Luna (9 page)

Diane had come to sit beside Selena. She held a sleeping Cathy on her lap and she rocked her now and then and smoothed her hair.

“Why don’t you spread out her blankets and put her to sleep under the table in the kitchen?” Selena suggested. Her last words were drowned out in a second long, “Ohhh,” of commiseration as another pyramid fell, the plastic cups bouncing across the dance floor. On her other side Jason rose and found a chair closer to the last child who was still building his pyramid, his brow furrowed with concentration. Jason pulled his chair forward to offer advice to the smaller boy, who glanced shyly toward him, then turned back to his project. From across the hall, his face lost in shadows, a man called out encouragement, then another male voice, and a woman’s. The pyramid wavered, a chorus of “Uh-ohs” came from around the hall, followed by friendly laughter. The pyramid righted itself and the boy lifted another cup from the pile on the floor beside him. Even the members of the band, who had returned to the stage, were watching now.

A movement in the knot of men standing around the open entrance caught Selena’s attention. Phoebe was working her way through the crowd, her shoulder turned sideways, the men moving aside for her when they realized she was trying to get past them. Brian wasn’t with her. Selena waved so that Phoebe would spot her in the dim, warm room and the crowd, but Phoebe’s head was down and she didn’t see Selena’s gesture. Instead, skirting the edges of the table and the people standing around watching the boy’s pyramid, she hurried down the length of the hall to the bathroom, clutching one side of her full skirt in folds against her hip. Selena was puzzled by this and by the tight way she moved—and where was Brian? Phoebe disappeared into the bathroom and Selena looked back to the entrance.

Brian had just entered and was standing easily, spread-legged, a little apart from the other men, one hand dangling in front of his crotch, the other hand clasping it at the wrist. His face looked pale, but, she thought, it must be the light.

“That’s the way, Terry! You got it there!” Barclay called.

“Careful!” from Rhoda. The boy stood up, a cup in his hand, his arm stretched as high as he could reach over his head, preparing to set the last cup on the pyramid. People clapped and called to him. The child touched the top of the pyramid with the bottom of the cup, it swayed, he waited, drawing back his hand, then bringing it down to rest his arm for a moment while the pyramid tottered, then steadied. More calls, more laughter and advice from the ring of children that had gathered around him, and from the adults seated at the tables.

The musicians were picking up their instruments again, talking to one another, glancing now and then to see how the boy was making out. Diane came back from putting Cathy to sleep in the kitchen and Tammy and Lana came running up. Tammy put her head down in her mother’s lap, yawned and rubbed her eyes. Lana wandered away.

“Has Tony got a job?” Selena asked Diane.

“Not yet,” Diane said. “He phoned his old company and they’re supposed to call him back.” The little boy set the last cup on top, the pyramid wavered, appeared to settle, then faltered again, and down came all the cups, a shower of white plastic. They rolled and bounced, scattering out over the dance floor. The band began to play a polka, a dozen little kids ran onto the dance floor and began to gather the cups, waving and jostling each other to see who could gather the most, while the grownups, still laughing, turned back to their drinks, or moved out onto the dance floor.

Suddenly Phoebe was beside Selena, sliding into Jason’s vacated chair. She was out of breath, as though she’d been running.

“What’s the matter?” Selena asked, alarmed.

Phoebe shook her head, said, “Nothing,” but without that spurt of anger Selena had come to expect. Had she been crying? Then Selena noticed a wet patch on her skirt.

“My period started,” Phoebe said into her ear. She let her skirt hang
down between their two chairs so that the wet patch could dry but not be seen by anyone else. “I wasn’t expecting it,” she said, not looking at Selena.

“Did somebody give you a tampon?” Selena reached for her purse, which she found under the table in a puddle of spilled beer. Phoebe nodded.

“I’m okay,” she said, still not angry. Puzzled, Selena glanced back to the doorway. Brian was still standing there, his legs planted firmly apart. He was looking out over the room at nothing. There was a tightness around his mouth, Selena knew she was really seeing it, that it wasn’t just a trick of the light.

