Kit's Law (40 page)

“The orphanage?”

“The orphanage.”

“Could you—please tell me how to get to the orphanage?”

A studied silence. Then, “See that smokestack over there? That’s the hospital. Follow the road in front of it to your right, till you comes to Buffy’s Chip House. The orphanage is on the other side. Can’t miss it, dozens of orphans running around in front of it.”

I nodded, and headed back towards the smokestack.

Seemed like no time before I was walking past Buffy’s Chip House and coming in front of a huge white house, the size of a dozen houses all built into one, and looking as pretty as anything with its fields of grass around it and low-hanging poplars, not at all what I thought Loret’s devil-run orphanage would look like.

Walking up a wide cobblestone pathway, I knocked timidly on a thick oak door, and then again when no one answered. Standing back, I screwed up my nerve and, lifting the handle, stepped inside a front room dressed as a porch, a large, fancy porch with a towering ceiling and a closed door directly in front of me and another leading off to the right. Sid’s voice sounded through the one on the right. I walked quickly towards it, and bent my head, listening. He was teaching. Arithmetic.

The door burst open and I pulled to one side, startled, as a couple of youngsters darted past me. Sid kept on teaching. Knees shaking, I peered around the corner of the door jamb. He was standing near a window, by a tall wooden cabinet that was slightly taller than he, reaching for a stack of papers that were resting there, and joking as he talked.

I caught my breath as I looked at him, mindful of another place—of me—just a few short hours ago, standing in front of Milly’s mirror, watching myself as I stood, now, watching him, his hair hanging straight and wispy fine to just below his shirt collar. And it was darker, its yellow dulled by the winter’s sun. There were other things. He wasn’t as tall as I remembered him, nor his shoulders as wide. But my eyes remained rooted to his hair, hanging straight and wispy fine, straight and wispy fine. A churning started low in my stomach. Then Sid, having found what he was looking for, held back his head and smiled, and the churning became a heaving state as I watched his smile rounding the curve of his cheek as he talked.

My vision became hazy, and with all the new places I had been in the past day, I forgot for a moment where I was, seeing only the curve of Sid’s cheek, and his wispy fine hair, the curve of Sid’s cheek and his wispy fine hair. He moved, and I jolted back behind the shelter of the door jamb, my breathing faint. The haze filming my eyes became more and more speckled with black, and I stumbled across the darkening porch towards where I remembered the door to be. Lifting the handle, I ran outside and breathed deeply of the sun-blessed air. Birds were singing and I walked woodenly forward, not knowing from whence I came, or where I was going. My ears must have picked up a sound, for suddenly I was turning back and there, staring at me through one of the windows, was Sid. Even through the window, I could see his face paling. The baby-down fuzz on his chin had thickened and deepened a darker brown, adding a strangeness to his face. Yet his eyes, though rooted in uncertainness as they stared into mine, were as sharp a blue as they always had been, and piercing a path straight through to my soul. He pressed his forehead against the window, as if to get closer to me, and for one taut second I felt a flicker of hope, a softening through my numbness to what my heart was seeking. But just as quickly, another thought killed it. Could I ever again see anything but the curve of his cheek and his wispy fine hair?

Shame swamped me. Sid’s face disappeared and one of his cursed Gods was glaring instead, through gouged-out sockets that betold of his having loved that which was denied him, a law that not even legends could do away with. Wicked! It was a wicked thing I desired, that I lusted, that I wanted above all else. And the smell of rotting dogberries was suddenly drowning the air around me, no different than the day in the gully when the reverend, my father, stood pointing his finger of shame and ordering his boy away from the gully tramp’s girl. Me, his daughter, the gully tramp’s girl, and his son, my brother. The air was suddenly too rancid to breathe, and turning away from the orphanage, and Sid, and the reverend’s pointing finger, I started running, past Buffy’s Chip House, the smokestack, and still I kept running. Once I thought I heard Sid singing out my name, but I ducked down a different road and kept on running, down this way and that, past the train tracks, till I came to the docks.

I sat breathlessly on a quay, too numb to separate the gulls’ screeching from that of tires, or to feel the wind that swept off the harbour’s water and dusted my face. Voices sounded all around me and I rose, needing to move on, but not wanting to go anywhere, excepting to find a spot with no people so’s I could take out in quiet the cold, sickening lump in my stomach and feel it through, like holding onto something precious that no one else ought ever to see, despite its quickening rawness cutting me clear through to the bone. Sid could never be my husband. Never! And more than that, there was shame in my loving him.

