The Seary Line (23 page)

Once, while she was snipping young dandelion greens to have with dinner, she heard birdsong coming from the stoop. Not sweet and tranquil, but a hasty, hesitant
warble. When she turned to look, perched on the base of the cradle was a familiar bird, with a yellow band over its eyes, white-tipped wings.

Stella sat back on the rise of rock, mound of greens in the lap of her apron, and watched the bird throw back its head and sing up towards heaven. She listened wholeheartedly as it chirped and sang, and before she knew it, the sky behind her was tinged with orange, the baby mewing, hungry for milk.

She put a hand to her face, and though she would never admit it to another living soul, she was nearly overcome with pride, pleased that the small feathered creature was witness to the life she'd created. The apprehension in its song did nothing to diminish it.

Sometimes, when the drizzle coated the windowpanes and the dampness slowed the rising of her bread, Stella thought of Amos. She wondered what life might be like if he had returned with the other boys. Would he have been empty and angry, or bursting with joy that he had survived? Would he have been happy when she married Leander, and was blessed with two children, Elise, now aged five, and Robert, one? Might he have married Nettie Rose after all, and had a sweet brood of his own? Of course these questions had no answer, but they chided her until her imagination felt raw and irritated. She missed Amos. Especially when it rained. How unfair it was to have a whole portion of her life lopped off, all those connections dangling now in a murky mess of nothingness.

Recently, in a rare moment when they were alone, Nettie Rose had asked Stella about Amos. What was he like for a brother? Stella was kind in her recollections, told Nettie of the innocent tomfoolery, the sensitivity behind his handsome face, how he was shy about the colour of his hair. He could knit with his fingers and a strand of yarn, loved poking through old junk. Never threw out a bent nail, or
backed down from an argument. Said that Amos liked any kind of sweet, sticks of candy from the general store, cakes and puddings, bakeapple jam, brown sugar in his tea.

“I likes brown sugar in my tea, too,” Nettie replied, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “And I makes a wonderful rice pudding, sauce like silk.” She smoothed her wrinkled skirt, scratched at a whitish stain, dried spit-up. “What did he think of me, Stella? Do you know?”

Stella couldn't stare into Nettie's round bland face when she explained that Amos had loved Nettie, had thought she was beautiful. Instead, she focused on Nettie's throat, the flesh rising and falling as Nettie kept swallowing something. Perhaps it was regret.

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Nettie pressed, “what did he think was beautiful about me?”

With this, Stella invented a few things, as Amos had never expressed appreciation for any particular feature of Nettie's. It was simply clear that he was besotted with her, overwhelmed with teenaged adoration. Love needed no visible reasons to seize a beating heart, render it into liquid.

Nettie reached up to plump her dull hair, then daubed wetness from her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “I didn't know that,” she said. “I didn't know he thought about me.”

“You never knowed?”

“Not a clue, maid.”

Stella knew Nettie was lying, and when Stella's lips betrayed a hint of her inner scowl, Nettie announced curtly, “Not like it makes nar bit of difference now. Things is the way they is.”

Stella clamped her teeth together, angry at herself for participating in such nonsense. Even though Nettie was her sister-in-law and friend, this sort of airy discussion annoyed
her. When her brother had been breathing, he'd been unable to charm her, though now that he was dead, Nettie furtively swooned over his ghost.

But when she reflected on her last visit with Nettie Rose, Stella understood. Nettie had married Gus Smith on a blustery day in January, only weeks after he'd returned from the war. Theirs was the sort of romance the community needed, young love, separated by forces beyond their control, amorous letters of devotion (read out by Nettie to every female willing to listen), then the homecoming, a spectacle of girlish squealing, macho smirks. They joined their hands in a gust, and within months, a baby on the way, this soon followed by another baby after another baby after another baby. The whole of Bended Knee felt it, this need to fill up the emptiness, replace the faces that were lost.

Then, after several years of rampant procreation, no one heeded them anymore. No one looked to plump and weary Nettie for an update on the bond between her and her husband. It was difficult to talk above the screeching children. At any given time, one would be yanking loose strands of her hair, or pinching her breasts, or trying to hide underneath her skirt. And no one mentioned the revelation that Gus had caught something over there – that something being a powerful thirst. Once married with umpteen children, his need to quench it overpowered him.

