Prairie Ostrich (5 page)

Her mother raises her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“He doesn't really talk like Hop Sing on
Ponderosa
but he doesn't talk like you either.”

“That's because Papa was born in Japan and I was born in Vancouver.”

“How did you meet him?”

“In Japan. After the war.”

Egg clicks her tongue against her front teeth to get all of the minty goodness. “How come you were in Japan?” She doesn't want to ask about the war thing.

Mama gazes at her and Egg can feel her hesitation. Mama says, “I got lost in the shuffle.” She follows up briskly with, “And your father, he just swept me off my feet. I mean, really — he was on a motorcycle and he almost ran me over. But he made up for that later with chocolates and nylons.” She leans in conspiratorially, “I think he pinched them from the American base where he was working. And his hair!” Mama juts out her chin and swoops her hand over her forehead, “Swept up like Elvis.”

Egg laughs, trying to imagine her father's hips swinging to “Jailhouse Rock.”

Mama sighs. “He was so crazy about baseball. He wanted to be pitcher for the New York Yankees.” Her smile dwindles. “Imagine that.” Her eyes dart to the window.

“Mama?”

Mama blinks. She looks down at Egg. “All better?” she asks.

Egg nods.

Mama rises, sliding Egg from her lap. “You go play now.”

“But I can help,” Egg says. She doesn't want to leave her Mama, not yet. Quickly, she drags the kitchen chair to the counter where the dish rack sits. She pulls the towel from the oven handle and steps onto the chair. Egg totters for a moment but her Mama's hand braces her, there, on the small of her back.

They stand eye to eye.

Egg's mother gazes at her. Egg stares. Her mother's eyes are a rich, deep brown, ringed with fine lines. She looks sad and tired. For a moment, Egg wonders if she has done anything wrong. She wonders what Albert would have said.

The steam rises, glowing against the foggy window. The groan of the barn gate echoes across the yard. Egg waits for the throaty call of the ostriches, their
Woooh woooh wooooh.
Do they ever get lonely? The square glow of her father's window shimmers like a beacon in the dark.

Her mother's arm reaches around Egg, pulls her close. Egg wants to ask, but she doesn't know the question. She thinks of the cheetahs on the Serengeti, the survival of the fittest, the good and the bad and the Moral of the Story. Rapunzel, locked in the tower, but what bad did she do? Her father stole from the witch but why was she the one who was punished?

“You can help,” Mama says. “Can you get the dinner tin from Papa?”

Egg feels the heaviness in her chest. She wants to hold onto the warmth of the kitchen but she looks out to the barn. A shiver snakes through her belly but she quells it. She can be brave. She can do it for her Mama. With one hop, she is off the chair and halfway to the porch.

The door slams behind her.

Wooh-wooh-woooohhh.

Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man. The field is a blur but Egg is already at the gate, pushing it open.

“Papa,” she pants.

Papa does not seem surprised at her sudden appearance. He holds the steaming kettle and pours the water into three shallow pans on the wood stove. A hiss as the water sputters and bubbles. The steam rises to the shadows of the beams.

“I came to pick up your tin,” she says.

He gestures for her to come closer as he walks to the work table. “I have something for you.” He takes the egg on the setting tray, the one that has been waiting.

Egg stands beside him.

Her father holds the egg against his chest, as if feeling for any vibrations. He cups the cream-white shell in his hand, as if measuring its strength. He places his ear against the porous calcite. He nods and eases the orb into Egg's hands. She feels the shell, that paradoxical mix of cool porcelain and warm interior. The weight calms her, she holds a thrill of anticipation, of something magical and alive. Egg can hear a faint chirp from the egg — the chick has pierced the air sac but still the surface of the egg is unbroken. If the chick does not break through, it will suffocate in its shell.

Egg feels a tremor, a peck, but the chick, still pipping, has not torn through the membrane.

She looks at Papa. “It's still alive.”

