By the Rivers of Brooklyn (27 page)

“All the same, there are things she should know. Especially in her case.” Frances said no more, but Annie felt the weight of it like a pillowcase full of wet laundry on her back. She carried that burden, of all the things she needed to tell Claire.

She carried it for several more days, while she waited for her own bleeding to start, and weighed what she might say to Claire. She tried to remember what her own mother had said to her and Rose, but could remember nothing. Whatever it was, it must have been very effective in her case, and completely useless in Rose's. So perhaps it didn't matter.

But it seemed the timing was good, or maybe Frances had the second sight, because on Friday evening Claire came to the door of Annie's room while she was turning down the bed. “Um, Aunt Annie, I need…uh, I just need to know…that is, I…” The girl's voice, usually so measured and confident, trailed away.

“What is it, my love?”

“Well, the thing is, I've…ah…I've started having my…you know, my…my periods. Just today. At school. I told Valerie about it, and she gave me a…um, you know. But now I need…”

“I know what you need, my dear. Come with me and I'll show you where I keep the flannels. You can wash them out in a bucket of cold water and then put them in with the rest of the laundry. Are you feeling all right? Do you have any pain or anything?”

“Just a little bit,” Claire said. “Valerie told me all about it, so I knew what to expect. Valerie uses Kotex,” she added.

“Yes, lots of the younger women do. Maybe you'll want to get some of your own later on. You can ask your Aunt Frances about that. But for now I'll get you the flannels. And just let me get you a hot-water bottle. Sometimes that makes me feel better, to lie down with a hot-water bottle.”

Annie went downstairs and filled a hot-water bottle from the kettle, walked slowly back upstairs and into Claire's room. Claire was lying down already, half-curled. Annie handed her the hot-water bottle and paused, looking down at her.

“Thank you,” Claire said.

“You know, now, once you starts your monthlies, you can…you can have a baby.”

Claire, who had closed her eyes, opened them again, a little startled. “I know about that. Aunt Frances explained it all to Valerie and Val told me.”

“Oh. That's good then.” So she knew the facts. And what more was there to say? Be a good girl? Don't go into a dark lane with a fellow? Surely Claire had more sense. What Annie really wanted to say was,
Look at you, all grown up.
She recalled again bathing Claire's small body when she was a baby, and felt a physical pain at the knowledge that Claire was nearly a woman and would soon be gone.

“You look so much like your mother,” Annie said abruptly, and went out, closing the door.

She went downstairs and made herself a cup of tea. Her mother sat in the rocking chair, endlessly knitting. “Young Claire gone to bed already?”

“Yes, she's not feeling so good. I brought her up the hot-water bottle.”

Mom nodded. Her needles clicked.

“Some warm in here,” Annie said.

Mom looked up from her knitting and studied Annie's face. “You're right flushed, Annie, and 'tis not warm in here at all, in fact it's a bit cool, if anything. You wants to stir up the stove a little.”

Annie waved a hand in front of her face, not wanting to think about stirring up the coals. “Well, it feels warm to me.”

“And so it should. I was the same way, my dear, when I was on the change.”

Annie looked up sharply. “Oh no, Mom, I'm not…”

Her mother nodded and looked back at her knitting. “Oh yes, just like me. Hot flashes all hours of the day. Of course, I was forty-five, but plenty of women starts it at forty. High time you was finished with all that.”

Annie stared at her mother, then at the stove. Two months gone by now. And she had been having hot flashes.

She drew a heavy sigh and went over to open up the stove.
Thank goodness
, she thought,
I never said nothing to Bill.

CLAIRE
 
ST. JOHN'S, MAY 1948

V
ALERIE HAD A TRUNK
open on her bed; she was pulling books from her shelves and very slowly placing them in the trunk, a job which took her forever because she would get sidetracked by a book and sit down to read it. “
Little Women
,” she sighed as she riffled the pages. A wisp of dust drifted up. “Remember acting this out when we were little?”

“I remember,” Claire said. Valerie made her be Beth and she had to cough a lot and die young. Valerie always wanted to be Jo, because Jo was a writer. Claire's own favourite character was Meg, the sensible one who kept them all in line. Valerie used to say Meg and Amy weren't important; if there were only two of them they could do it with just Jo and Beth and pretend Meg and Amy were in another room.

Valerie laid the book down gently on top of her stack of Royal Readers in the trunk. “I'm not going to have any room left for clothes,” she said.

“You've got ages, you know,” Claire said. “You're not even leaving till school is out. It'd make more sense to be studying for your CHEs. If you want to go to university, you need to spend more time on your exams.”

“I suppose so.” Valerie sank down on the bed. “I won't ever really get to go to university, will I?” She turned her large pale eyes on Claire as if Claire could somehow look into the future.

Claire shrugged and dropped down on the bed beside her. “I don't know, Val. It's awfully expensive, and I don't think it's easy for girls to get in unless they've got extra-high marks. That's why you need to give it your best shot–”

“I don't know why
you're
not going to university. You've got the great marks and you're awfully smart and ambitious. If you came with me, we could both apply to the University of Toronto.” Valerie ran her fingers through her hair and started gathering strands on top of her head, trying, Claire thought, to look like somebody out of one of her boring old Jane Austen novels.

“I don't see the point of it, honestly. I don't want to be a teacher, and what else could you do with a university degree? I want a job, so I took the commercial course. By the end of August I'll be working in an office on Water Street, earning my own money.”

“I don't want to be a teacher either,” Valerie said, pouting. She stood up and pulled more books off the shelves. “I want to be a writer. But that's not a
job
. Mom says I have to prepare myself for something.”

