, full water buckets, respirators, food, candles.

  Hanora examines the two drawings. Smoke is as Mariah described in her diary, and is sitting on a wooden chair and staring at the artist as if posing. The poster shows the head of a coal-black cat with yellow almond-shaped eyes. The left eye contains a round black pupil, the right a vertical black slit. The print below the cat’s head reads: “Until your eyes get used to the darkness, take it easy. Look out in the blackout.”

  She returns to the diary pages, reading further into 1941.

  MAY ?? 1941

  I sometimes look around and wonder where I am but don’t ask for fear Lizzie or the other residents of the house will think me mad. I found myself in the kitchen this morning about eleven o’clock, and could not think why I was sitting at the table by myself. I had no recollection of moving myself there from any other place. I stood and walked about the kitchen and made my way upstairs to my room. I sat on the edge of my bed and tried to recall the sequence of events that had brought me to the kitchen table. I could not come up with any motive. I am hopeful of preventing a repeat of this kind of experience, and will have to have my wits about me. I must remember to carry my respirator with me when I walk out. Lizzie continues to remind me.

  Smoke follows me from room to room, needing to be reassured of my presence. Once accustomed to the routine of the house, she will no doubt become a more independent creature.

  Evening note: Halfway through the afternoon, Smoke leaped up to the outside sill next the door and rattled the latch. She stared through the window, willing—perhaps I should say demanding—someone to admit her. Her independence asserted, she will now become intent on making us her slaves.

  After this, several pages are without any date. The entries then cease, and do not resume until December of the same year. The handwriting in December is no longer spidery, but it’s also not as assured and fluid as before.

  DECEMBER 23, 1941

  I’m glad that I have stayed on, and that I share the fate of everyone here. How can a city abandon itself? Our city—I think of it as my own now—was much destroyed, but after a night of bombing, clearing begins almost immediately. Clearing and reconstruction. So many lives were lost in the November raids last year, and again in April, that I realize how fortunate I was to emerge from my own injuries alive. Even now, we are never certain if and when planes will threaten overhead.

  After a bad spell that seemed to go on and on, my headaches have disappeared. At Lizzie’s urging I have begun to paint more. This war cannot last forever, and I believe it is important to document in art what is happening around us.

  I am also able to help once more at the hospital, though I put in fewer hours and my tasks are light. There is always a need for extra hands, and I do what I can to assist the regular staff. They work long shifts and stay beyond when emergency calls. I am sorry I cannot do more.

  One thing that has caused some grief and confusion is the following: A doctor who visited my ward this morning approached and spoke to me by name. He said his name was John, and repeated the name several times during the conversation. He told me we had met at a concert about a year ago. He is a cardiologist and now works at this hospital, his former place of employment having been destroyed. He told me he had cooked up scrambled eggs and toast for Lizzie and me after said concert, and this I could scarcely believe. We laughed together, though I believe he was concerned about my memory lapse. I continued to wonder if he was joking. I have met many men named John in Coventry. Perhaps he is the one mistaken. If it is my memory that has failed, then I have cause for grief.

  I have begun to long for spring and want to return again to St. Ives, where I painted so happily. Perhaps it will be possible to travel there with Lizzie in late spring or early summer. The citizens of Coventry appear to have set in for a long war. The determination on their faces tells the story. If that is the case, St. Ives residents are no doubt doing the same.

  Unable to resist, Hanora turns toward the end to have a glimpse at what lies ahead.

  It appears that Mariah stayed on in England throughout the war, though there are fewer entries in the diary between 1943 and 1946. Fewer entries, but more drawings. After the end of the war, she managed to get herself onto the Mauretania, one of the many ships that transported close to sixty-four thousand war brides and their children to Canada so that families could be reunited. The Mauretania landed at Pier 21 in Halifax on February 9, 1946, carrying just under a thousand women and children.

  Numerous sketches portray life on board, largely around mealtimes—images of countless toddlers scattered among the pages. There are drawings showing waves threatening the ship. Even if these are exaggerated, the faces of the new immigrants clearly show the misery of seasickness, people lying across their beds and laundry piled high. On land there are depictions of Pier 21—the walkways, the waiting trains—and an attempt to show crowds of women and small children disembarking as they arrive in their new country. Mariah notes beside one drawing: A band played a rousing “Here Comes the Bride,” but this was unappreciated by many women who have suffered during the crossing.

  Three sketches show a young girl of perhaps four or five on the train leaving Halifax. She is holding a banana, the first time she has held such a fruit in her hand. In the first sketch, she holds it with a perplexed expression on her face. In the second, she is about to bite at the peel. In the third, adult hands come in from the side to demonstrate how to pull back the peel. Extreme pleasure is now seen on the face of this child. Mariah used greys and blacks, and in contrast, created the one object of vibrant colour, the yellow banana.

