by Méira Cook
“How are the March sisters?” Lolleen asked Annunciata. She always called them the March sisters, as if they were one entity and not two separate women: Lolleen’s good friend, Rose March, and Rose’s elderly sister, June. Rose worked long hours as a receptionist at Thiessen’s Tiling and Flooring, and her sister was sickly and reclusive. Since the Bautista family lived in the same neighbourhood as the sisters, Lolleen frequently asked Annunciata how they were, by which she meant to inquire: Have you looked in on June March recently?
Everyone called her Aunt June, even Annunciata who had grown fond of the old woman, enough that she no longer begrudged the unpaid services she performed: making tea and keeping Aunt June company as she drank it, dusting the old woman’s room and turning her mattress. If Lolleen had ever had a mind to pay Annunciata for her trouble, she had long ago misplaced it — the thought and not the mind — but Aunt June always pressed a little something into Annunciata’s hand when she left. Not money, unfortunately, she was poor as a church mouse (another Miss Leonard-ism), but a piece of lace she’d been hoarding, or one of her late mother’s famous dinner bracelets. The bracelets were cheap and gaudy, only costume jewelry, but Annunciata presented them to her own mother in the hope that they would cheer her up.
But before Annunciata could reply to Lolleen’s pleasantry, Miss Leonard rapped on the counter to bring the kitchen workers to order. Somehow she contrived to rap in a leisurely manner so as to indicate that she would not be influenced by Chef Charlie in the painstaking molasses drip of her duty. As if pulled by strings, the volunteers jerked into place at their stations on the line, Lolleen behind the thirty-litre vat of hambone pea soup, her ladle at the ready. The soup was lukewarm but hearty looking, with fingernail-size chunks of meat bobbing in it and croutons piled on top. In addition to the soup, every plate got two pieces of garlic bread, a spoonful of coleslaw, an apple or a banana, a square of iced slab cake, and a helping of sweet pickles bleeding their bright yellow liquor.
“A word from our sponsor,” said Chef Charlie.
Miss Leonard glared at him. “For what we are about to receive, Lord Jesus Christ, and for what we have already received from your bounty. For the strength to help others and the strength to request help when help is needed. For the compassion that we give and the compassion that we seek…”
She was well and truly launched on her breezy sea of scruples, and wouldn’t be back for hours.
“Seems Miss Leonard’s been kissing the blarney stone again,” Chef Charlie would often say. But fortunately, he once explained to Annunciata, her chattiness only affected her during prayers.
Lolleen, however, was of the opinion that Miss Leonard had been bitten by snakes and that the outcome was grave and inconclusive.
“That’s tongue speak,” she sniffed, whenever Miss Leonard got going. “I’ve got no patience with a snake-bitten fool who lets her tongue run away with her.”
Annunciata couldn’t help it — the image of snakes like flickering tongues bearing Miss Leonard away beset her. She put her hand in front of her eyes so that she could open them and banish the terrible picture. Surreptitiously, she watched Chef Charlie’s expression of implacable, tolerant skepticism. He had his chin sunk deep into his chest and his eyelids closed, just so. These eyelids were like perfectly composed drapes over the windows to his soul. They neither wrinkled with effort nor fluttered with impatience, both effort and impatience being words that sprang to Annunciata’s mind at this moment, her body constrained by Miss Leonard’s dire God while her thoughts raced on.
Sometimes Miss Leonard would give minute thanks for all that had been bestowed and sometimes she would give the Lord a gentle nudge in the direction of the pantry. Pancake mix was a blessing, she would point out, but one of which they were generally in short supply, and milk — even powdered milk — was always a welcome contribution. Mostly, though, she lost herself in the lulling give and take of her own splendid gratitude.
“For what we may fashion with our hands and what we may fashion with our hearts. For the love that we give and the love we are granted,” said Miss Leonard. “For —”
“For Christ’s sake,” yelled Lolleen, riled beyond bearing, but Chef Charlie, without opening his eyes, intoned “A—men!” breaking the single word in two and transforming Lolleen’s runaway curse into the end of a prayer.
