Up Up Up by Julie Booker

Author:Julie Booker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2011-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

VIOLETTA

Chloe hangs Bert’s clothes on the line. She has no clothespins, just hooks the shirts under the armpits.

Violetta calls out to her, Canna you move you recycling bin?

Oh, is it in the way again? As if she didn’t know.

The dog, he no bark so much no more. Her index finger, an arthritic hook, pointing to Baxter. His coat looking richly chocolate today in the sun, lying in his usual position, ball in mouth, the ever-ready retriever.

Look atta this. She points to the driveway.

What?

The tree. Ev’ry day I sweep. Shit. Today I watcha the wind. Lassa night I can’t sleep. I think about the tree. Is so big. I call the city so many times to cut. Nothing.

Chloe just nods when she doesn’t understand.

She lights a cigarette. Violetta coughs. As usual she’s in the farthest corner of her porch, sitting at the round table just big enough to hold her Bible, ahem-ing at the sound of Chloe’s lighter, even though the wind’s not going her way.

The shirts are men doubled over, caught in barbed wire. Chloe once rode her bicycle fast into a clothesline, turning her head to yell at Baxter. There was no laundry, no warning, just pegs, the old-fashioned wooden kind, heads bobbing, legs clutching the line, not letting go even on contact. The impact of a guillotine. She had marks on her neck, a red beaded choker, for a month.

Signora. You take. Violetta waves at her parsley in a pot. Too much this year.

Violetta’s pots are lined up along the railing of her wooden porch. Geraniums, cucumber, tomatoes, sweet peppers, chives. When Chloe sits in any one of the four garden chairs around her tiny backyard table and looks towards Violetta, alone in her chair on the porch, she sees Violetta’s head as a pot.

My sister, she sick. In Milano. Cancer. And she putta the heart. Lassa year. Electric. To pumpa, you know?

Oh. I’m sorry. Are you close?

Huh?

Are you close with your sister?

Violetta’s eyebrows cave in, her mouth tight at the end of her sentences. Except now, when she genuinely doesn’t understand, her face is open, and Chloe sees the young woman who came with her husband to Toronto so long ago.

Um, are you near to her?

Huh, yeah. She before me. One year. But she got lotsa problems. Like me. Heh-heh. My hip is no so good. It hurt to do things. I do everything by myself. I alone. ’S just me.

Violetta’s been alone for the five years Chloe’s owned her half of the semi. Violetta’s husband went back to Italy fifteen years ago, and died there. No kids. No pets. Just plants that sometimes surprise — the tomatoes, not so good this-a year — and a constant stream of old Italian couples popping in before and after church, the husbands helping out with man jobs. The occasional game of cards on the porch with another widow. Black cardigans over their shoulders, the limp woollen arms flapping as they discard and pick up from the deck.

Violetta’s hair is short, like all the Catholic ladies.

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