Loddy-Dah Page 4

  “Like, I’m 21, Bettina. Legal age in Quebec.”

  “She made a novena just for you, so you would come home.”

  “I thought she was lighting candles for me. What a liar!”

  “Don’t talk about our mother like that. She’s a saint.”

  So Loddy called St. Alma and apologized for living, which would cover every wrong committed — past, present and future. This time her mother’s voice was reconciliatory, dismissing the latest fracas with a disobedient daughter who dared to turn her back on traditional Lithuanian values and move out with no husband in sight.

  When Loddy and Bettina were on the threshold of puberty, Alma would remind them at every turn of their youth how in the old country good girls lived with their families until they married, or died, whichever came first. Loddy’s departure was almost on par with committing a mortal sin and warranted the confessional; after all, she had broken the fourth commandment “to honour your father and your mother.” Loddy knew she should have stayed away; however, it was easier to capitulate. They were still family, so she agreed to a truce and accepted Sunday lunches.

  Bettina toyed with her food, building mountains of dumplings around a valley of sour cream. She dropped the fork on the floor, causing Alma to reprimand this daughter who devoured meals, yet carried the slenderness of a fashion model.

  “Eat eat. I no want to throw good food in garbage. You should see in the war, we beg for bread,” she said, her face, a portrait in despair. Alma shuddered as though she was exorcising a parasite then busied herself clearing the table.

  Bettina had sneaked into the bathroom and, after a considerable intermission Loddy could hear her heaving up the Cepelinai, the toilet flushing several times, a final gurgle of emptiness. Bettina emerged, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her skin the colour of summer wheat.

  “You okay?’

  Bettina just wagged her head and carried the empty plate to Alma as though she were in a wedding procession.

  “Va! You eat good.” Alma was happy. Best to keep Alma happy.

  Bettina turned on the television then curled up in her familiar corner on the couch, her head bent as if to catch a blow. They could hear Alma singing, her alto voice a study in precision, every note clear and true, a folk song from the old country — a shepherd tending to his animals, his children, a traditional lament, and then Alma announced lunch over and preparations for supper would begin. “Ah! Kukeli. We have for supper.”

  “I can’t stay, Maw,” Loddy said.

  Dishes washed and put away, Alma peeled potatoes over the sink, whipping off the skins with such a gusto and gospel tempo that Loddy expected the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to appear in a final chorus of Hallelujahs.

  “Maw. I said I have to go.”

  “What? But I make Kukeli.”

  “I have things to do. I have my own place now.”

  “Dump!”

  “It’s not a dump, Maw. You’ve never even seen it.”

  “I don’t need to see. I hear it not nice. Only mushrooms live in basement.”

  “Or cockroaches,” Bettina said under her breath.

  “Okay, I’ll stay for supper.”

  Loddy measured her life by the number of meals her mother had cooked for her so far — 2,420 — and still counting. She sidled up to Bettina in a soporific state of numbness from all the Cepelinai she had consumed earlier and waited for meal 2,421. Both fixed their eyes on the television screen to pass the time, pending the arrival of the much anticipated Kukeli. The heat from the oven with the baked casserole had raised the temperature in the flat to unbearable levels. Loddy rapidly fanned her face with a folded section of Lietuva, the Lithuanian newspaper, and no one spoke except Alma who did a rambling commentary of the six o’clock news from her kitchen.

  “They sick. Hooligans! Sick.” She raised her voice so everyone could hear. “You watch, that Trudeau be elected next year and you watch. He good Man. He too good looking. You have to be careful with the good looking ones.”

  Alma charged into the living room, slippers flopping, dishrag swinging in one hand and a spatula spinning in another, the Kukeli forgotten, now cooling on the counter top. Her distraction: a charismatic Minister of Justice, wearing a red rose in his lapel, condemning the bombings and robberies.

  “These acts of violence,” said the reporter, “have plagued the city for months and have left several people dead or injured. Yesterday’s bombing killed a member of the team attempting to detonate a bomb found in a mailbox near the McGill Campus.”

  Loddy lit a cigarette, a thread of smoke sailed by Bettina’s face.

  “Ach, they murderers, murderers! Trudeau, he fix them all, you watch.”

