| Volume 4 of Still at Home: July 1961 - September 1962 | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
movies: The circle of deception, Gone with the wind, Nikki, wild dog of the North, Lassie, The green helmet, Walt Disney's Perri, West side story. reading and plays: Ladies Home Journal, I shall not serve, True Love magazine, Tom Dooley The edge of tomorrow, Mary Stolz To tell your love, A tree grows in Brooklyn, Not as a stranger, Seventeen magazine, the Family Herald, Introduction to Jung's psychology, Exodus, Berlin diary, Wells Outline of hstory, Catcher in the rye, Murder at midnight (radio series), Anne Morrow Lindberg The steep ascent, Success in love, The tempest, Taming of the shrew, Cyrano de Bergerac, The gondoliers, McBeth, 1984. songs: The gypsy rover, Green door, The wayward wind, The lion sleeps tonight, Michael, The Tennessee stud, Hurry home to my heart, Smoke gets in your eyes, Apple green, Love hurts, Green fields, This nearly was mine, How deep is the ocean, I come to the garden alone, Yellow bird, The happy wanderer, The quartermaster's store. Green grow the rushes-o, Jamaica farewell, Fires burning. other: The man with the hoe [painting], Brunk crusade meeting at MEI, Samsonite Aeropack, Pacific Stages bus line, '58 Chevy, '54 Dodge Meteor, Rook [card game], Blushing Angel Face face powder, Fuller Brush salesman, La Glace Midgets hockey team, Varsity Guest Weekend in Edmonton, Canada Council train to Stratford. |
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A lot happens in this year. After Grade 10 exams I take the Greyhound to the Fraser Valley in BC for summer jobs. Grandparents, aunts and uncles. Meet Frank Doerksen at his family's strawberry patch. After 3 volumes of sheer silliness about boys finally the real thing, a boyfriend who's an actual friend. "We talk endlessly about anything." Part 1 Clearbrook. Part 2 Yarrow. Part 3 Frank visits La Glace. Part 4 Christmas. Part 5 rest of grade 11. Part 6 another summer with Frank, Canada Council sponsored trip to Stratford Ontario for a week at the the Shakespeare festival with high school students from all over Canada.
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July 9 "Those initials will be there a long time," he said, "I wonder how long." "By next summer you'll have taken an axe and chopped them out," I interrupted. "Why?" "Oh you'll find out something really horrible about me." "It'll probably be the other way around." "But I've already heard some horrible things about you and so far I've only said, so what." "No Ellie, I won't chop them out. You're special. You're one in a million." He stopped and put his arms around me again. "And you're only sixteen. You've got two years left of high school and three years of university " I'll never marry you, Frank, I thought. Under the tree he had mumbled something into my shoulder as I moved with his chest and deep breaths. "Pardon?" I said prosaically. "I won't let you forget me," he said. He sounded fierce. "I'm not going to forget you," I said.There is the touching that steals in, and then warmth is crowded out by intensity, and talk by long silences. The two kinds of love - it is nice to have men for plain friends like Gerald and Peter Dyck. I like men. But I like the touching too, and its something I need. July 27 George came then and handed our splits to us through the window. "I gave you the one with the blue spoon to match your sweater," he said with a grin. Frank always notices that sweater too. He had stared for a while when I got into the car, leaning back against the dash. "Y'know, that sweater does something for you. It really does. Remember that. No - maybe you'd better not." August 11 I love him. He's a wonderful guy. But this is young, this is an outgrowth of youth and summer. It would never last a lifetime. I want to be with people and motion and culture. I don't understand his feeling for the earth. I won't marry a farmer. It would make me old and tired and meek like Mom. Perhaps not, though, because I have more liquid steel in my blood than she ever had. Still, I'm afraid that a time will come when I'll have to choose between hurting him (and oh, I don't want to hurt him!) and messing up my beautiful future. If he loves me too much, if he believes in me too blindly, he'll be more than hurt if I dropped him, and I'd have to, sooner or later. He'd lose faith in people, he'd be bitter. I don't ever want to be responsible for doing that to a man. When the last radio program had ended, he knew this was time for aloha. I started walking toward the door. He reached up and pulled me back toward him. I could see the shadow tossed onto the wall by a street lamp. It was a boy and a girl being romantic. A chugging sound. "Listen to the frogs," I said. He laughed. "You have quite an imagination - that's an electric motor." "No, listen to it - it's ... It is an electric motor." August 24 Lottie Goertz phoned me last night and we eagerly talked subjects (school) and drama - Shakespeare's plays. It was communication, and it was almost exciting. After a long time a man's heavy voice broke into the party line. "This is long enough. Isn't it?" "Ye-e-s," I said