Ghost of the Southern Cross

by Nellie P. Strowbridge

  “She’s me own flesh and blood,” Matthew had answered.

  When he wasn’t around and Myrtle threatened to knock her head off, she imagined it rolling down her chest, her eyes shaking out of their sockets. When her stepmother said she’d skin her alive, she imagined the pain of it and she cried, afraid her stepmother would get angry enough to do just that, leaving her looking raw and bloodied like a skinned seal that sealers often brought home from a hunt.

  Day after day she watched for her father to come home, scanning the ocean, her eyes squinting against the sun’s bright light. She idled away the time gathering stones until her hands and dress pockets were full. Then she sat emptying her pockets into her lap. She had picked up a pure white rock, a lacy patterned one, and a grey rock looking as if it had been dribbled on by white paint. Now she laid aside the rocks and picked up a dark stone with a thick, white ring. It was as smooth as an egg and shaped like one. Her father had told her a story about cruel boys who had gone to all the birds’ nests they could find. They had gathered the eggs and carried them to the beach where they mixed them with smooth stones to fool the birds. He said that eggs taken from the nest grew cold and hard and the mother bird rejected them. Now she imagined that inside each oval stone she had gathered was a little bird who never had a chance to fly; if she held the stones tight, they would warm and soften and the baby bird inside would peck its way out and fly away—something she’d like to do.

  On Maggie’s ninth day waiting for her father, the stones and other treasures in her dress pockets felt too heavy a burden, and she spilled them on the beach. Instead, her clenched fists filled the pockets. Inside one fist she held a god rock: an all-white stone her father said was lucky. She tightened her hand over it, her nails digging into her palm. She sighed and started a slow gait up the path to the house that hadn’t seemed like a home since her mother died.

  That night she dreamed that a piece of driftwood, something fastened to it, was rolling against the beach. As she got closer, she saw a grey hand and the familiar brown speckled guernsey and stocking cap her mother had knit for her father. She squeezed her eyes tight as screeching gulls swarmed over the body. Sobs gurgled in her throat. Then she screamed, her throat burning with her cries. Rough hands whirled her around, smothering her in her stepmother’s rough brin bag apron.

  She woke in the dark with her arms wrapped around herself, her bedclothes kicked on the floor. Her eyes widened. It wasn’t real! I had what Pappa calls the darnies!

  The next day Maggie walked from one large round rock to another, her arms outstretched as if she were balancing on a tightrope. Then she dropped to a large shelf, her tiny bum settling, her knees holding her elbows while her feet absently played with a cobbled bed of stones. She imagined that her father had been taken by pirates. God would strike them dead with a thunderbolt and her father would sail the pirates’ black ship, heavy with treasure, home and they would live happily ever after.

  She looked past the stagehead and a low rock wall separating her from another, more sandy beach. Names floated on the air as children called to each other: Elizabeth, Emily, Olivia, Laura, Jamie, Noah, Zachary. . . . When the tide was out and until it began rolling in over the landwash they ran from beach to beach, sand sticking to their bare feet and legs like caplin spawn.

  Water surged and puffs of foam strayed along the shore. Elizabeth lifted foam on her hand. “Ocean clouds!” she called. “I’ve got ocean clouds.”

  The children ran into the ocean dipping their hands into the foam. They called, “Me, too!”

  All except Maggie, who stared out to sea—alone.

  Mary Jane frowned as she watched Maggie from her upstairs window. She turned with a smile toward Elizabeth and the other children running and leaping into the air, leaving footprints that the tides would wash away as if they never were. It would be years before the children would be part of the same sad story, one Mary Jane could not even imagine. No one could.

  2

  Two years before, Maggie’s attention had been drawn to the bawling cow inside her father’s barn. She had tiptoed close to the open door and had seen the cow struggle to born her calf. Her father had pushed the barn door shut. Later, she heard him tell her mother that after the cow gave birth she wouldn’t get up. He had put his hands over her nostrils, forcing her to struggle for breath and get to her feet, so she could be cleaned of the afterbirth. The healthy calf nuzzled her mother’s teat and then latched on. A few days later the cow sickened and died. Maggie’s father explained that the calf took all the mother’s strength.

