Wallflowers (3 page)

The girl collects Cha-Cha in the belly of her housecoat and climbs the stairs to higher ground. On the first floor, water already laps at the heels of the dining chairs, the sides of the couch. She watches the flood from Ms. Feliz’s bedroom window, which sits opposite her mother’s bedroom window. She shouts for her mother, but her voice is licked away by rain and the surge of water. Outside, the river has bowled Mr. Bradley off his feet, but he clutches the air mattress and drags it under his chest, so that he shoots downriver with the stolen debris—a yellow kid slide, a backyard barbecue, and four corpulent raccoons that paddle beside him in a row. The girl can reach the roof from the attic, which is not really an attic but a series of questionable floorboards and raw insulation. She considers staying in here, to keep out of the rain, but the air smells of itch and sawdust. The roof hangs low enough to open the hatch. She sets Cha-Cha down and hoists herself up. She stands on Ms. Feliz’s roof and searches for her mother on their own roof. Or the Singhs two houses down. Or the Halls. But she sees no one. The rain rolls down her neck. Inside, fatty brown water laps at the first stair. It fills the bathroom. The wisteria sucks at it; the hyacinths stand straighter. The peonies open their petals and sing.

Ship's Log

 

 

An accounting of the voyage of:

HMCS
RUPERT

(Led by Captain Oscar Finch and Navigating Officer Clementine Finch a.k.a. Nan)

 

Sailed: Monday, April 17, 1919

From: Sudbury, Ont.

Bound for: The Orient

 

 

TUESDAY, APRIL 18

1600

Light breeze from west. Temperature warm. Clear skies except one cloud the exact shape of the birthmark on my thigh, which looks like a bicycle wheel with spokes.

I'm knee-deep in a hole to China. Progress has slowed since my Nan's noon inspection—must shovel for width now, as well as depth. “China's a long drop,” she said. “We'll want room to stretch our limbs.”

 

1630

Went in for a glass of milk at quarter past the hour and Madame Dubois from No. 12 parked her Flivver over my hole. Progress further slowed. She's brought fruitcake and belated regrets re: Granddad.

 

Weather as above.

 

1633

I think Dubois's Flivver is a Jabberwocky. (See
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
, page 28—“The Jabberwock with eyes of flame came whiffling through the tulgey wood and burbled as it came.”)

 

1640

Dubois's fixing a pot of tea. Visit will be longer than hoped. Tried crawling underneath Jabberwock. Shovel wouldn't fit.

 

1650

In China, people walk upside down. That's why they wear those limpet-shell hats. The wide brims prevent the Chinese from falling out of the sky.

 

1654

In China, the sea is made from tea. During the third century, the drink was so prized that the provinces boasted their wealth through tri-annual tea festivals where every member of every town paraded to the beach with masks and fireworks and dragon kites and offered their leaves to the waves in a celebrated public sacrifice. That's why each coast tastes different. Most of the South China Sea (near Hong Kong) tastes like jasmine, but the Gulf of Tonkin is rosehip, and the Bay of Bengal, chai. The East China Sea is primarily green (there are a few local variations), and the tides of the Yellow Sea ebb/flow peppermint. The Formosa Strait produces a particularly strong brew of ginger root because Taiwan prevents open-ocean dilution, says my Nan. The Chinese don't drink their sea water, though. It's too strongly steeped.

 

1700

Madame Du
bore
still here. She asked me why I haven't kept the roses hydrated—the ones on the dining room table, from the parish memorial. “Un petty dry,” she called them.

 

2100

Temperature: warm. Wind: not there. Sky: the colour of Granddad's toe after he sailed home from Panama last May to fight the German alphabet boats, which he never did in the end because they wanted him in the Pacific aboard an “armed merchantman,” which is stupid because ships aren't men and they don't have arms and we're fighting the Germans not the Chinamen so why send my Granddad to Hong Kong?

Nan cut me a slice of fruitcake for dinner. She'd misplaced her own appetite again. John Cabot did not discover North America on fruitcake. I found a block of semi-sweet chocolate in the cupboard and ate that instead.

I miss Nan's old cooking. We haven't much in the cupboards now. Oats, farina, dried apricots, molasses, chestnut paste. We should arrive in Hong Kong within the week if I maintain shovel speed. (I reckon I average a foot an hour.)

I used to read with Granddad before bed. We're more than halfway through
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
, and the
Jane Guy
has just been captured by natives, but I won't finish without him. Maybe tomorrow I'll aim for two feet.  

 

 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19

0715

Pleasant Mermaidian breeze from east. Some clouds.

Wanted to dig another foot before Nan got up. Found her in the living room on the arm of Granddad's button-back chair. She was leaning forward and her shadow made a falcon on the secretary and the fishbowl that sits on top of the secretary. The ribbon of her nightgown was untied and it dangled in the fishbowl, but I don't think she noticed. When she moved, it glided across the surface like a Jesus bug.

I saw her breast. It was shaped like a triangle and hung over the pokey parts of her ribs. Then I noticed the slice of fruitcake in her lap and the cashew clenched between her index finger and thumb and the dried cherry floating above the fishbowl gravel. I asked if she slept. “With the fishes,” she said. She laughed and her bones made a stepladder in her chest. I took the plate from her lap and said I'd feed Aquinas later.

I made porridge like Granddad. I simmered the oats in milk and vanilla until the oats plumpened and milk clung to each grain like melted wax. Nan declined a bowl. I left her with the swordtail.

