That was unfair. Tenacious was a better word to describe her mother. Even so, she could not see what was to be gained by telling her mother what she and Mary had done. It was so long ago. Did it matter anymore? She rarely even thought of it. But when she did … when she did she was immediately agitated and worked hard to expel the thoughts from her head.
As much as she hated to admit it, her mother was right. What if she, Louise, as a mother, suspected one of her children had a secret, something that needed telling? Would she encourage Andrew or Catherine, Alice to tell her? Of her three children, she thought Alice was most likely to be the one with something to hide.
She pushed the shovel into the earth, leaned back, and uprooted the weed. This weed, unlike the others that came out so easily, had a multitude of shorter roots. She swatted the weed against the shovel, shook the clumps of earth from it, and dropped it on the pile.
She didn’t hear the car pull into the driveway. Her thoughts had moved on from weeds to a client who was proving difficult, refusing to accept her counsel about being more conciliatory in his divorce proceedings or risk losing much more. Nor did she hear the car doors close. Or the few words exchanged between the two women. Some moneyed men could be so stubborn. Rarely did it serve them well. She shifted her position and, at last, saw the two women moving toward the house.
She didn’t choose or will it, but her mind seemed to switch into slow motion as she watched Victoria drift toward the house — a tall woman taking short steps. Each step a decade in her life. Each step a distance of two, three, five hundred miles. Stately and elegant, there was softness in Victoria’s face. If Louise had been closer, she’d have seen brightness in Victoria’s eyes, even as the fatigue in her body was palpable.
Victoria was swaying, her knees giving way. Gloria leapt forward. Louise rushed to the two of them.
“Oh my,” Victoria said. “I was so excited. I got out of the car too quickly.” She sucked in a breath, looked directly at Louise. “And you must be Louise.”
She settled herself, with Gloria’s help, onto the front steps. She stretched out her legs, leaned back on her hands, and sighed. She told Louise she had fallen in love with the prairie, the golden flatness of the land, the enormity of the sky. She laughed and spoke of how she had been entertained by the gophers, the way they darted and scurried, tails wagging, into their holes, how they sat on their haunches surveying their world like little generals.
“Mother will not want to miss another word,” Louise said. “Let me tell her you’re here. She’s having a nap.”
“Don’t wake her,” Victoria said.
“She’d never forgive me if I didn’t,” Louise said. “Come on into the house whenever you’re ready.”
Louise paused at the door of her study.
A fan of sunlight spilled over Elinor. Hands clasped on her chest, ankles crossed, she looked peaceful. Elinor said she liked the blouse Louise had bought for her, but Louise could now see it was too big around her neck, too long in the sleeves.
Elinor didn’t stir as Louise moved over the carpet toward her. She knelt beside Elinor, squeezed her arm, and whispered, “Mother, Mother.” Elinor didn’t stir. Louise spoke louder. “She’s here. Victoria is here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that at the start?” Elinor said, lifting her head, bending her knees. “That was the only thing that was going to wake me.” She stretched out her arms; Louise pulled her up to a sitting position.
“How is she? How does she look? Is she all right?”
“She’s tired, but she seems fine. She’s anxious to meet you.”
An onlooker might have remarked that she’d never seen Elinor smile so widely. But it was short-lived. Suddenly, Elinor rolled away from Louise, curled into a fetal position, and pulled the blanket over her head.
Louise hesitated. In these kinds of situations, it never worked to try to convince her mother of something.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes. I’ll get Victoria settled.”
Elinor flung the blanket from her head and rolled onto her back. There were tears in her eyes. “I’m scared. What if it isn’t her? What if she doesn’t like me?” She patted her hair, asked if she needed to comb it. “Help me up,” she said.
Louise settled her mother on the couch in the living room, draped a blanket over her legs. She sat beside her, asked if she needed anything. Elinor grasped Louise’s hand. “Thank you for all that you’ve done. I am happier than a hen with young chicks.” Then her eyes narrowed and sternness flashed over her face. “And I will be even happier when you trust me enough to share your burden.”
