“But what’s the priest going to say? It’s a mortal sin, you know, Jennie.”
“There’s no reason to be so upset. I’m still the same Jennie. Nothing’s changed.” But Jennie could see that Mam didn’t believe her.
Bridey Sullivan was a strong woman, and when her daughter said she was expecting a baby, Bridey knew there had to be a marriage.A child born out of wedlock had no chance in a world where people would call it a bastard.
In bed a couple of nights later, when Ned went to blow out the lamp for the night, Bridey stopped him. “We needs to talk, Ned.”
“Can’t it wait for morning? I’m fair beat out.”
“No, this is the best time. All the children are asleep.” She propped her pillow up against the headboard and took a deep breath. “Ned, you’re going to have to speak to Albert Hillier and tell him that his son Tom has your daughter put in the family way. The Blessed Virgin only knows that I can’t talk to Suze Hillier. She wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“What? Jesus Christ, Bridey! That young son of a bitch of a Tom Hillier! How’d that happen?” Ned felt shocked and angry enough to seek out Tom and kill him on the spot.
Bridey calmed him down. “Listen b’y, this happens to many women; they gets caught before they’re married. Just because Jennie is your daughter don’t mean she’s any different.” She moved over in the bed to lay her head against his arm. “You knows that everyone does it on the sly. We did, or have you forgotten how hot you were to get inside my bloomers?” She laughed. “And you’re still hot to get in there.”
Ned looked at her and grinned, his anger waning. They both had great memories of their younger years together. “All right, Bridey, all right. I’ll speak to his father tomorrow.” He blew out the lamp. “Now go to sleep.”
The next day, Ned went down to the station to see Albert.
Albert was a mild-mannered man who attended to his station master duties with rimless glasses perched on the top of his nose. “Good day to you, Ned. How’ve you been keeping?” he asked as he peered at Ned over his glasses.
“I’m doing all right, b’y,” Ned replied. “If you can spare me a few minutes sometime today, I’d like to have a private chat with you about our two children.”
“Ah, so it’s come to that,” Albert sighed. “I must say, Ned b’y, I’m not surprised. Tom and his mother have had a few words over him seeing your daughter, you know.”
“Yes, Albert, the same thing has being going on at our house. I wish children would stick to their own kind. This marrying into other religions causes some fuss for the parents.”
“Yep, it sure does,” Albert answered, as he picked up his train schedule sheet. “Let me see now . . . I haven’t got a train coming for another four hours. Why don’t we take a little stroll together?”
Jennie was terrified. Mam had told her that Pap had spoken to Tom’s father and that he had invited Albert, Suze and Tom to have a cup of tea together at the Sullivan’s.
Mam was a bundle of nerves. She had the girls drove crazy as she made them clean and shine everything in sight. “Got to measure up to Suze Hillier’s house,” she muttered, even though she had never been inside it.
The Hillier family arrived. Jennie could see that Mam was quite in awe of Suze’s fox fur stole that she wore around her neck and shoulders. The stole was complete with beady eyes, dangling paws and bushy tail. It was some kind of status symbol for Suze, who wore it on any occasion possible, summer or winter. For a moment, Jennie’s stout heart quailed as she beheld Suze’s countenance, black as thunder above the animal fur.
Jennie and Mam served tea. Suze never touched the tea, she never smiled nor spoke and her lips were pursed up as if she smelled a bad odour. Only Albert and Ned were at ease as they chatted away over their tea and sandwiches. Tom sat next to his mother and kept offering her a piece of cake, a sandwich, more hot tea to replace the cooling cup that she hadn’t touched, all to no avail. Finally he cleared his throat, stood up, and put his hands on the table. Jennie went to stand beside him. “Me and Jennie wants to get married,” he said before anyone could interrupt. “Jennie’s in the family way.” Their parents had already been told this, but Jennie and Tom felt it needed to be said again in front of everyone.
