The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (5 page)

The box lay down the middle of the bed. Idella had been worried that it would be too small, that Mother wouldn’t fit. There was room at the top, her shoulders weren’t cramped, but at the bottom her skirt was bunched around her sides. It didn’t get to be full out, like a skirt should be.

She had on a beautiful white blouse. Lace ran all up and down the sleeves and around the wrists, arranged and folded back so as not to cover her hands. Mother’s hands were folded together across her waist. They were strong hands. Mother had said so herself, “strong hands for a woman.” They weren’t as soft as you might expect if you were to look at just her pretty face. Idella knew the feel of them. She reached over to touch them. “No, Della.” Dad stopped her, quickly grabbing her fingers as they reached out. “They’re cold. You don’t want to feel how cold. Remember them warm.”

Idella put her own hands down straight to her sides. She was suddenly afraid. Cold. Mother had gone all cold. They stood for several minutes, looking down at her face. Already Mother was so far away.

“It’s getting on time to go, Bill.” Mr. Doncaster talked low to Dad through the door. “Whenever you’re ready, of course. The wagon’s pulled up.”

“Della, the time’s come. You remember, we had us the best.” Dad spoke behind Idella. “You go on now,” he said. “Leave me here alone. Then we’ll have to take her out.” He gave Idella a gentle push toward the door. “You’re a good girl. You’re both good girls. God help me, I’ll try.”

Idella walked out of the room. She felt empty, as though something important had been forgotten. Mr. Doncaster and Uncle Sam and Uncle Guy and several other men were all lined up behind each other in the kitchen, grim and awkward in their Sunday suits. None of them looked at Idella for more than a flicker. They were lined up to carry Mother out in the box. Idella could see through the open doorway that the horse and wagon had been backed up against the porch. Mr. Pettigrew was holding on to the horse, keeping it steady.

Dalton was standing off to himself on the porch. He had on somebody else’s suit. He didn’t own one, never’d wear one, didn’t go to church.

“Della, dear, come sit with me.” Idella went willingly to Mrs. Doncaster. She nestled up against her. She could smell the sweetish-sourish scent from all the milk she was making, feeding two babies. It had leaked out in dark, spreading splotches.

Sometimes Idella forgot there was a baby. They’d named her Emma, after Mother, because Dad had said to. They’d been keeping her next door at the Doncasters’. Relatives were probably going to take the baby, she’d heard. Aunt Beth, over near Bathurst, had always wanted a girl. They’d be taking a cow, too, the best milker, because the baby needed milk to live.

Dad opened the door. He nodded to the row of men. “Let’s bring her out.” Everyone in the room stood up, like at church when it’s time for a hymn. Solemnly the men marched in. Dad must have closed the box alone in there once he’d said good-bye. This was
after.
Suddenly Idella wished that she’d touched Mother’s hair. That would not have been cold, but soft and lovely and normal. But it was too late. She couldn’t go back. She started to cry.

The men were coming out now. They were trying to carry the box on their shoulders, dignified, for Mother, but they had to put it down on the floor and shove it to get it through the narrow bedroom door. Dad was leading. When they’d gotten it through, the men stooped to pick it up again and carried it on out of the house. Idella watched as they stepped onto the porch and lowered it into the wagon. The men who weren’t helping had their hats in their hands.

Dad turned to Dalton. “We’ll take her out together.” Dad climbed up onto the seat and took the reins from Mr. Pettigrew. Dalton climbed up next to him. “No sense waiting any longer.” Dad gave a shake to the reins, and the wagon started to pull forward. Suddenly the horse bucked, jerking the wagon backward. The box with Mother in it slid and hit against the porch post with a terrible whacking sound.

“Steady, boy, steady.” Mr. Pettigrew grabbed the reins to quiet the horse. Dad stayed on the wagon. Mr. Doncaster and some others pushed the box back in. This time the horse went forward, slowly dragging the wagon away and up the road. The women walked out to join their husbands, and the string of wagons haltingly started for the cemetery.

Idella stood in the doorway watching. “Why don’t you go upstairs now, Della.” Mrs. Doncaster was wiping at her eyes. “I’ll be next door if you need me. I have to feed the babies. You come running over now, honey, if you need something.” Idella hardly heard the words. She watched the wagon with Mother in back for as long as she could. Then she ran through the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom window so she could watch it more.

