Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  Sara recalled being with several of these women in Russia. Their dresses had been softer in colour and material then, and had revealed the shapes of their bodies as they ascended a hill single file to a grove of walnut trees at the end of a day. In Russia these women had dressed in the latest of European fashions, copied from magazines that the well travelled and wealthy among them brought back from their journeys to Germany, Italy and France. They copied fashions they’d seen women wearing while they strolled in the parks of St. Petersburg and on the boardwalks of Odessa.

  As they went through the field of wild mustard, these same women seemed awkward and unlovely, swishing away the butterflies with their songbooks. Their dresses were jersey and cotton-print homemade shirtwaist styles, or a kind of A-shaped tunic worn with a white blouse. All of them wore white sandals and socks rolled down at their ankles, copying what their own people wore here so as not to offend their fellow Mennonites who’d come to Canada sooner than they had. The Canadian Mennonites were known as Little Church, Mennonite Brethren, General Conference, while Sara, Katy and the women were First Mennonites, high brow and worldly.

  These once-proud and educated women did not have to speak to be apologizing. They apologized with their demeanour. Apologized because some among them had buried young husbands or their betrotheds in Russia during the revolution. Several among the six women who came to sing that Sunday afternoon had been raped. They accepted the blame that they might have lost so much because of their desire to be fashionable, to dance, to play cards, to look in the mirror, as suggested by their more conservative cousins. Likely these women would never marry. They certainly would never speak English well enough to find employment as other than what they had become: servants, cooks, farmhands. Housekeepers and nannies for their younger sisters, who were obliged to make them part of their households.

  They arranged themselves on the blankets under the tree, glancing up at its branches, which were spitting droplets of moisture, choosing to pretend that this was not the case. Sara leaned against the trunk, a songbook opened on her lap, as Katy led the singing. The other women joined in, their voices quickly blending. Their voices were both sweet and sad, and filled with a resignation that Sara found irritating. She’d begun to suspect that, while the beliefs of her people had been necessary to sustain them during their time of danger, in this country those beliefs had become heavy old coats, bulky and too hot.

  The women harmonized as they sang the final amen. Katy then recited the Lord’s Prayer. Sara half closed her eyes, her attention drawn to one woman who continued to work on a piece of crocheting while saying the prayer. Her fingers deftly looped and twisted the yarn while her eyes remained shut, her lips moving in silent recitation. Give us this day our daily bread. Her bosom heaved, and a sigh escaped.

  Sara knew that like Katy, like herself, the women around her struggled to keep their memories at bay. They assuaged their night terrors with weak tea and honey. Forgiving those who had trespassed against them meant not remembering what had been done to them. These women had experienced desperate things that she’d escaped, and she suspected they might resent her for that. For thine is the Kingdom, they prayed, while Sara concentrated on the way her ankle looked; she wished it were more slender. These women had forgotten how to dream. She knew that if she was ever going to be able to dream, treason might be necessary.

  They returned to the house and gathered in the parlour, Sara leaving them to go to the kitchen and help Annie prepare the lunch. It’s time that girl was married, one of the women said, confirming what Katy had already concluded.

  But to whom? Sara hadn’t shown an interest in any of the young farmers attending church, those scrubbed and slicked men, sunburned and hardened by physical labour. They cast sideways glances in her direction, engaged in horseplay when she could see them, but failed to earn her attention.

  Sara is too fussy, one of the woman said. Another recalled Sara as a child living in the town of Rosenthal, Russia, where her family had stayed for a time at the grandparents’ house. Remember how active she was as a little girl? When she played with other children she sometimes stamped her foot to get her way, she said. Another woman remembered that Sara would enter their house and open drawers without asking permission, just as the dirty and sick little Russian children had done during the time of thievery. Sara had refused to sing for her unless she was given a cookie. Katy’s eyes filled with regret as she listened. For a time following the deaths in her family she’d been away in her mind, and perhaps during that time Sara had been alone too much.