 

1300

Dead calm. Sky like when Granddad made blueberry sherbet for the parish picnic on Dominion Day.

At the pit's deepest I've dug to my thigh. Starboard side needs work. My shovel's caused three casual worms, but I think they'll grow back. The soil's firmer now, less like cookie crumbs and more like dough. Nan says it's clay. In China they bloom bowls and teacups instead of tulips and that's why we call it chinaware. There's broken pottery everywhere and in Szechuan province the lawns are mosaics. I'll bet Chinamen cobble shoes with ultra-thick soles.

My own oxfords are soiled with mud. Nan hasn't noticed. She's in the front, milking the crocuses.

 

1420

Found a live floater abreast the keel! He wears a scarlet tunic and bearskin hat—potential deserter from the Royal Guard? I conducted a proper interrogation, but he said very little. (He appears to be made of tin, so I suspect his jaw is quite stiff.) I don't think he's a threat as he is little bigger than the palm of my hand—he will stay aboard as boatswain and I shall watch his behaviour. I went inside to introduce him to my navigating officer and found her in the bathroom applying white paint to her face, an emptied box of cornstarch on the toilet seat. Conversation as follows: “Nan?” “Captain Oscar.” “What are you doing?” “Putting on my face.” The plaster terrified her eyebrow stubs into fossils, and when she smiled, her forehead cracked. “But you already had a face.” Her hand rose from the sink, which was filled with white gook, and she slapped her cheek. “Without makeup, I'd stand out in Hong Kong like a polka-dot thumb.” Her palm smeared circles and stretched loose flesh to her nose, to her eye, to her ear. She reached behind her head and her cheek drooped to the corner of her mouth. She didn't have enough hair to hold a bun and her fingers left sponge stamps on her scalp. I asked what I ought to wear and she suggested Granddad's uniform, and I thought Granddad sailed for Hong Kong in his uniform, but apparently that was the British one and he has a Canadian one too, but they look almost identical. I went upstairs and found the uniform on Nan's bed. It's large, but I reckon the waistband will hold if I wrap the belt around twice. The pants are funny. The bottom of each leg is wider than the thigh. The shirt's got a large collar and a blue-and-white-striped kerchief, which I don't know how to tie because I was only in Boy Scouts for a year and Nan secured the knot at the beginning and I never untied it. My favourite's the cap. The tally reads “HMCS
Rainbow
,” which is a silly name for a ship so I'll probably cross it out and write
Rupert
. Nan's got a navy photograph of Granddad on the dresser. I'm a spit image.

 

I'm hungry, but the weather's fouling, so I should return to deck. Winds blow fresh and there are dark clouds on the eastern horizon.

 

1800

In China, there's a pyramid of mandarin oranges on every corner. Because there are so many orchards, everyone helps themselves, and the farmers replenish the pyramids every morning.

 

In China, they have dens where sages and scarlet women and gamblers and poets puff on the stems of poppies like pipes. Then they have extraordinary dreams, like none that you could ever imagine, and sometimes the dreams tell the future.

 

1830

Tried to make porridge for dinner, but the milk wouldn't pour from the pitcher. Gave it a slosh and tried again. One drop dripped out the mouth and down the side of the jug. Lifted the lid and found a golden bulb lodged in the spout and six more golden bulbs floating in yellowish liquid. Fished one out for inspection. Its skin felt like a waterlogged chicken thigh, with a hundred spots where the feathers might have been. I squeezed and milk gushed through my fist, trickled down my sleeve into the crease of my elbow. Called for Nan. “Apricots,” she said. “I'm necromancing the apricots.”

 

Made porridge with water.

 

1900

Nan's face is papier mâché and the whites of her eyes look yellow like she's been soaking apricots there too.

 

I think she's been in my room. I found a pile of white shavings on my pillowcase.

 

2030

Monsoon! Brisk gale, downpour of rain. I worry my pit will cave.

 

2040

Tried standing over pit with umbrella. Proved terrifically dull. Went back inside.

 

2045

There is a slice of fruitcake on a plate in the fishbowl.

 

2300

Tried to play Chicken Foot with Nan, but she preferred to spell words with the line of play. Had to find Granddad's Double 18 set so that she'd have enough tiles. He bought them on his first sail to Bombay in 1892. They're ivory with ebony inset pips.

 

Nan's poems:

“Tick tick tick tick”

“Cherry tart, crispy heart.”

 

My poems:

“Tongues clicking, licking”

“Mango meat. Yum.”

 

This game would be easier if the tiles had letters instead of dots.

 

 

THURSDAY, APRIL 20

0800

Rains have ceased, clouds clearing. Light airs, temperature like dishwater. Pit walls have maintained structure, but there are two inches of mud at the bottom. Will commence drainage after breakfast.

 

0830

Breakfast: one-quarter jar molasses plus two necromanced apricots.

Painted a molasses moustache above my lip, and Nan said I made a very fetching George V.

Told her the hull flooded two inches and she said that was the size of my mother's tumour. I don't remember my mother well, but Granddad said she was a dish, which means pretty.

 

1100

The boatswain and I drained the pit and dug another half foot. We're hip-deep stern to bow. It's harder to shovel, which means we're getting close. (We could be digging through a cement road in Hong Kong and we wouldn't even know.) Crew's complaining of thirst. Maybe the navigating officer will have lemonade inside.

 

1105

Nan's not in the house. The dining table roses are face down in the vase. Stems spike from the glass at 180 degrees and the water magnifies the heads into clown noses.