Our Animal Hearts

by Dania Tomlinson

I opened my eyes and watched her, aware now that this story was no gift.

  “The girl wanted to kill the unborn child—she knew it had spoiled inside of her. While pregnant she was racked with convulsions. The fetus chewed at her insides. But the girl’s sister persuaded her to keep it. The sister claimed that once the child was born they could baptize it in the river, and the holy water would transform the baby for good.

  “When the baby was finally born, the girl was exhausted and hollowed out. The baby was ugly and gnawed the girl’s nipples when she tried to feed it. It pinched and bit and reminded the girl of the darkness from which it was conceived.

  “The girl wanted to baptize the child immediately but her sister insisted that they wait for the saint to arrive from the holy city. The girl could not bear to wait a moment longer, so in the middle of the night she went to the pond to baptize the infant herself. As she held the infant under the water, she watched in wonder as the baby transformed into a hare, its hind legs kicking and paws scratching her hands, and then a pigeon, the green feathers fin-like and iridescent, then a red fox, then a kitten, and finally, a fish. The fish slipped easily from her hands and swam away towards the mouth of the river.”

  Llewelyna kept her eyes closed and I knew enough not to expect anything more from her. As I went back down the stairs, I could see my father and Jacob at the kitchen table drinking tea with my grandmother. I hadn’t noticed her when I came inside the house before. Her boat had arrived that morning. They all turned to me as I descended the last stairs. My grandmother wore a wide hat decorated with so many feathers and flowers it must have been heavy; somehow she kept her chin up.

  “Ah, the prodigal daughter,” she said. “You’ll ruin your reputation before you even get back to London.”

  I looked to my father. “London?”

  “They’re only children, Mother. It was nothing.”

  “Children? Iris is practically a woman.”

  I knew my grandmother’s presence tamed my father’s propriety. He was progressive except when it came to the future of his children. In his mind, we were only in Canada for a little adventure, experiences we would collect like shiny trinkets to bring back home to England. He didn’t acknowledge our growing attachment to Winteridge.

  “You smell as terrible as that Indian,” my grandmother said to me, recoiling.

  I looked down at my dirty dress. “Once Llewelyna is finished in the bath I will bathe.”

  “How is she?” my father asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Fine?” my grandmother said. “That woman is not fine. This house is in complete disarray, an utter shamble. Fowl roaming the halls. This is no way to greet company. If you ask me, she has become quite the sluggard.” My grandmother picked up her teacup and gazed at my father over its rim. “Noah, what a shame. If you had only waited a few more months. Annabel Linus, she’s still available, you know. No children. She would make a fine wife.”

  “Mother, please,” my father said, sounding exhausted.

  I was so thirsty. I took a teacup from the tray on the table and poured myself some tea. Jacob chewed a biscuit from the tin my grandmother had brought along from London and grinned at me.

  “A woman should not read so much. Planting ideas in her daughter’s fertile imagination,” my grandmother went on. “Just watch. Under that woman’s negligence Iris will surely become a scoundrel.”

  “Stop,” my father attempted.

  “And attending that barn of a country school along with any tramp and vulgar brewer’s daughter, it’s no wonder.”

  “Well at least you and Lew might agree on something.”

  “Oh, and what’s that?”

  But just then there was a knock at the door. It was Yuri.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said to my father. “You must come quick. It’s Henry. A mob is headed to his shop.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “What in the world kind of place is this where just anyone storms into your private home! Don’t you hire—”

  “Mother, hush!” It was rare for my father to raise his voice.

  “Mr. Bell says Henry stole his gun.” Yuri’s eyes caught mine for a flash.

  “Where did he get an idea like that?” My father followed Yuri onto the porch, hatless. I stepped out after them.

  “My father saw him snooping around the Bells’ shack, sir.” Yuri and my father went from walking to running. I followed them to Henry’s home. A mob of men stood around a pile of books; each carried one of Mr. Bell’s rifles. Viktor and Taras held Henry’s arms, though he didn’t appear to be resisting, and another man was yelling threats. Mr. Bell dangled a match over a pile of books.

