by Mary Razzell
I began to run, not knowing if I was running away from a falling tree or into one.
It was black. Black sky, black forest. Only my feet felt where the surface of the road was. Waves were pounding on the beach below me. The wind was a banshee—eerie sounds, screeches, sighs, groans, cries, moans.
Down hills, around bends, along level stretches. I’d never get home. There wasn’t a car on the road, but I began to feel the presence of somebody—something—near me.
So strong was the feeling that I stopped to listen. The high-pitched wail of the wind, the splitting groans of trees, the surf crashing on rocks. My heart pounding loudly in my ears, and a sound of heavy breathing.
I took one step forward and walked into a large, hot, breathing body—hairy, moving. I sank to my knees, waiting for the blow.
Only a cow. There was a faint jingling of a bell, a loud moo as she moved away. A swish of her tail caught the corner of my eye.
I moved through the herd, bumping into sloping flanks, slipping in cow patties and crying with relief.
Two hours after I had left the hall, I pushed open the kitchen door of our new house. The recently acquired electric light was too bright for my eyes after the black night.
My mother, who had been writing a letter when I burst in, took one look at me and said, “Glory be to God! Whatever has happened to you?” She helped me off with my wet jacket and, scolding and comforting, she had me sit in front of the kitchen stove and opened the oven door for more warmth. “You’ve walked all this way home?”
I wrenched off my sopping shoes and flung them on the open oven door.
“I have,” I burst out. “It isn’t fair! Girls have to be so... nice! We can’t do or say anything! But we’re supposed to put up with anything anyone else does. I hate being a girl!”
“Now, Sheila, calm down. It’ll be all right.” She filled a basin with hot water, handed me the soap. While I washed, she hung my nightclothes over the stove to warm, something she did only when we were sick. “The men don’t have such an easy time of it, either.”
“Name me one thing! Just one!”
“Two. I can name you two. Come on, sit down, I’ve poured you a cup of tea. There’s not many things a cup of tea won’t help.”
I sat across from her, wrapping my wet hair in a towel.
“For one thing,” my mother continued, “they have to worry about work, making a living for us.”
I stared at her. Had she forgotten Dad?
“And for another thing.” Her voice lowered. “They have a stronger drive than we do.” I knew she meant sex. “It can be dreadful hard on them.”
“I still don’t think it’s fair!”
“Nobody said it was going to be fair.” My mother’s voice was mild. “It never has been, as far back as time. For anybody.”
12
NELS PROMISED not to drink again if I promised not to meet the Union steamship. I told him I wouldn’t if it meant that much to him.
I missed going, though. There was so little to do at the Landing that the steamship calling in was the highlight of the day. And I liked walking up the wharf with Mr. Percy after the boat had pulled out. He always had some news. Had he told me that Helga was talking more these days? And that Dr. Howard had mentioned to him that I was “a right smart girl and pleasant to boot”? And so he went on, sure that in me he had a captive audience.
Of course, I’d miss Jack, too. Whenever I saw him he reminded me of the excitement, the things to do in Vancouver. There were times I felt pressed between the mountains at the back of me and the ocean in the front, and I thought I couldn’t wait to finish school and leave the Landing.
But I still loved school. My brother Tom and I were taking Science 12 together even though he was a grade behind me. That’s the way it was in our small high school with only the one teacher. We had to double up on some courses. Sometimes Tom got a higher mark, but that only made me study harder to beat him the next time.
My father had decided to leave Jericho Airforce Base and go to Williams Lake to work at the placer gold mine. My mother was unhappy about this. But he said he’d send sixty dollars every month.
My mother was even talking about buying a piano secondhand. Mrs. Robinson on the North Road had tacked a notice on the bulletin board at the post office: For sale, cheap, piano in A-1 condition. B. Robinson, North Road.
“Of course,” sniffed my mother when she read it, “that means the piano would have to be washed down with Lysol before I would let it in the house. They say she has a social disease.”
“You mean like T.B.?”
“No, I mean syphilis. She’s been a loose woman.”
* * *
“Agnes,” said my father, home for the weekend, “how would you like that piano for a Christmas present?”
“We can’t afford it,” my mother said. “Don’t be daft.”
But we could see that she was excited by the idea. She went through her music sheets, which were stored in the cedar chest.
“Do you remember this?” she asked my father, and she began to hum “The Flower Song,” following the notes with her finger. She could read music. My father played by ear.
Dad went ahead anyway and bought the piano, even though Christmas was two months away. He had it delivered when my mother was out at a Water Board meeting. I wiped it with a cloth wrung out in a hot water-and-Lysol solution, then dried it and rubbed lemon oil into the wood grain. It was made of cherry wood, and when I had finished, it glowed with a soft red sheen. The ivory keys were faintly yellowed, but the tone was good. Dad said he’d have a man come out from Vancouver to tune it.
Helga had shown me how to embroider, and I had already made a dresser scarf with yellow butterflies and bluebells for Mom’s Christmas present. I smoothed it out on the piano and placed the picture of Grandma Brary in the middle.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have, Frank!” my mother said when she came into the living room at Dad’s urging. “You really shouldn’t have.”