“Praise the Lord and pass the ketchup,” Chef Charlie said just for good measure, and the volunteers broke ranks, chuckling. Lolleen cranked open the metal shutters and called “Grub’s up, folks,” her thistly disquiet when forced into close quarters with the Lord and Miss Leonard always coming out as this canteen boisterousness.
For an hour and a half a steady stream of men and women passed by the kitchen to hand in their meal tickets and pick up their lunch plates. And for the next half hour the stream still flowed but it was more on the tributary end of the spectrum. After that it was trickle, trickle, halt.
Miss Leonard took up her position at the head of the serving line, inspecting each plate that came her way and clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Tcha, too much soup slopping about again, Lolleen. Remember, one ladle is a delight, two is a deluge.” Often she would comment on coleslaw skimp or sweet pickle distribution but her bone of contention was, and always had been, the soup — too much, too little, never just right.
“Sorry, Goldilocks,” muttered Lolleen. Hey little princess, hey little pea, she’d sometimes sing in her hoarse, oddly tuneful voice. Hey little princess, hey little pea. Come down from your tower and dance with me. Occasionally Miss Leonard would send a lunch plate back for correction but mostly she was content to rattle about in her easeful disgruntlement.
The thing about Miss Leonard, though, was that she was damn good at hospitality. The kitchen staff — from Chef Charlie to Annunciata, his sous, and even Hermano, the dishwasher — all agreed that this was so. She specialized in making folks feel welcome. For all her curmudgeonly this-and-that, she overflowed with the milk of human kindness, and her smile was genuine.
“Yeah, genuine leather!” her sister Maria would have joked, regarding the smile. She’d probably also have pointed out how quickly milk curdled when it was left out too long. But that was Maria for you, and it had nothing at all to do with Miss Leonard, who spent her weekends at the Mission, who remembered names and stories, who asked after people’s job prospects, their housing situations, even their children, which was a fraught subject since most of the children were in foster care, or missing, or otherwise destroyed by their parents’ love, which around these parts often took the form of something crooked and ingrown.
“You can’t love if you’ve never been loved,” Miss Leonard explained.
“Why not? You seem to love them,” Lolleen muttered, because even she had to acknowledge that if Miss Leonard loved anyone it was these lost creatures.
But Miss Leonard just smiled at Lolleen, taking her sarcasm as the compliment that it was surely never meant to be.
In the Mission’s Mission Statement, ha ha, talk of children was discouraged, along with discussions about sex and drugs. Blasphemy, too, was strictly verboten. Only religion was encouraged as a topic of endless fascination. Yet strangely, the friends in Christ were eager to talk about their children. Annunciata was always surprised at their eagerness, as if the stars had stopped in their lonely orbits and consented to discuss astronomy. Some folks carried dog-eared photographs — overexposed and blurry — of kids with gap-toothed smiles and wary eyes. But most had nothing to display except memories and stories, forgetfulness, blunder and prevarication, all mixed together like cheap rum and Coke.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Johnson,” Miss Leonard addressed an older gentleman with arthritic hands. “Can I tempt you with some hambone soup?”
“Certainly, Miss Leonard. The hambone is my favourite of all possible bones.”
“And how do you find yourself, these days, Mr. Johnson
?”
“Creaky in the joints, Miss L. Cold all the time. Used to take a couple of hours to warm up in the morning, now it takes a couple of months. But I reckon I’ll be thawed out by July so how’s about I meet you back here and take you dancing?”
Miss Leonard smiled like a girl and although the years did not fall away, they teetered somewhat, and her eyes — which had never grown old though the rest of her had thickened in some places and thinned in others and generally crinkled all over — shone out like good deeds in a weary world. Blue eyes too, the most pursuant kind. She tapped Mr. Johnson briskly on the wrist and he knocked a couple of fingers against his head, a ceremonial doff of the hat brim in the absence of a hat.
“You look nice today, Marleen. Wearing makeup and a new scarf, I see,” Miss Leonard greeted a newcomer.
“Betty-Ann here did my makeup. Hides my big black eye.” Marleen giggled as if the black eye and what had caused it were nothing, a trifle, an excuse for dress-up, although she took the trouble to complain, on behalf of her friend, about the coleslaw.
