Prairie Ostrich (3 page)

big fat toe

not because you're dirty

not because you're clean

just because you kissed a boy

She scans the yard. At first all seems chaotic, the rush and swirl of bodies at rest and in motion, but she can pick out the patterns. Hopscotch is for girls, along with skipping and the
clap clap clap
of Miss Mary Mack. With the boys it's all tag and spud and the monkey in the middle. Each grade has its own territory, within their elementary, middle, and high school sections. In the high school grounds, the divisions are clearer — how the hand-me-down shirts vie with the store-bought denim, how the princess girls flirt with the Popular jocks. The brainers hover by the glass doors of the library, far away from the shouts and squeals of the playground. In the playground the runts climb over the tangle of the jungle gym, where it is the survival of the fittest.

I'm the king of the castle

you're the dirty rascal

Here, behind the bushes, Egg is safe and sound. She squats and places her lunch box in front of her. Her hand strokes the scratches on the Six Million Dollar Man's face. She will not cry. Steve Austin never cried. She will stop being stupid. She will stop being weak.

She opens her lunch box to the neat rice balls, folded within the black
nori
squares. Her mother's
onigiri
. Only you can't have onigiri in the lunchroom. Or anything smelly, or sticky, or easy-peasy japa-nesy. That is the kiss of death.

Mutual of Omaha
says that the predators cull the herd, that they only take the weak. This is the law of the jungle. Across the yard, Kathy stands with all her friends. Debbie Duncan squeals and rushes forward; she is all bubbling excitement, bobbed blond curls and Bonne Bell lips. Raymond is there, with a shirt that is too city; he is thin and fine in a way that gets him into trouble. Egg's word for Raymond is
debonair
— a dash of French to make it all interesting. Jillian Henderson, the constable's daughter, saunters up with a “Hey, Kathy! Last year, senior. We'll rule the roost.”

Kathy is not a princess girl, but she is still Popular, even after things went bad with Albert and everything. Kathy is still the captain of the basketball team, even if it is just for girls, Kathy standing on the green when everyone knows that the grass is for the jocks, Kathy, who smokes in the coulee, down by the splinter-dry cottonwoods and sage, Kathy, who breaks all the rules anyway.

There is a shout from the rough-and-tumble shinny in the yard. Doug Fisken, his stick in the air, runs by a cheering Pet Stinton. Townies. The big bullies. Kathy and her friends draw closer.

Kathy isn't careful. Even Superman has his kryptonite. Egg has the comics to prove it. And Albert, the star of the baseball team, a no-hitter pitcher at the regional championships and that was two seasons running. Egg blinks against the glare and squats behind the stunted bushes.

They say accidents are nobody's fault. Albert's accident. His fall from the railway trestle over the fast-flowing river.

Was he trying to fly?

liar liar pants on fire

hang your clothes on a telephone wire

Egg gazes down the street to the intersection of Maple and Main Streets. She can barely make out the corner of the old stockyard. She runs across the playground, to the field, dashing under the bleachers beside the track. Up she goes, her feet a
tap tap tap
on the stairs. From the top bench she can see the spread of the entire town.

Queen Street, Logan, Victoria Drive. The churches, the hardware store, the scratch of dirt roads against prairie fields. Egg scans the indifferent horizon; the sky has no face.

Albert, Albert, where are you?

She turns back to the school.

In the yard, the princess girls flutter from circle to circle. They have bright coloured blouses with frills and lace and sometimes dresses of organdy and chiffon. Egg wears her dungarees. She loves her dungarees. Kathy wears her blue jeans and her summer shirt with snap buttons. Egg wants snap buttons when she gets older. She looks across the grey crackled concrete and feels the itch in the palm of her hands. It is the first day and she needs some answers. First day and you don't want to be the goat. First day, and whatever happens now, happens forever.

Egg bites her lip.

Kathy doesn't fit in. But she gets along all right, even without the dresses. How does she do that?

Egg rubs the worn patches on her knees, and stares at her white shirt and running shoes with the blue laces. She doesn't look too different. But she knows. She walks down the bleachers, her steps heavy, and shuffles to the garbage. She throws her onigiri into the bin. She has to make some sacrifices. She stares down at the white rice balls, the black nori even as her stomach twists with hunger. Sacrifices. Like Steve Austin.