  “What in God’s name is going on here?” my father said as we burst through the bushes.

  A few spoke at once, claiming what Yuri had already told us, that Henry had stolen Mr. Bell’s pistol. Taras and Viktor were silent.

  “Put your bloody guns down,” my father demanded, and the men complied. He turned to Henry. “Did you take Phillip’s pistol?”

  “No, sir,” Henry said, straight-faced.

  “Henry is an honest man. He does not lie. He does not steal. Let go of him already.” Taras and Viktor released Henry. “You should all be ashamed.”

  Mr. Bell approached my father. “Taras here says he saw him steal it, Noah. I won’t rest until we search the house.”

  My father glanced down at the pile of books. “It looks as though you already have.”

  “We weren’t able to get into the back room.”

  “Henry, I know you have nothing to hide. Will you allow Phillip to respectfully search your home for his goddamned gun if he promises not to touch one more goddamned thing while he’s at it?”

  Henry nodded. He would not look at anyone but my father.

  “There you have it,” my father said. He walked up close to Mr. Bell. “But if you don’t put everything back exactly as you found it, I swear to God…”

  I stepped away from the crowd and went back into the forest to look for the pistol. I would slip it back into Mr. Bell’s shack while everyone was gone. When I finally got to the place on the river where Yuri had hidden the pistol, I searched in the bushes, beneath rocks, and behind trees, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I thought the orphan thief might have found it and this terrified me. After what felt like hours of futile searching, I ran back through the forest to Henry’s shop. Everyone was gone except for Yuri, who was carrying a precariously tall stack of books back into the library. He looked at me, expectant.

  “I couldn’t find it.”

  “I threw it into the bushes.”

  “I looked everywhere. Nothing.”

  “Do you think Henry saw me throw it?” Yuri said, ignoring me.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe he went back for it.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Yuri shrugged.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Your father and Henry have gone for a walk, to cool off.”

  “We have to find that gun,” I whispered.

  “If it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s nothing we can do,” he said, and handed me a stack of books. “Let’s just get Henry’s books back in order. That’s all we can do now.”

  I watched Yuri’s face carefully. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine.

  12

  The Japanese no longer lined the back wall of the church as they had before the fire in the Kobas’ orchard the year before. They attended their own church now, built near the lake. In their stead, the Wasiks and some of the other poorer, white picker families sat at the back of the church. When I looked back at the Wasiks, Yuri glanced down as if he had already been looking my way. There was a bruise on his cheek. Viktor slouched beside him, his eyes opening and closing drowsily. On the other side of Yuri, Mary wore a grey veil over her face. Beside her, Taras was rigid and upright. Since the incident at Henry’s, he and my father had hardly spoken all week.

  Someone
poked my shoulder. I turned to find Mrs. Bell. She gave a playful little wave with her gloved hand. Mr. Bell nodded at my father, and my father, never one to perpetuate drama, smiled back.

  The priest motioned for us all to stand and sing the hymn. The congregation rose with a shuffle. Llewelyna remained sitting. She was unusually pale, amphibian. She knit and unknit her fingers. The congregation stole glances at her. My father pretended not to notice, while my grandmother threw Llewelyna glaring looks she didn’t acknowledge.

  “Are you feeling okay?” I whispered in her ear. Llewelyna closed her eyes and smiled. She mumbled something in Welsh.

  “For shame!” my grandmother hissed at us for talking. Llewelyna’s eyelids lifted heavily and she smiled dumbly up at my grandmother, who shook her head, furious.

  I stood for the hymn and stared at Jesus pinned to the cross. He looked as gruesome as ever, his mouth distorted in a terrible grimace of death. A bead of blood had collected on the tip of his big toe. It dripped off and stained the white mantel below. I mouthed the words to the hymn. Jacob’s new, erratic voice quivered above the rest:

  “Cast thy bread upon the water,

  “Christ will watch the rolling wave,

  “As it ripples slowly onward, to the soul he seeks to save.”

