A Home in the Country

by Sheelagh Mawe

  A harder problem to solve – and one we never satisfactorily did – was how to walk while rolling those buckets. It didn’t matter whether we walked sideways, frontways, or in-between ways, our legs always got battered and bruised from ankles to knees.

  It would almost always be dark before we made it back to the house and there were many days when we saw exactly what Agnes had threatened – our suppers floating on top of the hog slops.

  ‘I told you you didn’t move it the hogs’d get your suppers!’ Agnes gloated. ‘You shoulda listened. Get over to the sink now, wash them dishes.’

  Waiting until we heard the rumble of the rocker, we’d dive for the slop bucket.

  ‘Looks like the kids at school is right, don’t it?’ Cathy muttered, spitting out coffee grounds as we scooped out what we could of our suppers. ‘Us eatin’ like hogs, I mean. So what? Leastways we’re eatin’.’

  THIRTEEN

  The first teacher I had in that American school was called Miss Stacey and I admired her more than any other adult I’d met so far in my life. For one thing she wasn’t a nun. And for another she was both nice and pretty, a combination that was new to me. Miss Stacey smiled often, never raised her voice, wore pretty clothes, smelled like roses and when she walked up and down the aisles between the desks, there was a nice swishing sound so you always knew when she was coming down the aisle behind you.

  Whenever I was by myself, either picking up acorns or going to the store, I got in the habit of imagining what it would be like to live in Miss Stacey’s house and I’d pretend I did.

  In those lovingly wrought fantasies, I had a pretty room with a bed to myself, closets full of cute clothes, sparkling jewellery, long, blonde, curly hair, and more pairs of shoes than I had time to wear.

  I helped Miss Stacey with her housework – not because I had to but because it was fun and I felt like it – and she always said, ‘If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe a little kid your age could clean so good.’

  She’d have believed it only too well had she ever seen Agnes with her strap going after Cathy and me when we were cleaning. But I didn’t want to even mention Agnes’ name to Miss Stacey and I never did.

  Every day Miss Stacey would tell the class what she said to her dog and cat and what they said back to her. I made up my mind then and there that if I couldn’t go live with her the way I was – like a kid, I mean – then I’d be happy to go be her dog or cat.

  Miss Stacey didn’t have a husband and I thought that was real smart of her. The way I saw it, husbands were the same as fathers and with the two jerks I’d had so far, I’d made up my mind I wouldn’t have one either. No, sir-ee! Not me!

  One day Miss Stacey said, ‘Sarah, every once in a while I catch a word or two of your British accent and it’s just as cute as can be. But lately I’ve noticed you using some very bad grammar and you’re picking up a lot of slang. You need to watch that else what are your parents going to think when you get back home?

  ‘Come on up here now and read the words on the blackboard to the class, honey,’ she continued, ‘and try to pronounce them the way you were taught in England.’

  I moved reluctantly, thinking, Oh, brother, now how am I supposed to remember the way I was taught in England? And how come I can’t just read from my desk instead of up front where every kid in the class will get the giggles staring at Betty’s too-big, ugly dress and Danny’s disgusting shoes?

  Then I remembered I didn’t have to worry about the kids making fun of me anymore. They didn’t dare. Not since Halloween when they were putting on their costumes for the parade and one of the boys called out, ‘How come you’re not putting on your costume, Sarah?’

  Before I could think of a good lie or a way to tell him I didn’t have one without turning red, the class comedian called out, ‘She don’t need a costume on account of she’s already wearing it. Lookit! She’s a scarecrow!’

  I couldn’t think of anything smart to say back to that either and just when I thought my head would hit my desk from shame, I heard the comforting sound of Miss Stacey swishing towards me and her voice saying, ‘Sarah isn’t wearing a costume today because as a guest in our country, I asked her if she’d do us the honour of helping me judge the costumes. Sarah was kind enough to consent and, of course, judges are not allowed to wear costumes.’

  Taking me by the hand she led me to the front of the class and that was the end of the jeers.

