ghost of Thomas Scott,” she would tell me as soon as I learned that it was words she was speaking, “the ghost ofThomas Scott has left his mark on you.” Running her dry hand over the spot, an unhealable blister, “You’ve been touched,” she would say, “by the death of an Orangeman, a drunken rogue, Thomas Scott.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
T HERE WAS A BOBCAT in our woods that summer. My mother saw the print of its big soft pads pressed into the gumbo at the river, where it had gone to drink. The nights were loud. I grew dependent on the voices of wood frogs from the marsh behind the forest and wouldn’t sleep without their ululating drone, and forever after that sound would slow the pace of my heart and I’d fall into peace as if returned to harmony with my mother’s heartbeat. Then our sleep would be broken by the scream of a rabbit when the bobcat got it.
My parents never really named me. The dark newborn’s hair had given way to a white cloud of curls floating about my head. So they called me Blondie, a purely descriptive designation, really not a name at all.
My mother carried me in a sling stuffed with clean cotton. Her hair had grown very long, and she wound it into braids that lay like soft ropes around me. When my mother was a man, her driving energy had been situated in her cerebrum, rather like a propeller on the nose of a plane. But returned to womanhood, she decelerated, became as low-pitched as the diesel throb of the frogs, as if she were driven from a source low in her belly. She wore skirts and aprons. The only articles of a man’s clothing that she would not relinquish were my father’s woollen socks, because they fit with her beaded moccasins, and her hat, rain or shine.With the moccasins, the papoose-sling, the cotton skirts, the shambling hat, she looked like a Métisse. She had a narrow beak. Her strong Methodist jaw, her muscular upper lip, her big-knuckled hands and long arms were attached to a short, wiry frame.
She was having a bit of trouble relaxing into civilian life. It wasn’t very interesting being an ordinary woman in the province of Manitoba. The land was wonderful, but the politics were, quite frankly, ugly and deceitful. Thanks to Riel, Sir John A. had indeed granted us bilingual schools, given us a few seats in the Canadian Parliament, promised treaties to settle the Indians. Everybody got excited at the prospect of being railroaded. He had a genius for economy of scale. He could have been a brilliant ecologist, with his grasp of tautologies, of recycled manure. Every Christmas in our meagre household, as I unpacked my tiny Christmas stocking, I’d have Sir John A. Macdonald on my mind. He would have made a brilliant housewife, the way he could stretch a morsel of liberty, a tidbit of dignity. Sir John A., the Mother of Confederation.
Macdonald packed the hundred square miles surrounding our homestead with all the provincial status we could eat. It got hot in here, steamed up with our new responsibilities, nerved up with the shock of our brand-new identity. And around us like a wine-dark sea lay the vast holdings of the Canadian government, the sable empire of what was still called the North-West Territories. Administered from Ottawa. Hawks and eagles, owls and rabbits, bear and wolf, Cree and Ojibwa. Latent, veiled in royal rhetoric. Real estate. Millions of acres of real estate. Make sure it’s Protestant, British and white. And keep it out of thehands of the Americans. The quick old boys in Ontario planned to run it for themselves.
It began to rain. It rained for four days. We went out (my white head protected by a wild rhubarb leaf) to pick the end of the corn, knee-deep in mud. A warm rain and no wind, but hard, hard rain. It began to resemble punishment. My mother had a spacious soul, and she accommodated the ulcer of guilt from Thomas Scott’s death sentence. Thomas Scott lived with us, so to speak, in the dark corners, but we still lit the lamps, remained loyal to
CHAPTER SEVEN
T HERE WAS A BOBCAT in our woods that summer. My mother saw the print of its big soft pads pressed into the gumbo at the river, where it had gone to drink. The nights were loud. I grew dependent on the voices of wood frogs from the marsh behind the forest and wouldn’t sleep without their ululating drone, and forever after that sound would slow the pace of my heart and I’d fall into peace as if returned to harmony with my mother’s heartbeat. Then our sleep would be broken by the scream of a rabbit when the bobcat got it.
My parents never really named me. The dark newborn’s hair had given way to a white cloud of curls floating about my head. So they called me Blondie, a purely descriptive designation, really not a name at all.
My mother carried me in a sling stuffed with clean cotton. Her hair had grown very long, and she wound it into braids that lay like soft ropes around me. When my mother was a man, her driving energy had been situated in her cerebrum, rather like a propeller on the nose of a plane. But returned to womanhood, she decelerated, became as low-pitched as the diesel throb of the frogs, as if she were driven from a source low in her belly. She wore skirts and aprons. The only articles of a man’s clothing that she would not relinquish were my father’s woollen socks, because they fit with her beaded moccasins, and her hat, rain or shine.With the moccasins, the papoose-sling, the cotton skirts, the shambling hat, she looked like a Métisse. She had a narrow beak. Her strong Methodist jaw, her muscular upper lip, her big-knuckled hands and long arms were attached to a short, wiry frame.
She was having a bit of trouble relaxing into civilian life. It wasn’t very interesting being an ordinary woman in the province of Manitoba. The land was wonderful, but the politics were, quite frankly, ugly and deceitful. Thanks to Riel, Sir John A. had indeed granted us bilingual schools, given us a few seats in the Canadian Parliament, promised treaties to settle the Indians. Everybody got excited at the prospect of being railroaded. He had a genius for economy of scale. He could have been a brilliant ecologist, with his grasp of tautologies, of recycled manure. Every Christmas in our meagre household, as I unpacked my tiny Christmas stocking, I’d have Sir John A. Macdonald on my mind. He would have made a brilliant housewife, the way he could stretch a morsel of liberty, a tidbit of dignity. Sir John A., the Mother of Confederation.
Macdonald packed the hundred square miles surrounding our homestead with all the provincial status we could eat. It got hot in here, steamed up with our new responsibilities, nerved up with the shock of our brand-new identity. And around us like a wine-dark sea lay the vast holdings of the Canadian government, the sable empire of what was still called the North-West Territories. Administered from Ottawa. Hawks and eagles, owls and rabbits, bear and wolf, Cree and Ojibwa. Latent, veiled in royal rhetoric. Real estate. Millions of acres of real estate. Make sure it’s Protestant, British and white. And keep it out of thehands of the Americans. The quick old boys in Ontario planned to run it for themselves.
It began to rain. It rained for four days. We went out (my white head protected by a wild rhubarb leaf) to pick the end of the corn, knee-deep in mud. A warm rain and no wind, but hard, hard rain. It began to resemble punishment. My mother had a spacious soul, and she accommodated the ulcer of guilt from Thomas Scott’s death sentence. Thomas Scott lived with us, so to speak, in the dark corners, but we still lit the lamps, remained loyal to
Similar Books
