A Song for Nettie Johnson (11 page)

My father is a very intelligent man, I must say, but he is not a man of faith. He does not attend church with me and my mother, not even on special occasions. Even my mother doesn’t attend regularly. Most of the time it’s left up to me to uphold the family in spiritual matters.

My mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, drinking coffee and gazing out the window at the blizzard. She was leaning over the table, resting her elbows on the white tablecloth, holding the cup in both hands. Steam curled upward from the cup’s brim. The whole room smelled of coffee.

She didn’t even notice me come in, or stand there watching. On very snowy days or rainy days my mother abandons all her housewifely responsibilities and sits in front of the window all day, just looking out. We may as well forget about good dinners or a clean and tidy house on such days. She’s completely engrossed by storms. In some respects my mother is a bit lazy. Nevertheless, I find her an interesting person. In this day and age it’s important to observe nature and meditate on all its wonders.

“That’s some storm,” I said.

“There’ll be no school today,” she said.

“I guess not,” I said.

I went to the breadbox and sliced two pieces from a loaf. I brought out the butter and jam. I knew she was not about to make any breakfast, so I’d do it myself.

I sat down at the table to eat my bread and watch the storm with my mother. I have a very good feeling about that day, nothing at all like the days that followed. The blizzard was howling outside. The snow was so high no one even tried to get out, and the air so thick we couldn’t see beyond the porch. But the house was warm, and my mother was enjoying her coffee and my father his chess. Every so often he would leave his game and come into the kitchen to drink coffee with my mother. I knew they were both having a good day. As the Catechism says: “Let husbands and wives love and respect each other.”

Later, in the afternoon, the storm ended. The wind ceased, the sky cleared, the sun shone. And everyone in town shovelled themselves out of their houses. I put on my boots and my new blue parka and walked downtown between the drifts, clean and sparkling in the sun. I went to see my friend, Esther. She was helping her father in the store, straightening tin cans of soup and dusting jars of pickles. We talked about the storm and what we should do for our mothers on Mother’s Day. She thought she’d buy her mother a box of chocolates. I said I’d have to wait till Saturday to decide, when I’d have some money. Then I went home. And that night I got sick.

I woke up in the middle of the night. My head was hot, my chest ached, and my throat was sore. I felt damp all over and weak. I crouched under the blanket, shivering with cold and sweating. Then I got up. I turned on the hall light and walked down the corridor to my mother and father’s bedroom. I opened the door and saw them in the light from the hall. They were both sound asleep. My father was lying on his right side with his knees up. My mother was lying on her right side too, with her knees up. She was lying right next to my father, her stomach against his back and her legs fitting into his, fitting right into them like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I walked over to the bed and stood there. I touched her on her hair, but she didn’t move. I touched her on the cheek and she twitched a little. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“I’m sick,” I said and walked out of the room and back to bed. In a minute she was in my room, leaning over me in the dimness.

“Norma? Did you say you were sick?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“All over.”

“Here?” She touched my forehead.

“Yes.”

“Here?” She touched my neck.

“Yes.”

She turned on the lights. She looked at my face and neck. She felt the sheets and pillow. They were damp.

“You are sick,” she said.

“I know.”

She walked down the hall to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water, a washcoth, and a bottle of aspirins. She gave me an aspirin and the water. Then she washed my face with a cold wet cloth, and my neck too. She covered me up and brought in an extra blanket.

“You’ll be all right,” she said. “Try to get some rest.”

I didn’t say anything. I just turned over on my side and went back to sleep.

In the morning I was still sick. My chest was sore and my head ached. My arms and legs felt damp and heavy. My mother came in again and looked at me.

“I’ll make a mustard plaster,” she said.

