I love my sister but she is not always right.
I sit back down in my chair and turn off the TV. Folding up the paper with the list from lunch, I wonder: where did I get hotel stationary?
* * * *
VII) Friday, and I go to see our neighbor to ask if she would like me to trim her grass or hedges or take her small dog for a walk. I tap a small pane of glass in the door for a few minutes but get no answer. Around back I get the same response. Her small dog does not bark either.
Her grass isn't embarrassingly long. Thick, green, but you can tell that it has not been cut in a week or so. I decide to go ahead and trim it. She always lets me do it and if for some reason she didn't want it this week, I will not ask her to pay.
Our mother used to work for her, cleaning, caring for her children—sometimes late into the night when our neighbor and her husband were out with clients. There is a large moose head in the living room that I am afraid of.
Once the neighbor sat me on her lap and tried to explain to me that the moose was dead. There was nothing that it could do to me but look. She had red cheeks and her breath smelled of soft vanilla. She kept sweets in a cupboard for my sister and me.
She wore bright green pantsuits, cream blouses that tossed waves as she stood on the deck. That was when I was younger. Now browns and dark blue. Wool and thick knits.
Our houses were built the same year and look a lot alike. When I was a child I thought I lived in both. I thought water towers were filled with elves who made dress shoes. I thought utility poles were very smooth trees. I thought everyone knew my mother.
* * * *
VIII) On Monday a young professor from the Mathematics department comes into the library. The work-study tries to help her find what she is looking for but they have no luck and come to my desk.
We should have a book on Advanced Discrete Mathematics, the work-study says. The professor is wearing green elastic-waist running shorts made of denim and a tan T-shirt that says something. She smiles. Weak chin. The computer says we have it, but the text is not where it should be.
I explain that the computers aren't as up to date as the new card index I have been working on. I show them the listing for the book in question. It is not there either.
I thought I saw it, says the work-study shifting his weight on his false leg. Big book.
It must be an error. I get agitated when the books are misplaced.
Mind if I look around, asks the professor. The work-study offers to help her.
I go back to my desk. Perhaps I have made a mistake, I think.
* * * *
IX) Our mother began working for our neighbor after our grandmother died. I don't remember a time when she didn't work there. She had other jobs over the years. In the mornings. Working cleaning in the elementary school or the municipal building.
Very early—in a brightly colored memory I might not remember myself—a boy is making fun of my sister. He has red hair and a twin that doesn't speak. He asks if we live in the dumpster. My sister yells at him that our great-grandfather owned the whole town and our house is bigger than his and that he eats his own shit. The boy with red hair puts pencil shavings in her desk. He smacks the back of her navy-blue smock with an eraser.
One day the principal is in the hall. So are many teachers. They are looking in a locker. The red-haired boy is sitting on the dull tile, crying. His brother is on his tiptoes behind the adults. Our mother is standing at the end of the hall, the lines of the checkered tile pointing to her feet and the long dust mop she is leaning on.
My sister says that the twins have to go to a different school. Her class gets a new guinea pig that they name “Deer.” No one else makes fun of my sister.
But our mother always worked for our neighbor.
And at night my sister sat on the edge of my bed with me and told me about the parson who slept in the haunted house to pacify the pretty young spirit who was doomed to wander until her killer was found. My sister drew her picture: stiff hair, long neck, no eyes.
She saw I was scared and told me she made it up.
Now I tell my sister stories. I can tell she understands though she doesn't say.
* * * *
X) The Mathematics professor comes back another day. She and the work-study spend hours poring over the card catalog. She wants to see some of our special books. They still haven't found the first book she was looking for.
When I leave, they are sitting at a large table with a number of old volumes in stacks or open like butterfly-cut pork chops. The collection of maps near their feet.
* * * *
XI) I spent the morning with a stack of lists.
* * * *
XII) One summer a car hit my sister. She was standing in the alley behind the house. She was trying to get me to follow her on an exploration to the grocery store. Her pigtails bobbed with impatience.
I was scared to go. I told her we would get in trouble. She stomped her foot.
She said, Come O—
I remember: our mother crying. Our neighbor crying—driver's door still open. I remember the ambulance siren, flitting over the trees for many minutes, the sound shifting around but not getting closer. Red brick, cobbles. A chrome bumper. Racket like crickets, sobs lofting soft volleys of muted bellows.
Mother wanted to work less for a little while. Mother said she was at least entitled to that. I saw her in the kitchen red cheeked, wetted. She wanted to quit but could not. I was old enough at this point to watch my sister when I got home. My mother would stay at home until I got there and then work later at the neighbors.
At first I was scared of the way she looked—but I love my sister.
