Little Fish

by Casey Plett

  “Look,” said Lila. “Four drinks is an okay thanks. I’ll take four drinks.”

  “Get to work, you bitch!” Wendy laughed. Lila got out and flipped her off walking backwards toward the building. Then she tripped and fell over into a snowbank.

  Wendy hooted and honked the horn and drove away. She got a text: Six drinks. And I hate you.

  Wendy trundled down to the Perimeter and turned west, swinging around past Oak Bluff and the Number 3 highway, up past Wilkes and over the Trans-Canada, through spurts of houses and acres of blank fields. At the exit for the Number 7, she turned north, with only traces of city behind her. The day was perfectly clear and still, flecks of sunrise visible in violet streaks on the snow.

  It’d been a while since Wendy’d driven a car. She stuck the cruise control at eighty and found the CBC station that played classical music. She drove in peace past the occasional farmhouse or traffic signal, light veils of white blowing over the lines of the road.

  For a while, the only sounds were the hum of the engine and cellos and the quick roars of passing cars.

  This was the first time she’d left the city since her grandma died. Which was over a month now. It felt like a fucking year. Christ. Sophie is dead.

  Then she noticed the gas tank was almost empty. Shit. Lila’d even told her, too.

  She slowed to seventy. There was still nothing around. More specks of farm buildings, the dustings of snow blowing over the highway like shreds of fabric softener.

  Wouldn’t someone pull over for her if she ran out of gas, if she were stranded out here? They would.

  Despite the previous night, not eight hours old, Wendy assumed this unquestionably, for no reason, none at all.

  Fifteen minutes later, a speck of green rectangle in the ocean of white. Wendy parked at the Co-op, put her hands together in prayer, and thanked the Lord before getting out of the car.

  “Co-op number?” said the young guy inside.

  “No.”

  “Forty-two seventy-five. Debit or credit?”

  “Cash,” Wendy shivered. “Where’s your coffee?”

  “Next to the Slushies. Gee, that’s a nice coat you got, eh?” the guy continued. “You made a—how can I say this? You were filling up out there with the sun and the highway behind you, that belt ya got on yer coat flyin’ around—I. Ah. You just looked cool.”

  “Cool, eh?” Wendy grinned. “You’re sweet.”

  The guy seemed embarrassed. They might’ve been the same age, yet he looked so, so young. “You need anything else, give me a shout.”

  “What don’t I need,” said Wendy. He laughed.

  Once she had her coffee, Wendy grabbed a pen and scribbled her number on the receipt. “Pardon me,” she said. “I know I’m being bold, but if you ain’t cute! If you ever drop by the city, give me a ring. My name’s Wendy.”

  The guy looked shocked. “Wow.” He held the paper and gazed at it like a first-grader. “Wow. Okay. Okay. I’m Troy.”

  Wendy touched her forehead. “See you around, Troy.” She stuck her hands in her coat pockets and left, and for two seconds the wind blew violently inside the store before the door slammed behind her.

  She drove on, through glazed fields of waist-high snow, a four-way stop here, a grain facility there. A farmer in a padded spaceman suit plodding around a long livestock barn.

  When Wendy was a kid, she imagined the prairie land outside the city stretched forever in every direction. Now she knew that barely minutes from where Anna lived, this all turned into bush, bush for a thousand miles, up into Nunavut where the land broke into tundra.

  She stopped in Arborg to touch up her makeup (You need to be cis for, like, a couple hours, don’t forget) and a final coffee for her sleepy nerves. She drove around the town looking for a Tim’s but they didn’t have one here, just a community centre and a hockey arena and churches and a school and a Chicken Chef and a bakery and a huge machine shop and another little Co-op gas station. She stopped on Main Street, and her phone confirmed that the closest Tim’s was half an hour south, in Gimli.

  The whole place reminded her of the little towns around her grandparents’ place when she visited when was small. Wendy’d liked those towns. It disquieted her as she grew up, as those isolated Southern Manitoba burgs turned into Canuck versions of American Bible Belt mini-suburbs. With the fireplace stores and the megachurches and the sterile late-night coffee shops and the liquor stores open till ten. Not that the burgs of old were better—any less xenophobic, homophobic, racist. She was drawn to the isolation of those humble desperate towns of old, but their isolation, too, was a myth—Mennonites had been some of the first settlers in Western Canada to colonize the countryside.

