Tears in the Grass

by Lynda A. Archer

  Wipers clunking up and down, warm air creeping over the fog on the inside of the windows, the truck inched its way into the line of slow-moving cars.

  “I hope Gran’s all right,” Alice said.

  “She’s been through lots of winters.”

  “Yes, but she’s older now, and she doesn’t always remember to put on the fire.”

  “So we’ll check on her when we get home.”

  “May not tell us much. She doesn’t always answer the phone.”

  18

  Snap, snap, snap. The screen door clapped against its frame.

  Wind is strong this morning, Elinor thought. It was taunting her, grabbing her home and poking its chilly fingers wherever it found a plaything. A gust the size of a bison threw itself against the small building and the entire house shook. Elinor pulled the hook on the screen door and fastened it down. She chuckled. This time she had outwitted Wind.

  She wrapped a blanket tightly around herself and dropped into her rocker. The snow was coming so hard she couldn’t see across the lake. She could barely see to her garden. The pain in her left shoulder was worse with the cold. She stared at the fire. There was a bit of heat coming from it. Maybe it would last another hour or so.

  She looked back to the thick whiteness outside her window. “You don’t scare me,” she said. “I survived that cyclone in 1912, or 1921, whenever it was.” She was sounding like one of those bumper stickers: I survived the hurricane, I survived the Depression, I survived residential school. She could obliterate a car’s front and back bumpers and probably half of the trunk with all the things she had survived.

  Tears rushed into her eyes. And I have survived the theft of a child. Not until this moment had she called what was done to her theft. Kimotiwin. But theft was the proper word. Her body was the one that had nurtured the child’s development. Inside her body, the fingers and toes had sprouted, the little heart taken its first beat. The first kicks from the legs, punches from the arms, were made within her womb, not in the barren body of a White Neck. No god had given White Neck the right to take the child from her.

  When she figured out why her body was changing in the way that it was, she ran from the school. The child’s father, not a father in the church, found her and brought her back.

  She ran away again and again.

  He brought her back. She hated that she couldn’t be certain if the man in Rosie’s picture was him. He knew where Bright Eyes had gone. But he was dead. She knew Louise had left Rosie’s with great discouragement.

  Elinor pulled the blanket more tightly around herself. Was that the phone ringing? Damn thing. Let them call back. Maybe tomorrow she’d pick it up. Too much talking through wires wasn’t good for people.

  The fear that she had lived with for so long swelled up in her chest.

  There were two White Necks the day she laboured. The tiny, young one had been kind. Although the labour was long, the young nun never left Elinor’s side. She said prayers and spoke softly, wiped Elinor’s face with a cool cloth. At the moment Bright Eyes, wet and slippery, broke free, Elinor thought her body was going to split open. She fought to get up, to sit upright as she’d seen her mother and aunties do. The White Necks pressed her down on the bed.

  The young White Neck smiled at Bright Eyes and said how beautiful she was. Bright Eyes was so clever, she smiled back. There was such love in the nun’s face. Elinor thought everything was going to be all right. How naive and trusting she had been. Despite the constant hunger, the slaps and straps, even some dying at that school, she’d always thought things would get better. Nothing she’d seen with her family, on the rez, had prepared her for the harshness she saw at that school.

  She wanted her mother and father to see Bright Eyes, their first grandchild. They never did. They would have had no shame from the circumstances of her birth. They’d thank the Creator for such a beautiful child. By then the country was littered with mixed-blood children.

  When the older White Neck — they called her Man Face because she had so many hairs on her chin — came, Elinor knew there’d be trouble. Man Face sent the young White Neck away. Elinor clung to Bright Eyes. Even though Man Face smiled and talked sweetly to her baby, Elinor didn’t trust her. Her smile was forced. Her voice had the sweetness of a fox at the door of a rabbit hutch.

  Man Face asked to hold Bright Eyes. Elinor squeezed Bright Eyes closer to her chest; she wanted to push her back inside her body. She should have refused Man Face’s request, run from the school, hid in the coulees, and travelled by night until she got to the reserve. Her parents would have taken the child as their own.

