Prairie Ostrich (2 page)

Egg feels for the Six Million Dollar Man, but he is better than he was, faster and stronger. Sometimes when she runs, she can hear the music, the super-slow, super-strong, tick-tock of Bionic muscles. The Six Million Dollar Man has come through some hard times but he is happier than he was, just like a superhero. He has a secret life and he gets to save the world, over and over again.

He is like Evel Knievel that way. Evel Knievel is not a superhero but someone who was broken and made whole again. Evel Knievel has shattered every bone in his body and he can still ride his motorcycle. Egg knows that when they hit you, if it isn't broken, it doesn't matter. Sticks and stones. When the bullies come, that is what you are supposed to say. Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

Egg whispers to herself. Names will never hurt me.

The bus rattles to a halt as the front doors wheeze open, filling the light with a swirl of dust. The ride is always better before the corner pickup, with the lazy rolling bump and jiggle of the gravel road. The corner pickup and Stacey Norman gets on board. Kathy leaps from her place beside Egg and slides into the seat beside Stacey near the front. Egg looks around for Albert but then she remembers that Albert will not be on the bus with her today. He will never be on the bus.

She clutches her new lunch box, feels the smooth plastic of the handle under her palm. At her feet sits her school bag, with her special notebook. She will write everything down, like in the empirical method. A notebook to figure things out, to make everything okay. First day and she will make sense of the world, just like the scientists do.

Mr. Johnston, the bus driver, fiddles with the dial and “Billy Don't Be a Hero” floats in from KQWP, radio Spokane, all the way from Washington. Egg rides into the small town of Bittercreek, past the dwindling houses and false-front shops on Main Street and the dilapidated grounds of the old stockyard. The churches and bars tumble by, Robertson's Repair-All and Gustafsson's General Store. Kathy says Bittercreek is so small you could spit from one end to the other and flat enough you could watch your dog run away for a week.

Egg taps her feet.

They are the only Japanese-Canadian family on the prairie, except for the mushroom farm way out in Nanton. Lethbridge is so far away, it doesn't even count, even if they do have the Japanese Garden. Coal River has the Lucky Dragon Café but they are Chinese and no one has an ostrich farm. The birds come all the way from Africa. Everyone is different but only white people are normal. Even the television says that.

They pull into the school parking lot, to the looming red brick and concrete, the biggest building in town, built for the Confederation centennial: Bittercreek Central School.

The doors of the bus fly open and the aisle is a mass of gangly legs, jutting elbows, the shove and holler as the stampede to the yard begins. Egg hunkers down and waits — the rush is like rattling stones in a soda pop can. When she hears, “Last one off is a dirty, rotten egg!” she stiffens, but no, that is not for her. With the big kids out of the way, Egg peeps her head above the green vinyl seats to make sure the coast is clear. Then she grabs her bookbag and lunch box.

Egg steps off the bus into the dazzle of light. First day of school and everything is new like a stack of birthday quarters. She taps her feet together. The blue whale has a heart the size of a car, and the speed of light is the fastest ever. These are facts.
Irrefutable
. Egg holds the word on her tongue as she steps towards the playground. The grit of the dirt crunches beneath her feet; she likes the shuffle-scratch sound. She takes a deep breath. The freshly mown scent of the football field tickles her nose and the white gravel of the baseball diamond actually seems to sparkle. A part of her, that twisty tight part of her deep in her chest, loosens ever so slightly as the warm brush of light glows against her skin. School is books too, the best Dictionary of all and Evangeline Granger in the library. A once upon a time and a happily ever after.

It's a new year and everything can be different.

There is a sting at her fingers, a jarring tug, and the handle of her lunch box is yanked away. The flash of her shiny tin — Martin Fisken grins his fox grin, teeth bared, his laughter high and mocking. The sun glints on his flaxen hair. He smiles, his freckles seem to dance in delight across the bridge of his nose. Egg stands, stunned. There is no time, not even for surprise, as Martin kicks her brand new Six Million Dollar Man lunch box over the curb and into the gutter.

…

Egg thinks bumblebee bats. Bats the size of bumblebees. She knows they are the smallest mammal ever.

