A Bird in the House
“I don’t think it’s the comedown,” my father said. “If I were somewhere else, I don’t suppose it would matter to me, either, except where you’re concerned. But I suppose you’d work too hard wherever you were – it’s bred into you. If you haven’t got anything to slave away at, you’ll sure as hell invent something.”
“What do you think I should do, let the house go to wrack and ruin? That would go over well with your mother, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s just it,” my father said. “It’s the damned house all the time. I haven’t only taken on my father’s house, I’ve taken on everything that goes with it, apparently. Sometimes I really wonder –”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve inherited some practicality even if you haven’t,” my mother said. “I’ll say that for the Connors – they aren’t given to brooding, thank the Lord. Do you want your egg poached or scrambled?”
“Scrambled,” my father said. “All I hope is that this Noreen doesn’t get married straightaway, that’s all.”
“She won’t,” my mother said. “Who’s she going to meet who could afford to marry?”
“I marvel at you, Beth,” my father said. “You look as though a puff of wind would blow you away. But underneath, by God, you’re all hardwood.”
“Don’t talk stupidly,” my mother said. “All I hope is that she doesn’t object to taking your mother’s breakfast up on a tray.”
“That’s right,” my father said angrily. “Rub it in.”
“Oh Ewen, I’m sorry!” my mother cried, her face suddenly stricken. “I don’t know why I say these things. I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” my father said. “Here, cut it out, honey. Just for God’s sake please don’t cry.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother repeated, blowing her nose.
“We’re both sorry,” my father said. “Not that that changes anything.”
After my father had gone, I got down from my chair and went to my mother.
“I don’t want you to go back to the office. I don’t want a hired girl here. I’ll hate her.”
My mother sighed, making me feel that I was placing an intolerable burden on her, and yet making me resent having to feel this weight. She looked tired, as she often did these days. Her tiredness bored me, made me want to attack her for it.
“Catch me getting along with a dumb old hired girl,” I threatened.
“Do what you like,” my mother said abruptly. “What can I do about it?”
And then, of course, I felt bereft, not knowing which way to turn.
My father need not have worried about Noreen getting married. She was, as it turned out, interested not in boys but in God. My mother was relieved about the boys but alarmed about God.
“It isn’t natural,” she said, “for a girl of seventeen. Do you think she’s all right mentally, Ewen?”
When my parents, along with Grandmother MacLeod, went to the United Church every Sunday, I was made to go to Sunday school in the church basement, where there were small red chairs which humiliatingly resembled kindergarten furniture, and pictures of Jesus wearing a white sheet and surrounded by a whole lot of well-dressed kids whose mothers obviously had not suffered them to come unto Him until every face and ear was properly scrubbed. Our religious observances also included grace at meals, when my father would mumble “For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful Amen,” running the words together as though they were one long word. My mother approved of these rituals, which seemed decent and moderate to her. Noreen’s religion, however, was a different matter. Noreen belonged to the Tabernacle of the Risen and Reborn, and she had got up to testify no less than seven times in the past two years, she told us. My mother, who could not imagine anyone’s voluntarily making a public spectacle of themselves, was profoundly shocked by this revelation.
“Don’t worry,” my father soothed her. “She’s all right. She’s just had kind of a dull life, that’s all.”
My mother shrugged and went on worrying and trying to help Noreen without hurting her feelings, by tactful remarks about the advisability of modulating one’s voice when singing hymns, and the fact that there was plenty of hot water so Noreen really didn’t need to hesitate about taking a bath. She even bought a razor and a packet of blades and whispered to Noreen that any girl who wore transparent blouses so much would probably like to shave under her arms. None of these suggestions had the slightest effect on Noreen. She did not cease belting out hymns at the top of her voice, she bathed once a fortnight, and the sorrel-coloured hair continued to bloom like a thicket of Indian paintbrush in her armpits.