  Man Face said she was going to bathe and clothe the infant.

  That was the last time Elinor saw her child.

  Elinor rocked, a gentle swaying of her body, not sufficient to move the rocker. The sounds that burst from her throat were quieter now, not because her heart was any less broken, only because with age the strength of her muscles and lungs had been diminished.

  Her mind grew quiet and she slipped into sleep.

  The rocker moved of its own accord. Perhaps it sensed the woman’s need to be soothed. With the gentle rocking, Elinor slept more deeply than she had in months. And while she slept, others awoke. They squeezed their bodies around, above, and beside the curled torso of the old woman. They reminded her she was not alone. Each of them, at one time, had been above, on, and beneath that rocker. Some were humans — babies, infants, small children. Others were scaled or winged, furry and four-, eight-, or no-legged. Some created sweetness; others wove webs of great detail, strength, and connectivity. Fingers and wings and paws reached out to Elinor, drawing her deeper and closer into their world. Theirs was a world where all creatures lived in harmony.

  Elinor slept on and on.

  Outside the snow fell and fell.

  If awake, she might have remarked that it had always been curious to her how one colour, white, could bring such beauty. When she painted snow, she mixed white with blue or purple, pink or grey. Nature never had a problem with the mixing of colours.

  19

  The snow in the yard and on the porch, unmarred by human or animal footprints, was luminescent. The temperature had dropped. The snow, as if alive, squeaked and crunched, lamenting each of Alice’s footsteps. Despite her hurried pace and the short distance from her truck to the cottage, the cold seared Alice’s forehead and cheeks. By midnight it would be minus thirty degrees. People died of exposure at that temperature, especially if the winds were strong.

  Elinor’s cottage was dark. Alice tapped at the door. When Elinor didn’t answer, Alice let herself in. The cottage was cold. Freezing. Alice swept her palm over the wall, searching for the light switch. Probably her gran hadn’t gotten up from her afternoon nap; it had been overcast all day. Dull yellow light spilled over the room. And over the scene that would replay in Alice’s mind in the days and weeks to come — Elinor in the rocker, slumped deep, white head almost to her lap. No response to Alice’s hand on her shoulder. No groan or complaint at Alice’s whispering. “Gran, Gran.”

  Only stiffness and cold.

  And silence.

  As quiet as the stones on Elinor’s porch.

  20

  Listening to the whisperings, sensing the warmth and lightness of her body, Elinor wondered if she had passed over. It hadn’t been so bad, the journey, quite smooth and quick. She didn’t remember any of it. Where had she been before the Creator had come for her? What was she wearing? Was someone looking after her garden? What of the deer and rabbits that counted on her snacks?

  Now, a glimmer of memory. She’d been in her rocker, watching the snow dancing toward Earth. She’d been thinking of Bright Eyes: the slim, hot fingers clinging to her own, Bright Eyes’ breath slight and quick as a bird’s tickling at her neck. She could almost taste the musty, warm scent of her womb and its fluids that covered Bright Eyes.

  Now she felt the sense of something shifting over her, a darkening, the light occluded, the smell o
f sweat and perfume. Soap? She cracked open her right eye. Within inches of her face, she saw pale skin, freckles, an arm reaching in, fiddling at something. Then Elinor’s arm was being lifted up, a hand on her wrist, a sense of pressure against the side of the bed. Where was she?

  She struggled to lift her eyelids. The right snapped open again but the left was more reluctant. Finally, a slit of light came in, enough to see a person in white. The line of red colour at the perimeter of her lips suggested this wasn’t the Creator. They were heavy-set, thick lips. Eyes closed, the woman’s hand remained on Elinor’s wrist, fingers pressing lightly on the inside.

  The word hell popped into Elinor’s mind.

  She was in hell.

  She might as well have been. She hated hospitals. She swallowed away the tears. The last time she’d been to the hospital she’d wanted to die. What good had the hospital and all its fancy contraptions done? Joseph had died. And Louise hadn’t spoken to her for months, as if Joseph’s death had been Elinor’s fault.