“Repeats on me,” Betty-Ann explained.
Cabbage was a problem, however you sliced it, ha ha. Many of the friends in Christ were dubious about coleslaw in general, cabbage in particular. Gas was the main bugaboo but there were reports of other gastrointestinal tribulations: slow-downs and accelerations and uncomfortable bloating. One fellow reported that whenever he cabbaged-up, he disgraced himself.
“You need regularity when you live on the street,” he explained. “No surprises.”
“Can’t do anything about the coleslaw today, Betty-Ann. But I’ll alert catering,” Miss Leonard promised, dashing a note to herself on her pad. She always kept paper handy and doodled away for all the world as if she were taking notes and making resolutions and drafting proposals. Under cover of refilling the sweet pickle jar, Annunciata peeked at what Miss Leonard had scribbled. Coleslaw, slow caw, low saw, sole claw, in her full, curvy handwriting with its fat top and bottom loops like so many balloon animals bobbing across the page.
“That’s all right, Miss Leonard. I know you got a lot on your plate, ha ha.” Marleen was still laughing when a woman came up and grabbed her by the arm. Annunciata had never seen the woman before and she didn’t look hungry. Or rather she looked famished — and tired and sick — but Annunciata knew that no lunch plate in the world, no hambone pea soup, no garlic bread, no helping of slab cake and sweet pickle relish, was going to feed her. And this was unusual because, despite what people said about the deep-rooted problems of urban poverty, and the Band-Aids of charity and good intentions, and the giving away of fish instead of handing out those damn fishing rods, Annunciata had seen what a cup of coffee and a bite of food could do to keep heart and mind and spirit nesting together like dishes in a kitchen cupboard.
No, uh-uh. That woman was not going anywhere until whatever had been taken from her was restored.
It was a child, of course. It was a daughter or a sister or a niece. The woman showed Marleen and Betty-Ann a photograph and when they shook their heads she began making the rounds of those diners who’d lingered, sipping at the four-hour coffee and sopping their fingers around the rims of their plates. Annunciata turned away and did not look up again for a long time. She helped Hermano with the lunch dishes, she sluiced the counters down with ammonia and the grill with vinegar. She promised Lolleen that she’d look in on June March before she went home that night, and then she poured a bleach solution into a bucket and began to mop the floor. She did not want to think about missing girls, and for the next hour, at least, did not.
“Take a break, child.” Miss Leonard was always jaunty after lunch. She had fed the hungry and welcomed the stranger to her table. She had harried the volunteers and riled up Lolleen Magary. What more could she accomplish in a day?
Annunciata untied her apron and slipped out the back door. She seldom felt like eating after she’d helped cook and serve lunch, but Chef Charlie had fixed her a ham and sweet pickle sandwich, so she sat down on the back steps and ate it. Tried to, anyway. She’d only achieved a bite or two when Mr. Um came stumbling over, his tread heavy as if he were wearing horseshoes. He held out his hand so she gave him the rest of her sandwich.
“Pizza Chicken,” he said.
“Yummy,” Annunciata replied.
But Mr. Um would not be appeased. He came closer. “Pizza Chicken Dentist,” he insisted, giving each word equal weight. “Pizza Chicken Dentist,” he said again, as if it were the answer to a riddle. He did a sort of Bob Fosse shimmy in the dusty street, popping his imaginary top hat and sticking out his bottom as if he were wearing tails.
She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. She sensed Mr. Um and his conundrums go spinning off in the wind, his hooves sparking at the iron rim of the world. Tomorrow was Easter, blood of the —. Flesh of the —. On her way to catch the bus this morning she’d passed advertisements in store windows proclaiming the yeast of the rising, unsaved world. “Spring is sprung / The bread is risen,” in pastry font cursive at Heartstone Bakery, and Mr. Lube had a banner that read: “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz / I wonder how your sparkplugs is?” Then there were the neighbourhood window displays of chocolate bunnies and chickens, the arrangements of silk daffodils and plastic tulips in their fake grass tubs. Real flowers wouldn’t take root until next month, at least. Not in this city.