  The other kids had to walk round and round the classroom while Miss Stacey and I studied their costumes, fronts and backs. We agreed that being a judge and choosing the best or most original costume was not as easy as it looked. Once we reached a decision and the judging was over, I had a fine time at the party. It was as if standing up at the front of the class as a ‘guest in our country’ made the kids see me in a different way and they each gave me a piece of their candy as though I was as important as Miss Stacey.

  Going home on the bus that Halloween day I told Cathy I’d been thinking it over and had decided Miss Stacey wasn’t like other grown-ups.

  ‘I can tell she likes me a lot and I’ve about decided to tell her about Agnes,’ I began. ‘I bet she’ll believe me and if I can’t go live with her, maybe she’ll help me find someone just as nice. She might could even find a place for all of us.’

  Cathy looked at me like she always did and said, ‘Go on ahead. Just don’t come bawling to me when Agnes gets all her kids-in-uniform pictures off the piano and lines ’em up on the kitchen table and Miss Stacey wants to know how come you told all those terrible lies about such a fine, upstanding woman.’

  Once again, I decided I wouldn’t talk to Miss Stacey after all. At least not for a while.

  One miserable day at school all the kids were kept in from both recess and lunch because of lightning and thunder. To add to our – ‘our’ meaning the Slater kids’ – misery, Billy was absent for the first time ever and we were beside ourselves with hunger. Going home on the bus the rain started coming down harder than ever and if it hadn’t been for our hunger, we’d have liked to stay on that warm, dry bus forever, but the driver said, ‘Last stop! Out you get!’

  We tumbled out into puddles and mud and right away were soaking wet and freezing cold and all we could think about was going out hunting for acorns with maybe no supper when we got back. We came out of the woods in a miserable, stumbling huddle and nearly fell over a truck parked at the fence.

  ‘Now what’s she got going on?’ Danny growled.

  Heads down against the rain, we were nearly at the kitchen door when Danny gasped, ‘Jesus! Take a look over there! In the orchard!’

  We looked and saw two men, their clothes slick with caked, blackened blood, working over the hogs. The dead hogs. Every last one of them cut in half and hanging upside down by their chained back feet from the branches of trees where they looked twice as big as when they were alive and standing on those feet.

  ‘You gonna stand there all day gawkin’?’ Agnes hollered from the kitchen. Through the screen we saw her, a big knife in her hand, chopping at a mountain of raw meat that oozed and bled all over the table and puddled on the floor around her feet.

  ‘You boys leave the milkin’ till later,’ Agnes called. ‘Go help them men. Fools shoulda been long gone. Just spreadin’ it out so’s I’ll have to pay ’em extra is what they’re doin’. You girls get in here, get changed. Don’t need no more acorns. You got to get this here meat packed away.’

  ‘There goes supper,’ Cathy muttered.

  It took us a full week of staying up late every night, plus a weekend, to cut and grind and salt and smoke the one gigantic hog Agnes kept back for her own use.

  And there went many more suppers.

  When we were finally finished and everything was stored away in the cellar, Agnes said, ‘That’s the end of hogs on this farm, boy! I ain’t never puttin’ myself through another week like this ’un. Feel like I could sleep for a week. Would, too, if I didn’t have you pack of no-c
ount brats to drive me crazy.

  ‘Made more’n I expected, though,’ she rambled on. ‘Folks at Wally’s work can’t get enough of my bacon and sausage. Might could be I’ll get out of this dump sooner’n later.’

  Agnes wasn’t the only one who could have slept for a week. We kids could, too. And we did. We slept on the bus and in class and some days we thought we fell asleep standing up but if we had we’d have surely fallen over.

  Miss Stacey roused me one morning. ‘Sarah, honey! Sarah!’ I woke to find her shaking my shoulder and I could hear the bell ringing. What I wasn’t sure about was which bell it was. Recess? Lunch? Dismissal?

  Miss Stacey said, ‘Sarah, honey, I want you to stay behind from recess just for a minute. It’s time you and I had a little talk.’

  The other kids were looking at me sideways and rolling their eyes and I knew I must have said or done something dumb while I was asleep or why was Miss Stacey keeping me in?

  Miss Stacey waited till we had the room to ourselves and then shut the door and told me to come up to her desk.

