An End And A Beginning
John walked away humming to himself. It was one of the tunes his mother used to
sing to him as a baby and it made him feel good when he was feeling bad. First Sam in a tizzy and now the whole
gang. He thought it might take a great
deal of humming to make him feel okay again.
As he turned onto Mr. Ray’s street he saw
the Hermit come out of his gate and walk up the other way. He was carrying the
string bag that he used for vegetables and fruit so John knew he was going to
the Market off Talbot Street.
When John got to Mr. Ray’s house his feet
somehow took him up the path and along the side and into the backyard. Then he found himself sitting beside the log
he was carving. It calmed him to run
his fingers over the wood he had shaped.
And as he sat there, stroking his
creation, the humming reminded him of another part of his childhood and he let
himself remember. He wasn’t sure if it
had really happened or if it were a dream. He was only three when it had happened so it could have been either.
His two brothers, who were much older than
he was, had cut wonderful wings out of heavy cardboard in an attempt to
fly. It had not worked. And when Leonard tried jumping off the tool
shed roof with the wings on and had sprained his ankle as he fell, the boys
left the wings in the yard. John found
them.
He did not know that wings were supposed
to have the narrow end by your shoulders and the wide ends by your hands. He put them on upside down. Wrapped the elastic strap around his fat
little tummy. Pushed his arms through
where his hands were supposed to go. Then he ran madly across the yard toward the ravine and as he fully
expected to, he began to fly. Once over
the ravine, past the old railway tracks, back around the dried creek bed, and
again across the ravine.
It was not easy to fly because he was not
a bird. He was a human in flight and he
had to work to keep moving smoothly. He
thought that it was like the one time he had ridden his cousin’s little two-wheeled
bike and would have crashed if his brother hadn’t been running along side and
holding it. You had to keep pedaling
hard to keep it going. The same with
flying. It was fun but tiring. He liked being able to see the world from up
high. He liked the feel of the wind on
his body. He liked how it felt to glide
and catch a little puff of air and sort of hiccup in the sky. He would have
liked to fly higher, to fly all over the town, to see how high he could go.
But John was tired and hungry so he swooped
back over the ravine into his own backyard, dropped the wings, and went in to
supper. He never flew again. But
somehow he knew he could if he wanted to.
* * *
John walked by Ingrid’s house and looked at
it but he did not see her so he continued on. It never occurred to him to call on her; no one ever seemed to call on
Ingrid; she called on other people. It
never occurred to him to wonder why.
Ingrid saw John walk by but she kept
behind the curtains of her bedroom window so he did not see her. Then she
flopped backward onto the perfectly made bed. She was tired and her head hurt a bit. It was partly the thought of school and the new teacher who was said to
be strict but mostly it was the gang being so out of sorts with each
other. Whatever had possessed her to
say what she did about them never coming to her house. They didn’t but that wasn’t the point. And now she had been in Hugh’s house; easy
as pie he had shown them his room. Or
at least where his room would be. And
he was going to have sleepovers. She
raised her arms and legs and let them fall onto the bed with a loud groan. Life was just too complicated and getting
worse, she started to think and then her mother startled her by asking,
"What’s wrong?"
"Don’t you know it’s impolite not to
knock on a closed door?" Ingrid said, but not aloud. "Nothing." is what she said out
loud. "I mean I have a bit of a
headache."
"I could hear you groaning. Get your feet off the bedspread with your shoes
on. You know better than
that." Ingrid was kicking off her
sneakers as her mother was speaking. "And if you’re going to lie on top of the bed in the middle of the
day don’t forget to make it smooth again when you get up."
"Why? I’m just going to muss it again
when I go to bed," Ingrid asked, but again she did it silently. The unspoken words added to her headache.
Her mother looked at her daughter and
walked over to stand beside the bed. She put her hand on Ingrid’s forehead. "You are a bit hot. Do you want an aspirin? I don’t want you to get sick and miss
school."
Ingrid sighed and something about the
sound caused her mother to stare at her for a moment. "It’s not easy
growing up," she said as she turned and walked toward the door and for a
moment Ingrid wondered if she had just imagined that she heard her mother say
this. Her mother never said things like this.