Louise patted her mother’s arm, told her she was thinking about it. As she leaned forward to stand up, Elinor grabbed her arm. “Did you tell Victoria about her father?”
“No.”
“Good.” Elinor clasped her hands together. “We’ll tackle that gopher when we get to him.” She waved her hands at Louise. “Go. Go.”
Gloria, seated on the steps next to Victoria, was pointing at something in the sky. Louise wished John was home. He’d know better than Louise how to make Victoria comfortable. If it didn’t go well … She shoved that thought from her mind.
She opened the door, stepped onto the porch. Victoria and Gloria turned to her.
“She’s bursting to meet you,” Louise said.
“That makes two of us.” Victoria glanced at Gloria. “Will she mind if Gloria stays for a bit?”
“Not at all,” Louise said. She held open the door.
Her mother wouldn’t have wanted it, but Louise wished she’d taken pictures, pictures of the first few seconds. It had been months since Louise had seen such joy, such rapture in her mother. It was the kind of thing poets wrote about. Louise was no poet, but she imagined … a toddler’s delight with her first steps … a six-year-old’s joy achieving independence on his bicycle … crocuses, fuzzy and tender, opening to a spring sun … a mother exhausted from labour, cradling her newborn … John’s pleasure at the first rose to bloom in June.
Elinor insisted Victoria sit next to her on the couch.
For a full moment, Elinor did nothing but look at Victoria. “Do you mind?” she asked. “Can I touch you?”
Victoria, eyes moist, whispered yes.
With the faintest touch from her fingertips, Elinor slid her hands down Victoria’s cheeks, then up again. She squeezed Victoria’s shoulders and arms, fingers. She placed both hands on top of Victoria’s head, where she remained for a long time while she hummed a tune that Louise did not recognize.
Finally, Elinor squeezed Victoria’s hands and said tatawaw. Welcome.
“Thank you,” Victoria said.
“Pardon me for all the touching,” Elinor said. “It is the first thing that mothers do with their babies, isn’t it? Stroke them, nurse them, count their fingers and toes, rub their backs, squeeze their arms, wipe their bottoms.” She laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to do all that.”
Elinor shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out a black-and-white photograph. Three corners were curling, the fourth was gone. “This was you,” she said, “hours after you came into the world. It is a miracle that we are finally back together. We must chatter fast now, like a couple of squirrels, because my time is coming to an end.”
Elinor asked Victoria to tell her everything; she was thirsting to know it all. Victoria said she didn’t know where to start. Elinor patted her hand and said it was like visiting a new country. Everything was new; everything was interesting.
Victoria said when she saw Elinor’s picture on television, she didn’t make much of it at first. She’d come home from a neighbour’s; they’d been playing bridge. The house was cold. She’d cranked up the heat, wrapped herself in a blanket, and sat down with a cup of tea to watch a show about the Badlands in Alberta. The news ran again. And there was Elinor’s picture again. Seeing it the second time, she had a jolt. Something about the eyes, the cheeks. But it was so fast. She hurried to make dinner, watching
the news report three more times, studying the photograph, waiting with pencil in hand to write down the phone number.
“Did you win at your bridge game?” Elinor asked.
“I don’t remember. I’m not very good at it, so probably not.”
“I’ve always enjoyed bingo. Do you play?”
“When I was a child, my mother took me every week to the bingo nights at the church. I won a box of popcorn once. What about you? Did you ever win anything?”
Elinor smiled. “Lots of things, most of them pretty useless — a pair of skates, a couple of lamps, some cushions, six cans of jam — all orange marmalade, which I hate. Once I won a radio, a cheap thing, but funny, it still works. Probably it’s playing right now in my little cottage.”
Victoria laughed, said she loved radio, more than television. But if it hadn’t been for television, she might not have found Elinor.
While Louise longed to stay, she left the two women alone. Gloria went sightseeing.
