The Dancehall Years Page 9
Someone who sells matches, where’s the harm in that? What they don’t know won’t hurt them, eh? Can’t buy a drink for love or money in the dancehall, so what are the moonlight cruisers supposed to do when they’ve downed their hooch by the time they get to the island? Open the matchbox they’ve bought from George, and find the map to the hidden bottle with an X marking the spot, what else? Two dollars for a box of matches? Well, who was counting?
Only thing was, he didn’t want his sister to know about his sideline. Lottie was a stickler for the rule of law, picky picky about anything she thought remotely shady. Downright prissy half the time, being a teacher and all. When he visited her, he kept his bootlegging franchise under the table, ha ha, instead tried to impress her with his businesslike grasp of their family situation, sitting in her kitchen matter-of-factly suggesting that, if their dad had a bee in his bonnet about the amount of work the Yoshitos had put in, why couldn’t he have left Scarborough in trust to the Japs and arranged to have it passed back to his own family when he died?
Give it a rest, George, Lottie said. Dad was just trying to do the right thing.
You don’t care where his decision left me. It’s all very well for you, being in with the Union and all.
The Union has been good to you, too, George. They’re not offering anyone else your winter job.
That’s true.
14.
Huddled against the rain-streaked window of the bus to Blaine—windshield wipers slapping back and forth—Isabelle tries to knit an infant’s dress, but the lurching ride keeps jolting the yarn off the needles. Folding what she’s managed to knit so far, she nods off, dreaming she’s lost her skirt: the only way she can make herself presentable is by tying the sleeves of her jacket around her waist and wearing it like an apron. That way, her behind is exposed, but if she wore it as seat padding, the sleeves wouldn’t be long enough to cover her vagina. The bus driver feels so sorry for her he gives her the fare. The one seat that looked vacant from the front of the bus turns out to have a baby in it.
The residence for unwed mothers is a large gaunt house that smells of artificial pine floor cleaner cut with fried fat; the paint on the halls and stairways seems scrubbed with antiseptic. Old triangle-patterned linoleum on the wide stairs. A spare woman in a tweed skirt leads her down a corridor to a room with a narrow bed, the reading lamp tied to the corner post with string. The matron, if that’s what you’d call her, looks at her askance the way the bus driver did in the dream.
When Isabelle reaches up to put her few things in the cupboard, her arm drops like a piece of clothing from a line. She lies down still in her coat. This is how Takumi must have felt, alone and hauled away from everything and everyone he knew. Hard to believe it was only a week ago Gwen’d turned her change purse upside down and emptied dimes and nickels on the cottage bed. This is to help buy your friends’ house, Auntie. I saved it for you.
It’s not enough, sweetheart. Thank you though. Oh Gwen, don’t cry. I’ll make it up to you some day. I promise.
For the last few weeks, she’s done nothing but fall asleep, but now, in a half dream before they’re called down to supper like girls in a boarding school, she finds herself giving birth to a curved log swaddled in leaves. Downstairs, the cook in the institutional kitchen bangs her pans of instant scrambled eggs and powdered potatoes. It’s not her fault, her tired glance says, that Isabelle has to load a tin tray to feed the life inside her. What excuse has her family made? She visiting a maiden aunt like the rest of them?
It’s the saddest, most sullen time she’ll ever remember. She can’t bear being there with the donated furniture and sidelined girls, pretending they’re hidden when they couldn’t be more visible. When the baby moves inside her for the first time, she thinks of shiners eddying back and forth at low tide. She spends most of her time lying in bed, occasionally managing to comfort herself by touching the part of her beloved deep inside her body. This baby is staying with her, no matter what.
(A leaf falls. A mouse drowns in one of Takumi’s rain buckets, so that one’s not for drinking. Small reflections of sun flash on patches of dark water as shadows pick out the cedar and hemlock on the ridge across the inlet. A spotlight lifts the tone on the opposite bank to a vivid sage as the background overcast darkens. He dreams about a baby he’s never met who lets go his hand and is sucked into a narrow viscous tube in the sea. He isn’t worried because there’s a shallow beach at the other end where she’ll be able to wade. Later, diving down the tube himself, he discovers it’s a dead end, and she didn’t manage to get born. Swimming back, he explains to the people questioning her death that no one told him there was no opening at the other end.)