  Loddy closed her eyes and relived the blast of noise she had heard that night under the maple — a pistol shot of cracks and pops in between a greater boom, a blending of both fireworks and a bomb erupting into a final explosion. She hadn’t told anyone of her ordeal, not even Ulu. No one would have believed her. Who would want to rape a Beluga?

  “Bettina, go show the pictures from Lietuva my sister send.”

  Lithuania. Loddy felt disconnected from these relatives, strangers all. She was a Canadian, having lost the language of her ancestors when she entered first grade. Alma understood English, even a smidgeon of French, but used only a sliver of her English vocabulary to communicate. When Loddy was living at home, she kept a Lithuanian dictionary nearby so that she could understand her mother’s native tongue — and perhaps Alma.

  The three in the kitchen now, Bettina dealt photos around the table like a deck of cards in a poker game. Alma pointed to her sister’s family in front of a dilapidated farmhouse, an oversized cereal box resting on its side in the middle of a barren field, and every relative dressed in various shades of commie red — a sweater, a blouse, a jacket.

  “Nu, look how they all in red. Ach, Communists make them. Žudikas. Shit. I afraid Communists more than Nazis. Yah.”

  “They were all evil, Maw.”

  “Ach, you no understand.” Alma dismissed Loddy with a flutter of her hand as if to shoo away a fly.

  “Maybe one day they’ll come to Canada like you, Maw.”

  Alma kept shooing that fly. “You know nothing. It kill my sister. If Danutë see what we have — the food, the cars ... ach, it kill her. Too much.”

  But it was never too much for Loddy. All her questions about her mother as a child of war were met with a string of silences even Bettina couldn’t cut through. Tidbits of information surfaced, overheard during drunken brawls, her birthday, Christmas, New Year’s Eve. Six-year-old Loddy spellbound, listening behind her bedroom door to stories overflowing like the beer at the kitchen table. She remembered the laughter, the stink of her father’s cigarello drifting throughout the tiny cold flat and Alma sobbing for a past so horrific, she had silenced the memory.

  “Please, Alma, tell me.” She tried again in her teens, plied her mother with wine at a church social until she could exorcise some of her demons — the invasion of tanks by the Soviet Union and Germany into Lithuania, the Nazis’ final retreat in 1944, the Communists pilfering and ravaging her tiny village, her family, her home — and here Alma’s face contorted into terror — the sight of her father, a burly chunk of a farmer, who played his balalaika at Saturday night barn dances, hollering for her to run and not stop, and then the pop-pop-pop of a shot gun.

  She was sixteen, dauntless, an obedient daughter fleeing through the forests of Lithuania like a long-distance runner until she reached Poland and shelter in a camp for DPs, displaced persons.

  Here the story always stopped.

  “No more,” Alma would beg. “No more.”

  Too painful. Red.

  “Ah, kaip smaku.” Alma smacked her lips between bites of Kukeli as though she had just tasted happiness and wanted more where that came from. The Ed Sullivan Show, righ
t up there with her church, always seemed to stabilize those amps in her brain, resulting in some form of normalcy at unexpected times. Loddy decided to leave Alma and Bettina sometime between Tanya, the Elephant, executing dog tricks, and Spanky and Our Gang singing Sunday Will Never Be the Same.

  “I really have to go.” Loddy rose to hug Bettina who recoiled from the gesture.

  “Yecchh! I don’t like your clammy skin touching mine.” And Bettina shook her hands as though she had just washed them and couldn’t find a towel.

  “Well, like I’m not too crazy about your chicken bones, Bettina. I could break you in half and make a wish come true.”

  “You’re just jealous. Maw, Loddy is making fun of me again.”

  Alma in the kitchen, shrill as a whistle, cried out: “No go. No go. I have something for you.” And she foisted on Loddy a Steinberg’s bag packed with leftover Cepelinai and Kukeli.

  “Here, take. Nu, for lunch tomorrow.” Alma stepped forward to assess her first-born, squishing Loddy’s cheeks, her chipmunk, and said: “You still have job? You have money?”

  “Yeah, Maw, like I’m okay.”

  “You keep that job. I work hard to pay the secretary school so you have a good job in office, and not have to work hard like me, a cleaning lady.”

