“Yes, least you’re getting some sleep—hard enough as it is, getting up in the mornings.”
“Yes, I gets some sleep now I knows,” said Suze, “with that little angel sitting up on his pillow all night long, his chest heaving with him trying to get his breath. Sits in the kitchen and cries, I do, till Am comes out and drives me to bed. And then there’s the baby to feed. And Am’s as weak-hearted as anything. One thing I can say about your man, Addie—kind as anything, he is. Took Benji with him, sir, when he come by last week to help Am fix his boat. He’ll be a good one with youngsters when ye haves some—”
Adelaide groaned, relieved as the buzzer sounded loud and harsh above her head, giving her reason to shove in through the heavy wooden doors and away from Suze. Irritably, she hauled off her coat, ignoring her mother, who was shuffling in behind her.
“Ah, you lets everything get to you,” Florry scolded, hauling off her coat as well and, along with Adelaide, exchanging it for one of the white frocks hanging on the dozens of nails lining the sparsely painted walls of the dressing room. “You knows she’s only joking, sure. Cripes, as if anybody could picture you having babies!”
“Oh, Suze gets on my nerves,” said Adelaide crossly.
“Ah, everything gets on your nerves, Addie.”
“How can it not when all they all talks about is babies, babies, having a man and having babies,” Adelaide flared. “Jeezes, I wouldn’t open me mouth if that’s all was coming out.”
“Haughty! By gawd, you’re haughty,” said Florry. “Whatever’s wrong with you, you been like it since the day you was born. Don’t go huffing at me,” she warned, stomping her foot in a spurt of anger as Adelaide, her frock buttoned, turned to go.
Adelaide turned back, her irritation vanquished by this childlike mother, staring up at her, all defiant and bristling. “I’m not huffing,” she said defensively. “Never mind.” She sighed, walking away. “As if I huffs more than the rest of the brood.”
“Brood!” mimicked Florry and, in a rare show of quickness, leaped ahead of Adelaide, staring her down. “How come you says that now—brood. You’re not a brood to me, you’re Addie. And Janie. And I likes Addie so much I got it in mind to call this one coming Addie, as well.”
Adelaide’s eyes swung in surprise to her mother’s waist. Three months? Six? Nine? Who could tell with that short, stubby body, and the belly permanently rounded?
“Perhaps it’s wrong to keep having ye when we’ve no clear means,” whispered Florry, her face reddening beneath her daughter’s scrutiny. “But I’m only doing what feels right at the time. And even when I looks back, I’ve no clear mind where it might be wrong. It’s only when ye starts growing out of diapers that I’d like to give ye away.”
Adelaide raised her hands in exasperation. “Why do you keep having us, then?”
“Because I loves babies, that’s why. And nobody else in the brood”—she stopped for emphasis—“is all the time mad like you.”
“I’m not all the time mad.”
“Yes, you are all the time mad, and you always means it, too—whatever it is you’re all the time mad at. But that’s for you to figure, not me. I wish you would marry, I do. See if it might change you a bit.”
Change! From what into what? thought Adelaide dismally as the second buzzer rang, sending fifty or sixty workers jostling around her, assailing her nostrils with the stringent smell of tobacco and black tea as coats and caps got swapped for aprons and hairnets, and dozens of bodies pushed her along, fighting for a dip in the disinfectant water filling the trough before heading onto the floor. Marching past nine work stations laid out side by side before a long conveyor belt, Adelaide stood at the tenth and last, all thoughts about change evaporating as she fixed her hairnet in place, tied on the stiffly bibbed rubber apron that hung to her knees, pulled her filleting knife out of her rubber boot, and hauled a pan of fillets off the conveyor belt rumbling along in front of her. Slapping an ice-cold fish from the pan onto the piece of acrylic that marked her workplace, she slit the V-bone from the fillet, trimmed the tail, and hacked apart the flesh too soft or bruised, then flicked each section into a pan designated for different grading. One of the belts rumbling out of the holding room at the back of the plant started a low moaning that quickly accelerated into a shrill screech, sending her clamping her hands over her ears as the sound shivered through her teeth.
