The Shore Girl (5 page)

“Rebee, today you'll do Sunburst. Come.”

The children separated, making way for Rebee. She inched towards me as I positioned the small chair in the greatest shaft of light pouring through the window. Vanessa and Susan took her by each arm and helped her to step up and stand on the chair. She looked condemned, head slumped, as if expecting the chair to fall and a rope to tighten and snap her neck.

“Girls, have you told Rebee about Sunburst?”

“Not yet, Miss Bel.”

“All right then. Rebee, just close your eyes and stretch out your arms.”

The children moved back slightly, watching Rebee closely. She was breathing fast, panting as she lifted both arms, her eyes squeezed shut. One of her shoelaces had come undone and dangled over the side of the chair.

“You're standing in a sunburst, Rebee. Does it feel warm?”

I held out my hand and clasped the tips of Rebee's fingers within mine, pushing Rebee's arm higher.

“Let the light wash over you like a warm bath. From the tips of your fingers right down to your toes.”

Rebee stood a little taller, her face squeezed into one big wrinkle. She stuck out her chin, holding my fingertips tightly.

“Children, quietly now, what do you see?”

I closed my eyes, too, and listened to the children whisper their observations, just like I've taught them. The way the light danced over Rebee's face, the shine in her hair, the halo above her head, like an angel. Her sweater lighting up in stripes from the slats of the window blinds — its colour changing from red to orange. Rebee's body glowing, growing, how she became taller by standing in the light.

It's a silly game I've made up for these kids. When I opened my eyes, I saw Rebee, perched on her tiptoes, arms spread wide, like Jesus on the cross.

I wanted her to know that light doesn't hurt. “Very good, Rebee. You can open your eyes and come back to the floor.” She stepped down from the chair, tripping over her shoelace. “Sunburst is over. Everyone to your desks.”

“Should we take out our arithmetic scribblers, Miss Bel?” “Yes, Peter. I suppose we should.”

* * *

I chose Winter Lake for its coordinates. Longitudinally speaking, I'm now stationed at
110
°
00
W
, directly north of the battered wooden hole, veined and stained, of the old outhouse on the farm where I was raised with the chickens. If I could find a piece of string
560
kilometres long, I could tie it to the outhouse latch, which sits on the southernmost tip of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, run the string north along the border line, and tie it off at the Messenger School door. The outhouse still stands, although my parents have a real toilet now. It took my father six years to finish the eight-by-four room. My mother said little to hurry the process along. My mother says little during the best of times. Six years to drop a sink into the oval cutout, add a closed-in cabinet, taps to the bathtub, pipes that piped well water in and out. The bathroom door was added in year five. A doorknob to close it — year six. I was ten years old by then, but after all that waiting, the indoor toilet was reserved for visitors. My parents had the well to think about. “Water is as precious as a two-dollar bill, Belinda.” To this day, the flush of a porcelain bowl makes me hear the tinkling of china, cups brought down from the back of the cupboard, teetering on saucers on the way to the table.

But it's latitude that matters the most. Latitudinally speaking, I've moved up in the world. I found the ad for my Winter Lake position while slumped in the hallway waiting for Christie to open the door. Christie and I shared a room in the dorm at the University of Regina. Having graduated already, I'd been forced to give up my key. But Christie didn't mind me hanging on. She was a big-boned farm girl who hated change, spoke only when in bed, only when her side of the room was in shadow, always with her nose pressed to the wall, always with a muffled, fluttery lisp. I had no intention of teaching like the rest of my graduating class. I was planning to go north to find my uncle. I needed more money to make the trip — I just hadn't got around to finding a job.

I was waiting for Christie, absently scanning the bulletin board across from the elevators on the dorm's sixth floor. A small slice of newsprint caught my eye.
Grade Two
Teacher Reqd. Immed., Messenger Sch., Northern Lights S. D.,
Winter Lake.
I know my geography. The words fluttered inside like trapped swallows as I ripped the paper off its tack —
Messenger, Northern Lights, Winter Lake.
This was my winning ticket, a paid sabbatical on my journey north. Winter Lake sits at the halfway point on my climb up the provinces. From there, I can dip west and north until I hit the Welcome to the Northwest Territories sign, then traverse my way to the Beaufort Sea. Tuktoyaktuk is positioned at
69
°
27
'
N
, a quarter-inch above Inuvik on page eighty-six of the
New Canadian World Atlas
. From Winter Lake, lati-tudinally speaking, I'll have a mere fifteen degrees to cross before I hit my mark.