"Maybe you should invite some of your
friends over for a visit to make you feel better," was the next shocking
thing her mother said just as she was about to leave Ingrid’s room.
"They’d mess things up and you’d be
mad and maybe tell them off," Ingrid said and she was horrified to realize
that this she had said out loud.
Her mother stopped and looked back at her. She wasn’t looking hurt or angry as Ingrid
was expecting but quite surprised.
"I am a bit of a neat and tidy freak,
aren’t I?" she admitted.
She didn’t say anything else but she did give a bit of a shrug and
a sort of grin before softly closing Ingrid’s door and walking down the
hall.
Ingrid’s head now began to pound. Well, at least her mother hadn’t said,
"Those friends of yours" in that tone of voice that made Ingrid feel
awful because she thought she knew exactly what friends she meant and why she
said it. John and Piya and Sam. Then
Ingrid wondered if she was mistaken, if her mother had ever said this or was it
just that the one time her aunt did, her visiting aunt, that it had been such
an upsetting occurrence that it had caused a spreading stain.
And Hugh was going to have sleepovers. The
girls wouldn’t be asked, she knew that. Hugh was a boy. She’d never
thought of boys as boys before.
Oh, life was just too complicated. She yawned. If she went to sleep, had a bit of nap, she wouldn’t have to think.
She was just dozing off when there was a knock at her bedroom
door.
"Come in, Mom," she said, wondering what now and how
weird that her mother had knocked.
But it was Lucy.
Ingrid was so surprised she sat straight up, flung her legs over
and off the bed and began to put on her sneakers to cover her confusion.
"You mom said for me to come on up. She told me what room was yours. Hey, it’s neat." Lucy was
looking around at the pink ruffles and pretty pictures and fluffy bedside
rug. "You even have your own
desk. Sometimes I wish I were an only
child like you and Hugh," she was saying.
Ingrid was no longer the least bit tired.
"Sometimes I wish I had a sister or
brother," she replied.
She started to neaten the bedspread and
Lucy walked around the bed and helped her.
"Oh, your mom said to tell you that
she wasn’t going to put down papers for me to walk on, whatever that
means."
Ingrid opened her mouth in surprise and
then she laughed. "Oh, she’s a
neat freak. She says so herself."
It felt good to say this but she didn’t
really feel all that comfortable discussing her mother so she leaped from the
frying pan into the fire and asked, "Say, who do you think Hugh will have
over for his sleepovers."
Lucy shrugged. "I don’t know. Is
that a real music box? Does it wind
up? What does it play?"
Ingrid sighed, but to herself. "Look, I’ll show you." she said.
* * *
Lucy knew darned well that Ingrid wanted
to talk about Hugh; she had seen her blush and she remembered the look on
Ellen’s face when they first met Hugh and he had looked so foolish being
introduced to Ingrid. And since then Lucy realized that Ellen did not want to
talk about Hugh but she was interested to hear anything about him. Even after he had kidnapped the widow’s
dog. Lucy thought that once the girls
went boy crazy that was going to be it for the gang. She knew Piya really liked Joshua but this wasn’t the same: she
seemed to like him in a motherly sort of way.
Lucy could do two things at once, she
could think two things at once. So one
part of her was being interested in the music box and other things in Ingrid’s
room and the other part of her was wondering what things would be like if
suddenly the boys were BOYS and not just boys.
It made her scrunch up her face and when
Ingrid asked if she was alright she said yes she was and wow, did Ingrid ever
have a lot of books, almost as many as Ellen and they started to look through
the bookshelf beside the desk while Lucy thought about Hugh and wondered if
there was something wrong with her because she didn’t think of him as a BOY at
all.
For one thing she thought it was silly
that he was mad at his parents for moving and didn’t just tell them but acted
weird. And to find out that Ellen had
done the same thing by hiding her braces when they moved and pretending they
were lost was something she was still feeling very nervous about. How could Ellen do that? How could, she, Lucy, not know about
it? They were not only sisters, they
were twins, for goodness sake.