Her father takes the egg and places it into the hatch box, his fingers grazing along the sides of the oval as the egg finds its balance. He pulls out the white bottle of rubbing alcohol and a pad of cotton batten from the box beside the hatch crate. From his tool box he takes the drill and drops the smallest bit into the chuck, tightens it, and gives it an exploratory whirl. He cups the egg and runs his thumb along the crown to the base, where the air sac would be. Cautiously, he lays the drill bit almost parallel to the hard surface, working a groove into the glossy shell. She knows he is too careful for a puncture. A fine dust clouds the air and tiny shards fly off, the grit of ceramic. At breaking point he puts down the drill and dabs his fingers onto the alcohol swabs, his fingertips stark against the chalk dust. He presses through the alabastrine cover with the tip of his index finger and gently peels back the opaque membrane.

Egg can see the slick, tiny head of the chick, the bulbous eyes.

The beak moves.
Chirp.

Papa places the egg into the hatch box, beneath the strong heat of the overhead lamp. Egg knows that he will do no more. The chick must find its own way out of the vessel. As he gathers the fine china shards, Egg reflects on her father. The lines in his face have deepened, as if the years have cut sharp, almost to the bone. She knows that he could help the chick, he could, but he has told her that only the strong survive.

She cannot ask him to come back to the house (is that why her mother has sent her here?) for a wordless part of her knows that the barn is his test, his trial, his sacrifice. Egg has her questions but they shrivel and harden, as if into stone. Beside her father, she cannot ask the whys or the hows and so she swallows them. As they stand, her small fingers slip into his chalky hand. They watch the chick, its struggle, for it is the struggle that makes you stronger.

…

Later that night, when Egg creeps down the stairs in her slippery socks, she sees Mama in the living room, slumped in the big chair. The television is on the late night show of
Onward Christian Soldiers
. A pledge of ten dollars a month gets you a Bible with a golden pin. The choir, all dressed in white, sings with an unearthly fervour “Are You Washed in the Blood?” but Mama does not stir. The electronic glow of the screen bathes her in a ghastly pallor. Dead dead dead and Egg almost screams.

“Egg, go upstairs.” Kathy's voice comes from behind her. Kathy's hand is on her Mama's shoulder, jostling her.

“She's not dead, is she?”

“No,” Kathy says, with a glance at the bottle on the coffee table. “She just…here, could you turn off the television?”

Egg clicks off the set. She can smell the acrid liquor, like the clinging scent of gasoline.

“I want to help.”

“Go to bed, Egg. You'll just be in the way.” Kathy leans forward. With a deep breath, she loops her mother's arm around her shoulders and lifts her to her feet. Kathy eases her Mama up the stairs, the creak and stagger, the scrape along the wall, the groan of the mattress springs as Kathy rolls her mother into her bed.

As Egg hovers by Mama's doorway, she realizes Kathy has done this all before. A queasiness shifts in the pit of her stomach.

Kathy pulls up the covers. Mama's eyes flutter open.

Dark. Mama's eyes are dark. “You're such a good girl.” Her voice is whiskey gravel, so quiet, so heavy in the shadows of the room. “When I was your age —”

“Shh, Mama.”

Mama sighs, skipping stones through her memories. She swirls in a spiral of whiskey and mints. “What was that song? A Lullaby, a “Lullaby in Birdland.” He used to like that. American Jazz.”

But Albert liked
Soul Train
and
American Bandstand
.

“They take them away. They always take the good ones away.”

Egg backs out of the room, her legs rubbery. She runs down the hall and jumps into her bed, twisting the blankets around her. The good ones. The ones her Mama loves the best.

Egg burrows deeper.

Head tucked in, she hears the click of the lamp and even in the cocoon of blankets, the world glows golden.

Egg pops her head out.

“Hey.” Kathy sits at the edge of the bed. The crease between her eyebrows has deepened. “You all right?”

Egg nods.

“She's going to be fine. She's not going to die.”

“Everyone dies, you know.” Egg tries to make this a matter of fact.

Kathy tucks the blanket around her. “Do you remember when you were four years old, you started crying at the table, right out of nowhere, and when we asked you why, you said, ‘I'll be lonely when everyone dies.'”

“But I am the youngest and I'm going to die last.”

Kathy opens her mouth but can only puff out her cheeks. “Why do you think of such big questions?”

“All the small ones lead to big ones.”

Kathy picks up Nekoneko who has fallen from the bed. “Do you want me to read a little bit of the book?” Kathy taps the paperback on the bedside table, a copy of
Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
.

Egg nods again.

“Then scoot over.”