As she watched, she saw a lone figure come running across the fields from out of the woods. It was Avis. She was running, running, like a wild creature—her dress pulled up, barefooted, hair all undone—running up onto the road, toward the cemetery, way behind the long row of wagons. Idella could see that she was clutching something. Part of it fell at her feet, and she scooped it up and kept on running, leaving some behind. The mayflowers. Avis had gone and picked them all. She was going to get them to Mother. Idella smiled. Avis would get there. Idella stood with her forehead pressed against the window, feeling the flat coolness against her skin, and watched until the scraggly, frantic figure disappeared over the hill to where the wagons had gone.

Idella knew that when she moved away from the window, her different life would begin. Already there was so much to be done.

March 1918

 

“Will you look at this one coming down the road now? What do you suppose?” Elsie Doncaster muttered to herself as she flung a wet union suit over her clothesline and secured it with wooden pins at the shoulders. The breezes swooping off the bay pushed against her back, flapped and whipped at the long, empty trouser legs that so often held her husband, Fred. She stood and watched the figure of a girl or a woman, she couldn’t tell which, lumber slowly along the edge of the rock-riddled horse path they all called “the road.”

She was French. Elsie knew it. They had a different way about them, the French, something about the walk, using their whole bodies, not just their legs. Walking steady and alone, the girl got close enough for Elsie to see that she was clutching something up against her, a cloth bundle of some sort, and a pair of men’s boots. What looked to be a piece of paper was gripped in the other hand, flapping at the corners.

By then Tippie had run out barking, and Elsie had to call her off. The girl stopped and looked up at Elsie looking back. Long brown hair blew in a tangle around the girl’s face, but Elsie could see the large, soft features now—round and firm with youth, not the second-time-around saggy fullness like she was getting herself. The girl had breasts, though, two plump loaves fresh from the oven. She could see their ampleness across the front of her dress—which was tight under the arms, pinning her breasts in position. She’d been growing of late, that girl, and no one was paying enough attention to get her new clothes.

The girl raised the hand with the paper. Elsie waved back and stood waiting. The girl started toward her, across the piece of field that was the backyard.

“Bonjour.”
The girl did not smile. She was intent.
“Pardon,”
she said when she stood in front of Elsie. The clothesline hung overhead between them, Fred’s long johns licking at the girl like cold, wet tongues. “Is there soon a . . .” She hesitated and spoke carefully, “H . . . Hillock?”

“Oh, there’s lots of Hillocks around, honey.” Elsie reached up and grabbed the wet clothes to stillness. “You’ve got to be more specific.”

The girl looked down at the paper she was holding. “With girls.”

Elsie looked at the paper and smiled. “You mean Bill. He’s got girls, all right. Three of ’em. And a boy.”

The sun was behind the girl, so it was hard for Elsie to see her face. She raised a hand to shield off the glare.

“He’s down to two girls living there, but the two left are a handful. Plus the boy. Plus Bill. I’d say them four are a straight set of Hillocks.” She laughed. “You would make five. A full house.”

The girl looked at her, squinting in concentration as though trying to squeeze in the information.

“You get that paper down to Salmon Beach?” Elsie pointed at the wrinkled handwritten notice, the likes of which she had seen before. Bill kept putting up signs at the general store for someone to help take care of the housework and the kids. And he kept coming up with French girls that didn’t last long. There were plenty of reasons for them not to last.

“Which house, please?”

Elsie turned and pointed. “You can see it from here, dear. Next one down. That little gray house on the cliff edge. See?”

There was no way not to see. It stood alone against the morning sky, a ways off from the little barn. A strip of blue deeper than the sky was just beyond it, like a ribbon. That was the Bay Chaleur.

“Oh, you’re welcome, dear. And you can take the shortcut here.” She pointed toward her field. “They’ve beaten a path, those kids, right up to my door.” She laughed. “Don’t let ’em scare you. They’re good kids. It’s just that they’ve had all Bill and no Emma now for almost two years.” She shook her head. “God bless her dear loving soul.”

