A Short History of Indians in Canada (12 page)

My mother always wanted to be the heroine in a play, a strong woman who rose above adversity or held her family together during desperate times or died beautifully of something that wasn’t contagious or embarrassing.

She could have been an actress, she liked to tell me, and I believe that this is true, for she would move around the beauty shop as if she knew where to place each foot, when to turn, how to hold her head so that her hair caught the light that came in through the plateglass window.

On Sunday mornings when the shop was closed, my mother would go out behind Santucci’s grocery and pick any flowers that Mrs. Santucci hadn’t been able to sell. Most of them were in pretty bad shape, but she would trim the stems, cut off the dead parts, and arrange them in the green vase and put them in the front window. Then she would warm up the Philco hi-fimy father had bought just before he left and load a stack of records on the spindle. They were musicals for the most part or
operas,
The Desert Song, Carmen, The Student Prince, La Traviata, South Pacific,
and
Indian Love Call.
She knew all the songs by heart, and her voice blended in so well with the record that you could hardly tell them apart. She followed the music around the house until all the records had dropped onto the turntable. Then she would turn off the phonograph with a quick, hard gesture that reminded me of my grandmother wringing the heads off chickens.

My father hadn’t gone very far. He kept a small apartment out by the auction yards, and most Friday afternoons after school, I would go to his place.

“How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“How’s your mother?”

“She’s fine.”

“She got any boyfriends?”

“Nope.”

“You’d tell me if she did, right?”

“Sure.”

Once every month on Saturday morning, he would take me to Eddie Bertacci’s barbershop for a haircut. There were four chairs in the shop, though Bertacci worked alone and only used the one chair near the front window. He was a short, dark man with knotted red hair and a thin line of a moustache so black and dense it made his lip look as if it were hiding under a ledge. My
father told me that Bertacci had put in the other three chairs for each of his sons, but that all of them had taken off. There were postcards stuck around the mirrors.

“Danny’s in Italy now,” he said, pointing to one of the cards. “Joey’s working for Rockwell in Los Angeles. That one’s from Mario. He came through last month.”

Mr. Bertacci pointed to one of the palm trees and the ocean running up on the beach. “What d’ya think? Pretty nice, huh?”

“Is that Hawaii, Mr. Bertacci?”

“Who the hell knows.”

The writing on the back of the cards was all the same, tiny, crunched letters that you couldn’t read.

“Whatcha gonna do when you grow up?”

“Don’t know.”

“Hey, Leo, what’s this boy of yours gonna do when he grows up?”

“Why don’t you ask his mother.”

“Well, ain’t that the shits.”

Mr. Bertacci said he had cards from Japan and India and England and Africa.

“Look at this one, will ya. You see that funny-looking building?”

“Sure.”

“That damn thing is in Moscow, Russia.”

“Wow!”

“God damn Russia.”

All of the cards had the same tiny writing. None of them had stamps.

“Give her a call, will you Eddie,” my father said. “I wouldn’t mind finding out myself.”

“Well, ain’t that the shits.”

Most Saturdays, just before the matinee, my father would drop me off in front of the Paramount, give me a dollar, and tell me he’d see me next week. After the movie, I’d walk back to the beauty shop and watch my mother sweep all the hair into neat, fuzzy piles.

“How’s your father?”

“He’s fine.”

“He say anything?”

“Nope.”

“Did he ask how we were doing?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“I said we were fine.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much.”

“What else did you do?”

“Got a haircut at Mr. Bertacci’s. Went to the matinee.”

“Poor Mr. Bertacci.”

When I was twelve, the Main Street Theatre decided to do Lillian Hellman’s
The Little Foxes.
My mother got a copy of the script, and, every night for two weeks, she practised the part of Alexandria until she knew most all the lines by heart.

“Who’s Alexandria?”

“She’s the ingenue lead.”

“What’s an ingenue?”

“A very pretty, young woman.”

“That the part you want?”

