The table was set with tablewear unlike any she’d ever seen. Jugs and plates in rich deep colours—dark blue, burnt orange, brilliant yellows. They drank their Freshie from goblets—this is what was Mrs. Gurack called them: “Can I fill your goblet, Tessa?” But they’d eaten birthday cake almost silently off the splendid plates, the grandmother saying things occasionally and the Gurack boys answering with only one or two words. In Hungarian. There had been comments about Tessa. She knew from the way she was looked at, her hair stroked with a hand that looked like a claw. And then the grandmother said something that seemed like an order, said something in terrible English that sounded like, “And now we eat the candles,” so Tessa took the two candles from her slice of cake and began to eat them from the ends which had been stuck in the cake so that they at least tasted a little of icing. She was too frightened not to obey. She had read the fairy tales in which children had disobeyed simple orders given by old women like this one, old women with hair growing from their chins, and who had been punished for their actions. Banished or burned or turned into animals.
But then the boys, all of them, her brothers, the two sons of the household, and one more, a neighbour, all began to laugh uproariously, while the grandmother smiled and Mrs. Gurack gently removed what remained of the candles from Tessa’s fingers. Tommy Gurack then told Tessa that his grandmother had been joking, of course no one was expected to eat the candles. But by then she had bitten off quite a portion of one of her candles and didn’t want to spit it out in front of everyone; she swallowed it quickly and then took a drink of Freshie to wash it down. She couldn’t wait to leave that house. For days afterwards, the boys had teased her about her appetite for candle wax. She’d expected to suffer bad effects from the wax but nothing happened.
• • •
Progress on the map was slow. It was one thing to decide to map one’s neighbourhood, but another to make it work on paper. Luckily the paper was thick and sturdy because it sometimes seemed that every line Tessa made with her pencil had to be erased at least once. After she had worked out north, using her brother’s compass, and plotted out the general shape of the cemetery, then she took her bike and rode around the streets to determine what should be included and what didn’t matter. Quite a lot mattered. The tall thin houses on the upper part of Memorial Crescent inhabited by the old couple who never washed and the family whose father didn’t work, and the turreted house on the corner. Clover Point because that was where Tessa’s family collected bark for their wood burner and where they were taken to watch the Queen being driven around in an open car and where she waved to Teddy, her gloved hand inclined towards him clear as anything. The little tidal islands just where Clover Point began, where the children played pirates and were stranded once when the tide came in without them noticing. Luckily there were big driftwood logs on the islands, so they could ride a log into shore, but their mothers were cross that their clothing was so wet. And Ross Bay was notorious for sewage—that’s what Tessa’s father said. Moss Rocks went on the map, with its hollows and special hidden cliffs. The house on Dallas Road where the missionary lived—the Brownie pack had been invited there to see cases of enormous preserved spiders with hairy legs and beautiful butterflies from Africa, and spears and blowpipes from tribes who had been converted to God and who didn’t need to hunt any longer but who gathered in smiling groups in clothing sent by the church.
Bushby Park, of course, and Tessa intended to colour in the mint bed with a dark green pencil crayon. And then there would be the problem of how exactly to show the buried streams.
Where did they begin, for instance? Tessa decided to ask her father. He was reading in the living room and looked at her with surprise.
“Why do you want to know that, sweetie?”
“I’m making a map, Dad, and I know where they end up, but I have to show them coming from somewhere.”
“A map? For school?”
“No, it’s just something I want to do. Remember when we talked about Atlas? That started me thinking. I asked Mrs. Barrett for a big piece of chart paper so I could make my own map.”
“I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can find out. How would that be?”
He went away and returned an hour or so later. He had a map in his hand.
“This is just a regular street map of Victoria, but I think I can use it to show you more or less where the streams come from.”
He took a pencil and drew a little rectangle around an area bordered by Cook Street to the west and Moss Street to the east, with Oxford Street to the north and May Street to the south.
“Okay, so this area used to be a swamp and probably still is, just below the ground. One of the creeks drains this whole area, the stream called South Fairfield Stream. I’m guessing it’s the one that runs under our street and the park before it’s joined by this creek, West Creek” —and he drew a squiggly line coming down the map— “which comes from a swampy area just below Government House. The other creek, East Creek, also drains that area, so maybe it runs down something like this. You know Government House, Tessa. Your Brownie group went there for a garden party, if I recall?”
Tessa nodded vigorously. That had been a wonderful time. She reminded her father that they’d met the Lieutenant-Governor himself, a kind man with a grey moustache who shook the hand of each small girl and asked each one a question. What badges are you working on now? had been Tessa’s question. And in a shy voice she had told him, Knots.