  Knowing how impossible it was to find a way to cross the ocean during wartime years, and even for a year after the end of the war—and having found a way herself in 1945, with more than a little difficulty—Hanora suspects that Mariah offered herself in an official capacity so that she could make this historic postwar crossing. The Mauretania wasn’t the first ship to bring war brides; earlier ships carrying wounded soldiers had transported smaller numbers of brides and their children. But the Mauretania was the first “designated” ship for Canadian war brides and their offspring.

  Mariah might have been paid for her work. Perhaps she offered paintings of the crossing to the government in exchange for her passage. If so, Hanora will track any of her art that might be owned by the Canadian War Museum. She wants her book, with an appendix listing Mariah’s works and where they can be found, to be as complete as possible. She will be the first to set out this information. She has not yet chosen a title for her book, but that will fall out of the work itself, she hopes. She is counting on that.

  No matter how the passage home was negotiated, Hanora is now certain of the dates Mariah sailed to Canada. She returned without the company of Lizzie. The plan was for her British friend to join her when civilian transatlantic crossings started up again.

  Hanora will have to read the entries of the final pages before she has answers to her remaining questions. She is coming close to the end of the main body of research, which means she is coming close to writing the first chapter of her book.

  LAST WORD

  JUNE HAS COME AND GONE. THE CLEANING CREW scoured the basement, cleaned floors and bedroom closets, and washed shelves under sinks. Vacuumed cobwebs, replaced light bulbs where needed, wiped appliances, cleaned stove and fridge. Window washers removed every streak on every pane of glass, inside and out. The lawn care company sent a worker to mow the grass and clean up the small garden. Once the house was ready, it sold quickly. Now there are papers to sign, a meeting with the realtor and another with the lawyer, and a visit to the bank to ensure that the money has been deposited into Billie’s account. Finally, she will have to let Billie know that the red-and-white house has been sold.

  Filmore accompanied Hanora during her final inspection, and before she gave the realtor the okay to come and take photo
s. They were downstairs in the basement when Hanora opened the door of a narrow closet, a makeshift affair recessed into the wall of a side room. Although she’d walked past the closet many times, she had overlooked it earlier. And so, it seems, had the cleaning crew.

  A plastic garment bag was hanging from a metal bar, suspended from two hooks that protruded through the top of the bag. Hanora unzipped the bag and discovered inside a faded yellow dress with matching jacket that Billie wore to her brother’s wedding in Rochester, eons ago. Hanora saw the wedding photos after the war, and recognized the outfit immediately. The photos were taken before Billie moved to Canada, before she upgraded her education and started her new profession as a teacher of the English language.

  The yellow dress was layered, with yards of a paler yellow netting overtop of the skirt. A crinkled and slightly stiff crinoline was attached underneath. When Hanora removed the dress from the garment bag, the jacket disintegrated at her touch. The dress did the same. The garment bag also fell to pieces—rotted, old, brittle plastic. Everything ended up on the closet floor, and while Hanora began to pick up the larger pieces, Filmore went upstairs to find a broom and one more garbage bag.

  “That,” Hanora told him, “is the closest I’ve come to understanding the physical surrounds of Miss Havisham.”

  The last item to be removed was the seaman’s chest, which she had intentionally left in the house to the very end. Filmore lifted it into her car, and when they drove back to the apartment, he helped her carry it into the elevator and through the hall.

  The chest is heavy, cumbersome, made of pine with dovetail joints, iron hinges and a thick circle of rope inserted into a ring at one end, for lifting. Hanora raised the lid to show Filmore the image of a whaling ship painted on the underside. The chest is filled with papers and greeting card boxes, and Hanora knows she will eventually have to sort through the contents. For now she is happy to be the new owner of this wonderful old object that has passed through known and unknown hands for almost two centuries.

  HANORA and Filmore have made a plan for a day trip in August to the homestead where Mariah spent her childhood. Hanora checked with the descendants and was given directions. They’ve assured her that the farmhouse is still standing, and is lived in at present. The owners have agreed to permit Hanora to walk through the house and around the property, to take notes or photos, whatever she needs for the book. “You’ll find everyone up there pretty easy to get along with,” she was told. “You’ll be made to feel welcome. They were excited to learn that they live in a place that housed a famous artist. Especially one who will be the subject of a new book.”

  Hanora tells herself she’ll enjoy Filmore’s company. She can’t bring herself to call him Robin; when she does, she thinks of Christopher Robin visiting the zoo, tramping around London streets or parks with his father or with Pooh Bear. Robin was amused when she told him this and doesn’t mind what he’s called, he says. He adds that he was called Filmore during the war, last name only.

  IN late July, after the money from the sale of the house is in Billie’s account, Hanora drives to Respiro to visit. It is a hot day and an outdoor booth has been set up to serve glasses of lemonade and iced tea. A few staff members have come outside to be with the residents, and they carry glasses and cups to the tables. The extensive gardens at the residence are being tended along the back and sides of the building. Billie does not object when Hanora invites her to sit outside, and they make their way slowly, Billie using her cane. One of the exits is close to her suite. From there, it’s a short walk to a group of chairs that have been set near the gardens.