* * * *
XIII) I ride the elevator back down to the basement after lunch. The director is waiting for me. She is sitting at my desk. The work-study is sitting in a purple plastic chair by the soda machine crying softly. I see his leg in pieces on the floor next to him. The math professor is talking to one of the security guards. There are quite a few standing around. When they see me get off of the elevator, they pause. They look. I can see a cut across the work-study's cheek and the beginning of a black eye's blossom. The Mathematics professor is holding a plastic bag of ice to her lip. I step forward, wondering what has happened. The work-study sniffs a thick croak of mucus. The director stands, her hands up in front of her. Three of the security guards—in satiny green jackets and colorful patches—approach also. Their shoulder-mounted radios click and fizzle. I like the sound.
I am fired. I am not to return to the library. I am not to return to campus. I am not to approach the work-study or the Mathematics professor. If I do they will press charges. I am handed a few things from my desk in a box: Ink, keys, ID, letters, little earrings, Dictaphone, harmonica, emerald ribbon.
* * * *
XIV) When the neighbor's husband died, mother stopped working at their house. She said she no longer had to work. We were being taken care of.
We tried to go to the funeral but couldn't.
I slept outside one night and saw two little girls in robin's egg blue dresses walk from the garage and climb up the maple tree. They didn't come down.
* * * *
XV) I got rid of the lists. I think I found them all.
* * * *
XVI) My sister drops her fork down the laundry chute. I can hear its soft chuck against the dirt floor.
The basement. I have not gone into the basement in years. But it is the last fork.
I pause with my hand on the knob. There is the taste of an edge in the back of my throat—like a handful of straight pins poured out. The light from the open door falls on my nice shoes sitting on the bottom step. They are filthy.
I walk down in the dark. At the bottom of the steps I pull the chain on the light bulb. It is bare and—as it clicks on—swings. Everything dances.
The chute is in front of me. Below it the pile shines.
Once, my sister sat on my bed. I was afraid. I had snuck into the cupboar
d and eaten some sweets without permission. Plastic-wrapped peppermints. I knew what I had done was wrong and knew that something bad would happen to me.
She comforted me. She said, Not everything happens for a reason. Not everything that happens is caused by something else. Some things just are. Some just aren't. Just because you do something wrong doesn't mean that you will be punished and just because you do something right doesn't mean you will be rewarded. There's not someone watching, keeping tally of your happiness and sadness. Your kindness and your cruelties. No one is watching us.
I love my sister but she is not always right.
[Back to Table of Contents]
SHH by Peter Dabbene
Establish
Furnish
Burnish
Distinguish
Polish
Nourish
Tarnish
Languish
Anguish
Demolish
Refurbish
Finish
Publish
Flourish
Relish
Perish
Vanish
[Back to Table of Contents]
Bright Waters by John Brown
In the spring of 1718 Jan van Doorn returned to his log house with a load of molasses, flour, and a fine green dress for his new wife. He found she had run out on him and taken half of his goods with her.
She was the second wife he'd bought. And the second one to run away before a season was out.
Her name was Woman With Turtle Eyes, an older Huron of twenty-three years. He had thought an older woman would be more stable than the girl he had purchased the first time. Besides, she said she wanted him to buy her.
Jan didn't understand how the men in the settlements courted and kept their women. And it couldn't be because he was ugly. He'd seen plenty of ugly men marry. The only ones that seemed to have any interest in him were the whores at Fort Montreal, and when he'd given in to his urges that one cursed time, they took far more from him than his money.
There was nothing to do about Woman With Turtle Eyes. If he hunted her down, she'd just run away again. He could beat her, but she'd run nevertheless. Besides, her theft meant he'd have to start working his old claim, and there were precious few weeks before the beavers began to shed their winter coats. No, there was nothing to do but fold up the dress and put it in the cedar chest.
He looked down upon the dress for a few moments admiring the fine, shimmering cloth. Then he closed the lid.
That night Jan cooked himself a meal of kale and old potatoes. When he finished, he rubbed deer urine onto his traps to prepare them for the morrow. Then he went to bed.
Over the next few weeks he worked his claim, cured pelts, and began to rebuild what he'd lost. But as the weather warmed, someone began raiding his traps. The third time this happened he found six traps in a row with both bait and beaver gone. He held up the last trap and examined it. The other times he'd been too late to catch the thieves, but this time the blood matting the hair on the jaws was still wet.
If it was LaRue or English Pete, he was going to murder the man. That, or sell him off to the Abenaki. If it was a Mohawk, well, then he'd have to tame his response.
He didn't trap much anymore. There simply wasn't as much game here as there had been ten years ago. Besides, it was much more profitable to trade instead of trap. Let the Iroquois tribes do the work. He'd profit on both the buying and the selling. Nevertheless, he held agreements with all the trappers and Sachems in the area. This was his claim. Even if it was small.
His next set of traps lay only fifty yards farther up the stream. And by the great William of Orange, they'd better be full.
He decided to walk carefully and was rewarded for his caution, for as he crested the next rise in the trail, he spied three Indian boys standing over the trap he'd set next to the willow there. Two held a pole with half a dozen beaver draped over it. The third bent down and sprung the trap.
He looked at their leg tattoos. Mohawk. One of the Iroquois tribes. Well, he couldn't kill them then.
