No room for photos and dreams . . .
Silence pummelled the air. Pushing away panic, I grabbed the oars and rowed hard back to shore. Only a photo. I’d get him to send me another. But where was he? The boat crunched onto the sand. I clambered out, sped up to the cottage and flung back the kitchen door. ‘Granny Davina?’ I panted. ‘Could we please phone my father?’
‘What . . . ? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Roberta, look at that sand. Get a broom.’
‘Yes, I will, but could we please phone my father? I haven’t heard from him since we left home. It’s been ten weeks. I’m worried, and just now out on the lake I lost his photo. It’s all I had and I need him to send me another one.’
‘Telephone New Guinea for a photo – have you lost your mind? Do you know how much it costs? Your father’s fine, Roberta. If he weren’t, we’d have heard.’
‘Please . . .’
‘Absolutely not. Now clean up that mess and when you’re done I need some potatoes from the cellar, if you don’t mind.’
I cleaned up the sand and went down into the darkness of the cellar, switching on the light at the bottom of the stairs. The air was thick with the smell of over-ripe fruit and old towels. Sacks of potatoes, onions, boxes of pears and apples were stacked against the walls and the shelves were lined with preserved fruit, jam and chutney. I picked out half a dozen potatoes, took them back upstairs and gave them to Granny D.
Back on the beach the air was sharp. Waves skittered across the inky water and, on the other side of the lake, hills hunched against a darkening sky. I dragged the rowboat up the sand and tipped it upside down so it didn’t fill with water when the storm came. Then I wriggled beneath it and lay there listening to my breath, feeling cold grit and grass on my face and thinking about my mother in hospital. How sick was she? Had Grandpa told me the truth about fixing her up or . . . ? Surely, nothing really bad could happen to Mama? Not . . . ?
And Dad – why hadn’t he written?
‘Roberta!’ Grandpa called. I slithered out.
‘I was beginning to worry about you,’ he said. ‘It’s supper time.’ He caught my arm. ‘Tomorrow, Bertie, just you and me, we’ll go downtown and send your pa a telegraph. Only, don’t tell your grandmother. She fusses, you know.’
Around one in the morning the storm hit. I listened to it rattle the windows of the cottage, then got out of bed and went out to the porch to watch. As I passed the cellar I saw a line of light under the door and realised I must have left it on when I’d got the spuds. I went down to turn it off. Jars of blackcurrant and raspberry jam glowed on the shelves like bottles of blood. I picked up a jar, took off the cloth cover and peeled back the cellophane. Beneath it was a smooth pad of wax that gave way when I pushed. Overhead, thunder cracked. I stuck my finger in the jam and held it up to the light. Rich and gleaming and just thick enough to finger-paint GD across every jar on the shelf. When I finished I got Grandpa’s pea-rifle from the corner, lined up on the first jar and pulled the trigger. Whack! Fruit mince hit the wall. Die, old bat.
Boom! went the thunder. I lined up again. Crack! Strawberry conserve exploded against the wall. Whack! Splat! Blackcurrant jam – two jars – right in her mean mouth. Nice. Mustard pickle. Whoops. Intestines, not nice. Innards should be red. Plum jam – nah, not sloppy enough. Raspberry jam, yes! One. Two. Three – oh, perfect blood!
‘What in God’s name is going on?’
She stood at the top of the stairs, her face stretched with rage. I put down the gun. Suddenly I was tired, so tired I could hardly stand up. If only I could go to sleep and wake up at home, with my mother and father and my brother and everything normal again.
‘Get out!’ screeched Granny D. ‘Get out!’
At seven o’clock the next morning she woke me with a scrubbing brush and a pail of soapy water. It took me an hour to scrub the cellar and when I finished she gave me lines, two hundred of them. You’d have thought I was eight years old. I gazed blearily at the writing at the top of the page, hardly able to keep my eyes open: I am a wicked girl and a great disappointment to my family.
As she walked away, I wrote beneath it: And you, Granny Davina, are a great disappointment to me.
Grandpa was upset that he had no jam to go with his bread but, true to his word, he telegraphed Dad.
A reply came twenty-four hours later.
