Almost Eden

by Anita Horrocks

  At supper I couldn’t help it if I was in a bad mood still. Mom shuffled around the kitchen, not looking too good yet, but good enough to fry up some potatoes and hamburgers.

  “I’m so sorry, Elsie,” she said, stopping a moment to put a cold cloth on the back of her neck.

  “It’s okay,” I muttered. “Never mind.” I knew Mom was feeling pretty bad about everything. Only I felt lousy too, and I could feel the waterworks starting up in my eyes. It was too much to try to pretend everything was all right. I got up from the table. “I’m going upstairs to read.”

  I threw myself on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how come Sadie hadn’t invited me to sleep over, too.

  When Lena came to bed later, she told me Mom was crying.

  I wished I hadn’t been such a brat then, and almost went downstairs to tell her that it really didn’t matter that much about the party. Only it was too late already. Mom and Dad were arguing in Plautdietsch. They were arguing about me and my party that never happened.

  And then the arguing turned into something else. Mom screamed something at Dad and there was a slap and this loud thud like something had hit the wall or fallen down. I could hear Mom sobbing and I almost got out of bed after all.

  After that it was quiet again.

  I knew I should pray. I should ask God for forgiveness. I should ask him for his help.

  But I was too mad at him right then.

  Tommy was still waiting to be fed when I got home from my bike ride. I held the porch door open and invited him in, only he wouldn’t budge. He never did, no matter what I tried tempting him with. Like he was doing us a favor by letting us feed him.

  First thing when I walked in the door, Beth was on my case. “Where did you take off to this morning?” She slammed down the knob on the toaster and glared fiercely at me so I knew pretty much what she was thinking. She was thinking why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth shut for once.

  “Up yours,” I muttered under my breath. I could’ve said it out loud. It wasn’t like Dad was paying attention, sitting there at the kitchen table drinking his coffee like nothing had happened even. And smoking. Mom never would’ve let him get away with smoking at the table, for sure not while we were eating.

  Lena stuffed her grubby fist into a box of Cheerios and then into her mouth. She was wearing my brand-new blue peasant blouse. It figured.

  “I don’t remember anyone asking to borrow my clothes.”

  Lena’s lower lip pushed out far enough to step on. “It’s too small on you, you said so. And blue’s my favoritest color. Please?”

  “Favorite, not favoritest. You’re not a baby.” It simply wasn’t fair that Lena got the little turned-up pixie nose and I inherited the huge Redekop gurknaze. It wasn’t fair that Lena got the thick brown hair that tumbled in waves down her back, but my dirty blonde hair was so fine I had to keep it cut short always so I looked almost like a boy. Until this year I didn’t mind so much when people thought I was a boy, but now…

  “Please?” she whined.

  “What’s the difference, Elsie? Let her wear it this once.” Dad butted out his smoke.

  “She better not wreck it.”

  “Go back to bed and get up on the other side, why don’t you?” Beth stood at the counter buttering her toast. I stuck my tongue out at her on my way to the fridge. Okay, I was being a brat. I didn’t give a care.

  “Tommy’s hungry. Where’s the milk?”

  “We’re out. You can run to the Co-op and buy some.” Beth bit into her toast.

  “You go buy it.”

  “Look, you little ingrate.” Toast crumbs spit across the room at me. “I’m in charge until Mom gets home. So you can just smarten up and do what I tell you.”

  “Say it, don’t spray it.”

  Dad threw us a warning look.

  By now my heart was a wild thing. I had to ask. It didn’t matter that I already knew. “Where is Mom?”

  Dad studied his coffee cup, like the answer might be in there somewheres. “I was just telling Beth and Lena. I took her to the hospital last night.”

  “You mean Eden. You took her to Eden.”

  Finally, he looked me in the eye, and now he maybe looked a bit like death warmed over. “Nah yo, I mean Eden.”

  The questions nearly burst out, one after another.

  “For how long?”

  “Can we visit her?”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  None of them made it past my tightly pressed lips. I blinked away useless tears. Anyways, I already knew most of the answers.

  “A couple of weeks. Maybe a month.”