When Stella and Leander arrived last Saturday evening, Elise and Robert in tow, they could hear the racket from the front gate. Entering the porch, they came upon screaming twin girls in the corner crib, a toddler plunked in the middle of the floor, hand jammed down into his soiled cloth diaper, another boy picking a hole in his brother's wool sweater, clutched a string of yarn as the older one ran away from him. Two daughters chasing another boy with wooden
spoons, a single quiet child tucked in beside the woodstove, darning a sock with a fat needle.

Nettie was at the counter, mashing a heaping mound of turnip in a wide bowl. She smiled wanly when they came in, hollered over the din, “Find a place for yourselves. Don't be fussy.”

There was no sign of Gus. Leander held his cap in his hand, opened his mouth, and Nettie spewed, “Don't even ask. I got no idea where he's to. But isn't that lovely.” She nodded towards Grace, the darning daughter. “Not yet nine and she does a better job than her weary old mother.”

Stella went over to look, complimented Grace on her neat weave, and Grace maintained the placid lost expression that she consistently wore.

“What can I do?” Stella asked as she passed Robert, his black eyes like eclipsed moons, to Leander.

“Twins are teething. Daub some of that on those.” Nettie jutted her chin in the direction of a jug, beside it two balls of fabric tied with a string.

Stella retrieved the rum, dipped her finger in, then touched it off the fabric.

“Not like that,” Nettie said, wiped her hands in her apron, took the bottle from Stella and soaked each ball. Then she went to the twins, tugged their shiny fists from their chewing mouths, placed the dripping fabric on their gums, then pressed hard. They sputtered, fell back on their rumps, silent from the shock of the flavour. “There we go,” Nettie said. Then to the other children (excepting the diapered one and the darning one), she yelled, “Get your arses out of doors this instant, or I'll give you all something to make noise over.” On the back stoop, more bellowing, “Thomas! Harold! Mary! Get down here and mind your brothers and sisters”.

“Elise,” Stella said. “You too. Out of doors until I calls you for dinner.”

Gus arrived in the exact moment a roasted chicken was placed on the table. Before even greeting them, he tore the crispy knob off the rump from the back of the bird, jammed it into his mouth, licked greasy fingers.

“I'll tell you one of my dreams, Stella, my love,” he slurred between vigorous crunches. “Do you want to know one of my dreams?”

“Of course,” Stella replied, hands folded in her lap. She could see the salt crystals around his mouth, drunken tongue darting out to retrieve them.

“A plate of pope's noses. A load of the little beggars. Before I dies, that's what I wants. To eat a whole plate of pope's noses.”

Nettie snorted. “I allows. Keep dreaming.”

“What? A fellow can't have a dream?” Gus leaned his chair back on two legs.

“You got your dream now, my son,” Nettie replied. Bickering tone.

“What? Is you cracked?” he said as he peeled the entire skin off the back of the bird, balled it, then popped it into his mouth.

“That's not what you said all those years ago. When I was a girl.” Hurt, now. “Just a girl.”

“Get me a plate, missus.”

Stella glanced into Nettie's faded eyes, and they reminded her of two steel-coloured beach stones, edges long gone. And she felt pity for Nettie, her friend, once so full of conviction and self-assurance, always a perfect ribbon pinned in her hair. She remembered Nettie boasting not so many years ago. How her and Gus, so deeply in love, even a whole world at war couldn't touch it. They were charmed,
she said. A couple of charmed lovers who were going to do things right. Then, in only a dozen or so years, she had managed to recreate the home she had left behind. A husband who didn't understand his role. And so many children, she joked about having to search the outer limbs of the family tree to find enough names. Though perhaps Nettie never noticed the frenetic squalor, there was hardly time for observation.

“Well, now,” Stella replied. “A plate of pope's noses. That's something.” She tried to appear amused.

Throughout the meal, Leander nipped away at the rum, while Gus threw the drinks into his mouth, swishing it around his teeth as though trying to dislodge strands of chicken. He shook his glass over his open mouth, then winked at Stella, said, “Like the old woman who pissed in the sea says, Every drop counts.”

