Adelaide sat, anger working its way through her limbs. “You treat them as if they were still girls,” she finally said. “Janie’s near nineteen. Why wouldn’t you just leave her alone, make her pies whatever way she wants?”
“Ah, now, don’t you go starting, Addie, because that’s who they all learned it from, you—all the time fighting and bawling out.”
“I’m not starting nothing. I just wants to know why you wouldn’t leave her alone, is all. Why wouldn’t you just leave her alone?”
“Because she’d never get nothing done if I left her alone. Always up to foolishness, Janie is. And that Ivy, that’s worse again, that is. Lord above, Addie, wait till you gets a house full of youngsters and see then what happens when one wants Pablum for breakfast and another wants eggs and another wants boiled fish. Come back and tell me then what housework gets done if you leaves them alone.” She sighed in an overplayed moment of weariness. “More than once I wished they were babies agin. Only time they had any sense is when they were babies. That’s what I was always telling my own mother—give me the baby to look after, and you look after the rest. Swear to gawd I never touched a youngster after they was two till I had my own.”
Adelaide stared at this dumpling of a mother, her thoughts tripping in astonishment. “Did you never think we’d grow?” she asked incredulously.
“Like any mother with a house full now,” Florry replied, “if I had given thought, I wouldn’t’ve had any of ye. My, Addie, sit back; you’re like the cat about to pounce. As if anybody had time for thinking with a crowd of youngsters all the time bawling out! Cripes, by the time I learned to think, I was already carrying you. Too late then for thought. What’re you wearing the long face for? Would you rather you was never born?”
“I’ve sometimes wondered,” said Adelaide absently.
She was immediately drawn back by her mother’s own sense of frustration as she cried out, “Name of gawd, not that big, is it, you’d rather not be born than stew a bit of rhubarb all together? You knows you got to keep it simple, maid. If it weren’t for keeping things simple, nothing would ever get done. What’s you wanting to make a thing hard for when you can keep it simple? There’s no more difference in rhubarb than there is in grass, providing it all come from the same patch. Any fool knows that. Oh, my,” she wailed as the ball struck against the window again, hard. “Swear to gawd, I’ll tear me hair out yet. I bet you remembers that day, don’t you, when I fell on my knees in front of you, threatening I’d tear me hair out? That’s how bad you was one day, Addie. Swear to gawd, I almost done it, too. You remember that?”
No, thought Adelaide grimly as her mother creaked back in her chair, her feet scarcely touching the floor as she rocked, her chins sinking into the pudgy stem of her throat, some things may have escaped me, but their meanings haven’t. Sickened, she turned back to the rhubarb on the table.
The ball smacked against the window again, and Florry was on her feet, tutting and huffing as she toddled to the door. Adelaide watched through the window as Johnnie, a good head taller than she last remembered, dove ahead of the younger ones, grasped the ball and ran with it, the others screaming after him. They stalled as Florry appeared, shaking her fist.
“It was Johnnie, Johnnie,” the younger ones cried.
“Go on, you little liars,” cried Johnnie.
Catching Adelaide watching him, he grinned, swaggering toward where Eli was studiously kicking at a clump of weeds. And ignoring their mother’s ordering them inside, they both broke into a run, their heels kicking at their behinds as they shot onto the beach, out of sight behind their father’s old stage, racing upon the road again, a little farther on, their shoulders almost touching, as Janie’s and Ivy’s had when they stood sorting rhubarb.
A daring glance back at their mother, and the boys ducked behind the church. The church. Where she had fled. Alone. Finding her camaraderie amongst its quiet, its order, its sanctity, and in her need for acceptance, had reduced the altar to a world of her own making, and God into a cloth of her own fit.
Her mother came huffing in from bawling at the boys, saying something about the yard and her father. Mumbling something about getting home, Adelaide looked about for her coat, an anxiousness growing within her.
“Well, sir, I suppose you can say more than that,” said Florry, visibly offended. “It’s not every day your father offers somebody his yard!”
“His yard?”