docilely, and soon we hung up. But it was fun. August 25 Went to Goertzes after Lottie was here for a gab and she played me some Bach, Chopin, Debussey, Beethoven, and it was like heaven. Then she walked me home in the moonlight. Letter from Mom. August 28 We went into the café and sat on two stools near the juke box. There were tins of fruit and dog food and cases of pop on the wall in front of us. I caught our reflection on the mirror on one side of us. I looked pink-cheeked and a bit disheveled. Frank was dark and earnest. I was wearing the blue sweater over the blue print dress, over the petticoats, over the nylons - and my white heels of course. Television set in the next room. I could hear the voices of Jay North and his mother in "Lassie" and could nearly see the blue glow from the screen in my mind. He put a quarter in the juke box and punched numbers. A man sang excitedly, persuasively, "Love hurts!" "He's right, you know. There is a certain amount of pain involved," Frank said. So he has felt it too. On my request he played "Green fields" by the Brothers Four. "Once there were green fields, kissed by the sun ..." I could nearly see the long grass waving. "Gone are the green fields, parched by the sun ..." they crooned on. "Irrigation." Frank's farming fact in this tender mood of sighing song was startling. He couldn't understand why I laughed. "Oh I know he's talking about his heart, but he should'a irrigated anyway," Frank said as the song continued, "Gone with the cold winds, That swept into my heart," "Where are the lovers who used to stroll, through green fields ..." September 11 The bus roared in and its brakes hissed loudly ("Hate that sound," Frank said. "I'll hate it even more now.") We carried out my stuff and he stowed my suitcase for me. And then in the narrow aisle he moved closer very quickly and just for an instant brushed my cheek with his lips. And then he was gone. The man across the aisle said, "Such a little one!" "Maybe if you'd looked the other way," I said lightly and then opened my window as wide as I could. He was below in the blue shirt that makes his chin and eyes a different color. He reached to the ridge above me and chinned himself so that my face was against his one last time. And then the bus moved forward and he dropped to the ground. I saw him then, looking back. He was waving like a small boy. And I saw him once more when we drove by his truck. He stood on the running board leaning out onto the road at an angle from the hand on the door handle. - I remember sitting beside Sally in the bus with the window wide open and an exhilerating breaze sliding over our faces and our covered, tucked up knees. I remember the unending dark beside the road where the canyon was, and a glimmer of light like a wash on a painting far below. I remember hearing her saying "I liked London," and seeing her chin and mouth briefly fire-touched when she lit a cigarette. I told her about the tin cans and the soup. About the colors. The tin cans' linings a rich mollasses and gold and rusty brown. In Grandma's soup we ate last Sunday a warm beige liquid with tiny squares of orange and yellow carrot and a lacy delicate leaf of parsley. I took out the leaf and the other colors went drab. Tell me about the things you've done that you like to remember, the places you've been, I said. Oh, I liked London, the buses, you know. And I remember the little boy in Paris who carried our bags. He kissed all of our hands. Oh, have you been to Paris? Not long enough to even glance around, re-a-lly. That was just on my way through to Spain. My goodness! She didn't talk about boys. She rarely laughed. She had more "class" than anyone I've met. "Class," I think is composed of dignity and simplicity and taste. I shall need to acquire some. Taste I have. Simplicity I am learning. Dignity I need. In order to have this mysterious thing, tho', I'll have to find my own way as she has. - I told him about wanting to be a writer before we'd even gotten to the café, when we were just crossing the street. He was interested. It was dark when we went back to the depot. We talked about Vancouver and how pretty it is at night. "I love it," he said. "It's beautiful" I said, "at an indecently late hour when the streets are all wet and the neon lights are reflected on them." "Indecently late ..." he laughed reflectively. "Yes," he said, "you'll be a writer." September 12 The whole tribe met me at Hythe. September 16 Another letter from my friend in B.C. I shovelled grain and read a book and enjoyed the wind. Judy tried on my bathing suit and is inches taller'n'me and just as fat and wide-shouldered. September 25 Monday morning On Saturday night our room was strangely tidy. The kitchen was in a steamy panic. Mom and Rudy and the two cats had come in earlier to curl up on the bed and absorb peace. It was almost ten. I sat in the big chair brushing my hair. The lamp was behind me. Almost at the same time that Paul announced the fact with a shout from the living room I saw a light coming onto the yard. The lighted patch between the two headlamps was red. I bounded up, yanked a comb through my hair, and catapulted into the kitchen just in time