“That would have been General Pearkes. He was a hero in both wars. A very fine man. You were lucky to meet him. Anyway, you can keep this map. You’ll have the basic idea now of where the water comes from and how to draw on the creeks. Oh, and another thing—I found out from one guy I called, someone I know from work, and whose son is an archaeologist, that when this area belonged to the Indians, they used the creeks as pathways to take them over to the Inner Harbour. Of course it wasn’t called that then, but it was where there was a big Indian village, where the Songhees lived. Later on they moved over to Esquimalt.”
“Dad, why would the creeks go underground?” This was something Tessa had thought about a lot. She knew about pipes bringing water to houses from the reservoir; she knew about drains and sewers. Sometimes, when the tide was very low, you could stand by the outflow by Ross Bay and see murky stuff come out the pipe. Her brothers swore they saw poo itself gushing out. And there were the things like balloons that her mother had told them never to touch; they came from people’s toilets, though why a person would need a balloon in their bathroom was a mystery.
Her father thought for a minute or two before answering. Then: “Hmmm. Lots of reasons, I suppose. Running them through culverts and then using the land over top would give builders more scope for their projects. It’s not always convenient to have creeks running through areas where people live.”
“But our teacher said that Victoria was just a little fort when it began.”
“Oh, yes, true enough. This would have been wilderness. And you can imagine those Indians making their way through the bush by using the creeks. Later, when the city began to expand, this was farmland and it would have been helpful to have a water supply. As the city grew larger, more houses were needed for the people moving here. And you know, the cemetery has been here for a long time, maybe about a hundred years. I’m sure no one gave the creeks a second thought in the early days—there would have been more than enough ground for burying people and who knows, the creeks were probably a nice feature. But then every bit of land became more precious. I remember my father telling me about storms in the early part of this century that washed some of the graveyard out into Ross Bay. I bet the creeks had something to do with that, overflowing their banks, perhaps, and flooding parts of the cemetery.”
Tessa was quiet, listening to her father talk. Then, “Did some of the bodies go into Ross Bay too?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. Not very nice to think about, eh? Can I see this map you’re making?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not yet. Maybe never. I don’t know if I can get it the way I want it so I’d rather not show it to you right now. Is that okay?”
Her father ruffled her hair and went back to his reading. And Tessa took her street map down into the basement so she could trace and plot some more.
• • •
The children either walked to school or rode their bikes, depending on weather. (Weather was a concern mostly just for Tessa, who wore skirts and didn’t like the trail of water and mud splashing up the backs of her legs when she rode her bike in the rain.) It was a matter of seven or eight blocks, along May Street to Moss Street, and then up Moss to the five corners where Sir James Douglas Elementary School stood opposite a church, a pharmacy, a small store, and a gas station. On some fine mornings, walking, they might take the trail over the Moss Rocks and make their way down the little cul-de-sac that ran down the other side of the Rocks onto Fairfield Road. Every morning before they left, their mother would hand them their lunch kits and tell them to be careful.
What this meant, Tessa wasn’t exactly certain. Of course you would not want to ride your bike so recklessly that you might fall off, or lean so precariously over the edge of the Moss Rocks that you might tumble down. Be careful, they’d be told as they left the house to play in the cemetery, but what could harm them on the narrow lanes leading to the graves and tombs? At dusk, there were owls. Once, Tessa had seen one swoop down over the grass and then rise again with something in its claws. And as often as her brothers told her to watch when passing the mausoleums where Helmckens and Rithets slept for eternity, to watch out for a hand grabbing from within the little houses of the dead, Tessa was never frightened in those still places. Be careful, as they played on the shore near Clover Point, building bakeshops of driftwood with tall cakes created of wet sand and decorated with strands of seaweed and clamshells, a sprinkling of dry sand sparkling in the sun like sugar. There was a rumour of a girl who’d been chased on the beach by a man with his pants open; for a week or two Tessa and the other girls in the neighbourhood had to do everything in groups with at least one dog with them. But Tessa’s family dog, a fat old Labrador, needed much coaxing from her place by the wood heater in the kitchen, and anyway she couldn’t keep up and had to be left, panting, by the breakwater. And eventually the incident was forgotten. Be careful, careful—and yet what dangers might be contained in a neighbourhood of tidy houses, of men leaving each morning in their station wagons for jobs, coming home each evening to eat meals at tables with obedient children, wives in twin sets or pedal pushers, of those wives tidying their houses, taking the bus downtown on $1.49 Day to buy underwear at Woodward’s, nesting bowls for their kitchens, aprons and tea towels and a copy of McCall’s to read with a cup of coffee in the afternoon while waiting for their children to return from Sir James Douglas Elementary School at its five corners, its Annex on the rock hill of oaks.