The Japanese part has got to go.

…

There is peace in the library. Egg likes the quiet. She likes the books arranged in alphabetical order, the corridor of shelves, the soft tread of the carpet. There are secret places that no one goes, the corner of Philosophy and Ancient History, the aisle from Afghanistan to Upper Volta. Upper Volta has a capital called Ouagadougou. Egg likes all the vowels. In the library, the shelves are cluttered, the aisles narrow, but to Egg this is a comfort. The light is dim, a dance of dust motes, the windows high on the wall above the dark panelled wood. The library is small but as she steps inside, the space blooms out and deepens. For Egg, the library is like magic. It is like going into the swimming pool from the shallow end, stepping deeper and deeper until the water is over her head but without all the scariness and without all the wet. Egg does not like the wet. In summertime, she had her swimming lessons and the sound bounced off the walls. Martin Fisken pushed her into the pool and she coughed when she swallowed the water. Sometimes the water burned her eyes but then she could say she was not really crying. Here, Egg can tuck herself behind the book cart and slip into the lowest shelf, she is so small, but there is no need, not today. At the beginning of the year, the library is empty. There is only Miss Granger, stamping and re-stamping the cards, filing the books away.

Egg has read the Andersen, the Aesop, and the Grimm, and knows the forest, deep and dark, the path of wolves and thorns, but it is the myths she likes the best: the boy who flew too close to the sun, the monster in the labyrinth. Enchantments, the trials and tests and fabulous beasts! And the names! Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite! Galatea and Persephone! A goddess of wisdom and a goddess of beauty and each Muse with her own wonderful gift. The Gods, who were not so wise, nor just, not even particularly good but merely powerful and at the same time pitifully weak. And Pandora's box — Egg wonders — what does it mean when hope is the one thing left inside?

The library has all the answers.

And yet, as Egg searches through the shelves, she can find no books on her Japanese. A history of Japan and the Second World War, but no Japanese, here, in Canada. No Japanese like herself.

“Egg?”

She turns to Miss Granger who stands in the aisle. Miss Granger, who has the most beautiful name: Evangeline. Her dark hair is swept back and her dress is a washed-out brown. She is young, barely twenty, or something like twenty; Egg can't gauge the age of grown-ups. Yet there is something about Evangeline that suggests a sepia-toned past, as if she has stepped out of an old-time photograph. Egg remembers that last year, Evangeline was all in asters, a blossom of violets and forget-me-nots — when Albert was still alive. In this moment, Egg wishes she had brought something for Evangeline. There is a sweetness to her that gives Egg the shivers and Egg so much wants to make her smile.

“How is your first day going?” Evangeline asks.

Egg bites her lip. “Mrs. Syms is my teacher now.”

Evangeline sighs. It is then Egg knows that Mrs. Syms has not fooled everyone.

“First day is always the longest.” Evangeline places her hand on Egg's shoulder, the lightest touch. Egg can see the crescent moons on fingernails bitten to the quick. “But it's not forever,” Evangeline adds.

Grown-ups always say this. It doesn't help. Like “you'll understand when you get older.” Like a cookie jar placed just out of her reach.

But Evangeline, her jagged nails, her soothing voice, she has always been kind. She smiles with a warmth that spreads to her eyes, and asks, “What colour would you like today?” They walk behind the counter where Evangeline keeps her rainbow of lollipops, stashed behind the stamps and her stack of blank book slips. Last year, on the bad days, Evangeline would slip a candy to her. Egg does not think it strange that the school librarian would know her bad days. She has read of guardian angels and Evangeline is everything angelic.

Evangeline, Evangeline, Egg wants to sing her name.

Click click click
. She twirls the candy against the back of her teeth. Evangeline is showing her two new books:
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
— a strange title, Egg thinks — and
A Wrinkle in Time
.

Click
. Her tongue will be purple.

“How is your family?” Evangeline asks.