  “I know, Maw, you always say that. I’ll pay you back one day.”

  “Save money. Everything shit.” She hurled a dishrag at Loddy as she headed out the door and a breath of fresh life.

  Loddy didn’t know if she should cry or laugh. She left behind the voices of her childhood arguing over money, food, television shows, washing dishes, shutting the lights and turning off the TV, and attending mass every Sunday and nothing was ever good enough.

  xxx

  On the 58 Wellington street bus, heading in the direction of the Place D’Armes Metro and home, Loddy found a vacant seat in the back. It was late so thankfully there were few passengers on board. She welcomed the empty seat and spread her ample hips wide and flat, strained her head towards the open window and let the breeze cool her down, evaporate the beads of perspiration from her brow. For Loddy, the best part of visiting Alma and Bettina was the going home.

  This used to be her life, this borough that Alma and Bettina still cherished — blue-collar Verdun where the French and English melted into a stew of languages and cultures, played street hockey until dusk, and invented lexicons of their own in a show of strength. Vatashiview. It was years before Loddy realized the French kids were telling her to go home. Va-t-en chez vous. Same to you. And fame ta yeule. Huh? Ferme ta gueule. Shut up. Crisse. Christ.

  The Irish and French built communities around their churches — Notre Dame d’Auxiliatrice, Notre Dame de la Paix, St. Thomas More and St. Willibrord. Loddy could no longer regard Wellington Street with its wall-to-wall shops without recalling her childhood: Rosaire’s Bakery, Fabien Hardware, Gagnon’s department store, Sally’s, Buckley’s, the Savoy movie theatre and Woolworth’s — the scene of her first juvenile crime — stealing an Oh Henry chocolate bar. Even then, she had needed sustenance.

  This now insignificant fraction of her existence, this slum, two steps beyond St. Henri, one step above Pointe Ste. Charles, still held her hostage. Perhaps one day she would be capable of filtering memories and would remember a child’s wonder and trust before it was damaged. But not today. Today, Verdun was Loddy’s burden to bear.

  The bus braked in a screech of wheels and flying dust, picked up a pack of greasy biker boys. High school kids in hip leather jackets and Elvis pompadours, they jostled towards the rear of the bus.

  “Hey, lookit here, the hippo taking up the entire seat all to herself.” One of the leather jackets sat next to her and began a relentless dance with his hip, the shove and move-over shuffle, ramming Loddy motionless against the window.

  “Hey, what’s happening, Fatso?”

  Loddy collected her thoughts. If she sucked in her stomach, stopped breathing, and ignored him, perhaps he would evaporate. On impulse she crossed over lanky Leather Jacket, and without restraint, like a daredevil climbing Mt. Everest and in danger of plummeting, she grabbed the overhead strap as the bus jerked along its route. She cried out to the baby-faced bus driver, “Excuse me, sir. I want to get off! Sir! EXCUSE ME.”

  The bus joggled her as she fumbled towards the front exit, catching herself as she tripped over an assembly of feet outstretched in the aisle. She swung from pole-to-pole, strap-to-strap, like a monkey in a banana tree while the Leather Jackets convulsed with laughter.

  “Bus driver, I want to get off. Please driver, let me off here,” she yelled, face flush with anxiety.

  The door sighed open and she stumbled out, her knees buckling under her weight and there she stayed until she could no longer hear the cacophony of insults as the bus sped away in a spurt of black fumes, her mother’s parcel with the Cepelinai and Kukeli abandoned on the seat.

  Brought to her knees at the intersection of Wellington and de l’Eglise, she looked up and there it was. An urban oasis! A mirage! A grotto! Laura Secord, her favourite saint: Our Lady of Lost Appetites and Found Calories. Pray for us sinners now so we will always have a supply of chocolate for our serotonin. Joy to the world, the store was still open! Thank you, Jesus!

  The dusky scents of dark cocoa, vanilla and sugar snapped her into nirvana which no drug or alcoholic beverage could ever match. She purchased a variety of medications to heal her wounds — an exquisite box of miniature chocolate clusters, a bag of peanut brittle, and a chocolate fudge ice cream cone to immediately stop the bleeding while she waited for the next bus.

