A Song for Nettie Johnson (27 page)

“Oh,” Hosea said, “I didn’t know that.”

“He has a job in the oilfields. It’s only for six months. He’ll be sending me money. We’re still together.”

“I see,” Hosea said and glanced down at Anxiety’s stomach pressed against the rim of the table. “You’re staying with friends then? You have friends here?”

“Sort of,” she said. Then, “Don’t you have a room here? My back’s killing me. I either have to lie down or stand up against a wall.”

“Yes,” Hosea said. “Let’s go on up.” And they left the café and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

Inside the room, Anxiety struggled out of her coat, manoeuvring her arms and shoulders this way and that. She hung the damp garment over the iron bar at the head of the first bed. She stretched, yawned, rubbed her lower back with the knuckles of her fisted hand.

“Did your back bother you when you were pregnant?”

“Yes, the back’s a real problem,” Hosea said. She noticed Anxiety’s outfit, a nubby pink top and tights to match. It looked modern and expensive. She wore a gold chain around her neck.

Hosea sat down on her own bed at the end of the room. Anxiety waddled to the bed next to it and slowly lowered herself onto the green blanket. She sat upright, very straight, wiggled her feet out of her sneakers without unlacing them, using one foot to slide the shoe off the other.

“I hate being wet,” she said.

“That’s a pretty outfit,” Hosea said.

“It’s new. I got it here in Edmonton,” Anxiety said.

“You look healthy,” her mother said “You look good. You must be taking care of yourself.”

“Tell me about it,” Anxiety said. “I had to watch all these videos in the clinic in Revelstoke. About food and exercise and smoking and drinking. Stuff like that. I saw these skinny babies and stunted babies and fetal alcohol babies with those weird eyes. You can screw up a kid even before it’s born. Did you know that? Hey, would they kill me if I laid down on this bed?”

And without waiting for an answer, she stood up, lifted the green blanket, and lowered herself again, this time lying on her back, legs stretched out, head on the pillow. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and smoothed it over her belly, a green mound in the middle of the bed.

“So what are you doing here?” she asked her mother, who was still sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Looking for your father.”

“Dad!”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re still looking for Dad?”

“He’s still my husband.”

Anxiety raised her head from the pillow. “
Mother.
Pardon me for a minute here, but you two split up. Remember? I think it’s time you got a new life.”

Hosea sucked in her breath. Great, she thought. Just great. Miss Due-in-three-weeks-with-no-mate suddenly has the credentials for teaching me how to live.

“Go back to school or something,” Anxiety said. “There’s a college in Medicine Hat, isn’t there?”

Hosea’s anger rose.
“Me?”
she said.
“I
should go to school? You’re telling me that I should go to college?” She meant for Anxiety to see her own predicament, quitting school and suffering all its worst consequences.

But instead Anxiety said, “Why not? You can read, can’t you?”

Hosea felt the space between the two beds widen, the beds like small ships floating away in opposite directions. She was conscious as she drifted that she hadn’t even touched her daughter – not a hug, a kiss, a handshake, not the slightest, tiniest tap of a hand on her daughter’s arm or shoulder. She lay down and covered herself with the blanket. The room was chilly. Rain beat against the window.

And then, through the fog that surrounded her, through its thick haze, she heard the voice from the next bed. It cut through the greyness like thin steel.

“I’ve been with Dad,” Anxiety said. “He lives here now. On the North side.”

Hosea felt the fog pull close to her and tighten and harden against her.

“He’s changed,” Anxiety said. “He’s not the jerk he used to be. I think he’s happy.”

Hosea’s voice was hoarse. “You’ve kept in touch with your father?”

“On and off,” Anxiety said. “When Joe left for Kuwait, Dad said I could stay with him.”

“I see.”

“Him and Bonnie.”

“Bonnie.” Hosea echoed the word from a distant mountain across the continent.

“Well, you know Dad.”

Hosea was silent.

“But I think this one’s permanent,” Anxiety said. “She’s good for him, makes him laugh. A real relationship.”

Hosea’s least favourite word.

“Fuck relationship,” she said.

“Mother. Don’t be crude.”

“His make-him-laugh girlfriend doesn’t say crude things?”

“Of course. But she’s young.”

Hosea felt herself at the top of a mountain, standing on a precipice, her feet on the very edge of it, her shoes slipping on loose rock. And she heard Anxiety’s voice from across the chasm.

“She took me shopping last week. Bought me a bunch of baby stuff, a layette it’s called, and a receiving blanket. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. And this outfit. Well, Dad paid for it, I guess.”

And Hosea’s feet slipped on the rock and her body tumbled into space and her daughter’s words faded, became distant, dissipated. And Hosea floated, breathless. She knew one thing: don’t land. If you land you’ll break into pieces. You’ll be a little pile of broken bits at the bottom of the chasm.

Then something caught her, held her. She sat up. Her neck was stiff, her back rigid.

“Why have you come now?” she asked. “Is this your big Get-Even-With-Mother thing? But you’ve already done that. No answers to letters. No phone calls.”

Anxiety didn’t answer. She lay with the green blanket over her belly, her head on the pillow, her damp hair swirling up and out, over the pillow’s edge. The pink smock was scrunched up over the edge of the blanket, and the gold chain had fallen in a loop away from her chest onto the pillow. Her neck was red and blotchy. And Hosea saw her there, a heap on the bed. God. She looked like a small whale. She must have gained fifty pounds. Even in that pink underwear outfit she looked huge.

Hosea hadn’t landed. She hadn’t broken into pieces. She was still in control, stronger than she thought. Let her daughter and Gordon both sail off into the sunset. Let the happy girl sail with them. And the new baby. She could care less.

“So why did you come?” she said again.