  Maggie watched her mother’s stomach grow, and one day when she found her mother asleep in the rocking chair and saw movement under her apron, she felt a knot of fear. Then one evening she followed her mother’s cry. She pushed open the bedroom door to see her mother’s white knees spread wide, a pool of blood on white sheets, her face upturned in anguish to the midwife. Holding in a scream, Maggie fled to her bedroom. The next morning her father stood in the doorway, his voice leaden with the words, “Your mother passed away.”

  The air around her pressed in as if to smother her. “Passed away? Where?”

  “She’s gone to heaven,” her father said, his face crumbling.

  Maggie ran into her parents’ bedroom. Her father was wrong. Her mother was asleep. She tried to shake her arm, but it was stiff and hard. “Wake up, Mamma!”

  “She can’t,” her father said, his face dark and sad.

  Maggie pressed her lips against her mother’s cheek. She knew then that her mother had gone away and left a body that was cold and deaf and dumb. Her eyes once bright enough to light up a day, now closed, her smile like sunshine gone. Beside her lay a small, white-faced creature. She stared at the wrinkled face. A leprechaun or a fairy, not my sister like Pappa told me. She touched its skin, as hard as candle wax, and pulled her mother’s blanket over the baby’s still face, knowing it would never mewl and latch on to her mother’s breast. Her face hardened. “You killed my mamma.”

  She dropped to the floor and curled in a ball on the hard surface and dug her head into the braided mat, where she stayed for a long time. She knew that no matter how many times she shook her mother she would not move and wake up, and if she put her hand over her mouth like her father had done with the cow she would not get up. Sobbing, she climbed the stairs to an attic room and lay on the bed. This small room had always felt warm around her like a coat. Now it felt empty and cold.

  She heard the hoarse pull of her father’s saw and then the sound of hammering. After a while she could see through the small window that her father and a neighbour were carrying a pine box toward the house. She listened with dread to the heavy scuff of the men’s feet on the landing before they entered the porch. The box would take her mother away. She drifted from the sound of voices as women came to wash and lay out her mother.

  “Don’t be thinking anything bad,” the midwife said to Maggie’s father sitting by the coffin in the back room, his head resting on the edge. She patted him on the shoulder. “Fishermen are lost at sea. Women are lost to childbirth. It’s the way of nature. People leave the earth for a better place, but they never leave our hearts.”

  Maggie’s Aunt Liddie from Middle Bight urged her to say goodbye to her mother. She reluctantly drew near, past the baby beside her, and reached to kiss her mother’s cold face.

  Not even her father’s arm around her shoulder could soften the blow of her mother’s coffin being lowered into a hole in the ground, shovels of earth clobbering it.

  “Mamma!” Maggie screeched. She threw her body across the mound of earth.

  Soon the displaced earth settled over her mother and the land grew grass and then it was as if her mother wasn’t there.

  “In heaven,” Aunt Liddie said.

  “In here,” Maggie said, holding her hand over her heart as she stood above her mother’s grave months later.
Sights and sounds skirted her mind about the day her mother left her. She wouldn’t let them in. She couldn’t rise above the feeling that the terrible thing that had taken her mother would be back.

  Liddie’s voice seemed far away. “I’d take care of you but for the brood of children filling me house. Maybe another relative will do her duty. Your father can’t get his work done and mind you as well.”

  Maggie sat half on and half off a chair, her legs dangling, one arm wrapped around a back rung, her hand tightened in a fist. She wasn’t leaving her home.

  “Maybe your father will find you a stepmother,” her aunt said.

  Maggie’s green eyes darkened. “A stepmother! A mother to step on me.”

  Myrtle hadn’t stepped on her, but she was not like Maggie’s mother, who had smoothed her hair, cupped her cheek, and pulled her so close she could hear her heart beating.

