Wallflowers (4 page)

Authors: Eliza Robertson

1109

She's not in the yard either.

1400

Scoured the coast. Found Nan in Mr. Arden's wood, picking flowers from the riverbank. (Fortunately we've had a dry spring and this stretch of the stream is dry.) She says his April day lilies are the finest in all of Ontario. We gathered four baskets, then lay between the stones in the riverbed and watched an eagle collect grass. Nan tried to string the lilies together stem by stem, but her rings kept sliding off her fingers and we could never remember where the
clinkity-clink
clinked from and they're coloured the same as the pebbles. So I did most of the stringing and my chain grew to two fathoms long. We wound it through her hair over her shoulder across her collar around her waist up her arm. She looked like the Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser. I had to memorize from Canto XI last year for school. “Be bold, be bold, and everywhere, be bold
.
”

1800

Light airs, some clouds, temperature cool.

I've promoted my boatswain to quartermaster. After writing my last entry, we dug for four hours. The pit's to my shoulders now, and if I bend my knees slightly, it's as deep as my chin.

My shovel ripped a hole in Granddad's trousers. Nan wasn't mad. She helped me trim the pant legs to above my knees and now I trip less and my shovel speed has increased by at least a couple of inches. We were sailing south at almost a foot and a half an hour, but we're inside now because I feel like someone is shovelling the inside of my stomach. In China they believe in karma, which is like Galatians 6:7â“whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”âand I wonder if I feel like this because I cut those worms in half.

Chinamen also believe in reincarnation. After death you come back to earth as something else. I hope I don't come back as a worm.

I hear shouting.

1804

Dubore's driven her Flivver into my pit.

I hath slain the Jabberwock.

(O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!)

1900

We had to stick Dubore's floor mat under the wheel and push from the front grate while Nan cranked the ignition, and I fell in the mud twice.

She found Nan's appearance “startling” and threatened to call a nurse the moment she arrived at a telephone.

She wanted to take me home with her, so I hid inside Granddad's chest, which is where I am now but with the lid open a crack so I can see.

The air in here itches.

1910

In China there are fields of garlic and rows of ginger and rivers of soy sauce and hills of peppercorns and plateaus of cumin and mountains of five-spice and clouds of star anise. And the grass is made from lemons.

Someone's on the stairs.

1920

Nan's got rid of Dubois. And she knows for certain that she does not own a telephone and does not like driving at night so she probably won't come again until morning, which gives us till then to get to Hong Kong.

2030

Dug to my nose. Pressed my ear to the ground, and cross my heart I heard wind chimes. We're a few fathoms away at most. Soon I'll be able to crack through to the other side, but I hear Chinese cement is extra strong. (It has to hold more feet because did you know there are a lot of people in the Orient?) Was extra careful around worms, but it's hard on account of the dark. Nan called me inâsaid we were close, real close, and that we should enjoy our last evening in Sudbury. She wants me to help her look smart for our arrival. (Her flower chain has fallen off, but the individual lilies are mostly unharmed.) I have to pack too, but Nan says we won't need to bring much. My stomach sounds like Madame Dubois's Flivver. Might try to make semolina pudding from the farina in the cupboard.

2055

My pudding's erupted.

Details later.

2110

Left the farina and milk on the stove while I braided flowers into Nan's hair. This took longer than it should have because A. I don't know how to braid, B. a clump of hair fell out her skull each time I ran the comb through, which was C. gross, and D. hard to hide, but E. I had to hide it because Nan used to have hair down to the bottom of her spine, black as the ink in this fountain pen.

I maybe put in F. too much farina or G. too much milk, and now H. it's vomiting.

Scraped what I could from the pot. It tastes like sand.

2230

We've boarded the ship, but Nan doesn't want me to continue digging just yet. I write by the light of our last candle because we are saving the lamp oil for navigation. I packed: my good breeches, a clean sweater, matches, Granddad's Double 18 domino set, his pocket watch,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
, chestnut paste, this log, an extra pen. Nan's packed nothing, but she's dressed grandâsilk tea gown plus the fox and mink furs that Granddad gave her after they got married and Granddad's mother's pearls. She's wearing both furs at the same time because she says it's “bloody Siberian” out here, which means cold. I collected the flowers that fell off her chain, into two baskets this time, and I'm going to try and fix a few to her hat.

