Discovering Emily (6 page)

I don't care, Emily told herself. I'll never be good enough to be a real artist, anyway.

Winter seemed to last a long time, but finally the green buds of new leaves appeared on the trees outside Emily's window. Father was in a good mood and promised the family a picnic the following Saturday. The days before the picnic crawled along. The hands of the clock seemed to stick in one place and Emily thought Saturday would never come. But it did.

Emily's aunt and uncle were visiting from San Francisco, so Father ordered the omnibus to pick them up and take them out to Mill Stream. The bus was yellow with carpeted seats. Emily's uncle made a nest of cushions in one corner for Aunty.
The baskets of food were tucked in around her, then the children climbed in. Emily settled on one of the high seats. Up ahead, the driver called for the two horses to be off. The bus jerked and rattled over the dirt roads. The wheels were rimmed with iron and made a terrible clanging sound over the stones. Emily's body swayed, and her dangling legs bumped against the bottom of the seat. She began to feel queasy. She climbed up onto her knees and rested her arms on the open window ledge. That was better.

On her nest of cushions Aunty coughed and held a white lace handkerchief up to her face.

“The dust is going to ruin my new coat,” she complained. She waved her hankie at Uncle, and he hurried to close Emily's window. Emily went back to bumping and swaying and feeling queasy.

Finally, the omnibus came to a stop. The driver opened the door and everyone spilled out onto a grassy clearing beside a stream. Emily stood, drinking in the sight of
meadow and forest, the smell of new green, the tinkling sound of the moving water. Behind her, Lizzie pushed past, carrying a basket. Reluctantly, Emily turned back to help unload the bus.

Soon, Dede had a tablecloth spread across the grass, and she and Mother were removing cloth bundles from the baskets and unwrapping cakes, pies, cold meat and sandwiches. Uncle made a new nest of cushions for Aunty next to the tablecloth.

“Lunch first, children,” said Mother. “Then you can play.”

After they hurried through their food, Emily, Alice and Lizzie jumped to their feet and headed to the stream. Little Richard followed them.

“Keep by the stream,” Mother called after them. “Don't go into the woods — and watch out for your brother.”

“You have four hours,” Father called, holding up his watch on its chain.

Emily sighed happily. Four hours was a wonderfully long time. She walked slowly,
poking along the edge of the stream. They followed it into the forest, though they stayed close to the water as Mother had directed. The woods were too thick to get into, anyway. Pine and cedar trees towered overhead, smelling spicy and sweet. The stream made a tunnel through the dark, shadowy forest. This was the type of wild place Emily loved.

She climbed from rock to rock. In one spot the stream rushed around a huge boulder and bubbled into a pool. In another spot the stream was gentle and slow. Mossy stones looked like babies' heads, which Alice pretended to be giving a bath. Many-fingered ferns hung over the banks, dipping into the water. Around a bend, there was a muddy beach with mysterious heart shaped prints.

“Deer hooves,” said Lizzie.

Emily imagined the gentle deer coming to the stream to drink. She sat down on her knees and bent forward. In front of her the water looked clear and fresh. She was thirsty.

“Milly!” Alice cried in alarm, catching hold of the back of Emily's pinafore as she began to topple over into the stream.

Emily flung out her hands to help stop her fall. One of them went into the stream, but her sleeve was only wet up to the elbow. Not too bad, Emily thought.

Plop
! Something jumped into the water beside Emily.

Splash
! Both Emily's sleeves went in up to the elbows this time. She pulled her hands out of the water, triumphantly holding a large, golden-brown toad.

“Ugh!” said Lizzie and Alice together. “You'll get warts.”

Emily turned her back on them and held the toad for little Richard to see. His eyes opened wide as he stared at the toad. He smiled in appreciation. Emily put the toad in a tin and placed a large skunk cabbage leaf over top for a lid, then she hid it under a plant to collect later.

Suddenly, Dede appeared from around the bend behind them.

“It's time to go home,” she said.

“It is not!” Emily cried. They'd hardly been gone long at all.

Dede gave Emily an angry pinch, then turned to take little Richard's hand. For the first time, Emily noticed that he looked tired.

“It's been four hours,” Dede said as she began to march them back.

Emily hung behind to pick up the toad. She looked up into the silent trees. Only the stream made any sound. How could a few hours have gone so quickly when Saturday had taken so long to arrive?

She said good-bye to the forest and stream and followed the others back. At the picnic site, the baskets were already packed, and Uncle was building a new nest for Aunty in the omnibus. Mother was seated in the bus, looking tired. Richard climbed up beside her and laid his head on her lap. He was instantly asleep. His toy watch dangled out of his pocket. The hands had not moved since they'd started on the trip that morning. The toy watch is much truer than Father's real one, Emily thought.

She sat down across from Aunty. The bus rolled and bumped along. Emily peeked under the skunk cabbage leaf she'd placed over the toad's tin.

“Emily dear,” said Aunty in an indulgent voice. “You must throw that leaf out of the window. The smell is upsetting your old aunty.”

Reluctantly, Emily tossed the leaf out the window.

“What do you have in the tin, dear?” asked Aunty.

Annoyed that Aunty had made her throw out the leaf, Emily thrust the tin up to the old woman's face.

Aunty screeched.

Dede reached across, took the tin and looked inside. Before Emily could stop her, she flung it out the window, toad and all.

Emily swallowed a cry and twisted around to look. As the omnibus clattered forward, the tin can bounced off into the bushes at the side of the road. She could just make out the golden-brown shape of the toad hopping slowly back toward the stream.

Sitting in the hard, wooden desk at school the next week, Emily couldn't stop her mind from wandering back to the stream. She wondered how the toad was doing. Only art class could keep her attention. In other classes, the time dragged, but in art class it flew just as it had at the stream. She had tried to stop being interested in art, but it was something inside her that had taken hold. She couldn't shake it off.