A woman went from house to house measuring women for foundation garments. She was once welcomed into homes to show her samples of elastic girdles with small clasps of flesh-coloured rubber to hold the tops of stockings, her brassieres made of oyster satin, a little rose centred between the bosoms. Tessa had seen her come up their own sidewalk with her suitcase, her straight back, the hat with a little veil covering the top part of her face. She spoke softly, with an accent. But now when she was in the neighbourhood, women would phone to let the others know. There had been an incident. Word of it spread like a disease. She had touched a woman inappropriately while fitting her for a brassiere or girdle; this was how Tessa heard her own mother describe to one neighbour what she’d been told by another. They used low voices, so the children wouldn’t know, but they heard. So when the tap, tap, tap of her shoes on the wooden steps of the porch announced her arrival, the children were sent to the back of the house and Tessa’s mother set her mouth in a very thin grim line and went to the door to send the woman away.
What kind of touching? Tessa wondered. Did she hold on to a hand too long, was there kissing or hugging, did she put her hand in the area all children were warned not to touch? What would happen if you touched a person, or yourself, there, maybe while bathing or while lying in your bed at night? One of Tessa’s brothers had been given a book in Health class that suggested disease or imbecility (Tessa looked up this word in the big dictionary) if too much touching—the book called it “self-abuse”—took place. This made the washing of your private parts a very risky business, she decided, and would just splash water in that general direction when she was having a bath, hoping it would do. The man with his pants open had showed his private parts to anyone who would look. Was that what made him dangerous? Or was it the parts themselves? Tessa had been bathing with her brothers for years and they changed into swimsuits in the same room. Their private parts were as innocent as shoulders. Or so it seemed.
“Well, that got rid of her,” said Tessa’s mother with some satisfaction. The tap, tap, tap could be heard as the veiled woman crossed their cement path to the street. “And now I want you to come with me, Tessa. I’m taking my winter coat to the invisible mender on Cook Street for a small repair. You can help me carry a few groceries back.”
• • •
She could not breathe under the weight of the sand. Outside the men were grinding stone and her brothers had vanished. Could not breathe, her neck flattened by cold sand, unable to lift her hands to push the weight off her chest, her throat. She began to gasp and panic, tried to call out but no sound came, no words, no scream. She tried to rise up from the sand, hearing the frantic pulse of her blood in her ears, when suddenly she woke up, finding herself curled in a warm hollow on the Moss Rocks, utterly alone. Shooting stars in a small cluster bloomed beside where she’d fallen asleep in the sunshine. She breathed deeply, smelling moss and something earthy and dark, something like snakes. (Her brothers had put them down her back in the past and she’d had to wriggle them free, smelling them on her T-shirt afterwards.) Quickly she checked to make certain none were around and found instead of snakes a tiny rubbery case, like a soft egg. Whatever had been inside the egg was no longer there, a tear at one end indicating exit. Snakes, she thought she’d been told, were born alive. Parting the ferns growing right against the rock, she found several more of the little cases. She put one in her pocket. Her father usually knew the answer to any question.
“A lizard, Tessa, like the ones your brothers occasionally bring home. From the Moss Rocks, was it? Yes, I think certainly a lizard. Probably the western alligator lizard. They like the warm rocks and places where they can hide away for winter.”
But then he came to her a day later with a puzzled look on his face.
“It’s not quite true, what I told you about the lizard, Tessa. Farther south, they do lay eggs. Or least a related species does. But here—” and he showed her the field guide he was looking in . . . “—here, it says that this far north, they produce young by means of ovoviviparity. The female carries the eggs in her body but rather than lay the eggs externally, the young come out of the shell while still inside their mother’s body. It seems that they’re born live, but in fact it’s a slightly different process. So I’ve no idea what might have laid the egg that you found on the Rocks.”
Another mystery to set upon her windowsill, along with a green feather, a tiny rib cage found at the high-tide line, a black arrowhead from a family camping trip to the Nicola Valley, a tooth that had fallen out of her kitten’s mouth into her palm when she was tickling its tummy. These objects charmed and perplexed her. Most days she would touch them reverently, wanting to know more. Why a kitten tooth curved, how an arrowhead ended up in a little graveyard by a wooden church, how something as fragile as a rib cage could ride in on the tide, miraculously whole. And as for the egg case, she would never forget waking from a nightmare to that smell, dark and warm, like the very earth itself was alive and breathing under the moss.
TWENTY-TWO
February 1918
“Flora, whatever is wrong?”
For Flora had come through the door in tears. Grace was in bed, and the house was still, a few chords from the stopped piano almost audible.
“Didn’t the meeting go well? I thought the client was very happy with your work?”
Flora brushed her eyes hastily with one glove. “Yes, I think he is. In fact I’m certain of it. Ann, I didn’t mean to interrupt your singing. I love that cantata. Please continue?”
“How can I when you stand here in tears, Flora? My dear, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting that lovely panel on their wall, though I said from the beginning it deserved a grander placement than a bathroom wall, however luxurious the chamber . . . So is that it, then—have they decided against it?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that, Ann.” She turned her head so her friend wouldn’t see that she was still weeping.
The Age of Water Lilies Page 17