15.
December, 1942
In the summer, it’s all Grandma and Grandpa Gallagher, but back in Vancouver in the winter, it’s Grandma and Grandpa Killam who’ve moved to Vancouver from Saskatchewan because life is too hard on the Prairies. Grandma Killam’s over at Blenheim St. to help because it’s so close to Christmas. She sits on a stool at the ironing board in a stiff suit, holding herself straight like the first person to salute the platformed general in a marching parade. Coming out on the train, Grandpa Killam lay on the bunk craning back his neck trying to see the tops of the Rockies as they rounded the bends. Now they live in an apartment at 43rd and Larch; wonderful to be so near the grandchildren, but they can’t get used to living up off the ground.
Grandma Killam folds a pillowcase in half, irons it, folds it in half again. They did have a time on the train. Kind of a holiday. People don’t get much in the way of holidays in their neck of the woods. Not like being able to go to a cottage with your children every summer and sit on the beach all day, Ada.
Dear knows, they’d only been here a few weeks before Lyndon started pacing up and down the apartment lawn looking for his cows. Holding a shirt up at the cuff and armpit as if measuring it, Grandma sticks the sleeve over a narrow board that folds down from the ironing board cupboard. Second childhood, my eye, she says. He plain misses his livestock. As for her, she misses her sister Eleanor. Ada would understand. She has sisters. Eleanor. The loveliest name in the world when you come right down to it. Loveliest person in the world for that matter. Grandma Killam stops ironing, her face softening as if she’s hearing Silent Night crooning from a music box. When Grandma and Grandpa Killam arrived in Vancouver, Great Aunt Eleanor’s flower watercolours had to be brought up from the basement. Bevies of wrinkled roses weakly capsized in a grey wash now hang in a row on the dining room wall.
Eleanor’s the one who insisted on living in a room above the barn because she wanted to paint. Oh she sounds exactly like Eleanor, their dad said scathingly at the dinner table when Mother mentioned as to how, at camp, Isabelle liked to use the coffee grounds to mulch the azaleas. Not exactly, you could tell she wanted to say. Isabelle’s not asking to live in anyone’s barn. Funny how you can get away with saying something mean about someone in your own family, but let an outsider make a remark and it’s a different kettle of fish.
How about a big smacker, Gwendolyn? says Grandma Killam. Lines crinkle the edge of her eyes, her cheek is dry and papery. It seems that she’s like Miss Fenn who says she thinks nicknames are frivolous. The look on her face when she’s ironing is like someone in school who has to colour when she wants to be learning to read. Mother tucks a collar of brown paper inside the tin before she pours the light fruit batter. Arranges tree sugar cookies in a box decorated with Christmas soldiers. Change your dress, dear, before you go out to play. The house will become even more special when she’s out, as if it’s marinating in nutmeg.
Coated in grey stucco, the Killam house on Blenheim St. near the lane behind Crofton House School has leaded glass windows, a square entrance hall and a spacious upstairs. Outside, a few kids are playing double Dutch even if the sky’s darkening. Fallen maple leaves flatten on the driveway. Gwen’s jittery beside the person who’s turning the rope. Trying to get the nerve to skip into fast pepper t
o keep the kettle boiling, her foot hesitates in and out, the way Leo’s does on the Sannie gangplank. Miss the rope, you’re out.
At her ninth birthday, a week before Christmas (and not fair), her mother hangs streamers from the ceiling lamp to the corners of the new pedestaled dining room table her dad’s brought in as an early Christmas present. They had to carry the old one down to the basement. At the party, she turns the chairs opposite each other in a row, so the kids can prowl in a circle until the music stops and everyone grabs a seat. Then a chair is taken away. There has to be one less chair than the number of guests, so someone’s out every time. Finally there’s only Gwen and Leo running around the last one. When the front door opens, their mother’s hand suspends above the gramophone arm ready to nip it back onto the stand to stop the music. She lifts the arm. Leo grabs the seat. Losing makes Gwen feel sick, and she has to go lie down on her own birthday.