Shame! I drew a long, sobering breath and stepped hurriedly over a coil of rope as two dark-skinned men, who could’ve been sailors or fishers, stopped with their smoking and yarning to watch me. I cringed beneath their oily stares, yet oddly enough, it felt fitting that they see me so, for it was a wrap of filth that I wore, no different than the dirt shrouding their lusting eyes. And it had swaddled me all this time from the day I was born, the reverend’s sin, seeded in a darkened, unnurtured womb, its godless mark growing slowly over time, till it sprouted into life, announcing the reverend’s fall from grace with each kick of my tiny webbed foot.

I cringed and glared at the two swarthy sailors as I would’ve at Mrs. Ropson, had I been able to shrink back to the day of my birth and watch her look of horror as Doctor Hodgins held me naked in his hands, naked excepting for her husband’s adulterant mark.

Dare you touch me! I screamed silently at the two sailors and Mrs. Ropson, dare you touch me whilst my flesh lies caked with the reverend’s sin. I turned and fled off the wharf for fear of wanting to plunge myself into the cold, dark waters surrounding it, and cleanse myself forever of its dirt and shame. Screeching brakes and honking horns sounded all around me as I foolishly raced down the centre of a road. A woman shrieked as I leaped out of the way of an oncoming truck, and stumbled in her path, and still others sung out. I kept running. Then a shaft of sunlight struck me full in the face, blinding me. Clean! I heard Nan’s voice bawling at me no different than if she had been standing on a cloud in front of me, and her hand reaming down from the heavens, shoving a sogging wet washrag in my face. Clean! she bawled out, again. Be Jesus, it’s a God-given right to be clean, but He left it for us to do some of the work!

I raised my hand before my face as one might a shield to protect it from a foe, excepting there was the added pain of another foe striking from within. Clean! Tears brimmed my eyes, and I sprang between two half-rotted buildings to escape the staring people and honking cars. Clean! I was on the docks again, and running. A grove of trees stood in the near distance and I raced towards it, wishing for the jolting disorder of the rocks in the gully, and the squalling easterlies that would pummel me amongst the rocks at Crooked Feeder, and where I could finally lie still and allow the blazing shaft of light to burn red on my eyes and force even this merciless day to turn quiet. A small wooden bench poked out of a bunch of shrubs amidst the trees, and I gratefully collapsed, sinking low so’s to hide myself from anyone walking by. It felt like sitting on the stoop again, on the day that Nan had died. Time felt like nothing. The wind blew. Seagulls cried. And coal smoots from some giant burning chimney drifted around me like black snow. And I felt nothing, nothing at all, excepting the sound of my heart beating against my breasts, and tears wetting my face.

The tears were dried when Sid found me.

“Kit!” His voice sounded with relief when he peered around the shrubs and seen me. “Kit!” Then, he was sitting besides me, his hand reaching for mine, his breathing coming hard and shallow.

“How did you find me?” he asked. “Who brought you here?”

I kept from looking at him just yet, and allowed him to wrap his hands around mine, warming them.

“Why’d you never come back?” I asked finally, when my heart had quietened from the nearness of him and my lips had ceased their trembling.

“Kit! I’ve tried,” he whispered. “A thousand nights I’ve begged for courage to go back. But I was afraid, afraid of weakening—of becoming your husband. And you would’ve hated me if I had, you would, yes, you would have,” he said, holding up his hand to quieten my protest. “I saw what it did to Mother, living with the reverend’s sin.” He held my hands tightly. “You’ve always fought for what was just,” he half whispered. “Fonse, Loret, it would’ve worn at you, all the time thinking, wondering what they were thinking, how they were feeling. And I would’ve known it. Every time I looked at you, I would’ve known it. That’s why I was afraid to come back, afraid you’d stop loving me. I’m weak, Kit; I can’t risk you not loving me.”

He brought my hand to his cheek, his face twisting with the fear of having said that which till now had only been spoken in his heart. And now, having shown himself, was at risk of losing the one thing he still desired more than the rightness of laws.

I caressed his cheek, my finger circling the spot near his mouth that dimpled when he smiled.

“No, not weak,” I whispered. “It’s me who’s weak, still wanting you after all this time—knowin’ that some things can never be changed, no matter how hard we wish—like the wind, it can never be stopped.”

“Shh, we don’t choose who we love,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against my palm. “I still love you. I’ve dreamt of this day, when you would come and say something—anything—to change how things are with us, so’s none of it won’t matter any more, that I’ll be free to go home to you and Josie. Then, when I’m not dreaming, I try to forget you—I try and try, but you’re always there, you and Josie, calling, calling out to me—and that damn gully, the brook, all the time I hear it, babbling, babbling. And I can never quite hear it, just feel it, pounding through my veins as if it were a part of me, and all the time sounding me back to you. God help me.”