“Well, sir, she don’t hear nothing. He’s offering you his yard to build on. There’s not much room anywhere else to build, leastways not near the water. And knowing Syllie, he’ll want to be near his boat. So your father’s offering you the backyard.” She sank into her chair, trying to catch her breath, pointing to the water bucket. “Give me some water, Addie. Swear to gawd, I’m wore out. Hector Rideout got his mother’s old place up for sale. Last year he wouldn’t have got a bed of spuds for that—boarded up for years. But he’s asking a nice price now, with all ye moving here. Who’s that? That’s your father now I hears. Look out the window, see if that’s your father. You can go talk to him about building a house in the yard.”
The dread of such a likelihood was offset by its offering. Glancing through the window, she saw her father dragging a gill net out of his shed, its mesh all cluttered up with the greenish-black slub that was a fisherman’s curse these days. Spreading it out over the beach, he kept hollering at the youngsters who were stumbling around awkwardly as they helped with the spreading. The smallest—Gilbert, or Gilly as he was called—darted across the net, getting his foot entangled in the mesh halfway across. He fell with a yelp. Adelaide more felt than heard her father’s oath of impatience, as he threw down the net and stomped toward Gilly. Swinging the youngster up over his shoulder, he lugged him, screaming and kicking, into the yard, dumping him into the soft mound of sawdust beside the woodpile. Like a shot, the youngster was on his feet, racing after his father, grabbing his leg and shrieking for another horsy ride, another horsey ride.
“When did he start disliking us?” she asked curiously.
“Who? Your father? Your father disliked ye? Well, sir, who said anything about anybody disliking ye! I just said ye were harder to get along with, that’s all I said! Sir, she’s like the robber, stealing your words, then making them her own. There was nothing your father never done for you when you was small. The little doll, he thought you was, and more than once wished he never had to go off on the boats all the time, or in the wood camps. Like coming home to strangers, he said often enough, with all of ye growing up, and he hardly ever seeing ye.”
Adelaide sniffed disbelievingly. “I don’t remember many horsey rides.”
“Well, sir, I just told you he was never home. Sure, the five years between you and Ivy I hardly seen him. Never thought I’d have another youngster. As if I was never married, I told him once. He started coming home more after that. But I tell you he never had much patience when the others started coming. He wasn’t around ye long enough to get any, I always told him. Like we’d all be, I suppose, if we weren’t used to a thing. But he’s been good this past while, especially with the younger ones. Ivy, now they’re at each other’s throats worse than you and he ever was. Certainly, that Ivy is at everybody’s throat, she is, wild as the cat.”
Adelaide watched a moment longer. He had swung the youngster over his shoulder and was lugging him back down on the beach again to where the others were scampering all over the net, picking off the slub.
“What’s he doing with a gill net?” she asked. “Don’t he work in the plant?”
“Nay. He quit that a few weeks ago—got on his nerves, working in all that racket. He was midshore for a while with Hector on his skiff. But he couldn’t even handle that—being fifty, sixty miles out on the water in a small boat. Nerves is gone. So he’s on his own now, if he can keep himself going in nets. That’s the third one he got this year. Them trawlers keeps tearing them up. Good thing the government’s giving them away.”
&n
bsp; “He’s getting enough fish with the gill nets?”
“He’s not doing too bad with it, although he’d like to be working alongside somebody. Not young now, your father’s not.”
She turned back to her mother. “What’d you mean, the government’s giving them away?”
“Out at the fish store. They just gives you one whenever you wants.”
“But what about ghost fishing—all them fish it catches and rots.”
“My gawd, don’t get your father going on that. They took away his schooner and his flakes, and they’re letting all them foreign boats in here, robbing us. The gill net’s all he got left, and if they takes that away, he’ll be nothing more than a hangashore, because for sure you won’t catch him back in the plant agin. Anyway, like I tells him, them nets can’t be that bad, else the government wouldn’t be giving them away like they are. They’re not as stun as all that, are they? Go on out and talk to him. He’ll want to know about the yard, seeing’s you were here.”
“I’ll—tell him I’ll talk to Syllie. I got to go—Suze and Ambrose is probably waiting by now.”