Jennie noticed how not one person sitting at the table would look them in the eye. They were all staring at their sandwiches and cooling tea. Mr. Albert was the first to look up and speak. He told them that they were welcome to come and live with them until they built a place of their own. Jennie glanced once again at Suze but still she didn’t speak, or look up. Her lips seemed to be pursed even tighter and the fox’s beady eyes gleamed.
Once Mr. Albert had spoken, Mam got up and started to bustle around clearing up the table. Pap sat back and filled his pipe with baccy and offered some to Albert, commenting on how adding a slice of apple to the pouch provided moisture and added a nice flavour to the smoke. Mr. Albert graciously declined, saying he and Suze had to be getting on and that they would be in touch.
And then the two families planned a wedding.
Jennie said she wanted her oldest sister to stand for her. Tom said that his mother wasn’t fussy about having too many Catholics present. But Jennie was firm. No sister to stand up for her, no wedding. Tom was quick enough to change his tune then.
Mrs. Plotsky gave Jennie a lovely cream-coloured evening dress. It came to mid-calf and had an organza shawl. Her sister said they’d get blue forget-me-nots from the garden for her bouquet.
Tom was in a quandary who he’d ask to be his best man, seeing as he had no brothers.
“I don’t care who you gets,” his mother told him. “But get a Protestant. Don’t you so much as offer to bring in that Sullivan fella, Phonse. I just knows they’re dying for you to ask him.” She went off down the hallway grumbling about too many idol-worshipping Catholics in her good Christian home.
Suze told Albert to ask the pastor to get one of the young men from the Youth Group to stand for Tom. She was pleased when he did. That meant there would be one less Catholic in her house. Tom didn’t care. His mind was focused entirely on Jennie.
It was 1948. The pastor married them in Suze’s living room.Even though it was summer and they were indoors, Suze still draped the ugly fox stole over her shoulders as her son and his Catholic girl said their vows. There were only Jennie and Tom, Suze and Mr. Albert, Mam and Pap, and Jennie’s sister Philomena. The boy from the Youth Group, who was only fifteen, was shy and uncomfortable. As soon as the ceremony was ended he mumbled goodbye and was out the door before anyone could stop him. Mam and Pap stood strong together, but their eyes were red and watery all the way through. My God in Heaven, Jennie thought afterward. It wasn’t that bad! You’d think I was marrying a criminal instead of nice quiet Tom.
The women from Suze’s church, at the request of the pastor, had produced tea and sandwiches and a small wedding cake. Bridey wanted to make Jennie’s wedding cake herself, but Tom told Jennie that his mother wanted no wedding cake in her house that had been made with rum in it.
There was no gaiety. Suze’s disapproving face and turned-down mouth put a stop to any attempt anyone might have made for a laugh or a joke. No one drank a drop because of the religion issue. No one danced, for the same reason. At one point during the long evening, Jennie thought of what fun it would be if Ralph were here with his fiddle. But there was no use thinking about that; Suze despised the Mi’kmaq people as much as she did the Catholics. Besides, the Mi’kmaq were both Indian and Catholic. According to Tom, his mother allowed that the Drum family was damned for all eternity.
When Ralph heard that Jennie and Tom had gotten married, he got into his canoe and paddled for miles up the Little Red Indian River, to organize his thoughts. He wasn’t sure if it made him happy because Tom was a good man, or if it made him sad because it wasn’t him that Jennie Hillier loved. Ralph’s own future remained uncertain to him. That night, Jennie’s wedding night, he made camp on the bank of the Little Red
Indian. As he lay back in his sleeping bag having a final smoke before going to sleep, Ralph saw a star shoot swiftly across the sky. He sent a silent wish after it, a wish that Jennie would be happy with Tom.
And then his thoughts turned to Vern Crawford, who had got himself a woman from Windsor after all, just as he said he would. Her name was Millie and Vern had married her that very same year. Whether he did it to show Jennie or not, Ralph didn’t know. He and Vern weren’t close buddies as they once were.
Ralph could never have guessed that two years later Vern would have a huge spot of luck, when Millie would inherit five thousand dollars from a rich uncle in the States. Before long, Vern was out of the woods and into a big Chrysler with a lit-up sign on top saying BADGER TAXI.