…

Egg straggles to the end of the line outside her classroom. She slouches, her shoulder slides against the wall, as if willing herself to blend into the painted cinder blocks. The screeches in the elementary school hallway careen off the concrete and granite. Cacophony, Egg thinks, like black crows against a barren field. She sticks her fingers into her ear sockets but she doesn't like the squeeze. She thinks of the world under water, of unbearable pressures, or copper-burnished diving helmets in the murky depths. If only she could be invisible! There are magic words —
abracadabra
,
presto magico
— she wills it —
shazam
!

“Come along.” Egg feels Mrs. Syms's fingers claw into her shoulder, pushing her forward. “Idle hands do the Devil's work.”

Mrs. Syms is Egg's grade two teacher. Mrs. Syms pinches.

Mrs. Malverna Syms, with frosty hair tied back in a bun, has taught elementary for as long as anyone can remember. Egg has heard her voice ringing out from the teacher's lounge: how she is soon to retire but how she loves the children. Mrs. Syms is a fairy tale grandmother, as if in a storybook, pictured with a gingerbread house behind her. As she walks the hallway with Vice Principal Geary by her side, Mrs. Syms talks of God's watchful care and how she is always vigilant for the sparrow's fall.

To Egg, Mrs. Syms towers, all jiggly jowls and flaring nostrils. Her fingers are curled like a raven's, and her eyes are a bloodless blue. Her hair, lashed back, is a bleak winter's grey.

The line trudges to the classroom before the bell, before the doors slam open and the older years rush through the corridor. In the hallways, Mrs. Syms uses her singsong voice but in the classroom it sounds very different.

“Children.” Mrs. Syms's voice is flat as a ruler. “Silence.” She slaps her pointer against the wall. Egg notes the strap hanging behind Mrs. Syms's desk — a dark brown leather cut from a worn crupper. She shudders.

Mrs. Syms continues, “I will now call out your last name and you will take your desk.” She looks down at the attendance sheet. “Allen, Brennan, Brown.” Her pointer, like some darting insect, hovers, then slashes to the front row.

Egg holds her breath.

“Collins, Cochran, Easton.”

She grips the handle of her lunch box.

“Fisken.”

The letters ring the room, above the chalkboard, beginning with A is for Apple. A is always for Apple. Egg knows this. It is never Apes or Apricots. Kathy says
Ah
pricots but Egg puts the apes in
Ape
pricots. Egg knows that if enough people say
Ape
pricots it will be real. Language is like that.

“Johnson, McClure, Murakami.”

Her desk is right behind Martin. Martin Fisken: her nemesis.

She slides into her chair ever so quietly, quelling her fear.

“Simpson, Taylor, Williams.”

As Paulie Williams takes his seat behind Egg, she whips around and whispers, “Trade seats for two dollars?”

Paulie's eyebrows pop, like a jack-in-the-box weasel. He takes a moment to pull at his cowlick as he leans forward; he's a dead ringer for Dennis the Menace. “Two bucks every week,” he says, as his eyes dart to the pursed lips of Mrs. Syms who peruses her attendance sheet.

Egg squints. “One buck one week, a Tootsie Roll the next.” She knows that he favours the sticky caramels and taffies that he can pull into strings. He has lost two fillings already, rattling them in his daddy's tobacco tin that he keeps in his back pocket.

“Sponge toffee,” he counters.

She gives a curt nod, “Deal,” and slips sideways out of her seat. Luck is with her, for at that moment Mrs. Syms turns to the blackboard, writing her name with great sweeping letters against the pristine slate. Egg nods to Paulie — she is halfway to his seat, her arms already on his desk. Beside them, little Jimmy Simpson raises his eyebrows but he does not say a word. It's a smooth swap all around.

At least now she is closer to the back of the class and she has something between her and Martin Fisken. A dollar is worth it. That and sponge toffee. She holds her breath when Mrs. Syms looks over her classroom but no, her teacher does not suspect a thing.

Egg rocks back in relief.

