hasn’t figured this out. My father finds it odd that the Richters haven’t taken to locking him in his bedroom. I say, hotly,“Mrs. Richter would never do such a thing! She’s
nice!”
I tell myself that the morning after one of her nights of roaming the streets, when she asks him where he went, he keeps his answer vague.
“Just out,” he says. “Wandering around.”
In the ravine. Once school finishes for the summer, he spends every day there, no matter what the weather. Except for Saturday mornings, so do I.
Saturday mornings Mrs. Richter does her grocery shopping, and that’s my opportunity to look at her for at least an hour.
I wait across the street behind the Gorys’ cedar hedge. At about ten o’clock she leaves her house, pulling a bundle buggy. I follow her. At the Dominion store I stand close enough that I could reach out and touch her skirt if I had the nerve. I don’t think she’d even notice. Everybody could be naked and she wouldn’t notice, she is so caught up in trying to figure out what to buy. She taps a finger on her cheek, cocks her head. She makes me think of someone playing charades. I wish I could help her. I could push the cart, I could pull her bundle buggy, going home. As it is, I do what I can to mentally urge along her decisions. I think,“The Mcintosh apples, pick them, the Delicious are too bitter.” Nine times out of ten she does what I command.
So then I think,“Turn around and see the girl in the pink shorts, love her, want to adopt her,” but this never works.
In the ravine, I enter a daydream that has me as an orphaned Indian princess called Little Feather and Mrs. Richter as a captured German settler whom the chief has renamed Nightingale and taken for his bride. Because Mrs. Richter is too old to bear children and I am like a daughter to her anyway, she and the chief have adopted me. I teach Mrs. Richter Indian songs, the ones I learned last year at Camp Wanawingo—“Indians are High-minded,” “We Are the Red Men,” “Pow-Wow, the Indian Boy.” She teachesme the German language and customs. Everything is fine until Maureen Hellier waltzes by. Maureen is a sleazy half-breed named White Pig. When she starts throwing her weight around, the chief orders her to be tied to a tree and gagged. Sometimes she’s not in the daydream at all, she has been banished to the wilderness. Sometimes I imagine everyone, including Mrs. Richter, gone. I am alone in my tee-pee. I am the sole survivor of a massacre by white men.
I have built myself a shelter on a wide ledge along the eastern slope, and though I call it a tee-pee, I know it’s only a lean-to: a row of branches tilted against a pile of logs, the branches secured to the uppermost log using pieces of wool, forest-green for camouflage, that I unravelled from the cable-knit sweater my mother wore the last Christmas morning she lived in our house. To break the wool I burnt it with matches, these, too, once the property of my mother, rescued from pockets curiously overlooked by Aunt Verna, who might have come up with leads by tracking down the places on the matchbook covers: Satin Doll Lounge, Bart’s Esso. Of the five full books from Bart’s, most contain duds.
I now have a knife if I need to cut anything. My father’s penknife, which I took from his desk drawer and which he has yet to report missing. In the tee-pee, among sticks of sunlight, I sort through my stone collection and feed Jell-O powder to black ants. Sometimes, overhead, I hear a faint whine I think must be the clouds gliding by. Then there are moments of silence so absolute I am convinced I hear the ants’ footsteps; it is a tinkling sound, as if they wore bells on their ankles. When I lie with my ear to the dirt floor, the tunnelling of the worms is distant thunder. All around mepine trees cross out the view. I am at the heart of an impenetrable fortification. Safe.
The valley and its cool slopes are also Abel’s preferred part of the ravine. The
nice!”
I tell myself that the morning after one of her nights of roaming the streets, when she asks him where he went, he keeps his answer vague.
“Just out,” he says. “Wandering around.”
In the ravine. Once school finishes for the summer, he spends every day there, no matter what the weather. Except for Saturday mornings, so do I.
Saturday mornings Mrs. Richter does her grocery shopping, and that’s my opportunity to look at her for at least an hour.
I wait across the street behind the Gorys’ cedar hedge. At about ten o’clock she leaves her house, pulling a bundle buggy. I follow her. At the Dominion store I stand close enough that I could reach out and touch her skirt if I had the nerve. I don’t think she’d even notice. Everybody could be naked and she wouldn’t notice, she is so caught up in trying to figure out what to buy. She taps a finger on her cheek, cocks her head. She makes me think of someone playing charades. I wish I could help her. I could push the cart, I could pull her bundle buggy, going home. As it is, I do what I can to mentally urge along her decisions. I think,“The Mcintosh apples, pick them, the Delicious are too bitter.” Nine times out of ten she does what I command.
So then I think,“Turn around and see the girl in the pink shorts, love her, want to adopt her,” but this never works.
In the ravine, I enter a daydream that has me as an orphaned Indian princess called Little Feather and Mrs. Richter as a captured German settler whom the chief has renamed Nightingale and taken for his bride. Because Mrs. Richter is too old to bear children and I am like a daughter to her anyway, she and the chief have adopted me. I teach Mrs. Richter Indian songs, the ones I learned last year at Camp Wanawingo—“Indians are High-minded,” “We Are the Red Men,” “Pow-Wow, the Indian Boy.” She teachesme the German language and customs. Everything is fine until Maureen Hellier waltzes by. Maureen is a sleazy half-breed named White Pig. When she starts throwing her weight around, the chief orders her to be tied to a tree and gagged. Sometimes she’s not in the daydream at all, she has been banished to the wilderness. Sometimes I imagine everyone, including Mrs. Richter, gone. I am alone in my tee-pee. I am the sole survivor of a massacre by white men.
I have built myself a shelter on a wide ledge along the eastern slope, and though I call it a tee-pee, I know it’s only a lean-to: a row of branches tilted against a pile of logs, the branches secured to the uppermost log using pieces of wool, forest-green for camouflage, that I unravelled from the cable-knit sweater my mother wore the last Christmas morning she lived in our house. To break the wool I burnt it with matches, these, too, once the property of my mother, rescued from pockets curiously overlooked by Aunt Verna, who might have come up with leads by tracking down the places on the matchbook covers: Satin Doll Lounge, Bart’s Esso. Of the five full books from Bart’s, most contain duds.
I now have a knife if I need to cut anything. My father’s penknife, which I took from his desk drawer and which he has yet to report missing. In the tee-pee, among sticks of sunlight, I sort through my stone collection and feed Jell-O powder to black ants. Sometimes, overhead, I hear a faint whine I think must be the clouds gliding by. Then there are moments of silence so absolute I am convinced I hear the ants’ footsteps; it is a tinkling sound, as if they wore bells on their ankles. When I lie with my ear to the dirt floor, the tunnelling of the worms is distant thunder. All around mepine trees cross out the view. I am at the heart of an impenetrable fortification. Safe.
The valley and its cool slopes are also Abel’s preferred part of the ravine. The
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