Tryouts for the play were on a Thursday evening, and, even though it was a school night, I got to go and watch. My mother spent an hour combing out her hair. She tied it back with a yellow ribbon and put on her good white dress and heels.

There were about forty people in the auditorium, and one by one, they read lines from the play until Mr. Lipsitz nodded to them to stop. When it was my mother’s turn, she strode to the front, dropped the script face down on a chair, and delivered Alexandria’s lines until Mr. Lipsitz nodded and said thank you and called the next person.

“Did you hear what he said to me?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Lipsitz.”

“You mean, ‘thank you’?”

“No, he didn’t say it that way at all.”

“Does that mean you got the part?”

“Alexandria is supposed to be young and blonde and beautiful.”

My mother wasn’t blonde, and she didn’t get the part. Betty Morehouse, who taught part-time at the high school, got to play Alexandria. I didn’t even know my mother had gotten a part in the play until the day I came home from the Saturday matinee and found her in the back of the shop practising lines.

“You get a part?”

“Yes.”

“I thought Miss Morehouse got the blonde part.”

“She did.”

“What part did you get?”

“Mr. Lipsitz asked me to play Regina.”

“Is it a good part?”

“It’s the female lead.”

“So that’s good.”

“That’s good.”

When I saw my father that Friday, I told him about my mother getting the part in the play.

“She going to get to play a heroine?”

“What’s that?”

“Heroines are women who believe all their dreams will come true.”

“Are heroines like ingenues?”

“Ingenues? What the hell is an ingenue?”

“They’re pretty women, blondes mostly.”

“Your mother’s no blonde, I can tell you that.”

“Can we go see the play?”

“Where the hell did you get a word like
ingenue
?”

I offered to help my mother with her lines, but she said, no, she’d better do it herself. I asked her if I could come and watch the rehearsals, but she said that it would keep me up too late. She wouldn’t even let me read the script.

“I thought you liked to see me read.”

“I do, honey.”

“Well, then, let me read the script.”

“You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Has it got sort of naughty stuff in it?”

“Is that what your father told you?”

My grandmother lived just out of town. She had a small house, a chicken coop, and a large garden. Whenever we went to visit, she would take me out to the garden, and I would help her gather up potatoes and squash and corn and beans.

“You like squash yet?”

“Not much.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

She kept the chickens in a small wire coop that stood off the ground on stilts. There were layers, she told me, and there were meat birds. These were meat birds.

“I don’t like chicken all that much anymore, Granny.”

“No profit in being a romantic.”

“No, I mean, it sort of makes me gag.”

“Light the candle and hand me that knife.”

Afterwards, she would roll the carcasses over the flame until you could smell the burning feathers all the way in the house. Then she would scrub them down with soap and water, wrap them in brown butcher paper, and put them in the box with the vegetables.

“Granny, have you ever read
The Little Foxes
?”

“What is it?”

“A play.”

“A play?”

“Mum’s got a part in a play. It’s the lead…Regina.”

“Your father come around much anymore?”

“But Regina is not an ingenue.”

“He still drink?”

The two of them had an argument. I got sent out to the garden, but I could hear my grandmother’s voice, even over the crackle and snap of the cornstalks moving in the afternoon air. After we loaded the box into the trunk, my mother stood behind the car and looked at the house. She stood like that for a while, and, then, we got in the car and drove home.

Most Fridays my father would take me to Jerry’s for dinner. I’d always order the cheeseburger and fries, and my father would order the clubhouse with a side of Thousand Islands dressing so he could dip his sandwich in it.

“You ever going to come home?”

“Ask your mother.”

“She says you aren’t.”

“She should know.”

I waited until he finished his sandwich and was stirring the sugar into his coffee.

“Mum said I could come to one of the rehearsals if you would take me.”

“She said that?”

“Sort of.”

“What did she say exactly?”

“I forget.”

My father finished his coffee. He didn’t say anything
else about the play, and I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. So I was surprised when we pulled up in front of the auditorium.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see what she’s up to.”