Grandmother MacLeod refused to speak to Noreen. This caused Noreen a certain amount of bewilderment until she finally hit on an answer.
“Your poor grandma,” she said. “She is deaf as a post. These things are sent to try us here on earth, Vanessa. But if she makes it into Heaven, I’ll bet you anything she will hear clear as a bell.”
Noreen and I talked about Heaven quite a lot, and also Hell. Noreen had an intimate and detailed knowledge of both places. She not only knew what they looked like – she even knew how big they were. Heaven was seventy-seven thousand miles square and it had four gates, each one made out of a different kind of precious jewel. The Pearl Gate, the Topaz Gate, the Amethyst Gate, the Ruby Gate – Noreen would reel them off, all the gates of Heaven. I told Noreen they sounded like poetry, but she was puzzled by my reaction and said I shouldn’t talk that way. If you said poetry, it sounded like it was just made up and not really so, Noreen said.
Hell was larger than Heaven, and when I asked why, thinking of it as something of a comedown for God, Noreen said naturally it had to be bigger because there were a darn sight more people there than in Heaven. Hell was one hundred and ninety million miles deep and was in perpetual darkness, like a cave or under the sea. Even the flames (this was the awful thing) did not give off any light.
I did not actually believe in Noreen’s doctrines, but the images which they conjured up began to inhabit my imagination. Noreen’s fund of exotic knowledge was not limited to religion, although in a way it all seemed related. She could do many things which had a spooky tinge to them. Once when she was making a cake, she found we had run out of eggs. She went outside and gathered a bowl of fresh snow and used it instead. The cake rose like a charm, and I stared at Noreen as though she were a sorceress. In fact, I began to think of her as a sorceress, someone not quite of this earth. There was nothing unearthly about her broad shoulders and hips and her forest of dark red hair, but even these features took on a slightly sinister significance to me. I no longer saw her through the eyes of the expressed opinions of my mother and father, as a girl who had quit school at grade eight and whose life on the farm had been endlessly drab. I knew the truth – Noreen’s life had not been drab at all, for she dwelt in a world of violent splendours, a world filled with angels whose wings of delicate light bore real feathers, and saints shining like the dawn, and prophets who spoke in ancient tongues, and the ecstatic souls of the saved, as well as denizens of the lower regions – mean-eyed imps and crooked cloven-hoofed monsters and beasts with the bodies of swine and the human heads of murderers, and lovely depraved jezebels torn by dogs through all eternity. The middle layer of Creation, our earth, was equally full of grotesque presences, for Noreen believed strongly in the visitation of ghosts and the communication with spirits. She could prove this with her Ouija board. We would both place our fingers lightly on the indicator, and it would skim across the board and spell out answers to our questions. I did not believe whole-heartedly in the Ouija board, either, but I was cautious about the kind of question I asked, in case the answer would turn out unfavourable and I would be unable to forget it.
One day Noreen told me she could also make a table talk. We used the small table in my bedroom, and sure enough, it lifted very slightly under our fingertips and tapped once for Yes, twice for No. Noreen asked if her Aunt Ruthie would get better from the kidney operation, and th
e table replied No. I withdrew my hands.
“I don’t want to do it any more.”
“Gee, what’s the matter, Vanessa?” Noreen’s plain placid face creased in a frown. “We only just begun.”
“I have to do my homework.”
My heart lurched as I said this. I was certain Noreen would know I was lying, and that she would know not by any ordinary perception, either. But her attention had been caught by something else, and I was thankful, at least until I saw what it was.
My bedroom window was not opened in the coldest weather. The storm window, which was fitted outside as an extra wall against the winter, had three small circular holes in its frame so that some fresh air could seep into the house. The sparrow must have been floundering in the new snow on the roof, for it had crawled in through one of these holes and was now caught between the two layers of glass. I could not bear the panic of the trapped bird, and before I realised what I was doing, I had thrown open the bedroom window. I was not releasing the sparrow into any better a situation, I soon saw, for instead of remaining quiet and allowing us to catch it in order to free it, it began flying blindly around the room, hitting the lampshade, brushing against the walls, its wings seeming to spin faster and faster.
