by Beryl Young
“I’m fine,” I say. “School’s good. Tommy’s still a brat.”
Gram laughs her soft laugh. “He’s bound to grow up. All little brothers do.”
“He bugs me. Interrupts what I’m doing and gets mad when I don’t want him around.”
“Maybe it would help if you did a few things with him. You’re his older sister.”
“I’d rather have an older sister myself. We could have fun doing things together.”
Gram looks across to the top of my dresser. “I see your china bluebird sitting there.”
I nod. “Place of honour, Gram, ever since you gave it to me. Remember when we saw my first real bluebird? It was sitting on the fencepost near the road into the farm.”
“Do you remember what I said?”
“You said, ‘Isn’t that the brightest blue in the world?’ And it is!”
I show Gram the scarf I’m knitting. “I’m making it for Mom for Mother’s Day. I don’t know if she’ll wear it.”
Gram smiles at me. “Remember to pick up the stitches you drop.”
“It’s way too late for that, Gram,” I tell her, laughing.
Gram shifts on the bed as though she’s trying to get comfortable. I almost ask if I’m adopted but decide not to. I sit there quietly, and the next thing I know she’s asleep.
I tiptoe out of the room and wander around the living room, then sit in the armchair, swinging my feet in the air.
Mom comes in with a women’s magazine and sits down on the chesterfield.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask.
“He’s down in the office talking to Otto. Have you done your homework?”
“Yes. Did it at school.”
Mom frowns at me. “Stop twirling your feet. Find your book and read it. What’s the matter with you tonight, Maggie?”
“I’m thinking about Gram,” I say.
“Just sitting there thinking? Aren’t you the strange one.”
I go to the bookcase in the hall to get my book. Does Mom mean I’m strange because I’m different from everyone else in the family? Well, it’s true, I am different. Most kids would love their mother and their little brother. I don’t. At least, not in the wholehearted way I should.
Maybe this is the moment. My knees are shaky as I get up and stand in front of Mom.
“Yes?” she says.
Now or never.
“Mom, what do you mean I’m a strange one? Do you mean I’m different from all of you?”
“What on earth are you on about, Maggie?”
I stare at the floor. “Sometimes I feel as though I come from another family.”
It seems to me she pauses before she answers me. “Don’t be silly. Of course you don’t.”
Mom’s not looking me in the eye.
“It’s one thing after another with you, isn’t it?” She waves at the door. “Go outside and bring Tommy in, please. It’s time both of you were in bed.”
“You know I go to bed way later than Tommy.”
“Do you have to argue with everything I say?”
“Mom, I’m older than Tommy. We don’t go to bed at the same time.”
“Go and get him, and both of you get into your beds, right now.” She turns back to her magazine.
“I can’t go to bed, Mom. You’re sitting on the chesterfield which happens to be my bed!”
“Don’t sass me, Maggie.” She gets up and walks out.
I swear, the next chance I get I’ll ask Gram if I’m adopted. She’ll look me in the eye and tell me the truth.
WHEN I COME home from school the next day, Mom tells me Gram’s been in the hospital all day for treatments. I rush into the living room and sit down beside her on the chesterfield. She’s that comfortable kind of person. When you sit close to Gram you can sort of melt right into her.
Her voice is soft. “Maggie, do you remember visiting the farm and Gramps talking to you about the Saskatchewan hills?”
“I do. I remember Gramps in his straw hat taking me out to the field and pointing to the horizon. ‘Never let anyone tell you this land is flat,’ he said. ‘People who say the prairies are flat don’t know a thing.’ I do remember that.”
“I’ve been thinking about those hills,” Gram says. “They’re all shades of blue, aren’t they. Pale against the sky and then they get darker and deeper at the horizon.”
“I used to think they looked like a watercolour painting.”
“It was in that field your grandfather had a heart attack.”
“I was ten and I was so sad.”
“I’m glad that those hills were the last thing he saw.”
I look at Gram. Her eyes are on the sky outside the window, and there’s a strange look on her face.
“Gram, are you sick?”
