Farmed Out (6 page)

Just then, Frida let out a horrible bellow. Then another. If a cow could scream, that's what it would sound like.

The doctor frowned. He took out his stethoscope and held it under Frida's front leg. He started feeling her sides. Frida let out another scream, even louder this time.

“Frida?” Anna gasped.

The vet said something to Klaus in a low voice. He pulled out the biggest needle I'd ever seen.

“But the birth went so smoothly!” Klaus said to the vet.

What was happening? On the floor of the stall, I saw a huge pool of dark red blood.

Anna wrapped her arms around Frida's neck and started wailing. “No! Frida!”

“We must go now, Maddie.” Ruth put her arm around my waist and pulled me to the door. I turned around to see Klaus holding Anna back as the vet worked on Frida.

Ruth took my mom and me outside and closed the barn door.

“Oh dear,” she kept saying. “Oh dear, oh dear. Anna loves that cow so much.”

“What's happening?” my mom said.

Hot tears spilled onto my cheeks. It didn't know what was going on, but it didn't look good.

“Let's go inside,” Ruth said. “Not much we can do.”

Ruth was too distracted to see our packed bags sitting by the door. She put the kettle on the stove for tea.

I grabbed our bags and shoved them back into our room. Then I went into the kitchen and stood at the counter with Ruth, in silence.

My mom sighed and sat at the kitchen table. After a long time and many cups of tea, we all went to bed. I couldn't sleep at all.

Chapter Eleven

I couldn't believe it. Frida Cowlo was dead.

Klaus told us at breakfast in the morning. It was something to do with a torn uterus. Ruth was in the barn, trying to comfort Anna. None of us had slept much. My eyes were blurry, and my hair was sticking out all over the place. I didn't care.

“The calf is fine,” Klaus said gruffly. “But Anna is inconsolable. She stayed in the barn all night.”

I set down my fork. I didn't feel like eating. Poor Frida. And poor, poor Anna.

I had a split-second thought about the contest. The deadline was in three days. Frida was supposed to be my prize-winning contest entry.

I'm a horrible, awful person, I thought.

I got up from the table. “I'm going to see Anna.”

“Just a second, Maddie.” My mom followed me out to the porch.

“No,” I said to my mom. “You're not going to make us leave!”

“Maybe it's a good idea,” she said. “They don't need us here now.”

I turned and ran toward the barn. The door was closed. I knocked on it lightly.

Ruth opened the door. “Oh, come in, Maddie.”

Anna was in Frida's stall. Frida was covered in a big blue blanket. One of her ears stuck out from the edge of the blanket. Anna was stroking it gently.

The little brown calf was in a stall on the other side of the barn. It was drinking milk from a huge bottle, mounted on the wall.

I didn't know what to do. I'd never had to deal with anything like this before.

“I'll miss her velvety ears so much,” Anna said, still stroking. Then she covered her face with her hands and cried.

“Oh, Frida,” she wailed. “My poor girl. She was so brave.”

I knelt beside Anna. She didn't look up. I put my hand on her shoulder. Anna cried and cried.

Finally Ruth came over and sat next to her daughter. Anna threw her arms around Ruth's neck and kept on crying, all over Ruth's shirt.

I tiptoed out of the barn.

It was a whole different world outside. A breeze fluttered the leaves on the apple trees. Klaus was riding his tractor through one of the fields. Farm life went on as usual.

I hadn't been able to comfort Anna at all. I didn't know how to make her feel better.

Maybe my mom and I should leave, after all.

I wandered around looking for my mom. As I passed the small broken-down building beside the garlic shed, I heard some banging. I saw my mom's blond ponytail through the dirty, cracked windowpane.

“Uh, Mom?” I said, sticking my head into the crooked little doorway.

“Oh, hi, Maddie,” my mom said. Her hands were full of green plastic plant pots.

“Were you still thinking about leaving?”

My mom shook her head. “Oh, no. I've got an important job to do now, you see.”

I glanced around the dusty little shack. “An important job?”