7
Millie Crawford was washing up the dishes and trying to ignore her excited husband as he paced about the kitchen. “Millie,” Vern said. “This is my big chance. I’m going to buy a taxi. No more lumberwoods for me, maid. Just thinking about the living conditions in those camps makes me shiver. Men housed in shelters not fit for henhouses, scroachin’ all over with lice, forced to work long hours in all weathers for small pay – I can’t take any more, Millie. I got a chance to get out of it, and I’m going to do it. Yessiree.”
Millie wasn’t too happy about her husband taking her money like that. She tried not to show it, but this evening she was banging the dishes about a little louder than usual. After all, it was willed to her from her bachelor uncle down in the States. She thought she should get to say how the money was spent.
“Vern, that’s my money too, you know. Can’t I have some for myself?”
Vern, oblivious to her feelings, said, “Sure what do you need it for? Don’t I keep you fed and looked after?”
So she let him go ahead. A couple times he heard her muttering to herself about new clothes. Vern squashed that. “What do you need new clothes for? You never goes anywhere except to Mass and to bingo. No one’s going to notice what you got on.”
Vern’s taxi became the love of his life, a ’48 Chrysler 300, beige-coloured, with many miles to her credit, but a valiant and brave car nevertheless. He’d bought her second-hand because he wasn’t sure if the taxi business would pay off. She was scraped and scruffy-looking. The passenger’s door handle was broken, so he had to lean across and open it when someone got in the front; inside, the brown vinyl was stained and torn. But for all her wear, Vern sometimes thought he loved her more than he did Millie.
Vern and his Chrysler worked long hours together. In winter, he attempted trips over Halls Bay Road, plowing his way through the snowdrifts when no one else would try it. He made daily runs to Grand Falls and Windsor and even a few long overnight trips to St. John’s. Vern was a happy man. He was out of the woods camps, while fellows who had laughed at him, like Ralph and Tom, for instance, were still up there and working like slaves and being eaten by the flies. Well, not Ralph; flies left him alone. And Jennie’s brother Phonse, who was on the drive, was stuck out in the wet and cold driving logs, while he, Vern, soaked up the warmth of his cozy taxi. Hah! That would teach them to laugh at Vern Crawford!
There was no baby for Jennie and Tom. There never had been. It had all been a lie.
Consumed with guilt about the great falsehood she had told, so she and Tom could get married and share a bed, Jennie’s thoughts cast back to what had brought them to this.
No matter how much sex we had in the A.N.D. Company barns the winter before, I never became pregnant. Every twenty-eight days or so I’d see the dreaded stain on my bloomers and I’d have to tell poor Tom, “No baby, no marriage this month.”
Spring had come and the barns were busy with the men and horses, so the good times in the hay were over. Getting desperate, Tom had said that they could lie. Jennie had not been too happy about lying. Mam’s old saying had kept ringing through her mind, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
“Tom, I can’t. I can’t lie to Mam,” she had said. “There’s no way I can tell Mam I’m having a baby if I’m not. That’s a great sin that will surely haunt us for the rest of our lives.”
“It will only be for a couple of months until we get married, and then we’ll just tell them it was a false alarm,” Tom had urged. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see if it won’t.”
Jennie was still reluctant, but wanting desperately to please Tom, she’d agreed.
And it did seem all right; right up to the time I told the lie to Mam and she dropped the plate and started to cry. It became worse when we had to stand in front of two sets of parents and lie again. And now is the worst of it all. I am stuck in a house with a mother-in-law who hates me.
Three months after they were safely married, Jennie and Tom told their parents that it was a mistake and she wasn’t going to have a baby after all. Mam and Pap said nothing, but Jennie sensed their disappointment.
Suze nearly had a stroke. “Dirty crawling idol-worshipping Roman Catholic, you trapped my son into marriage,” she spat at her when the two were alone. The two women spent many hours alone together while Tom was up on Sandy and Mr. Albert busy with his railway duties, but they took no joy in each other’s company. Jennie was too scared to carry on a conversation. Used to her easygoing Sullivan family, Jennie had never before met anyone like Suze and she didn’t know how to respond to her at first. Her mother-in-law had a way of undermining her self-confidence with sly remarks. Suze had a mean and dirty mouth when there was no one around to hear her but Jennie. And to see her, Jennie thought, so pious and holy, testifying in church.