  Now Maggie’s father had disappeared and Myrtle made her leave her own bedroom for the room in the attic. She lay on the bed sobbing. The only two people who had ever loved her had left her.

  One day, after Maggie came up from the beach thirsty and hungry, she slipped her finger into a pan of milk cooling in the porch and lifted an island of cream from its milky waters. She had it almost up to her tongue when there was a chop across her back, her stepmother’s voice sharp as a knife: “You little thief!”

  She was at the mercy of a woman who liked men, not children. Myrtle already had men visitors. One gave Maggie a greasy grin and patted her bum, sending shivers up and down her spine.

  “You’ll not be staying here now that your father’s gone,” her stepmother said in a cold, hard voice. “You’ll need a relative with the means to feed you. Henry Batten in Bareneed is willin’ to take you. You’ll live with a fine man whose wife is partial to children. Bareneed is fastened to Portagrave, the longest finger on a hand of communities. Your people, the Taylors, are Church of Englanders from there, so it’s as if you’ll be goin’ home. The Battens’ll be happy to raise you. They have a grown son gone away to Canada.”

  “This is my house,” she answered, her eyes bright and round with fear.

  “It was yours when your father lived. Now it’s mine and you belongs elsewhere.”

  Maggie thought of the little nooks in the house, her hiding place for her collection: a dried, small, orange shellfish her father called a fish doctor; tiny pieces of glass and porcelain she’d found on the beach among tiny stones she had gathered.

  As if reading her mind, the woman said, “You’ll take your duds and other scraps of things you’ve minded.”

  Maggie straightened against her fear and looked at Myrtle, unflinching. “I’ll stay until Pappa comes home.”

  Her stepmother’s eyes showed narrow, icy blue glints. “His boat come ashore up the bay. It was found nibbling at the beach. Like a hungry horse, it was. Someone already claimed it.”

  “How do you know it was his boat?”

  “Never you mind.” She gave her a push. “Now up to your room. There’ll be someone to take you off me hands in a day or so.”

  The next day a boat drew near to her father’s stage. Maggie stood still, imagining it was her father coming home to be with her, not a stranger coming to take her away.

  3

  Elizabeth Maley, Maggie’s best friend, stood on the stagehead. Her eyes, usually bright and wide, now squeezed out tears. “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” she said.

  Maggie hadn’t heard her come down the path. She was too busy gazing out to sea, still hopeful of seeing her father.

  Elizabeth had seen Myrtle grab Maggie by her hair and knock her down. She had heard her squealing like the pigs in Abe Porter’s slaughterhouse. Elizabeth’s tongue had clapped in anger. Her mother had never hit her, and her older half-sisters and half-brother ignored her most times. She wished that Maggie were her sister.

  Once, last year, while she was sitting on the outdoor steps playing with her doll, she’d seen Myrtle out by her door shaking Maggie. Elizabeth had pulled a round stone from her gimp pocket and had thrown it for all she was worth right into the woman’s fat bosom. She whispered under her breath, “I hope I’ve knocked off a nipple and let the air out of her big udder.”

  “What! You brazen little hussy,” the woman called. She ran after Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was too quick for her. She skittered down the path and out over her father’s stagehead and down the rails.

  “Climb down here,” Elizabeth called, “and I’ll pull your legs off.” She began to sing,

  “I see England, I see France

  I see the legs of raggedy pants.”

  Myrtle had backed away in a huff muttering about the dirty-mouthed little girl William Maley had bred.

  Maggie stared in admiration. Someone had stood up for her. She made sure her stepmother had gone back up into the house. Then she ran toward Elizabeth.

  Maggie hooked her finger into Elizabeth’s, as if they were breaking a wishbone. They said in unison, “Friends always.” Maggie slipped a piece of worn glass from her pocket and put it into Elizabeth’s yellow gimp pocket.

  Elizabeth took a smooth, variegated stone from her pocket, licked it to bring out its colours, and spat away the salty taste. She gave it to Maggie, who loved stones as much as Elizabeth did. Elizabeth saw stones as a living part of the earth, imagined them as children of the large round rock her mother had warmed every winter night by the fire and put in her bed.