“What’s the matter with Brian?” she asked, nodding toward him. Phoebe turned her head, looked at him, closed her eyes, and turned away. A fight? Selena wondered. “How was the dance at Chinook? Was there a good crowd?” Phoebe shrugged.

She was sitting on the chair Diane had left turned so that it was facing the dance floor, but she wasn’t watching the dancers. Her legs were pressed together, crossed at the ankles and she kept twisting her feet. Her arms were crossed in front of her, her right arm resting on her left shoulder and her left hand holding onto her right forearm next to Selena. As she watched this tight, uncharacteristic posture, Selena’s uneasiness grew. She leaned toward her and said into her ear, “Are you all right?”

For a second she thought Phoebe was going to cry. Phoebe lowered her head even more, shook it no, a slight, almost imperceptible motion. “Did you have a fight?” Selena whispered gently, directly into Phoebe’s ear, holding back her light, sweet-smelling hair.

Phoebe said nothing for a second, then nodded miserably, blinking, yes. Selena put her arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and turned her gently so that she was in shadow, facing the table. Phoebe lifted and slid her chair around. This way no one would see how upset she was.

“It’ll be all right,” Selena whispered into her ear again. Phoebe said nothing. Selena brushed Phoebe’s hair back from her face and set it so that it hung down her back. She thought to herself, I’m not so sure I liked Brian anyway. Phoebe took a deep breath, her throat quivering, as if she might be fighting back tears.

Selena noticed then that the bodice of her dress and the full skirt had come apart at the seam just below her belt. Selena pushed the seam together and tugged the belt down to hide it. Phoebe didn’t move. Bent forward that way, her arms on her lap, Selena, leaning close to her, couldn’t help but notice how round and full Phoebe’s young breasts were. How desirable she must be to men, she thought, so young and yet so womanly, and a pang of pity for Phoebe’s innocent beauty went through Selena. That’s why Kent is so hard on her. To keep her safe, she thought, as if that were possible. She looked back to the doorway, but Brian had disappeared, or at least she couldn’t pick him out of the crowd standing in the doorway. Phoebe hadn’t moved, but since everybody who had been sitting on the opposite side of the table was up dancing, Selena didn’t bother trying to cheer Phoebe up. Let her feel badly for a little while, she thought. She just needs a little time. Kent was dancing with Rhoda; she was glad he wasn’t there to disapprove or to cross-examine Phoebe.

She thought of her own father, but in the noise and confusion, couldn’t get a grip on her memories. Funny how she still sometimes found herself expecting him to come into the kitchen on a gust of wind, slamming the door, and shouting at her, what’s for supper, girl? as if by shouting at her he could fill the void left by her mother.

“I have to help serve lunch,” Selena said to Phoebe, seeing the other women going to the kitchen. “Do you want to help?” Phoebe shook her head no, and pointed to the wet patch on her skirt. Selena patted her arm, and was startled to find it cool, almost cold in the hot room, and glancing once more at her, rose and went into the kitchen. At the door, she turned and looked back. Lola was just depositing her little boy in Phoebe’s arms for Phoebe to hold while she helped with the lunch. Phoebe was cradling him and looking down at him with a serious, tender expression. Selena remembered how eagerly she herself had been to hold the other women’s children when she was a girl, sometimes even secretly pretending they were her own. At one time or another, she thought, glancing quickly around the room, she had held and rocked nearly every child in the hall.

When the buffet table was set with food again and people were lined up and serving themselves, Selena went looking for Diane. She found her in the kitchen checking Cathy, where she lay asleep on the floor in the corner.

“Too bad Rhea couldn’t come,” Selena said, as Diane got up and brushed off her skirt.

“I think we should get her to a doctor,” Diane said. “She’s getting awfully funny.”

“She always has been funny,” Selena said. “As long as I can remember. It’s all those years alone.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Diane said, sighing. “When I’m gone, can you handle her yourself?” It was true, Selena realized, she would be the last close relative.

“I’ll have to, I guess,” she said. She thought of Diane gone, living somewhere in the city. Tony trading in his workclothes for white shirts and a suit. She thought of Rhea, sixty years a ranch wife, most of those years without electricity or plumbing or telephone, now a half-crazy old woman, unable to enjoy the amenities she once would have given anything for. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” she said. Suddenly she was so tired she thought she might never move again. Rhea, alone in her shack, her husband dead, her children gone or dead. Would they all wind up that way? Was that what happened to your life?