For another thing she hated the goofy look Hugh got when he looked at Ingrid. Lucy
hoped no one ever looked at her like that. She’d gag if they did; she was sure of it.
And half the time she couldn’t understand
what he was saying. Well, it was
getting easier but you had to really listen when he spoke or you’d get
confused.
And he had his own room.
She sighed, quietly (Ingrid was showing
her her new school shoes), and thought maybe it was just Hugh, not all boys,
and maybe some boys might be BOYS for her.
So
she considered Joshua. No – he was
definitely a boy. He wasn’t what he
seemed to be, or maybe he seemed to be what he wasn’t, or maybe that was the
same thing. Maybe he one day would be
that – whatever that was.
Lucy decided he had potential. Piya pronounced it podenchill and Lucy had not ever corrected her (Ellen
said it was rude of her to do this when she did it and Piya cried easily so she
avoided upsetting her if she could) but Lucy did wonder if Piya would ever get
it right. Too bad she didn’t have an
aunt who was an English teacher.
She thought about Sam and almost
giggled. Sam! He would always be a little boy to her even when he got big, she
was sure of it.
John? No, he was too different. And
she knew there would be other problems here although she would not put them
into words, even in her head.
Bill? He was nice, she guessed, but she didn’t really know him or know about
him. She knew he was a fusspot but he
was big and strong and he had a way of listening to people when they talked
that appealed to Lucy. And he had a
wonderful laugh. Maybe there was BOY
material here.
Lucy rolled her eyes slightly and decided that she was just very
particular about BOYS and there was nothing wrong with her.
Ingrid broke into her secondary thoughts by saying, "I don’t
really think you’re paying attention, you’re making all sorts of faces, let’s
go and find the gang."
"Okay," Lucy agreed. "Sometimes I just pay attention elsewhere as well as here,"
she added by way of explanation.
"Oh, I see," Ingrid said, but she didn’t really. She looked back at her bed just as they
were leaving the room and saw that it was in perfect order again.
* * *
Sam was sitting on his bed with his back against the headboard, a
red scarf with white polka-dots tied around his face and over his mouth.
His sister came in to get something from the drawer she rented
from Sam in his dresser, noted his presence and smiled, but did not say
anything. She sat down on his bed and
began to go through the dresser drawer for the notebook she was wanting. Sam leaned a bit sideways and put his head
against her back.
"Not feeling well?" she asked.
"I talk too loud." he said.
"Oh, I wondered if you had a toothache. Or were planning to rob a bank."
Sam giggled and then he sighed. "I talk too loud." he said again.
"You do," she agreed.
"People don’t like me when I yell."
"I guess not."
Sam snuggled closer against his sister’s back. "They want to make a map and just put
important places on it. My place is
important."
His sister didn’t say anything.
"Well, it is!" he said.
"I know." she replied.
"Hugh has his own room."
"You’d like your own room."
Sam rubbed his face against his sister’s back; her sweater was
soft and warm. He thought he would like
his own room but he couldn’t really imagine it.
"I talk too loud," he said again.
"You’re not talking too loud now," she said.
He didn’t say anything but she could feel him nodding his head in
agreement.
* * *
Snookums was wriggling
contentedly and wagging her tail as Ellen petted her. Ellen had seen the dog staring at her hopefully from the old
wicker laundry basket where she sat and watched the world on a no-longer-used clothesline
stand in the Widow Jenkins backyard and she had stopped and let herself in by
the gate and sat on the stand and was now cuddling the dog.
She had been worried that Snookums might
have been upset by being kidnapped – dognapped, as Lucy had corrected her – but
she seemed to be fine. The Widow Jenkins had no idea Snookums had
gone missing. Joshua had returned her
before she was missed. It felt good to
sit with the warm little dog and try not to think about the gang.
"Oh, I didn’t see you out
there," Snookums’ owner suddenly called out and Ellen looked to see the
Widow Jenkins at the back door; she looked like she was tangled in yarn.
"Do you want some cookies? I think I have some left in the tin. My grandkids were here last week and they
know where to find them."