I was petrified. I thought I would pass out if those palpitating wings touched me. There was something in the bird’s senseless movements that revolted me. I also thought it was going to damage itself, break one of those thin wing-bones, perhaps, and then it would be lying on the floor, dying, like the pimpled and horribly featherless baby birds we saw sometimes on the sidewalks in the spring when they had fallen out of their nests. I was not any longer worried about the sparrow. I wanted only to avoid the sight of it lying broken on the floor. Viciously, I thought that if Noreen said, God sees the little sparrow fall, I would kick her in the shins. She did not, however, say this.
“A bird in the house means a death in the house,” Noreen remarked.
Shaken, I pulled my glance away from the whirling wings and looked at Noreen.
“What?”
“That’s what I’ve heard said, anyhow.”
The sparrow had exhausted itself. It lay on the floor, spent and trembling. I could not bring myself to touch it. Noreen bent and picked it up. She cradled it with great gentleness between her cupped hands. Then we took it downstairs, and when I had opened the back door, Noreen set the bird free.
“Poor little scrap,” she said, and I felt struck to the heart, knowing she had been concerned all along about the sparrow, while I, perfidiously, in the chaos of the moment, had been concerned only about myself.
“Wanna do some with the Ouija board, Vanessa?” Noreen asked.
I shivered a little, perhaps only because of the blast of cold air which had come into the kitchen when the door was opened.
“No thanks, Noreen. Like I said, I got my homework to do. But thanks all the same.”
“That’s okay,” Noreen said in her guileless voice. “Any time.”
But whenever she mentioned the Ouija board or the talking table, after that, I always found some excuse not to consult these oracles.
“Do you want to come to church with me this evening, Vanessa?” my father asked.
“How come you’re going to the evening service?” I enquired.
“Well, we didn’t go this morning. We went snowshoeing instead, remember? I think your grandmother was a little bit put out about it. She went alone this morning. I guess it wouldn’t hurt you and me, to go now.”
We walked through the dark, along the white streets, the snow squeaking dryly under our feet. The streetlights were placed at long intervals along the sidewalks, and around each pole the circle of flimsy light created glistening points of blue and crystal on the crusted snow. I would have liked to take my father’s hand, as I used to do, but I was too old for that now. I walked beside him, taking long steps so he would not have to walk more slowly on my account.
The sermon bored me, and I began leafing through the Hymnary for entertainment. I must have drowsed, for the next thing I knew, my father was prodding me and we were on our feet for the closing hymn.
Near the Cross, near the Cross,
Be my glory ever,
Till my ransomed soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.
I knew the tune well, so I sang loudly for the first verse. But the music to that hymn is sombre, and all at once the words themselves seemed too dreadful to be sung. I stopped singing, my throat knotted. I thought I was going to cry, but I did not know why, except that the song recalled to me my Grandmother Connor, who had been dead only a year now. I wondered why her soul needed to be ransomed. If God did not think she was good enough just as she was, then I did not have much use for His opinion. Rest beyond the river – was that what had happened to her? She had believed in Heaven, but I did not think that rest beyond the river was quite what she had in mind. To think of her in Noreen’s flashy Heaven, though – that was even worse. Someplace where nobody ever got annoyed or had to be smoothed down and placated, someplace where there were never any family scenes – that would have suited my Grandmother Connor. Maybe she wouldn’t have minded a certain amount of rest beyond the river, at that.
When we had the silent prayer, I looked at my father. He sat with his head bowed and his eyes closed. He was frowning deeply, and I could see the pulse in his temple. I wondered then what he believed. I did not have any real idea what it might be. When he raised his head, he did not look uplifted or anything like that. He merely looked tired. Then Reverend McKee pronounced the benediction, and we could go home.