My mom nodded. “I'm going to feng shui this junk shed to bring the Friesens better luck.”

My mom had taken a one-day course in feng shui last fall. Ever since then, she'd been feng shui-ing everything, from our bathroom to the produce section at the grocer down the street.

“I told Klaus I could bring a better flow of
chi
to the shed. He thought it was a great idea.”

Unbelievable. My mom had convinced an old farmer of the merits of an ancient Chinese interior design system. He was probably just happy to get her out of his way for a while.

My mom got back to work shuffling old pots around.

Now I really didn't know what to do with myself. I slumped into the house and went to our bedroom. I hucked myself onto the bed and lay there for a while, feeling sorry for myself.

I wanted to win that art contest so badly. It was the chance of a lifetime. But I couldn't enter the portrait now. It wouldn't be right. And it was too late to start something new.

I rolled over and pulled my sketchbook out of my bag. I turned to the portrait of Frida Cowlo.

I felt like crumpling it up in a ball or scribbling all over it with a black crayon.

But I didn't do any of those things.

Instead I smoothed the edges of the page, and stared at it. I had captured Frida Cowlo's long ears, her feathery eyelashes and moist nose perfectly. I was more than halfway there.

It was a good portrait. More than good. I thought it was on its way to being great.

But it was missing something.

I crept into Anna's room and took down a photo of her and Frida. The cow had a “Best in Show” blue ribbon tied around her neck. I heard Ruth's voice in my head:
Anna loves that cow so much.

Frida had been a big part of Anna's life.

My Frida Cowlo portrait wasn't about the
Canvas
art contest anymore. I was going to finish it for Anna.

I took the photo back to my bedroom and set it on the desk with my sketchbook and art supplies.

I sat down and picked up my black pencil with a flourish. I smiled as I drew hundreds of tiny feather strokes to create the Frida Kahlo unibrow.

Once I had finished all the fine details in pencil, I took out my pastels. I had figured out what was missing from the portrait, and I knew just what to do about it.

Chapter Twelve

By the next afternoon, the portrait was finished. I wrote my initials,
MT
, and the year in the lower right-hand corner. I held it out and gazed at it. I felt a whoosh of pride.

The cow looking out at me from the page looked exactly like Anna's beloved pet. Bright red roses adorned her head, above her dark eyebrows. Large gold hoop earrings hung from her ears. Around her shoulders was a blue and green flowered shawl just like the real Frida Kahlo's in her self-portrait. In the background I had drawn the red and white barn, the garlic shed and the river. Frida Cowlo on her farm.

I laughed to myself. I never would have guessed that my masterpiece would be a drawing of a Jersey cow. I could just imagine the magazine articles.
Early in her career, celebrated
Vancouver artist Maddie Turner drew
her inspiration from large farm animals.

I was bursting to show the portrait to everyone. Closing my sketchbook, I ran out of the house. Anna and Ruth were still in the barn. My mom was still feng shui-ing the broken-down shed.

“Mom, I have to show you something!” I said, bouncing up and down.

My mom's clothes were covered in dust, and her ponytail was one giant cobweb. “Just a second, Maddie. There's too much yin over here. I need to figure out how to balance the yang with—”

I opened up my sketchbook and shoved it in her face. “Look!”

My mom set down her tools.

“Oh, Maddie,” she said, her eyes going all pink in the corners. “It's…it's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Are you going to show it to Anna?”

I nodded. “I'm heading over to the barn right now.”

“Okay,” my mom said. “Wow, I've got a lot to do before we leave tomorrow. I have to fill the missing
bagua
areas here.”

“Tomorrow?” I said.

“Can you believe our week on the farm is almost over?” my mom said.

So much had happened in one week.

My pace quickened as I approached the barn doors. I could hardly wait to show Anna my drawing.

But then I stopped. I had a better idea. Carefully, I placed my sketchbook on a ledge outside the barn door.

Inside, Anna was sitting in the stall nearest the door. The calf was drinking from the big bottle of milk on the wall again.

“Hi,” I said, sitting down next to Anna.

