A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  “Aren’t you the smart one,” she said. Sometimes she could be quite encouraging.

  “But it’s not working so well,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Most of the poems are confusing.”

  “Hm,” she said and went back to her peeling.

  “I suppose I’ll have to write my own,” I said.

  Upstairs, I started making a list of things that were beautiful. My list, not Wordsworth’s, although I agreed with him that daffodils were beautiful, especially when seen in such large numbers.

  I began with beautiful sounds: crashing thunder and falling rain, meadow larks warbling from the fence posts, loons on the lake, Rivney’s dog barking at suppertime. I moved on to beautiful scents: apples, cinnamon, lilacs, evergreens. Beauty. Beauty. It was everywhere. And without realizing it, I found myself writing my own poem.

  A flock of wild geese,

  A crimson western sky,

  Tall pines and poplar trees

  Through which the evening breezes sigh....

  It looked like a cinch, but the next day everything changed.

  I was on my way home from school and took a shortcut across the back alley behind the hotel, a route I’d taken many times before. The day was mild. Long icicles hanging from the hotel windows were dripping water on the snowbanks below. Icicles and snow. These, too, were beautiful, I thought. I was in the middle of the road, facing the back door of the hotel. To the left of the door was a row of garbage cans and to the right a storage shed. As I stood there, the door of the shed creaked open, and out stepped Jackson Armor. He was wearing the same red cap and black and red jacket he’d worn on New Year’s Eve. The jacket was scrunched up a little in front of him and his hand was down just below the jacket. Then I saw what he was doing. He was holding his thing in his hand. When he saw me he smiled and waved it from side to side.

  I froze in my tracks. I tried not to look at it, but there it was. He took his hand away and his thing dangled in front of him. It was long and white, except for the tip which was kind of pink. Even though it was big, it looked sickly to me. Suddenly, he stepped forward. I backed up cautiously so as not to startle him, which is what you’re supposed to do, I’d read, when you come upon a wild animal. I headed for the sidewalk. When I glanced back I saw Jackson standing in the middle of the road, smiling and jiggling it. I walked away very slowly. I was barely breathing.

  I had crossed the vacant lot and was by the church. I stopped, looked up at the steeple, then walked up the steps, opened the heavy doors, and went in.

  It was cold inside. I stood shivering in the aisle. I smelled the familiar smells: varnish, wax, old books. I touched the arm of a pew, rubbed my hand on the oily wood. A thin light came in through the arched windows. I sat down in a pew and lifted the hymn book out of the rack in front of me. I didn’t open it, just held it for awhile. Then I got up and went home.

  When I opened the back door I found Mother in the kitchen. I took off my boots and jacket and sat down.

  “I’d like your opinion on something,” I said.

  She waited.

  “Do you believe God created the world and everything in it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And do you think what he did was good?”

  “Very good,” she said. “Why?”

  “I think he could have done some things better,” I said.

  “Do you?” she said. “Like what?”

  “Just some things,” I said, and went upstairs.

  But after supper, when I was alone with my mother, she wormed it out of me. Before I realized it I was telling her the whole story. She was quite upset and asked if Jackson had touched me. He hadn’t and I told her so, but she still seemed agitated, so I said not to worry, I’d stay clear of Jackson from now on.

  We sat there for a minute or two without talking.

  Then I said, “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  “No, I’m sure not,” she said.

  “I don’t know how I can go on with the debate.”

  “Why not?”

  I was surprised she had to ask.

  “Where’s the beauty?” I said, and left the room.

  Later in the evening I was in my room, sitting up in bed thinking about Jackson. I saw him in his red cap and black and red jacket, standing in the alley, wagging it and looking proud. And I thought of all the men who had that same thing: Mr. Ross, Gibbs, Rev. McFarlane, the boys at school, my brothers, Ivan. In fact, all the men and boys from the time of Adam to the present day. Holding it up, so pleased with themselves.