Kathy crawls into the cramped space beside her sister. Egg nestles in, closing her eyes, her head on Kathy's shoulder. “Now let's see,” Kathy says as she flips through the pages. Egg can hear the words, feel them, a rumble through Kathy's chest.

Kathy begins:

“Dear Diary. It's been a while since I've written but we've finally made the journey to America. So much has happened since our escape by train, since our long voyage across the ocean. Mother ate so much fish and cabbage on the ship that she threw up before we could dock. We're settling in though. We've started school and Margot is surrounded by so many beaux. Peter is so behind in his studies and all he thinks about is the war but Father says there's time enough for that. Father seems a little lost somehow, maybe because of all the changes. It is hard to be tossed from our cozy Secret Annex but what a relief it is to be out of that cage. Safe and without worry. I do wonder about the world though. What will happen? What will the future bring?”

Kathy shifts. Egg wills her breathing into an even flow, pretending to sleep. Kathy slowly eases her way out of the bed and clicks off the bedside lamp. In the dark, Egg measures the day. She tries to think of Elvis, of motorcycles, and melty mints. She knows that Good Mama is gone in a whiskey swirl, lost in the shuffle.

…

It is Sunday and from the pulpit Reverend Samuels crows about damnation and the everlasting love of the Prince of Peace. Egg perches on the edge of her seat and tries to make sense of it all. Jesus crucified on the hills of Calgary. But if God created the world in seven days, where did the Devil come from? She squirms on the hard wooden pew. Kathy, beside her, taps on the hymn book and hums “Born to be Wild.” Her mother nods and sways at every amen. The veins are popping out of Reverend Samuels's forehead as he strains for the passion. He is going to pop a gasket.

Those are her Papa's words — pop a gasket. He says might as well pray to a tube of toothpaste: cavities are the real evil.

It is like Papa has cut himself off from the world. If he doesn't believe then he is going to Hell. And how can it be Heaven if all those you love aren't there?

But here, in the brightly lit nave of Bittercreek United Church, Egg is surrounded by Hosannas and Hallelujahs, the gasps and sighs of the faithful. It is hard to figure everything out. She looks around her, at the good citizens of her small town. What do they believe in? That Goodness is rewarded and Badness is punished? And can you be Good but do Bad? What does that make you? Reverend Samuels says the Wages of Sin is Death but doesn't everybody die anyway? And Mama, what is she looking for in the vaulted ceiling and stained glass? What does she pray for?

From her seat at the back, Egg can see a good chunk of Bittercreek, the thinning heads and comb-overs, home perms from Julie Duncan's kitchen, the crewcuts from Nelson's Barber Shop down on Maple. There are no long-haired hippies in Bittercreek, that is only on television, like on
The Mod Squad
. But as Egg looks up at the cross, she realizes that Jesus looks like a long-haired hippie.

In the basement of Bittercreek United Church, surrounded by a mural of Jesus healing the Leapers, in Mrs. MacDonnell's Junior Sunday School class, Egg raises her hand.

Answers. She needs some answers.

Mrs. MacDonnell's nose twitches.

“Yes, Egg?”

“If Jesus died so we can be saved…why did He have to die so we can be saved?”

“So His blood can wash away our sins.” Mrs. MacDonnell speaks slowly, each word a biting clip.

“But couldn't He do that anyway, being God and all?”

Mrs. MacDonnell's ears blush pink. “It was His plan. We cannot presume to know The Ways of God.”

Egg sits, stumped. The Ways of God argument. There is no way around that one.

“But if we were made in God's image . . .” Egg thinks of Mama and her whiskey. “Why do we need to be saved?”

Mrs. MacDonnell twitches. Her eyes bulge like the classroom goldfish. “Sin entered the world when we ate of the Tree of Knowledge and for that all of mankind is tainted,” she says finally.

“But didn't God put it there? I mean, it sounds like a trick to me, like the three wishes that make everything worse.”

Mrs. MacDonnell burns red. “Out!” she shouts, as if to expel Satan himself. Egg still has questions about Mama and the Wine in Cana, about Papa in the ostrich barn — she just wants to know how to save them, for they are lost, lost in their own desert, their own wandering wilderness. The Devil is out there, she knows it, but Mrs. MacDonnell's finger calls down the Wrath of Righteousness and it is out the door for her.