  She thought back to that hot summer night. Everyone had their doors and windows open, children were playing hide and seek, laughing and calling, dogs were barking. Radios were playing. There was laughter. She wished it had been a full moon. At least she would have had that to explain what happened that night. But it was a dark night. And it only got darker.

  Joseph had made a small fire behind their house. He loved his fires, regardless of the time of year. They were drinking tea sweetened with honey and eating bannock with margarine and strawberry jam. The fire crackled, crickets buzzed in the long grasses. Every once in a while a coyote called. The mosquitoes had been terrible that year, biting and biting like there was no tomorrow. But that night they had gone on vacation. Joseph had been away for two weeks at the Sawchuk farm, putting up fences and corrals for the cattle. He’d returned exhausted but pleased with the money he’d made.

  Those days Elinor had been thinking even more of Bright Eyes. Her memories got stirred by a couple of teenage girls on the rez who were pregnant, their bellies growing rounder each week. They weren’t going back to school in the fall. She’d promised herself that when Joseph came back from his work, she’d tell him. She’d convinced herself he’d understand; it was she who didn’t want to speak of it. She didn’t know how anyone ever spoke of such things. She imagined Bright Eyes was a young woman, maybe with children of her own. Hardly a day went by that Elinor didn’t think of her, send her blessings when she smudged in the morning, blessings in all directions the smoke drifted.

  Joseph was telling Elinor how the farmer kicked his dogs, beat the horses, how unnecessary it was, when they heard men shouting, curse words, coming from the front of their house. She didn’t know who the men were, but she could tell they were drunk. She and Joseph waited and listened, Elinor, especially, hoping that the fools would move on because she knew what Joseph would do if they didn’t.

  Damn, Elinor muttered to herself. What was she doing in hospital? She needed to get out. She had no time to lie about while some fat-lipped nurse held her hand.

  When she tried to sit up, her left arm didn’t work too well.

  Now what was the woman doing? Slipping some stick into Elinor’s armpit.

  “Stop that,” Elinor grunted.

  “Did you say something?” the nurse asked.

  “I said stop that.” Elinor twisted and snatched at her right arm, the one the nurse was involved with. “Where are my clothes? I need to get out of here. I’ve got things to do.”

  The nurse withdrew the thermometer from Elinor’s armpit, jotted down the reading. She suggested Elinor grab on to her arm and pull herself up so she could fluff her pillow, straighten her sheets.

  “I don’t want my pillow fluffed. Stop that. Just get my clothes. And where are my puffs?”

  “Your what?”

  “My … my … oh, you know, the fire sticks, for smoking.” Elinor allowed her head to sink into the pillow. She was exhausted. How was she going to get out of here? It terrified her. People died in hospitals. It seemed to her more died than got fixed. She closed her eyes.

  So long she’d been on her own, all because of those two. Those two and their drink and their stupid argument and fight that Joseph felt compelled to intervene in. She and Joseph were holding hands, watching the fire lick over the birch branches. His hands were so strong, always dry and calloused, three fingertips missing from frostbite.

  Such swearing from the drunks, then the threats to hack out a tongue, twist a knife in a gut. Joseph’s hand squeezed tighter around hers. His tension siphoned into her arm, over her chest. Then he was heading around the side of the house. For a short man he had a long stride, even with the hitch in his left leg from the time he fell off a horse onto a boulder. She called after him to leave them alone, said they’d stumble into the bushes to sleep it off. But Joseph hated listening to fighting. He didn’t want the children to hear it. It scared them and it set a terrible example. She should have gone with him, but he’d done this kind of thing before. She expected he’d be back in a few minutes.

  But these two were different. They turned on Joseph.

  It was quick and then it was silent.

  Only the sound of the crickets, a chorus of crickets, endless, unceasing.

  At first she thought the steps were Joseph’s, but they didn’t have the rhythm of his limp, and they came fast, like a dog after a rabbit.

  “It was an accident,” he said, “we didn’t mean nothin’.”