  Dragging my feet, I made my way to the front of the room where Miss Stacey put her arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Sarah, honey, I want you to tell me if anything’s wrong. Your face is white as a sheet lately and every time I look your way, you’re sleeping! Is there anything I can do to help?’

  Miss Stacey’s voice was so soft and kind, her look so caring, her arm a warm comfort on my shoulders, that my eyes filled and my throat grew such a lump I couldn’t say a word.

  ‘Is there a reason you’re so tired and not handing in your homework anymore?’ Miss Stacey went on in the same gentle way. ‘And maybe you could tell me why you sign the notes I send home with you? The ones intended for your foster mother’s signature.’

  Oh, Jesus! She knew it was me signing the notes! Oh, God! Oh, shit! I managed to swallow the lump and said, ‘It’s because – it’s on account of – Ag— Mrs Slater. She won’t sign ’em….’

  ‘Them, Sarah,’ Miss Stacey corrected, ‘Not “’em”. Does she say why not?’

  ‘She … she says she ain’t got – hasn’t got … doesn’t have time to read ’em – them – all. Just too many kids…. Too many notes….’

  Miss Stacey frowned, ‘I see. Tell me, is she – Mrs Slater, that is – is she good to you?’

  I stopped looking down at the floor and looked up instead because I suddenly knew – never mind what Cathy said about Agnes’ kids’ pictures lined up on the kitchen table – that I could tell Miss Stacey everything there was to tell about Agnes without being called a liar. And I knew no matter what I said, Miss Stacey would listen till I finished. I took a deep breath to begin and that’s when I noticed she was leaning towards me, sniffing, a look of disgust on her face.

  ‘Sarah … honey …’ she faltered, ‘Your hair…. Why, it smells just awful. What is it?’

  I stepped back so fast Miss Stacey’s arm fell off my shoulder. The kind, sweet lady I’d imagined Miss Stacey to be would never say a thing like that. Never. If she didn’t like the way my hair smelled, why, she’d just go ahead and wash it for me.

  ‘I…. It’s from the hogs,’ I stammered. ‘I mean … you know, the smoke from the hogs. It got in everythin’.’

  Miss Stacey frowned. She didn’t understand.

  I tried again. ‘Ag— um … Mrs Slater had some men come out and kill the hogs. We been saltin’ ’em. Grindin’ ’em. Smokin’ ’em. It’s the smell from all that that got into everythin’, includin’, even, my hair.’

  Miss Stacey’s head went back and she had a good laugh. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed. ‘The smells of autumn! Of course! I guess I was worrying needlessly, wasn’t I? Sarah, do you know how lucky you are to live on a farm? Do you have any idea of the price of bacon these days?’

  She stood up and, her arm back around my shoulders, walked me to the door. ‘I’m glad we had this little talk, honey. I won’t worry about you anymore and I do understand about the homework and the notes. Mrs Slater must be the busiest woman in the county right now. Run along out and play now. There’s still a few more minutes of recess left before the bell rings.’

  My admiration for Miss Stacey in permanent ruins, I wanted to scream in her face, ‘Not enough minutes for me to find somethin’ to eat, there ain’t, you dumb bitch!’

  Instead, I turned and ran down the empty hallway and crashed out the back door to the playground.

  A crowd of kids from my class were standing by, waiting for me. All talking at once, they called out:

  ‘She give you a lickin’, Sarah?’

  ‘She tell you go home, take a bath?’

  ‘She tell you, you stink?’

  I pushed past them to the nearest trash can where I saw an apple with only one bite missing. I grabbed it and took the biggest bite I could get my mouth around.

  One kid said, ‘Oink! Oink!’

  Another, ‘Look at the pig!’

  Another, ‘Here, pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!’

  I didn’t care. Didn’t make me no never mind. Besides, I’d just thought about something I’d been too tired to think about before: with the hogs gone there wasn’t a slop bucket beside the stove anymore so where was old Agnes gonna throw our suppers now, huh?

  For a time after the hog killing, Agnes kept on taking her naps up in Betty’s room. But there was no heat up there and with the days getting colder it wasn’t long before she moved back downstairs to her rocker beside the range.