“What?” Diane asked, watching the lineup of people across the kitchen from them.

“I just keep thinking …”

“What?”

“That our lives would turn out … differently …” Diane laughed.

“Nothing ever changes out here,” she said. But that’s not true, Selena wanted to say. Everything was changing.

They were silent, leaning side by side against the counter. Selena yawned, then covered her mouth. She thought of her bed at home, Kent’s weight on her, his breath in her hair. When she didn’t understand things, when the world moved too quickly for her, there was always that retreat. How glad she was to have it.

“Have you found a buyer for your farm?” she asked.

“Probably Doyle. His land borders ours and he’s about as land-hungry as they come. He won’t be able to pass it up.”

“Just as long as he can pay for it,” Selena warned. Diane seemed not to hear.

Mark was passing them in the line now. He tossed Selena a quick, wordless half-smile, a little embarrassed, it seemed, at having a mother. She saw again his bony wrists sticking out of his too-short shirtsleeves. He would be a big man someday, bigger than Kent. Already he had left her behind, as if what she thought and knew were no longer of any consequence.

It was two o’clock when all five of them got into the car and started for home. Jason fell asleep in the back seat, his head bouncing against the window, which didn’t seem to disturb his sleep. Mark sat against the other window, with Phoebe in the middle. Mark leaned forward.

“Rick says his old man is going to buy Tony out.” Kent, leaning back to hear Mark, merely nodded.

“You’d think he had enough land,” he said. “Some people are never satisfied.”

“Did Tony talk to you about it?” Selena asked.

“Yeah. He said he can probably go back with that company he used to work for summers when he was in college.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “I hope to hell he can. I haven’t got the money to help him if he gets into trouble. And I don’t think that family of his will lift a hand.”

“Well, if it comes to that,” Selena said slowly. “Phoebe’s room will be empty this fall, and I always grow plenty of garden, and there’s always lots of beef.” Kent laughed.

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. That sister of yours …”

“Who knows,” Selena said, her tone dreamy as she yawned. “Maybe she’s right.”

“Right?” he said. “Are you crazy?” But Kent, too, seemed to have lost interest in the argument, and when she didn’t reply, said nothing more. The car hummed softly, carrying them through the starlit summer night, toward their home. Selena thought again about Phoebe’s strange behaviour. Phoebe hadn’t gone to say good-night to Brian, but as they were
leaving, he had come toward her and caught her arm as she passed him. Selena pretended not to notice. He had said something in an undertone to Phoebe. Phoebe had answered him, but had not stopped for long, so they hadn’t had to wait for her like they usually did.

Then there was that grad night business, Selena remembered. When all the kids were returning to the hall after changing into jeans for their all-night barbecue, Phoebe had come toward Selena looking angry, hurrying across the empty floor, Brian trailing behind, an exasperated look on his face, trying to catch up with her.

Phoebe had only wanted Selena to take her grad dress and good shoes home with her, why Brian should be annoyed about that, Selena didn’t know. As Phoebe handed her the dress, Selena noticed that the blouse Phoebe had changed into had a button missing. Irritated that Phoebe hadn’t seen it, she searched through her purse for a safety pin. Brian stood there like a forty-year-old husband waiting impatiently for his wife. Selena had deliberately taken her time fastening the blouse.

“You okay, dear?” she asked into the back seat.

“Yeah,” Phoebe said.

“Why wouldn’t she be okay?” Kent asked. Selena patted his wrist.

“Never mind,” she said playfully Phoebe made a sound, it might have been of disgust or agreement, and Selena twisted around to look at her. But it was dark in the back seat and she couldn’t make out Phoebe’s face.

At first Rhea can’t make out what lies below. She is aware only of being high, high above … above what? Nothing of importance. She doesn’t think this, it is simply there. She is detached, indifferent. She turns her attention to the things below, observing without warmth or anxiety, as though all her human emotions had been stripped from her. She sees a group of women. They are doing something. They talk to one another, they turn to and away from one another, their hands are busy, their bodies
are moving. She hears their voices, but their conversation, their activities are so trivial, so irrelevant seen from this new plane of consciousness that she does not even bother to try to understand what they are saying or what they are doing.