  “Not for a few days.”

  “I wish the hell I knew.”

  Depression, Dad. It’s called depression. I wanted to shout it at him, along with the one question I didn’t know the answer to: Is she ever going to get better?

  All I said was, “I’ll go get the damn milk.”

  “Elsie!” Dad’s voice boomed.

  Only I was already out the door. I ran across the street, cutting through Pudel Pete’s yard and the alley to the back entrance of the Co-op.

  Eden, Eden, Eden. What kind of dummkopps called a mental hospital Eden? Who did they think they were kidding?

  This was too big for a wish. I needed serious help.

  Dear God, I prayed, ignoring the stones stabbing my bare feet. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should’ve kept my mouth shut, I shouldn’t have made Mom feel bad about the pajama party. Please make my mother better so she can come home.

  It was a real prayer, not some selfish wish. Okay, maybe a little selfish. But it wasn’t like I was praying for bigger boobs or for Aaron Penner to notice me or anything.

  Still, God was going to have to work overtime to answer my prayer.

  Conditions didn’t favor it.

  I promise to be good, I added.

  Conditions didn’t favor that either. I for sure didn’t feel like being good.

  Grandma Redekop’s nose led her across the alley before lunch. She waddled in the back door.

  “Goondach, meyahles. Oh my, such good girls you are. Doing all the Saturday work.” She’d caught us on our knees, Beth scrubbing the kitchen floor and me dusting baseboards in the dining room.

  Work was Grandma’s answer for most everything. Dad had given us a choice, after I’d got back with the milk. Either Beth was in charge, or he’d ask his mother to come over during the day while he was at work.

  “NO!” All three of us had agreed on that much at least. It wasn’t that we didn’t like Grandma Redekop, or even that she would forcefeed us a steady diet of plumen mouse hollopchee, varenika, and borscht. Some of those things I liked even. And Grandma’s cooking would for sure be a whole lot better than anything Beth made.

  But Grandma would never be done thinking of things to keep us busy. I wouldn’t get to spend any time at the pool with my friends if Grandma was in charge.

  “Well then,” said Dad, running one hand through his Brylcreemed hair like he was ready to tear it out. “Maybe I should phone up your Auntie Nettie or Taunte Tina. One of them could check up on you girls while I’m at work.”

  Taunte Tina was ancient–all of my mom’s sisters were. Dad’s sister, Nettie, was my favorite aunt, but she wasn’t Mom.

  “Dad, I’m sixteen. I can handle it.” Beth made a big deal of staring straight at me. “As long as Elsie does her share and helps look after Lena.”

  “I don’t need Elsie to look after me.” Lena scowled, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m not a baby!”

  “Well, Elsie?” Dad waited.

  Like I had a choice. Besides which, I had to do whatever I could to make it up to Mom. “Fine with me.”

  All my plans for summer got sucked down the drain, just like that. Plans to hang out with my friends, swim, suntan, ride my bike, have pajama parties, and maybe…my heart skipped. It was bad luck to even think his name.

  None of my plans included taking orders from
Beth, or having to schlap my little sister along every time I left the house, that’s for sure. But it was a good bet that none of Mom’s plans included being stuck away in a mental home.

  “Good. Then I don’t want to hear any more about it.” Dad took a cap from the row of hooks by the back door. He faced us again from behind an Elephant Brand fertilizer emblem. “I’m late for work.”

  On a Saturday? Sure, okay. At the seed plant where my dad worked, he mostly sold seed and fertilizer and stuff to farmers. But seeding was finished weeks ago already so what did he have to work on a Saturday for?

  He paused halfway out the door. “Your mom will be just fine in no time, kidlets. Pray for her.”

  Uy uy uy. Here’s the thing. Mom and Beth were the religious ones in our family. Dad was what Reverend Funk would call a backslider. For one thing, he smoked. For another thing, he never hardly went to church. He never hardly said grace before meals, except if Mom made him. And he used words that for sure he didn’t find in the Bible.

  He was the one telling us to pray? I got a bad feeling in my gut.