I don't think it's how Chinese girls dress, but she says she feels like Queen Mary so I guess that's good?

We're going to play dominoes.

2345

Light airs. Temperature cool, clammish. Skies blacker than the bruise on my right knee, which I think I got from unmooring the Jabberwock. Didn't realize it was this bad until I started using my legs as a writing desk.

Nan and I engineered a domino track, which winds over the whole deck, portside behind Nan's rear, then overtop the tin of chestnut paste to the bow, where it figure-eights around my rucksack and me, then starboard to the stern, over
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
and under the handle of one of the overturned baskets. We tried to make it climb the ship wall, but the tiles wouldn't stay vertical.

Nan wants me to pinch her cheeks to add colour because harlots wear rouge and ladies get proper blood flowing.

But she's still wearing cornstarch.

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

0015

I don't like pinching Nan. Her skin feels like butterfly wings. She dozed off so I stopped.

I guess I'll dig when she wakes.

0018

The air out here must be even blacker than my bruise.

0020

Nighttime sounds like this:
hiss, chortle, shwoo-shwoo, crackle-crack-crackle-clickle
.

The first three I attribute to the wind.

I've sent my quartermaster in a dinghy to investigate the last.

0021

Can foxes eat sea captains?

0022

I want to go inside, but Nan's asleep.

Maybe she'll wake up if I light the lamp. We'll sleep in the house and I'll just get up extra early to finish digging.

0030

No luck. She's out cold. I even tried coughing very loud. I'm out cold too. But awake.

Our domino track looks like the Great Wall of China.

Maybe it will defend our empire and keep out the enemies and we'll be safe as long as we stay within the tiles.

I just won't move, that's all. I just won't move.

0035

In China the girls bathe in milk and sleep in silk and walk in threes under parasols through gardens. The women wear chopsticks in their hair and fold the future into cookies. The men are warriors, calligraphers, alchemists. They make dragons from paper, fireflies from powder.

0040

I miss Granddad.

0045

I forgot the tin opener for the chestnut paste.

Maybe if I read
Pym
aloud he'll hear me.

0515

I fell asleep under Nan's mink. My neck hurts and I feel like I spent the night in an oyster shell. Sun's below the horizon, but I can see without the lamp. Hair's wet from dew or oyster spit. It's cold. I'm a bloody Siberian. There's very little wind. Dead calm.

Real ships can't sail without wind, but this isn't a real ship with real sails so it doesn't even matter. It's a holeâa stupid, stupid, stupid, dirty hole.

Nan won't answer me. I didn't want to be rude and shake her so I made loud awake sounds insteadâbanged rocks on the chestnut tin, etc., but she's a heavy sleeper.

I want to go inside.

I'm scared my toes are blue.

I want to go inside.

0520

I wish he was here. I wish my Granddad was here. I wish he was here. I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish heâ

I hear burbling.

A whiffling in the tulgey wood.

Shook Nan, no reply.

It's coming.

The frumious Bandersnatch.

The Jubjub bird.

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch me if I leave this hole, so I am hiding under Nan's fox. She'sâ

My toe, my stupid-stupid-maybe-frozen-blue toe just knocked over the Great Wall of China.

She's not answering.

I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish he was here I wish

My Sister Sang

Seated and stowed.

Thank you, all set.

[sound like cockpit door closing]

Oh, that fucking door again.

What’s wrong?

This.

Oh.

You have to slam it pretty hard.

[sound like cockpit door closing]

This one is: PLANE DITCHED IN COLUMBIA RIVER AFTER MULTIPLE BIRD STRIKES. Three serious injuries. One fatality. Forty-three passengers treated for hypothermia. On my desk Monday morning: the stats, the snaps, the autopsy, the tapes. (The FLAC files—we still say tapes.) Linguists identify speech—loss of thrust, loss of trust, one five zero knots, one five zero, not. I take the acoustics. Engine noise, aircraft chimes, whether the captain has reclined his seat.

Flaps one, please.

Flaps one.

What a view of the Columbia today.

Yeah.

After-takeoff checklist.

After-takeoff checklist complete.

[sound of chime]

Birds.

Whoa.

[sound of thump]

Oh shit.

Oh yeah.