Jennie didn’t want to force a confrontation and hurt her beloved Tom. As her quick temper and saucy tongue were clamped down she became withdrawn and nervous. And she was too ashamed to tell Mam about the things her mother-in-law said about Catholics.
Back when they got married, Tom had encouraged Jennie to stay working at Plotsky’s. The morning after their wedding night,which Tom had enthusiastically consummated in the bedroom where he had slept all of his life, Jennie had come downstairs. Tom had left at dawn to go back across the River to the woods camps. It was barely eight o’clock and Jennie had to be to work at nine.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hillier.”
There was no answer from her mother-in-law, who looked like she’d been up for awhile, already dressed in her severe black dress and white apron. Jennie had reached for the kettle on the stove but Suze quickly brushed her aside without as much as an “excuse me,” picked up the kettle and, walking to the back door, dumped the entire contents over the step.
“Oh, I was hoping for a cup of tea before I went to work, if that’s all right,” Jennie had stammered.
Suze had slammed the empty kettle down on the back of the stove. She’d gone to the cupboard and got out her stove blackening and her brush. “Well, if you wanted tea you should have gotten up at a sensible hour like a decent Christian instead of lolling about in bed until eight o’clock.
“I’ve been up since six,” she’d continued. “Got my breakfast eat and am ready to work now. This is my day to blacken me stove. The fire is died down now and I’m not building it up for the likes of you.” She’d waved the blackening in Jennie’s face and motioned toward the door with the black brush. “So be off with you now!”
From then on, Jennie kept a pack of biscuits in her room to munch on in the mornings. She wasn’t about to try and face Suze again in her kitchen.
At first, she’d tried going back to Suze’s to make a sandwich for her lunch, but her mother-in-law quickly put an end to that. “If you thinks you can come traipsin’ in here in the middle of the day, dirtying up my clean kitchen, wasting my firewood to boil the kettle, you can change your mind on that.” Jennie ended up walking up the track to Mam’s place where she was always welcome.
When Mr. Albert and Tom were at home, Suze Hillier was all goodness, cooking their dinner every day. Suze tolerated Jennie being there during those times; otherwise Tom would be asking questions.
/> The only happiness she had was when Tom came home and they were in their bedroom and in bed. They made the bedsprings creak, but they were so in love they didn’t care.
In the morning Suze would say under her breath, “You two are like rabbits. Kept me awake all night with the noise, you dirty Mick. Certainly I wouldn’t expect much more of you, the way you were reared. Eleven children! He must’ve been at her day and night.”
But to Jennie and Tom’s great disappointment, no matter how much loving they did, Jennie didn’t become pregnant. She longed for a little baby to hold and cuddle and call her own, but every month, like clockwork, she would get the cramps in her belly and her flow would start. She came to believe that her monstrous lie, plus the fact that she had left the Catholic Church to marry a Protestant, was God’s punishment on her.
Before long, to please her new husband and her new mother-inlaw, Jennie threw herself into the Pentecostal Church. She went to all the services and became saved. They were glad to have her – another convert. The handsome new minister, Pastor Damian Genge, said to her, “You’re a Christian now.”
Jennie asked him, “What was I before?” He looked at her as if she had ten heads, opened his mouth to say something, closed it again and walked away.
Tom and his parents were all saved. It meant living a stern and strict life, which she knew Tom found hard. He said that he worked with men who cursed until the air turned blue. Tom occasionally used God’s name where it wasn’t appropriate, but he said he always asked forgiveness. He had tremendous sex drive, but he rationalized that by saying that it wasn’t a sin as long as they were trying to make a baby. In Jennie’s opinion the Pentecostals were no different from the Catholics: same beliefs, but presented in a different manner. But she wisely kept these thoughts to herself.
The Badger Riot Page 6