The nurse confirms what Ginny Mustard knows. Says she’s healthy as a horse and should have a strong baby. Gives her folk acid and multivitamins. Tells the kitchen staff to let her drink as much milk as she wants and to do the heavy work themselves. That’s how Ginny Mustard becomes head chef and while she can’t order provisions until she learns to read, she manages to talk the person who does into adding a few more interesting items to the list now and then. Joe Snake brings cookbooks and she passes them around so the other inmates can pick a nice dish and read aloud how to cook it.
She wants to see what the new house looks like since Joe Snake moved in and he takes pictures of the work in progress, brings a new batch every time he visits. Paint samples and a catalogue to choose a couch and kitchen table. Fabric and dimensions so she can make curtains in the craft room with Ella’s help when she takes a prayer break. Ella knows how to knit as well and is teaching Ginny Mustard to make a blanket, soft and pink, with hope and dreams set in delicate stitches.
When the guards put Crazy Rachel in the cell across from Ginny Mustard, peace and quiet get up and leave in a flash. For once, her family, rich as they are, cannot bail her out and since she is only mad when she doesn’t get her own way, no one is able to convince the courts that she’s insane. Attempted murder earns her four years. Her chances of getting out a minute sooner are slim to non-existent. When they take her street clothes and give her prison garb they find half a pound of cocaine and a couple dozen joints in her fur coat pocket. She’s pissed and screaming and no one is going to shut her up. They can do as they please, she’ll stop when she feels like it and not before. Short of slapping a piece of duct tape over her mouth there’s nothing much can be done so the guards hand out ear plugs and let her rip.
Joe Snake works hard to make the new house a home. He peels wallpaper, repairs plaster, scrapes old paint off the bannister, gets his friend Alf to help replace the kitchen cupboard doors. And he goes to the university and enrolls for January courses, buys a book about being a dad, reads every word. Ginny Mustard says the baby is a girl but he reads the boy sections too, just in case.
Ruth doesn’t find it easy being on her feet all day and with minimum wage she can barely make ends meet but it’s okay. She is happy with her independence. She is pleased to pay her rent and buy her groceries with money she earns. If there’s nothing left over for new shoes or a watch, so be it; there wasn’t any on welfare either. And in a few months, if they keep her after Christmas, there’ll be health benefits and a pension plan which you certainly don’t get working the bars.
Patrick wants to marry her. The idea of spending her life with him is appealing but she’s damned if she’s going poor to him, will have her own income, however meager. She’s tired at the end of her days and mostly just wants to go to her small home and be alone so they don’t see as much of each other as he’d like. And of course, she spends time with Sarah and Peter, and though Patrick is certainly welcome, she doesn’t always bring him along, doesn’t feel like sharing her family with him every time she visits. He tries not to be hurt but he is.
Judy and Maggie are thrilled with their new place. They have a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a really big bedroom with space enough for two as long as they don’t plan on entertaining the young fellows. Patrick told Joe Snake all about the conditions of Judy’s probation and he keeps careful watch, takes a good sniff in the air around her when she comes in just in case she’s had a bit of pot after school. Days when they don’t stop at Maggie’s dad’s house he asks about homework and tells them to do it upstairs in the dining room where he has installed his computer and where he does his own work, the better to raise a baby.
Ginny Mustard wants Joe Snake’s family to come for Christmas. She sends an invitation from prison with Becky doing the writing. There’s plenty of space in the new old house. She orders furniture from the catalogue for the guest rooms. Tells Joe Snake where to buy a good turkey - fresh - for dinner. Makes him write down her instructions for gravy and tells him how much cream to put in the mashed potatoes.
Christmas at Mrs. Miflin’s house had always been a dreary affair. A little fake tree with blue plastic balls glued all over was set on the coffee table next to a plaster stable with sheep and the Holy Family, lest they forget the true meaning. The tenants drew a name each and gave a gift and there was a turkey and fruitcake but that’s as special as it ever managed to be. Ginny Mustard would walk along the river and stare through windows at magic trees and parties for hours and never went home until all the pretty lights had been turned off for the night.
