by Anne Carter
“I’m a big sister,” I say. “How long before I can teach that kid to play goal?”
Tante Marie laughs and wipes her eyes. “Knowing you, next year. As soon as Céline can walk.”
She walks over to me and kisses both my cheeks – the smell of Tante Marie. “I’ll be gone in the morning,” she continues. “I won’t come back here again.”
My legs tremble at the thought of losing her. It’s not fair. “But if you don’t come, I’ll never see you.”
“The train runs both ways between Toronto and Montréal,” Tante Marie says.
“Me?” It’s an astonishing thought. Could I do it? “Travel alone on the train?”
“You’ll be fourteen in August. I traveled alone when I was twelve. There’s a porter to help you on and off. And the conductor will treat you like a queen. You’ll love it.”
Tante Marie’s eyes sparkle. “If I send you the ticket for your birthday, your maman won’t deny you my gift.”
The pressing on my chest stops. I realize it wasn’t pressure on my lungs at all. It was on my heart. My mother’s problems are not mine. I can still love Tante Marie.
“I’ll do it. I’ll come by myself.”
She drops her voice to a whisper, a lavender-scented whisper. “We’ll have fun. I’ll take you to see les Canadiens play at the Forum. That’s where we’ll really beat those maudits anglais.”
Oh, Tante Marie! She makes me laugh. How lucky I am. Ever since that first time back in the House of Horrors, she’s brought me her gifts. She causes such wonderful trouble.
If only my mother could understand. Whatever Tante Marie’s gifts, they have a way of bringing me home.
18.
HOME
In the morning when I get up, Tante Marie is gone. Dad has taken her to the train station. She is on her way back to Montréal. She’s on her way home.
As I get dressed, I remember the trouble she caused at the House of Horrors. We had to wait a few days until I could be discharged. Tante Marie visited every morning, staying for hours to check that we were all okay. She brought fresh croissants, raspberry jam and thermoses of hot chocolate, teaching us to sing “Alouette, gentille Alouette” with her as we got ready for each day.
Witch Wilson quit, or was fired. It didn’t matter which. When the doctor ordered her down to his office, she left our ward for the last time. She never haunted us again.
My mother is right about Tante Marie. She has always caused trouble. Wonderful trouble.
I understand now that my mother blamed herself when I finally spoke and told them about all the bad things I’d had to endure. I guess that’s why she was so afraid to let me go to school. She was afraid I’d get mistreated or hurt again.
I know what it’s like to be jealous and hate somebody for what they can do, especially when it’s something you find hard or can’t do very well yourself. I think my mother feels that way about her youngest sister, Marie.
I love Tante Marie. But I also love my mother.
I walk into the kitchen. My mother is holding my sister, my new sister Céline. I can tell by my mother’s red, blotchy face that she’s been crying.
Céline’s got a red, blotchy face too. Oh no! Both of them.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, sitting beside her. It’s probably best not to bring up Tante Marie and what happened last night. Besides – this itsy-bitsy sister is amazing!
“Oh, Mom. She’s so tiny. Look at her fingers. Just like a doll. I can’t believe it.”
My mother looks up at me. Her hair is a thick brown mess, hanging loosely to her shoulders. She looks like she hasn’t had much sleep.
“Would you like to hold her?”
I reach out my arms. Mom cradles her, carefully passing her into my arms.
“She hardly weighs a thing! She feels like a warm football.”
My mother laughs. “Oh, Pauline.”
Oh no. Now she looks like she’s going to cry again.
“You’ll be such a better sister than I ever was.”
Well. What should I say to that? I suppose she knows she doesn’t treat Tante Marie fairly. But I know better than to rub it in. So I say nothing.
“I … I reacted badly last night. I’m sorry,” she says.
What has happened to my mother?
She pushes her hair off her face, finds a comb in her pocket and begins to tidy her hair as she speaks. “I wondered if you might like to see Tante Marie this summer for your birthday.”
I’m not sure I’ve heard her right. She keeps combing her hair, arranging herself, pulling herself together.
She puts the comb back in her pocket and looks at me uncertainly. “You’ll be old enough to go on your own this summer. Maybe you could take the train to Montréal … it might be an adventure.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I’ve already planned it with Tante Marie.