“Well, my love,” she says, turning to me and reaching to hold my hand, “seems I might have a small growth in my stomach. Don’t you worry.”
My chest starts to feel tight. “That’s terrible, Gram.”
“Oh, Maggie, this is part of growing old.” She smiles gently at me. “I’m old, but I’m tough. I’ll be around for a while.”
I squeeze her hand and I believe her. I need to believe she’ll be around forever.
No chance to ask if I’m adopted.
Anna
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14
I’M ASLEEP WHEN Papa shakes me in the middle of the night.
“Wake up, Anna. Mama has the baby now. You must help.”
It’s then I hear the baby’s cry. The baby has come! I rush into the bedroom and see Mama lying with her eyes closed. The kerosene lamp on the dresser is lit and I can see blood on the sheets around her. Papa picks up the baby with the cord still attached. I sit on the bed and he puts the baby in my arms. It’s a girl, and she’s so tiny. Her dark eyebrows are two perfect arcs over her eyelids. She’s crying steadily now.
Papa goes down to the kitchen and comes back with a kitchen knife to cut the cord. He ties it with string, then wipes the blood off the baby with a towel. The baby has stopped crying, and I hold her up so Mama can see. Mama looks at the baby, but only for a moment, then closes her eyes again. Even in the dim light from the lamp I can see that Mama’s face is pale.
“Stay with Mama. I go for Mrs. Covey,” Dad says on his way downstairs. I hear the kitchen door bang and his truck start up.
I wrap the baby in a clean towel and try to put her in Mama’s arms, but Mama is sleeping and can’t hold her. I sit on the bed beside Mama, holding the baby. The baby is very still. I put my face up to hers and feel soft little breaths. She’s alive.
“Papa will be back with Mrs. Covey soon,” I say to Mama. She opens her eyes and looks at me.
Her voice is so faint I have to lean close to hear. “Take care of the baby, my Anna.” Her eyes lock into mine.
“I will, Mama. I promise,” I whisper.
I know Mama hears me, because she sighs and goes back to sleep. I sit beside her holding the baby for a long time. Everyone else in the house is asleep. The air is still, with the lonely feeling of a house when you’re the only one awake. You might be the only person awake in the whole world.
At last I hear Papa come in. He brings Mrs. Covey into the bedroom. She looks at the baby and smiles. Then she bends over Mama.
Mrs. Covey isn’t smiling when she looks up. “She’s gone. Your mother’s gone.”
My mother’s gone? Does she mean Mama has died? I hear Papa’s heavy breaths behind me.
“Your mother lost too much blood and slipped away,” Mrs. Covey says. Her eyes are gentle when she looks at me. “Take the baby downstairs and light the fire. I need to take care of your mother.”
PAPA LOOKS STUNNED and doesn’t say anything as he gets wood and builds a fire in the stove. I sit at the kitchen table with the sleeping baby in my arms.
Something momentous has happened. Mama is no longer here on this earth. Her body is upstairs in that dark room, but she’s not there. My chest feels as though it’s being squeezed. Is this the
pain I’ll feel for the rest of my life?
I look down at the baby. She’s so light, so helpless with no mother to keep her safe. I hold her tighter.
Then Papa scares me by putting his head down on the table and starting to moan. “I’ve lost her. Mama has left me with six children. I cannot do it, Anna.”
“It will be all right, Papa,” I tell him. “I promised Mama I’d look after the baby.”
He gets up and finds a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard and starts to drink right out of the bottle.
Mrs. Covey comes down and says she’ll call the priest and the undertaker from her home phone. It’s starting to get light when Papa drives her home. The baby sleeps on, breathing so softly. I sit in the kitchen, my legs too heavy to move. I think of all the things I have to do. I must remind Joe to milk Dover so there will be milk for the baby. And have Papa bring down the wooden cradle from the attic.
The morning sun streams through the dust on the window and makes everything that happened in the night seem unreal.
THE BOYS ARE up and the girls too. They’re surprised to see the baby, but they sit quietly, the girls not understanding when I tell them that Mama is dead.
