Too Close to the Falls (25 page)

The janitorial nun, Sister Bridget of Kildare, wore a different habit from the other nuns, a blue-and-white pinafore for cleaning. She couldn't teach anymore because something had happened, I never knew exactly what, when she was up north in Canada teaching in some Indian school. Knowing that dirt terrified her, we sometimes tore up to her with mud from the playground on our hands. This infuriated her and she picked me up by my ear, which rang like the angelus bells for weeks. In her thick Irish brogue she told me, “If you like filth then you can have warts like Warty, and as one filthy lie after another spews from your lips, then your warts will grow with each lie told.” She assured me that eventually I'd be the new Warty. When I laughed this off, she terrified me by saying, “What do you think that face of freckles is about, Miss Dirty McClure? It's just the beginning of the warts — mark my words.”

There were various stories that made the rounds as to Warty's origin, since she had no family that anyone had ever seen. Some said she was born on Halloween — lightning hit some rotted cauliflower in the organic garbage pile, and Warty sprang to life. Some said that her mother was bitten by a lizard when she was pregnant with Warty, and that she was half-lizard. Some argued this point and said that she was half-skunk which accounted for her odour as well as her colours. Jim Mackay, a volunteer fireman, said that he'd heard that when she was in her mother's stomach, the poor woman stood too close to the flames of the Wheeler barn fire on River Road long ago, and Warty sizzled inside and she was born burned and popped.

Nee-Nee, my teenage babysitter, had the most terrifying birth story I'd ever heard. First of all she made me promise not to tell,
assuring me that only she knew the real story and would know if I told anyone. She said that Warty was born to an unwed teenage mother who tried to hide her pregnancy by wearing a tight belt and hitting her stomach every day with a trowel, trying to kill the baby inside. When “her time” came, she went to the school washroom and gave birth to Warty. She took one look at Warty, wrapped her in the white pull-down towel with the blue line from the lavatory wall, and dropped her off at the dump, and the mother was never seen in Lewiston again. Although I didn't follow all the details of that tale, I was speechless with terror. For about a month after hearing it, every time my stomach growled I went into the garage and hit my stomach with a tin watering can.

There was a religious fanatic named Marian, who Dolores described as “pure as the fresh-driven
slush
,” living on Ticonderoga Road, who had signs on her lawn quoting scripture which she changed monthly. She had no trouble with the short ones like “For the wages of sin is death”; however, she had problems planning ahead when writing the longer ones, like “He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith,” and had to scrunch the last few words at the bottom. I listened as Mrs. Helms told my mother that Marian stood up at town meetings and said that Warty was “original sin” and God sent her to earth to remind us that we were expelled from Eden as punishment for our own lust. Mrs. Helms, the town mayor, said it was only Marian's opinion, not town business, and she was getting the “lower element” of the town all excited with her “doomsday claptrap.” I had previously thought the Helms were communists so I didn't know what to think when my mother wholeheartedly agreed with her.

Touching Warty was a risky proposition. Anthony McDougall
had warts on his hand and Clyde Ayers said that Anthony had touched Warty and she
planted
the warts on him — in fact, that's why they're called
plantar
's warts. Whenever Anthony came near anyone on the playground, we all screamed and ran away. Once when I was loading up for deliveries, I saw salicylic acid, Anthony McDougall's wart medicine, and told my father that Anthony got the warts from Warty when he handed her the garbage.

My father stopped in his tracks, saying these theories were ignorant and he had no intention of his daughter participating in such medieval nonsense. The word
ignorant
took me aback as my father never spoke that way to me or used words that would in any way cast aspersions upon me. Humiliated, I snapped to attention as my father continued. He said that Warty had Von Recklinghausen's disease (the name was later changed to neurofibromatosis, the disease made famous by
The Elephant Man
), which caused café au lait spots and tumours to grow on or under the skin. Her voice was strange because some of these growths had constricted her vocal cords. Her odd crooked walk was caused by enlargement and deformation of the bones and curvature of the spine. She probably heard sounds in her head, a condition called tinnitus, caused by the growths pressuring her ear drum which accounted for why, on occasion, she suddenly grabbed her head. It had nothing to do with being possessed by the devil or hearing voices. The reason she smelled peculiar was because it was impossible to clean between the protrusions, and when she did clean it was impossible to get all the surface area dry which caused the fungal growth and smell — to say nothing of the fact that she had no running water.