Elsie knew the truth was that Avis and Idella—and Dalton—were not interested in having anyone else living with them and trying to help. They thought they got along just fine by themselves. They went to bed when they were ready and ate when they pleased. They didn’t fuss about having a certain day for washing—either the clothes or themselves. And they did get around to washing and cutting toenails and beating the rugs and airing the quilts. They just didn’t like being told to. She’d learned that early on and had taken a watchful seat in the shadows.

It was the memory of their mother, of Emeline, of wanting to please her still, that got them to fill the tub with hot water and take a bath, or to make stew like she used to, or to wash all the curtains come spring. For their mother they’d do anything.

Elsie watched as the girl—must be fifteen, she thought—made her way to Bill’s house with a slow, steady gait. She didn’t pause or look about as she crossed Bill’s yard and stepped up to the house. Must be the boots she was wearing, Elsie thought, that make her walk like that. Like a cow coming in from the fields—weary, deliberate, ready to be milked and put in her stall. Poor dear.

 

The girl stood on the slanted porch, knocked once, and waited a long time till someone happened to open the door to go out.

“Monsieur Hillock?” she asked. It was Dalton who confronted her. He stood, tall for his fourteen years, gazing down at her. His hair, uncombed, had the appearance of a thatched roof left exposed to foul weather.

“I ain’t no monsieur.” He laughed. “Though I’m stuck being a Hillock.” He lifted his head and called out from the sagging front porch across the barren yard to the open barn door. “Dad, a new Frenchie has showed up!” Then he took the girl’s hand and shook it. She still held on to the paper, the blanketed bundle, and the boots clutched up against her. “Good luck,” he said, and walked off toward the ladder protruding from the edge of the cliff. “I’m going out to set my lobster traps.”

“Bonne chance.”
The girl smiled when he turned back and cocked his head. “Good luck to you also. With the fishing.”

Dalton smiled and started down.

She stood on the porch and watched him slowly disappear. She could hear the lapping of the bay down below, and she could smell it. She walked to the edge of the porch and stood looking about. There were no trees to speak of near the house. The few there grew as though bent from the waist, away from the winds that must blow fierce come winter. For there was no shelter from the winds. The fields that stretched beyond the barn were broad and flat. She knew from looking that there were as many rocks as potatoes to dig.

 

“How long you think this one’ll last?” Idella peered from behind the kitchen curtain.

“Not long, I hope.” Avis was crouched before the window, her eyes just over the cracked wooden sill.

“Do you see her feet?” Idella whispered. “She’s wearing boots as big as barn doors.”

“I bet she’s got toenails like old shingles,” Avis said. The two sisters started giggling. Avis peeked over the sill again. “She’s like a moose from behind.”

“A big old pumpkin,” Idella said, “gone all rotten in the dirt.”

“Or a fish gone belly up and staring—with flies coming in and out its mouth.”

“That’s enough, Avis. Jesus. She is human.”

“I guess.”

“Come back to the table, or she’ll see us watching.” Idella reached down and tugged at Avis’s sleeve. “And she’ll hear you.”

“How come Dad keeps getting French girls to look after us?”

“They’re all that’ll come.” Idella sat at the kitchen table, where she’d put out biscuits and molasses for breakfast. “To them our life seems pretty good. A step up.”

“From what?”

“From living way down country.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to take care of us.”

“Of you, you mean.” Idella laughed. “I’m no trouble.”

Avis poured a large pool of molasses onto her plate and dragged her fingers through it. “I wish she wasn’t sleeping in our room. There isn’t room to fart in there as it is.”

“You manage.”

They both started giggling.

 

Bill Hillock came from the barn, but not till he’d finished shoveling out the horse stall. He ambled up to the porch step, wiping his hands down the front of his overalls. “You come on soon enough, by God.” The girl held out the paper with his hand-scrawled job announcement. He nodded. “Put it up yesterday.” He leaned an arm against the porch rail and looked down at her. “It don’t pay much. But you get the roof, see.” He looked up, then paused. “While it holds.” The girl followed his gaze. A weathered shingle had loosened at the edge and was dangling like a drip of water ready to plop. “I’ll get Dalton to fix that.” He reached up and grabbed it off the eave.