A Song for Nettie Johnson (25 page)

The first time
Gordon left was soon after Anxiety was born. Hosea had come home from the hospital with the new baby, her first. She was scared. The baby cried almost constantly. Hosea had tried to enjoy the infant, to sit on the sunny porch beside the morning glories and nurse her, to sing to her, go for walks in the park, pushing the baby in her small carriage. But she did these things without confidence, without energy. Her actions were awkward and rigid. The baby seemed to sense her mother’s fear and became increasingly more nervous and discontent, vomiting, bawling, her small face turning dark red from some deep and hopeless effort she was making right there in her mother’s arms. Then Gordon left. When he returned two weeks later, he explained that he wasn’t able to handle the confusion: meals disrupted, sleep disturbed, wife flustered, impatient, depressed.

One day while he was still gone and the baby was crying and spitting, red faced and ugly, she laid the infant on their wide bed. The baby’s legs and arms kicked and whirled above the spread. And Hosea looked down at the purplish face and in a voice full of exasperation said, “From now on your name is Anxiety.”

The name stuck. Later, in school, the child’s teachers refused to use that name, but most of her classmates used it freely until nearly everyone got used to it.

She heard soft snoring
from the other bed and pulled the blanket partway over her head. When she finally went to sleep she dreamed of her father. She was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between Europe and North America. It was dark, the water icy cold, and she was alone. She radioed to New York to tell someone that she couldn’t make it; it was too far and she was tired. If she didn’t get help soon she was going to sink. And her father came to her, red faced and laughing. He grabbed her with his strong dusty arms and lifted her out of the murky water and carried her safely to shore.

When Hosea awoke, the girl was sitting cross-legged on top of her bed, digging into her backpack. Hosea could not see her face, but she saw the long straight hair, thin arms, grey white T-shirt, loose on her skinny body. The white panties were gone from the rod. The girl must have sensed Hosea’s awakening. She raised her head and looked at her, a sly look, Hosea thought, a bit of a sneaky look, the look of someone who had just played a trick on you or was about to. She was not as pretty as Anxiety.

“Well, good morning, sleepyhead!” the girl said in a voice loud and enthusiastic. “I’m just getting some breakfast and you’re welcome to have some.” From her pack she lifted out a loaf of McGavin’s bread, a jar of jam, and a sausage ring. She laughed. “I’m travelling third-class economy as you can see.” She laughed again, louder. “Actually, I’ve been saving for awhile for the Rose Benson weekend at the Westin Hotel. You’ve heard of Rose. She’s a preacher on TV. From Texas. Everybody calls her the Yellow Rose of Texas. And she’s wonderful! I myself came up on the Greyhound. From Bawlf, ha ha.”

Hosea stood up and took her towel from the iron rod. She picked up her bath kit.

“Would you care to join me?” the girl said. “Ten dollars a session, or twenty-five for three. You won’t be sorry.”

“Oh, no,” Hosea said. “I have business to look after. I’m kind of in a hurry. But thanks.”

“No problem,” the girl said.

When Hosea returned from the shower the girl was gone. But she’d left a note on Hosea’s pillow: Help yourself to the food on the table. I’ll be back tonight for supper.
(More bread and sausage. Ha!)

Who was she anyway? Loud. Forward. Like an
American, Hosea thought as she got dressed. Hosea didn’t
like Americans. She blamed the entire United States of America, especially Montana, for Gordon’s behaviour. He hadn’t been a run-around in Cardston. She checked her purse for keys, wallet, makeup.

In the lobby downstairs she stopped by the bulletin board and read the notices. Aerobics: Tuesday & Thursday. Makeup: Monday. Accessories: Wednesday. Self-esteem: Friday. Beside the announcements, someone had pinned a brochure announcing Sunday morning worship at the New Universal Church of Feminine Consciousness and Cosmic Awareness. “Get in touch with the Divine Feminine at the heart of the Universe. Connect with Her energy. Feel Her Power in your fingertips.” In the lower corner of the board was a small poster of coloured pictures of missing children: Tara, age 10, missing since November 10, 1987. Brent, age 4, missing since October, 1990. Jonathan since 1988....