“You can come,” I cried, not able to bear his anguish. “Not yet, perhaps, but someday. It’s not fair that you should be here, living in an orphanage that was meant for me. We’re still crippled—still apart—still living in his sin.”

“I don’t know if I can, Kit.”

I swallowed hard.

“Is it because of your girl?”

“God, no, there’s no girl!” He laughed bitterly. “Fonse told me about how Bruddy was keen on you. So I made her up—so’s you’d forget about me.”

“You fool,” I cried, hugging my arms around his neck, the choking lump in my throat giving way to little sobs. “But I’m glad you done so, for it brought me to you. You must come back, Sid. It’s not just the pitcher plant that’s the thing of beauty. It’s other laws that made it so—the rain, the bog and the sun. It couldn’t have grown without those.”

“Lord, what’re you saying?” he mumbled through my hair, rocking me.

“I’m sayin’ you’re part of my law—the law that governs me. And Josie. We’re a different thing without you.”

“Oh, Kit,” he half laughed, half cried. “What kind of stuff have you been studying on?” And then he was holding on to me so tight that I never thought it possible that he could ever let me go again. And I held on just as hard. When at last he let me go, he led me back along the docks and through the roads, towards the smokestack that rose above the city like a chimney from hell, belching out a smoke as grey as the film smothering my eyes.

Sid let go of me on the stoop of Milly’s boarding house, and I squeezed my eyes hard to hold back the tears burning to make themselves seen.

“Kit!” He lifted my chin and I looked into his eyes, the colour of ten skies, and my mouth quivered to smile.

“I’ll always love you,” he whispered.

I nodded, my throat too choked to speak.

“Perhaps I will come. Someday.”

“I’ll tell Josie.”

“Tell her I thinks of her.”

His face became squiggled through the cursed tears.

“I miss you,” he whispered. “I think of you every day, sitting out back, looking down over the sea. Don’t forget me, Kit.”

“Forget you?!” I laughed crazily, the tears flowing freely now. “How can I? How can I when everything brings you to me, each draught of wind, each thud of an axe. You’re everywhere, Sid, just like Nan.” Then I was pushing him away from me and bursting in through the door to Milly’s. She come to her feet as I went running up over the stairs, but Sid’s voice sounded from the doorway and it was to him that she went.

The shaft of light flickered through the room window as I burst in across, and became stronger as it found me, but I wasn’t wanting its comfort yet. Dumping my clothes and things onto the bed, I started folding and packing them into my bag. Dusting off the dresser and the washstand, I made sure there wasn’t a fleck of dried skin or strand of hair left behind for Milly to clean. And when I had everything packed and cleaned, I dumped my garments out on the bed again and refolded them better, smaller than before, so’s they wouldn’t bulge out the bag as much. I swear I must’ve packed that bag a dozen times before I finally got it right. Then finally, I threw myself across the bed and lay flat on my back, allowing the light to wash over me.

“I love him,” I whispered harshly, opening my eyes to its warm, yellow heat. “I’d drink the oceans dry if it could change things between us. Every damn one of them.” Then the light became too bright, forcing me to close my eyes as it burned red on my eyelids. And with the cars sounding like waves, and their horns honking like seagulls, I waited to feel the quiet.

R
EDEMPTION

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
I
MADE FAST
work in getting out of Milly’s boarding house. She trailed behind me as I lugged my bag down over the stairs, and despite my reassurances that I was all right and just needed to be alone, she kept steady with her rantings till I finally agreed to a cup of tea. After, she helped me get a taxi from her doorstep, arguing all the time that Johnny ought never to have allowed me to come to the city by myself, and now here I was, in some kind of state, and having to take the train back home all by myself. Thanking her warmly, I finally escaped into the taxi and sped off to the train station. There was still a hope that Sid might be there, that something might have happened after all during the night, and it would no longer matter that he was my brother, and he would be packed and coming home alongside of me. But in every face I searched, I kept seeing his bluest eyes as they caressed me goodbye. I boarded the train, back to riding on the mindless wind again, and feeling nothing, nothing at all, just a sense of the train jolting and shaking all around me, and trees blurring by my window. And it wasn’t till I got off the train late that afternoon in Deer Lake did I take note that I hadn’t sent a telegram to Doctor Hodgins telling him to meet me.