Elinor folded the letter back into its envelope.
Damned Lillian and her capital letters, trying to tell her things she already knew.
She would find Bright Eyes.
Someone always knew; someone would have told.
Secrets are like pods of the milkweed. They always burst open.
I will never forget the first time I saw a hill of bones.
The thing was mammoth. Even with my weak eyesight — bison have weak eyes — I was able to see the mound from a great distance.
My first instinct was to run from it, but I crept closer. The hill spanned the width of many wallows. Standing on one side of it, I couldn’t see to the other side. The height was far greater than the largest bull or rubbing stone.
When the wind picked up, the bones rattled and clanked, whistled and wailed.
Smaller bones were swept onto the ground with stronger gusts of wind.
I stood at one end and tried to hold my head high.
Naked and pure white.
Countless bones.
Skulls.
Shoulders and ribs. Thighs and ankles.
Bison bones. A herd of bison baking in the prairie sun.
12
Elinor flipped to a fresh page in her sketch pad. The drawing wasn’t going well. The constancy of lighting in the museum and the absence of movement from Big Brown were helpful, but only to a point. She’d never had a calling to paint teapots, houseplants, or bowls of fruit. The closest she’d got to that kind of work was a watercolour of saskatoon berries. She’d started with a branch of the berries, glistening blue and purple in the late afternoon sun. Very soon her images from within took over: Small hands reaching for the berries. Cheeks bulging with the sweet fruit. Bent fingers pressing the ripe orbs into dried meat.
The absence of life in paskwâwi-mostos had an effect on her work.
Big Brown. Lillian, my sister, sent me a long letter. Alice was probably still on the highway when she started writing. Otherwise, I don’t think she would have remembered all the things they talked about. She told me they had a lovely visit and then she was cranky, asking why I hadn’t spoken up sooner about the child. And what was I thinking, asking my granddaughter to find her after all these years? I didn’t have a good answer for her, Big Brown. It’s like asking the wind why it blows hard one day and soft the next. That was how it was. Like the principal at the school asking why Swift Eyes and I had gone into his office. Over and over, before he brought the belt to Swift Eyes’ palms, and then mine, he asked why she had taken the money. What answer would suit? Elinor chuckled. Because it was shiny. Because it sounded like rain on a tipi. Because we wanted to see the picture of Queen Victoria.
Then Lillian said she was sorry. She remembered me telling her about the child after our trip to the store. She said I’d been so upset that day. She said I kept staring at this young girl in the shop, how she had to grab me before I got myself into trouble. I had forgotten that, Big Brown. How could I have forgotten something like that? Makes me wonder what else I have forgotten.
Elinor laughed. I’ll never know that, will I, Big Brown? But I’ll not forget you. There will be drawings to remind me.
Elinor dragged her chair closer to the gallery. Working in short, careful strokes, she drew the beard, hair by hair. She remembered the dry thickness of the hair on the blankets her mother had made. When she felt a tingling on the crown of her head, she stopped her work to look around. No one. The last time she’d been at the museum, there had been a group of children on a school trip. Some had been polite and curious to see what she was doing. One girl wanted to know why she was drawing the bison. Why not a horse or a dog?
The sensation on Elinor’s head grew stronger. As if a hand or a bowl was being pushed downward. She rubbed her hand over her head. Only hair.
Her eyes were tired. It took more effort to move the pencil over the paper.
Steadying herself with her cane, she moved closer to the gallery. She was tempted to press her face to the glass. It was obvious by the smudge marks that many had already done so. Keeping her eyes on paskwâwi-mostos, she shifted a few inches to the left and then to the right. It was going to be hard to do the eyes, so lifeless were the glass orbs. Probably, if she searched, she’d find two or three bison living in a zoo or a game farm. Two or three. Hundreds of thousands reduced to a handful; the thought enraged her. She wouldn’t be able to draw or paint those animals. Creatures standing dead, that’s what they would be.
Jeremy had brought her into the city. Where was he? She wanted to go home.