No one spoke after my father had explained all that. I loaded
boxes and Roy carried them to the car. Ted counted pills and we all kept our eyes lowered. Irene, who had heard only the tail end of the conversation while ringing up a sale at the cash register, came back into the long narrow prescription room and said, “No matter what she's got, she's not right in the head.”

That set my father off, I could tell by his thinning lips and the way he spoke with a kind of controlled patience that had rolling waves of agitation under it that I'd never heard before. “Of course she's not right. No one has talked to her for almost all of her abandoned life, so how would she know how to act normal? She has no frame of reference.” He continued to pound a white powder with a mortar and pestle as he went on. “Not only does she have growths all over her, but people have made her feel as though she has been the cause of her own disease. Her illness was translated into evil, or into communicable disease that could corrupt or infect anyone near her. No matter how much Anthony McDougall touched Warty, he would not get the disease. Von Recklinghausen's disease is
genetic
, which means it's inherited, and is unfortunately autosomal dominant.” I had no idea what he meant. Usually in situations like that I asked for clarification of all the details, but in this case I simply wished he'd stop talking about it. After pounding for a while in silence, he continued. “That means that if one parent has the disease, each of their children has a fifty per cent chance of inheriting it.” He lowered his voice and said, “If anyone were to be interested in the truth, they would have found out that Warty's mother had the same disease and died young, leaving Warty on her own. With all Warty's been handed, does she ever ask for a thing?
No.
What about all the people who have arthritis in one finger joint? They come crying to me every day. What
about all those Helena Rubinsteins who drum up cosmetic bills they've no intention of paying and come to me crying the blues about how they have had bad times? Has anyone ever heard a word of complaint from Warty or has she ever asked for a dime?
Never.
She has given unstintingly to this town while being ostracized by it.” As he added his crushed powder to an emollient with a spatula, he said as an afterthought, “I think she deserves a medal for getting up in the morning.” Roy and Ted nodded, but Irene just kept busily unpacking her free samples from Revlon.

I opened the thick steel-lined door, blinded with bright spring sunshine as it bounced off the loading dock. Blinking like Paul on the road to Damascus, I too was thrown from my horse by blinding revelation:
Warty was the Saint of Lewiston.

My guilt and humiliation faded and actually turned mighty quickly into exaltation when I began to make my plans. I'd found Warty's permanent state of grace and would be responsible for having her canonized when I wrote about her and won the contest. (Humility wasn't my strongest suit.) I also knew that I had to interview her as a penance. I had laughed when Warty got on the bus. I'd run to the back with the Baker sisters when Warty's smell wafted our way. Warty had always appeared oblivious and it was only now that I let myself feel how cruel I'd been. I, like Mother Agnese, would kill two birds with one stone. I would win the contest, get Warty canonized, and atone for my sin at the same time. Why, this wasn't two birds with one stone, it was a virtual scattergun of good intentions. Although frightened, I knew I had to do this completely on my own, as Warty was on her own. If I went with Roy it wouldn't count as a penance. It would be hard not to tell him, but I knew it was necessary.

No one knew where Warty lived. It was somewhere in the woods up the steep escarpment rocks with no road or path entry. It had to be somewhere near the rock quarry which was used as the dump. The first thing I realized was that I'd have to skip a day of school. This would take a whole day and I worked on weekends. I couldn't come up with anything other than a birthday party that would let me off work, and Roy would take me to those and pick me up afterward.