Christmas can break the hearts of women in prisons. They mightn’t buy princes or the fantasy of the ball or happily ever after but the picture-perfect Christmas with soft snow and candles, rosy-cheeked children and gentle families, keeps vigil, reawakens every year in every Christian as soon as The First Noel hits the airwaves. And they crumble one by one, the women in prisons. And the bars may be steel or poverty or apathy, it makes no difference and no matter what they are saying aloud, if you listen closely you’ll hear the desperation of the one dream that might come true but obviously not this year, maybe next.
Joe Snake brings home the biggest tree he can find and it takes up the entire living room with only space enough to squeeze past it into the dining room. It touches the ceiling and he has to cut some off to make room for the star. The back of the box of lights says that 200 will be right for a three-foot tree so he buys 4000. He covers the bannister with boughs and the house smells like a forest after warm rain.
Maggie wants her dad to come for Christmas dinner and he says yes. One way or another he will get away from his wife who thinks they are going to Cuba for the holidays. She bought tickets ages ago because she just knows that Margaret will be causing trouble for them and is surprised that she hasn’t heard tell of the girl since the time she threatened her at the house on Bishop’s Road.
Dorrie came around the other day and asked if she could spend Christmas at Ginny Mustard’s house and since she has such a flair for decorating as well as her own porcelain nativity scene that she will bring along if they want, Joe Snake said sure, the more the merrier. Dorrie hasn’t seen her policeman since the wed-ding reception. Is feeling unloved these days and small lines are beginning to show around her eyes and mouth that weren’t there before.
Over Eve the earth is working and moving ever so slowly. You won’t notice if you aren’t a bird. The weather has been warmer than it should but who’s to say if that’s true or false or if it even matters. Tiny shoots of green appear and then buds and one day a hundred purple crocuses in the fog, in the rain, and a reporter from the Daily News who happened to be covering a story about vandalism in the graveyard noticed the color and at first thought someone had lost a pretty sweater but soon saw the flowers. Called a photographer and a picture appeared on the front page next day.
It didn’t matter that other people had crocuses blooming in their own yards and even a few tulips poking their way up through dead leaves to see what’s going on with the seasons. Someone needed a miracle. Remembered the northern lights a while back. Connected them with the flowers for some odd reason and asked around about the occupant of the grave.
Judy told all she knew which wasn’t much but apparently enough and the rumors began that Eve was who she thought she was - mother of all - and as with most miracles, people figured that getting close to the source would heal them of their woes and the caretaker had the devil’s time keeping everyone on the beaten path and not walking all over the dead. Someone decided to make a special headstone for Eve. Fashioned a large fat goddess with breasts and tummy and backside all falling over and plunked it down on top of the crocuses which demolished quite a few of them and pissed off some of the old ladies who come by every day to pray for each other’s sick and dying husbands. They gathered up enough strength to push it over and planted more bulbs from their own gardens but they never did bloom as purple as Eve’s.
Crazy Rachel has decided t
hat Ginny Mustard is the bane of her existence and must pay. Dearly. That baby in her belly is rightfully hers since the father is most definitely Howard James. It all came out in court. How Ginny Mustard used to go to his house at night. How she stole away his dog and how Dorrie came to be living in that old Mrs. Miflin’s house. If it hadn’t been for her meddling, Rachel and Howard would be happily wed by now and she’d have her own baby on the way. But if she can’t have her own, she’ll have Ginny Mustard’s.
Crazy Rachel’s family is scared to death of her. While in her mother’s womb she made life miserable for all. Kicked and screamed - her mother swears she screamed and her father is inclined to believe it with the nightmares his wife had from the moment of conception. The boys had never caused a minute’s trouble. That’s because this is a girl and she’s weird, said Crazy Rachel’s mother.
