The Cure for Death by Lightning (23 page)

“That’s nonsense. Lily wouldn’t do a thing like that. She’s a nice girl.”

“They did!” I cried. “It happened.”

“Nothing happened! Nothing happened at all. You just don’t want to go to school. Don’t lie to me. Tell me where you’ve been all day. Where you go.”

“Out walking.”

“You go to the reserve?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I just walk.”

“Where do you walk to? You don’t see some boy?”

“No!” I said. “I just walk. Sometimes I see Nora and we do things.”

“Things? What things?”

“She shows me things. Indian things. We built a house.”

“A house?”

“A place underground. Like a root cellar. A winter house. Like they used to live in, underground.”

“You’re talking nonsense. No one lives underground.”

“What good is it telling the truth if you’re not going to believe me?”

My mother didn’t say another thing as I drove the rest of the way home. When I pulled Cherry and Chief to a halt in the yard, my mother leapt from the democrat and marched to the house, leaving me to deal with the horses. I took my time taking off their harnesses, and when I finished I fed the pigs, brought in the cows, and milked alone. My mother never once came out to offer help. She wrapped the house up in her anger, made it a fortress I couldn’t enter. Sometime during the milking I heard a buggy pull in the yard and out again, and heard the voices of Dan, Dennis, and Billy heading towards the hired hands’ cabin. A little while later my father stumbled across the yard, carrying a bottle and heading for the Swede’s fence.

When I finally went into the house, my mother was already in bed and her bedroom door was closed. My father was still out. Dan was still over at the cabin with Dennis and Billy. I went to my room and took off my clothes in the dusk. As I undressed, I became aware that I was being watched and turned to the window. The hands, from the
thing that followed, were on the outside window ledge. I jumped onto my bed, threw a blanket over myself, and looked again. The hands were gone, but a darkness moved in front of the window. The window slid open, and Nora climbed in, with her necklace jingling.

“You were asleep,” she whispered.

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Your dad isn’t here?”

“No. Just Mum. He’s taking down Mr. Johansson’s fence. Dan’s out someplace.”

“I saw the fight,” said Nora.

“You were there? Where were you?”

“Looking for you.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Your mother was dragging you off.”

I opened my blankets to her, and she lay in bed beside me, fully clothed, and eventually we fell asleep like that, holding each other. My father came home swaying in the night, drunk and hurting. When he came into the house we jolted awake. Nora leapt out of bed and, as my father marched into my room, Nora climbed out the window.

“Get out of my house,” my father yelled, but of course she was already gone. “I’ll skin you! Stupid little squaw.”

Then he flipped me over onto my stomach, turned up my nightgown, and slapped my bare bottom with his bare hand. Dan ran into my bedroom.

“Get your hands off her!” He took my father’s arm and pulled him off.

“You will not have that girl here,” my father said. “Do you understand? She’s a breed. They’re filth. They carry lice. Do you understand? It’s for your own good. I’m only trying to protect you. Do you understand?”

His breath and clothes stank of booze. Blood was smeared on his face, his cracked lips were bleeding, and a splotch of red was growing where his cheek had met with a blow. He scared me so that I could barely breathe or answer him. I crouched against the headboard decorated with forget-me-nots, held my ears, and sobbed. My father
stamped a circle in front of the black window screaming words I only half heard.

“Did that breed make you miss school? Here I am working. Sluttish girl! Were you with some boy? Who is he? Answer me!”

But I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t say anything at all. My mother stood at the doorway to my bedroom in her nightgown with her arms crossed, not intervening this time. Dan slapped the wall and pushed past my mother. I heard his bedroom door slam shut.

My father shook me by the shoulders and my head hit the headboard so hard I cried out. My mother came around then. She stepped forward and put her hand on my father’s arm. “John!” she said. “That’s enough.”

My father shook her off, but he stepped back too, letting me go. On the back of my head a pain swelled. The room sparked with little bits of light for a moment or two, then the dizziness passed. I slumped forward on the bed just the same.

Mum said something quietly to my father, and he started out the door, then yelled at me. “You’ll stay in the house. Understand? You won’t leave this house!”

He stomped from the house himself, and spent the whole night cutting down and tearing up what remained of the Swede’s living fence. My mother sat on the edge of the bed beside me, feeling for the growing bump at the back of my head. Dan shuffled through the parlor and stood at my bedroom door.

“She all right?”

“I don’t know,” said my mother.

“She tell you about the kids?” said Dan.

“What?”

“Robert Parker, Lily Bell, and some others. And Billy said Parker went after Beth today in the bush.”

“Nothing of the sort happened,” said my mother. “She’s just been lazy and lying to cover it up.”

“It did happen. Billy was there.”

“No!”

Dan crossed his arms and looked back into the parlor. My mother sat on the bed and held my shoulders and made me look at her.

“Did a boy get inside you?” she said.

“No!” I cried.

She shook me as my father had done. “Did a boy get inside you? Answer me!”

“No!” I said. She slapped me hard.

Dan said, “Mum!”

“Did a boy get inside you? Did he? Did he?”

She went crazy, shaking and slapping me and pulling my hair. I cried out, but she kept at me. Dan pulled her off and held her arms until she sank to the floor crying. We melted there together in my room for a long time, my mother crying and me sobbing and Dan rubbing his embarrassment into the floor with his foot. He tried once to pick my mother up and carry her out, but she was a limp sack of potatoes and he ended up only dragging her to the door. He gave up, said “Jesus!” and stomped the same steps as my father had out the door. I didn’t see him again that night.