Not that he'd want to. They were, after all, just boys. Still, Indian boys weren't like the lads back in Rotterdam. It had been small Abenaki lads, just like these, that tried to take his scalp in his first year as a trapper. He'd killed them all with the blood flowing down the side of his face and a chunk of his scalp flapping about like a wig.
And so he'd need to be ready. Hunting knives hung from the belts at their waists. But none carried a war club. Only one held a bow.
Jan sneaked back the way he had come and then up and around in front of them so that the boys would walk right up the trail into him. The path bent around a hill where the river willow grew thick. He waited for them there.
He withdrew rope and a knife from his pack. He couldn't kill them, but he could tie them up and scare them into good Christian men.
Just as he was wondering if he hadn't misjudged their direction, he heard footsteps and low voices. He wrapped the ends of the rope in his hands.
The first two boys passed and didn't see him. Each carried the end of a pole laden with beaver on his shoulder. When the third turned the corner, Jan roared and lunged for him.
But instead of catching the boy up in the rope, he ran into a white woman wearing a yellow bonnet who yelled like the devil himself and all his horned helpers.
She did not look like a slave. She did not react like one either. Before he could turn back to the boys, the woman set herself, brought up an Iroquois corn stick, and walloped him on the side of the head.
Jan lost his vision momentarily. When it came back he could see the boys preparing for an attack.
He pulled his war club out of his belt and warned them away. He was two heads taller than most men, and his war club was a good three feet long.
"I promise you by Hiawatha's bones,” he said in Mohawk. “I'll crack every one of your thieving heads like a pumpkin."
"Stop,” said the woman in Mohawk. “All of you."
One of the boys looked over at her.
"Stop this now."
Neither Jan nor the boys put down their weapons.
"Crow Child, put your knife down. Now!"
The boy hesitated and then lowered his knife.
"And you,” she said. “That is Iron Wood's boy. You touch any of us, and his village will feed your parts to the dogs."
Iron Wood's boy? Jan looked at the boy closer. He saw the turtle tattoos on his legs marking his clan. He saw his face. How had he not recognized him? He'd grown.
"These are my traps,” he said. “This is my claim. And I'll suffer no thieves to take what's mine. If he's Iron Wood's boy, then I'd like to talk to the Wise Mother of the turtle clan about the proper punishment for thieves."
The boy didn't show much. They were trained not to. But Jan saw his eyes round just a little. The Wise Mother of the turtle clan ran her village. She was the one who chose the Sachem, and she was not someone to trifle with. They'd flog the boy twenty times or hang him up from a tree for a day. There had been too much blood shed between Indians and traders over incidents just like this.
The boy looked to the woman.
"I think we can work this out,” said the woman.
Jan turned to her. What woman in her right mind would be out walking with three Mohawk boys anyway? Granted, the Mohawks around here hadn't attacked any English or Dutch settlers for a few years. But Mohawks weren't the only ones in these woods.
"Who are you?” asked Jan. “And why do you speak Mohawk?"
"That is none of your business,” she said.
Her accent when speaking Mohawk was just like Pete's.
"You're that English teacher the Indians have been talking about,” he said.
"I'm not English,” she said. “And no one has trapped here for years. How do we know they're yours?"
Most women avoided Jan. None looked him in the eye. It was disarming to have her look at him so. But it was also obvious she didn't know anything about trapping
. “They're mine because the traps have my mark."
The woman looked hard at the boys. They did not meet her gaze.
"I see,” she said. “And if they promise never to raid your traps again?"
He looked at the boys. They'd be back. He would have come back were he in their position. “You may speak Mohawk and spit fire, but you're still an English woman. Not a Sachem or Wise Mother. You can't bind them. I'm afraid that won't do."
"They're boys,” she said.
"They're thieves. And they're still young enough that they can learn. Or would you simply let this bad wood grow until it was too hard to cut out without killing the tree?"
"There are other ways,” she said.
"Well, until you think of a better one, I'll be walking back to Iron Wood's village with you."
He could see she did not like that. But he didn't care. He raised his club and spoke to the boys. “You can put down your knives and we'll walk to your village like men. Or I can break a few bones and then carry you to your village over my shoulder."
The boys looked at the woman.
She motioned for them to put their weapons down.
The surprising thing was that they did. How an English woman got such authority he could never guess.
When their weapons lay on the grass, he quickly bound their wrists to the pole holding the beavers. It would not do for them to be able to act on second thoughts. And they would have second thoughts. Then he began to march them the three miles to the village.
On the way he asked her what she had been doing.
"They were escorting me to their village to teach them English, the Bible, and how to shoot muskets."
Yet another surprise. She took a great risk, or the English had suddenly reversed their policy on Indians and muskets. The English thought it wise to prohibit the sale of guns to their Iroquois allies. It was a stupid policy that Jan never followed. The Dutch had traded guns freely with the Iroquois and profited greatly. He supposed the magistrates would consider shooting lessons a similar offense. If they ever found out, she'd be pilloried and whipped.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 17 Page 9