I started out early for school on a crisp spring morning, when the dew was still threatening frost. I'd packed my plaid flannel-lined dungarees and matching flannel shirt in my Ponytail tote book bag. I also put mittens in my lunch box in case I had to scale the rocks on the escarpment. I hoped her home was on the road side, instead of the river side, as I had no desire to hang on to rocks with whirlpools below me. God, I was nervous about finding it, and I'd never been as far away from home on my own before. The night before, in my own toasty little room, I confidently told myself that it was within walking distance of the dump; but in the clear cold light of morning I acknowledged that I had no idea in what direction her house was from the dump.

As I passed school on the other side of the street, I saw all the kids crowding into the double doors of Hennepin Hall at nine, like sheep to the slaughter. I wondered why I'd never thought of skipping school before. Why, I could take a bus to Niagara Falls (not that I'd ever really do that) or go the library and read Nancy Drew mysteries. I could go shopping on my own and even buy a straight skirt like Nee-Nee had with a kick-pleat and a buckle in the back. After all, I had my own money.

When I'd woken up that morning I'd felt terrified at the prospect of actually talking to Warty. First of all, her wheezy little squeak was really hard to understand. I tried to remind myself that all the people in the town were superstitious about germs and acted as though they had never heard of the twentieth century, as my father had said. I gained confidence as I walked out of the village toward the huge shale escarpment. I started up the Lewiston hill on the road and realized I'd been walking a long time. I kept looking over the edge, and all I saw were whirlpools below me. Finally I saw a monorail track which must have been the remnant of the abandoned pipeline to Canada. I decided to follow it, figuring it couldn't be too rugged or narrow if a train could get through. If they were going to build a pipeline they would pick the most direct route through the escarpment. Still, I had to hold on to huge shale juttings and pull myself up to keep hold of the rusty old monorail. The bottoms of my feet hurt from bending them around rocks and tree roots as I climbed straight up through the foliage.

I decided to sit down, have my lunch, take off my shoes, and rest and dry my feet in the sun. I sat amongst the blowing Queen Anne's lace and opened my Fluffernutter that I'd made myself that morning. Usually I went to a restaurant for lunch, but I knew I'd be too far away today. A magnificent panorama unfolded as I looked down the escarpment and across the river to Canada. Gulls dipped into the river, landing like Sky King's plane. I was convinced I looked exactly like Penny, the female pilot on that TV show, and made my mother fix my hair in exactly the same braids as she wore, on the off chance I would be mistaken for her. The sunlight on the swift current made the river appear covered in
floating blue fireflies. On the Canadian side of the gorge, the landscape above the escarpment had cherry trees in white blossom, accented by a saucy petticoat of pink flowering almond.

I was transported to my favourite era, the pioneer days. Suddenly I became Hawkeye, the explorer in
The Last of the Mohicans
. I pretended to share my Fluffernutter with Uncas, the brave Mohican of the title, and I could tell by his expression he had never tasted a Fluffernutter before.

As I sat on the steep canyon slope, I thought of how this spot called “the portage,” a title still used today, was named by the French fur traders long before the Mayflower landed. It was the only French touch, or what I thought to be a cosmopolitan flair, within Lewiston and I liked pronouncing the word with a French accent. We enacted this portage route every year in our school play with me as the narrator. (Dolores said I was always given the starring role because I had the biggest mouth, but my mother said it was because my voice had resonance and I knew how to read with expression.) I pointed out to the audience of parents, who had seen this play every year since the year dot, and “visiting dignitaries,” Mother Agnese's term for a priest from a neighbouring parish, that many years ago there was no way anyone could travel through the interior of eastern America because of its dense bush. The only means of travel was through the waterways and we were lucky that God had thought to connect the Great Lakes. The only problem was that every traveller had to portage around Niagara Falls and carry all their belongings to lower ground. Whoever controlled the portage, the land of Lewiston along the banks of the river, controlled trade from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi.