Winter Shadows (3 page)

Now, Christmas was looming, and I still had no privacy, no life, no old friends, no new friends and … I jumped when someone turned the door handle. I put the star brooch in my pocket.

“Let me in!” Daisy shrieked, kicking the heavy slat door.

“Hang on!”

“Mommeeee! Cass locked me out agaaain!”

I swung the door open and glared at the oversized glasses and elongated Pippi Longstocking braids. “See? Open. You can come in now.”

“You – you did that on purpose!”

“Of course I did,” I said. “Anything to get five minutes of privacy from you!”

“That’s enough!” Dad was there to do Jean’s dirty work again. “Daisy, go wash for dinner. I want to talk to Cass.”

“Nooo,” she whined. “I want you to be really mad at her. I want you to
spank
her!”

You’d think she was five years old, not twelve. Dad gave her a gentle push, which she shrugged off, but then decided to let it propel her down the stairs so she could cry to her mommy that Jonathan had pushed her.

“Don’t lock the door again, Cass.”

“I opened it right away. Gawd.”

“Look, just
try
to be nice. She only wants to be friends.” I looked at him steadily. “Yeah, okay. She’s giving me a hard time as well, but this is all new to her – and it’s new to Jean too, remember that. Just try, okay?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“That girl of mine who got me through the last two years seems to have gone completely AWOL. Do you know where she is? ’Cause I don’t.”

“Just leave it, okay, Dad? We both know there’s no point in going over it all again.”

“I’ll try harder to understand if you will. Come on. Dinner. And please don’t bait Jean tonight.”

I opened my mouth, but he held up one hand. “If you can’t be nice, at least be quiet.” Then he tried to put his arm around my neck like he used to do, but I ducked quickly past him. I could hear him moving slowly down the stairs behind me. I didn’t look back.

I
wasn’t going to keep a diary on returning to the parish, in case my father’s new wife, Ivy, got her grasping hands on it, but I have found a perfect hiding place. Not even she will find it. On the inside, I’ve written
Meditations of a St. Cuthbert’s Parish Daughter, December 8
^th
, 1856, Old Maples.

I won’t keep day-to-day notations – just the things that compel me to write. I hope that recording my musings will help me get through the long winter months ahead, with Ivy as mistress of the house. After Mama’s death, caring for the house and Papa had been
nôhkom’s
and my job. But now my grandmother is too old and frail, and I have once more become the daughter of the house, not its mistress
.

As I look out into the dark night, my spirits drift down like the ragged snow falling thick and fast past my bedroom window. I will soon be a woman of eighteen, yet I can’t seem to stop these feelings of despair and sadness. I become angry at myself for allowing them
.

The rush of the rapids sound to my left in the distance, while directly in front of the house, the Red River is silent
,
smoothed to a blanket of muted blue-white. Beautiful. Cold. Remote
.

The winters in St. Cuthbert’s, encased in ice and snow, are endlessly long. How I yearn for summer, even with its torment of mosquitoes and black flies. For then the river will be busy with York boats, canoes, and other craft plying the waters between the Upper and Lower forts, some on their way to northern places, others delivering goods to parishes like ours, dotted along its banks
.

Summer brings with it picnics, visits to the settlement down the river, and social calls to Papa’s friends at the Lower Fort, where I can buy much-needed thread, beads, and luxuries like sugar or tea. The post is more reliable in summer, too, with the possibilities of new books to read and family letters to answer from England and Scotland
.

When the lilacs against the house are in full bud and the days grow longer and warmer, some of nôhkom’s kin will once again arrive on their yearly visit, dragging their canoes into the tall grass and setting up camp under the maple trees along the riverbank. I will hear the crackle of their fires at night through my bedroom window. Each day, they will quietly climb up the trail to take sage tea with nôhkom. I learned Cree as a child, and I love listening to their stories. Unlike so many in our staid parish, Grandmother’s
wîtisâna
find much to laugh about despite their hard life – the women covering their mouths with their fingertips, their eyes filled with easy enjoyment. After offerings of smoked fish, beaded moccasins, and other things to nôhkom, Papa, and me, they will leave as silently as they came
.

I sigh as I write this. Last summer is but a distant memory, and in this icy heart of winter, I see no glimmer of warm light ahead. In a month, we’ll have a brief exciting week when the dog team, horse, and carriole races take place on the frozen river. But then, the short cold days and long dark nights will close around us once again. Christmas used to offer a short happy time as well, but I don’t hold out much hope for it this year with my stepmother, Ivy, and her puritanical Presbyterianism at the helm
.

Earlier this morning, I dressed in a similar darkness to this. To brighten my spirits, I pinned Mama’s star brooch on my collar for the first time this year. Having it close always takes me back to happy Christmases with my tall and cheerful mother, Anne, who died the Christmas Eve I turned ten. But as I tied my moccasins, I knew Christmas this year would be anything but cheerful
.

A soft cough from nôhkom reminded me there was no time to indulge in worries or sad memories. I tightened my resolve not to give in to the shadows hovering nearby
.

Wrapped in a goose-down comforter by the lowering fire, she spoke in her raspy voice, “The sun is rising
, nôsisim.
You will be late for your teaching.” She had coughed often during the night. I had to make sure she had plenty of rosehip syrup and hot spruce tea beside her before I left
.

