Authors: Sharon Butala
Tony and Kent had pushed their chairs back against the wall at each end of the table to get out of the way of Selena and Phoebe, who were hurriedly gathering the breakfast dishes. They had finished brushing and braiding Tammy’s hair and had bathed Cathy and put a fresh, clean dress on her. Selena had hounded the boys, who never wanted to go to church, till they had finally finished breakfast and changed into dress pants and shirts and sportcoats. Now Mark was lounging in the doorway, his white shirt that she had bought for him only that spring, already too short in the sleeves.
“Are you coming to church?” she asked Kent.
“Nope,” he said. “Tony and I have some running around to do. And the boys want us to go to their ball tournament in Chinook this afternoon, so we have to do it now.” She wanted to protest, but could see it would be no use. “You take the kids,” he said. Selena glanced at the clock.
“Maybe I should let Diane sleep,” she said. “She looked worn out.” Tony shifted positions so that he was facing Kent instead of her.
“I didn’t make her take that job,” he said. “She’s determined. You know what she’s like. There’s nothing I can do.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Selena said, dismayed. “I know she wants to work. It’s just that she’s lost weight and she looks so tired.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, glancing at Selena now. “I’m hoping she’ll slow down in a month or two. She’s just so damn excited. You’d think the city was paradise.” He shook his head, raising his coffee cup to his mouth. “It beats me, but, if she’s happy …” He took a drink from his cup, but Selena saw the concern in his eyes, belying the assurance he had put into his voice. “If you don’t mind taking the kids,” he added, apologetically, “it’d be nice if you could let her sleep.”
“Oh sure, Tony,” Selena said, angry with herself for having been so thoughtless. “The boys can help Phoebe and me. After all, they’ll be fathers themselves one of these days.”
“Hah!” Mark said from the doorway. Kent laughed.
“Where’s Jason?” Selena asked. “Jason!”
“What!” he called back from the living room, where she knew he was reading comic books with his feet up on the coffee table.
“Are you ready?” she called. There was silence.
“Jason, get in here,” Kent said, barely raising his voice. Jason’s feet hit the carpet with a thump and in a second he was in the kitchen, squeezing past Mark, who refused to move to let him pass.
“What?” he asked, less belligerently, looking from one to the other of them, with a child’s quick, bright eyes. Selena looked at him, checking his clothes. He was too small for twelve, almost thirteen, she hoped he would begin to grow soon.
“Okay,” she said. “You two go wait outside. I’ll be out in a minute.” She cast one last hopeful glance at Tony, but she knew by the way he met her eyes and immediately looked away that he wouldn’t say anything more about Diane. Maybe because he didn’t understand her either.
“Can I drive?” Mark called from the hallway. He had just gotten his learner’s licence.
“Okay,” she called back. To Kent she said, “Will you ask Diane to
keep an eye on the goose in the oven? It should be okay till I get back.” Kent nodded.
“We’re going over to Doyle’s right away,” he said. “But if she’s up before we leave, I’ll tell her.” Distractedly Selena ran a hand through her hair, trying to think where she could find a pencil and paper to leave Diane a note. The screen door opened and Cathy, Tammy and Phoebe entered, all of them looking bored and impatient.
“Everybody into the car,” Selena said quickly, before one of them could start to complain. Obediently the three of them trooped past her, while Selena grabbed an envelope lying on the counter and scribbled on the back of it.
Lying on the bed upstairs, Diane listens to the medley of voices and to the sound of doors opening and closing. If only I could sleep. If only I could sink into that blessed oblivion the way I used to, and wake in the morning feeling relaxed and fresh. Her back aches, her leg muscles feel tight and cramped, and her eyes sting from lack of sleep. She raises her hands to her face with a slow, deliberate motion, and places one palm over each eye. Her flesh is cool against her eyelids and the world goes deeply black. I’ve got to calm down, she tells herself, I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to settle down. Or I’ll go mad. Maybe I am mad. Is this madness? A wave of panic sweeps over her and she quickly takes her hands down and opens her eyes. This voice in my head talking to me, always talking to me, telling me all the things I already know, reciting the day’s events, the night’s events, criticizing me, calling me names, complaining about my life, planning, hoping, driving me to someplace I can’t find, I only know I haven’t found it yet.