Egg's throat tightens. She thinks of Papa, exiled to the ostrich barn, and how could she explain Mama? Her tears almost rise, her chest so full. It is too much to be on the outside, the only Japanese family on the prairie with Albert dead and Kathy with the snap buttons and herself with the lunch box onigiri. Everything is upside down and jumbled. Yet Evangeline, her brown eyes and lollipops, Egg wants to tell her — no, she wants to run away, to hide behind the wooden cart. Here, in the library, Egg wants the books to swallow her.

“Perfect,” she says.

As Evangeline turns to her stacks, Egg realizes that no one must know, of Mama's whiskey, of Papa's cot, of Martin chasing her, taunting
jap jap jap
. Egg thinks of Pandora, of all the evils in the world contained in one box. A secret. She will not be like Pandora. She will bury it.

Evangeline Granger looks so much like a storybook heroine, like Laura Ingalls in
Little House on the Prairie
. Her family has been in Bittercreek since before the railroad. There is even a road, off Four Corners, named after the first Granger in the territory. Evangeline, daughter of Old Man Granger, the sourest man east of the Rockies. She is like a pioneer girl in a bonnet. Egg, on her tiptoes, so much wants to ask her how it is to be normal, how it is to be white.

…

At the end of the day, the bell rings through the corridors. The bus will be leaving soon. At her desk, Egg sits, as her fellow students rush out of the classroom. She bites her lip. She will not be the goat, not this year. She will wait and run just before the bus pulls out of the parking lot. Then Martin Fisken will not be able to catch her. She's been practising all summer long.

She looks down at her legs and taps her feet together. If she were taller, she'd be able to run like the ostriches. She tries to imagine her legs growing, pulled long like taffy. Egg knows you must be careful what you wish for — that's in the stories as well. As the last of the class bolts out the door, she grabs her bag and rises.

At the door, she looks up and down the hall. Now she will take the long way, into the high school corridor, that is her plan. She dashes down the hallways, by the rows and rows of lockers, through labyrinthine twists and turns. Her footsteps echo, bouncing against the glass and granite and the dull concrete.

She stops. She looks down the empty passageway, the light a watery fluorescence.

She is lost.

“Hey squirt.”

Egg jerks her head up but it is only Raymond, who smiles when he calls her that.

“What are you doing up here?” he asks. “Are you looking for your sister?”

Egg nods. Raymond, in his city shirt, should be on
Soul Train
, not trapped in this dust bowl of Bittercreek. He gazes at her and for a moment Egg wonders if Kathy has spoken to him about her — the weak one. The small one. The stupid one who can barely talk in class.

Raymond leans forward. “When I had Mrs. Syms, she scared the bejesus out of me. She still does. I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I swear, all year I looked like a penguin,” and he walks for her, his knees locked together. They laugh and Egg wonders. A part of her is amazed that he would give that away, a story that makes him look so weak. Is there a word for that? Egg gazes at his dark eyes and fine features, as he waves goodbye and makes his way down the hall. He is the only boy that she would call beautiful. She knows that Doug Fisken calls him sissyface, the football team snickers when he walks down the hall. Egg wants to catch up to him and ask him why.

“Egg,” Kathy is suddenly beside her. “How was the day?”

Egg nods. If you don't say anything, it's not like you are really lying. “Miss Granger gave me the
Mixed-Up Files
and some
Wrinkle in Time
.”

“I loved those books.” But Kathy spies Egg's dented lunch box, the long scratch where the paint is scored off. “What happened?” she asks.

Egg's voice drops. “I fell, an accident.” She clears her throat and gallops off with, “We're learning about the Vast Open Plains of the Northern Tundra!”

“Oh Egg,” Kathy chides, so much like a big sister, “you've got to be more careful.”

Egg sinks into her chest and all the words come tumbling inside her
: stupid clumsy useless dumbbell
. She must be as vigilant as the nestlings on the Savannah. Yes. She must be more careful.

…

Egg steps off the school bus and drags her bookbag behind her. She shuffles her feet and kicks at the gravel in the drive. She thinks of her Greek myths, of a man carrying the world on his shoulders, or the one rolling the rock uphill. She looks at the barn, the house, the field. The sun beats down on the parched grass by the shrinking slough. She feels the heat loosening, as if unravelling — this is
her
barn,
her
house,
her
field — and sighs a small relief that the first day of school is over. Her shoulders sag, as if all the bad of the day drains out of her.