And then I realize something – Mom’s trying. She’s trying to let me be independent. She’s trying to give me a gift.
“Do you think I could? All by myself?” I ask, trying to sound a little fearful.
“I do. You are full of surprises, Pauline. You are a very capable person,” she says.
Slowly, carefully, I pass her back my little sister. “You’re full of surprises yourself, Mom.”
We laugh together, looking at the baby. We both know I mean more than the baby.
She seems proud. “Not bad for an old grouch of forty.”
“Nearly forty-one!” I remind her.
There’s a knock at the side door.
“I bet that’s Henry,” I say. “They want to play on the rink. Okay, Mom?” I hold my breath, unsure of her answer. Dad’s not home yet. He’s still at Union Station with Tante Marie. Mom doesn’t like me on the ice with anyone but Dad.
My sister helps out – she starts to cry. Mom rocks her, looking from me to Céline, somewhat anxious. “I’m not sure. Céline’s hungry and I should feed her. Those boys might push you too fast.”
“They’re careful, Mom. Don’t worry.” I get up as quickly as I can to answer the door, before she can change her mind.
“Hey, Henry. Are the other guys here?”
“Yup. Need any help?”
I’ve been letting my hair grow long. It swings around my shoulders as I lean forward to give him my crutches. I take my red beret and coat off the hook on the wall and get ready. I am aware of Henry watching me, holding the side door for me.
“What did you do to your hair?” he asks.
“What’s wrong with it?”
He’s looking at me funny. I take my crutches from him and smile as I walk past him.
“Nothing,” he answers. “Remember when we used to ride our horses up and down the lawns and your long hair would fly behind you? You used to say you had a horse’s mane.”
I laugh suddenly, remembering. “And you wanted to grow your hair long too, Henry. I remember the big fight you had with your mom.”
Henry hoots. “I’d forgotten that. Do you know there’s a weird guy at school who’s got long hair? He wears it in a ponytail. I wonder if he fights with his mother about it.”
“Maybe I’ll ask him that when I meet him at school.”
Henry does a double-take. “You mean … you’re coming to school? What about your mom?”
“I think I can persuade her. I want to take music, maybe play the drums or the trumpet in the school band.”
“What about the stairs?”
“I’ll do them,” I say firmly. “It’ll be good exercise. Anyway, so what if I’m a few minutes late to a few classes. I’m a few years late! A few minutes is nothing.”
Henry laughs. “You know, I’ve been thinking. There’s a little freight elevator the caretaker uses for supplies and moving desks and stuff.”
I stare at him, amazed. He’s been thinking about me.
“The caretaker’s name is Mr. Shine. Honest. He’s just like his name. He’d give you a ride –”
I interrupt him, feeling a
little annoyed. “I’m not freight, Henry. I’ll do the stairs.”
“Okay, Pauline. It was just a suggestion.”
He looks a little hurt. My mind jumps back to another scene, another time when he was thinking about me. “Do you remember that day you brought me the sheriff’s badge, Henry?”
He looks a bit puzzled, but nods.
“I couldn’t move my fingers or hands until that day. You put the badge on the window and I was so happy, I wanted it so badly, I moved my fingers for the first time.”
Henry has a strange look on his face. “I didn’t realize that. I always thought … you know … I misunderstood. I thought you were telling me to go away.”
“Yeah. Well. You’ve got hair on your face.” I have no idea why I say it. It comes out of nowhere. It’s just, all of a sudden, I don’t know what else to say and I notice a fuzz of hair on Henry’s cheeks. There’ll be other times to talk about what happened in the past. This is too important, though. How could I not have noticed the hair on Henry’s face?
He rolls his eyes at me. “Geez, Pauline. You still say the darndest things.”
Stuart and Billy are bringing the wheelchair out of the garage.
“Hey, guys. Guess what? Pauline’s coming to school. We just gotta work on her mom.”
Billy’s carrying our hockey sticks and claps them together. “Great.”
Henry sits on the little bench next to the opening in the sideboards. He takes off his boots and begins to put on his skates.
