Crow Jazz Page 3

  The tool shed is a few steps away from the vegetable garden, and like Hansel and Gretel, (oops) I drop a few hors d’oeuvres on the path and I’ve got them. When I spread the feast on the concrete floor, they are all over it. All that remains to do is to wait until the shed is filled and then pull up the drawbridge. I take a moment to enjoy the improbability of turning the mopheaded Grim Brothers upside down and sweeping up when the rabbits are done eating and shitting in the shed before I lock them up.

  I once wrote a song, “All we do the whole day through is eat and poo.” “You’re a poet,” Moon said, the first time I sang it.

  She’s already setting the table in the meadow, a picnic bench made from a huge cedar that fell in a storm the year I was born. Ocean flattened the top with a chainsaw and used the part he cut off to make benches. The table seats twenty, and we have big family picnics on my birthday.

  My sister was born in the winter, and she suffers from picnic party envy. This is her day.

  She has covered part of the table with a linen tablecloth and is arranging six napkins, six place cards, six plates, and six cups and saucers, none of them matching. Moon is squinting, lining up the settings, which are more or less orderly. Her knitting bag sits by her place. Our corvid friends are lined up on a branch, waiting for a pitch fork to set them off.

  “How come all their place cards say Grim?”

  “Because they think with one mind and don’t deserve names.”

  “No forks or spoons?”

  “These people are barbarians,” says Moon, spitting in a cup.

  I follow her example and spit in three more.

  “Get going,” she says, “we’re done here,” and I head for the house.

  En route I pick some more lettuce and take it in to Windsong, who is in the kitchen making mayonnaise.

  “I think it is so nice that you kids are making overtures. Peace in our time. No one is all bad.”

  Wrong Windsong. Wrong. Wrong Wrong. NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE. We are third-generation hippies, but, despite congenital blindness and pharmaceutical interference with our genes, we see more clearly than she ever did. Bad is bad. She is our history teacher, but she’s blinder than Moon. I open my mouth to say something snarky, but Moon burns through the door and puts a sock in it.

  “Time to get dressed, Sunny.” She gives me a shove.

  She’s right. There is no point in questioning Windsong’s artificially enhanced sunny ways. She does have the power to obstruct.

  “I’m getting changed,” I say.

  “It’s a girl day after all,” Moon sings.

  I find a dress laid out on my bed. Moon has decided for me. It is pink. It is girlie. It has a big puffy skirt with crinolines. I put on a slip and take out my boy bun. I brush my hair, attach a hairband with silk roses, paint on mascara and pink pearl lipstick and finally don the girlie dress and my gold sandals, a ladies nine from the thrift shop. I feel gorgeous, not confused. It is a girl day after all.

  “Beautiful,” Windsong says. I am. I walk in beauty like the night. In her heart of hearts, she likes girls best. I know it.

  Windsong is cutting the crusts off the egg salad sandwiches and arranging them on a plate. Moon is slicing up fruit.

  “Here,” she hands me a bowl of strawberries, grapes and pineapple. “Ocean’s setting up the fountain, and I will bring the chocolate and the tea.”

  Something sparks in my brain. It’s the way she says chocolate, not in the dreamy creamy way. But all consonants, ch,c,lt. It could be code.

  But my thoughts are drowned out by the sound of drumming. I look our the window and see brothers marching up the path around the house and down the trail to the meadow, banging pot lids with big wooden spoons, and chanting.

  “Grab the pussies. Eat the rabbits. Off with their heads.”

  “I can stay,” Ocean offers when we get there with our provisions.

  “We’re fine,” Moon insists, but her voice wobbles. She places her Minnie Mouse teapot, her precious teapot from Disneyland, on the table next to her place, and waves our hovering helicopter parent off.

  It’s us and them. We have joined the deplorables.

  “You have place cards,” she says to her pot-banging guests, and then in a lower voice, “Do you need help with that?”

  They put down their kitchen drums and sit. I take note of their dress code. Obviously, Windsong and the Grim Mother have exchanged words. The boys are wearing clean white shirts, and their ginger hair looks spat on, patted and parted. I have seen this many times. The Grim Brothers march to church every Sunday. This is their Sunday School uniform. They are Christian Soldiers, some kind of Baptists. The bad kind.