Her father rose as he spotted her leaving through the back door, cutting across the yard. She gave a half-hearted wave and kept on walking, feeling a sudden need to be home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A LESSER GOD
CLIMBING OUT OF THE BOAT in Cooney Arm, Adelaide waved to Suze, and leaving Ambrose to unload and sort out their purchases, she started homeward. The wind was against her, rakish, and it swayed trees and saplings alike, rippling through the grass and battling with her skirt and hair. The graveyard appeared to her left, and her step faltered, her eyes fastened upon the three little mounds of dirt, all sodded now, with shorn grass, and with three wooden crosses looking over them, and seashells, bleached white by the sun, scattered about. Put there by Sylvanus or Eva, no doubt, for she hadn’t ever been inside except for the burials.
“Addie!” It was Suze, catching up with her. “Nice, isn’t it?” she said, glancing at the graveyard and the sun-bleached seashells. “Syllie put them there yesterday,” she added, dispelling Adelaide’s sudden notion that perhaps it had been she, Suze, who put them there. “It’s for the garden service on Sunday. Addie, you should come. No, wait,” she implored as Adelaide turned, brushing her away, “I think it’ll help you. I knows you don’t like me talking about this—and Am thinks I shouldn’t, either—”
“Then don’t,” cut in Adelaide, that old tightening back in her chest. Bending into the wind, she ploughed forward, trying to shut out Suze, who was chasing after her, her pipes bellowing louder than Gert’s.
“Perhaps I am interfering, Addie, but some things I just feels, and this never visiting their graves, I don’t think it goes well, especially since you’re their mother. They were awful pretty babies, Addie—even the one in the caul. I knows you hates that I looked, but I had to, along with Syllie, he was so broken, Addie, the prettiest little thing, I always felt you should’ve looked, seen how pretty your baby was, it was a awful thing to look at, the caul, but that baby—that pretty little baby—”
Adelaide stopped, her hand to her chest, gaping for breath. Suze stood before her. “Are you all right?” she cried. “Lord, Addie, it’s this damn old wind—smother you, it would.”
“It’s not the wind,” said Adelaide quietly. “Just leave me now, please. Just leave me. I’m fine. I’ll think about what you said, if you’ll just leave me.”
“You hates me,” cried Suze. “I shouldn’t have said nothing, I promised Syllie—”
Adelaide shook her head, in silent praise of the tears tumbling down the Suze’s cheek. Impulsively, as though willing those healing waters inside her own cramped self, she leaned toward Suze and pressed her lips against one of the tears. “Now, go on,” she whispered to the surprised girl. “I wants to be by myself.”
Speechless, Suze nodded. She stood for a second, not knowing if there was more to be said, then turned, casting worried looks back over her shoulder as the wind pummelled her along the shore.
Adelaide stood, the huge September sky barrelling clouds overhead and the overly bright sun bouncing sharply off the cemetery’s white picket fence. The wind gusted harder, jiggling the loosely toggled gate, as though bidding her entry. She glanced about, noting a few fishermen tarring their boats way down the beach, another hammering at his stage, a couple of boys yelling and tussling as they gathered wood chips for kindling.
Almost furtively, she untoggled the gate, stepping inside. She could scarcely breathe now, yet the wind was heedless, nudging her along the footpath trailing around the knolls, some marked with crumbling clay tombstones, most not. Her step slowed and she crept nearer those three sleeping graves as though in fear of waking them. Foolish, she thought, yet she faltered, lowering her eyes, and knelt a foot away, the grass so cool it felt wet beneath her knees. For the second time that day she felt the timid stranger, an encroacher, as she lifted her eyes almost warily onto the three little crosses. Immediately she recoiled, her eyes moored onto the names—Eva, Elikum, Eliza—all painted black against the garish whiteness of the crosses.
He’d named them. Syllie had named them. She reached out her hands as though to touch them. Eva. Elikum. Eliza. Her babies. They were her babies, gone, banished to the underground, and with no grieving mother bargaining their return. The tightening in her chest gave way to deep remorse, and she lowered her eyes, wanting to shrink, to cover her face, to hide amidst the tuckamores and the trenches of Eva’s garden, to withdraw into the tuck of her own arid self. Eva. Which one was Eva? The son she knew was the last born, but which one had been Eva? Eliza?