“Valerie? Are you home? Where are your brothers?” Aunt Frances called from downstairs, shutting the door behind her. Click, click, click. Her heels came up the stairs, and she stood in the doorway, smart as paint in her work clothes, her hat perched on her neat curls. She pulled off her gloves a finger at a time, looking around the room with a single frown line between her eyebrows.

“They're over at Aunt Annie's,” Valerie said.

“Are you still at those dusty old books? I wish you'd go through your clothes and decide what's worth taking and what to leave behind. Of course most of our things are going to look out of date in Toronto. I'll take you down on Yonge Street, Valerie, and we'll get you some lovely new outfits. Now, Claire, you know it's never too late to change your mind about coming with us,” Aunt Frances continued, turning to her. “You're still giving it some thought, aren't you? I've talked to Annie and she agrees it would be a wonderful chance for you. You've got excellent marks in the commercial course, you'll have no trouble finding a good job. You'd really have a chance of getting ahead, meeting someone nice.”

“Yes, thank you, Aunt Frances. I'm still thinking it over,” Claire replied, and got a beaming smile in return. She had a gift for pleasing other people's mothers: unlike real daughters, she always spoke politely and seemed grateful for advice and attention.

Walking down the lane between the houses half an hour later, Claire wondered what advice her own mother might give her. Rose's letters and cards arrived erratically; one year there might be a card for her birthday, the next year her birthday would pass unmarked and a letter would arrive months later.
I'm sure
you are being a good girl for Mother and Annie,
she wrote last Christmas.
Work hard
in school and don't go around with boys. Nobody knows the troubles I've seen. Hugs and
Kisses, Your Loving Mother.
Claire had been unsure what to make of that letter, and had not been sorry when it was misplaced. One time she used to keep old letters and foolishness like that, but when she turned sixteen she cleared out the drawer where she kept those things and threw most of them away.

Aunt Frances was right, of course. She would have far more opportunities in Toronto than she'd ever have here. The idea of leaving school, getting a job, making her own way in the world, was exciting. The idea of doing it in a big city, far from St. John's, was even better. Aunt Annie seemed to approve. She said how much she'd miss Claire, of course, but Claire wondered. Ever since Annie and Bill got married they had had family tripping over them. They might like to be able to sit down and eat a meal in peace without the whole family trooping in and out through the back door.

Claire let herself in and sat down at the kitchen table. Aunt Annie was setting the table for supper; she looked up and smiled when Claire came in. Aunt Annie had some grey in her hair now, peeking out among the dusty brown underneath the bandanna she always wore tied over her head in the kitchen, and she had lines around her eyes.

“Where's Bill and the boys?” Claire asked Annie. “I thought I would have passed the boys coming down the lane.”

“Oh, they talked Wince Winsor into giving them a ride home in the car,” Annie said. Uncle Bill's brother had recently acquired an old Packard and Kenny and Danny thought it was the greatest treat in the world to go for rides in it. “Once they're in Toronto they'll look back and laugh, to think it was such a big deal to ride in a car,” Aunt Annie added. “You can hardly walk on the street for all the cars up in Toronto, from what I hear tell. Certainly if it's anything like New York, from what Jim and Ethel says.”

“Answer me this,” Grandmother said from her chair. “Toronto. With the rest of the family down in Brooklyn. Why couldn't they go to New York along with Ethel and Jim, someplace where they already got people? If they had to go away again, why wouldn't they go back to New York? I never heard tell of anybody going to Toronto.”

“Two boys in my class are going to Toronto once school is over,” Claire volunteered. “After all, we'll be part of Canada soon enough.”

“Well now, that's not a foregone conclusion, is it?” Annie said. She was rather torn on the question of Confederation, as Bill and his family were against it, but Harold and Frances were voting for it.

“Canada!” Grandmother said with some venom. Her only position on the issue – as on any other – was to disagree with the last opinion anyone expressed. “Why not leave well enough alone? There'll always be an England, you know.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose there will,” Aunt Annie said soothingly. “Of course there will.”

“God save the King,” Grandmother said. “Canada, my foot. Oh, I dropped a stitch.” She handed her knitting needles to Annie.

“Well, of course, there'll always be an England, but England won't always look after us, will they?” Claire countered. “And why would we want them to? The Commission of Government hasn't done a thing for Newfoundland. Mr. Smallwood knows what he's doing if you ask me.”

“My goodness, you do know a lot,” Aunt Annie said, picking up her mother's dropped stitch and handing the knitting back to her. “I suppose they talk about it at school all the time, do they?”

“Yes, and it's a shame the young people can't vote, because it's our future that's being decided.” Claire was all for Confederation; she'd competed in a debating contest at school and her team – pro-Confederate – had won easily. She was one of only two girls on the debating team and Mr. Hobbs had told her she ought to go to Memorial College – which just seemed to bring everything back from the broad question of Newfoundland's future to the narrower one of Claire Evans' future.

“Aunt Frances was talking to me again about coming with them,” she said, taking chicken from the frying pan to a plate and laying it on the table. She looked quickly at Aunt Annie, thinking that maybe if she could catch her aunt off-guard, she might see what Aunt Annie really felt about the idea of Claire going to Toronto. But Aunt Annie's face looked as composed and sensible as ever.

“It's something to consider, indeed,” Annie said, putting out the creamed potatoes. “It's a great opportunity. Seems there's more people every day going away, off to the States or to Canada. Makes you wonder if there'll be anyone left here in twenty-five years.” She stirred the gravy and sprinkled another pinch of salt into it. “One thing I keep thinking of, is how much you'd miss Valerie when she goes. Sure, you and her have been like two twins almost since you were born.”