When the Bough Breaks (2 page)

Mother looked at me and, after a moment, said, “I was an orphan too, Millie.”

The basin I was holding between my knees slid to the floor, and the peas rolled all over the cracked boards and down the steps into the stubbly grass. “An orphan like Anne? You mean, you lived in an orphanage?” I asked.

Mother looked vexed. I don't know whether it was because I'd spilled the peas, or because it upset her talking about orphans, or because she hadn't meant to tell me she was one too.

“I can't think why I told you that, Millie. It wasn't an orphanage the way you think of it. The Home was in a pretty English village. I lived in a beautiful cottage, with a garden full of flowers – not like Anne at all. Now fetch the broom, please, and let's try to rescue those peas.”

Later, when I was setting the table for supper, I asked her: “Does Father know? I mean, about you being an orphan?”

“You are a little goose. Your father and I don't keep secrets from each other. And it's not a secret – I never think about it, that's all.”

But I thought she was behaving as though it was.
If it was all so wonderful, why hadn't she ever told me before?
This weekend Miss Tracy has set us an essay for homework. We are to write about ourselves and our family. I can write about myself and Hamish; that's the easy part.

I was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and my family moved to Lindsay when I was four and my brother, Hamish, was one. Father is a blacksmith, and my brother will be apprenticed to him when he leaves school. Hamish has recently started a paper route, and my father fixed up an old bicycle for him to ride. Father finds a use for the oldest and rustiest tools and always says, “That will come in handy someday,” and somehow it always does.

On Fridays after school, and for three hours every Saturday morning, I'm employed at Mercer's Drugstore on Kent Street. The first two weeks I was there, I worked without pay, just to show that I was responsible and could fit in, and then I was hired year-round.

I really love everything about being there, and helping to keep the drugstore clean and shiny makes me feel necessary. I sweep up, polish the brass fittings, and clean the counters. I rinse bottles in the sink in the back room and write labels. I earn twenty-five cents a day, and Mother lets me keep ten – the rest goes into the winter-boot-and-clothing fund for Hamish and me. It's
important that I have a job because I want to contribute like he does. After all, I am the oldest.

Sometimes my friends and I go to a movie. We enjoy musicals, especially those with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. My brother and his friends prefer movies about Tarzan and his jungle adventures.

My hobby is reading and I take out two books from the children's library every week. I aim to go to the Baker Business College in town when I'm sixteen. I'll learn shorthand and typewriting, maybe bookkeeping too. My ambition is to work in Eaton's mail-order department. It would be interesting to see what people order from the catalogs, especially at Christmastime.

As I sit and chew my pencil, Mother comes and stands beside me. “Your penmanship is beautiful, Millie. Why are you looking so worried?”

“Because my composition is too short, I haven't included enough information, and because I'm pretty sure that Denise Tetrault will get higher marks than me again – stuck-up creature. She goes around boasting anytime she gets a good grade, and I can't abide the way she flutters her eyelashes at all the teachers. She knows the names of everyone in her family right back to 1897, when her grandparents arrived in Lindsay from Quebec.
She and her friend Francine speak French to each other, making us feel left out. Well, I'm going to learn a second language when we go to high school.”

“Millicent Carr, whatever has got into you?”

“I'm sorry, I just want to do well, and I don't know anything to write about our family, and Denise always acts so … I don't know … superior, as if she's looking down at Grace and Sadie and me.”

“I can't conjure up more relatives for your composition, I'm afraid, but here's what I do know:

“I was born in London, England, an only child, and both my parents died young. I never knew my father. My mother, Helen, told me I looked like him and that he was a sailor from Malta.”

“I know where Malta is – it's an island in the Mediterranean Sea.”

“There now, Millie, I'm sure Denise wouldn't know that…. My father drowned at sea when I was a tiny baby, and my mother died of tuberculosis when I was seven.”

I want to ask Mother if that's when she got sent to the orphanage – when her mother died – but she got so upset that time she told me about being an orphan that I swallow the question.

“Your father's parents died young too. Grandfather Albert was a groom for a London bus company, who died in a far-off war in South Africa, looking after the
colonel's horses. Your grandmother died a few years later, and your father was sent to Canada when he was twelve years old. His younger brother stayed behind in England and he was adopted.”

“That's horrible, Mother, separating brothers like that – poor Father.” I shudder, sad for him.
No wonder he doesn't talk about the past.

“The boys did meet again, Millie, when your father volunteered to fight in the First World War. I think your uncle Frank had decided to come to Canada and farm out here, after the war was over, but he died in France in 1917. It was just not meant to be….”

“Is this story going to be all gloomy and sad, Mother? Didn't anything nice happen?” I ask.

“Oh, Millie, of course some nice things happened. I'd just got engaged to your father. Then I got my first job working outside the house; I was so proud when I could write him that I was working in a munitions factory, and that I was helping the war effort too. But he was horrified when I told him that I'd had to cut my hair, so that it wouldn't get caught in the machinery!

“Every spare minute, even at coffee breaks, I'd knit socks and mittens and scarves to send to your father.” When he came home in 1918, at the end of the war, we were married.

“We moved to Toronto, and William was taken on at Eaton's horse stables to look after the delivery horses.
That's why Eaton's still sends us their spring and winter catalogs and a card at Christmas.

“Those horses were looked after like royalty, but even princes and princesses get sick. There was an epidemic of pinkeye, and it spread so quickly, there was nothing to be done to save the animals, even though Eaton's had its own horse hospital. One hundred and fifty horses had to be put down – your father could hardly bring himself to go back to the stables after that. It reminded him of those dreadful war years.