She walked, trancelike, over to the piano, sat down at the bench and began to play. Her fingers, stiff and unaccustomed to the keyboard, still remembered how. And she was still playing hours later when I went to bed.
* * *
One evening, Nels’ parents invited me to dinner. I just dreaded the thought. I wanted to like Nels’ mother. Why should I care if she wanted to look like a teenager?
I didn’t taste anything because I was trying so hard to make a good impression. But I probably didn’t. Mrs. Bergstrom asked me how school was going, and I told her about studying Macbeth.
“Mac who?” she asked.
“You know—Shakespeare.”
“Oh, him.” There was a silence. “Nels, pass Sheila the ketchup.”
Later when Mr. and Mrs. Bergstrom left for the Legion to drink beer, I did the dishes. Nels sat and read at the kitchen table to keep me company. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told me he liked comic books and Westerns. He actually had a pulp Western propped up against the salt and pepper shakers as he read about the adventures of Luke, Montana Ranch Hand.
Still, at the end of the evening I felt uncomfortable— about Shakespeare and about Nels reading pulps.
The next day Nels told me, “My mother thinks you’re pretty. She isn’t too happy about you being a Dogan, though.”
“Dogan?”
“Yeah, you know, Catholic. Says you’ll want to get married and have a kid every year.”
“I’m not getting married for a long time, Nels Bergstrom, so you don’t need to worry about that!”
We were sitting in his truck after school. It had begun to snow lightly, the flakes melting as soon as they hit the window.
Nels took my hand and turned it over, tracing the lines on the palm.
“How long before you want to get married, Sheila?”
“Well, I want to finish high school first, then go on to university or nursing school, then I want to work for a few years, travel...”
“What a
m I supposed to be doing all this time?” Nels asked.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
He watched the snow coming down, heavier now. It blanketed the windows and shut us in a small, silent white world.
“I want to get married. Build my own house. Have a kid or two.” He turned on the engine. “You cold?” He pulled me closer, wrapped his arms around me and blew down my neck.
“I’d like to get married, too, Nels, but not for a while.”
“Sheila, I mean soon. What do you think it’s like for me, having to leave you every night, go home and...”
“Go home and what?” He had completely unbuttoned my blouse by then—the snow was giving us privacy—and was stroking the skin of my breasts very gently with his fingertips. At times he was so tender that I thought I would melt. Other times he could be crude and rough, and I would pull back, afraid.
“And what, Nels?” I asked, not really wanting to know, only wanting to prolong what he was doing.
“Take care of myself...”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, Jesus, Sheila, don’t give me that crap. Jack off, what do you think?” He took my hand then and placed it on himself.
“Undo the fly,” he pleaded, kissing my ears and neck.
“No, Nels...” I started to say. Then a warmth was growing in me, spreading, like the sun rising.
He fumbled with the opening himself and took my hand. I heard him groan. Suddenly my hand was filled with a wet warmness, and Nels groped for his handkerchief and wadded it into my hand. I could hear him breathing deeply.
I dried my hand on his handkerchief and put it on the seat between us. I didn’t want to look at him. His breathing slowed, relaxed,
But I didn’t feel relaxed at all. My stomach felt like I’d taken a sudden lurch in an elevator, and I ached so much it hurt.
But I did know, then, what he had been talking about.
* * *
Christmas was only a month away. I sent to Woodward’s for a record for Nels, Margaret Whiting’s “I’m in Love with You, Honey.” He always asked for it at dances.
Trust Tom to come up with the idea of a correspondence course for my mother. All the years I’d seen her read my school books, and it had never occurred to me she might like to be learning, too.
That was one of the differences between Tom and me. He was more thoughtful of the family than I was. Tom and my mother were alike that way. They were both shy and more comfortable at home.
I guess my mother was right. I was more like my dad. We both liked to be out and meeting new people. Maybe that was the reason my mother liked Tom so much and me not very much.
Anyway, Tom sent away to the Department of Education in Victoria for a catalogue, and we spent hours going through it. Finally we narrowed it down to either a poetry or a literature course.
I took my grade twelve book of poetry out to the kitchen where Mom was making plum pudding.
“Listen to this, Mom. It’s by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Tell me if it doesn’t remind you of Helga Ness.
“Love in the open hand, nothing but that
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt”
My mother had shut her eyes when I’d begun to read. When I stopped, she took up where I left off, her eyes still closed.
“I bring you, calling out as children do:
‘Look what I have!—And these are all for you.’”
She opened her eyes and, seeing my astonishment, said, “I’ve always loved poetry.” So Tom and I decided to give Poetry 12 to Mom for Christmas.
* * *
Nels gave me a beautiful set of Evening in Paris for Christmas—soap, cologne and talcum powder. I wished I had been able to give him a nicer present.
Dad and Paul were home, and my mother cooked a goose. We didn’t usually celebrate Christmas much at our house, but this was one of the happiest we’d ever had together as a family. When I went to sleep, my father was playing the piano, and my mother was singing along.