  My mother came in and sat at the foot of the bed. She was quiet for some time, then said, “Maybe you could look at it this way.” She put her hand on my foot. “In Scripture all the bodily parts are called members. Feet, arms, ears, eyes...” She hesitated. “Jackson’s part that you saw today is also a member. It’s called the male member.”

  “That’s new,” I said.

  “Of course, the body has many members,” she continued, “and each one has its own job, so the body can do many wonderful things because of all these parts working together so harmoniously.”

  I didn’t know what she was getting at.

  “But if a member is cut off from the body... well, like you said, ‘Where’s the beauty?’ If you saw a finger lying by itself on the table, it would be disgusting, or an ear, or an eyeball. They’re not meant to be alone.” Her face was getting flushed and she was talking quite fast.

  “So?” I said.

  “What I’m trying to say is Jackson’s member by itself looked ugly to you, just as an eye lying by itself on a table would look ugly. It needs to be connected, to be part of the whole.”

  “Jackson’s member was connected!” I said. I was beginning to get a little impatient with her.

  “In a way it wasn’t,” she said, “because he’s not connected. I don’t know how to put it. He wants to be, but he doesn’t know how. That’s all I’m saying.”

  After she’d gone, I was left to ponder her words. I knew she’d meant well, but what she said only filled my mind with even more gross pictures. An eyeball, a finger, a big toe, all cut off from the body and lying on the countertop. And the body itself with gaping holes where the parts had been.

  The next day at school there was something different in the air. I hadn’t been in the classroom very long before I noticed it. I was finding it hard to keep my eyes off Ivan. I also knew, even without looking, when he had his eyes on me. A few times when he went to the front of the room he’d walk on my side of the aisle so his hip bumped against my desk as he passed. Afterwards, I’d rest my hand on the spot he’d touched and my hand would feel warm. Then I started thinking about his house across the tracks. I remembered exactly how it had looked and thought of ways it could be made to look a bit more cheerful, a pretty cloth on the table, a colourful afghan on the sofa.

  I was in the middle of one of these thoughts when Mr. Ross announced that the debate would be held on Friday because we needed to move on to the next chapter in World History.

  At the supper table, Peter told them the news.

  “Doomsday on Friday,” he finished cheerfully.

  “Not for me,” I said.

  “Will your poem be ready?” Mom asked.

  “Poem!” Peter said. “You’re not reading a poem!”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “That’s not what they do in debates.”

  “It’s what I do. My whole debate’s going to be a poem.”

  Grandpa frowned. “Hauge had no use for poetry. He used plain words and said them straight.”

  That night I lay in bed under my heavy quilt and thought about gravity. Holding everything together. Mountains and oceans, planets and stars. And holding me together, and everyone I knew, and all the people on earth. Holding us. If gravity ever started to crack, we’d be in trouble. Then I thought, is God bigger than gravity? And I wondered if I could say this in the debate.

  I tossed and turned,
unable to sleep. Finally, I sat up, switched on the light, and reached for my scribbler and pencil. I wrote furiously into the night.

  On the day of the debate I rose early to get ready. I put on the dress Mom had sewn for me before Christmas, a long-sleeved navy blue dress with a red collar, red cuffs, and red buttons down the front.

  At breakfast we ate the usual, Cream of Wheat, and Grandpa told me again to stand up bravely and be counted. My stomach felt loose and jittery. I left half the cereal in the bowl and left early for school.

  I was partway down the walk when I heard Grandpa calling. I turned around and saw him standing on the front step in his shirt sleeves. Frozen vines above the door arched over his head.

  “If God is for us, who can be against us?” he shouted. Little steamy clouds puffed out in front of his face.

  “No one!” I yelled.

  “That’s right!” he said. “And don’t forget it.”

  Mr. Ross stood in front of the room, facing us. He was a tall thin man, and today, standing there in his grey suit and white shirt, he looked even taller than usual. He’d invited the older students to join our class for the debate. Peter, Joe, Abie, and others, who sat together against the side wall, nudging each other and trying to look important.