She stepped back from the gallery. Now what? Her eyes were playing a trick on her? Had the bison’s tail moved?
She dropped onto her chair. A chill ran the length of her spine. Whether the tail moved, or she thought it moved, wasn’t the point. It was a sign. Something she needed to attend to. If there were spirits in boulders, trees, rivers, grasses, why not in this creature? She must revise her opinions about museums; maybe they held more than she had accorded to them. Maybe she needed to listen more closely, look more carefully.
She leaned forward. “I’ll be back, big fellow,” she said.
She looked for a further movement of the tail. None came.
Instead a rumble, a deep, throaty groan.
13
Alice, short of breath and a stitch in her right side, caught up to Wanda at the back of the legislative buildings. Wanda, her cheeks red, curly black hair wet with sweat, was staring up at the sandstone building. The muscles in Wanda’s thighs and calves bulged; her entire body was firm and taut from years of running. Although she was almost flat-chested, Alice could still make out her nipples through her damp T-shirt.
“Where did they get all the stone?” Wanda asked. “This is the plains, not the Canadian Shield. It’s like a pyramid in the middle of the desert.”
“It’s Tyndall stone, quarried in Manitoba.” Alice laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Wanda said.
“I’m remembering a class tour of the building a few months ago,” Alice said. She leaned forward in a stretch, touching her toes. Before she met Wanda she’d not done much running. Occasionally, she’d gone hiking and canoeing with friends, but she wasn’t a fanatic about it like Wanda. As they talked, Wanda was running on the spot.
“One of my students, Daniel, is a bit of an egghead. He got obsessed with the fossils in the stone. You can find quite a few of them. He wouldn’t leave when it was time. He’d been counting, making sketches and notes of the different fossils he’d found. Trilobites, cephalopods, and brachiopods. Little footprints of history. He was beside himself. Finally, I had to yank his pencil out of his hand and drag him to the bus.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Wanda said.
“I love it. Although I’m happier with the fourth and fifth grades than I was with the kids in kindergarten and grade one.”
“How so?”
“Younger ones always need more looking after. You spend time wiping tears, tying shoelaces. I love to see them grappling with arithmetic and science ideas. Can’t imagine you teaching in elementary school.”
“Some days I think it might be easier than university. You expect students to get things in on time, do the readings, have some interest in what they’re learning. But every class has someone who’s full of excuses for why his stuff is late, why he’s done a half-assed job. Then he has the nerve to complain about the mark he gets.”
Alice grinned. “And you’re a paragon of patience.”
“When have you seen me impatient?”
“All the time. Hovering over the toaster waiting for it to pop, tapping on the steering wheel when the light’s red, at the grocery store waiting to pay for your food.”
“Everybody gets impatient at those times. I was a camp counsellor for three summers in upstate New York. I was the one who handled the kids who were homesick, the kids who were afraid to go in the water, burned their fingers in the fire. That takes patience. And, it seems to me, I’ve been pretty patie
nt with you.” She leaned toward Alice, kissed her on the lips, stroked her hair, then ran off.
Alice watched Wanda for a few seconds then turned away. Even as she was aware of the lightness and tingling in her body, she was furious at Wanda. She imagined hundreds of eyes peering from the multitude of windows at the back of the building. Parliamentarians, janitors, tourists, government officials had all left their duties to spy on Alice and Wanda. Newspaper headlines flashed across her mind. Alice Preston, grade four teacher, kisses woman. Premier calls for her resignation.
Silvery sunlight bounced from the windows of the legislative buildings. It was impossible to see inside the building; she’d never know if she’d been seen. She ran a few yards then slowed to a brisk walk. She didn’t want to catch up to Wanda. Even as her mouth throbbed with the sensation of Wanda’s tongue thrusting against her own, she detested what Wanda had done. It was useless to tell Wanda her worries. Whenever she did, Wanda told her she was paranoid. People, Wanda would say, were going about their work, not glued to the windows in case a couple of dykes stopped by. There was more at stake for her, Alice tried to impress upon Wanda. This was her hometown. People knew her; they knew her family. And two years ago a man in the Northwest Territories had been charged with, and found guilty of, homosexuality.
