Sylvanus Now (5 page)

Perhaps that’s how it was Adelaide started feeling slovenly. However it was, despite her knowing in her head it was right and proper for a girl her age to do well in school, way, way deep inside, a tiny part of her started oinking. The slovenliness of her mother’s house became hers. And at some point she never really noticed, whenever a neighbour nosied by, or a youngster whined, or her mother hollered, she started shoving her books underneath her bed to hide them, and bolt to the kitchen, cleaning, serving, and placating. But not without pay! For the oinking channelled itself into a spite that was forever snapping at her mother and kicking at youngsters coming too close to her heels and slamming about dirty cups and clothes and the like. And throughout it all, she rehearsed in fantasy that coming day when she’d wave goodbye to this shack of a house and its tongue-tattling neighbours, and set off down the road and never, ever, look back on this hole of an outport. Not ever.

L
IKE THE BUCKLING WALLS
of a card house, her dreams fell in on themselves one fine May morning, two days shy of her fifteenth birthday, when her mother halted her at the door, lifting her school bag out of her hand, saying that the catches were down and her father was scarcely making enough to pay his berth on the schooner, and she was to stay home now, to help more with the younger ones and to accompany her to the flakes.

The flakes! Adelaide stared disbelievingly. Always come spring there was some poor mortal taken out of school to go work on their father’s flakes—mostly the Reids and the Dykes. Now, since the war ended, and with the growth of bigger fish-killers and their extended catch taking up most of the shoreline with flakes, more and more women and youngsters were needed to work the fish, gaining themselves extra credit with the merchant. But—make no mistake—no one worked the flakes unless they had to.

Her eyes grew more incredulous as she stared down her short, pudgy mother, to whom the world outside ended at her stoop.

“No! No, I won’t,” she cried, grasping back her school bag. “You had them. You had them babies—you feed them.”

“You mind now, Addie. It’s not going to kill you, a few months on the flakes. Do you good, a bit of hard work, and it’s only for a summer. You can start back agin in October.”

“No, no, I won’t start back, nobody ever starts back. You can’t make me quit school, you can’t make me.”

“I already told you it’s only a few weeks,” cried Florry, her voice rising with warning, “and I’m not changing my mind, so you can stop pouting and get used to it. Not going to hurt you, a few weeks out of school, like I said, do you good, a summer on the flakes.”

Adelaide raised a hand to mouth. She was being taken out of school. Her mother was taking her out of school. “You can’t,” she whispered. “You can’t take me out. I won’t, I won’t!” she then yelled, frightening the baby on her mother’s shoulder. It started bawling, its face darkening, wrinkling. Of their own bidding, Adelaide’s eyes fell onto her mother’s belly. There. It was swelling, again.

That’s why she was being took out of school; that right there was the reason why—to help feed them babies that kept coming and coming, and to help with their cleaning and diapering.

“I hates them,” she whispered. “I hates them babies.” Revulsion twisted her face as she raised her eyes to her mother’s.

Florry lapsed into silence, her free hand crossing protectively over her belly as she stepped back.

“You mind now, Addie,” she warned as Adelaide bore down on her, hot tears illuminating the startling blue of her eyes. “Addie!” Clutching the squalling youngster to her breast, she scurried across the kitchen, singing out as Adelaide chased after, “You get on now—get on, you young thing.”

“No, wait, wait,” cried Adelaide, her tone turning into a higher note of pleading as she grasped after her mother. “It’s not fair, I won’t quit, I won’t go. You can’t make me.” Grabbing her mother’s arm, she gave a hard yank. Caught off balance, Florry stumbled, thudding sideways against the wall, near falling, near losing her grip on the baby whose screaming was now frenzied. Adelaide withdrew in fright, watching as her mother caught hold of the corner of the washstand, steadying herself, grasping the baby back up on her shoulder.

“Not fit. You’re not fit,” said Florry. Spurting across the kitchen, she darted into her room, a last rattled look at her daughter, and shut her door, muffling the baby’s cries.

The front door swung open, letting in the sound of the school bell and her youngest sister, Janie. Her cheeks reddened from the cold, Janie grabbed a bookbag from the pile of boots near the door.

“I forgot it,” she said and stared boldly at Adelaide. “You got to stay home from school. I told the teacher. And you’re not going back, either.”

“Get,” croaked Adelaide, her throat too tight to speak properly.

“I got to tell Mom something—”

“I said, get!” cried Adelaide, raising her fist as Janie was about to bolt across the room.

