When Fenelon Falls. Dorothy Ellen Palmer
Probably not good timing, given MC’s singeing at the bonfire. Not wise to pick the moment when your mother is raking your head with a metal hairbrush. They sounded like this:
‘Can I sleep out in one of the cousins’ big tents this summer? Ouch!’
‘No dear, that’d be a waste of good sheets.’ Good twenty-year- old sheets.
‘Could cousin Marianne have dinner, owww? Or maybe cousin Dale sleepover?’
‘We’ll see, dear. It depends on how good you are. Only time will tell on that score.’ Jordan’s version two imitated that line later, adding its translation: ‘No, you selfish little brat, because we’d be obliged to return the favour. If you sleep there, then said cousin will want to sleep here. We’d have to feed them breakfast which isn’t possible because a box of eight Muffets and one box of Alpha-Bits in pre-measured one-cup servings lasts this family exactly five breakfasts. You only get bacon and eggs on the weekend if you follow the rules.’
In real time, Jordan sighed. ‘Time, tide and turnips. I’m never good enough for you.’
Mom snapped a hair elastic and played dirty. ‘Fine. You win.’ When maybe gleamed in her daughter’s eyes, MC shrugged. ‘I don’t care if all of March learns you wet the bed. But you might.’ When Jordan’s retort included the word ‘damnation,’ she got to burn the midnight oil writing this poisonous little reproof a hundred times: ‘The intelligent have vocabularies sufficient to any task. Only the vulgar and unintelligent resort to profanity. Which are you?’
Now don’t misunderstand. British vernacular and war lingo – those were encouraged. We could say ‘bloody well’ all we bloody well wanted. Given Grandma’s working-class roots, she often uttered words learned well before she married a minister. If the occasional imitative ‘bollocks’ and ‘shite’ left our mouths, she’d say, ‘Well, I’ll be buggered, that’s Lizzie the Q’s second language!’ March found it charming. But we never swore. We were never profane. Not even Derwood. The words I hurled at Yogi’s stoning were every swear word I’d ever uttered. You’ll find that hard to believe, I’m sure, but it just wasn’t done. Even when I swore in my head, it was laughable by today’s standards. ‘Tough titties,’ now that was bad-ass. Alone, BS and I would try, ‘What the cluck!’ and ‘Kiss my asp!’ and ‘Chuck you, Farley!’ We’d even risk ‘Puck off!’ ‘Piss off’ was rude; we said ‘P.O.’ We’d call Derwood an asswipe and feel like James Dean. But that was as foul as we got. And had we been in ear’s reach of a familial adult, they’d have replaced our Dubble Bubble with a bar of Sunlight. And scrubbed.
So that first Saturday night, MC got her way and BS got hand cramps. But win by emotional blackmail and no one wants to give you anything else. MC should have listened to herself: he’s the slave of all slaves who serves none but himself. When you cannot give, you’ll little get. Penny wise and pound foolish. Deny your child and she ceases to be your child. So Queen MC got her pink-trimmed castle, her royal purple petunias, a gangplank dock, a chuck-you-Farley-March deck and got left royally alone. She presided over mosquitoes, snappers, skunks and an inquisitive gaze of raccoons. Yes, that’s exactly what you call a bunch of OB’s little caged friends.
But MC did give us something else, a gift she never intended. As the minister-grandpa I never met might have put it: ‘The last shall be first.’ Unlike Marches One to Six, veiled by sacred cedars and rose hedges no one but a sky pilot would call a bush, we had eyes. We could gaze out. If you stared past the garbage and breathed past the smell, Almost had the very best of sunsets. Bannocks are better than no bread. Our little finger of a dock got washed at each day’s end by the rosiest light of all. When Jordan sat there – well, you remember.
HAZEL #21
She’s such a liar. She’s done it all her life, just for the attention. Needs to get everyone around her cooing, ‘Oh Hazel, you poor hard-done-by-brave little thing!’ Well, this time she’s gone too far. If I have to pick between my sister and my Kevin, it’s no contest. When that lying smut came out of her mouth, I reached for my rifle, said I’d be out hunting rabbit. Said by the time I got back, she’d better have a better story and she’d better have made Mumsie believe it. Because I knew. Spat it right in her face, said I knew how she really paid for that fancy-dancy apartment in the city. Said if she didn’t know which ‘fancy man’ it was that had got her in the family way, if she didn’t even know his name, well, that was just too damn bad! She could flip the bloody phonebook, for all I cared. My rifle pointed itself in her direction. ‘But if you ever say anything so filthy about my Kevin again, I’ll be hunting you.’ She didn’t even look up. She hunched on the parlour couch, hand at her throat, clutching her version of the matching lockets Daddy gave us. She was still there when I came in, jabbing a needle into the ripped seam of an old doll’s dress. Eyes blank as a cow, mending yellow silk with red cotton. Like there was nothing wrong with that. Like nothing had happened, certainly nothing that could make one sister hate another. Every rabbit I shot at looked like her belly.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.