  “Screw them,” she said.

  Across the street, Notre Dame de Sept Doleurs loomed before her in all its majesty and splendour. As a child, Loddy thought it was the grandest church in Montreal until Alma took her to St. Joseph’s Oratory. She had climbed the hundred steps on her knees in prayer like a pilgrim, one Hail Mary per step so she could enter its holy sanctuary and behold the hundreds of crutches displayed on its interior walls.

  “Whose crutches are they, Maw?”

  “Sick people cured by Brother André. Miracles. Yah, miracles.”

  “Can he cure Bettina?”

  Loddy licked her ice cream at machine-gun speed, her eyes now fixed to the other side of Wellington Street where she had last bumped into her father. Four years ago.

  They had faced each other, waiting for the light to change, a showdown in a John Wayne movie. Loddy squinted against the sun as she stepped off the curb, spotting him in the puddles of shade; he, drifting towards her, a failing kite. Her spirit vanished; wounded girl walking.

  As they had intersected in the middle, he, with some perverted purpose, brushed against her arm, tiny hair follicles prickling as she floated by. She held her breath to escape the contamination from the familiar stench of cheap aftershave, tobacco and alcohol. When they reached their respective corners, they simultaneously glanced over their shoulders as if choreographed, a sudden acknowledgement of recognition and then the release.

  Loddy shivered and swallowed the last chew of her cone.

  SCENE 5:

  The Resurrection

  of Robbie Rabbit

  Autumn 1967

  “You could have broken your fingers or joined the priesthood like so many of the French guys did in World War II. Like, why do you think Quebec had so many priests in the forties and fifties?”

  “Very funny, Loddy.”

  “No Dewey, I’m serious. Like this girl I went to school with, told me her father told her, and he was French.”

  “Did he break his fingers?”

  “No, he was one of the ones that went and came back a mess.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Brain damage. Like he’s in the Dougie or something as far as I know.”

  Dewey bowed his head, clasped his hands as if in prayer. “My best friend sho
t himself in the head so he wouldn’t have to go.”

  Loddy pressed his forearm in a speechless gesture of understanding.

  They were finishing their meal at Ben’s when the red-haired, slightly distracted young waiter, ruddy with the rush of orders, interrupted them: “Finished?” His order pad poised for a final tally.

  Dewey and Loddy shook their heads as if they had been transplanted into another world and weren’t ready to join the living yet. Ruddy-face flew back with attitude to his post near the kitchen. Loddy jabbed the straw into her almost empty glass and sucked on air, searching for the last dribble of Cherry Coke over chipped ice, residual droplets not to waste.

  “Do you have to, hon?”

  Diners at the next table turned their heads towards the sound of slurping, throwing Loddy a look that would freeze the Amazon jungle.

  “I’m sorry. I mean about your friend.” She continued attacking the ice chips, stirring the meltwater at the bottom.

  “I phoned my mom last night. Miss her, you know. It was her birthday.” Dewey stared off into the distance as if expecting his mother to walk out of the ladies room and join their table. Loddy twisted round to see if he had spotted someone he knew. Dewey seldom mentioned his family and avoided any political discussions that would draw him into debates about Vietnam or draft dodgers, so Loddy felt a kinship developing.

  “She said she wouldn’t tell my dad I called. He still doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Coming from a military family ... my granddad, my dad, my uncles, they all fought some war somewhere.” Dewey took a sip of water, an interruption to gather his thoughts. “He called me a coward, a disappointment.”

  “He didn’t mean that.”

  Dewey was adrift in his own invisible space. “Anyhow, she got a letter from my baby brother, Aaron, in ‘Nam. He’s only 19.”

  “And? Like he okay?”

  “She cried when she read his letter to me. She tried not to show it but I could hear it in her voice, the way she would catch herself, choke on his name. He was in a search and destroy mission. Ugly. Just ugly, she said. Two hundred and eighty-two American soldiers died that day. Could ... could have been him.” Dewey lowered his head again, a weight he could no longer carry, and began to play with his leftover French fries, dipping them into the ketchup, deploying them to the edge of the plate. “She said I did the right thing coming here.”