  When the hymn was over we all sat back down in the pews. Llewelyna’s eyes opened and closed slowly. Her lips twitched with language too quiet to hear. Father John asked us to bow our heads in prayer but I kept watching Llewelyna. My grandmother stared at her also, until she saw me looking and glared for me to close my eyes, and I did.

  Llewelyna’s leg began to vibrate against mine. By the time I knew what was happening she had slipped off the pew to the ground. I dove down beside her. Her head jolted back and forth between my hands. There was noise all around us as people stood, and then shuffled to get a better view. Llewelyna’s hair was already plastered against her forehead with sweat. My father was too large to fit between the pews at her feet and so remained seated. “No, no, no,” I could hear him saying, but wasn’t sure who he was directing those words to. Father John, eyes closed, continued with his prayer, his voice projected towards the ceiling. No one was praying with him now.

  Llewelyna’s eyes were closed and her mouth long and tense. Her hands were in fists at her sides. She had told me once, after that first time in the garden, that during her tremblings she often saw the end of the world as Saint Francis described it to her: fire, earthquakes, exploding stars. It was important I didn’t tell anyone about these visions, it would only scare them, she said. The trembling in the garden felt surreal, otherworldly, as though I had witnessed her exit the physical world for another. But now, surrounded by people, her trembling was made corporeal: just a body ravaged by convulsions, made electric. I thought I might throw up, faint, or die right there beside her. The trembling seemed to last hours. I couldn’t help but look around at all the faces. People held white-gloved hands and handkerchiefs against their mouths as if there were a contagion in the air. At the back of the church Mary fell to her knees and uttered a prayer of her own. Viktor’s and Taras’s eyes were to the floor in shame, but Yuri’s met mine.

  A voice hissed, devil. It made my skin bristle. I looked up at my grandmother but her mouth was sealed with a frown. I was glad Llewelyna couldn’t hear those words spat out like a curse upon her: devil, devil. I was nauseous at the thought of my beautiful mother thrashing on the floor beneath the pews, with common, unspectacular people bending over her and whispering. I realized then that Father John had taken on the hissed word and was praying the devil out of Llewelyna.

  When Llewelyna finally opened her eyes she smiled at me. The whites had turned dark red and emitted gasps from onlookers. She took in the scene around her slowly, then closed her eyes and fell asleep. Despite my grandmother’s quibbling—Mightn’t we leave her be? Mightn’t there be harm in moving her? Mightn’t we call the doctor?—my father slipped his hands beneath Llewelyna and picked her up. Her head hung limp over his arm; her white neck curled back impossibly, the bulge of her throat visible through the skin, her hair loose, almost touching the ground. I picked up her yellow lace veil and pinched the fabric so hard it left imprints on my fingertips.

  There was a crowd outside the church and I stood alone, lost in it. My father got inside our carriage with Llewelyna still in his arms. My grandmother and Jacob got in behind them, and the horses tugged the carriage towards the road.

  “Are you all right?” Yuri was beside me. I turned as if to walk away from him, but I knew he would follow me into the forest.

  We ducked under fallen trees and stomped through low bushes.

  “Were you afraid, Iris?” Yuri asked. He ran up ahead and stood in front of me. “Iris?” His eyes were big as two bluebird’s eggs. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to release the bubble rising up my throat. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head and pinched my lips together. The hot tears were ready at the insides of my eyes. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Yuri pulled my shoulders into him and petted the nape of my neck softly as mothers are supposed to. My knees gave out and we sank to the forest floor, my face planted into Yuri’s shoulder. The bubble in my throat burst.

  Llewelyna’s fall in the church confirmed my grandmother’s suspicions about her: She has always been a little “off,” hasn’t she? She called the trembling a fit. Dr. Cross was called from the city to see to her, and he gave my father a bottle of white pills Llewelyna refused to take. She stayed in bed for days.