“You mean Mama is sleeping?” Helen asks.
“Oh, Helen,” I say, “being dead is different. It means she won’t wake up.”
I see the dawn of fear in Helen’s eyes. I don’t know how to help her.
Joe goes out to milk the cow, and I let Berny hold the baby. His eyes are red and his nose runs, but he doesn’t let go of the baby to wipe at it.
I cook porridge for everyone. We’re still sitting at the table at ten o’clock when the priest and the undertaker come in, both of them dressed in sombre dark suits.
Then the night seems real.
The priest looks around the table and says, “You must come upstairs to say goodbye to your mother.”
Papa picks up Lucy, and we go into the bedroom. Mrs. Covey has folded Mama’s hands over her chest. Her lovely long fingers are pale and limp. I touch her hands and oh, they’re so cold.
The girls are frightened and crying. Berny’s sobbing, but Papa and Joe don’t cry. I don’t cry, either. I have to hold the baby in one arm and lift Helen so she can kiss her mother’s cheek. No one speaks; the air in the room is heavy.
The priest makes the sign of the cross over Mama and asks God to bless her and take her into the Kingdom of Heaven. Then he pats each of us on the head and says, “Be good children and honour your mother.”
They put Mama on a stretcher and carry her to the long, black hearse and drive away. The baby starts to cry.
Maggie
FRIDAY, APRIL 16, AND SATURDAY, APRIL 17
ANNA HASN’T BEEN at school for two days. Both mornings I wait in the yard for the school bus, but none of the Lozowski kids are on it. Anna’s family has no phone. My head is buzzing with worry.
When the bell goes, Miss Alexander stands up straighter than usual at the front of the room. She’s not smiling.
“Class,” she says, “I have a sad announcement.” My heart starts hammering in my chest. It is Anna. She must have had an accident.
“I’m sorry to tell you that Anna’s mother died two days ago.”
There’s not a sound in the classroom. From far away I hear Miss Alexander’s voice.
“The baby was born early, and the birth was too hard on Anna’s mother. Anna will stay at home to look after the new baby and her sisters. She won’t be coming back to school. Her brothers will be back next week.”
I feel shaky and pull my sweater tighter. Miss Alexander tells us to get our readers and do silent reading until recess. After the bell rings, I wait behind while the others stream into the hall.
I go up to Miss Alexander’s desk. “Is the baby a boy or a girl?” I ask.
“It’s a little girl, Maggie.” She looks at me, her eyes soft.
“Will Anna be able to finish grade seven with us?”
Miss Alexander shifts the papers on her desk. “I don’t know about that yet. I understand the funeral is at four o’clock next Tuesday at St. Joseph’s. I intend to go.”
“I’d like to go too.”
“Do you think your parents could drive you out to Anna’s place? I’d like to put together a package of school books for her,” Miss Alexander says.
“I’m sure my dad would. I’ll go too. Mom can’t drive.” I don’t mention that she wouldn’t want to go anyway. She didn’t know Anna’s mother and she doesn’t like Mr. Lozowski.
AT SUPPER, MOM SAYS, “It’s a shame for those kids. Six of them now with the baby. And Anna doing all the work. That father of hers is probably in town right now drowning his sorrows in the beer parlour.”
I wish Mom wouldn’t talk like that. I need to think about how things have changed so quickly. Poor Anna. Her mother is dead, and she won’t be able to come to school. And poor me. I won’t have my best friend in school.
Dad agrees to drive out to Anna’s farm on Saturday.
“I’ll come with you,” I say.
Mom butts in. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Your father will drop off the things for Anna. If you were there, you’d want to stay. I don’t feel right about you spending time on that farm.”
“I have to go, Mom.”
I turn to my father. “Dad? I need to see Anna.”
“Your mother and I will talk about it. Good night, Mags.”
I go to bed determined to see Anna tomorrow. I’ll throw myself under the car wheels if I have to.
I’M SURPRISED THE next day when Mom says I can go. I guess Dad talked her into it. Mom has things for us to take to the family. She’s made a gingerbread cake, and she takes a yellow baby blanket from her gift drawer.