Art was like the British Columbia nightingales. This was a nickname Father had given to the tree frogs that sang each spring in Beacon Hill Park. It was hard to believe that such a tiny creature could make such
a big noise. When she was smaller Emily had been frightened by the chirping rattling sound that came in the open window and filled the whole bedroom at night. When Father had told them it was British Columbia's nightingales, she had imagined the nightingales to be huge creatures lying in wait in the park swamp. No wonder her parents had forbidden her to wander alone through the park.

Then Mother had told Emily that a nightingale was an English bird that didn't live in Victoria at all and that the name was just Father's idea of a joke. Now Emily loved the sound of the frogs in spring. All winter you heard nothing from them, then suddenly they were there, filling the whole world with their sound. Art was like that inside Emily. Now that it had woken, she couldn't keep it quiet. She was like the frogs too — not a beautiful English singing bird, but a spunky creaking British Columbia frog. And she liked it.

At home she continued to draw at her easel, and Alice continued to complain about
sweeping around the legs. Sometimes it seemed to Emily, though, that the complaining was just habit, and Alice didn't really mind. Once, Alice had even told her that she thought Emily's drawing was improving, but Emily was sure she'd only said it to be nice. Lizzie had not said anything nice when she tripped over one of Emily's large plaster noses. She still thought Emily was wasting her time with art. Emily scowled at Lizzie and tried to ignore her words, but she felt discouraged. With all her heart, Emily wished she could be an artist. But wishes had disappointed her too many times.

One art class, Miss Woods announced that they were going to have a contest to see who could copy the best.

“Once you have learned how to copy,” explained Miss Woods, “you can begin drawing from life.”

The idea of drawing from life was exciting. Copying pictures was getting dull. Miss woods gave Emily a picture of a boy holding a rabbit. Emily looked at the picture. She tried to imagine drawing a real live rabbit,
and thought about what the rabbit would feel like in her own arms. She remembered the day she drew the picture of Carlow — his warm fur and his wet nose. The rabbit's nose would twitch. Its fur would be softer. Emily's pencil moved across the paper. She forgot about the other children. The lines of the pencil and the imagined feel of the rabbit blended together and filled Emily.

When she was finished, Emily put down her pencil. She felt light and happy.

Miss Woods walked around the room, looking carefully at each of the children's drawings. She held up one that a girl named Bessie Nuthall had done. The picture of a girl with a basket was very neat and carefully drawn. The winner for sure, Emily thought. But then Miss Woods put the drawing down and walked on. She picked up Emily's. She seemed to be frowning at the smudged lines, and Emily sank down in her seat. Her happy feeling seeped away. It was hopeless. She would never be good at anything.

“This is the winner!” Miss Woods announced with a big smile.

It was Emily's picture.

“It's not the neatest,” said Miss Woods. “But it's got the most life in it.”

When Emily walked home from school she felt so light her feet barely touched the ground. The road was muddy from spring rain, so she ran along the wooden sidewalk and jumped off at the gate in front of the Carr house. First, she went to Carlow's kennel and crouched down to pet him. His muddy paws left marks on her pinafore, but she didn't care. His tail wagged happily, and Emily felt that if she had a tail it would be wagging too. Then, she ran into the house.

Dede was just coming out of the kitchen.

“Quiet!” she snapped. “Mother is resting.” Emily stopped as suddenly as if she'd
bumped into a wall. Dede was never happy with anything she did. She probably wouldn't like Emily's new drawing. She'd think it was messy like the Carlow drawing. She probably wouldn't care about the contest. Slowly, Emily held out her picture.

“Look,” she whispered. “My drawing was picked the best in the whole class.”

“It's not nice to be boastful,” Dede scolded. But she took the drawing and looked at it.

“You won a contest?” she asked. Did her voice soften? Were the corners of her mouth turning up? Emily wasn't sure.

“Yes,” Emily said.

“Well, well,” Dede said. “Very good.”

Had Dede actually said “very good”? Emily wanted to leap into the air. She, Emily, had done something good. But Dede's voice stiffened again, and her face went back to being stern.

“If you'd try to be less messy, you'd do better,” she added.

“Yes, Dede,” Emily answered. For once, she didn't care about Dede's scolding. She held tight to the important words, “very good.”

Emily hurried up the stairs to her room. She propped her picture up on the cherry branch easel. Then she went back out to the landing. First, she leaned over and checked to see if Dede was gone from the hallway and no one else was there. Then, she lifted up her skirt, flung one leg over the banister and slid down to the bottom of the stairs. She skipped out of the house, careful not to bang the door.

For once, no one called after her. No voice scolded, “Be good, Emily. Behave, Emily.”

Emily walked to the cow yard, singing out hello to the cow, the rooster and the chickens. But she didn't climb the fence and go in. Instead, she walked past the cow pasture and on to the picket fence that surrounded the lily field. She didn't try to lift the picket gate. She just climbed over.

This time she did not have to imagine the lilies as she had during the winter. They were in full bloom. Emily stood in the middle of the delicate white flowers and looked up to the sky with them.

“I'm going to be an artist,” she said out loud.

She had won a contest today, and even Dede had said she'd done well. Maybe it was just a little contest, and maybe her picture had been a bit smudgy, but it was a start. It meant she could be good at something, something that she, Emily, wanted to do. And she could do what she wanted. She could be an artist. She would keep telling herself that — no matter what other people said.

Emily drank in the perfume of the lilies and looked up through the tall pine trees. She felt that same strange, wonderful feeling she always felt in this spot. It filled her up and overflowed. She felt like she could float on her happiness right up over the lily field and fly like the wind out over the wild forest of Beacon Hill Park and the ocean beyond.