25JUNE1959
ROBERTA LIGHTFOOT
POST OFFICE SEBA BEACH
ALBERTA
CANADA
SORRY RE YOUR MAMA LITTLE CP STOP HOPE ALL BETTER SOON STOP ALL FINE HERE BUT VERY BUSY STOP GREETINGS TO ALL LOVE DAD STOP LETTER FOLLOWING STOP
I stopped writing to my father.
Post Office Box 61
Port Moresby, TPNG
26th June, 1959
Dear CP,
I apologise for being such a recalcitrant Dad, but I’ve been busy. Sorry to hear that your mother’s sick. I telephoned your grandmother (which she no doubt relayed to you) and was most disappointed you weren’t able to have a word with your old man. However, she assured me all was under control and that your mother will be home soon – no doubt by the time you get this letter. Not too bad a dose of the old malaria, your grandmother reckons, so just a case of riding it out and resting. No need to spoil your trip. Your mother’s waited a long time for this – let her make the most of it.
Not much to report, just busy and hot. Saw your pal Stefi at a barbecue a few weeks back – looks fit and well and was clicking away with her camera – she might have a replacement photo of me I could send you. I’ll check it out but in the meantime I can confirm I look pretty much the same as I did when you left.
Well, darling daughter, must sign off and press on.
Much love from your old,
Dad
‘You didn’t tell me my father telephoned.’
Granny D snipped a thread on her darning. ‘Weeks ago.’
‘You didn’t tell me. Why?’
‘I expect I forgot.’
‘He asked to speak to me.’
‘You weren’t here.’
‘He said he expected by the time I got his letter Mama would be out of hospital. She isn’t. Why isn’t she? What’s wrong with her? What’s happening?’
‘Nothing you need be concerned about, Roberta. Your mother will come home when she’s well.’
‘My mother concerns me. She’s my mother!’
‘That is enough!’
Two weeks later we went to collect Mama from the hospital. She was sitting in a chair, waiting for us, looking like a faded photo. When she hugged me I felt bones I didn’t know existed. We were together for an hour before Grandpa dropped me at the Edmonton train station. Granny D was sending me to Toronto to stay with Uncle Bill and my cousins.
‘Don’t send Bertie away, Mama,’ my mother begged. ‘I haven’t seen her in so long.’
‘It’s better for both of you if she goes, Lily May. You need rest and Roberta needs friends her own age. She’s had only Timothy and me as company for months.’
Uncle Bill was waiting for me at the train station. He was as blond as Mama was dark and meltingly handsome but his limp, even after so many years, was worse than mine and he still needed a stick. He and Aunt Jean had two homes, an apartment in the city and a holiday house on the shores of Lake Erie, about an hour’s drive from Simcoe. We went back to the apartment where Aunt Jean – elegant in a grey silk suit and wearing a bathtub of perfume – kissed me hello and hurried off.
‘Committee meeting,’ said Uncle Bill. ‘Her social conscience is so highly developed it requires her to ignore the needs of her family. That, and work. She works here, I work at Simcoe. She comes down weekends. I’ve got an opto-momomom-etrical practice, kiddo, a spectacle doctor.’ He leaned over and brought his face close to mine. ‘Hmm. Eyes blue; just as I thought.’
My cousins, Maurice and Laura, were spending their summer vacation at the lake house where we’d be going tomorrow. ‘But tonight,’ Uncle Bill said, wav
ing his stick carelessly around the living room, threatening expensive looking vases, ‘you and me are hitting the town. I want to show off my gorgeous niece. Put on your best dress and let’s get out of here.’
‘Can’t I wear this?’
‘Pants? No way. I want a gal on my arm.’
I put on the best dress I had, already too short, and we walked downtown to a posh hotel. Uncle Bill drank bourbon with our huge meal of steak and apple pie and the more he drank, the funnier he became. Like Dad, he’d been a wartime pilot and was full of stories.
‘You flew in an Anson?’ he said when I told him about my birthday flight. ‘Holy cow, I didn’t think there were any left. I flew one a couple of times. It had a wind-out aerial for radio messages that you dropped once you were high enough not to hit anything, but you had to remember to pull it in before you landed. One time I forgot and when we flew over the houses near the runway there was an almighty crash. The aerial had taken the tiles off a half-dozen roofs and frightened the bejesus out of the locals.’
