“So, what about your trip with Grandpa?”
“What trip?”
“When you went to the mountains.”
Her gran squinted. “When we got a few miles past Calgary and he could see the mountains in the distance, he got more excited than your mother does with those birds of hers. I’d only seen a smile like that when we were a lot younger and we’d just had a good round in bed.”
“Granny!”
“What? You think we were never that way?”
“I guess you were.”
“You think I was always this old? Your grandfather was very sensitive to what made a woman happy. What was I saying when you interrupted?”
“About the mountains.”
“Mountains?”
“You and Grandpa went to the mountains.”
“He cried as soon as he saw them. That this Earth not only had the prairie with its big skies but also mountains with cliffs of rock, evergreen trees, and snow-capped peaks that pushed through the clouds.” She slumped back into her seat.
“Tired?” Alice asked.
“I miss Joseph. It gives me comfort to think of him. For a long time, our lives weren’t easy. The later years were better. He gave up the drink, talked to the young ones about doing the same. He was a good carpenter. There was a lot of respect for his work. We had fun. Bingo. Long walks in the valley. He was the one who stuck by your mother. Never said a bad word about her.”
Elinor rolled her lips together. She stared at the pile of grey bones from which she’d sucked every shred of meat.
“I never told him about Bright Eyes.” She picked up a bone, then dropped it. “I should have. I should have told him.”
“So …” Alice hesitated.
“Why didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“The shame stopped me. It was enormous. Shame holds secrets like a banker’s vault. Only death does a better job.”
16
They bounced over the unpaved grid road, Louise in the driver’s seat, Elinor, eyes closed, hands clasped in her lap, seated next to her. She’d hardly said a word during the forty-five-minute trip from the city. There was little gravel left on the road, potholes and hard pan, clumps of grasses and weeds being its prominent features. After a quarter of a mile the road ran out, out onto the prairie. There were no sidewalks or gutters, no separation between the front yards of the houses and the roadway. Kind of like a big camp, except instead of tipis there were houses, cheap houses that would fall over in a good windstorm.
“Looks like we’re here,” Louise said.
Elinor opened her eyes and pulled her body up straighter from the slump it had assumed most of the trip. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked as they drove slower, deeper into the grouping of small homes. A couple of the houses had fresh coats of paint, a garden in the front yard, a wooden chair or rocker on the porch. Other houses had broken windows, a door bashed in, tires and tools strewn about, a child’s headless and limbless doll. At one house the front yard was taken up by a rusted, wheelless car up on blocks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Louise asked. She rolled down her window and caught a scent of cooked onion and meat. She was transported to another time, a time when she was ten or eleven and her mother was frying gopher.
Elinor pulled her sweater tighter around her body. “Don’t like to bother people. I haven’t visited in such a long time. They’ll think I’m a ghost.”
“Which is Rosie’s house?” Louise asked.
Elinor leaned forward, squinted, and pointed her knobby finger. “Up there, I think. The one on the left. The one with the stove in the front yard. She might be dead, you know.”
“Is there no one else from that time?”
Elinor shook her head. “Maybe. Maybe lots of folks. I can’t remember. Did you find a picture from the school? They were always making us stand up straight, look at the camera. What did they do with all those pictures?”
“Alice found some pictures, but not from your time.”
A small black dog, missing one ear, ran at the car, barking and leaping against the door. Louise closed her window; she hoped he’d go away before they wanted to get out of the car. She pulled up alongside the stove; three black holes gaped where the elements had been. The door was gone from the oven. Maybe her mother was right, they shouldn’t be here. The place, its condition, made her nervous.
“You’re sure you don’t know his name? Did it come back to you?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The man, the father of your child?”
“He’s called brute, rapist, I don’t know. Why do you keep asking? He never properly introduced himself. What I do remember about the man, you don’t want to know.”
A barefoot boy, six or seven years old, squatted at the side of the road, scratching in the dirt with a fork. Louise didn’t want to think about what her mother had endured. The boy drew circles, then laid pebbles, twigs on the circles. Another recollection from Louise’s childhood. Her mother making sketches with a pencil or a hunk of charcoal from the fire. Whereas another might be pleased to have these images bubble up, Louise was not. Best to keep them all suppressed, since there was no way of selecting the good from the bad.
“Do you know what he did at the school? Was he a teacher? The janitor? The gardener?”
Elinor stomped her feet, shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweater. “Why do you persist with all these damned questions?”
“Because sometimes people remember something a few hours later, or the next day. I’ve seen that so many times in my work. A client will assure me he’s told me everything I need to know. Then a week later he remembers something else. And something else.” She knew about this from her own life, that’s why she worked so hard at not allowing the slightest recollection to creep out. If her mother remembered the guy’s name, maybe he had relatives; maybe he had said something to them. Or maybe the nun had killed the child.
She pulled to the side of the road that was barely a road and turned off the ignition.
“Can I stay here?” Elinor asked.