So that was it, then. I waited for Christie to get off the elevator, grabbed the key from her farmer's fist, sprinted down the hallway and unlocked our door. Then I counted my escape money tucked between the covers of
Sociology in
Crisis
. $
321
.
37
. Leftovers from the Rotary scholarship, my grand prize for being the student most committed. Glassy-eyed Rotarians listened closely while I read my winning essay, “An Apple for the Teacher — Passion with Purpose.” Most had polished off their chocolate mousses by the time I came to the closing sentence — “And that is the weight of it, this call to the classroom, to forge a new imagination, a better world in the hearts of children.” There was a great upheaval as they collectively stood in the Chamber of Commerce meeting room. Clapping and stomping. I felt light as water, as convincing as butter pecan ice cream.

I stuffed my clothes into two canvas bags, wrapped my night lights in towels and shirts: my feather-winged angel and church tower; my dead starfish; my stained glass leaf with a broken stem; and my plastic clown, whose red nose gets feverishly hot when I plug him in.

Christie wouldn't face me when I sat at her desk.

“I've got a teaching offer. In Winter Lake. I'm leaving Regina. As soon as I get these references done.” I frantically pounded on her keyboard and typed three letters, designing new letterhead for each. Sincerely yours, James Knight, Yours truly, V. Stefansson, and Best Regards, Hugh Evans: northern explorers who, despite being dead, believed in my worthiness more firmly than most.

“When did you have your interview?” Christie had her back to me and scratched at her scalp. She always scratched when she felt change coming.

“When I get there.” I gathered my bags and walked out the door. “You can keep my sociology books.”

I arrived at the Greyhound terminal ticket counter at a quarter to two, then waited four hours for the Winter Lake connector bus to back out of its stall. I sat in the single seat at the back, across from the toilet smells, with the reading light on. I studied my reflection in the window through the long dreary night. I'd given myself a terrible haircut. Again. My bangs were too short. My eyebrows too arching, eyes too far apart, pupils indistinguishable from irises. It took a long night of staring at myself, seven stops, one driver replacement, a nineteen-degree temperature drop, and twenty-two hours before me and my polished boots and two canvas bags lined up at the office counter of Messenger School.

“By bus? Through the night? Instead of a phone call? I've never heard such a thing.” Mrs. Bagot steered me into her principal's office and pointed to the blue upholstered chair beside the plastic palm. I hadn't eaten since Regina and couldn't tear my eyes from the jar of red and green striped rock candy sitting beside the pencil holder. I had to clasp my hands together to stop them from reaching in.

Mrs. Bagot thumbed through the contents of my manila envelope. She started with my unblemished transcript. Then, the Rotary scholarship certificate on embossed paper with the gold seal. Then the sample lesson plan for contrasting simple vowel phonemes — pit, pet, pat, put, putt, pot. Last, the three reference letters.

“Those are excellent references, Mrs. Bagot. To assist you with your decision.”

Mrs. Bagot breezed through the dead explorers' accolades, looking up every so often to study the girl who had garnered such praise. Mrs. Bagot later told me she was surprised by my lack of an accent, my prairie heritage, “When I appeared so, well, from so far away.” I said nothing when she told me that. People smell a whiff of “difference” on me. I don't want it explained.