  I wasn’t quite sure how she had done it, but Llewelyna had hidden her illness from everyone but me. Although my father was often away, I thought he must have suspected something, but he didn’t seem to know about her tremblings. Perhaps he was naive to it or maybe Llewelyna had a kind of control over the falls. Later she told me she usually knew when one was coming. It began with the smell of lemons, sharp at the back of her throat. She would have a dizzy spell and need to sit down, and then everything would go black and all of a sudden she would be in a thick forest, following Saint Francis to the lake. She knew when she dove into the water that she was convulsing, that her visions of the end of the world would begin. She said that day in the church, the dizzy spell had come upon her too quickly. Before she realized what was happening it was already too late.

  My grandmother had called upon a proper priest from the city, dressed in white robes and with a heavy gold cross around his neck that thumped against the kitchen table when he reached for the sugar to sweeten his tea. The priest arrived on the Rosamond early one morning. While he was in Llewelyna’s room, I strained to hear his murmurings from my bedroom. His voice surged in a kind of chant.

  “Why worry yourself?” my grandmother was saying to my father as I descended the staircase. “There is no harm in it.” She sat alert at the kitchen table with the handle of her teacup pinched between index finger and thumb. My father was slumped over, head in his hands.

  “You’ve brought an exorcist into my home.”

  “Simple prayer. No harm in simple prayer.”

  “The entire neighbourhood watched the man disembark. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

  “It’s a matter of spirit. And spirit must be fought with spirit.” My grandmother lifted her face to me. “Good morning, darling.” She smiled and gestured to the teapot. “Tea?”

  My father got up from the table without looking at me and went outside.

  This wouldn’t be the last time I would feel as though I were interrupting something when I walked into the room. For weeks after Llewelyna’s fall in the church, I often found my grandmother and father sitting close, leaning towards one another like scheming thieves who couldn’t quite agree on a plan. During one of these heated whisperings in the sitting room, I hid around the corner where I could just barely hear the conversation.

  “…in Hertfordshire,” my grandmother was saying. “A lovely building, and new. Designed by Rowland Plumbe. It doesn’t even look like a hospital. An esta
te, really. A palace. The grounds are stunning. Gardens. Plenty of fresh air.”

  “I’m telling you she won’t cross the Atlantic again. She won’t leave. I’ve tried.”

  “Perhaps she hasn’t a choice?”

  “Are you suggesting I kidnap my wife?”

  “Of course not, Noah. But something must be done. You cannot continue in this manner.”

  Then one evening my father entered the spare room where Llewelyna now slept since her seizure in the church, and announced he would be accompanying my grandmother and Jacob back to London. My grandmother stood at the doorway, her arms crossed. I remained in the hallway, a safe distance from the scene but close enough to see my father and the lump Llewelyna made in the bed. She didn’t say anything, just let my father keep talking. His words were practised and precise but his chin quivered ever so slightly as he spoke.

  “Surely you can see that it is best for Jacob to get acquainted with London. Mother has arranged for him to receive instruction, a tutor who will prepare him for the rigour of boarding school.” He looked to my grandmother as if for encouragement. My father did not go on to say why it was necessary he go along with them, but my grandmother’s firm nod dispelled all uncertainties.

  Llewelyna sat up then and reached for a glass of water on her bedside. My father regarded her squarely and awaited her response. She propped herself up on a pillow. She was pale, her eyes still bloodshot, as pink as her robe. She held the glass of water to her chest and turned towards the window. I wanted so desperately for her to demand he stay, or go hysterical, cry, curse him, jump from the window, anything at all. I could tell by the way he watched her, the muscle of his jaw pulsing, that he wanted that too. But she didn’t appear to be interested, or even listening, at least not to him.

  The day they left on the Rosamond I refused to walk them to the lakeboat. My grandmother and Jacob were already at the bottom of the drive. Viktor and Yuri carried their trunks for them. My father had stalled at the threshold of our house and waited until everyone was a distance away. He bent down and pulled me in close.