My mother is not an ignorant woman by any means, but she is not a woman of science. She does not read up on the latest developments in medicine as my father does, even though he’s only a telephone man. She prefers remedies handed down by her mother and grandmother and even great-grandmother for all I know. Mustard plaster is a case in point. If you’re unfamiliar with that remedy, this is how it works: You make a paste of water, flour, and powdered mustard. I’m not sure of the proportions, but don’t use too much mustard – it burns. You spread this yellow paste on a piece of cloth cut out to fit the chest it’s going on. Then you lay another cloth over it and pin the edges together. You put this on the chest right next to the skin, and it’s supposed to do some good – I’m not sure what, except warm your chest considerably and make you sweat.

She came upstairs carrying the mustard plaster, holding it in her two hands like a rolled-out sheet of dough. When I saw it I began feeling embarrassed and wished like everything I hadn’t gotten sick. I was eleven years old at the time, nearly twelve, and I was beginning to develop. I was the only one in my class beginning to show. Ever so slightly I know, but even so I wasn’t fond of the idea that someone would see me, even my mother.

“I think I’m feeling better, better than last night,” I said. “I don’t believe I’ll be needing the mustard plaster.”

“You’ll be up and on your feet in no time with a good strong mustard plaster,” she said. She laid the bulging cloth on a chair and lifted the quilt from under my chin, and the sheet too. She unbuttoned my pyjama top slowly and gently, and I felt myself getting more and more embarrassed. She spread out the fronts of my pyjama top; then she lifted the mustard plaster from the chair and laid it on my chest, tucking it under my neck and partway into my armpits and down to my stomach. She pressed her fingers on it ever so gently and I felt the pressing on the soft places on my chest where I’d begun to develop. I stared at the ceiling and didn’t say anything. Neither did she. It seemed as if she didn’t even notice, but she must have. I don’t see how she could have missed. She buttoned my pyjamas again and covered me with the sheet and quilt.

“Have a nice time in bed today,” she said. “I’ll bring you some magazines to read and some juice.”

Maybe it doesn’t make much sense to you how I felt about such things at the time. I certainly don’t feel embarrassed now. But now I’m thirteen and in grade seven and I’m fully developed. My mother has explained everything to me, about my body and sexual things. So now I understand all that. I have no problems in that line. However, when I was eleven and just starting to develop, I felt quite peculiar about it. I didn’t want anyone to know. When I was alone I’d sometimes look at myself in the mirror, without my clothes on. Then I’d put on a T-shirt or a sweater to see if I showed. I never wore T-shirts to school though. I certainly didn’t want everyone gawking. I’d leave the T-shirts to the grade nine girls, Rosie Boychuck and her group. They seemed to enjoy letting the whole world know they were developing.

Anyway, I had a fairly pleasant morning after that, looking at
National Geographic
s and at the icicles melting outside my window, falling asleep and waking up and drinking juice. If you’re not in pain it can be quite enjoyable sometimes being sick.

Then, in the afternoon, it happened. I can’t understand to this day how my mother could have done that to me. But she did. She came upstairs in the afternoon, when the sun was warm on my bed, and said she would change my mustard plaster. She’d make a fresh batch and after that I’d be finished. She pulled down the quilt and sheet, unbuttoned my pyjamas, and lifted the cloth from my chest. My chest felt icy cold, and bare. I pulled my pyjama top together quickly without buttoning it and snuggled under the covers. My mother left the room carrying the used mustard plaster, folded like a book, in her hand. I heard her walk down the stairs into the kitchen. I heard the cupboard door opening and some pots banging. I heard her chatting away to my father about nothing in particular. And I thought no more about it until I opened my eyes and saw him standing in the doorway. My father. My father holding the fresh mustard plaster. My father coming to put the new mustard plaster on my chest. I looked at him and felt my face getting hot and my heart beating faster. Was he actually going to do it? Open my pyjama top and see me? And press that bulging cloth against my chest? Had my mother sent him up for that? I felt my eyes sting and I knew I was going to cry. I felt the wetness press against my eyeballs and drip over the edges of my eyes down the side of my head, into my hair. I couldn’t say anything. I just lay there and cried.