Gradually it comes to her that she is no longer one of them, that she is elevated, on a higher plane than they are. But this is not possible, some other part of her tells her new, detached consciousness. No, I don’t want this, it says. I’m just an ordinary woman. And at once she feels herself growing smaller, dwindling, her fleshly warmth returning, she sweeps through layers of blackness, with great effort returning from that calm detachment to the safety and comfort of her own flesh.

It is as though she is two selves. One is the self of the body, the heart-driven, vein-filled, blood-rushing, breathing body, and the other a creature that lives inside and sees out the eyes of the flesh-and-bone self. The creature inside looking out the eyes of the body sees … the yellow mass of wild sunflowers she gathered on impulse the evening before and thrust into a quart sealer.

Sunflowers. Flowers of the sun. The sun’s flowers. She feels her fingers, fat and warm on the crocheted doilies of her chair arms. She flexes them. Her wedding ring is worn to a thin, tarnished thread that cuts into the flesh of her third finger. I’ll have to have that ring cut off one of these days, she tells herself again. Filed off, torn off, wrenched off. She laughs, listening to the sound, long, ringing peals of sound like bells, or water over polished stones in the bottom of a coulee. She laughs again, to hear herself.

She is sorry she picked the sunflowers. They are too big and garish, they have none of the delicacy of so much that grows on the prairie, and no scent worth mentioning. Better to gather the wild roses, or the sage itself, dusty and silvered, to scent the house. A momentary aberration, she tells herself, and repeats the phrase several times, pleased with the sound of it.

Slowly she begins to feel all one person, the two selves melding as they always do after one of these visions. She waits, calmly sitting in her chair in her living room. She waits. How well I wait, she compliments herself. I always could wait. Learned young, she thinks, learned it when I was still
a child. Sitting in the truck, the wagon, the buggy, the model ?—over by the sale ring or next to the elevators or in front of the beer parlour or on the main street in town on Saturday night—hour after hour, waiting on the men. Who do they think they are, that we should have to wait for them, always be waiting on them—blowing children’s noses, singing them songs till they fall asleep. Waiting, knitting, waiting … A woman has to know how to wait.

When she feels herself securely back in her own skin, she waits a moment longer, knowing that what is to be done next will come to her, her body will tell her. Ridiculous, she says to herself, there’s diapers to be changed, hoeing to be done, and the men will be wanting dinner. She almost heaves herself up out of her chair, but the very silence of the place settles into her and she knows she is alone and time has passed. Years, she thinks, years.

Gradually the feeling she has been waiting for steals through her. She is alert now, all her senses attuned to it, straining to read its message. A hollow feeling, yes, it flows upward, engulfing her, a wanting.

Bread. Bread! That’s it. She can smell the yeast already, feel the cool moist dough, its texture like the silken flesh of infants under her palms. She heaves herself up and scurries to the kitchen.

She takes her bread-making bowl from the nail where it hangs on the wall. It is a large blue granite basin with sloping sides and many nicks along the rim where the shiny, blue-speckled surface is missing and the black undercoat shows through. She tests the curved inner surface of the bowl with the flat of her hand, running her palm around it while she surveys the kitchen busily, planning her next move. Sometimes she finds she has hung the pan without cleaning it first. She’s forgetful, she knows it, but this time it’s clean. There is not a knot or a grain of dried dough on the smooth, inner surface.

She sets the bowl on her kitchen table and begins to gather her ingredients and set them on the table: lard, yeast, salt, sugar. She fills the kettle and sets it on the electric stove, then rolls her flour barrel over to stand beside the table. She is still strong, stronger than either Selena or Diane, and she’s glad of it. A good life well-lived, she thinks smugly.