Hosea looked at the pictures and wondered why she felt nothing. No sympathy. No sadness. Her mind remembered with exact detail the morning of Anxiety’s disappearance. But her heart was blank.

It took only a glance
from the bedroom doorway to get the whole picture: the top of the dresser cleared of all its objects, the bed neatly made. For several moments she didn’t move. She stood in the doorway and felt the small grey hole at the centre of her stomach slowly expand, from below her navel up into her chest and throat, then quickly out to her arms and down her sides to her legs and ankles, until there was nothing inside of her to hold her up. She sat down on the bed.

Bittern came into the room.

“Where’s Annie?” he asked.

“Gone,” Hosea said.

“Gone where?”

“With Joe.”

“So where’d they go?”

“I don’t know.”

He moved to the closet and peered into its emptiness; then he opened the dresser drawers, reached his hand to the far corners of each drawer, pulled out a pink sock. “One sock. Man. She
is
gone,” he said.

The Inn on Seventh
was only four blocks from the YWCA. Hosea decided to walk the short distance and have breakfast there. The air was clear. The sun was shining. In front of the funeral chapel, bare branches of shrubs glistened in the light.

At the Inn, she chose a booth by the window, ordered a carafe of coffee and a cinnamon bun, and got out her ballpoint pen.
What to Do
she wrote on the paper napkin.
Call Judith, go to the Cecil, the Strathcona, the
Commercial.
Someone would remember him. Someone would know where he was.

He liked to sit in taverns or coffee shops and write his ideas in little scrappy notebooks. He wrote mostly about gamblers and wild women, about ex-cons in dark and smoky bars. He wrote a poem about her once – in the Commercial Hotel on Whyte Avenue. About her body, naked in an amber light. Hosea filled her cup with hot coffee from the carafe and unrolled a long strip of cinnamon bun. His favourite colour: amber.

On Anxiety’s fourth birthday
they had gone to Pancake Palace, just outside of Medicine Hat, for breakfast. Anxiety, Gordon, and Hosea. After the waiter had laid the plates of steaming hotcakes down in front of them, Anxiety examined hers carefully, her nose close to the plate, and refused even to lift her fork to them.

“Eat up,” Gordon said.

“I don’t eat green pancakes,” she said.

“They’re not green,” her mother said.

Anxiety pointed to a tiny speck in the centre of one pancake. “Do you see that?”

And since it was her birthday, she got a waffle instead, with whipped cream and strawberries.

In the lobby,
Hosea dialled her sister in Rocky Mountain House. No sooner had Judith answered the call than Hosea heard Bittern and Doloros arguing in the background.

“I want to, I want to,” Doloros was shouting.

“I said I was going to,” Bittern said.

And Judith said, “Just a minute, I have to settle something here.”

While she waited, Hosea unclasped her wallet and counted her money. Four tens, two fives, some change. She’d need to fill the gas tank before she went back. She’d have to be careful with the spending.

Bittern came on the line. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“I can’t guess.”

“Guess who called.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

Hosea’s heart beat faster. Gordon. He must be trying to find her. “Your father,” she said. “It was your dad.”

“No. Annie.”

“Anxiety?”

“Annie! That’s what I said.”

Judith picked up the phone. “She called last night. She wondered where you were, but I didn’t know so I couldn’t tell her anything.”

“She wondered where
I
was?
Me?”
Hosea felt her heart speeding. “Where is she?”

“She didn’t say. Where are you? She might call back.”

“She called?” Hosea said again.

“Yes,” Judith said. “So where are you?”

“The Y. The YWCA.”

The policeman
had sat at Hosea’s kitchen table, pen in hand, black notepad on the blue placemat. Who is this guy? A guy. How old is he? Nineteen. Where does he work? The oilpatch. Is he abusive? I don’t think so. Is she safe? The officer was a tall, lanky man. He spoke fast, got to the point. “We can find them, of course,” he said. “But then what?” He stood up, stuffed the notepad and pen into his black case. “Do you have pictures?” he asked. “A recent snapshot?” Hosea gave him a school portrait of Anxiety when she was in grade eight. At the door he turned and looked at her.