“You’re not feeling well at all, are you,” he said “It’s no treat being sick. But maybe this will do the trick.”

He lifted up the quilt and sheet. He spread open my pyjama top. He looked down on my chest. I looked up at his face and saw his eyes open a little wider, and I knew he saw my development. It was pretty clear to me that he saw.

He laid the cloth on me, smoothly and firmly, and his hands were heavy on the roundness there. Then he buttoned my pyjamas and covered me with the sheet. He wiped my eyes with the edge of the sheet and told me I’d be better soon and not to cry and mother was cooking vegetable soup with dumplings for supper.

In the evening I felt better, and on Saturday I was fine except that I had to stay inside all day and couldn’t go downtown to buy a Mother’s Day present. My mother told me not to feel bad; if I stayed inside and got completely well by Sunday we could go to church together, to the special service.

On Mother’s Day I got up early. I washed my face and combed my hair. I put on my green dress with the long sleeves and white cuffs and went downstairs to make breakfast for my mother and father. I set the table with the blue placemats Aunt Hanna had sent from Sweden. I boiled eggs and made cinnamon toast because that’s what I’m best at. My parents were pleased with the breakfast.

After breakfast my father went to his desk to play chess with someone in India or Yugoslavia. And my mother and I went to church.

I do worry sometimes about my father. His indifference to spiritual matters suggests a certain arrogance. And you must have heard what the Bible has to say about that: “Pride goeth before a fall.” Of course, my father is not the only person who feels this way. Many people, at least in our part of the province, have no religious faith whatsoever. Men especially. Men seem to feel that religion is for women and children. And not even for all women. Some women they prefer without any religious faith at all. So they can have fun, if you know what I mean. But if a woman has children and has to take care of things, if a woman is responsible, if she has men and children to take care of, then she should have faith. That’s what they think. Well, this kind of argument holds no water whatsoever, as far as I’m concerned.

We walked through melting snow to church, our rubber boots black and shining in the slush. When we got inside, Mrs. Franklin and Mrs. Johnson met us at the door and gave us each a carnation, a pink one for me because my mother was alive, and a white one for my mother because her mother was dead. She died five years ago. She had sugar diabetes, but it was a heart attack she died from. We pinned the carnations to our coats and walked down the aisle to the middle pew, right behind Mr. and Mrs. Carlson and Leonard, who’s one year older than I am, and not very bright.

The text that Sunday was from the Book of Proverbs, written by King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, although he had a lot of wives. Mother’s Day is the only time we ever hear it: “Who can find a virtuous woman, for her price is far above rubies.”

After the sermon we sang a hymn we sing every Mother’s Day. My mother says she could do without that song, but I myself feel it has a lot of meaning. We all stood up. Mrs. Carlson sang in her usual voice. Mr. Carlson didn’t sing at all, just looked at the words. Leonard turned around and stared at me a couple of times.

Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.

Home, home, sweet, sweet home,

There’s no place like home,

O, there’s no place like home.

That afternoon,
I found the cat.

I had just come from Mary’s house to see what she had done for her mother on Mother’s Day. I knew it would be something clever because that’s how she is.

The cat was in a ditch when I first saw it. A kitten actually, scratching at a little drift and meowing. It was grey and skinny, its voice thin and unpleasant. I leaned over the ditch, picked it up by the fur of its neck as I’d been taught to do, and set it down on the concrete walk. But it didn’t go anywhere. It didn’t move. It just stood there by my ankle. I walked away and it followed me, meowing after me in its ugly voice. I didn’t know what to do, so I scooped it up with my two hands, laid it on the crook of my arm and took it with me back to Mary’s house. I stood in their porch and showed the cat to Mrs. Sorenson. She leaned against the porch wall, against a giant-sized pile of newspapers and magazines, and told me I should take it back where I found it.