Simple folk they were, who made a fortune in packaging materials when Missus complained once that sending a parcel was hit or miss every time and so Mister came up with something better and the world beat a path to his door. They bought the biggest house and the nicest cars and raised their children in the lap of luxury even if they didn’t have a clue which fork to use. Rachel didn’t bother to speak until she went to school and discovered that merely pointing at an object and yelling was no guarantee that she could have it. Nothing ever changed at home though, and her wish was her family’s command. She grew up beautiful on the out-side and warty mean on the inside but she was rich so no one cared.
Prison suits her. If she had a metal cup she’d be banging it on the bars of her cell day and night. Instead she elbows people in the side for no reason, trips them when they walk past her, preferably when they are carrying trays of lunch, picks a spot on their bodies to stare at hard for an hour or so, a shoulder, a nose, an ear. She’s a bully, pure and simple, but subtle and it’s not easy to pinpoint exactly what she’s doing wrong. After enough complaints the guards try solitary confinement to teach her a lesson but Crazy Rachel doesn’t learn lessons, uses her time alone to fortify herself and is always worse when they let her out.
Odd how we get from there to here. How life goes on and we work and play and grow and in a still sudden moment we stop and wonder - how did this come to be? It was just yesterday, wasn’t it, when I was that person and now here I am this one and what transpired to make this happen? How did I get to be living in this place and putting my dishes in this cupboard and taking my bath in this tub? How did I come to be looking at these walls and where are the ones that came before?
Ruth stares at her little tree with the white lights and pretty glass balls from the big sale at work. Snuggles down under a quilt and is pondering just such questions when Patrick comes by with champagne and roses and a diamond ring in a blue velvet box. Makes her cry until her nose runs and her eyes are red. And she looks at him long and hard. Says yes she will marry him but not yet. There is something she needs to know and it is in this place alone with her. Alone with no one else around. When she sits in the quiet she has the sense that it is just there. Or there. If she moves her head quickly enough at the right second of time in a certain light she will have it and if she hasn’t yet that doesn’t mean that tomorrow - or tomorrow - the knowing that is so close will not be in her grasp. “I wouldn’t mind dying,” she says. “I have a bone to pick with God, and so many questions.” She smiles and the knowing skitters away to hide until Patrick leaves.
Downtown is aglow with Christmas except for the empty shops and two or three houses where nobody bothers and the city looks silly all green and red in the fog. Everyone wants snow but it looks like there won’t be any in time and after the twenty-fifth it doesn’t matter if it never comes. Parents who bought toboggans and skis for the youngsters are thinking they should exchange them for scooters and skateboards but it’s probably too late now anyway and they ready themselves for the disappointment. Those who remember the rules make a big deal of putting the shovels and winter boots away, taking out raincoats and pretending that this suits them just fine in hope that the gods are listening and will fling a storm their way just to mess up their plans. Forgetting, of course, that the gods know what’s really going on and can recognize a fake-out miles away.
The people who haven’t finished their shopping keep putting it off and retail business has come to a standstill with customers poking around half-heartedly and leaving the stores with nothing and no one is thinking of saying Merry Christmas when they stop to chat.
In prison it doesn’t matter if it rains or snows and Ginny Mustard is still putting a holiday together for her outside world. She has pictures of the tree full of little cats who find the branches just perfect for napping and tormenting Harvey who can’t climb, and has taped them to the wall at eye level all around her cell. Joe Snake takes a roll of film a day and has it developed at the one-hour place, sends the pictures to her by courier and after the guards have finished looking at them she puts them up.
Christmas. Cold now. Earth round and sweet. Worried. A bubble on some giant’s tongue who can spit or swallow - makes no difference to him and either way, we fall together and most things land where they began the day. Paper and gifts and some sad some happy same as last year and the one before that except for maybe Uncle Fred didn’t get in from the rig or Aunt Floss died in July and is missed or there’s a brand new baby who has never seen the pretty lights before and tries to eat any tinsel that the cat didn’t get.