  Sara once kissed me, a woman broke in to say. This was Nela, who had been a neighbour to Sara’s grandparents in Russia. I didn’t ask for a kiss. I was sitting on a bench outside thinking of my father. His pear tree had been chopped down for burning, and I thought how this would have hurt him so. I felt these little arms go around my neck. Sara kissed me. Sara said, I love you, Nela. It was as though she knew what I was thinking. She knew what I needed.

  In the silence that followed, Sara’s and Annie’s voices rose up from the kitchen, over the murmur of Kornelius and Henry Friesen as they visited on the veranda.

  When Henry Friesen came to visit again he did not come with his aunt, but on the invitation of Kornelius. Sara watched from the window as he walked down the lane to the house, his jacket slung over his shoulder, and she decided that she liked that. He’s older than Sara, of that I’m sure, Sara had overheard Kornelius saying to Katy. But he seems younger. She’ll eat him for breakfast.

  And although Henry was expected, just before he arrived Kornelius took the little children for a ride about the country to look at the crops, while Katy sent Annie to the garden with two chairs, which she was to set down near a tangle of wild rose bushes.

  Henry told Sara immediately, I work for my father, as though, if he didn’t, he would not be able to speak, his blue eyes blinking rapidly behind his wire-frame glasses. His shyness made Sara bold. Made her want to touch him and say, Don’t worry, I won’t bite you. She liked the way his face had lit up with pleasure when they were first introduced. As they sat in the garden and talked, she appreciated that his ears turned red when she laughed.

  There wasn’t enough business in clock and watch repair to keep him and three brothers going in their father’s shop, he explained, and so his brothers were going to Normal School to become teachers. He didn’t have the patience for teaching, he knew. He wanted to build onto his father’s store and sell furniture and household items. It was as though he’d rehearsed what he would say, beginning immediately as they sat down side by side on their chairs, Sara needing to turn slightly in order to look at him, to see his shirt moving with his heartbeat. Rose petals were strewn about the ground beneath the bushes, and she watched for a moment as several red ants began carrying one away.

  I so terribly much want to buy a car, Henry blurted, the first thing that did not sound as though it was an item on his list. The day was hot and perspiration beaded his upper lip and forehead. The scent of wild roses mingled with the rich smell of decaying vegetation from a nearby compost heap.

  His shirt strained at the buttons across his stomach, revealing a slash of skin and a feathering of gold hair. Sara thought about sliding a finger between the buttons and tickling him. A pink ribbon gathering the neck of her blouse had come undone and she played with it, rolled it up like a frog’s tongue and let it fall loose. She knew not to look directly at him, but to be occupied with the ribbon, which left him free to look at her. She felt his myopic gaze, his yearning. It seemed to her that her hands were delicate, and that when she rolled up the ribbon again, they spoke to him.

  If I had a car, would you go riding with me? Henry asked, which was tantamount to a proposal of marriage.

  Sara knew this and yet she could not consider the proposition seriously. She grinned and said in a teasing way, You want to take me for a spin? She laughed. The English word, spin, stepped out from among the German. Once, when Emily Ashburn had sent her to order co
al, there had been two men leaning against a car near the coal shed, their caps pushed to the backs of their heads. They’d called out, Hello there honey, would you like to come with us for a spin?

  Annie came through the garden carrying a tea tray, choosing her way carefully among the rows of vegetation, the dog following at her heels. Sara felt the space between their chairs widen as she thought of Katy sitting in the shade of the veranda, watching; hovering over all the details of her and Annie’s lives, the unspoken history of the violent end of their family.

  Annie stood in front of Henry, colouring as she offered him a glass of tea, and it occurred to Sara that Annie had grown taller. Then she realized that it wasn’t that Annie had grown, but rather that Henry had become shorter. During the night there had been rain, and the earth in the garden was soft. While they’d been talking, the legs of his chair had started to sink. He sipped cautiously at the tea, worrying, she could tell, that his nervousness might cause him to spill it. The legs of his chair were sinking minute by minute deeper into the earth, and he pretended not to notice, although he crossed and uncrossed his legs, trying to get comfortable.