She grasped at the grass on one of the mounds, a wave of hysteria growing within her as she struggled through that dim corridor of memory whose walls were dank with the sweat of her suffering and the wretched stench of death. The labyrinth, she was reaching back into the labyrinth again, not wandering this time, but searching for some one thing, for Eva—that little hand hidden within the white of her caul, for she’d be the one he’d name after his mother, wouldn’t she? The first born, wrapped into a misshapen wing and buried without a mother’s blessing? All of them, banished, forsaken. The thaw was complete, and her flesh, no longer anaesthetized by cold, was racked with grief as she leaned upon that second grave, Eliza’s grave. That startling blue of an eye, that’s what she remembered of the second, and the old midwife saying, “It’s a girl, my dear, it’s a girl,” and she had shut it out, had shut it out. Something came to her—“Like Janie.” Isn’t that what Syllie had said, that one had looked like Janie? Yes, yes, he’d said that, Eliza, that’s who. That startling blue of an eye—she’d seen that, she’d seen that, and for sure it did look like Janie’s, and her cheek had been cold, he’d said. Her cheek had been cold. “Oh, my Lord,” she whispered, and not knowing if it was an exclamation of prayer or pain, she lay down her head, feeling a prickling of tears upon her cheek, and watched them drip onto that shorn grass, gliding along its blade as it might a child’s lock, before soaking through to the underground, baptizing the fretting brows of her babies, Eva, Eliza, Elikum. Poor things. Poor, poor things, and she started a slow rocking, her weeping growing deeper.
After a while, despite her sobs, a curious calm betook her. She remembered back to something of Eva’s, about souls at rest and those still labouring. And that’s how she felt, sitting there beside those little engraved markers, her sobs subsiding, like a mother’s release when the babe is finally brought forth from her labours. Eva. Eliza. Elikum. And she sat there awhile longer, after all had stilled, quietly rocking her babies. Forgiveness. She knew it now. From herself it had to come, and onto that skinny-kneed girl whose sustenance demanded she paste life around her as if it were wallpaper, but then who had scrambled into hiding after it started crimping and peeling and falling in strips around her. She touched her hand upon the coolness of a cross—the middle one, Eliza’s—the bluest eye, and was besieged by the teary blue of her sister Janie’s, and he
r softly whispered bye that had dispersed yesterday’s treacheries like ashes in the wind. Was hers not a cheek deserving of warmth?
Holding back what sobs were left, Adelaide wiped her face and rose. Stepping carefully around the graves, she let herself out of the cemetery and toggled the gate. Cursing the tears that still wanted to flow, she hurried toward Eva’s, sniffling into sleeves that were now wet, and cut around to the back of the house so’s not to encounter the old woman who was surely watching her from some window. Rooting through the tools in the old wooden wheelbarrow, she pulled out the gardening shears, exclaiming loudly as she jabbed a finger on their pointed top. Sticking her finger into her mouth, she headed toward what was left of the rhubarb patch. Shunning the old and the young, she cut what was left of the medium-sized stalks, snapped off the oversized leaves, and when she had a good-sized pile beside her, she lifted it into her arms. Eva appeared in the doorway, but she took no notice, marching steadily onwards.
“Go help Am with the boxes,” she said to Syllie, as he straightened up from cleaving wood at her approach, “and make your mother some hot brandy.” Shutting the door upon his curious look, she set about scrubbing and chopping the rhubarb, and digging out the flour and shortening from the cupboards below, the salt and baking powder from the cupboards above, and the oblong syrup bottle with the long, skinny neck that she kept on the mantel-shelf for a rolling pin.
And whilst the rhubarb was stewing, she blended the flour, shortening, and butter, adding a bit of salt, water, and sugar, dumping all onto the table, rolling and stretching the dough as she herself was being plied and stretched from the coiled little self she’d become into that greater sphere of selflessness, where thought was more focused onto sisters despairing before bake sales, and brothers swaggering before sisters, and mothers rising or sinking to the needs put forth by their children, and fathers resurrecting the long-lost love for a child.
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