The time drifted by. Louise swept the kitchen floor, cleaned out the birds’ cage, dusted the windowsills, collected the mail. She filled the kettle with water, took cups from the cupboard. She tried not to hover, even as her curiosity was chomping at the bit. She caught snatches of conversation: Her mother telling Victoria about the Qu’Appelle Valley where she was born. Victoria speaking about her son, her husband’s work with the bank, her childhood spent on Manitoulin Island. Victoria laughed, and Louise enjoyed the robustness of the sound. It was harder to hear what Elinor was saying; her voice had grown weaker.
Louise poured the boiling water and covered the pot with a tea cozy. She rummaged into the back of a cupboard and found a wooden platter to hold plates, napkins, and spoons, cream and sugar. Standing at the kitchen window, waiting for the tea to steep, she watched a sparrow flit about, then a robin jab its beak into the grass and extract an earthworm. This never ceased to amaze her — that something as hidden as an earthworm could be found by a robin.
John had been the robin in Louise’s life, ferreting out the guilt and shame, her lies. She’d lied to him at first, saying she was orphaned, her parents dead from influenza. Over time John caught the inconsistencies in her story, small things that he kept track of. One time she told him the orphanage was in Regina, another time in Saskatoon. Once she said she was adopted at eight, another time at eleven. He wondered why she never wanted to see her adoptive parents. After she told him where she had come from, who her parents were, she expected he’d be gone the next day. For years she wondered what he saw in her, and she expected he’d leave one day. She kept her worries from him, worries about her mother and father, cousins and aunts on the reserve. And she refused to tell him about the remarks by lawyer colleagues: their challenges that an Indian couldn’t know anything about white people’s justice; the taunting questions about why she wasn’t on the reserve breeding more dark-skinned babies. More than once she’d been propositioned by senior lawyers wanting her to show them how an Indian had sex, promising her quicker advancement if she complied.
She remembered the moment she started to think differently. It was the day after a judge had propositioned her, promising to rule in her favour if she did as he asked. She and John had gone to the park with Catherine, who was almost a year old and beginning to walk. Catherine had thick, dark hair, round brown eyes, sturdy legs. She was always smiling. It was 1935, another year of crop failures for the farmers. The city was full of transients, hungry and dirty, hoping for work. As they walked, they passed a young couple with two children, four or five years of age. Everything about the family was grey — their clothing, their skin, the looks on their faces. The thin arms and legs of the children, the scabs on their faces, sickened Louise. She picked up Catherine just as the man stepped forward and asked John if he could spare some change. John, always the kind one, shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a couple of nickels. The man thanked John, then reached over and shook Catherine’s hand, said she was lucky to have the parents that she did, parents who seemed to be doing okay for themselves even when others couldn’t buy nice clothes for their kids, only had enough food for one meal a day. Louise squeezed Catherine closer; she wanted to get going but the man was standing right in front of them, blocking their way. He tugged at Catherine’s dress, said he wished his daughter had something just as nice. Then he turned to John, as if Louise wasn’t there. “Indian, ain’t she? Don’t seem fair that she’s all dolled up and my wife ain’t.”
Without a drop of anger in his voice, John said, “She’s a human being just like you and me. Sorry that things have been hard for you.” He shoved his hand in his pocket again, slapped a coin in the man’s hand and suggested he buy his kids an ice cream. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.”
When they were well away from the man, Louise said she was tired of being told she was Indian, as if she didn’t know it, had to be constantly reminded. Indians didn’t go up to white people and ask if they were white. And then she told him about the judge. John was furious, said the man should be made to step down.
They stopped at the pond. Catherine grabbed handfuls of sand and threw them in the water.
“Does it get to you?” John asked. “This being asked … told that you’re Indian?”
“Of course,” Louise said. “Every day. I feel like an imposter. Like I’m living in someone else’s world. Like I don’t belong here; I should go back to the reserve, be with my people. Make some more of those dark-skinned babies, so eventually there will be enough of us to rise up and send you all back to where you came from.”