  I sat at my desk with my notecards stacked neatly in front of me. On each card was a verse of my poem, and I had twenty verses all together, so I’d divided the stack into two piles and numbered each card to prevent confusion. Ivan didn’t have any cards on his desk, just his scribbler. And I thought that maybe he wasn’t as well prepared as I was.

  Then Mr. Ross announced the judges: Freddie Wong, Mary Sorenson, and Mike Donnelly. Freddie was Chinese and as far as I knew, not religious. Mary Sorenson came from a Communist home. Mike’s parents were Catholic. He’d almost have to vote for God, I thought.

  Mr. Ross called on Ivan to begin. “You get fifteen minutes,” he said. “Then Elizabeth will get fifteen minutes. After that you will each have five minutes for rebuttal.”

  Ivan slid out of his desk and shuffled to the front of the room. In his right hand he carried his scribbler, rolled up like a scroll. Mr. Ross had moved to the window side of the room where he half sat on the window ledge. Ivan stood in front of the teacher’s desk with his seat scrunched against it, trying to look like Mr. Ross. He was wearing the same brown tweed pants he always wore and a sweater that was too small for him. It stretched tight across his chest, and the sleeves didn’t even reach to his wrists. He held up the scroll, like a flag.

  “I am here today to ask each of you to stretch your mind, to rethink old beliefs, and to be open to new thoughts and discoveries,” he began.

  I started feeling nervous.

  “Specifically,” he continued, “I am here to challenge the outworn belief in a Supreme Being who brought into existence everything in the universe.”

  The room was quiet. Everyone was waiting to hear what he would say next.

  “Let me describe the origins of life in the words of the scientists I’ve been studying, men who have spent their lifetime in the search for truth.” He tried to open his scribbler, but the pages kept rolling back. When he finally got going he said, “Everything is energy. Light is energy. Heat is energy. Even matter. Matter is stored energy. It’s all energy. And it has always been here.”

  Then he described how everything got started, how particles of energy moved about in the universe, sometimes colliding and creating more energy, and how this energy expanded in space, farther and farther out, and some parts separated from other parts. He said that particles of light separated from particles of matter. And because of gravity, the particles of matter attracted each other and united and became the sun.

  “Gravity is the great force in the universe,” he said. He described it as being like billions and trillions of strings attached from everywhere to everywhere.

  He’d beaten me to one of my main points. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I looked around the room. Andrew was sitting with both elbows on his desk, holding his face in his fists, concentrating. Vera sat with her head leaning toward her shoulder, paying close attention.

  Ivan talked about stars that had burned until they used up the hydrogen, then exploded, and heavier matter was formed. And then, because of gravity, these particles of matter came together and formed the earth. And everything went on from there.

  He stood up straight, looked at me, raised his voice and said, “Every single piece of matter in the universe has evolved from one primal matter.” I stared back at him, trying to look fearless.

  Then he brought up names of people I’d never heard of. Thomas Dodd, the alchemists, Dmitri Mendeleev. He got excited when he talked about Dmitri, who’d worked in his dad’s glass-blowing factory in Siberia, and later organized the atoms and came up with the Periodic Table, the very same one as we had over our blackboard. As he spoke, his voice got higher and his cheeks flushed and the scribbler shook in his hand. He described Dmitri shut up by himself in a little cottage by the Black Sea, and how he spread small squares of paper on the table, each square with the name of an element on it, and how hydrogen was the lightest atom and was first in the row. And I pictured Dmitri sitting at his little table by the cabin window, organizing the atoms, while the wind whistled down the chimney and the wolves howled by the sea.

  Then he said a lot of other things like the universe is not perfectly symmetrical and that’s why we’re all here. He lost me at this point. I looked around the room. The others seemed confused as well. The speech got more and more complicated. Peter began to squirm, and Joe and Abie slouched lower in their chairs.

  When Ivan had finished, Mr. Ross called on me. I went to the front, laid my notecards in two piles on his desk, and stood in front of it.