“I still have time,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

Downstairs, the kitchen was unusually warm. My stepmother stood by the fire, ladling porridge into a bowl. Our
little maid, Dilly, a girl of twelve years or so who had recently joined the household, glanced shyly at me and left the room with a broom and dustpan. She was the daughter of a poor farmer and his deceased Indian wife. The farmer had left St. Cuthbert’s when Dilly was five, taking his two sons with him and leaving the girl child with a neighbor, who had allowed Dilly to go to school until she was ten. After that, she demanded the child leave in order to help on the farm, training Dilly as a scullery maid and letting her out to people who needed cleaning or outside work done – for a price. Papa had heard from others that the girl was being treated badly and asked the farm wife if she might come to us on a full-time basis. The neighbor received money from Papa, of course – how much, I do not know – to release Dilly. As I looked at Ivy’s stiff disapproving back, I wondered if poor Dilly had leapt from one sizzling pan right into another. I decided to watch over her and make sure Ivy didn’t take advantage
.

A man sat, arms on the table, waiting to be served
. Ah,
I thought
, so that explains the large fire snapping in the grate. The Big Fellow has come for his breakfast.
Ivy’s son, Duncan Kilgour, glanced at me, then peered into his thick mug with an irritating half-smile
.

While I was away at school in Upper Canada, Kilgour had arrived from Scotland to visit his widowed mother. He now lived on his mother’s farm – the small Comper place, farther along the river road. A coarse fellow, with black curly hair hanging in greasy coils around his thickly bearded face, he wore a woolen jerkin over a flannel shirt, rough wool pants, and knee-length moccasins. His arms and shoulders
were heavy with muscle – like one of the broad pale oxen in our barn. Boorish in his manners, he was either rudely silent or talked too much, with a loud laugh that grated horribly on my nerves
.

He and some of the local farmers had been away hunting when I arrived home. Papa said the October hunt was late getting started because early snow slowed their progress. They returned a few weeks back, with buffalo meat and hides as well as deer and smaller game. Of course, trapping will continue all winter in the bush around the village
.

I could see Ivy was making another pot of her venison stew for dinner tonight, sparsely dotted, as usual, with exhausted vegetables from the root cellar. Out of necessity, the best of the meat, already stored in the ice house, must be sold off. I cannot abide her thin and greasy stew, so I eat little of it. I suspect Ivy deliberately makes these miserly meals to show her displeasure at Papa for holding the best cuts back from her
.

As for Kilgour, he has barely said two words directly to me since I arrived home. Not that I care, as I am still adjusting to finding his widowed mother installed in our house as my father’s wife!

“Good morning,” I said. “My grandmother needs more wood placed on her fire.” I looked at Kilgour. “I wonder if you would –?”

Ivy pushed the bowl of porridge at her son, and he sprinkled it, not with precious sugar, but with lake
sîwîhtâkan,
the brown salt sold to us by Indians every fall. He nodded at my request, the spoon moving back and forth
.

Ivy’s eyes narrowed when she spotted the brooch on my dress collar. She had followed me to my room when I unpacked from my long trip home and saw the pin when I placed it on my table. She’d asked me if it had once belonged to my mother. When I’d said yes, to my shock, she snatched it up and darted off to Papa – with me, outraged, following behind
.

“As your wife, it should rightly be mine!” I’d heard her cry through the door of Papa’s study
.

On entering, I could see him teetering on the edge of giving the small jewel to her, but I said, “That brooch was given to me on my mother’s deathbed. I shall never part with it, Papa. Never.”

He nodded, returned the brooch to me, and left the room, Ivy skittering after him, talking all the while. Her shrill voice was cut off by the loud bang of the kitchen door. She ran up the stairs, gasping and huffing with indignation. Later that evening, Papa asked Kilgour to help him move a truckle bed into his study. Ivy now slept alone in their room upstairs. The next morning, she had claimed it was all her idea, as she was tired of hauling that man upstairs every night, but we all knew the truth of it
.

“I’ll get the wood.” Kilgour pushed away his empty bowl, filled a basket from the wood bin, and left the room
.

I began to count … one, two, three.… With perfect timing, my stepmother snarled in her thick Scottish accent, “No reason why you can’t fix the old squaw’s fire yourself.” She held the bread knife in front of my face. “If I had my way, she’d be living in that Indian town of St. Anthony’s with her own kind. It’s bad enough I have your ailing father to attend to.”

I finally threw the gauntlet down after three weeks of holding my tongue. “My grandmother is with her own kind, right here. Do
not
speak of her this way again!”

She bridled, sucking in a sharp breath. Up to that moment, I’d steadfastly refused to rise to her bait, although I often felt as if I’d swallowed its sharp hook. I knew if I fought back, Ivy would only make things miserable for nôhkom when I wasn’t around. But let her try her worst now! With trembling hands, I piled a bowl with porridge for Grandmother. As I reached for the bannock, the flat of Ivy’s knife slapped hard across my knuckles. I let out a yelp
.

“What’s this, what’s this?” Papa stood in the doorway, gripping his pronged walking sticks
.

Ivy ran to help him into the kitchen, simpering, “Goodness, can you believe it, Gordon? My knife accidentally tapped Beatrice’s hand. No harm done.”

She settled him into a chair at the table, picked up her weapon, and handed it to me, handle first. With unsteady hands, I took it and cut slabs of cheese and Ivy’s hard bannock for Grandmother’s midday dinner, covering them with a damp cloth. I then filled a heavy jug with fresh cold water and a stone foot warmer with boiling, which I slid into a fur cover. Ivy served Papa his breakfast, chatting cheerfully. I knew Papa wanted me to get along with Ivy, so to keep the peace and protect nôhkom, I kept my anger to myself
.

As I left with the tray, she returned my cold stare with one of sneering satisfaction
.

When I reached the upstairs hall, I heard nôhkom’s tittering giggle and Duncan Kilgour’s deep chuckle. He was
stoking the fire in our room. “And will you tell me more if I come again, nôhkom?”

How dare that oaf call her Grandmother in Cree! And what was so funny?

“I will,” Grandmother replied, “for I have many to share. “