“Hey,” she said, petting the calf. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. “I'm going to name her Frida Junior. Look.”

She turned the calf's face toward me. Frida Junior had the same dark eyebrow markings as her mother.

“My dad said I can keep her,” Anna said. “She's sweet, but I just want Frida back.”

Then she started crying all over again. It made me cry too. We sat together petting Frida Junior, our tears falling on her silky fur.

The next morning, my mother decided it was time for her big reveal. She assembled Ruth, Klaus and me in front of the junk shed she'd been working on. She'd asked us to keep our eyes closed from the porch to the shack.

“Ta-da!” she said, flinging her arms above her head. “The junk shed has been officially feng shui-ed. The yin and the yang are in balance.”

My mom looked proud. Ruth, Klaus and I squished around the door and looked in. Ruth looked hopeful at first. Then her face fell.

Inside the shed, stacks of cracked plant pots stretched from floor to ceiling. There must have been about eight stacks, all crammed on one side of the shed. Take one pot off the stack, and the whole thing would fall over. In the middle of the shed was a big pot full of water, with a few rose blossoms floating in it. I recognized the roses from Ruth's well-tended rosebush in the front yard.

“That's your water feature,” said my mom. “Very important. You need to change that water every two days, or else it'll go stagnant.”

The Friesens, of course, were too polite to say anything. But I saw them exchange looks that said,
We'll have to
fix this when she leaves
.

“Uh, well, thank you, Lynn,” Ruth said. “For all your hard work.”

“I am glad to provide my helping hands where needed,” my mom said, “and to teach you a little about feng shui along the way.”

She didn't get it. These nice farmers couldn't wait to get rid of her, and she thought she'd done them a great service. I had that familiar I-could-just-die feeling again.

Smiling, my mother turned to me.

“All packed, Maddie?” she asked.

“All packed,” I replied.

“Okay,” she said. “See you at the car.”

“I just need to do one last thing,” I said.

I hurried to the guest bedroom and opened the big drawer in the desk. There it sat, my portrait of Frida Cowlo. My masterpiece. I had wrapped it up in two blank pages from my sketchbook. I thought about looking at it one last time, but I decided not to. It might break my heart.

I leaned the wrapped-up portrait against Anna's bedroom door.

I turned and walked away. At the end of the hall, I hesitated.
You're doing it
for Anna,
I reminded myself,
and Frida.

I walked out into the hot summer morning, leaving my chances at winning the
Canvas
art contest behind.

The Friesens were gathered around my mom's car. By some miracle, she was able to start it after all that sputtering on our way there.

“Thank you for coming,” Ruth said, clasping my hands and then my mother's hands.

“It has been interesting,” said Klaus, winking at me.

Anna had come out of the barn to say goodbye. She gave me a big hug.

“Bye, Maddie. I'm really going to miss you.” Her voice came out whispery. She seemed too worn-out to say much more than that.

“I'll miss you too,” I said.

I hate goodbyes. They're the worst. I hopped in the car before I started blubbering. Or worse, before I decided to run back in the house for the portrait of Frida Cowlo.

I waved as we drove down the long dusty driveway. The Friesens waved back.

There were a few blissful moments in the car when my mother didn't speak.

When I say a few moments, I mean a grand total of about twenty-seven seconds.

“Well, that was fun. I'm so glad I could be of service to the Friesens.”

I didn't say anything.

“It was a lot of work reorganizing that shed,” my mom continued. “But in the end I really improved the flow of
chi
.”

I couldn't hold it in anymore. My chest felt heavy, and I burst into tears.

“What's the matter, Madison?” my mom said, her eyebrows knitted together.

I still didn't say anything. I couldn't, with all the tears and the hefty helping of snot.

“Are you sad about leaving the farm?” she said.

“I guess so,” I said.

I was crying for Anna, and Frida, and the little calf without a mother. And I was crying because I left my beautiful, possibly prize-winning portrait behind.

I am such an idiot, I kept thinking. Now I'll never get to New York City. That was my big chance.

“See,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “I told you that city girls can learn to love the country.”