  He’d started to cry, told her to come right away, said there’d been a terrible accident. When Elinor came around the house, Joseph was on his back in the middle of the road, blood seeping from his body. She shouted at one of them. She didn’t remember their names; she wanted to forget them. She told him to call the chief, to get a car. It would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. They’d just put a man on the moon, but they couldn’t get an ambulance out to the reserve unless some white person had had a heart attack.

  Somehow they got Joseph moved into the chief’s car. Except the damned thing died a half-mile down the road. Cars and trucks were scarce in those days. Nobody had money for gas or tires for cars. Lots still travelled around with horses and buggies. They waited in the car for half the night, it seemed to Elinor, while the chief’s son ran to find another car. It was an empty road. No other cars came along. There was only the buzzing of the crickets. Coyotes howling. The scent of sage and soil.

  She’d bound an old towel around Joseph’s belly, but she could feel it getting wetter and warmer. She’d tried to stay calm for him, but he was the one who held the calm for both of them. He insisted on talking even though she told him to save his energy. Voice weak, barely above a whisper, he remembered the first time he’d noticed her. He’d just turned twenty, she was seventeen. It was early summer. He’d come back from fishing at the river; she was crouched down picking strawberries. He grinned, started to laugh, but it hurt too much. She told him to stop. He was quiet for a moment then told her that before he’d seen her face, he’d seen her behind and thought it was fine, wide enough for babies. Another time she would have swatted him, but this time she wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  Finally, she heard the truck; it belonged to the Indian agent. There was a bed and a chair in the back of the pickup, lots of blankets, and a Thermos of tea for Elinor. And that was how they arrived at the hospital. The care went downhill after that.

  Elinor didn’t know how long she slept. It was a struggle to get her left eye open and to move her left arm, but with her right eye she saw Alice and Louise at the window, their backs to her. She closed her eyes. She had to decide on a strategy. She could get around Alice, but Louise would be insistent that she stay on in hospital. And after that? She tried to get a sense of what they were plotting.

  They weren’t talking about her! They were talking about Louise’s silly birds, Alice’s new winter boots, an accident on the Trans-Canada Highway near Moose Jaw. She needed a smoke. Her body ached for tobacco, the war
m, weedy smoke filling her mouth, coursing down her throat into her chest. The thought of it set her off coughing; she struggled to sit up.

  “Gran. Gran.”

  She saw tears in her granddaughter’s eyes. And even in her daughter’s. Not a good sign. She’d have to act quickly.

  She asked them to help her sit up. From her new vantage point, she saw her clothes on hangers (she rarely used the things), slippers beneath them. But where were the smokes? Louise asked how she was feeling. Alice asked if she wanted some tea.

  “Never better,” Elinor said. She wouldn’t tell them about her eye and arm.

  Louise said Elinor had had a small stroke. And she was anemic and underweight, probably from poor nutrition. Louise offered Elinor a glass of water. Her dry throat welcomed the cool wetness. She closed her eyes. Never had she felt so tired. She wondered what drugs they’d been pumping into her.

  “When can I get out of here? And where are my smokes?” She struggled to push herself higher in the bed.

  “You can’t smoke in here, Mom.”

  “That’s all the more reason to get out.” Her hands were shaky; she was having trouble catching her breath. She didn’t want to die here like Joseph. From another room a scratchy voice calling for a nurse. A few minutes later she heard the banging and clatter of metal, trays being taken in and out of the food trolley, smells of onion, tomato, and coffee. Elinor’s stomach growled and she realized how hungry she was. She leaned back.

  Alice went in search of tea.

  Louise washed Elinor’s face and hands with warm, soapy water, then she brushed her hair. Elinor was soon impatient with it. Louise was in no hurry. One brush stroke from the top of Elinor’s head through the length of her hair seemed to take forever. Elinor glanced at Louise and decided to keep her eyes closed. It was too hard to see the fear and worry in her daughter’s eyes, as if this was Elinor’s last day on Earth. It had been the same when Joseph died, except there had been more fury. After the third brushing that she thought would never cease, Elinor grabbed the brush from her daughter.