  Moon adds the chocolate. The fountain is bubbling.

  CH,c,lt tickles both my brains. I try not to smile as the Brothers, mesmerised by the fountain and the mountain of fruit, sit down obediently. We know they will eat and run.

  Moon stands up. “There will be no more war. We will eat and play games.”

  “Eat!” The Grim boys yell in sync. They’ve really got the unison thing down, must be the Sunday School practice. I’m surprised they didn’t learn to take turns there. It’s impossible to get past the scrum around the chocolate fountain, so I don’t bother. Nor, I notice, does Moon, who passes the almost full plate of egg sandwiches to me.

  “Eat! Don’t let these go to waste,” she says with a wink and a wicked grin. “They seem to be going for the chocolate.”

  “Yes they are.” The Grim Brothers grab handfuls of fruit, and the chocolate drips off their chins, staining their Sunday School shirts. There will be hell to pay with the Grim Mother.

  “Plenty where that comes from,” I agree. Let them fill their boots.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Moon says. “I used it all up.”

  In moments, they’ve demolished the fountain. The fruit is all gone.

  “Tea time,” she says, “I’ll be mother. She gets up and pours tea with a swizzle of honey at their places. This is some trick for a girl who can hardly see. I notice when she pours mine, it drips on the tablecloth. The tea makes a yellow stain.

  “What kind of tea?” I ask and she answers, “Pure.” Now I know what the Grim Brothers don’t. “Pure” is what my mother calls her dying solution, a mixture of petals and uric acid.

  The Grim Brothers are parched. They say the chocolate is salty but good. “It tastes like Hershey bars.” One of them licks the fountain, and I wish it would freeze so his tongue would stick. Painfully.

  “Finish the sandwiches,” Moon says, “and let the games begin.”

  “What about the taxidermy part? “one of the feral boys inquires, “Liar, liar pants on fire, we came here to stuff your rabbits.”

  “Wrong,” Moon tells him. “You came here to stuff yourselves, and we have kept our part of the bargain.”

  She instructs us to fold our napkins and cover our eyes. We’re going to play hot and cold because she has hidden a giant surprise. “Yuuuge,” she says. “The biggest ever. The treat of treats, and then the war will be over. No slagging, no grabbing, no beheading.”

  Four inbred morons, aged eight to twelve, versus two precocious sissies, twelve and thirteen. Of course they will win. They have already won. The war is already over. The Grims smirk at one another and put on their blindfolds.

  Moon says, “Wait. I forgot the party hats.” Moon puts an adorable pink hat on each Brother in turn. I’m off the hook because I’m wearing her hairband. Because I have not been ordered to fold my napkin and cover my eyes, I can see helicopters emerging from the weeds and circling the picnic table. They are carrying signs, four of them, one in each hand, all printed in felt pen.

  Ocean is holding FEMPIRE STRIKES BACK! and so BAD THE PARENTS ARE HERE, felt pens on cardboard. Windsong holds aloft CUNNING STUNTS and WATCH OUT! THESE PUSSIES SCRATCH!

  Bravo parents! Brava! My chest swells with pride. I may not need breast augmentation after all. Thank you Windsong and Ocean. I lose concentration and in the confusi
on, allow the Grim Brother standing beside me to take a leap in the blindfolded dark. He fumbles between my legs and gets his answer.

  Snake! I grab him back. The brother has a tiny erection. Of course.

  “Grab her by the pussy.” He squeezes out his feeble battle cry, and Windsong clobbers him with her CUNNING STUNTS sign while the others, intent on winning, follow my sister. Winning matters in the Grim Brother household, even when it means leaving casualties in the battlefield.

  “Warmer,” Moon shouts. They want the big reward so badly they keep following. My nearly blind sister, belting out “Warmer! Warmer!” leads them straight into the blackberries and stinging nettle, just like Brer Fox (like again).

  “Hot!” Moon yells at the top of her lungs. They are tangled in scratch wounds, but my genius General has managed to keep herself free of the brambles.