Aunt Evvie comes in, smashes a bag of groceries on the counter, and the party’s punctured like a balloon. Her hair’s piled on top of her head, but the ends have sprung from their bobby pins. She’s gone, Ada, she cries. Mother’s gone. She looked so alone, I couldn’t bear it. The two of them stare into the sink, as if Grandma Gallagher’s blood is pouring down the drain. They never touch, but now they reach for each other awkwardly as if they don’t know what else to do with their arms. Mother pulls away first. Someone’s got to get in touch with Isabelle, she says. They must have a phone in that café in Britannia Beach. She’s said she’s staying there for Christmas.
The children are sent to bed early. Gwen sits at the top of the stairs and listens to her mother hang up the phone. For goodness sake, they’ve never heard of an Isabelle Gallagher, she says. I’m going to call Frances. She’s the only one who might know. Frances’s phone rings and rings, but there’s no answer. Where could Isabelle be? Where could she possibly be?
16.
Every week, Isabelle visits a thin, hurried obstetrician who rushes into the cubicle, eyes on his clipboard, then reaches over to heave her belly back and forth as if kneading bread. The baby’s positioned feet first, he tells her. If it doesn’t turn soon, they’ll have to do a Caesarean. He tries to roll the baby into a headfirst position, but it stays stubbornly pointed the wrong way.
She, Isabelle says. It’s a girl.
Even if she hasn’t managed to look after the house the way she said she would, at least she’ll have a granddaughter to present to Shinsuke and Noriko when they come back. A daughter to make up for the sister Takumi lost. At least there’s that, but what’s she going to do about her family? She can’t be in Britannia Beach forever. Back at the home, she uses her own hands to try to turn the child headfirst into the birth canal, but the baby’s narrow feet stay downward like small hooves.
One afternoon, there’s a knock on the door she assumes is the matron’s, but it’s not, it’s Ada of all people. She turns her face to the window, angry and yet relieved. What are you doing here, Ada? I want you to leave. How did you find me? Ada sits down as if she’ll never move again. I was at that pajama party too when we talked about that girl. We found out where she went, remember?
What happened to her baby?
I have no idea. You poor thing. You look as if you’re almost due. Let’s get you through this, Issie. Then we can talk about what to do.
How’s Gwen?
Gwen’s fine. She’ll be expecting you at Christmas.
Well, I won’t be there. I’m up the spout.
Isabelle, promise me you’ll call when you feel the first sign of contractions. First babies can take a long time. So the minute you feel anything…
What do they feel like?
A kind of gentle tugging.
Until the contractions begin, Isabelle’s certain she’ll want to be on her own, but when she finds herself breathing slowly, trying to leave her body and get up high so she can look down at the tops of trees, she’s terrified. The part of herself that was in control disappears. Ada’s done this; she must know something. How could she have known she’d need her this badly?
She calls. Can you come?
I’ll be there.
And so in the end, it’s her sister who’s holding her hand in the delivery room, listening to the doctor say that the cervix may not be dilating because the baby hasn’t presented its head properly. It will be best for mother and baby if they settle for that Caesarean.
It’s a she, Isabelle murmurs as she loses consciousness and knows nothing more until somehow—is it possible—she finds herself waking up in her old bedroom at Laburnum St., the cut down her belly aching and subsiding with post-delivery contractions like aftershocks. Bruised with abrasions as if she’s been scraped off a highway, pain pulling the stitches down her belly, she tries to sit up, vaguely remembering Ada’s arm around her shoulders half-carrying her up the front stairs. What are we doing here? she says when her sister comes in the room. Where’s the baby?
Don’t try to get up, Ada says, unpacking a bag of Isabelle’s stuff she’d grabbed on the way out of the hospital room. She quickly put the knitted baby dress back in the bag so Isabelle wouldn’t see it. I don’t know how to tell you this, Isabelle, but I have to. The cord tightened around the baby’s neck as she was being born. They didn’t get her in time. I’m so sorry, but she died. I wanted you to be somewhere you felt safe before you found out. I was lucky enough to find an orderly who was willing to help me take you out a side door when I explained…
What, that the baby was Japanese?