“What do you think about all that stuff, Dad?” I asked hesitantly, as we walked.
“What stuff, honey?”
“Oh, Heaven and Hell, and like that.”
My father laughed. “Have you been listening to Noreen too much? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think they’re actual places. Maybe they stand for something that happens all the time here, or else doesn’t happen. It’s kind of hard to explain. I guess I’m not so good at explanations.”
Nothing seemed to have been made any clearer to me. I reached out and took his hand, not caring that he might think this a babyish gesture.
“I hate that hymn!”
“Good Lord,” my father said in astonishment. “Why, Vanessa?”
But I did not know and so could not tell him.
Many people in Manawaka had flu that winter, so my father and Dr. Cates were kept extremely busy. I had flu myself, and spent a week in bed, vomiting only the first day and after that enjoying poor health, as my mother put it, with Noreen bringing me ginger ale and orange juice, and each evening my father putting a wooden tongue-depressor into my mouth and peering down my throat, then smiling and saying he thought I might live after all.
Then my father got sick himself, and had to stay at home and go to bed. This was such an unusual occurrence that it amused me.
“Doctors shouldn’t get sick,” I told him.
“You’re right,” he said. “That was pretty bad management.”
“Run along now, dear,” my mother said.
That night I woke and heard voices in the upstairs hall. When I went out, I found my mother and Grandmother MacLeod, both in their dressing-gowns. With them was Dr. Cates. I did not go immediately to my mother, as I would have done only a year before. I stood in the doorway of my room, squinting against the sudden light.
“Mother – what is it?”
She turned, and momentarily I saw the look on her face before she erased it and put on a contrived calm.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Dr. Cates has just come to have a look at Daddy. You go on back to sleep.”
The wind was high that night, and I lay and listened to it rattling the storm windows and making the dry and winter-stiffened vines of the Virginia creeper scratch like small persistent claws against the red brick. In the morning, my mother told me that my father had developed pneumonia.
Dr. Cates did not think i
t would be safe to move my father to the hospital. My mother began sleeping in the spare bedroom, and after she had been there for a few nights, I asked if I could sleep in there too. I thought she would be bound to ask me why, and I did not know what I would say, but she did not ask. She nodded, and in some way her easy agreement upset me.
That night Dr. Cates came again, bringing with him one of the nurses from the hospital. My mother stayed upstairs with them. I sat with Grandmother MacLeod in the living room. That was the last place in the world I wanted to be, but I thought she would be offended if I went off. She sat as straight and rigid as a totem pole, and embroidered away at the needlepoint cushion cover she was doing. I perched on the edge of the chesterfield and kept my eyes fixed on The White Company by Conan Doyle, and from time to time I turned a page. I had already read it three times before, but luckily Grandmother MacLeod did not know that. At nine o’clock she looked at her gold brooch watch, which she always wore pinned to her dress, and told me to go to bed, so I did that.
I wakened in darkness. At first, it seemed to me that I was in my own bed, and everything was as usual, with my parents in their room, and Roddie curled up in the crib in his room, and Grandmother MacLeod sleeping with her mouth open in her enormous spool bed, surrounded by half a dozen framed photos of Uncle Roderick and only one of my father, and Noreen snoring fitfully in the room next to mine, with the dark flames of her hair spreading out across the pillow, and the pink and silver motto cards from the Tabernacle stuck with adhesive tape onto the wall beside her bed – Lean on Him, Emmanuel Is My Refuge, Rock of Ages Cleft for Me.
Then in the total night around me, I heard a sound. It was my mother, and she was crying, not loudly at all, but from somewhere very deep inside her. I sat up in bed. Everything seemed to have stopped, not only time but my own heart and blood as well. Then my mother noticed that I was awake.
I did not ask her, and she did not tell me anything. There was no need. She held me in her arms, or I held her, I am not certain which. And after a while the first mourning stopped, too, as everything does sooner or later, for when the limits of endurance have been reached, then people must sleep.