“After he returned from France, he told me that every time a new shipment of horses arrived, he knew they'd be lucky if they stayed alive more than a few days. Many were killed within hours. That's why he never talks to you and Hamish about the war.”

Mother must have noticed by my expression that I don't think this part of the story is a very happy one either because she says, “Goodness, Millie, I'm all talked out, but if you promise not to write about it in your composition, I do have one more piece of information for you.”

“I promise not to, Mother, but I hope it's nothing sad.”

“It's something wonderful, and I've been waiting for a quiet moment to tell you about it. In three months' time, at the end of June, we'll be a family of five.”

“You're going to have a baby! (I had wondered, but I didn't like to ask.) In three months means the baby
will be born just as I start summer vacation. I'll be home to help you take care of it, but you'll have to teach me how to look after a baby – I can't remember much about Hamish when he was little. Have you and Father decided on names yet?”

“I have been thinking about names…. There's the door – that's your father home early.” Mother's face lights up, as it always does when she sees him.

“What are you two young ladies whispering about?” he asks.

“Only names, William,” Mother says.

“And who might these names be for?” Father loves to tease us.

Hamish comes running in. “Can I stay out a bit longer, please? I've finished my chores, and the boys are going to play marbles.”

“Button up your jacket, Hamish, and be home in half an hour,” Mother warns him. Hamish rushes out again. “A nice quiet little girl is what we need, Millie, my love, and of course we are not going to mention anything to Hamish for a while yet. William, I was thinking of naming the baby Maria, after my school friend, and if it's a boy, Edward, for the dear old king.”

“Sounds fine to me and now, Mrs. Carr, let's take our walk. It's a fine March evening.”

I run to get Mother's shawl, then sit down again to my essay. It's hard to concentrate.
A new baby!
I love
babies. The
Lindsay Post
often prints news about the famous Dionne quintuplets, born last May. One of them is called Marie. The others are named Yvonne, Emily, Annette, and Cecile.
How wonderful it would be to have a little sister to dress up and take for walks! I'll be almost old enough to be her mother!

A LONG ROAD

I
don't hear anyone come round the side of the house, and don't see the woman until I'm just about to push the door open with my wash basket. She appears from behind the lilac bush, which will be in bloom in a couple of months. She coughs, and speaks in a husky voice, as though it had not been used in a while: “Excuse me, miss, can you spare me a drink of water, please?” She's as thin as a broomstick. The man's jacket she wears over her skimpy faded dress has no buttons, and she's tied it around her waist with a bit of rope. She might as well be barefoot, her shoes are so worn and full of holes. I offer her a dipper of water from the rain barrel.

Mother wanders outside and takes the wash basket from me. She looks at the woman and invites her into the house. That's the way my mother is – makes up her
mind to do something in an instant. “I've brewed a pot of tea. Won't you come inside and have some?”

The woman wipes her feet and asks Mother if she may first wash her hands at the pump. I see her looking at the sliver of soap on the scullery window ledge, so I pass it to her (you'd think it was made of gold, the way her fingers claw it), and offer her the frayed towel we keep beside the pump, when she's finished.

The three of us sit at the kitchen table, and Mother pours our tea. She's put out the sugar bowl, which surprises me because, normally, we only have sugar for a special treat. Mother cuts three thick slices of bread, and asks me to fetch some jam from the larder. I bring her a jar of plum preserve that we made last fall, and she spreads the slices thickly before passing the plate round. Mother doesn't take one herself, just makes a big show of stirring her tea. I've seen her do that so often, when she wants to give Hamish or me an extra helping, pretending she's eaten earlier, or that she's not hungry.

“Thank you, missus,” the woman says. I look down at my plate, so as not to seem to watch her cramming the bread into her mouth. Father says there's no shame in being hungry, but something about her makes me uncomfortable.

“I'm Lillie Carr, and this is my daughter, Millicent,” Mother says.

“I'm Elsie Bates,” she replies, her mouth half-full.

“Have you come far, Mrs. Bates?” Mother asks her.

The woman says, “Yes, from Carman, near Winnipeg. Things are pretty bad in Manitoba. Anger and hopelessness grow worse each year; there's been strike talk. We're headed to Port Hope, to my sister's. My man's cutting cordwood in the square. He'll be finished shortly. As soon as he picks up our relief food vouchers, we'll head out. He's not had steady work for four years.”

Mother refills the woman's cup and slides the last slice of bread onto her plate. She never turns anyone away, or misses her turn to volunteer at the soup kitchen. Somehow she draws people out and they tell her all kinds of stories. One man said he barely survived through his first Ontario winter, with no work and no place to sleep. A farmer, who rode out from Saskatchewan on the boxcars, told her how he'd stood helpless, watching his land blow away. He said he'd lost everything he owned except the clothes he was wearing.

I've gone with Mother twice to the soup kitchen to help serve meals to the homeless. She wants me to understand how things are – how people pass through our town hoping for something good to happen, for their luck to change. Hamish thinks it's all a great adventure moving from place to place, but he's only a little boy. Men have been killed falling off boxcars, mistiming the speed of the trains.

“When hoboes come to the door, asking if there are
chores that need doing, Mother always finds them something. After they finish digging, or cutting grass, or shoveling snow, they sit outside on the back step and eat the sandwich she gives them, or take it away for the road. We don't see women as often, coming to the door, asking for work.

Mrs. Bates thanks my mother again, then asks, “Do you have any jobs you'd like me to do? Scrubbing, maybe?” I can see Mother try to think of something, but she says, “No, thanks, there's nothing. Sit and finish your tea.”