Anxiety turned her head slightly. Her face was flushed. Her hands lay on the blanket, fingers rigid.

“To ask you for something,” she said.

Right, Hosea thought. So your father’s out of cash, is he?

“I was hoping you’d be with me when the baby comes,” she said.

For a moment, Hosea stopped breathing. The room was still, the darkness hovered. She stared at her daughter, saw a thin wetness seep out from the corners of her eyes.

“Me? What about...?”

“I don’t want them,” Anxiety said.

Hosea’s back felt sore, her neck tight.

“But if you don’t want to, well that’s all right,” Anxiety said.

The blue darkness of the long rain seeped into the room.

Suddenly Anxiety jerked upright. “Oh my God,” she said.

“What? What?” Hosea said. “Is it time?”

Anxiety fell back on the bed. “It’s kicking. It’s really kicking. Feel it. Put your hand here. Quick, or you’ll miss it. Right here.”

And before she realized it, Hosea was at her daughter’s side, her hand pressed on her stomach, feeling the jabs and kicks.

“It moves,” Anxiety said. “Did you know that? It actually moves. And it makes noise. The doctor said so.” She grabbed her mother’s shoulder and pulled her down. “Listen. See if you can hear it. Try to hear it.”

Then Hosea’s head was on Anxiety’s stomach, her ear pressed close.

And Anxiety was crying and laughing. “It’s wild. It’s so crazy.”

But Hosea was neither laughing nor crying. She was holding onto the mattress, her eyes closed. And oh, Hosea, what are you doing here bent over this girl, your head on the smooth mound of her belly? What are you doing with your eyelids shut and your lips pressed hard? Hold on, Hosea. Hold fast.

But what could she do when her cheek was pressed like this against her daughter? When her ear was receiving even now the bumps and thuds and general chaos of the life within? And what else could she do when at this moment her daughter’s arms once again came up and circled round her and held her there? Hosea let out a clumsy hiccup of a sob, and then another. And she opened her mouth and bawled.

And when her crying stopped, Anxiety lifted her mother’s head with her own thin hands and raised her up and looked into her face and said, “Did you hear it?”

“Some thumps.”

“That’s all?”

“Some gurgling sounds.”

“I want to hear it too,” Anxiety said, “but my ear can’t reach that far.” She crouched deeper under the blanket.

She turned over on her side and yawned. “Beyond Repair. What do you think of that for the baby’s name?”

“Annie!” Hosea said.

“Or I could name her after you.” She smiled and closed her eyes and breathed into her pillow.

Hosea sat on the edge of the bed and watched her daughter. Ann’s mouth was partly open, a bead of spit bubbled on her lower lip, and she began to snore, a soft snore like purring. And Hosea noticed things about her she thought she had forgotten: the scar on the side of her chin from a fall on her tricycle when she was three, the birthmark below her left ear, the tiny beads of sweat that formed on the bridge of her nose when she was sleeping. Hosea did not move from the bed. She laid her hand on her daughter’s foot, and sat quietly looking down at her.

She thought of names for the baby. Karen, Marilyn, Sue, Kristi. And Naomi, that was a pretty name. So many to choose from. It was going to be a girl, Ann had said.

When Ann awoke it was still raining. She yawned and stretched and looked up at her mother. “Have you decided?” she asked.

Hosea rose from the bed and stepped to the window. She loved weather, especially rain, but this rain just came and came.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll call Judith and let them know we’re coming.”

In Rocky Mountain House
the sun had dropped behind the ridge of mountains. The air was cold, a blue black air left behind by the sun. The earth was still hard with frost, but in wide patches the surface ground had crumbled and become soft.

On the porch the children waited in sweaters and mitts. They’d know the whirring sound and the small clicking sounds of the car’s engine. They’d know the slanted beam of its headlights, and the crackling movement of the tires on the pavement. They’d know its curved shape looming toward them out of the dark.

They sat on the steps and leaned toward the street and waited.

They breathed in the cold air and breathed it out and watched it form small clouds in front of their faces, then disappear into the darkness.

“It’s about time she came home,” Doloros said.

“I guess I’ll have a thing or two to say to her,” said Bittern.

~

The Dolphins

B
eneath the gentle water four dolphins
sleep. They lie belly down just below the pool’s rippling surface. Their smooth humps rest like quiet hills in the green waves. A dorsal fin cuts the water’s edge, and one dolphin slides up, into the air above, curving himself over the others, a slick grey arch dripping water like wet crystals, shards of fluid glass. The muscled lid on top of his head pulls open. He sucks in air, pushes the lid shut, and plunges down for another snooze. A short one. Dolphins have to sleep holding their breath.

In her narrow bed,
under a white quilt, Emily dreams of the vessels. Thousands of glass containers that fill the shelves in rooms and corridors. Bottles, jugs, tumblers, urns, crystal cups as small as thimbles. And in one of these rooms or corridors, on one of the hundreds of shelves, hidden amidst all the glass, there is one secret vessel. In that one lies the answer. If she looks hard enough, if she is determined, if her will is strong, she will find the answer. Then she’ll know. Then everything will be all right. She moves slowly down the narrow corridor.

She wakes, hears her mother in the bathroom. She’s sliding open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet, moving things around in there. Emily hears the clinking sounds. She closes her eyes, pulls the quilt over her face, and sees her mother remove a small bottle from the shelf, pry open the plastic lid with her fingernail, shake a green pill into the palm of her hand, lift her hand to her mouth. Water gushes from the tap, splashes into the porcelain sink.

She sits up in bed.

“Mother?” she calls.

“Yes?”

“I hear water running.”

“I’m thirsty,” her mother says.

The water stops.

“Mother?”

“Yes?”

“Did he come home?”