  The Grim Brothers shriek in pain. They tear off their blindfolds. They see each other, wounded boys in matching pink pussyhats shaped like vulvas. There is nothing huge waiting for them in the prickles, no candy store, no bright shiny toys, only scratches and blood, AND ADULT WITNESSES.

  They look absolutely ridiculous.

  “Who’s the pussy now?” my sister says in a calm voice. “You pussies have been drinking my pee and you have eaten mass quantities of ex-lax (Yes! I get it. ex-lax is Windsong’s laxative of choice, her anti-opioid), and now you are going to pick up your mother’s pots and pans and the wooden spoons she will use to spank you when she sees the condition of your Sunday School outfits, and you will get going before you start going because you are not going to use our bathroom.”

  The chanters are howling, making animal noises as they crash through the underbrush, taking the shortcut home. Having watched them scramble for food like a litter of deranged puppies, we can hardly imagine the scene in the Grim bathroom.

  The two of us are laughing so hard we are in danger of losing it. We both get our panties down in time to pee in the comfort of our own bushes while Ocean volunteers to clean up the tea by himself in case the Grim Father comes after us with his fence post auger. What is the bother of tidying up compared the safety of his children?

  We march back to the house, accompanied by Windsong, both kinds, and crow laughter. A storm may be whispering getting ready to roar, but we are armed and dangerous, and honour is on our side.

  “Sorry about your ex-lax, Mum. It was used for a higher purpose.”

  “It sure was,” she says.

  “I hope Ocean remembers to let the rabbits out.”

  “Have we made the world safer for them?” My sister wonders.

  “We’ll see.” Our mother might have found a renewed purpose in life.

  THE CHILD CITY

  They don’t know I’m watching. That’s what curtains are for, seeing and not being seen, or the opposite.

  The curtain is falling on our marriage, no excuses, no reason. Maybe it’s been there all along.

  “I’m playing house,” I’ve said on many occasions, excusing my febrile gusto for cooking and cleaning, my colour-coordinated clothesline, my weed-free garden, my compulsive needlework, and every play has a beginning, middle and end. Act 3.

  It’s a game of perfect symmetry, one Lego brick on another until someone stops breathing. First it was the babies that didn’t want to live. Now it’s me. Inhale like that, and the brick sticks in your throat. Believe me.

  I started by throwing things in the fire, photographs with his face cut out, jewellery, my mother’s black pearls.

  I’m attracted to fire. Does that define our species, we who cook our meat? We are hunters, but isn’t our definition of civility versus savagery “well done” as opposed to “rare”? I like my meat savage, with or without parasites; but then, how do you know; so many parasites are invisible.

  It’s dark outside, but the kids have flashlights with the trajectory of bullets in what we call the Garden of Eden, an acre of vegetables, orchards sloping to the estuary and fields dotted with sheep and evergreen high-rises, home to eagles and ravens.

  Paradise.

  And the children, undisturbed by torment, playing with Lego and Playmobil, building happy families and child cities. Just one ripple on the quiet pond of our existence, a childhood friend, no, more than a friend, a brother whose parents, alumnae of the Kuper Island Residential School, drowned in alcohol, choked on their own vomit, and left him in the care of the parish priest and a nun, and us, of course, because we were his rebound option, a safe haven with cookies and crayons and horses to ride.

  He burned three churches before they caught him and put him in jail.

  That was simple arithmetic, but the children needed to understand, “When you’ve been thrown in the fire, you start fires.”

  Once a rat came into our house and climbed a curtain. Don’t they say, see one count twenty? They probably climb all the curtains while we sleep. Rats, cockroaches, the vermin tiptoe out of the dark and violate our dreams. There’s no light on in the bedroom where I stand, looking down, watching my children scurry, life as we know it.

  More like fireflies. I see Ku Klux Klan, riding with torches at night, burning crosses on lawns.

  I had high fevers as a child, all of them turning into nightmares, terrifying fires: Nazis kindling their ovens with little children, Hansel and Gretel fattened up for the witch’s spit. My own children are fearless. They put out candles with their fingers, dip them in hot candle wax. They light matches and hold onto them.