  Outside, the weather was now quiet and calm. Wendy got out of the car and went into the bakery between the Chicken Chef and an empty lot where she bought a huge weak coffee and a roll with icing for her blood sugar and sat in a little booth with a Coffee News. Most everyone ignored her except a Hutterite man in suspenders buying donuts who glared at Wendy as his wife looked forward, immovable as a train. Wendy wordlessly met his gaze, staring blankly into his angry eyes as she sipped her coffee and ate her roll. She flipped over the Coffee News. Among jokes about women and Liberals was a box that read: “The commandment God gives most frequently in the Bible is Do not be afraid.”

  “Ya want another coffee there?”

  “Huh?”

  The guy behind the counter lifted a fresh pot in Wendy’s direction. A big ticking clock behind him. “Oh, crap,” said Wendy. “Thank you, but I’m late, I gotta go!”

  23

  Anna had a bungalow surrounded by poplar trees and a trampoline out front. She was waving from inside a big picture window. Short and wearing a long skirt and a head covering.

  They stood in the doorway facing each other.

  “Nice to finally meet you!” said Wendy.

  “You as well,” said Anna. She was stooped and walking like she might’ve needed a cane, but she didn’t have one. She was so short. Wendy was so huge. “No troubles on your drive. I hope.”

  “No, none at all,” Wendy said awkwardly, nodding. “Nice and easy.”

  “Good weather?”

  Wendy gestured to outside. “Like this the whole way up.”

  “Very cold out this week,” said Anna. She spoke with an absence of body language. “But the wind. Wasn’t too bad.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Wendy. “Could’ve been worse. Very pretty drive on the way up here,” she said. “I haven’t been out of the city in a while.”

  “Oh. Haven’t yuh,” said Anna.

  The entranceway had dark blue linoleum flooring and a big grey rubber mat for boots and a stairway to the basement. Wendy took off her layers, and memories of sandy-faced Mennonite kids running into houses for family visits went through her like wind.

  She wondered if Sophie would’ve felt as much like a boy as she did just then.

  “Oh. Are you. Having trouble,” asked Anna.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” Wendy blinked back tears. And then rapidly, “I like your trampoline! Is it for your grandkids?”

  And Anna said, “Oh, yeah! Even in winter time. Have to be. Ready for the grandchildren.”

  “Well, I bet they love that.”

  Wendy towered over the tiny lady. Anna nearly disappeared under her coat when she took it to the closet. Wendy wore a sleeveless bottle-green dress over blue jeans and under a zippered wool sweater. When Anna hung up her coat, she turned around and looked Wendy up and down.

  A deep smile formed on Anna’s face. “Very nice to have you here,” she said. A grin flashed. “Get a look at you!” She slowly made her way to the kitchen. “Made some coffee.” Off in the corner was a plate of päpanät on a little table next to an old wooden box. The cabinets were beige-yellow with silver handles, and on the other side of the sink was a mirror. The top of the mirror had a short wide bell curve with a small design in the centre.

  Anna invited her to s
it down. She had a lined face and large glasses.

  Wendy crunched down on the tiny biscuits at the table, and they filled her mouth like sand.

  “So,” said Anna, in words that alternated between drawn-out and clipped. “Tell me about. Yourself, Wendy. So you live in Winnipeg.”

  “My whole life,” said Wendy. “And you? Have you been in Morweena your whole life too?”

  “Oh. No.” Anna momentarily looked taken aback. “Morweena was only. Built in the fifties. I was born in Kansas.”

  “Kansas?”

  “Yes.” Anna looked unsure whether to go on, then proceeded. “My parents, they were from Steinbach area. And then they and other Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites went down to West Kansas. Satanta area. They stayed there for about twenty-five years.”

  “I had no idea,” said Wendy. “I knew there were some Mennonites in Kansas, but I didn’t realize they were related to our Mennonites.”