He told me to be quiet, that we were only going to stay for a little while. We stood at the back of the auditorium where it was dark and no one could see us. My mother and Miss Morehouse were on stage, and they were arguing. We watched the play for about fifteen minutes, and then my father nudged me. When we got out to the parking lot, he laughed suddenly and threw his head back.

“God, what a bitch!”

“Mum’s pretty good, isn’t she?”

“Just like real life.”

“Can we go to see the play?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

My father made me promise that I wouldn’t tell my mother that we saw part of the rehearsal, and I didn’t. But I did ask her if I could come to the play.

“You wouldn’t enjoy it, honey.”

“Sure I would.”

“It’s an adult play.”

“If Dad takes me, can I come?”

“I’ll talk to your father,” she said. “Let me talk to your father.”

My mother told my father that under no circumstances was he to bring me to the play. Those were her exact words, he said. We sat at the counter and ate our food in
silence, and, when Jerry brought the coffee pot, my father asked me how old I was.

“Almost eleven.”

“Well, hell,” he said. “You’re almost a man.”

“Why doesn’t Mum want me to see the play?”

“Because she’s a bitch. In the play.”

“It’s just a play. It’s not real life.”

“Some people don’t know the difference.”

“I do.”

“Good for you,” and he slapped me on my shoulder. “Hey, Jerry,” he shouted. “Bring my kid a cup of coffee, will ya. He’s damn near a grown man.”

“Does that mean we can go?”

I asked my mother once why they had split up and all she ever said was that marriage had been a surprise. I asked my father, too, but he said I should ask my mother. When I told him I had, he wanted to know what she had said. So I told him.

Friday was opening night. My father was waiting for me when I got to his apartment. He was dressed in a blue suit with a red tie. He looked real good.

“I got married in this suit.”

“You look like a movie star.”

“That’s what your mother said.”

We didn’t go to Jerry’s for dinner. We went to Antoine’s instead, where you could sit at tables and have
waitresses bring your food to you. My father spent the meal adjusting his napkin and looking at his watch.

“You think Mum could have been an actress?”

“All you need is a good imagination.”

“Is that why you married her?”

“Is that what she said?”

We got to the auditorium late. I thought we would sit at the back where no one could see us, but my father marched down the centre aisle and found us seats in the second row.

If my mother saw us, she never let on. She was great. The character she played was an awful woman who was really nasty to Alexandria and who wouldn’t give her husband his medicine when he was dying. By the end of the play, I was expecting that someone was going to shoot her. But no one did.

When the curtain came down, everyone in the auditorium stood and clapped, even my father. Then the players came out on the stage, and someone from behind the curtain brought out bouquets of flowers. Standing there in the lights, smiling at the applause, she really looked like an actress. She really did. My mother got two bouquets. Miss Morehouse only got one.

“So what did you think?” my father asked me as we walked to the car.

“She was good. Didn’t you think she was good?”

“Made you want to strangle her, didn’t it.”

“She really wanted to play Alexandria.”

“Alexandria? The blonde bimbo?”

My mother was waiting for me when I got home Saturday. She had put the bouquets of flowers in the green vase and set them in the shop window.

“Santucci throw those away?”

“No. I got them for being in the play.”

“You must have been good.”

“The big bunch is from your father.”

We didn’t talk about the play, and I was never sure if she knew I had been there. My father came by that Sunday still dressed in his suit, and the two of them went for a walk and talked, I guess. She came back alone.

My mother made lunch, and, while we were eating, she told me about how life was always full of surprises, that some of them were good and some of them were bad.

“Does that mean Dad is coming home?”

“What did I just say?”

Then she told me about Eddie Bertacci and the postcards. She was angry. I don’t know why, but I figured it was because I had gone to the play. After lunch, she turned the hi-fion and we listened to her records.

The flowers lost most of their petals in less than a week, but my mother trimmed and cut them back until there was nothing left but the stems.