  Maggie felt akin to Elizabeth for other reasons. One day she had seen Elizabeth running along the path. An uncomfortable look crossed her face. The elastic in her underwear must have let go because her fleece bloomers were falling down around her feet. She looked around to see two big boys, Mark and Jud, looking at her. They began to snigger and Mark chanted,

  “Lizzie’s bloomers fell on down

  An orange pumpkin on the ground

  She picked it up a dirty brown.”

  Jud laughed and banged the other boy on the back. “Mark yourself down to be a poet.”

  Elizabeth stooped and stepped out of her bloomers. She pushed them under her arm just as Mark pulled on her pigtail. She swung around, her eyes flashing. “Do that ag’in and I’ll knock you off your block.”

  He grabbed her plait a second time and held on. Dirt flew against Elizabeth’s legs as she turned and slapped his face.

  Mark let go of her hair and rubbed his cheek. He ran to the top of the hill, stooped, and turned holding a rock. He flung it, taking her in the back. She lurched forward, then got her balance as the boys’ voices in unison followed her:

  “Fat braid, baby brain, you’re no good

  Chop your arse for firewood.”

  They were the same boys who took baby robins from their nests and cut them to pieces, and bobbed the tails of stray cats or bashed in their brains.

  Mark called to Maggie, “Your father’s gone. He’ll never come home.”

  He turned back and the boys took off laughing. Maggie stood biting her lips and thinking, What does he know!

  She watched Elizabeth, unfazed by the boys, walk on the wall of stones by the side of the beach, her bloomers still under her arm. Water, white and churning, sent its cold spray dashing against her legs. Elizabeth didn’t squeal and jump back as Maggie and other children might have done.

  Now, after Elizabeth had gone home, Maggie stood by the stone wall and stared at the dark body of water stretching farther than she had ever travelled.

  Big! her father had called the ocean, spreading his arms.

  Clouds, like fists, squeezed out rain, dropped it like pellets to pockmark the sea. Maggie’s small, flat stone flew from her outstretched hand, making a silent, twirling motion as it tiptoed across the dark ocean and disappeared. Wind swept in as cold as her stepmother’s look, the night descending like a dark veil over her face.
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br />   4

  Myrtle had a kinder look than usual as she bundled Maggie’s clothes in a quilt Maggie’s mother had made, kinder still as she said, “Go on to the boat. Your uncle will be up to carry your belongings.”

  Maggie didn’t look back as she made her way down to the stagehead where her uncle waited.

  Henry was a large man, his face sizable under a flat cap with a lip that shaded his eyes. He hoisted the cap off his bald head, looked at her, and nodded. “We’ll get along if you’ll heed the missus.”

  Maggie looked up at him and blinked against the bright sunlight. Her lips trembled. If she answered him she’d be sure to cry. He gave her bonnet a pat and reached to lift her. He held her in his arms, beach treasures rattling in her pockets, as he climbed down the rails to the boat. He went back up to the house to take Maggie’s belongings. He hurried back down and stowed them in the boat’s cuddy.

  Until now Maggie had travelled only along the shore in Foxtrap. Bareneed, where her father’s relatives lived, was miles and miles away. She tried to remember everything her father had told her. He said the earth was round, not flat. She had asked anxiously, “If the earth is round like a ball, will we fall off if we go too far over the hill?” He had hugged her close. “No fears of that. The earth is larger than you can imagine.”

  She had liked her father’s stories. He’d look out over the beach and begin: “There once was a little girl who lived in a little house with her mamma and pappa above the beach. They were all sitting at the table having a cup of tea and fardy—Irish bread to you, little one—on a set of green dishes the mamma loved. The sea hove in and grabbed the legs of the house and dragged everything out to sea. The plate the little girl was holding sailed through the open window and was dashed on rocks below. A lit candle on the window leaf toppled into the sea with a tiss. The whole family was taken out to sea to be seen no more. Pieces of green glass now worn smooth is what the sea left to remind us what the sea can do to anyone who gets too close to it.”