  Hanora chooses chairs that are protected from direct sun. There are striped awnings along one side of the building, and a groomed field stretches beyond that, but is off the property. A cricket match is in progress, a game Hanora has not seen since she lived in London and watched a charity match at Lord’s during the war. Billie has never seen cricket, and watches intently. Several of Respiro’s other residents have begun to take an interest, and while the game is under way, a groundskeeper comes along with a ladder and sets it against the wall beyond the edge of the iced-tea booth. Some part of the roof above must need repair.

  Just after the ladder is placed, a man and his visiting family members, all of them stout, sit at a table near the walkway at the opposite corner of the building and dig into the food that has been set out for snacks.

  “The washing-machine family,” says Billie. “They’ve been here before.” Her voice begins to rise. “Drum barrels on legs. Washing-machine barrels with heads on top. Father, mother, daughter, son-in-law. By their fruits ye shall know them. Remember the washing machines of the forties? Their skin might have been painted white. Look at them!”

  “Billie, they can hear you,” Hanora tells her, in a low voice. But Billie is right—the four have the same bulge across the middle, which makes them all the same shape. Their skin could pass for painted enamel. Hanora wonders if they eat nothing but white bread and pasta and desserts.

  Billie drops her voice, looking chastised. She turns her attention in the other direction, where the man on the ladder is repairing a section of the eavestrough.

  “The comics,” Billie says, eyeing the ladder, but she speaks more softly this time. “All those accident-prone figures walking under ladders or slipping on banana peels. Think of Mutt and Jeff. Or maybe the man on the ladder is climbing to heaven. Every rung goes higher, higher.” She is enjoying herself. She adds, “‘Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.’ That man might want to rethink the length of the ladder.”

  Billie has been slipping into biblical references lately, and Hanora sometimes feels that they’ve begun to converse like ancient biblical sisters. This must be coming from some period of Billie’s childhood. She was brought up to read the Bible. She mentioned one day that her father sometimes carried one around the house when he was drinking, and shouted out the Scriptures aloud. Billie was raised as a Protestant, but she set aside her religion after she moved out. Too much hypocrisy in her own home, she said.

  Billie is still watching the groundskeeper. “If he wants to get to heaven, he’s chosen the slow way.”

  Hanora is thinking of Mutt and Jeff, damsels tied to tracks, ballooned exclamations over cartoon figures, mischievous boys in comics, a lick of hair over one eye. Billie’s childhood memories often send Hanora back to earlier times, the past unreeling in her mind.

  A woman who lives on Respiro’s first floor wanders by. Seeing an empty chair on the other side of Billie, she turns and comes back and sits next to her, greeting her by name.

  Billie looks at Hanora, raises her eyebrows and says, loudly, “I have never seen this person before in my entire life.”

  The woman, a small woman wearing a cotton skirt and lightweight top with long sleeves, twists at her own arm. Continues to fidget.

  Hanora is about to introduce herself, but Billie says to the woman, “Oh, do sit still,” and turns back to the cricket game. The woman is already up, and wanders away.

  Billie watches the woman walk toward other chairs, other residents, and this time she whispers. She says to Hanora, “The place is full of strangers.”

  Whatever Billie says or doesn’t say, knows or doesn’t know, she no longer has to pretend that she can look after the complexities of day-to-day life. She no longer has to pretend that she doesn’t need assistance. She accepts help as if this is her due. She doesn’t argue, and no longer shouts at the staff.

  Hanora wonders if the timing is right to tell her about the sale of the house, and decides to go ahead. There may never be a right time, an exact time, a time that will fit a particular state of mind that will admit the information.

  “I have something to tell you, Billie. Something important.”

  Billie perks up at this.

  “I’ve finished preparing your house for sale—I’ve kept you posted about this over the past few months. Well, we’ve had an offer, a good one. I’ve accepted, and the house is sold. Yo
u’ll be getting a good price for it.”

  “My home?” she says. “You’ve sold it? You had no right to do this, Hanora. No right at all.”

  “Yes, Billie. It had to be sold to pay for the care you receive here. You have excellent care, excellent meals, your own furniture around you . . .”

  “You sold my home,” she says again, in disbelief. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you moved out and came here. The house can’t remain empty. You knew the house would be sold. We’ve talked about this many times.”

  “Well, of course,” she says. “That’s true. The insurance company won’t cover an empty house with no one living in it.”

  But she eyes Hanora suspiciously.

  She drinks a glass of lemonade. “Did you sell my house?” she asks.

  “Yes, it’s sold.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  The same conversation is repeated several times, but Billie can never quite remember the answer or the explanation.

  “Am I here, then? Is that it?” she finally says.

  “You’ve been here four months now, Billie. This is where you live.”

  “That’s true enough,” she says. “They’re good to me here. The strangers.”

  After they’ve spent an hour outside, Hanora takes Billie back to her room and helps her settle into her TV chair.

  Billie thanks her. “I had a lovely afternoon,” she says. “It was good to sit out in the fresh air. I don’t know if that man ever reached heaven.” She laughs at her own joke. She switches on the TV.