  “Put away your childish things,” I said, because we are leaving. “Save your favourites and give the rest away.” Soon we’ll be starting over.

  Now, from my veiled vantage point, I wonder if that is wise. Is “moving on” a proper euphemism for slash and burn? Do I really expect to build our future on a cold fire? Will I wake up in my new bed in my new house with the taste of ashes in my mouth? Will they?

  What are they doing in the garden? I should go out and ask. Some dead babies are buried there and several pets, even the rat that climbed the curtain. I hit it with a shovel, and the child who tried to kiss it goodbye before I stopped him buried it in a shoebox.

  “Didn’t you tell us we’re all God’s creatures? What about ‘All my relations?”’ My children are my conscience. Perhaps this is why they will inherit the Earth. Maybe they will take better care of it. I wonder if they are digging up the dead. “You said to take your favourites.”

  No sound from birds in their nests, sheep in the barn, only wind shivering trees, lifting a few loose shingles, soft socks on the stairs, up and down. The children are trying to be quiet.

  Soon I will call them in from their night games, but not yet. It is after all the last time they will play in the garden. The moving truck is coming tomorrow morning.

  Now when I try to remember sounds of life in this house, I only hear weeping.

  Was that him? Did I miss something? The problem is, he was invisible too, except for the scent of lavender.

  Now the sky lights up. Northern lights, perhaps, or lightning, a summer storm, but it isn’t. I can see it clearly now. The light in the garden is the Child City, and it is burning.

  MUD PIES

  My maternal grandmother died the week I was born. I was travelling feet first, positioned to retrieve her Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook, every lady’s guide to menu planning and servant management, while she flew first-class in the opposite direction. In my usual left-handed way, I failed to make the catch and entered the world empty-handed and crying out for custard.

  An invalid, my grandmother must have spent most of her adult life eating comfort food. I must have inherited her addiction, bread highest on the list. Where else could it have come from?

  I had the usual two grandmothers, one who lived and one who died. The one who died was from a rare breed, Austrian Jewish aristocrats too privileged for cooking but not immune to the ovens, where most of her cohort perished. Even if she hadn’t been invalided by rheumatic fever, she would never have worn an apron.

  The
grandmother who lived was also visited by misfortune. My grandfather, the Seaforth Highlander who sang for the German and Canadian soldiers one Christmas in the trenches, became ill with tuberculosis after being gassed in France. Because he refused to die in the TB sanatorium, he had been allowed to come home on one condition, extreme hygiene. Cutlery was boiled. Tasting was verboten. That meant my surviving grandmother’s kitchen was off limits.

  Checkmate.

  She did, however, give me her old clock when she replaced it with something turquoise and New Look during a fifties kitchen renovation. That clock, cream with big black deco letters, would get top dollar at a swap meet these days. She gave it to me for “playing house.”

  Kids don’t play house. Kids do work. Whether it is over-watering a Wettums doll, covering sheets of paper with unintelligible child-glyphics or digging up the geraniums when I was asked to weed, I worked as hard as any adult.

  Since my mother lacked a kitchen tradition, her Formica temple was as pristine as a layout for House and Garden. Singing, “mud, glorious mud,” the Flanders and Swann song my father poured with bourbon over ice, I performed my cookery out of doors. In my summer kitchen, earth and sun facilitated the miracle of the loaves. I made the best dirt cuisine in the neighbourhood. Decorated with huckleberries, soapberries, rose and hydrangea petals, seasoned with love and solar energy, my mud pies were beautiful.

  Crow, my Wettums doll, a shape changer, was the beneficiary of a new mother-to-daughter tradition. She never complained. The leftovers were for her. “Eat crow,” my parents said, encouraging me to confess, and I confused them by eating Crow’s fingers, you are what you eat, my mantra.

  Bread is what mud pies aspire to be. These days, I am one of the world’s leading bread-makers. The Queen of bread. Are my loaves uniform? No. I consider it a point of pride that after I won the Cowichan Fall Fair bread-making competition ten years in a row, they made a new rule, “that it had to fit in a toaster.” What rubbish!