“Dyin’ jumpin’, my dear,” said Janie, then ducked back outside as her eldest sister kicked at a boot and bolted toward her. Slamming the door, Adelaide leaned against it, staring out the window, hot tears swaddling her eyes, and the watery shape of the flakes out on the beach blighting what sight was left.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE FLAKES

A
STARK DIFFERENCE
marked the quiet between mother and daughter as they followed the muddied path to the beach the following morning. Florry, aside from a few guarded glances at Adelaide, tutted at the brisk winds, the gulls screaming like haunts overhead, and looked no farther than the baby swinging off her arm in a basket. Adelaide walked woodenly beside her, eyes glazed upon a face fixed in marble.

Her step faltered as they came upon the all-toofamiliar sight of a dozen or more women and young girls, all dressed—like Adelaide herself, this morning—in brown wrapper aprons made from burlap, with white cotton skullies on their heads. Like some kind of rite, she thought, as the women hobbled hunchback over the wooden platforms, ceremoniously laying out their armloads of fish, the wired brims of their skullies shadowing their faces from the sun, and the flaps, sewn along the back to protect their necks, flapping in the wind. Some of the women straightened upon seeing Florry and her girl, waving largely and calling boisterously, “Good morning,” and, “A bit breezy. Good for the flies, though.”

Adelaide walked stiffly past them, leaving her mother to return the pleasantries. It was like a dream, a bad, horrible dream. She approached with trepidation the faggots—piles of partly dried fish all neatly stacked atop each other—some as high as four feet. They didn’t even look like fish, all split open and flattened and shaped like dirtied paper kites.

“Don’t be scared of them; they’re not going to bite,” bawled out Gert, the boss woman, from the middle of the flakes—hired, no doubt, for the foghorn harbouring in her gullet, thought Adelaide. She burned beneath the pairs of eyes turning onto her. Choosing one of the higher faggots, where the fish were already a bit dried and not too soggy with brine, she cautiously picked one up by the tail, grimacing at the coldness of the pickled flesh. It slipped out of her fingers. Picking it up again, she laid it across her arm, grateful for the long sleeves of her blouse, and held the thing arm’s length from her chest.

Trampling over the flakes toward her, Gert hollered, “My gawd, not squeamish, is she?” and started piling wet fish onto Adelaide’s arms. “There, how’s that for a load?” she asked as Adelaide had to stretch her neck to see over the fish. Amidst the spurts of laughter erupting from the women working the flakes, Gert grinned broadly, slapping on a last fish, squishing the cold, wet flesh beneath Adelaide’s chin. Near vomiting, Adelaide twisted her head sideways, her stomach heaving from the sharp, fishy smell. Florry, having deposited the baby alongside three or four others sleeping in baskets nearer the flakes, waddled toward them with a look of concern.

“Having a fine old time, are you, Gert?” she said a mite contrarily. “You never mind her, Addie, bad as the devil, she is. Wait there for me, now. We works together.”

Gert laughed, “I allows you’ll get more work out of that sleeping baby over there than this one.”

Fighting back nausea, Adelaide crept away, trying to see her footing over the bundle of fish.

“The other way, the other way, cripes, you’ll end up home agin, if you keeps going that way,” sung out Gert amidst more spurts of laughter. A figure darkened the entrance to the stage. Suze. Suze Brett. Adelaide groaned. Stun as the gnat, Suze was, and always chasing after Adelaide, till, much to Adelaide’s relief, she got took out of school, two, three years ago to work the flakes, and was since married.

“Addie,” said Suze. “My gawd, what’s you doing on the flakes?”

Adelaide said nothing. Clutching onto her yaffle of fish, she crept toward the farthest end of flakes down by the water, where fewer bodies were hunched. Small wonder, she thought dismally, examining the godforsaken structure before her. The flakes were rickety platforms made by laying long, skinny birch poles side by side and covering them with a layer of boughs onto which to spread the fish. Beneath them, holding them in place and levelling them against the sloping beach, were stilts of varying heights, with the ones nearest the water’s edge being the highest—six feet, thought Adelaide, eyeing them. And with a full tide, as it now was, the flakes extended about ten feet or more out over the water, creaking crazily as the water lapped against the stilts. Along with the women’s trampling, the whole thing felt to Adelaide as though it were on the verge of collapse.

“Not deep enough to drown, even if you do fall in,” called out Suze.