Stuart has a strange look on his face.
“What’s wrong, Stu?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I just can’t figure why you guys think school’s such a good idea for Pauline.”
They’ve been talking about this amongst themselves. All of them.
Stuart continues, “I’d rather stay home all day and watch TV.”
I turn myself around to sit in the wheelchair. Henry is busy, lacing up his skates. Billy does just what my dad would do, if he were here. He stands behind the wheelchair to secure it as I sit down. I drop my crutches to the ground.
Henry’s voice is low and impatient. “Stu, you’d do better at school if you thought about things a little more. Imagine watching TV all day. Come on. Remember summer holidays? How sick you get of it after two days? It’s boring staying at home. Pauline’ll have a way better time with all of us at school than home alone.”
He stands up and passes me the goalie stick.
Stuart grumbles. “I still think we should ask Pauline’s mom if we can all home-school with her.”
“She’d make you read Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.”
“Who are they?”
“You wouldn’t like them,” Henry says. “Let’s play two-on-two.”
“I don’t want to play goalie today,” I say, staring at Henry. “I know my dad’s not here, but we don’t need him. It’s my turn to be forward.”
Darn, my voice sounds squeaky, like a mouse. The three boys tower over me, their faces worried. For a second, I lose my nerve.
Anne Laurel Carter is a hockey fan who had a hockey rink in her own childhood Don Mills backyard. She remembers her parents’ stories about the polio “Summer Plague” of 1953. While this is Anne Carter’s first novel for Orca, she is the author of the young adult title The Girl on Evangeline Beach and of the picture book Tall in the Saddle (Orca, 1999), a Canadian Children’s Book Centre “Our Choice” selection. She is a full-time writer who still has a hockey rink in her Toronto backyard each winter.
More juvenile fiction from Orca.
THE GRAMMA WAR
Kristin Butcher
Everything is going well in eleven-year-old Annie’s ordered life — until she finds out that her ailing grandmother is coming to live with the family. A virtual stranger, her grandmother takes over Annie’s room, smokes in the house, runs her mother ragged and turns Annie’s whole world on end. Annie fights to stay afloat as her problems, both at home and at school, multiply.
In an attempt to help her cope with the changes, Annie’s parents enroll her in a local genealogical society where she grudgingly embarks on a journey to learn her family tree. In the process she discovers not only that her grandmother has a wealth of knowledge and stories about their shared family history, but that she was not always the angry old woman she seems to be.
1-55143-183-1
$8.95 CAN; $6.95 USA
More juvenile fiction from Orca.
WAITING TO DIVE
Karen Rivers
Carly is ten and loves to dive — dive from the rocks at her family’s summer cabin, dive from the boards at the pool with her diving-club teammates. She loves the feeling of floating up into the air and then dropping cleanly into the water with hardly a splash. She loves the feeling she gets when everything goes just right.
Then one summer weekend, as she and her friends Montana and Samantha play in the water at the cabin, things don’t go just right and her world is turned upside-down.
Waiting to Dive is Karen Rivers’ second novel for young readers. Her teen novel Dream Water (Orca, 1999) was a finalist for the Sheila Egoff Book Award. Karen lives in Victoria, BC.
1-55143-159-9
$8.95 CAN; $6.95 USA
More juvenile fiction from Orca.
PIPER
Natale Ghent
When eleven-year-old Wesley’s father dies, she and her mother must move in with Aunt Cindy on a working farm. Watching the birth of a litter of Australian shepherd puppies, Wesley pleads with her aunt to save the life of a runt. The puppy, an undersized red merle named Piper, is a challenge from the start, with a natural talent for trouble as well as for herding sheep.
Through hard work and long hours, the dog and girl become inseparable and even stand a chance at the herding championship. But when Piper and Wesley are set upon by marauding coyotes, it is Piper who must protect Wesley. Will the dog save the girl who gave her a second chance? Will they still have a shot at the big title?
Piper tells the timeless story of a girl and her dog and the ties that bind them together. Natale Ghent has crafted a tale that speaks to anyone who has struggled for something they truly believe in, and for a place to call home.
1-55143-167-X
$8.95 CAN; $6.95 USA