  I decided to go along with the helping-out bit until lunch. Then I was going to the pool and that was all there was to it. No way was I missing the first Saturday of summer holidays.

  “What do I have to–” I started, but there was Beth, hands folded, head bowed and eyes closed yet, before the door even shut behind Dad. Her lips moved silently.

  Holy macaroni.

  When she finished praying, Beth told me to eat something. “Then we’ll clean up the kitchen and make the beds. I guess I should go buy groceries yet, too.”

  Already it was starting. Before I knew it I was down on my knees with a dust rag. I was still there when Grandma showed up.

  “I brought ginger snaps. Isaak’s favorite.” She never stopped for a breath even. “Tina brought them to me, but who can eat so much? Vooa es Mutta? I said I would help this morning with the peas. Now the day is too hot already, not?”

  Beth wrung out the floor rag, hard.

  Grandma noticed.

  “Vaut es louse, kint?”

  I couldn’t help giggling. Plautdietsch was hilarious sometimes. “Me, Grandma. I’m loose.” I flopped over like a rag doll. Loose screw. Screw loose.

  Grandma didn’t laugh. “You make fun of an old woman.”

  I jumped up and put my arms around her, as far around as I could anyways. “I’m sorry, Grandma. I was just acting silly.”

  Beth told her what was wrong, scrubbing still harder yet. The kitchen chair groaned as Grandma’s bottom spread over both sides. “Uy uy uy. So it goes always. And you girls all alone? It’s too much. Why did Isaac not make me a phone call?”

  “We’re fine, Grandma,” Beth stood up, pushing a long strand of hair away from her face. “Thanks for the cookies.”

  Grandma’s fingers clasped my wrist like steel handcuffs. She pulled me close. “Come here once, meyahl”

  She squeezed me against her softness. “Don’t worry yourself over it. God will take care of your mother. You’ll see. You pray for God to make her well again. God will listen. God always listens.”

  “I will, Grandma.” I wriggled out of her arms.

  “You do the best thing you can for your mother, making the house so nice.” She nodded her approval. “I’ll make the lunch. Throw me over here that apron.”

  Beth didn’t stand a chance.

  “What kept you?” Jillian asked. She’d saved a spot for me to put my towel beside her. “We waited at Sadie’s for ages.”

  The pool was the best thing about Hopefield. It wasn’t anything fancy like the Pan-Am pool in Winnipeg where we’d gone last month on a school field trip. But it was big enough, with two diving boards and lots of grass around the deck where we could tan, and a few trees for shade. Besides which, it was the only place in town for us to hang out except for church or maybe the park.

  Sadie lived a block from the pool. We usually met at her house after lunch–Jillian and me–and sometimes Naomi, Joy, Heather, and Eleanor, too.

  “My grandma was over,” I said, dodging the question. I didn’t feel like explaining about Mom right then. Maybe if it was just Jillian I’d have said something, but not with everyone there, the guys yet, too. Caleb, Pete, Mark, Jimmy, Richard. And Aaron. Especially Aaron Penner.

  For now I just wanted to have some fun. First thing, we split into teams–girls against guys–to dive for pennies. There were no rules. Anything went.

  “Ready?” Naomi tossed a penny into the middle of the deep end.

  We took turns, three people from each team diving at once. Sadie, Jillian, and I stood at the edge, ready to dive against Pete, Mark, and Aaron.

  “Set.”

  We watched the penny sink to the bottom.

  “Go!”

  We hit the water, kicking like crazy. I’d got a good start, and guessed that the penny probably slid down the slope to the deepest part of the pool. There it was, skittering along the bottom. I grabbed it and kicked off the bottom, heading for the side of the pool.

  “Got it!” I slammed the penny down on the concrete, a split second before Aaron yanked me under.

  I whipped around underwater, grinning, showing him my empty hands. Our laughs gurgled up to the surface with us. “Slowpoke,” I mocked.

  “You won’t be so lucky next time.”

  “Hah!” My wrist tingled where Aaron had held it.

  He got a better start than I did on our next turn, so I tried to force him off course. Only someone’s hand clamped around my ankle and held me back. Mark. He wrapped both arms around my leg.