Latching a foot onto the bottom rung of a spindly ladder and awkwardly balancing the fish against herself, Adelaide started climbing. Boldly, yet shakily, she stepped onto the flakes. They felt knobby beneath her feet, despite the layering of boughs. Her ankle rolled, near throwing her, but she kept steady as she caught sight of Suze abandoning the stage and lumbering toward her. Mannish, Suze looked, with her broad shoulders and broader hips, and by the bulging of her wrapper, it looked as though she might pop a youngster any minute. Yet easily she climbed up the ladder, swinging herself onto the flakes, and propped herself before Adelaide, face flushed with exertion, eyes brimming with light, and berry-red lips stealing away from the shadings of some future moustache.

“Here, give me some of that,” she ordered, reaching for Adelaide’s fish. “Likes a bit of fun, that Gert do.”

“I’m fine,” said Adelaide.

“Won’t be if you falls over,” said Suze as Adelaide stepped precariously close to the edge of the flakes. “And what’s you doing here, anyway? Your mother take you out of school? Cripes, brains like you got, I’d keep you there somehow. Here, give me some.”

Ignoring Adelaide’s protest, she scooped half of Adelaide’s bundle onto her own arms and started laying out the fish.

“Like this, skin side up,” she instructed, hunching over, laying down a fish. “Head to tail, tail to head,” she added, laying down a couple of more fish, hobbling along, “and you does that right to the end of the flake, and then you starts back—skin side up—head to tail, tail to head. Not that hard, hey, maid?”

Without a word, Adelaide followed, gripping the slimy wet fins and throwing down the fish, skin side up, head to tail, tail to head; skin side up, head to tail, tail to head. Florry, halfway up the ladder, toting a yaffle of brine-soaked cod, hailed. Suze, her load mostly laid out, tossed down the rest and hurried toward her.

“Size of you,” she called out. “Cripes, don’t toddle too close to me, else we’ll break down through them flakes,” she warned, hand on her belly, eyeing Florry’s. “Perhaps we’ll keep Addie between us. For sure we won’t have to worry about her breaking a pole—skinny as anything, isn’t she?”

“She’ll pad out soon enough,” huffed Florry. “We was all skinny as her once, hey, Nelly maid?” she called to a cumbersome elder, waddling by.

“Make sure they lays them skin side up,” Gert hollered to Suze from over beside the faggots.

“Yes, lord jeezes, hard thing to learn, laying out a fish,” Suze hollered back. “How long was you in training for that, Gert? Cripes, the mouth on her—foghorn,” Suze declared as Gert carried on hollering over the quips and chortles of those others enjoying a good morning’s razzing. “What you say, Addie, think she’d make a good foghorn? My, you’re awful quiet,” she added to Adelaide’s silence. “What’re you thinking about? Bet you’re missing school, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps I got nothing to say,” said Adelaide, laying out her fish all the faster so’s to get some distance between her and Suze. Blessedly, the woman fell silent and hobbled off, leaving room for her mother to lumber into place beside her.

“Lord almighty, the tongue on you,” sighed Florry. “The girl’s only trying to help.”

“Didn’t need her yesterday, don’t need her today,” said Adelaide. “And don’t need you, either,” she muttered beneath her breath, and watched as her mother stooped off, grunting—like Old Maid Ethel’s pigs herself, thought Adelaide, kicking her fish into place: head to tail, tail to head; head to tail, tail to head.

Wasn’t the only time Adelaide was to think of Old Maid Ethel that morning. For as she plodded through the hours, hunching and hobbling over the bough-covered poles, laying out the stinking fish and biting down on her tongue as she repeatedly jabbed her hands with bones, she prayed for a hovel, for exile—anything to escape this hell and the stupid, yakking women and the stupid, scratchy skullies and dirty-looking wrappers. And always Suze, working right alongside, seemingly noting nothing of Adelaide’s silence as she kept a running commentary on the weather and the water and the bloody screaming gulls and the size of Gert’s pipes bellowing over the wind.

The morning crept, the brim of her skully slipping too far over her face as she hunched and hobbled, the flap flapping against her face each time she turned her head sideways to the wind. Yaffle after yaffle, from the flakes to the faggots, from the faggots to the flakes, head to tail, tail to head; head to tail, tail to head. By midmorning, the low of her back ached as though it were cracked. A quick cup of tea on the beach, heated by some of the women building a fire and boiling the kettle, and Adelaide groaned to see a couple of boats returning from their traps, and the fishermen pronging more fish up on the stagehead.