“I crocheted this last winter. At least the child will be warm.” Mom hands me some coloured wrapping paper.
I’m struggling to wrap the blanket when Mom says, “That parcel looks a mess. Let me straighten it.”
I bite my tongue. I can’t do anything right.
Dad and I drive in the big police car south out of town toward the line of hills on the horizon. Dad says it’s seven miles on the dirt road to the four sections where the Lozowskis run their cattle.
I’m nervous about seeing Anna. I don’t know if she’ll be too upset to talk to me. Or what I should say about her mother. Or if I’ll start to cry as soon as I see her. I grip the cake pan tightly the whole drive out.
We turn off at the corner just before the park grounds and drive along a small creek lined with trees. Dad parks the car close to the two-storey wooden house, and a little girl in bare feet with tight curly hair comes running out to meet us.
“You must be Helen,” I say, smiling at her. She looks at me with a serious face and nods, then runs to the back door. Joe and Berny are bending over an old truck in the yard and wave to us.
Mr. Lozowski comes out the door, rubbing his unshaven cheeks and brushing back his dark hair. He’s wearing dirty grey trousers with black suspenders. He nods at us. Anna comes out behind him, with a smaller girl hanging onto her skirt.
Anna sees me and runs to give me a tight hug.
“This is Lucy,” Anna says, pushing the small girl forward. “Lucy, can you say hello to Maggie and her father?”
Lucy stares at us with big brown eyes. “Uh-hum.” She reaches to Helen to be picked up.
Helen is very pretty, even with her dark hair in tangles. She isn’t much bigger than Lucy, and she struggles to hold her younger sister in her arms.
Dad and Mr. Lozowski walk into the yard. Anna leads me inside.
I put the cake tin and the parcel on the kitchen table beside the dirty plates. The little girls come over and stare at the tin.
“Are you Anna’s friend?” Helen asks.
“I’m her best friend,” I tell her. “And I hear you’re the girl with all the questions!”
Anna gives me a smile. Her eyes look tired. She goes to a wooden cradle and picks up the baby, kisses her, and hands her to me.
The baby is as light as a doll, but much warmer and softer than any doll I’ve ever had. Her pink face is all scrunched up. She whimpers a bit and kicks her thin legs loose from the blanket.
“We named her Isabella, after Mama,” Anna says. “Bella for short.”
“That’s a beautiful name.” I tighten the blanket around the baby and sit at the kitchen table, watching while Anna wedges wood into the stove and slides over a pan of milk.
Berny comes in the door. I see him at school, and he seems popular with the other grade four boys. Joe comes in too. Tall and good-looking, Joe’s in grade ten and has the start of a beard on his chin. I hear he’s smart, like Anna.
The boys nod at me, and Berny’s eyes fix on the cake. “Can we have some?” he asks.
Anna says, “Okay, everyone can have a piece.” She passes me a bottle to feed the baby.
It surprises me how quickly Bella starts sucking, her pink mouth gripping tightly to get the milk. I run my hand over the dark fuzz on her head and stroke her little hand. Her fingers close around mine and my heart gives a leap. She knows I’m here.
The two girls and Joe and Berny stand around munching the cake that Anna’s cut. She offers me a piece, but I shake my head and tell her to have one herself.
I stroke Bella’s warm head. “You are hungry, aren’t you, little one?” I say. The baby stares solemnly up at me with big dark eyes, then stops sucking, and the tip of a pink tongue pushes out between her lips. Then she goes back to sucking. She smells of milk and something sweet like honey.
Anna smiles down at Bella. “She’s a good baby. She loves her bottle, but it’s hard at night because she wakes up every two hours.”
“She’s only a few days old. When will she sleep through the night?”
“Lucy didn’t sleep all night until she was almost a year. Bella came early and she’s small. I don’t know when I’ll get a decent sleep.”
Anna knows more about babies than I ever will. There are smoky circles around her eyes. She’s pale, but all her brothers and sisters have pale skin and dark hair like hers. The baby, too.