In the yard, car doors slam, a motor starts, gravel crackles as a car pulls away from the house. The hum of the engine fades as the car moves onto the grid. Selena, taking the kids to church. I should have gone, I lie here pretending to sleep when I know Selena wants me with her. And she’s stuck with my kids. I’m a lazy, lazy, lazy bitch. No. I’m not a bitch.
Below her, Tony and Kent are walking down the hall. The outer door opens and closes again, then their boots are crunching on the driveway
gravel as they cross to the barn, where the truck is parked. Not a breath of wind stirs the curtains. The sounds coming in the open window are as clear as if she were walking beside the men. She can see Tony raise one hand to scratch his chin. This is it. What will Doyle say? The truck doors slam, the engine starts, they drive away, roaring down the approach, whining into the sound of wind up the grid.
Alone at last, she thinks, lying back, relaxing. She smiles at the ceiling, then sobers. You’re changing their lives, she reminds herself. And you have no right.
She throws back the covers and in one fast, continuous motion lifts herself up and out of the bed. The linoleum floor is warm under the soles of her feet and at last a bird cries outside the window, and she hears the swift beating of wings, then a long chirruping call. I’m up, I’m up, she tells the bird.
At least I can get dinner ready for Selena, so she comes home once to all the work done and a meal on the table. Clean up the dishes. Hah! That’d be the day Selena would leave a mess behind. And Phoebe working like a little slave right beside her. As if a clean kitchen, a clean house, were the only things that matter in this world.
Selena sent Mark into the pew first, then Phoebe, then Cathy, then she went in, bringing Tammy behind her, and Jason last so that he and Mark couldn’t bother each other. They filled the pew and she was relieved because this way the little girls’ squirming wouldn’t annoy anyone else. The church was only half-filled, although it was the special Labour Day service.
The minister emerged from behind the altar and the service began. Selena struggled to pay attention, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the goose in the oven, and Diane, thin and exhausted-looking and too wound-up, asleep upstairs. She studied the minister, a small, young man with an English accent. His peculiar lack of appropriateness for the job, the fact that he was a city man who knew nothing about crops or cattle, and that he was a bit effeminate, accounted at least partly for the half-filled church. And mostly women at that. Selena remembered when she was a girl. The pews were always full in those days.
She stole a glance at Tammy. The child sat primly, her hands folded on her lap, her soft face with its small, perfect nose turned upward toward the altar, although, Selena suddenly realized, she was too small to see anything over the heads of the people in front of her. Such perfect obedience, she thought, and wondered how Tammy got that way. Diane wasn’t hard on her, nor was Tony. Maybe it was because she had always helped with Cathy. Maybe that had taken the childishness out of her. But that’s what you do, she thought, frowning, the older ones help with the younger ones, don’t they? Phoebe had always helped her with the boys. Jason especially, because he was five years younger.
She glanced at Tammy again, and as she watched, the child raised one small hand to push her hair away from her face with a half-weary gesture. It was a perfect imitation of an adult, perhaps her mother, but Selena was stricken by the gesture. Poor little girl, she said to herself, only a child, and already a mother. And it seemed to her then that girls never had the perfect freedom in childhood that boys had. Could this be true?
She leaned toward her and put her arm around Tammy’s back, lifting her onto her lap. Tammy looked up at her, surprised, and then acquiescent. Selena settled Tammy on her lap, holding her tightly, her cheek against Tammy’s hair. She was so light and pliant.
A few flies buzzed against the windows and somewhere outside the small wooden building a hawk screamed. Selena could imagine the dive, the beating of wings, the triumphant lift-off, a gopher dangling from the hawk’s claws.
The minister began his sermon.
“The text for today is Genesis 3, Verses 17-19.” He began to read, his light voice floating through the warm morning, reaching the corners of the small building, while the sun poured in through the windows, lighting the particles of dust that sailed down the beams.