As we left the restaurant, a young couple eyed our built-up boots and swapped smirks. Uncle Bill stuck out his foot. ‘You think this is ugly? You should see my ass!’
We went up the road, hooting with laughter. ‘Useful things, boots,’ he said. ‘You never know when they’re gonna come in handy.’
Early the next morning we drove down to the summer house. It was wide and low and set close to the lake. My cousins were doing impatient wheelies on their bikes in the driveway. Maurice was fourteen and built like a wrestler, Laura was my age, blonde and pretty.
‘I’ll get you a bike and teach you to ride,’ Uncle Bill promised. ‘We’ll start tonight when I get home from work.’
A housekeeper named Kay cooked and cleaned but didn’t look after kids. ‘You lot can entertain yourselves.’
And we did.
Uncle Bill and Maurice taught me to ride. My foot was clumsy at first but within a week I could ride as well as Laura and for the first time in my life I could keep up with other kids. I could go where I wanted and do what I wanted. The bike gave me more freedom than I’d ever known and soon meant more to me than a box of seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils. More, almost, than art. Together we swallowed the countryside – mile after mile of paved roads, dirt roads and grassy tracks. When I wasn’t riding I swam in the lake and painted until there were no paints left. Mama had given me a dollar before I left but when I asked Uncle Bill where I could buy paints he brought home a tin of twelve and a stack of paper. It wasn’t rag paper and the paints weren’t good quality but I was grateful, and I still had my dollar.
One morning I sat at the kitchen table drawing Kay. She was shaped like a pear with a thin wrinkly neck and a big bum, which made her easy to caricature. She bent over and pulled a cake from the oven, her pinny gaping at the neck, face pink with heat. I was grumbling about the hardness of the paints when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned. Maurice stood behind me with a half smile.
‘You want paints, cuz?’ he said. ‘Get on your bike and come with me. I’ll get you paints.’ Red flared from his shoulders, in some places as dark as dried blood, and formed a ruddy halo around his head. I felt uncomfortable, but still he smiled.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
‘Yeah, sure. Why?’
I put down my brush. ‘Oh . . . nothing.’ Whatever was wrong with him had nothing to do with me.
I rode with Maurice to a vacant allotment on the outskirts of town. Laura was there and so were Maurice’s friends, Charlie and Todd.
‘Hey,’ Charlie patted the ground beside him, ‘come sit here, Bertie.’
I sat on the grass. No-one took any notice of my boot, perhaps because they were used to seeing Uncle Bill’s. Charlie pulled out a pack of Camels. ‘You smoke?’
I shook my head.
‘Time you learned.’ He lit a cigarette and pressed it to my lips. ‘Suck it in.’
I breathed in the smoke and coughed.
‘Keep going,’ said Charlie. ‘You’ll get the hang of it.’
Maurice pulled a half of rye from his pocket and passed it around. I took a swig along with everyone else but on top of the cigarette it was too much and I threw up in the grass. Luckily, they thought it was funny.
‘Bertie wants paints,’ Maurice said.
I shook my head, feeling woozy.
He grinned. ‘Another day, hey, cuz? Waste of time anyway, painting.’
I hung around with Laura and the boys most days after that. I liked that they wanted my company but some things they did bothered me. Charlie and Maurice hurled stones through the windows of empty houses, lit fires in derelict buildings and dared each other to sneak into houses and nick things. Todd didn’t join in the destruction but he shoplifted from the drug store – small stuff – candy, erasers, a torch. Sometimes the boys went off and left Laura and me on our own. Being with Laura wasn’t like being with Stefi. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t like damaging things and stealing, especially from people’s homes – things I could have told Stefi. But I had a feeling Laura would think I was pathetic. She might have been my cousin but she wasn’t my friend.
In over two months I’d seen Mama for just one hour. We wrote to each other every week. She told me she was getting better but didn’t know yet when she would be coming East. Sometimes I dreamed about her, frightening dreams that I would never see her again and I’d wake in panic. One night I shouted in my sleep and brought Uncle Bill hurrying to my room. I told him I was missing Mama. ‘Tomorrow,’ he promised. ‘First thing in the morning we’ll give her a call.’ We did phone her but Granny D said Mama and Grandpa had left early for Edmonton. Tears sprang to my eyes. Granny D or God – or both – seemed determined to keep me from my parents.