They’d argued before they’d gone out. Wanda had challenged Alice to accept who she was. Yet again Wanda said the words that had become a mantra between the two of them: Women have been loving women since antiquity. The Greeks knew that. No modern-day politician, parliamentarian, or neighbourhood mechanic is ever going to change that.
Even Hitler wasn’t successful, Wanda added, when she really got going.
Those were the moments when Alice became silent. She didn’t think Wanda was wrong. But small-town Saskatchewan was not Greenwich Village. Saskatchewan — while the birthplace of Canadian medicare and socialism — was full of farmers, not artists and beatniks, writers and Jews. If Ross Thatcher, the current premier, had his way, the place would become more conservative, not less. Her father had been furious when Thatcher’s party won the last election; health and social services were cut, taxes went up. And the province was “open for business.”
Unlike the sociology department, where Wanda worked, which was full of outspoken left-wing radicals, most of the teachers at the elementary level were more concerned with recipes for cookies and salads, which team had won the last football game, and how to deal with a difficult student. She was new to the school. Perhaps in time more important conversations would emerge. At the moment she had no idea from whom those might come, or when.
She spotted Wanda in the distance, running on the spot and waving her arms as she waited for the traffic light to change. As soon as it was green, Wanda tore across the street. Alice wished she had Wanda’s courage. Knowing no one in Regina, or Saskatchewan, Wanda Cohen had picked up and left New York for a job at the university. It was her way of protesting the Vietnam War. In New York, Wanda had had a circle of lesbian friends who met weekly to talk books and protests. And dance. Women dancing with women scared Alice. Alice hadn’t met other lesbians in Regina, but, within a few weeks of moving to the city, Wanda seemed to know them all. Just as she had picked out Alice.
Wanda was sitting on the front steps of her house, a two-and-a-half-storey white stucco with green trim and attached garage. The front yard was taken up by a sprawling oak. Wanda had taken off her shoes and socks and was picking at her left large toe as Alice walked up the sidewalk.
“Good run?” Wanda asked when Alice got to the steps.
“All right. Yours?”
“Shouldn’t have stopped to look at the legislative buildings.”
Wanda unlocked the door and Alice charged up the stairs and into the bathroom. She peeled off her sweatpants and shirt and turned on the shower. She was braless, in the midst of stepping out of her underpants when Wanda, breasts bouncing, buck naked, plastic vampire teeth overhanging her lips, burst in.
“Never let your guard down,” Wanda said, her voice thick with Transylvanian drawl. “You never know where Dracula is lurking.” She nibbled at Alice’s neck.
They showered a long time. Long after the sweat and grime had been sloughed from their bodies. Until the bar of pink soap, lodged at the lip of the drain, had turned mushy and slippery. Finally, naked and wet, they dashed to the bedroom.
Standing in the kitchen, the scent of peppermint wafting from her teacup, Alice scanned the white, yellow, and pink papers stuck to Wanda’s oak cupboards. There was a reminder of an upcoming meeting of the urban studies section of the sociology department, two flyers announcing protests against the U.S. Army band scheduled to play at a local high school, and an invitation to a bris for the son of one of Wanda’s colleagues. A poster announced that Joni Mitchell was singing at the 4th Dimension coffee house, and there was a note in Wanda’s handwriting reminding her to send money in support of the Morgentaler abortion clinic in Toronto.
Max did the traditional cat dance. Purring loudly, strolling and turning full circle every few feet, he dragged the length of his body over Alice’s calf, then turned to bunt his head against her ankle. He pushed into the massage when she scratched the top of his head. Not usually a cat fancier, so loose, languid, and serene did she feel, she could find even a cat’s antics amusing.
Wanda cantered down the stairs and into the kitchen. She dropped a newspaper in front of Alice; one of the headlines was circled. Student protestors in France were being charged and jailed.