“Anxiety,” he said. “That’s a hell of a name for a kid.”

They’d found her the next day at the York Hotel in Calgary. With Joe. And when the police called Hosea, she heard her daughter yelling in the background. “I was not kidnapped. He didn’t even know I was coming.”

“Tell her to get home where she belongs!” Hosea shouted. “Right now!”

“Never!” Anxiety yelled back.

A policeman came on the line. “We can bring her home in handcuffs,” he said. “Is that what you want? Or would you like to come up to Calgary and talk to her?”

In the end, Hosea came to Calgary, Judith drove down from Rocky Mountain House, and Anxiety agreed to stay with Ralph and Judith until things calmed down. Then Hosea drove back home.

Anxiety stayed in Rocky Mountain House for five weeks, until her sixteenth birthday, when she called her mother. “I’m going now,” she said, calmly, without anger. “I’m going with Joe.” And Hosea knew not to argue.

Where had her daughter
gotten her formidable will? Gordon was not one to persist in anything. And Hosea herself had waffled her way through life. But Anxiety had some bottomless source of willpower that was there right from the beginning. How hard she’d kicked against the walls of her mother’s womb. Kick. Kick. Punch. Kick. And when she finally emerged – the tearing, the incredible pain.

“Look at this head,” the doctor had called to someone. “The size of it.” And Hosea had thought in her drowsiness that she’d delivered a monster. But no. The doctor raved on. “She’ll be a stubborn one. A winner. A rare beauty.” And she was a beauty. People would stop Hosea on the street to look down at the new baby in her carriage and gush at her loveliness.

As the child grew, she also became more affectionate. Even in her sleep she could sense her mother’s presence hovering over the bed and would reach out her arms and pull Hosea down to her and hold her close.

Where had such love come from?

The waiter stopped at her table. “Would you like anything else?” he asked.

“No,” Hosea said. “No thank you.” She sipped the coffee and stared out the window at the traffic.

And where had it gone wrong?

Suddenly Hosea wanted to sleep. She wanted to undress and get into bed and sleep for a long time. She got up from the table, paid for the coffee, and walked back to the Y.

At the front desk she asked the receptionist if there had been any calls for her.

“No,” the girl said. “None.”

“Oh,” Hosea said. She remained standing by the desk.

The receptionist looked up at her. “Was there something else?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” Hosea said.

“Okay,” the girl said.

“I’m going to my room now,” Hosea said. “I’ll be in my room on the sixth floor.”

“I see,” the girl at the desk said.

“My name’s Hosea.” She did not move from the spot.

“You’re expecting a call?” the receptionist asked.

“Not really. But in case.”

“I understand,” the girl said. “I’ll get the message to you.”

Hosea took the elevator up to her floor, unlocked the door of her room. A quiet nap was all she needed. She took off her shoes, sweater, and jeans and lay down under the blanket.

Anxiety had always hated naps.
“Not all children take naps you know,” she announced when she was five.
“Christine and Scott don’t take naps. Tim Hanson doesn’t.
Jeff Merkel never does. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“That’s enough now,” Hosea said.

“Do kangaroos take naps? Do fish? I know dolphins take naps, but only when they want to.”

“Go to sleep,” Hosea said. “You’re not a fish.”

It was midafternoon
when Hosea woke up. She lay under the blanket and tried to remember her dream, something white and moving, but nothing more came to her. Instead, she remembered the day Anxiety stepped on a hornets’ nest. Kicked into it. She was three years old and playing near a cement slab that was in their backyard. The hornets had built their nest under a ridge of concrete at the edge of the slab. Anxiety had seen it there, grey and papery, and kicked it. Hosea and Gordon were in the house. They didn’t hear Anxiety’s screams. They didn’t see the insects swarming. They didn’t realize what had happened until their neighbour came to the door, holding the child in his arms. She was panting for breath, her face deep red, beginning to blister.