As soon as Dan shut the door my mother started talking to her dead mother, just mouthing the words at first, and staring at something just in front of the window as if listening to a reply.

“We’ve got to clean you up,” she said so quietly that I thought she was still talking to my dead grandmother. But she said it again, louder, as she turned to look at me. Then she slid up the doorframe, magically, her skirts hiding the effort.

“Put yourself together,” she said, and went into the kitchen. I heard her rattling around in there, stoking up the fire, filling the kettle with water from the bucket, pulling the little tin washtub from the pantry.

I put on my nightgown, sweater, and slippers and shuffled into the kitchen. My mother had lit a lamp and placed it on the table. She stood at her prized cupboard with her back to me, mixing something in the half dark. She poured the mixture into a wine bottle and handed it over to me. I took the bottle and sniffed it. It was a vinegar solution of some kind, likely just vinegar and water. I smelled nothing else in it.

“You know what it is to douche?” she said.

I nodded.

“Go to the outhouse and douche with that.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. It will help stop anything that might have started.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just go do it. Take a towel.”

I did as I was told, sitting awkwardly in the outhouse with one knee up, then dropped the wine bottle down the outhouse hole. When I went back into the house, my mother had a bath ready for me. She made me take off my clothes, there, in the kitchen by the fire, and step into the little bathing tub in front of her, and, while I cried at the injustice, she scrubbed my skin until it bled.

“If a boy got inside of you, or ever gets inside of you, you take care of it. Understand? You’re too young for mothering. Too young for any of it.”

I felt dirtied by my mother’s talk, confused by what she was telling me. The sting of embarrassment reddened my face and churned in my stomach.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I won’t do anything. Parker pushed me down, that’s all. Pushed me down.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” said my mother. “I don’t ever want to hear about it.”

I
SPENT
the next day in bed, staring out my naked window at the barn wavering in the heat, replaying the events of the day before over in my mind, sometimes as they happened, sometimes as I would have liked them to. I grabbed the gun from Filthy Billy and shot Parker in the butt as he retreated. I gripped my father by his collar as he opened his mouth to yell at me, and pushed him through the window. I replayed that scene in my mind until I had it perfectly: my father lifting from the floor, coasting towards the window, smashing into it and through it, the glass floating off in all directions and tinkling to the floor, the look of fear, surprise, and shock on his face.

My mother made no demands on me that day, but my father came into my room to interrogate me after he woke late in the morning. He stomped the same circle as he had the night before, in front of the window, round and round, shouting and not waiting for an answer. I flinched and shook through it all, hugging my knees.

“You tell me where you were! Why didn’t you go back to school? What happened that day you looked so strange? Were you with some boy? Who was it? Who was it?”

Exhausted and frightened by my father, my nerves shot by the events of the day before, I giggled. My father roared —
roared
— and took me up by the arm and slammed my whole body against the wall. I didn’t cry that time. I stared at him, running that perfect scene of him breaking through the window over and over in my mind. My lightning
arm reached out and tried to grab him, though the rest of my body was numb and useless with fear. My father took a step back; he was stunned a little, I think, at the thought that I might try to protect myself or hurt him. I took the arm by the wrist and pulled it down to the blankets and held it there. But he grunted and left my room. He was gone for the day. My arm came back to me slowly, but anger took me over, leaving me breathless, shaking, sick to my stomach. I sweated and my heart raced, although I did little that day but lie in bed staring at that window.

My mother came into my room silently once with a jug of water, an empty glass, and a ham sandwich, and left them for me on my vanity, but I didn’t eat them. Sometime in the afternoon, Dennis came up to the window. He looked over his shoulder, then cupped his hand against the glare of the glass, tapped once, smiled when he saw me, and left a bowl of cherries on the windowsill. Then he was gone again. I got out of bed and opened the window and realized just how hot I’d been, cooped up in there. Sweet air flowed through in waves, fluttering my nightgown, refreshing me. Lucifer jumped onto the windowsill and rubbed himself against me. No one was around in the yard. The outhouse door was ajar. I caught a glimpse of Dennis running across the fields to where my father, brother, and Filthy Billy worked to cut the alfalfa hay. I ate the cherries that Dennis had left and spit the pits out the open window, petting Lucifer and conjuring, once again, the vision of my father cutting through glass.

R
ASPBERRIES HANG
like nipples on tall, thorny stalks. If a raspberry is ripe, caressing it with your fingertips will bring the berry rolling into your hand. But wait for that ripeness. A berry plucked too early has no sweetness, only a coarse flavor that will pucker your lips up tight. When a berry is ready you’ll know by its softness, the deep purple-red color, and the ease with which it gives itself to you.

But that’s just raspberry. You approach each fruit, like each lover, differently. For cherries, you roll your sleeves up. Otherwise you’ll stain them purple. And look into the sun when picking cherries, so you can see their dark silhouettes hanging there. And of course you must reach up, so find yourself a sturdy ladder. When you eat a ripe cherry straight from the tree on a sunny day, its juice is so hot, thick, and red that it has the feel of blood running down your chin, staining your lips, and filling your mouth. Once you’ve sucked all you can from it, you spit out the pit and go for another warm cherry off the tree, and another and another, because the cherry will seduce you every time. The cherry becomes a compulsion, a thing you must have, a passion. You don’t see that ripeness, that hot blood juice, in a store-bought cherry. But a cherry sun-hot off the tree, well, that’s where it came from, the insinuation of lust in the cherry, the smut-name put to the ripe button-love of a woman. Cherry. It’s all juice and warmth, ar
O
in your mouth, a soft marble for your tongue to play with, a sweet soft thing with a core cloaked in flesh.