  “The American Mennonites were more central. Around Wichita. The school is somewhere around there, I know. A small number of our Manitoba families went to the western part. For the better climate. Most of them came back in the Dirty Thirties. That would’ve been my childhood. My parents stuck it out. Until the end. We moved back, 1940. And I was born. In Satanta, Kansas. In 1930.”

  “Oh, yikes,” Wendy said. “What was that like?” Oh, what the fuck, Wendy! “Sorry,” she immediately said.

  “Difficult,” said Anna. “Very difficult. For my mother especially. But tell me about yourself, Wendy.”

  Wendy crunched down on more päpanät and sipped more coffee. “I work close to Polo Park.” Wendy said. “In a gift store.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I’m a supervisor,” she said. “I work directly under the head manager.”

  “Oh! Very good.”

  Anna was quiet, smiling, waiting for her to go on. She had the open, grandmotherly look of someone who genuinely wanted to listen to this stuff. Like she would listen to Wendy talk about her life for the next hour. She was just waiting.

  “I have a boyfriend,” Wendy said. “His name is Ryan. He lives with his parents in North Kildonan. They attend the North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church.” Anna nodded in approval. “I know, those MBs,” she added, and Anna made a short cackle.

  Wendy propped up her head with her hand.

  “I do well at work,” she continued. “I’d like to go back to school at some point. I’d like to be a bookkeeper. I’ve always been good with numbers, and I keep track of my money. That’s part of why I do so well at work. I hope Ryan’s going to propose to me sometime in the next year. I really want him to. He needs to finish school, though. He goes to the U of M. He teaches music. He’s a wonderful guitar player and singer. He helps the choir church a lot. I think he’ll be a high school music teacher. It seems like that’s what he wants to do. I want to get my bookkeeping certificate before we have children.”

  “You want children!” Anna said. “Very good. Some young people today …” she trailed off. “Well.”

  “Yes,” enthused Wendy. “And goodness, Anna, can I tell you, Ryan’s going to be such a good father. He’s such a sweet man. He drives to my house just so he can drive me to work so I don’t have to take the bus in winter. He’ll sleep over on the couch and wake up early, and he goes out to pick up breakfast just so it’s there when I wake up. I’m no cook myself, I—well. It’s awkward to say this, but I … I didn’t have a lot of female figures looking after me in my younger years. There are some normal girl things I missed.”

  Anna nodded impenetrably. “We are not all. Blessed the same.”

  Wendy tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. “He puts up with dinners I make him,” she said. “I’m so lucky, Anna. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so emotional. You asked me about me, and I’m just talking about him. He sings for me when he plays guitar. He’s good to me when I’m upset. I get frustrated … kinda easily. He’s so much better to me than I deserve. He loves me. He loves me. I’m so very lucky.”

  “The Lord is. Looking after you well,” Anna said.

  “What else?” Wendy said, wiping off a stray tear. “I’ve lived in the city all my life. I went to high school in River Heights. I’ve lived in Crescentwood most of my life. You remember Ben, I know. I live with him now. You could say he’s taken me in. I had—” she paused “troubles with my own parents. My mother is still alive, but where she is I don’t know. My father I never knew. But Ben has taken very good care of me.”

  “How’s Ben? And. Uh …” Anna stumbled over her words for a brief second. “His family.”

  “There was tension for quite some time,” Wendy said. “I think that’s more in the past. I wish he went to church more, I will admit. A few times a year he comes with Ryan and me. I attend Ryan’s church,” she clarified. “That’s where I met him.”

  “Well, praise the Lord. I’m sure you’ll. Be a good mother.”

  Anna’s face glowed. Wendy felt held, as Anna listened to every word; here she was. Here she was.

  Safe.

  Understood.

  “You’ll be a good mother,” repeated Anna. Her tone was the same, sitting there, unmoving. “I can already see this about you.”

  “Well,” added Anna. “Ryan sounds nice. What about. His family.”

  “Ah, they’re great,” Wendy said. “His grandmother and I are very close. I often go with her earlier on Sundays for the German services.”