“That could be you,” Wanda said. “Are they still intent on erecting roller coasters and whirligigs out there?” Local entrepreneurs were planning to build an amusement park on land that was believed to be an Indian burial site. Alice had been attending meetings to plan a protest.
“Seems so. I wish more people showed up at the meetings,” Alice said.
Max leapt onto Alice’s lap; she pushed him off. Wanda picked up the cat, stroked the length of his back. His tail twitched, then he bit her hand. She tapped his nose, poured him from her arms.
“You sound discouraged,” Wanda said.
“Impatient, I guess. The whole thing makes me think about my mother. She doesn’t seem to give a damn about it.”
“So don’t talk to her about it. You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” Wanda grinned.
Alice spotted an ant shifting back and forth on the lip of the counter. She whisked it onto the floor and shrugged. “It seems logical to talk to her. She’s Indian. Both of her parents were Indians. But she’s so hard on her own people, like it’s all their fault. If you ask my mother, there’s nothing good about being Indian. Our time has come and passed. It’s so different from how Gran talks. Thank God for my grandmother.”
“I don’t find the whole idea that strange,” Wanda said. “There are Jews who don’t tell anybody they’re Jewish; they try to pass.”
“Pass?”
“You have led a sheltered life, haven’t you? They try to pass as Gentile, goyim.”
“But why?”
“Oh, Alice. Think about it. You’re no different from them. Why don’t you want anyone to know you love women, that you prefer sex with a woman over a man?”
“It’s none of their business,” Alice said.
“And you’re afraid. Afraid your mother will be mad, afraid you’ll lose your job. You want to pretend that what you and I do together doesn’t happen.”
Alice didn’t want to admit that Wanda was right. She hated to be wrong; she’d always been that way. Her mother would say she was stubborn; her father would say she had strong opinions and that was good.
Wanda pulled a chair from the table, sat backward on it, arms crossed over the top, a leg splayed out on each side. She drew her fingers across the top of Alice’s head; Alice hung her head back as Wanda combed her fingers through the foot-and-a-half length of it, jiggling out tangles as she went. Alice recalled the roughness of her gran’s thick fingers fumbling with her hair when she was younger, pulling it so
tight the roots tingled. Wanda brought the end of the braid over Alice’s shoulder, asked her to hold it. She rummaged through a kitchen drawer and pulled out a clump of ribbon. Red, yellow, green, and blue entangled like seaweed thrown up by the tide. She asked Alice which colour she preferred; Alice picked yellow. The yellow ribbon had a couple of knots. Wanda fussed with it for a couple of minutes, then shoved it at Alice. “You do it. I’ve got no patience.”
Alice smiled. The knots were pulled tight but she managed to get a fingernail under a small segment. Gradually, she wiggled the section of ribbon free from itself and handed it back to Wanda.
Wanda stepped back after securing the ribbon around the braid and grinned. “Such a lovely Indian maiden you are.”
“Shut up,” Alice said.
Wanda pulled Alice from her chair, bowed, then asked if she could have this dance. They waltzed around the kitchen in a clumsy two-step, with Wanda humming the “Tennessee Waltz.” When Alice tripped on the cat and the thing shrieked, the moment was lost.
Wanda rummaged in the fridge, finally locating an open can of cat food from behind a jar of sauerkraut. She scooped a couple of spoonfuls of the grey mush into the cat’s bowl, pushed the dregs from the spoon, and wiped her fingers on the back of her blue jeans.
Alice watched the cat’s tongue. Slender and pink. Lithe. So efficient at swiping every speck of food from around its mouth. Like the nuns at that school. Sweeping away that dark stain from the perfect white world before anyone had a chance to see.
“I’ve been feeling guilty. And frustrated,” Alice said. She drew her braid around to the front of her neck, twirled the end hairs in her fingers.
“With me?” Wanda asked.
Alice laughed. “That would be easy. No. This business with finding my gran’s child. I don’t see how we’ll find her in time. If at all.”
“In time for what?”
“Before … before she dies. I don’t like saying the words. I can’t imagine my gran not being here.”
Tears in the Grass Page 8