“Shut it down, shut it down!’ hollered somebody. ‘Sweet Jesus, shut it down!” The demonic sound subsided, and Adelaide let go her breath with relief. Four weeks! Four weeks she’d been standing here, and never had her nerves been more jagged. Hell is what this plant was, bloody hell with its ten stations to each side of the conveyer belt, and another belt rumbling behind her with another twenty stations, making for forty stations and forty women, arguing, cackling, and shrieking over the belts rattling along its pans of fish from the filleters to the skinners to the trimmers (of which she was one), and then on to the packers where it was wrapped in five-, ten-, twenty-pound boxes and nailed shut and jammed into freezers, steel plates clanging, doors slamming, steam hissing from the web of pipes snaking barely a foot over the tallest head. And despite its being the loudest, the station closest to the skinners and the holding door was the one she chose to work at, sparing herself the added aggravation of having to shout back at Suze or Gert or her mother or a dozen others all working around her, bellowing to each other over the ruckus of the machinery.
Most mornings she worked three hours steady, up to break time, without a word, without looking up. Yet, hellish as it was, she rested assured she’d never have to scrape another maggoty fish, for not even a mosquito ventured into this low, oblong cell of harsh overhead lights, of walls shaking from the clanging, vibrating generators, of air putrid with gut and gurry, and fishermen out-shouting each other over the clanging of the motors and winches as they tied up at the wharf in their longliners and skiffs and motorboats and punts, unloading their thousands of pounds of fish into the holding station.
Yet, despite the growing complaints of those working around her for more air, longer tea breaks, and a place to sit and have lunch, she liked it just fine to stand straight-backed, not hunched; to have her world reduced to a piece of acrylic with a light beneath it and five pans in an arc around it; to have her daily wardrobe consist of an oversized rubber apron dragging past her knees and a hairnet that rendered her and the rest of them—men and women alike—to caricatures of old women. What need to expend five minutes of caressing the yellowy petals of a buttercup, of gazing through the honeyed haze of the sun, of feeling last evening’s raindrops slide coolly down one’s cheek—of what use was anything when most of daylight’s hours were spent standing imbecilic amongst the maniac roar of machinery, hacking apart flesh already eating itself?
Marry the fisherman in the fancy suit? Humph. Not as if she didn’t think of it. Divine were those visions of grass and finches and clean, running waters. And she gorged herself upon reliving the sweetness of lazing beside the falls, her cheeks cooling to its mist, and the grass cushioning her bed, and the breeze lifting and fondling her hair with fern-scented combs. But to conjure the meadow without Sylvanus Now was like conjuring the brook without the falls, for dark was his figure upon that mantle of grass and wildflowers, and his presence, no matter how much he held himself behind her, was as commandeering as the foaming white waters plunging down the hillside.
Loneliness is what he evoked in her, a great, starving loneliness. She had always banished those around her, scorning their foolish games, seeking aloneness. Now he had violated that aloneness, pried apart the four corners of her world, inviting her to step outside, filling her with other needs and trading his meadow for them.
She winced, and not solely from the conveyer belt starting up again with a shrill whine, but from where her thoughts had taken her. For just as beauty of face goes no further than to bring attention to the person beneath, so was marriage a sham, bringing attention to silly things like rings and
veils and nice kitchens, distracting the mind from fancy pressed suits getting exchanged for oilskins, and babies swelling out bellies, and the eternity of days to come, ravaged by the deadening detail of domestics.
A blast of cold air struck her, and she shivered, laying down her knife and buttoning the top button of the sweater she wore beneath her frock. A side door opened beyond the faulty conveyer belt, letting in a flash of light that vanished instantly the door shut, like a star sucked from its nebulae and extinguished in a dark hole. Which was exactly how she felt walking to work each morning: like a body forced through light, then sucked inside a dark hole. No wonder she needed to be sanctified. No wonder her thoughts kept turning to the desiring eyes of Sylvanus Now. She conjured again the sweetness of his meadow. Even those times he carried her across the brook to visit his mother were nice, no matter the old woman’s quietude—or aloofness, for she appeared that, Adelaide thought, aloof and a bit disapproving of her son’s bringing home a girl from up-along somewhere. But no matter. That was the very thing Adelaide liked about her: her keeping to herself, knitting in her rocker and watching out the window as the kettle’s humming filled the room around her.