“Mother, I can’t do this all on my own.” She pulled the rear-view mirror toward her, shoved her hair back from her forehead, rubbed a smudge of dirt from her chin. As she pushed the mirror back into position she caught a glimpse of a tall, slight man in a dark blue shirt, his black pants held up by suspenders. He walked quickly down the middle of the road, never getting closer to the car. Louise recognized him: Ian Scott. A clammy cold passed over her even though it was warm in the car. She glanced at the boy squatting by the road; when she looked back to the mirror, the man was gone.
“Oh, isn’t that a surprise,” Elinor said. “I thought that was how you usually did things.”
Louise was startled by her mother’s voice. “I guess I’ve been learning.” She put a hand on her mother’s. “I think Rosie will be thrilled to see you. You were good friends. She was the one, you said, who had the cot next to yours at the school; she was the one who rocked you to sleep after they took the baby. She’s younger than you, you said, so maybe she’ll remember more.”
Louise desperately hoped the meeting with Rosie would unleash names, stories, recollections in her mother. Memories were as elusive, finicky, and unpredictable as a prairie springtime. It made no sense to Louise that she recalled what she regarded as useless, unimportant details and events, like the scar in the shape of an M above Ian Scott’s left eyebrow, the smell of burnt onions in the restaurant she first worked in after she left the reserve, the stupid practical jokes of one of her classmates in law school. Yet important things that she wanted to cherish were gone: the place her son took his first steps, Catherine’s first words, Alice’s stunning arguments in the cross-city high school debating competition. Was that why two parents were necessary? So at least one parent held onto the memories? John was that parent, not Louise.
“Let’s get it over with,” Elinor said, yanking at the door handle. “And I need to pee.”
“Just open the door,” Elinor said. “Either they’ll invite us in, or they’ll send us away.”
Louise knocked again, and when there was still no answer, she turned the knob and pushed open the door. She called out hello, asked if anyone was home.
Elinor pushed by Louise into a room that appeared to serve as kitchen, living space, and sleeping area. There was a small fridge, a two-burner hot plate, a kitchen table with a green Arborite top. On the table a white mug half-full of tea, a plate with orange smears, a knife and fork. The plywood flooring was covered with an oval hooked rug, in the centre of which was depicted a pair of deer.
Elinor crossed the room to a closed door and knocked. “Are you in there, Rosie? It’s Elinor. Elinor Greystone.” Elinor opened the door a crack, leaned into the room. Although dark, she could make out a double bed with a quilt of many colours, a four-drawer white dresser, a table stacked with clean laundry — towels, shirts, and socks. On the wall to the left of the door were several photographs, all in black frames. Elinor flicked on the light. There was her friend in the photos. Beside the river, in the bingo hall, in front of the white church. Grinning in the midst of several young children — her grandchildren, Elinor assumed. Rosie was just as she remembered her. Round face, keen eyes. Short and stout, white hair tied back in a ponytail. Elinor took one of the photographs from the wall.
“I think we should go,” Louise said.
“Hold on to this,” Elinor said, shoving the photograph at Louise. “I still need to pee bad.” Elinor shuffled down the hallway to the door at the end. She pulled on the knob and it banged onto the floor.
“Mom,” Louise hissed.
“It’s broken,” Elinor said. “It was broken before I got here. I’ll go out the front. Come to think, there’s probably an outhouse.”
Louise placed the photograph on the table and picked up the knob. It was dented. Either it was a really cheap doorknob or something had smashed into it with great force. She tried to return it to the door, but it wouldn’t stay. She set it on the floor. She noticed, and her mother had not, that the entire perimeter of the door was taped up with grey duct tape. Nobody was going through that door. She returned to the main room and the photograph her mother had handed her. She could see why it interested her mother. Standing in front of a long, two-storey building were three rows of Indian children, flanked by a priest and a couple of nuns. Was this the school her mother had gone to? Louise looked closely at each child, wondering if one was her mother. No one was smiling, but in those days no one did smile in photographs. Beyond that observation, she thought the children were all the same. She could shuffle them about and the picture wouldn’t change. Everyone wore a white shirt and dark pants or skirt. They all stood stiff and straight with a vacant, distant look in their eyes. She wondered what each child was thinking at that moment. Surely there were one or two who had thoughts before the photographic moment. Thoughts of mothers and fathers, dancing around a fire, eating rabbit, listening to stories.
She took the photograph near the window where the light was better and looked at each child one at a time. Was there even one child who wasn’t looking straight ahead? Even one whose eyes were closed or looking down? She liked to think that she would have been that child. Or her mother. Or Alice. As much as the two of them bickered, she was glad her daughter could stand up for herself. She smiled. At the periphery, the child closest to the priest — his head was twisted slightly, his eyes turned down. She wondered what had become of him. That photograph demonstrated why she had made the choices she had — run from the rez, lived with Evelyn McKellar, gone to law school, married John. So if she ever had children, they would not look like these children.
She slid the photograph onto the table. Where was her mother? Had she fallen down or fallen asleep, gone back to the car? She’d hate for Louise to come looking for her, but if she wasn’t back in the house in another five minutes, Louise would do just that. And where was Rosie? Louise rubbed a chunk of dirt from the toe of her shoe. How embarrassing it would be if Rosie returned and Louise was here on her own.