Ellen put Snookums down and the dog took a
moment to decide between following Ellen into the house or returning to her
laundry basket where she could watch the world of her neighbourhood. She chose the basket.
The Widow Jenkins did have wool wound
around her neck and down her front like a long necklace. "I’m untangling this darned mess,"
she explained, pulling a bunch of tangled yarn out of her dress pocket.
"It was in a nice neat ball, I wound it as I undid a sweater that had
holes in the sleeves but was good in the body of the sweater, but that darned
dog got playing with it when I wasn’t looking." She laughed and Ellen knew she was not all that mad.
When Ellen was sitting at the kitchen
table with crackers and peanut butter (the cookie tin was empty: the grandkids
had eaten them all) the Widow Jenkins continued to untangle the mass of wool
and drape the straightened length around her neck.
Ellen picked up one of the knitting
needles that was on the table and twirled it in her fingers like she had seen a
magician do at a show at the library. You could sit quite comfortably with the Widow Jenkins and not
talk. Ellen found it peaceful. Lucy said she found it nerve-wracking.
"Would you like to learn to
knit?" the Widow Jenkins asked
Ellen, not understanding the ‘magic’ of her twirling.
"I sort of know how," Ellen
explained. "My grandma taught me
but I didn’t want to make potholders."
"I knit socks," the Widow
Jenkins said and pointed to one half done on the counter where the phone
was. "I knit when I talk on the
phone."
It didn’t look like a sock to Ellen. It looked like – a ballet slipper.
"Could you teach me how to knit a ballet slipper?" she asked.
The Widow Jenkins thought about this for a
time. She always gave a question
careful thought. "I don’t think a
knit ballet slipper would be a good thing," she finally said. "Not stiff enough in the toe and too
slippery on the sole. You taking
ballet?"
"No, but my sister is. Sort
of." Ellen said.
"Well, I have a pair of ballet
slippers that my niece grew out of and left here in case my neighbour’s girl
could use them but she decided she wanted to be a majorette instead. I think I
saw them in the hall closet. I’ll go
see."
She came back with a lovely pink pair of
ballet slippers.
"Do you think they will fit
Lucy?"
"I don’t know. My feet are bigger than hers." Ellen
slipped off her sneaker and put on the shoe. It was a bit tight. It might be
perfect for Lucy. She said this.
"Well, take them and see. I hope they do. No sense having them dance for no one in the closet." She laughed and Ellen chuckled as well.
"There she goes now," the Widow
Jenkins said, who, from her kitchen window, had as perfect a view of the world
as Snookums from her laundry basket.
Ellen looked out the window to see Lucy
and Ingrid walking along the street.
"Hey," she called out the door
and they stopped and waited for her as she thanked the Widow Jenkins for the
crackers and the shoes.
"I got you some shoes for your
ballet," Ellen said to Lucy showing her them.
"And I got you a book on magic –
Ingrid said you could borrow it."
The
twins smiled at each other. Ingrid
wasn’t thinking as she usually did when she saw the twins together that she
wished she had a sister. She was
thinking of getting to Joshua’s and seeing who might be there.
"Let’s go," she said.
"Where?" Ellen asked.
"We’re going to Joshua’s. See if the gang is there. It’s
awful being out of sorts."
The twins hooked themselves one each to a side on Ingrid’s
shoulders and she put her arms around each of them and the three walked
giggling and lopsided down the street.
* * *
Bill and his brother were sitting on the
floor of the side porch folding newspapers into neat cylinders so they would
more easily fit into the delivery bag and be easier to toss onto
doorsteps. Bill and his brother weren’t
saying anything, at least not in words, but their expressions to each other
said a lot.
They
were listening to their mother having a phone conversation with her
sister. She was in the hallway and
there was an open window so they could hear clearly. They were quiet so she wouldn’t know they were there.
"Well, of course she would think that, now wouldn’t
she," their mother was saying. They had to imagine what their aunt was saying some of the time but most
of the time it was obvious. "I
mean he hasn’t been home early three nights last week and two already this
week."