She will have to chop wood for the baking, but there’s plenty of time for that. To this day she hasn’t baked bread in her electric oven. Well, once, for an experiment, but the bread seemed tasteless to her and the colour wasn’t right. So she continues to use her cookstove, which stands across one corner of the room, raised on a brick platform which her son Harold insisted on building for her, it had taken four men to move the stove onto it, over her protests and muttered imprecations—it’s safer, Mother, these things are real fire hazards, now you’ll be glad when we’re done. She keeps the stove polished so that its nickel-plated trim gleams, its black surface shines dully. The children all stare and stare at it when they come to visit. She reaches out a hand to touch its coolness. A beautiful thing.

The kettle has begun to sing. She has let the water get too hot, and forgotten to set the yeast. Annoyed with herself, she stands for a moment, then shuts off the burner under the kettle and goes to the kitchen door, where she stands looking out over her garden through the screen. After a moment she pushes the door open and steps outside, letting the door slam shut behind her. She bends and pulls a dead blossom off the pink and yellow snapdragons at the door, and then off a mauve and purple pansy. A ladybug crawls onto her hand, and she flicks her wrist to shake it off. It flies away to land in the raspberries.

It is mid-morning, the sun is high, spreading its heat over the land. She never could stand the heat. She has to laugh at this, and a couple of wrens leap, startled, out of the lilacs in the corner of the garden. Five children to feed and care for, a husband, two, often three hired men, the house to run—ironing, baking, meal preparation—all in the blazing summer heat—she who couldn’t stand the heat. Well, I stood it well enough, she tells herself grimly. That blessed sun! She shades her eyes from it, thinking how the gardens will be burning up.

Red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, a robin or two, finches, swallows, all sing in her oasis. She wonders idly, listening to them, if it was right for her to build this garden in the middle of the prairie, or if she should have left it the way it was. It’ll go back soon enough, she reminds herself somberly, when I’m gone. Go-back land, she says, remembering the phrase the people used to say. Go-back land. The corn whispers to her,
far off the prairie runs in the heat, and she can’t help but laugh again. She shakes her head, as though someone who ought to know better has just said something ridiculous, and goes back inside.

This time she sets the yeast, puts the lard and some salt and sugar into the warm water she has poured into the basin and stands, one hand on her hip, while the yeast slowly rises in its dish beside the basin. She is reminded of when she was a girl and the threshing crew was at her father’s place, she used to rise with her mother at four every morning to set the buns for breakfast. Once they got the first batch of buns or bread started, they never used yeast again, just saved a small piece of dough from the previous morning and mixed it into the fresh dough. It was enough to leaven the whole batch. Then around seven the crew had fresh, hot buns for breakfast. She and her mother and the hired girl sweating in the kitchen for weeks on end.

Then later, a grown woman in her own kitchen, baking twenty loaves of bread at a time to sell to the bachelors of the district—old Appleby, Jake Johns, Shorty Small, old Rhyhorchuck, and that blessed Loewen who never would pay her, till she wouldn’t give him any more bread. And every week baking another twelve loaves for her own family. Oh, I’ve made enough bread in my day, she thinks.

The yeast is ready and she stirs it carefully, then tests the temperature of the mixture in the big basin by dropping it onto her wrist. Just right. And Selena wanting a recipe. A recipe! You do it till you get it right, and then that’s the way you do it from then on, she had told her. She pours the yeast slowly into the big basin, then stirs carefully. She made Selena and Diane do it over and over again in her kitchen, when they were still girls, after Maude died. Selena never did get it quite right, but good enough, she supposed, Diane never could do it at all. She shakes her head. Buying her bread. Women don’t know anymore, she thinks, don’t know what bread-making is for, what it means to make your own bread.

She lifts the lid off the flour barrel and sets it carefully against the table leg. She puts her cup in and lifts out the first cup of flour. Its smell fills her nostrils, faint, not describable, but real. When she dumps the cupful into the bowl of yeasty liquid, a fine white powder rises and settles on her
wrists and fat forearms. She works more briskly now, dipping, shaking, pouring flour into the big bowl. When she judges the amount to be right, she begins to mix it in, first using a big wooden spoon, then wiping the sticky dough off it and setting it in the sink. She begins to use her hands. The wet dough rises up between her fingers, sticking to them.