‘Hey, kiddo,’ said Uncle Bill. ‘Don’t cry.’ He gave me a squeeze. ‘Your mama will be here before you know it. Besides,’ he tapped his leg, ‘you and me – we’re the tough ones – remember?’
August turned to September and summer kept going. Aunt Jean came down at weekends and forced Laura into piano lessons. One afternoon when her mind-numbing scales had driven me out of the house, I wandered down to the lake and lay in the long pale grass, making pictures out of clouds like I used to when I was little. I heard rustling behind me and boys’ voices. A face appeared, upside down. Two faces. Three. Maurice, Todd and Charlie.
Maurice flopped down beside me. ‘Goddamn vacation’s nearly over.’
Fine by me; I’d just heard from Uncle Bill that my mother was coming . . . at last.
Charlie pulled a fistful of stolen all-day suckers from his pocket and handed them around. ‘Compliments of Mr Murdoch. Shame he doesn’t know about it. Hey, Bertie,’ he drew his tongue lazily across the candy, ‘why don’t you take off your panties?’
I snorted. ‘Very funny.’
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you what a prick looks like.’
‘I know what a prick looks like.’
‘Good, then you’ll know what to do with it.’ He leaned forward and grabbed the neck of my smock.
‘Get off!’
‘Come on, Bertie – who else is going to want you with that piss-ugly foot?’
I froze.
He yanked me forward. I tried to get up but I was too slow. He grabbed my ponytail and twisted it around his fist. Pulled, hard. I hit the ground, screeching and lashed out at his face with my nails.
‘Fuckin’ bitch!’
Someone grabbed my hands and held them above my head. ‘No!’
‘Shut up!’ Maurice’s sour hand clamped over my mouth.
Charlie rolled onto my chest, pressing the air from my lungs.
‘Get off her!’ Todd appeared over Charlie’s shoulder and yanked on his collar. Maurice kicked out and Todd toppled backwards.
I began to retch. The world was turning indigo. My lungs were bursting and my ears were filling with the sound of a roaring wave and on the wave, an echo . . . You strong, Bertie, like Solomon.
He fell back, clutching his balls and howling. I scrambled up and took off.
Back at the house, I bolted myself in the bathroom. My chest ached. My scalp was on fire. I shook from head to toe but inside I felt worse. I’d trusted them. I’d trusted him – Maurice – because he was my cousin. I’d ignored his colours and my gut feelings because I wanted to be wanted, boot and all.
I tugged off my clothes and stepped under the shower, careful to avoid the mirror and my stupidity. I washed Maurice’s horrible hand from my mouth but as the water hit my scalp I gasped. Charlie must have ripped out handfuls.
Oh, CP, what happened to your beautiful hair?
Oh, Dad.
Tears leaked down my cheeks.
You strong, you got Solomon heart.
Solomon had killed to defend his twelve-year-old niece. I didn’t have Solomon but I had his heart. I had colours and I had my instincts and from now on I’d trust them. No looking to other people. No more fake friends and absolutely no more tears. I soaped my body and tipped shampoo onto my screaming scalp. No-one would know anything was wrong. Wash up. Wise up.
For the rest of the holidays I avoided my cousins and stuck close to the cottage.
‘What’s with you?’ Laura demanded.
‘Nothing. I just want to draw.’
‘Draw. You’re a sap, Roberta, you know that? A dull, boring cannibal-country sap.’
Mama and I sat on the porch swing, sipping Kay’s homemade lemonade. My mother was still thin but her skin had regained its dark glow and the whites of her eyes were white again.
‘You’re very remote, Bertie. Is anything the matter?’
Nothing I couldn’t handle myself any more.
‘No. I missed you, that’s all. I was worried because I didn’t know what was wrong with you. I still don’t. What happened, Mama? What made you so sick?’
‘Malaria.’
‘Grandpa said you had women’s problems, something as big as a grapefruit. What was it?’
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