She then said a few "Mmm-mmm"’s and Bill
and his brother looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. She was talking about Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson
just down the block.
Bill had once heard his mother say that it wasn’t gossiping if you
didn’t say anything bad about a person and since then he realized she
skillfully skirted the issue. Mr.
Sanderson hadn’t been home late, she hadn’t said that, she had just said he
hadn’t been home early. It was
confusing but it sort of made sense. It
worried him that this was so. But he didn’t seem to mind this kind of
worry.
Then she said, "Oh, they’re both fine" and Bill and his
brother cut their eyes to each other. Now she was going to talk about them. At least they hoped so. They
didn’t believe eavesdroppers never heard any good about themselves. She was a braggy sort of mother.
"Well, no, he hasn’t been told yet, but they think the middle
of September, that was the earliest they could do the surgery."
Bill and his brother immediately stopped folding papers and stared
at each other. Surgery? What surgery? On which one?
For awhile their mom just kept saying, "Uh-huh, mmm, yes,
well, no, I don’t think so."
Then she said, "Oh, you’d better go and see who’s there,
then. Talk to you later." And she hung up.
Bill and his brother started to fold papers again but very slowly.
"What do you think she was talking about?" Bill asked
his brother.
His brother shrugged.
"I don’t need any surgery. Do I?" He would have bitten
his nails without worrying what his mother would say if his hands hadn’t been
occupied folding papers.
"Likely wasn’t talking about us at all," his brother,
who seemed not to worry, ever, about anything, said.
They thought their mother had gone back into the kitchen but she
was, in fact, still sitting in the hallway untangling the phone cord and she
heard her sons talking. She knew how
Bill would continue to worry (she wished Ken had half more of the worrying
knack and Bill half less) and she knew she could ease it this time.
"We were talking about my brother and his son, Agnes had
asked how they were doing," she called out so they could hear her,
"and their dog is going in to the veterinarian to have its, um, operation
so it won’t roam around so much."
Bill and his brother did not say anything, just looked at each
other with guilty grins.
"You’re welcome," their mother called out into the
silence.
"Thanks, Ma," they both said. And Bill scooted away.
* * *
When Piya walked home she went by Joshua’s
house, as she always did, but she did not see him and wondered where he had
gone after they all left Hugh’s. She had stopped at Kresge’s to see how the
guppies were doing – they seemed to be fine; the babies were definitely growing
bigger. And Mrs. Mabel had commented on
her earrings, the shavings Piya had forgotten to remove.
She hated it when the gang argued. She hated to see Joshua upset.
She stopped in front of her house and
stared up at it. Suddenly she had the
thought that she would be able to see Joshua’s house very clearly from the
attic in her house. His house was on
the street that jutted into her street but from up high it should be visible.
The trouble was she had no idea how to get
into her attic. But there had to be a way.
Her mother was in the garden doing
something so Piya went straight upstairs and started looking at the ceiling for
an opening that she might not have seen before because she hadn’t been looking
for it. Her aunt the doctor said people
often didn’t see what was right in front of their noses until it was pointed
out to them.
There were no openings in the hall or any
of the bedrooms or the bathroom. Next
she tried the closets. No luck there,
either. The only thing left was the
linen cupboard in the hallway. Nothing
there. She sighed and was backing out
from there when her skirt got hooked on a nail or sliver of wood and as she was
freeing it she happened to glance up and it was then she saw the small door in the
wall, not the ceiling, high up, in front of the shelves.
For an adult to get in there they would
have to take all the sheets and blankets and towels and boxes off the shelves
and get a ladder. Or maybe just get a
ladder – there might be space enough in front of the shelves.
Piya thought for a moment and then she
simply climbed the shelves like a ladder and lifted the latch on the door and
pushed it forward and open.
Yes – the attic. She had to lean forward and brace her arms on the floor of the
attic and then take a deep breath of bravery and sort of let go with her feet
and pull herself into the attic space with her arms. But she did it.
She
then gave a huge sigh of relief and almost sneezed in the dust.