Never mind that. We had to take a taxi back from Blaine, and it cost a fortune. Dad thinks you’ve had a collapse because you’ve been working too hard.
Isabelle’s eyes hood like her mother’s, as if she’s taking her place in the sick bed. How could you have taken me away without letting me see her? She’s all I had left.
She was dead.
She was inside me; I knew everything she was doing, and I never even got to hold her! She can’t stop crying.
I’m so sorry, Isabelle. Ada tries to hold her, but her sister pulls away. And it’s terrible, that I have to tell you now. Mother’s passed away.
For two days, Isabelle lies facing the wall and crying. Her sister bandages her breasts to stop the milk, drapes a bed jacket over her chest as camouflage. You and dad should come and have Christmas at Blenheim St., Ada says. It’ll do you good.
I’d rather see it in from here, says Isabelle. He’s got me where he wants me, she thinks. My father’s got me back where he wants me.
After she’s been at Laburnum St. a week, she manages to make her way downstairs where she finds her father hunched at the table, his face swollen with grief and loss as if a layer of air has been pumped under his skin. Upstairs she’d seen him walking through the hall carrying articles of Harriet’s clothing as if searching for an altar to lay them on. He looks so lost she covers him with one of the crocheted blankets her mother’d picked at, hooking stitch after stitch. It’s all right, she says, I’m back now. He throws off the blanket and falls heavily in his daughter’s arms, leaning his large white head against her bandaged breasts. She winces but he doesn’t notice, instead clutches her, sobbing as she lowers him to his chair. You have to eat something, Dad, she says to the refrigerator. As she gets up, he grabs her ring finger and pulls it close to his face. This, he says, is the only good news we’ve had in months. A little scrap of hope at Christmas, that’s all I ask.
17.
What’s wrong with this tree, this tree is fine. This tree is not fine Percy, and you know it. When the air’s this tense, her dad’s liable to reach out and whap something, and it could be one of his daughters. So no, Gwen does not want to go with the family to get the tree: all they do is tramp mile after mile through the bush until every tree looks like every other tree. Smiles are at least supposed to be trying to get onto their faces, but no, it’s life or death whether it’s the be-all and end-all perfect tree her father’s holding by the neck as if he wants to throttle it.
At leas
t, after the others leave, the air surrounding her fits better. The trim around the grey front door could use some lettering: words written equidistant around three sides of the white rectangle frame like the words around a Christmas card border. This, turn the card, is Killams, apostrophe before the s or after, over and down the other side, House. With the car lights turned off for the war, the lettering will make it easier for people to know they’re at the right house because everyone’s welcome at Christmas. Auntie too. She’s at Laburnum St., but she’s not feeling well. On the Killam family Christmas card, Lily’s perched on the lowest stair, Gwen face-front on the next, Leo in profile on the landing, candles held high like Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick. The girls in white flannel nightgowns, the boy in a white nightshirt. The worst story Gwen’s ever heard is the one about Peter Pan who finally makes it home to his own window only to find another boy in his bed. He has to go back and stand on the blue stone in Kensington Gardens forever.
She’s stretching up as high as she can, painting the last letters on the door frame when the Dodge drives up with its captured tree on top, her dad’s angry eyes flashing over the dashboard. Her mother lifts her feet over the dirty whitewall tires. Where’s Jean next door? She’s supposed to be watching Gwen for heaven’s sake. If Gwen thinks she’s too big for her father to pull down her pants, turn her over his knee and spank her, she’s got another thing coming. The hits ring out with the type of sting he’ll tell you is par for the course but isn’t. Once he took her aside and asked how she’d feel if he went and lived in a hotel for a while. She said it wasn’t a good idea. He should ask her again.
Christmas Eve, Ada’s still got a million things to do. Maraschino cherries to cut up for the holly on the shortbread for one thing. All that sewing. Christmas Eve wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without Percy banging on the floor at 2 AM, calling his wife to come upstairs. How’s Santa Claus going to come until everyone’s in bed?