Our friends recount the year’s blessings and sorrows and make resolutions. Ginny Mustard puts hers to rhyme and sings them to her belly that she has taken to protecting with both hands whenever Crazy Rachel is about for she sees what is on the warped mind and has a sharp kitchen knife tucked away in her mattress just in case. She sings, “Daddy’s gonna take you to our pretty house,” and “You’re gonna be a smart little girl” to the tune of Hush Uttle Baby and never in the same order so her dreams are many different songs. Soft and no one hears.
Mrs. Miflin was in a boarding house on Caine’s Street until she took herself to the waterfront and walked off the edge of the wharf leading some to believe that she was a few bricks short of a load and after they fished her out they put her in the hospital for the mentally deficient where she waits. Sometimes quietly and sometimes not so - especially on the days when she tucks her happy pills under her tongue and pretends to swallow and spits them in the toilet when nobody’s looking. When the new owners of her house came to move in, she still hadn’t moved out and there was quite a to-do until poor Fred the real estate agent dragged her to Caine’s Street and signed her up for a month at Mrs. Pretty’s house. Even paid with his own money. And put her furniture in storage. He still has the key.
When Mrs. Miflin forgot that she had a fat bank account and couldn’t figure out what she’d do when her time was up at Mrs. Pretty’s place, she tried to end it all. Not realizing that of the hundred or so people taking a walk on the waterfront there’d be at least a dozen who would try to save her.
Ruth has a lovely Christmas but for the knowing that waits for the quiet and has become a nagging thing lately - pulling her away from wherever she happens to be - calling her to come and find secrets. And so she leaves what she’s doing and hurries to her womb. That’s what she calls home - it being too small to be a real apartment. Once she told Patrick that she was going to the wash-room when they were at a very good movie but when she reached the lobby - well - she just kept going. And halfway through dinner at Peter and Sarah’s house she upped herself from the table before dessert and coffee and said, “Good-bye. I have to go now.” They worry about her but there’s nothing they can do. No more can Ruth. It beckons and she’s gone.
Judy is in constant pain - she’s that angry. Maggie has left her and she hasn’t felt this alone since Grammy Hagen died. When Mrs. Eldridge came back from Cuba without her mister he got it with both barrels - never mind that the man has a bad heart - and was sent packing with half of everything they had accumulated over the years and a yearning to see the wo
rld with his daughter. They had their passports in no time flat and were on their way - to Egypt and Belgium and England and Peru - though not necessarily in that order. And if Judy had been around to say good-bye she’d have known that Maggie will send a postcard every week and will miss her and wishes she could come but school is first if Judy is ever to be set free of the watchful eye of the law.
While Maggie awaits her flight arm in arm with her dad, Judy sits on her favourite swing in the schoolyard and won’t leave even when the principal comes out and threatens to have her expelled if she isn’t back in her classroom by the time he counts to five. She yells at him that she doesn’t go to his friggin’ school anyway and he can take a flying fuck at the moon for all she cares and he goes inside to call the cops but litde Josie Gullage has a nosebleed and he has to take her to the hospital. Between the jigs and the reels, Judy is left swinging until four in the morning when Joe Snake finds her and tells her to get on home out of it.
And Judy has sworn off friends forever and doesn’t care if she never sees Maggie again but she cries in her pillow at night and has dark circles under her eyes and a sad droopy way of walking with her text books folded hard against her breasts and holes in her shoes where she drags her toes every slow step.
Joe Snake worries about her and tries to get her to eat vegetables but she is unbearably lonely downstairs and he is unbearably lonely upstairs and even though they watch television together sometimes they don’t have much to say and neither is any help to the other. They take the little cats and their momma to be spayed or neutered - depending on which is which - and don’t speak a word the whole time going or coming.
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