Tom, Mike and Jim went back with Dad to spend the holidays at Williams Lake. The house seemed empty without them.
On New Year’s Eve Nels took me to the dance at Roberts Creek, and he didn’t get me home until after one in the morning.
Mom got out of bed when I came in. With one hand she clutched the open edges of her blue flannel kimono.
“Sheila, this is no good. This is far too late for you to be out.”
“But it’s New Year’s Eve! The dance didn’t end until after midnight!”
“It’s not that. You and Nels. You can’t go on like this... or you’re going to have to get married.”
“What are you talking about?” I stared at her. “I don’t want to get married!”
My mother drew the neck of her kimono tighter and shivered. The fire had been out for hours, and it was cold and damp in the house.
“You can’t see this much of each other without getting into trouble. It’s bound to happen.”
I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about and went to my room. Undressing quickly, I was in bed with the covers pulled up high over my ears when she came to the bedroom door.
“From now on, you’re to be home half an hour after the dance ends,” she said. “No more of this wandering in late, your clothes all rumpled and your eyes bright. No more, I say. You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
“Yes, okay, Mom.”
My mother meant business, but I didn’t think Nels was going to like it.
He didn’t, and he said so loudly and often. Then, two weeks later, without a word to tell me why, suddenly it was all right with him to bring me home early. And it seemed to me that he drove off quite happily.
It was Arnie Olsen who told me why. I had eaten my lunch with the other girls in the classroom and was on my way over to basketball practice when Arnie caught up with me. Both his hands were rammed down in his pockets, and his walk was cocky.
“You don’t mind,” his voice was casual, “Nels’ trips to Gower Point?”
“You think I should?” I asked, not knowing what he was talking about.
“Well, gee, Sheila, any other girl would. I mean, even though Betty Lou doesn’t charge Nels, it’s still...you know what I mean.”
I didn’t know what he meant, and one look at my face must have told him that.
“She’s that woman’s moved into Smyth’s old place. A chippy. Practically all the guys in town have been over there at least once. Doesn’t charge much, and she’s built like a brick—”
“Arnie, you can go to hell.” I tried to keep my face blank, but my voice trembled with anger.
“Sorr-ree!” Arnie said and swaggered off.
When Nels took me home from the movie the next night, I asked him about Betty Lou. Pulling out his wallet, he took out a picture and handed it to me. He turned on the overhead light of the truck, and I held the color photo under it.
Betty Lou looked to be in her early twenties and was posed leaning against a car. She wore a short white dress and was laughing at something. And, in Arnie’s words, she really was built.
I held the snap by one corner, as if it were dirty.
“Good looker, isn’t she?” said Nels.
Dropping the snapshot in disgust on the seat between us, I said, “You really burn me up!”
“Ah, Sheila’s jealous!” Nels taunted.
I raised my hand as if to slap him, but he caught my forearm and bent it backwards.
“Temper, temper, little Sheila.”
I glared at him, but he just laughed. I moved to open the truck door. He pulled me back.
“What do you expect me to do?” he asked, suddenly serious. “You don’t want to get married. You let me go so far and no further, and then when some dame gives it away, you want me to say no. You can’t have it all your own way.”
And that was the impasse. Ne
ls took me home on time, and both he and my mother were satisfied.
I wasn’t. Nels and I never talked about Betty Lou again, but I cheered when Arnie Olsen said she was moving to Alert Bay at the end of the month.
* * *
My brothers came back from Williams Lake. Only two weeks, and yet I could see that they’d grown even in that short time.
Tom was different, too. Something must have happened at Williams Lake, but when I questioned him about it, he changed the subject.
He was changing in other ways, too. He had the male lead in the school play, and he was supposed to kiss the heroine twice.
“It’s disgraceful, that’s what it is,” my mother told him. “Think of the example you’re setting for the younger boys. Jim and Mike look up to you. Do you think the play would fall apart if your teacher changed those scenes? I’ve a good mind to talk to the principal about it.”
Tom was stubborn and quiet.
“I’m going to do it,” he said.
I saw how his hands trembled, though he hid them behind his back. My mother didn’t, and she gave in.
Paul wrote that he was getting married. She wasn’t Catholic, and her people were English. That was two strikes against her right there, as far as my mother was concerned.
Married. Free to do what they wanted. Nels and I were beginning to act as if we were—almost. What contortions we went through to avoid “it.” Because, of course, “it” could cause pregnancy, and that must never happen. I got to the point where, if Nels had said, “Let’s get married now,” I would have. School seemed pale beside the urgency I felt.
Sometimes I thought it must be easier for Nels. He did have some physical relief. But I walked the trails in the woods, restless. I thought if I could walk enough, I might get rid of some of the ache. It didn’t happen, and I was left wanting what I hadn’t had. I didn’t know what—only that I was missing it.
* * *
Dr. Howard talked to me about going into nursing.
“I’ll write you a letter of recommendation that will get you into any nursing school you want. You should be taking Latin, maybe a correspondence course.”