  Finding her rocking there one particular day when we came in from school I unexpectedly heard my voice asking, ‘Bein’ we don’t need acorns no more, ma’am, is it OK if we do homework tonight? Please, ma’am.’

  Agnes came out of her chair and had me by the shoulders so fast we both hit the wall. ‘No, it ain’t all right you do your homework, Miss Queen of England! You’re here to do my work. Cathy, take her and show her what bagging leaves is all about. There’s a good half hour yet before dark.’

  Bagging leaves was all about getting a sack and a rake from the barn and going deep in the woods where the fallen leaves were thickest – we all took it as just one more sign of Agnes’ growing craziness that she thought nothing on the edge of the woods was ever good enough for anything – and raking up a big pile, taking care not to rake too deep.

  ‘You rake too deep,’ Cathy warned, ‘your leaves are liable to be wet and mouldy. You bring in any like that, count on Agnes rubbin’ ’em in your face.’

  When you had a pile as high as yourself, you sat down with your back to it, took your sack and laid it out in front of you and placed a foot in either side of the opening to anchor it. Then you reached back with both arms and scooped the leaves under your bent knees into the sack.

  ‘You need to stand up a couple times ’n shake ’em down good and tight in your sack,’ Cathy instructed. ‘Not like Sally over there actin’ like her sack is full when you can tell from way over here it ain’t nowheres near.’

  ‘What’s she want leaves for?’ I asked, settling myself with my back to my pile and beginning the scooping motion.

  ‘For the cows,’ Cathy said, exasperated as always. ‘What else?’

  ‘Oh…. You mean she’s gonna make ’em get fat eatin’ dead leaves?’

  ‘I swear you’re dumber even than Sally!’ Cathy exploded. ‘Cows don’t eat ’em! They sleep on ’em! In the barn! Come winter! When it’s cold! Je-sus!’

  ‘Oh….’

  With night falling a little bit earlier every day and the wind picking up, we had to get our leaves bagged quickly so the wind wouldn’t blow them away, making us start again.

  Then along came the windiest, coldest day of all. So cold it made our teeth chatter and our noses run. Cathy looked up at the sky, let out a kind of moan and said, ‘I guess it’s comin’.’

  She scared me so badly saying those words that I jumped and looked behind me. ‘What?’ I gasped. ‘What’s comin’?’

  ‘Winter, jerk. What else?’

  ‘How come you have to go mak
e even winter sound like somethin’ real bad?’ I complained. ‘Winter comes every year in case you never noticed. It’s you the jerk!’

  ‘Yeah? Well, just wait. You’ll see.’

  It didn’t take me long to figure out what Cathy meant. What she meant was, Agnes used winter as one more way to torture us. Just like everything else.

  Agnes said, ‘Didn’t I tell you that mother of yours was nuts sending you over here with no leggin’s and no gloves and no nothin’ warm? I did, so don’t come complainin’ to me about it. Go catch your bus.’

  ‘You want to stay warm you got to do like the rest of us,’ Cathy told me. ‘Start in running and don’t never stop.’

  That worked better for the boys than the girls. They wore long trousers anyway and they had the old coats and jackets the Slater sons had left behind with deep pockets to put their hands in and collars to turn up to their ears.

  But how were we girls supposed to keep warm running when we were already where we needed to be and had to stand around and wait for the bus? Where are you going to run then? was what I wanted to know.

  Cathy thought she was so smart but she couldn’t answer that and had to do the same as Sally and me: dump her books down by the side of the road, try and squeeze her frozen hands into opposite jacket sleeves and then squat so her jacket came down and covered her bare legs.

  When a person is slowly freezing to death, it’s as if they shrivel up and go inside themselves somewhere and don’t see what’s going on around them. But once they warm up a little, they start noticing things again. What caught the attention and admiration of all us Slater kids those bitter winter days were the snow suits and fur-lined gloves, the wool caps and scarves and earmuffs and boots everyone else on the bus wore. It gave us something else to think about when we were outside doing chores or waiting for the bus: the cupboards full of snow suits and boots and soft, warm clothing we’d buy with the piles of money we’d have when we grew up. After we’d bought all the food and candy bars we could ever eat, naturally.