Restless, she paced the small space, counting her steps. She estimated the living room and kitchen area weren’t much more than ten by ten. On an upturned wooden crate next to the armchair, a few feet from the television, were an ashtray and a pair of knitting needles, a ball of red wool. The couch was covered with a blanket that had been thrown back, as if someone had been sleeping there. She heard voices from outside and crept to the window, moved the curtain a few inches. Two children, about six or seven. One child was struggling with a bucket of water that was sloshing over the edge; the other child dragged a couple of planks. She was about to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs when she remembered the bag of food in the car.
Elinor drew up her skirt, fumbling to get her underwear pulled down while shoving her skirt to one side, finally getting herself settled on the firm, cold bench with barely a second to spare. Ahhhh … the wonderful relief of the pee spilling from her body. She marvelled she’d not wet her pants, so intense was the urge. On occasion, at home, she’d had an accident getting from her garden to the house or even her outhouse. She’d told no one about that. Louise would be dragging her off to the doctor for tests; she didn’t need that.
She’d stay on for a few moments, even as she imagined her daughter pacing about in Rosie’s house. Maybe Rosie would arrive before Elinor. It would be good for Louise to have a chat with Rosie on her own. She looked up to the crack of light and blue sky that came through the boards near the roof. She’d never painted an outhouse, inside or out. Perhaps she should, if for no other reason than to bug her daughter. Would she hang one of those outhouse pictures in her lovely living room? Such nasty thoughts, she told herself. Louise was trying to be helpful, as best she could.
Forgetting where she was, she sucked in a long breath and immediately regretted it. Hacking and puffing, she hurried to get her underwear pulled up, her skirt straightened. She patted the wall to her right, thanked the building for doing a good job. Imagine, she thought, as she pushed open the door, imagine a world without outhouses. Well, there had been that kind of world when people lived in tipis, and it worked out just fine.
She noticed Louise at the car as she came along the side of the house. Surely she’d not leave without her, without saying goodbye. Elinor quickened her pace for a few steps, then slowed when she saw Louise step back from the car with the bag of food they had brought.
They returned to the house together, Louise saying if Rosie didn’t come home soon, they would come another day.
“She’s always home,” Elinor said, as they returned to the house. “Nobody on the rez goes anywhere. She’ll be back in a few minutes. I don’t want to drive out here again.” She took the photograph from the table. “I want to see if I can find myself in here.” She sat down on the couch and held the photograph inches from her eyes.
This is not right, Louise thought. They shouldn’t be poking around like this. She tolerated it only because something — a name, a picture — might jog her mother’s memory.
Elinor, intent on the photograph, moved her finger from one child to the next. Sometimes she smiled, other times it was a grimace or a shake of her head. She set the photograph on her lap and leaned back on the couch.
Louise heard voices from outside. She said she’d hang up the picture. Swiping tears from her cheek, Elinor clung to the photograph, then shoved it at Louise s
aying she hadn’t found herself in it.
“It’s hopeless. I recognize some of the faces, even remember some of the nonsense this one or that one got up to, but the names are gone.” She grabbed the picture back from Louise, peered at it again. “See here. See that man standing off to the side by the lilac bush? Maybe that was him.” She shook her head. “But I’m not sure. This whole idea is crazy. Why didn’t you and Alice tell me that? Why let me hope?” She lifted the photograph up in the air as if she might smash it to the floor. Just as Louise grabbed for it, the door opened.
A short, stout woman, dressed in a maroon skirt, white shirt, and blue sweater, her thick white hair in a single braid, came into the room. Her right hand shaking with a slight tremor, she cradled a package the size of a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. If she was startled, frightened, she didn’t show it. She stared at Elinor, glanced at Louise, then back to Elinor. Then she grinned, a large smile that revealed two missing teeth on the top left.
“Elinor? Elinor … is it you?” She spoke in Cree for a few sentences. Elinor nodded, then laughed.
Rosie sat on the couch next to Elinor, grabbed Elinor’s hands and squeezed. “So good to see you, old friend. How long has it been? Why do you never come visit? Shall I make tea?”
Elinor patted Rosie’s hand. She said they’d brought cookies and fruit and Louise could make tea while they caught up.
Elinor and Rosie chattered in Cree. Louise only got every tenth word — Grandchildren. Summer berries. Somebody had died. The reservation. Sickness. The kettle boiled, then a harsh whistle. Rosie pointed at the cupboard to the left of the sink, said the tea was in there. The teapot, a brown crockery one like Elinor’s, sat on the windowsill above the sink. There were mouse droppings in the corner of the ledge. Through the window Louise watched two dogs, nose to nose, front legs braced, in a tug of war over a chunk of leather. The larger dog risked a gulp, securing a better grip, then, shaking his head, he wrenched the contested object (it looked like a sleeve from a leather jacket) from the smaller dog and ran off. A few feet away he dropped the prize to lick and sniff it, then snatched it up as the other dog charged at him.
Tears in the Grass Page 10