When all the flour is mixed in to her satisfaction, she cleans her hands off and adds several more cups of flour. Then she shoves the basin back from her, sprinkles flour by hand over the oilcloth surface of her table, turns the basin upside down over the sprinkled area, so that the dough falls out, rights the basin, and cleans out the dough left sticking to the inside of the basin.

She begins to knead, standing back a bit from the table, her legs set apart, knees locked, and pushes hard, but slowly, from the shoulder, not the elbows, so that she leans into the dough with her weight and the strength of her back: a quarter-turn, knead, flip; a quarter-turn, knead, flip; a quarter-turn, knead, flip. The dough feels heavy, stiff. She isn’t worried, it will come.

Diane had sat across from her, watching her while she kneaded, holding the little one, what was her name? Some foolish modern name, no, Catherine. It was the other one with the silly name. Got it out of a movie, I suppose. Fold, quarter-turn, knead. The dough is beginning to respond, no longer warm, the flour working in well now.

Crying. I can’t stand it, Auntie Rhea. Diane sitting at her table, crying. I’m going crazy.

Crazy! Hah! She doesn’t know what crazy is. Old Mary Andras, now, there was crazy. Six sons, no daughters, all hard-working, which meant
she
had to work twice as hard as they did, twice as fast, to keep them all fed and clothed. And old Miklos, so strong he could lift a bull, but too stupid to see she was losing her mind. Carrying water to her dried-up garden day after day, the grasshoppers eating what the drought hadn’t taken.

What are you going crazy about? she had asked Diane, trying not to laugh, or was it cry? I’ve had my own crazy days, she thinks, and as she remembers, she stops kneading, she is so surprised.

I started to pay attention to each living thing growing on the prairie: the plants, the lichen, the rocks … I wandered out on the prairie at night,
it was the only time I had … I studied the rocks, one especially, I remember … a handsome rock, flat-topped, almost the size of my table. It was flesh-coloured … I thought it was my lover … under the moon … I knew it was madness. I didn’t care. Out there things spoke to me … not with voices, but deep inside me, they drew me to them, or they pushed me away. And the wind blew, hot or cold, was silent or raged at me, told me where to go, where not to go, where to stay and wait. I knew then that I was first of all a woman, one that no man could satisfy … I wanted more, or was it less? Why should I have wanted anything at all … the rocks, hard, ancient, flushed with colour, cracked, shat upon by small birds, used as altars for the sacrifices of hawks and eagles. Many times I found the perfect, minute paws of gophers on them, and their bloody bowels … I sat in the centre of the tipi rings, silent, facing north, east, south, west. In that time I learned to listen to what welled up inside me….

So what are you going crazy about, Diane?

I want … Diane said, and Rhea had felt herself nodding.

Don’t we all, she had said, don’t we all.

Not Selena, Diane had said, her voice full of anger. Rhea gives the bread a final turn and pat and leaves it to rest, going back to the door again to stare out, listening to the songbirds perched in the bushes.

You think Selena doesn’t want? she had asked.

She’s satisfied, Diane said, running after Kent and the boys, watching Phoebe grow up into the same thing.

So you’re leaving.

I suppose you think that’s wrong.

Hah! Rhea had snorted. What’s wrong, what’s right.

Well, if you don’t know, you’re the only one in the whole world who doesn’t think she does, Diane said.

What do you think you’ll find in the blessed city?

Life! Diane had shouted, so loud that the baby on her lap had wakened and cried.

What’s that you’re holding? Rhea had said, and remembering now, she has to chuckle. Tsk, tsk, her tongue goes. She goes back and pokes gently at her bread with her finger. A long enough rest.

Oh, Rhea, don’t you see? I’m not stuck here like you were. I’ve got a choice. I can leave, I can get a job. Tony doesn’t own me the way it was in your day. I’m a free person.

Free, Rhea had said and laughed again.

I bake cookies, I make the beds, I hoe the garden, I look after the kids, I sleep with Tony. And when everything’s done, when the beds are all made, the floors swept, the dishes washed, the clothes ironed and the kids are asleep I look around and I think, is this it? Is this all there is? Her dark eyes had fastened on Rhea, a deep, black light shining in them.