There
were things in the attic she had never seen before and decided they were from
the people who had owned the house before her parents did. Likely her parents did not know this was up
here. They certainly wouldn’t think
Piya was up here. She giggled softly to
herself and walked over to the window that looked toward Joshua’s house.
Yes! She could see his house clearly now. The whole front of it and part of the side. And far along the street. The window was dusty but it opened
easily and she knelt on the attic floor and leaned her head and shoulders
through it.
Now she could watch Joshua from her very
own house. She settled contentedly and
began to watch. Oh, there he was
now. On his verandah. He must have been home when she walked by
but inside the house. She waved at him
but did not call out. It was more fun
to secretly observe. Maybe she was
going to be a detective when she grew up. Sadly she did not have an aunt, or an uncle, who was a detective.
* * *
Joshua looked around the verandah. It looked awfully empty with no one there.
"Mom," he yelled.
"What?" she answered from somewhere in the house.
"I need some lemonade. I think the gang is coming over. We’re going to make a map of the
neighbourhood."
"That’s nice," she said. "But you are going to have to make it yourself. I’m busy."
Oh well, he thought. Mostly she could be counted on. Today he would have to do it. He
went into the house, into the kitchen, read the directions on the Kool Aid
packet, found the jug, poured in water, poured in the Kool Aid powder.
The
sugar bin was empty.
"Mom," he yelled.
"What?"
"We’re out of sugar."
"No we’re not. We’re
never out of sugar. There is another
bag in the cupboard beside the stove at the back beside the extra
vinegar."
He found it and added a cup to the Kool Aid lemonade. Then he added a bit more. He liked things sweet. Some sugar got on the floor, he could feel
it grit under his sneakers. He took the
dish cloth and swiped it like a broom until the grittiness was gone.
"Joshua!" was shouted from the front door and he went to
see and it was Ingrid, holding her new school coloured pencils and Ellen with
ballet slippers and Lucy with a book on magic.
"I made lemondade," he said and the girls helped him
carry it and the glasses to the porch.
"You’ll need nine glasses," he told Lucy. "Don’t forget Hugh."
"As if I could," she thought, thinking of Ingrid and
Ellen. Then she sighed. Maybe he would move back to British
Columbia, if not England. And she sure
wanted to know what a Colonist was.
Bill showed up and then Sam. Then Hugh. Joshua looked around
at the nicely crowded verandah.
"Where’s Piya?" he asked.
The gang lined up on the porch and looked along the street. No Piya.
Then,
for some reason, Sam opened his mouth and shouted, "Piya!"
considerably startling the rest of them and at the same time Bill looked along
the street toward the street where Piya’s house was and saw her in the window
of her house way up high.
He motioned and they all looked. Piya was looking back, partly hanging out of the window.
Joshua motioned for her to come join them. She waved her hands at them, side to side,
palms up.
"I think she’s stuck," said John who seemed to have
appeared from nowhere and who was good at reading hand signals.
"No she’s not, the window is open wider than she is,"
Sam said and it wasn’t very shouted so that most of the gang looked at
him.
"I’ll go see," said Lucy and Ingrid and Ellen went with
her.
Five minutes later they were back.
"She was stuck," Ingrid explained.
"In the attic." added Ellen.
"She couldn’t get back out of the attic opening, too far to
the shelf." Lucy finished.
"What did you do?" Bill asked.
Some of the gang were
trying not to laugh. They couldn’t tell
from Piya’s face if she found this at all funny.
"I backed out of the hole and stood on Ingrid’s shoulders and
then sat on top of the towels," Piya said and started to giggle and so the
whole gang knew they could laugh and not hurt her feelings or have her cry or
go home.
"Let’s make the map," Joshua said. He was about to yell for his Mom and tell
her they needed paper – Sam had not brought any – but he decided to get it
himself. He wanted the good paper in
his Dad’s desk and thought it best not to tell his Mom he was taking this. He got it and didn’t tell her.
Hugh opened the paper bag he had brought and took out a package of
potato chips. The gang loved potato
chips.
"Crisps," he said.
"Chips," shouted Sam.
Hugh passed around the bag for sharing and then they began to make
their map.