John squeezed her hand, drew her toward him. “Every time something like that thing with the judge happens, I want you to tell me. So I can tell you it’s not right, that you are a human being deserving the same rights as everyone else.”
“I’ll try,” Louise said.
“I don’t want you to just try. I want you to do it. You know why?”
“Not really.”
“Because I want our children to be able to go anywhere and be proud of their mother. But they won’t carry that pride if you don’t show it to them first.”
Elinor and Victoria were holding hands when Louise brought out the sandwiches. Elinor was in the middle of telling her about the time she and Joseph had taken the train through the Rocky Mountains, how Joseph had charmed a bear when a group had gotten off the train to take a hike. Five minutes into the hike, a bear appeared on the trail. Joseph told everyone to turn around slowly and go back to the train; he’d distract the bear. Elinor said she was so worried; he was always doing something like that, rescuing animals, people in trouble.
“Got him killed in the end. I went with the others; there were ten or twelve of us. We got back to the train. Twenty minutes later Joseph wasn’t back, and the train was ready to depart. We waited another hour.”
Elinor sucked in a deep breath, leaned back on the couch for a moment then sat up again. She said she was sure the bear had dragged Joseph off. Or that he’d come running out of the woods covered in blood, the bear at his heels. Another fifteen minutes went by. The engineer came; he had a shotgun. She didn’t want the bear to get killed and she was getting mad at Joseph for taking him on. Just as the guy was shoving bullets into the gun, Joseph came strolling down the path, calm as could be, grinning.
He was in his glory, Elinor said, for the rest of the trip, spinning this long yarn about how he sat down on the path, hung his head, and waited for the bear to leave. The bear came up to him, sniffed his face and neck, arms, then he sat down next to Joseph. He smacked his lips and Joseph thought he was going to be lunch. Then the bear sprawled out and went to sleep. Joseph didn’t want to move in case he startled the bear; for sure, he would attack. So Joseph waited. He thanked the Creator for bringing the bear to him; he asked the Creator to give each of them safe passage through this predicament. And he didn’t move until the bear woke.
“Was Joseph my father?” Victoria asked.
“I wish he had been,” Elinor said. “I’m
sorry to tell you that your father was not a nice man. I don’t like talking about him.”
“Of course,” Victoria said. “But you do know who he is?”
“In some sense,” Elinor said. “And he has long since left this Earth. That’s a conversation for another time.”
Elinor waved her hands, said Victoria and Louise were sisters and they should talk for a time; she’d listen.
Louise showed Victoria photographs of Alice, Andrew, and Catherine, and Catherine’s daughter, Mariah. Alice, she said, was keen to meet Victoria; the others lived out of town. Victoria showed her pictures of her parents, her house and garden, her son, Robert, a slight, tall man who appeared to be a few years older than Louise.
Elinor kept her eyes closed. She didn’t look at the pictures of Victoria’s son or house, but she did ask to see the photograph of Victoria’s parents. Victoria’s father, in suit, vest, and tie, stood behind Victoria’s mother, who was seated on a chair; she wore a dark suit and white shirt and was holding a single rose.
“What were their names?” Elinor asked.
“Jack and Kathleen.”
Elinor grunted. “Did they love you well enough?”
“Yes. Yes, I believe they did,” Victoria said.
“Louise,” Elinor said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“When I’m gone, you must tell Victoria everything, to know who her family is, where she came from.”
Another time Elinor would have told Louise to stop fussing around her — folding her clothes, fluffing the pillow, asking if she needed a drink — but she was too tired even to bring her lips together, shift the position of her tongue. But the fatigue was only part of it; she didn’t want to dispel the good mood between the two of them. It had been her plan to let herself sink away after meeting Victoria, tell Joseph she was coming. Now she had to hold on just a little longer. She had to bring this daughter, the one tucking the blanket around her shoulders, in from the wilderness of her fear and shame.
Tears in the Grass Page 24