Sure, once, when Sylvanus had gone to fetch something, and she, Adelaide, had been sitting back on the daybed, nodding hypnotically to the clicking of the old woman’s needles, her cheek fanned by the same breeze as was fanning through the window onto the old woman’s fissured cheek, she, Adelaide, had actually slept.
Another scream from the broken conveyor belt and Adelaide quailed, her knife falling from her hand. Picking it up, she wiped it clean against her apron and cursed this hellish hole that wouldn’t allow even for a waft of thought on this cold, drizzly morning.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE LAST SCHOONER SAILS
“ELECTRIC WASHER,” pleaded Ivy that evening as Adelaide and her mother trudged wearily into the house, still wearing their frocks, and staring aghast at the sorted bundles of dirty clothes spread out over the floor, boots strewn about, and plastic balls and smatterings of pebbles spilling from an old sun-bleached plastic bucket. “Can we? can we please?” “
“Name of gawd, can we what?” cried Florry. “
“Get an electric washer when we gets electricity.”
“Praise the Lord, is that what you’re waiting for? How come you got nothing done?” wailed Florry, eyes anguishing past the dirtied clothes and onto the dirtied dishes covering the sink. “And where’s the youngsters—where’s all the youngsters?”
“I sent them out so’s I could get some washing done, but then the sink plugged—” “In this weather? You sent them out in this weather— praise the Lord, and what’re you doing, starting the washing on a Wednesday—and this late in the day?”
“Because I can’t do it tomorrow. I’m going to Carol Ann’s,” she ended pleadingly. “Her father’s showing the new western show and she said I can stay and watch. That old sink’s always plugging up. If we ever gets electricity—”
“Electricity!” scoffed Adelaide, picking her way across the kitchen, shrugging out of her frock. “What’s that going to do for a plugged sink? And who’ll be taking care of the house whilst you’re watching shows in the middle of the day?”
Ivy faced her. “Think I’m just going to run off and leave everything?” she yelled defiantly.
“Might as well for all you got done today.”
Ivy pulled a sour face. “You stay home, then. See how much you gets done!”
“Yeah, think she’s just going to run off and leave everybody?” snitted Janie from across the room. “I’m helping her look after them—if that’s all right with you,” she ended brazenly.
Adelaide snorted, brushing a pile of clothes off a chair and sinking onto it. “You’ll take care of them, all right. From the looks of this place, it takes the two of ye to fold a pudding bag. Oh, don’t bother me,” she ended tiredly as Ivy started toward her, howling in protest.
“And don’t you bother we, either,” yelled Janie.
“Well, she’s always at us!” said Ivy as her mother held up a fist of warning at Janie. “And I was taking Johnnie and Alf with me to the show, so it’s only the small ones Janie was looking after. Oh, what odds,” she ended in a wail, kicking a bundle of clothing aside, “I never get a chance to go anywhere.”
“Big mouth,” said Janie, fishing a ratchet out of the drawer and glaring at Adelaide. “Perhaps you’re jealous and wants to go yourself.”
“Mind now, Janie,” said Florry, “be none of ye going nowhere we don’t get this mess cleaned up. What’re you doing with the ratchet? You got something dropped down the sink? What you got dropped down the sink?”
“We got nothing dropped down the sink,” both Janie and Ivy cried at once. “It’s just plugged, is all, like it always is,” continued Ivy, “and if we had hot water, we could run it down the drain and cut through the fat.”
“Fat!” said Adelaide. “You got fat poured down the drain?”
“I never said I poured fat down the drain! You never hears nothing I says. Everybody else is getting their houses wired. How come we’re not getting ours wired?”
“Oh, for the love of the Lord, don’t bring up nothing else,” moaned Florry, sinking into her rocker and easing her feet out of her rubber boots. “Go out and find the youngsters, for gawd’s sake—go on, and no more saucing. Who’s that talking outside the window? Addie, take a look. Well, sir!” she exclaimed as Adelaide, her boots kicked off, rose and walked past the window without a glance. “Was that too much to ask—take a look through the window? Cripes! Go see, Janie, go see who’s outside the window. Janie? Well, sir, what’s she at!” she cried as Janie, halfway inside the cupboard by now, started hammering at the pipe with the ratchet. “Wait, hold on. That’s not how you uses it; name of gawd, it’s not a hammer! Get it from her, Addie, quick, before she breaks the pipe.”