  “Oh, jo!” Anna said, immediately giddy. “Kjenn jie noch Plautdietsch?”

  Wendy smiled with what she hoped this woman would take for sadness.

  “Sorry. I never learned Low German. Or High German. I just go because she needs someone to take her.”

  A mischievous look crossed Anna’s face. “Scheissarei.”

  They were silent for a few moments, then Wendy politely asked about Anna’s grandchildren and heard all about how some lived here in Morweena and some lived in Winkler and how one of her children was now out west in BC. Anna showed her photos in the living room in front of the picture window. Tiny Menno kids, cheery and bright.

  When they returned to the kitchen table and Anna had poured more coffee Wendy said, “So. I suppose I did come up to hear more about Henry.”

  Anna nodded. “What would you like to know?”

  “Would you say he was happy?” Wendy said without thinking. “That’s a stupid question, sorry. I’m sure he wasn’t happy.”

  Anna did not respond right away. Then she said, “He was not a man in pain.”

  “No?”

  “That’s what you’re asking,” she said.

  “Well. Um,” Wendy said. She’s lying, she thought. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “His faith was strong. I would never call him anything but a committed Christian. I hope everyone knows that.”

  Wendy was taken aback. “I don’t think anybody would say otherwise.” She tried a different tack. “Could you tell maybe a bit more about his early life? Where he came from? I don’t know these things. Ben doesn’t like to talk about Henry much.” She tried a joke. “Don’t tell me he was born in Kansas too?”

  “No,” Anna replied, unmoved. “Think he was born in Grunthal. Or Steinbach? Can’t remember. I think it was Grunthal. He moved to Landmark when he met Aganetha.”

  “Wait a minute,” Wendy interrupted. “I thought you went to school with Nettie.”

  “We lived in Landmark a short time before I married my husband,” replied Anna. “I went to Prairie Bible Institute. With Aganetha.”

  “You were a teacher?”

  “I never got to,” said Anna, flat-lipped.

  “I—okay.” Wendy was getting disoriented. “Okay, so Henry. What was he like when he was younger? Like my age? Maybe that’s something I’d like to know.”

  “Henry,” said the older woman. “When I met him—we became friends fast. Though it was. Unusual at the time. Men and women having that kind of. Friendship. But Aganetha never minded. Anyway. Henry judged
himself greatly on what he viewed as. Personal inadequacies in his faith. He said he often felt stupid he didn’t understand more of the Bible. That he did not grasp what his elders were able to grasp. He was always a strong believer. As I said. It never wavered. But he thought he was stupid.”

  “He said that?” said Wendy.

  “Yes. I told him often. Whatever you understand, well. If your faith is strong. Then that must be part of God’s plan. No one can understand all of Holy Scripture. Not ministers. Doesn’t matter. How much you read,” Anna was no longer looking at Wendy, as if she’d said these words many times. “If you are physically opening the book and sitting down and asking to be guided, the Lord will draw you to what you need to hear. That won’t be every word, every book! No life is long enough for that. And which part of the Word of God you need to see will not always be the same as everyone else’s. Isn’t that faith? That is part of faith, I think.”

  When she was younger, Wendy had tried to read the Bible, especially the parts with Jesus. She had trouble focusing. “Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.” What? This was the Word of God; it meant literally more than anything else in the world! What was stuff like that supposed to mean? She’d felt so stupid. She’d wanted to get it.

  “Like to think. That gave him some solace,” continued Anna, looking pained at what she took as Wendy’s bored expression.

  “Oh, yes,” Wendy snapped back. “I’m sure it did.” She paused. “Might I ask when Henry told you about—the way he was?”

  “The seventies,” Anna said after staring off into space for a minute. “We had been good friends for decades. By that point. Our families knew each other well. He swore at the time he was not. Doing. Acts. Found out later that wasn’t completely true,” she said, then shivered. “Can’t think about that. He smartened up. I do believe at least the last ten years of his life, he was right with God and living. Christian. He righted himself. It was always a burden. I’m sure but. He carried out his final years in peace and asking God for forgiveness. I believe he is in heaven. I do.”