  “Mr. Ross, honourable judges, worthy opponent, and fellow students.” I got right into my speech, wasting no time on an introduction. I didn’t need my notecards for the first verses.

  A flock of wild geese,

  A crimson western sky,

  Tall pines and poplar trees

  Through which the evening breezes sigh.

  But there is no God, some people say,

  Maker or Creator? No.

  These things just are – like night and day,

  And ever will be so.

  I looked out over the class. Peter was squiriming. Ivan was shaking his head. I realized I had to be more compelling, so I recited the next four lines louder.

  The wind howls in the night.

  The mighty oceans roar.

  “God is not tame!” the wise man says.

  “Not napping on the floor.”

  I glanced at Vera. She was nodding her head in agreement. I decided to recite the next verse in a lighter tone, for contrast.

  The smoothness of an egg,

  The scratching life within,

  The breaking of its brittle shell,

  And lo, our feathered kin.

  The grade ten boys began to snicker. I picked up the second stack of cards, flipped through them quickly, and decided to read only my best verses.

  Roaring thunder, slashing rain,

  Tempestuous, violent weather.

  Rough winds can roar and rip and groan,

  But still we hang together.

  No one was squirming now.

  The mighty force of gravity,

  Yet...

  Love is even stronger!

  When all around would pull us down,

  Love lifts us up and holds us there,

  And we are sad no longer.

  For the next verse I again lowered my voice, but I pronounced each word slowly and distinctly.

  A tiny grain of love,

  So small one hardly sees it,

  But still it travels through the air

  (Fast as sound and quick as light!)

  And lands on one who needs it.

  I repeated the refrain, “But there is no God, some people say...” I’d decided not to use it after every verse, but to sti
ck it in here and there.

  The body’s shrewd design,

  Each part a purpose serves,

  The neck that holds the head upright,

  A narrow hip that swerves.

  I felt my cheeks getting warm. I glanced down at Ivan. He was looking at me curiously, but he wasn’t sneering. For the next verse I raised my left hand. On the second line, I curled and uncurled my fingers.

  Five fingers of a hand,

  And knuckles so they swing,

  Two fingers hold a yellow rose,

  And one, a wedding ring.

  Things were going quite well, so I decided to skip over to the end.

  A million needles on a spruce,

  A billion stars on high,

  Ten thousand dolphins in the sea,

  WHY?WHY?WHY?

  Whose idea was it to GIVE and GIVE and GIVE?

  Whose idea was it to LOVE and LIVE?”

  I had come to the last verse. Now I looked at everyone, individually. I’d seen my dad do this, and it seemed to work quite well.

  Dear friends who’ve gathered here,

  I very strongly urge you,

  Throw off the blinders from your eyes,

  Scrape off the scum that lingers,

  And see the LOVE that touches YOU,

  Your ears and eyes and lungs and heart,

  Your hands and all your fingers.

  The room was quiet. Everyone was looking at me. I saw Vera wipe tears from her eyes with her clean white handkerchief. And I knew I’d won.

  That night I went to the rink. All the lights were turned on, every string, as they were each Friday night. And music was playing over the loudspeaker. Tonight it was “The Blue Danube Waltz.”

  I was skating by myself in the centre of the rink. Light from the bulbs hanging above glittered over me and around me in small circles and sparkled on the blue white ice at my feet. I felt as if I were gliding on the Blue Danube itself, heading into the Black Sea.

  Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Ivan skating toward me, head bent, arms swinging. He was zooming right at me. I jerked sideways to get out of his way, and I fell on the ice, legs and arms sprawling. He circled around me, his skates pointing in opposite directions, his body leaning over me, gliding smoothly around and around. He scraped to a stop, and snowy bits of ice sprayed up from his silver blades. Then he bent down and shoved his hands into my armpits and lifted me up, and I stood wobbling beside him. He stretched his left arm around my back, his left hand still in my armpit, his fingers pressing into me. He grabbed my right hand in his and held it tight, and off we went down the ice. He swirled me around the corners, whizzed me past the other skaters, moved me swiftly and surely through the circles of light.