Last December Martin Fisken chased Egg down the hall, shouting that she killed Pearl Harbour. Egg always gets chased at Pearl Harbour — that was when the Japs were evil. But for now, December is an eternity away, just as August is long past. For Egg, December and August are the hardest months. In August, Martin and his gang caught her by Gustafsson's store with the worst game of all, something he called Atomic Bomb — the knees and elbows hurt the most. Grown-ups tell you to turn the other cheek, but that doesn't help if the blows keep coming. In the Greek myths, Nemesis is the Goddess of Retributive Justice but Egg knows that nemesis in the Dictionary means something different. Egg had to look up the word retributive. Sometimes the Dictionary is like a puzzle, going from word to word, like the thread in the Minotaur's labyrinth. If you don't know one word, you have to look up another, until the meaning is all unravelled.

For Egg, it is all very complicated. The Greeks were scientists but without the science. They knew about atoms but they couldn't see them. That's what Democritus said; Egg read it in her
Young Reader's Guide to Science
. So the atoms were like stories you made up and now we know that atoms are real.

The Greeks didn't have Jesus. Science or no science, Mrs. MacDonnell in Sunday School says the Greeks are going to Hell.

Egg looks up. The pointer is out. Everyone knows about Mrs. Syms and the pointer. But Mrs. Syms stands by her desk and places her hand on a stack of books. Her fingers drum, a cascade of clicks as her nails skitter off the cover.

“Now children,” Mrs. Syms holds up a book, “this year we will be reading
Charlotte's Web
.” Every front row desk gets a pile. “Take one and pass them back.”

Her heart jumps when Martin slaps the books on Paulie's desk but he quickly turns back; he has taken no notice of the switch. Even Paulie just slides the book behind him without a second glance.

Relieved, Egg picks up the slender volume, strokes the cover: a girl, staring dreamily into the distance, a spider's web, a pig.

Egg knows the story for Kathy has read it to her already. Kathy goes for the stories where children fly and wise animals talk, magical and miraculous, but Egg reads the Dictionary, her favourite book. She likes the brevity and precision. The Dictionary makes sense of the world, the A to Z of it, defined and ordered. Everything else is so muddled. Egg stares at the flap of skin beneath Mrs. Syms's chin and she thinks of the turkey's waddle and gobble. She sits straight up in her chair, palms on the desk, alert and ready. Not that she is browner, no. As Mrs. Syms speaks to the class, enunciating her
d
's,
t
's, and
i-n-g
's, Egg looks over her fellow students: Martin Fisken, Chuckie Buford, Glenda, and all the same gang from last year. She spreads her fingers, feels the desk, solid, the chair. She knows that wood has grains but not like sand. Egg sits. She thinks of the word
diaphanous
.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
says that animals can smell fear, like blood in the water; they can sense it from miles away.

Paulie raises his hand and he is off to the washroom.

Egg gazes at Martin's head, his slender neck and wispy blond hair. The fuzz on the back of his head is like the softest down on the head of an ostrich chick. She starts at that unexpected fragility, at the curve of the skull that seems so much like a shell. She thinks of the ear's spiral, how ears and noses are the strangest things and even if you leave them out of your drawings, your faces won't turn out creepy. Martin's little dog ears make him look smaller. A curl of his lips brings out a snarl. Egg wonders what makes the mean come out in people, if it is there all the time, like the appendix, or is it something you catch, like the cooties? Can we cut it out, the badness in ourselves, if we turn the other cheek?

Martin Fisken twists around in his chair. His freckles, sprinkled across the bridge of his nose, remind her of sparkles on the Christmas cupcakes, the faded red on shortbread cookies. With his smile and golden hair, he could be on a Weetabix box. The thought vanishes when he leans towards Egg and whispers, “This year, Jap, this year, you are going to die.”

…

At the first clang of the lunch bell, Egg bolts out of the classroom. Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. That's how the story goes. She skulks behind the monkey bars, close to the bushes. By the bushes, at least, she can blend in with the runts, she is small enough. She knows the art of camouflage; she's seen it on the
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
, the fawns in the tall grasses, the nestlings in the trees. Stillness is the key.

In the schoolyard she can hear the chant:

my mother and your mother

were hanging up the clothes

my mother punched your mother

right in the nose

what colour was the blood?

r - e - d spells red

so out you must go

with your mother's