“And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your
life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it were you taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’”
“And thus was man cast out of the Garden of Eden, because of Eve’s sin. And the Lord decreed that ‘in toil’ shall you live out your life, ‘in the sweat of your face,’ shall you earn the bread that you and your wives and children eat. And it won’t always be easy. ‘Thorns and thistles’ will the ground bring forth for you.
“On this Sunday, we gather to honour the men whose back-breaking labour built this country. Farmers and ranchers are not the least of these. Even today, you toil among ‘thorns and thistles,’ you labour in the midst of drought, with grasshoppers destroying the fruit of your work as quickly as the grain sprouts.”
As she expected, except for two coffee cups and spoons on the table, the kitchen is spotless. Something in the oven, too. A goose. Doesn’t even need basting, she notes, opening the oven door and peering in, turning the roaster around in the oven. Pies are made. Diane can’t help but shake her head, admiring Selena’s diligence.
She wanders out the back door to stand on the steps and look out over what’s left of Selena’s garden. Don’t tell me she’s got all her preserving done already. Diane sits down on the steps, her chin resting on her hands.
It’s so beautiful here. My God, it’s beautiful. And peaceful. There is no sound, not even wind, only birds flocking in the carraganas and the poplars. A faint thudding tells her there must be horses nearby. The sun is slightly to her left, fairly low on the horizon, reminding her that winter is coming. Beyond the garden the land rises in low grassy hills, beige and yellow. A bush rabbit hops cautiously from under the carragana hedge and pauses, his head turning nervously, then freezing. She holds perfectly still, watching. He hops through the garden, testing this, testing that, his nose twitching.
How could I want to leave such perfect beauty and peace, she asks herself. And for once, the voice in her head that won’t shut up is stilled. The
sun beats down on her, she breathes in the scent of grass and sage, and is slowly filled with peace.
But of course it doesn’t last. It never does. She moves irritably and the rabbit leaps for cover. The hours Selena spends in her garden. Year after year. The work with the cattle, the riding, the haying, and all the housework and the kids besides.
A chicken ventures out beyond the strip of grass and begins to peck in tumbled, yellowing and stripped pea vines.
And yet I think she’s happy. She seems happy. I have to admit, I have to now, that the peace of nature, the beauty of nature, seems to be enough for some people.
Why can’t this be enough for me? It can’t be, when there’s books full of things to know, I’ve seen them myself in the university library, floor after floor of books, whole worlds Selena’s never even dreamt of, waiting to be entered. Music, art, drama, poetry, foreign lands and people, ways of looking at the world that could change everything we think.
All she knows is work. Work and family. Family and work.
Well, it’s not enough for me. I wish it were, but it’s not.
She rises to go in and peel the potatoes, get the vegetables ready.
“And so you labour. Some of you began when you were little boys, milking the cow so your brothers and sisters could have milk to drink and to spare your mothers a little toil. You started riding with your fathers when you were perhaps as young as seven, learning the honourable trade of the cattleman, or you rode the tractor, summerfallowing by yourself when you were no more than twelve or fourteen. This after a full day in school. Sometimes you rose before the sun was up to water and feed the animals in the barn and in the pen, and during harvest now you are out on the combines till midnight or longer, sometimes the entire night. And unlike city folk, you don’t get a day off each week. A cattleman said to me once when I inquired if he and his family would be going anywhere for Christmas, “‘Nope, the cattle get hungry on Christmas Day, too.’”
Cathy had been squirming for some time and Phoebe had taken her onto her lap, but now she slid onto the floor, despite Phoebe’s attempts
to hold her, and began to cry. Mark cast Phoebe an angry, embarrassed look and Jason leaned around Selena to see what was going on. The minister was ignoring the noise, refusing to look in their direction. Tammy stirred, but Selena rocked her a little, and whispered to Phoebe, “Take her outside, it won’t be long now.” Phoebe gathered the protesting Cathy into her arms, squeezed past Mark and started down the aisle. Her footsteps and Cathy’s cries receded as she went down the aisle and out the church door.