  I kicked out hard, but he had a pretty good grip. I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. I started to panic, twisting around to kick out at Mark’s stomach with my free leg. He was lucky I didn’t aim lower. Finally he let go and I scrambled for the surface, gasping for air.

  “What’re you trying to do, you retard? Drown me?”

  “Wimp.” Mark splashed me as he swam by. “Schmocke bayn. Nice legs. Don’t you ever shave them? I’ll lend you a swather and baler.”

  I was too stunned to put my brain into gear. If only I’d hurled an insult right back at him everything would have been all right.

  “Fuy”, I scowled like an old woman, then dove underwater to cool my flaming face, hating Mark Giesbrecht with every ounce of my soul and not caring one iota if God knew exactly how I felt, even if it was a sin.

  Did the others hear him, I wondered? Did–? Oh, John Jacob Jingleheimer. Exhaling, I let myself sink to the bottom of the pool. When Aaron had dunked me before–did he think my legs were hairy, too?

  Eventually I had to swim back and pretend nothing had happened. The fun had gone out of the game, though. I stopped even trying, then we had to quit because the lifeguards blew their whistles for a pool check.

  The others stretched out on the grass to suntan, but I wanted to stay as far away from Mark as possible. I went to find Lena, and Jillian came with. When the lifeguards finished checking the pool, we ducked into the shallow end to horse around a bit, letting Lena and her friends swim between our legs and dive off our shoulders. Then we knelt in the shallowest water and watched the little kids.

  “Don’t pay any attention to Mark,” Jillian said. “He’s a glommskopp.”

  So she had heard. “Do you even know what that means?” “Pete told me. Idiot or blockhead or something like that.”

  “Close enough. It means cottage cheese head.”

  She giggled. “How perfect is that? Glommskopp.”

  “Uh-huh.” I had to smile a little because now Jillian had a new favorite Plautdietsch word. I ducked underwater, coming up again with my head tipped back so the water smoothed my hair. “Did the others hear, too?”

  Jillian shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Do you shave your legs?” I asked, quickly, before I lost my nerve. Really, when you think about it, whether a person shaves their legs or not is nobody else’s business.

  Jillian grinned. “N
ot because I want to. But one time I borrowed my mom’s razor and tried it. And then the hair grew back and was so prickly I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t even sleep at night. So now I have to shave practically every week.”

  “What did your mom say?”

  “She said I was far too young to worry about a little hair on my legs, and it was my own fault for using her things without asking. But she bought me my own razor. Why don’t you ask your mom to get you one?”

  “Yeah, I probably will,” I lied. I was beginning to see what Reverend Funk meant when he said one lie just led to another.

  After a while we joined the others. I made sure to stretch out with my feet against the fence, so no one would be forced to look at my gross hairy legs.

  When the pool closed I looked for Lena. Only she was gone already. And so was her bike.

  “She’s probably at home,” Jillian said.

  “She’d better be,” I muttered.

  We rode home together like always, the bunch of us, hogging most of the road until we had to move over for some guy in an old brown pick-up, driving right on our tail. He crawled by, giving us the evil eye, but we all pretty much ignored him.

  Pete turned off at Jillian’s street with her. I was a little jealous, even though we all knew Pete had had a crush on Jillian since that day she walked into our grade 3 class with her six-shooters on.

  Sure enough, Lena’s bike was leaning against the porch when I got home. Thank you, God. From the back alley already I could hear Beth having a spaz.

  “She never listens, Dad. What if some pervert had walked off with Lena?”

  As if that would happen, I thought. This was Hopefield, for Pete’s sake. There were no strangers. Besides, Lena was almost eight already. She knew better than to go off with someone she didn’t know. So how come I felt so relieved that she was home safe?

  “I’ll talk to her,” Dad’s voice rumbled.

  “I hope you ground her at least.”

  That did it. Beth was doing her level best to get me in trouble. I stomped into the house. “You don’t have to be such a worrywart. Lena’s home, isn’t she?” I was a bit surprised to see Auntie Nettie sitting there with Dad. Grandma must’ve told her about Mom already. I gave her a quick nod.