  He lived at the back of his father’s watch-repair shop, as a window had been broken and his presence discouraged that from happening again, he told her. He planned to enlarge the living quarters back there, once he had added onto the business. This was where they would live, Sara knew. As he talked she willed him to get up from the chair. To pull its legs free and make a joke out of it. But he simply gave up trying to cross his legs, and now his knees jutted up level with his chest.

  She noticed that his fingers were pudgy, and likely too blunt for the minute workings of a clock. A muscle jerked in his face as he talked, his stomach was fat, there were bracelets of fat around his wrists. Fatty, fatty, two by four, Sara thought; she had heard young children chanting the verse at school.

  What’s so funny? Henry asked, and Sara realized that she had laughed.

  You, Sara told him, wanting suddenly for this to end. Fatty, fatty, two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door, Sara said, as she went away from him through the garden.

  Returning to the farm meant becoming the egg girl once again, going to the town of Aubigny with Katy. Waiting on the doormat while women went rushing about looking for the correct change, and then counted it out into her hand as though she couldn’t make change. She welcomed the chance to peer into rooms, sometimes startled by the dirt and clutter, and sometimes admiring an arrangement of pictures on a wall, a vase on a table. Children peered at her as though she came from the moon. What’s your name? she once dared to ask, and the children ran screaming to find their mother.

  She watched for Alice Bouchard when they delivered eggs and cream, but apparently the Bouchard house wasn’t one they called on. She crossed the river on the ferry with Katy, went trudging up the access road to Union Plains to sell their produce, not knowing that, shortly after her failed date with Oliver, he’d left the city too, and returned to run the hotel. On one of those Saturdays, Sara was shocked to come upon him leaning against the door frame, chewing on a piece of straw. Both of them were riveted in the moment, uncertain if they should acknowledge one another’s presence. Oliver was the first to do so, with a slight smile and a nod before going inside.

  After that she was feverish for Saturdays to come, for the sight of Oliver. Her eyes were drawn to any man she happened upon with dark hair, her body instantly coming alive. When she stood beside Oliver, she could barely keep from touching him, and went away hot, an ache between her legs that she pressed against when she had a moment alone, in order to feel normal again.

  On their third encounter, Oliver invited Sara to attend a dance in Aubigny. I can’t dance, she said, shifting from foot to foot, swinging the egg basket to cover her fear of Katy coming upon them talking in the street. She only meant to warn him that she didn’t know how; that wouldn’t stop her from going.

  There’s nothing wrong with letting your hair down, Oliver replied. He knew now that she was Deetch, and how peculiar they were. Straitlaced and pious, to the point of being offensive. Alice would be at that dance, he was certain, and there was nothing wrong with keeping her on her toes.

  Sara agreed to meet him at the ferry, thinking that she would wear the blue dress Annie had made as a welcome-home gift to soften the disgrace of her return.

  Throughout the week she performed all her tasks without complaining. With an eagerness to do them well, as though she somehow knew she’d soon be freed of them. Not knowing that, upon agreeing to meet Oliver to go dancing, she had agreed to become the mother of his children.

  Her hand shook as she dabbed lipstick on her mouth and cheeks. The dress was flattering, its shoulders softly shirred and padded, accenting the curve of her breasts and her flat stomach. Children’s voices rose up from the yard at the back of the house; Annie was with them, Sara knew. Kornelius was busy in the machine shed and Katy in the kitchen, and so she was able to climb down the ladder she’d placed against the house earlier in the day, unseen. And run through the garden towards a windbreak that would screen her from view.

  She half ran the distance to the ferry road, and down the road where it dipped into a wet gully and then rose to a crest. When she reached the crest she saw the river below, and the ferry on the opposite shore reflected in its surface. As her breathing stilled, she became aware of a rustling sound behind her and turned towards it, expecting that Oliver had already crossed over and waited now among the trees. But what she heard was the sound of a tree shrugging off summer, its foliage churning outwards in a sudden gold rain, the swishing sound of it like running water. Several moments later, the ground was carpeted with leaves and its branches were almost bare. It was unsettling to witness such a thing, a tree’s season ending so quickly. In this country there was sweltering heat and overnight, a hard frost, and the desolation of winter descended.