Adelaide was pouring hot water from the kettle into a faded plastic pan at the washstand. “Watch out!” she yelled as Ivy, hauling on a coat, barrelled past her, near causing her to lose her grip on the kettle. “Trying to bloody scald me,” she yelped, then huffed in exasperation as Ivy flung herself out the door, leaving it wide open behind her. “Born on a bloody raft,” she muttered, kicking it shut.
Immediately the door popped open again, and thinking it was Ivy ducking back for a last retort, Adelaide drew in front of it, holding out the kettle threateningly. It was her father, Leamond. Still wearing his sou’wester, his jowls blackened by a month’s growth, and his eyes a brighter blue than she remembered, he stood squinting into the room as though he were still searching out horizons from the bow of a schooner.
“Leam!” exclaimed Florry. “Well, sir, I thought ’twas you I heard out by the window. My gawd, Addie, stand aside and let him in. Sir, what’re you doing home middle of the month?” and kicking aside her rubbers, she lifted herself out of the rocker, skirting her way around the assorted piles of dirty clothes toward him. Adelaide stood aside as he edged his thick frame through the door, his shoulder bent painfully beneath the strap of a heavily stuffed duffle bag and a pair of logans dangling by their laces from around his neck.
“Lift it off, lift it off,” he croaked impatiently, nudging his bent shoulder toward her. Adelaide pulled back, a constrained look on her face at his odour of schooners and rust.
“Squeamish, Lord, how squeamish is she!” cried Florry, as Adelaide hooked a finger beneath the strap of her father’s bag, giving it a little tug. “Get away, here, get away,” said Florry, grabbing the strap from her daughter and yanking it off Leamond’s shoulder. “Gentle Mary, what’ve you got in there, rocks?” she exclaimed as it thudded to the floor. “How come you’re home, my son? What’s wrong, haven’t got yourself hurt, have you?”
“Nothing, there’s nothing wrong,” Leamond replied in that whiny, quarrelsome manner Adelaide hated, as though he was always caught in argument. And in effect he was, she thought, eyeing him as she laid the kettle back on the stove,
for he reminded her of a tuckamore, forever beaten by the wind, his limbs gnarled in protest, his trunk thickened and stunted, and his scruff of hair flattened mat-like atop his head—as was Sylvanus’s, she recalled, that day on the cliffs, standing bowlegged as he leaned into the wind, pointing out to her the nest of a carey chick. Her heart lurched sickeningly as she now watched her father crossing the room with a bowlegged gait.
Ooh, were you once dark and tall? she cried silently. Were you once the upright juniper, now dwarfed by the wind? Ooh, and unable to deal with such a thought, she rooted through the dirty dishes in the sink, looking for the soap that was forever missing from the washstand, listening intently for her father’s reply, as her mother never gave pause with her haranguing.
“Then what’s you doing home? You only been gone a few weeks. Name of gawd, Janie, stop clanging at that pipe. Take that ratchet—or the wrench, whatever the hell it is she got in her hands—away from her, Addie. Didn’t I tell you to take it from her? Here, sit down, Leam, before you falls, and don’t tell me you’re not sick, else you’d not be home in the middle of the season. Mind now, Addie, you don’t hurt her,” she cried as Adelaide, her sleeves shoved up and about to immerse her hands into the pan of hot water, now trod impatiently across the room, grabbing her younger sister by the ankles.
“My Lord, they got me drove foolish,” Florry carried on as Janie let out a series of yelps, clinging to the pipe and kicking at Adelaide trying to drag her out, “I wish you would stay home, Leam, I wish you would, for the older they gets, the worse they gets. Janie!”
“You can’t just hit at it,” yelled Adelaide as Janie kept kicking and clinging to the pipe.
“I’m not just hitting at it. I’m loosening it.”
“A bit more and you’ll have a sink full of water drowning you!”
“I got a bucket to catch it, you idiot. You think I’m stun like you?”
“Hear them? Hear them? That’s what they’re like all day long,” said Florry, “like savages. I wish you would leave the boats, Leam, or else take the whole brood out to sea with you. Now, that’d be a blessing, that would, all of them floating on a boat for the rest of their days.”
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