Once the children were fed and the women started clearing, Leander hoisted the accordion on his lap, began to squeeze music from its stiff body. Not three notes in the air, and Gus was up from his chair, spinning his children around the room. One by one, each clung to his willowy trunk as their feet left the floor. They stared at Gus with absolute adoration, captivated, his boisterousness pressing at the walls of the warm room. The younger boys knocked their hair forward, a lock covering their eyes just like their father's. Older boys swaggered. After Mary and Grace and Lucy and Anne danced, they all blushed when he tapped his bristly cheek, said, “Give a kiss to your old father.” Even Elise, suddenly shy, took a turn. “What do you think of your old Uncle Gus?” he said to her. “Lighter on my feet now than a seal on his flippers.”

Nettie poured steaming water from the pot on the back of the stove into a washbasin. Dishes clanked harder than
necessary as she dropped them in, scrubbing fiercely enough to damage the finish, water too hot for a sane person's hands. As Stella dried, she could hear Nettie mumbling to herself, inflection indicating endless questions.

But after each available child had been twirled around the kitchen dance floor, Gus came up behind Nettie, formed his body into her back. Instantly, the frown disappeared, and her face flushed when he held her waist, turned her around, and opened his hand towards the centre of the room. “Ma lady,” he whispered, and she struck him gently on his shoulder, smiled, bitterness dissolving.

Leander slowed the pace of the music. Nettie and Gus began to waltz, his hand firmly on her lower back, her face resting on his shoulder, eyes closed. He danced her across the kitchen, into the porch, twirled her through the door and onto the back stoop. They swayed there in the evening glow of summer sun, and after several minutes, he danced her back again.

Stella glanced over at Leander, and he winked at her. They were thinking the same thing, this dip and climb of emotion was likely creating the simple foundation for yet another child.

Dance complete, and Nettie sat down, nudged Grace and Mary towards the sink.

Gus clapped his hands now, hollered, “Line up, you little beggars. Hop to it now. Show your father how it's done.”

The children, Elise included, dodged and weaved, arranging themselves in order of height, backs straight, chests jutting out. Gus could have been at the head of the pack, his freckles and thick reddish hair making him look more like a brother than their father. But instead, he walked before them, dug his hand deep into his pocket, jingled his change, then plucked out a fistful of shiny nickels, placed
one in the open palm of each. “Toffees for the load of you.” Mouths open wide in disbelief, they stared at their coins, turned them over and over. Then, they stormed their father, squeezed him, squealed, “I loves you, Dad. You's the best father ever.”

Nettie erupted from her chair. “That's what you don't then,” she cried. Fog in hot sunlight, her afterglow from the moment of romance had burned off. “What do you think? Money grows on trees? Giving children the pittance we got to survive. What? You don't want to eat? Is you mad?”

Elise was the first one to fork it over, followed by the older ones. Nettie then pried the money from the sweaty hands of the younger children. Johnnie, though, would not relinquish his treasure, and she tugged at his hands until he flopped down on the floor, curled in a ball, hiding his money. Flurry of words: “But I loves toffees. Loves them, Mommy. I wants them. Wants them. Wants. Pleeeeease.”

The accordion, which had slowed to a background melody, now choked on its bit of air, and everyone stared when Nettie hissed, “By Jaysus.” She reached her hand underneath Johnnie's wild hair, tweaked the back of his neck. The veins in her forehead stood at attention, her heart pumping certain acrimony.

“I wants it,” he cried, twisting on the floor. “Please, Mommy.”

“That's what you don't then, you little bugger.”

She freed his arm, bent back his wrist until he cried out in pain, the nickel dropping to the ground. “One gets it, they all wants it.” Talking to herself now.

When he jumped to his feet, Nettie gripped his chin, spoke firmly, “That'll teach you to disobey your mother.” And Johnnie, lips bunched up and ready, spit in her eye.

“Blood of a bitch,” Nettie cried as she stepped back
wards, stung. Her face looked like greased dough, and her mouth wrinkled as the anger dribbled off her, replaced by something different. Flouncing down on the pine floor, nickels rolling in every direction, she stared at Stella, began to whimper, “How is this fair? How is this fair? I cooks their oatmeal and washes their arses and scrubs their grimy clothes. Sews their trousers. Combs out their snarls. Daubs salve on their cuts. But they despises me. Despises me in spite of all I does. Spite of it. And that,” nod towards drowsy Gus, “does not a thing but come home drunk, rile them up with his madness, fill them up with garbage thoughts. But they loves him. Loves HIM!”