  Someone called, and she turned to see Oliver and the ferry operator emerge from a path among the trees and into a clearing on the other side of the river. Oliver’s voice echoed, cupped by the embrace of trees whose foliage was brazen yellow, cranberry and brown leather. The ferry’s engine spurted to life and the operator ducked out of the engine shed, a small hunched man missing half an arm. Oliver leaned against the other motor shed, wearing a short maroon tie knotted beneath the collar of a white shirt and a brown suit jacket.

  Small waves lapped at a sheath of rubber tires nailed to the front of the ferry as it reached the shore, the rippling water staining the planks of the landing a dark grey. Oliver stepped off and came towards her, and she waited for him to speak. She expected to be greeted in his usual teasing manner. My God, lookee here. Look who you see when you don’t have a gun. In this joking manner, he always veered away from any attempt she made at conversation when she happened upon him in Union Plains, leaving the hotel, or at the nip-and-chip stand, ordering a hamburger and chips to go, and stopping for a smoke and a visit with the woman who ran the booth.

  At last, she thought. Throughout the week she’d feared something would prevent her from meeting him. A fall, a twisted ankle, a raging flu.

  By God, he said softly, after a long moment of silence.

  She saw admiration shining from his eyes and didn’t know where to look.

  She thought they would return the way she had come. Go on back up the road and enter the town of Aubigny and walk to the end of it, to the dance hall, a lumbering, square building set in a field of grass. But instead Oliver glanced back at the ferry and called to the man in French. What he said caused the operator to start with surprise, and with a shrug he returned to the engine shed. A moment later the engine started up.

  Oliver didn’t ask whether she was coming or not. But Sara knew that he was inviting her to cross over to Union Plains. Yes, she thought. Go with him. She was a child daring to leap from the top step for the sake of experiencing the moment of flying, for the uncertainty of the landing. He didn’t offer his hand to help her board, and
kept his back turned as they rode in silence. She leaned against the guard chain, watching the shore retreat as she had watched the coastline of another world grow distant and dissolve into the horizon. Halfway across the channel, they entered a stream of moist warm air that was replaced by a stillness as they came near the other shore.

  She followed Oliver as he took the path through the trees, both of them silent, unmindful of the deadfalls, the rich stink of decay amid the underbrush. Oliver crossed Stage Coach Road and Sara crossed too, following him into town and down a street, passing several children along the way, children who called to one another when they parted and went into their houses. She followed him into the hotel, and he took her by the hand and led her to his room under the stairs.

  She could not have imagined the ferocity of his desire, his hunger, how he would consume her in a moment, or the tearing, the sudden raw pain; his panting and calling out, the gush of hot wetness, both hers and his. She was stunned by the largeness of his desire, then equally stunned by his tenderness. His tears as he nuzzled her neck, hands sweeping down and up the length of her body.

  She could not have imagined how the distance, the strangeness between them, would dissolve instantly. She felt that she knew his body, its odour, its smooth skin and deep colour, as though it were her own. She came to learn that a touch, a certain expression, a glimpse of her nakedness was enough to make Oliver desire her, to lose himself for a moment and then return to her, soft with love.

  A mist was rising on the land when Oliver walked her home, a dog barked, and then Katy came running down the lane towards the road. She grabbed Sara’s hands and took in her dishevelled appearance. Fix yourself, Oliver had said, and given her his comb to pull through her hair. But there was nothing she could do about her dress being torn, its buttons missing. There was a rawness between her legs; a stickiness of blood, his fluid gluing her pubic hair to her undergarments so that it prickled and pulled when she walked. She had set her shoulders as Katy ran towards her, knowing that her sister had been waiting up all night.