Alaska by Jana Harris

Author:Jana Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504018913
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

21. SEATTLE

1928

“Debra, you sit still while Mummy helps Charles with his thank-you-for-the-nice-vacation note to Grandpa. Here, dear, draw a picture with your Crayolas for Mater.”

The late-summer-afternoon sun sparkled on the ruffled white crepe-de-Chine curtains of the upstairs nursery. I looked at the bright walls, wondering if I’d chosen the right wallpaper for my two formative minds: little bouquets of blue and yellow pansy faces.

“Now, Charles.” I took a firm hold of his first-grader’s hand. “Remember what Mummy told you about using dots instead of circles over your i’s. Circles show holes in your character, dear; that’s what Sue Querry says. So always dot your i’s; do it just for Mummy.”

“Don’t,” screamed Charles, throwing down his pen in a fit of impatience.

“Don’t what, dear?”

“Don’t touch me, bitch!” Charles cried, shredding the paper in front of me.

“Charles! What if Mater heard you say that? Patrice!” I called to the nanny. “Come wash Charles’s mouth out. I’ll teach you, young man. That’s what dirty people say in alleys; you don’t talk like that in this house.” Patrice appeared in her black-and-white uniform and led Charles into the bathroom.

“Mon pauvre petit,” I heard her say. “Must we, madame?” she called to me.

“Just give him a taste of it,” I instructed. How could my cuddly baby boy not want me to touch him? And why did he push me away like that?

I never should have let Barnett talk me into taking the children with us on our vacation to Sitka. My babies exposed to the coarse, vulgar summer cannery workers. Or perhaps it was Tommy who’d taught Charles filthy words.

And what about Mater? There’d be no end to her lectures if she ever heard Charles talk back to me like that. She’d know for sure I wasn’t a fit mother for her grandchildren. That woman was beginning to do more than grate on my nerves, but maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t a good mother.

It’s times like these that I wish Nana lived just around the corner. How had she managed as a young mother in the wilds, or later, with Mama so sick in the head and Mama’s three babies to look after as well? Right now I could use a good dose of Nana’s elderberry wine, as well as some advice. The trouble was I wasn’t sure I knew how to bring up children. When I was a little girl, I did a full day’s work right alongside Nana, sorting fish at the cannery. She’d talked to me just like she talked to the grown-ups. But things were so different when one brought up children in the city.

I looked down at two-and-a-half-year-old Debra’s cherub face as she drew a fairy princess, the Crayola tightly knotted in her fist. Gently I showed her how to position the crayon, noticing again how crooked her little fingers were.

Her blue eyes looked up at me. “Mummy,” she said, “gimme my hand back.”

Crooked, every one of them crooked, I thought, as I let her return to her drawing.

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