During my interview, I recited pieces of my Rotary essay beginning with page two and adding appropriate pauses and occasional stumbles to make it appear I was choosing my words for the first time. My mouth moved in one direction, my mind in another. I was thinking about what got me to this place. I suppose if I traced it all the way back it was that boy in the Luther cafeteria. That boy with delicate wrists, long fingers reaching into his plastic bag, pulling out orange carrots, red and yellow pepper slices, a mixture of lettuce leaves, arranging these painstakingly, as though he were a painter and his plate the palette. I sat two tables over in the noisy cafeteria, surrounded by liberal arts students I didn't know. The giant fig tree separated my table from the boy's, so I could watch without being noticed. Thick glasses magnified his worried concentration as he chewed through the colours. He had lips like a woman. He was beautiful in his otherness, so much so that he drowned out everyone else's roar until all I could hear was the sound of his breathing. When the boy stood to leave, I stood too. As he walked away, his timetable fell from the pocket of his book bag. I scooped up the crumbled paper and studied his choices. It was the first week of my second semester. By day's end, I'd switched from Arts to Education and changed all my courses to match his. If it wasn't for that boy, I might have been a sociologist. And sociology is dead — clearly.

“And I suppose that is it, this call to the classroom.” Unlike the Rotarians, Mrs. Bagot neither clapped nor stomped. “My apologies for my long speech, but I feel passionate about teaching.” I didn't, of course, but there are parts of a girl she must keep private, especially during an interview.

“And why Winter Lake? Why here?”

“I've been researching carefully.” I knew nothing of Winter Lake other than its position on the map. “This area has an amazing history. And this school an excellent reputation.”

Mrs. Bagot looked dubious. “You have no direct teaching experience.”

“But I was top of my class.” I felt light-headed from lack of food, sleep, light.

“And you are very young. Compared to the other teachers.”

“My youth works in your favour, Mrs. Bagot.”

“We've been relying on substitutes for over two months now. The children have become unruly, I'm afraid to say.”

“I can fix that.”

Perhaps Mrs. Bagot sensed the truth in this bit.

The next morning, after a second sleepless night, this time in the bowels of the Inn on Main Hotel, I arrived at my classroom at a quarter to nine and surveyed the thumbprint patterns etched on grimy green walls, the dishevelled stacks of cardboard along the window ledge. I routed through my predecessor's paper scraps in my top drawer.

• Cabbage and canned tomatoes (×
6
)

• Diet Ginger ale

• Weigh in —
4
:
00

• Big clothes to Jo-ann's Slightly Used

• Body Jam —
6
:
00
PM
class

As children bounced in from the cold, I blocked the doorway to inspect each child singly. I must have gripped their shoulders too roughly. When I let go, they ran to their desks like calves after branding. With the hallway emptied, all children in, I walked first to the deep sink, scrubbed my hands, then I marched straight to the board and printed “Miss Bel” in large letters. The room was quiet as a whisper.

“Well, here we go then. We're going to clean up this dump. Scrub every inch.”

* * *

My mother smacked my left hand so often with the wooden spoon those fingers still burn when they reach for a pencil. Rebee is left-handed. I love the way her fingers curl when she concentrates, smudging the letters as they inch across the page. I love the way her body stays still when she sits at her desk. She hasn't once raised her hand, joined in a discussion, or asked to go to the bathroom.

As for the others, they natter incessantly. The girls cluster like grapes; they flatter and fidget. The boys crush their juice boxes in their sweaty little fists and pound each other's foreheads and other flat surfaces.

It's a funny business, the way the mind works. I used to spend hours in my room at the farmhouse, conjuring up desks filled with breathing bodies shaped like me. I surrounded myself with girls in velvet dresses with satin sashes, boys in shirts crisp as white paper. I stole my classmates from the radio songs that drifted up from my mother's kitchen.

The real assortment is sorely disappointing. Now I find myself longing for my bedroom, away from the heat of so many grubby bodies. It's been three months now. Three paycheques, one report card, twelve Thursday after-school meetings in the teachers' lounge. There are nine green linoleum squares between my desk and the door. Sometimes I simply walk from the classroom, past the mudroom, and into the cold where I stand under the cracked canopy and suck in frigid air.

Yesterday I stood at my classroom window, inside when I was assigned to be out. It was my turn to supervise the recess raucous, but I couldn't bear another moment. Inhumane, what Mrs. Bagot expected from her teachers. I stared into the twisting, churning mass of bodies wrapped around the play equipment. A clump of girls emerged from the mouth of the vortex. It was Vanessa and Susan, and they were dragging Rebee between them, headed in my direction.