The United Church near the hospital had a sign display that asked, “Got God?” and the one outside First Baptist read, “Conversational English for New Immigrants!” Only Holy Faith Evangelical seemed to display a sober attitude to resurrection. The white signboard with its unevenly spaced black lettering was forthright and joyous: “He is coming!” Sometime in the miracle-ready night before Easter Sunday, the letters would shuffle around so that when the congregation arrived at church that morning, shivering in their early spring frocks and lightweight suits, they’d be greeted with the Good News: “He is risen!”
It never failed. One day rising, the next risen. He was a loaf set to prove in the ovens of the faithful.
“Risen?” asked her mama, the first time she saw the Sunday sign.
“It means erect, Mama,” Maria told her. “Today our Lord is erect.” She threw back her head and laughed at her mother’s puzzlement. “English she is a bitch,” she giggled, mimicking her papa’s formula for assimilation and spite. None of the Bautistas attended church anymore. It was just one more empty building with a sign beside it.
The woman with the missing child was coming down the street, carrying a stack of posters. Annunciata watched as the woman struggled to affix one of her posters to a hydro pole. That’s not going to work, she wanted to tell her. Come the weather, any weather, and the paper would turn to paste in the rain, or fly away like a wish on the wind. The last of three wishes. One, come home my sister. Two, never get lost again. Three, down comes the rain.
What Annunciata and her mother found was that a staple gun was essential. You stapled the Missing Girl poster to trees and fences and telephone poles all the way up and down the street. And when the street was full, you moved on to the neighbourhood (the city, the world, the universe, oh my heart). If coloured paper made you feel better then use it, by all means. You centred your pink or green or yellow poster then, with four quick hitching clicks, you secured the corners, being particular not to run the bottom staples through the Missing Girl’s throat. In the beginning, her hands shaking, Annunciata had done just that.
The woman was limping along the street, stopping at hydro poles and community bulletin boards, even the odd stunted tree that remained, fenced in its little black cage. As she walked she fumbled at her stack of posters and her roll of sticking tape. Once or twice a door opened suddenly and someone — a storekeeper or office worker — would call out to the woman. Then they’d catch sight of the poster and stop. Shrug sometimes, sometimes wave a hand as if to say, Well, if you have to, or Hurry up, lady
, or I hope you find her, honey.
Annunciata went to help — she was good at centring the posters, holding steady.
“Go away, white girl,” yelled the woman. Then she took a closer look at Annunciata and corrected herself wearily, “Fuck off, you filthy Pino.”
Some things still hurt, like remembering the staple glinting through her sister’s throat, or seeing other posters of Missing Girls with their once-and-before smiles that no never-after could erase. All the Missing Girls were the same girl but every girl was different. Meanwhile, the family waited as April melted into an impossible river that flowed in both directions at once. He is coming! He is risen!
What could halt the river? For her father, nothing, though he tried to dissolve his pain in various solvents. For her mother, nothing — she slipped into the soft noose of her sorrow and hung there. Yet Annunciata never stopped looking for her sister. Maria, Maria! But where could you find a young woman — a small-boned, soft-skinned, almost girl — in the immensity of the city, its concrete factories and railway bridges and smoke stacks, its vast post-industrial fields. She was never where you looked and Annunciata had still not come upon the last place she would have thought to look, that hidden pocket in the world’s lining where you could always find your bus pass and your change purse.
The police lacked conviction and after a while they stopped coming. Now her sister was a cold case.
“Cold means dead,” sobbed her mama. “Dead and buried in the snow.”
“Not the case, at all, ha ha,” said her papa, drunk.
Cold wasn’t dead, explained Mrs. Binder. It was just a waiting place. Not as good as warm, admittedly, but soon Maria would come in out of the cold. Mrs. Binder was angry, though, and she promised the Bautistas that she would agitate the police until they found Maria.
There was talk in those days of many young girls who had disappeared. But where did they go? People began to avoid the river. They would not walk past or stare too long into its muddy brown waters. The river had become a place of misfortune, but Maria wasn’t found in the river.