to hear Daddy exclaim and Mom remind him to take it easy. ("Calm down. Leave everything as it is" - she didn't want all the stuff lying around to be shoved behind doors as it usually is.) I stepped out of the door, closed it behind me, walked slowly around the corner in the dark to meet him. He was at first, only a shape, and then became a voice, became Frank, altho' still not quite. He did not become completely Frank until last night. I felt smaller and more slender than usual. I was, perhaps, a mess, but he is only Frank and actually Frank. My blue jeans were rumpled and rolled up. Judy's shirt was pretty dirty. My white socks and sneakers were the utmost in dustiness. But yesterday he said, "You looked so good last night: I didn't even want to touch you." We only stood and looked at each other. Judy craned her neck - we could see her from outside, but she couldn't see anything. "You'll get heck for staying outside so long," he said. "Just cold. Are you going to come in?" He went to the café where he had an uneasy night. When asking for directions to us, he had asked Myrtle in the café, "Where do Epps live?" "You mean Ellie Epp?" "Well, yeah ... Myrtle reported this morning that as soon as he'd come through the door she'd known he was "Ellie's boyfriend". She explained vaguely, "... oh, he just seemed sort of sophisticated. ... I just thought so." On Sunday I saw him through the window - tight blue jeans, his lovely new blue ribbed seater, curly hair and blue eyes - he looked good!! When he came back from stowing his stuff in the shack he had changed, disappointingly, into a suit jacket. But after all the church deal, when he came to lunch, he was back in jeans and the sweater and big camping boots. His hands under the blue cuffs were brown and wide and somehow sensual. While we ate lunch I stared at them, and it changed my mood from an even non-caring to an intensity of some kind. - I didn't talk to him and I didn't smile at him. When they were outside I cleaned up angrily. I needed fresh air, I decided. While changing after volunteering to help shovel grain I asked Mom why I was so cantankerous. She said she had a pretty fair idea. I asked to be told. She said, "better wait 'till you're in a better mood." I think I knew, too, faintly. She said, as I walked out, "they'll be taking their guns along to see if they can find a few chickens." "Oh, great," I snapped. "When men get together with guns they never see anything else," Mom said. I detected amused understanding and sympathy. A "between us women" feeling. Sept 28, Thursday He and I "went out" last night. It was fun. I remember the sharp wind and the darkness when I stepped outside with him. The wind driving brittle leaves down the street at Sexsmith. Walking down board sidewalks. The enclosing coldness of the wind and the dry rustling grass as we clambered back into the truck. The row of greenish lights that was Sexsmith. A deep curve in the road that dipped and tickled the bottoms of our stomachs. Sept 29 Mother & Judy went to a meeting; Paul & Rudy & Dad went to bed; Frank was tired; I was too. But we sat around in the kitchen anyway. There were millions of stars showing - it was a brittle night - clear & sharp edged & crisp, like a piece of ice over a puddle on a fall morning. It was cold by the windows where I kneeled on a chair to look out. Oct 2 Monday When he was chopping wood energetically at the top of the hill I ran out in my rolled up blue jeans, white sneakers, the light green shirtwaist, & a pony tail to talk to him. The sky was blue & the leaves were blown & golden. We sat crosslegged on the earth amid chips & sawdust and were friends. Then I had to run back in to the house to clean my room We dug potatos. Mom came after a while, & Daddy hauled in Frank & Paul to thresh. I didn't see him again until supper. After supper we sat in the living room to visit while Mom & Dad bathed. Paul & Rudy fell asleep. Soon the cats did too. Judy was in her room. Mom & Dad talked quietly in the kitchen. Soon they went to bed too. Mom stuck her head out her door. Frank dropped my hand at the first squeak & looked so sober & righteous I could have giggled. "Let the cats out before you go to bed, eh, Ellie?" she smiled. When the door was shut Frank jumped up to go home. He watched me crawling around looking for cats, then "enfolded." I remember feeling my bones, all down my side, bumping his side. And then he ran home to his cold shack on the hill among the trees.. Oct. 8 A car moves past slowly on the other side of a wall of rain and wind. Its lights glow out in the darkness like embers. I cannot see it but I know there is a car between those lights & that in that car are people. I think of times & people I have known and stare through the window into a nothingness. The window is misted over. I think of a strawberry patch; and people. (Lothar Edigar, (the sunny last day I was at York Farms when I ran to the end of the railroad car and his head suddenly came over the top of the ladder - he was always golden haired and laughing. When I walked through the warehouse I'd look at his incredibly long body in blue pants & a blue plaid shirt leaning against the weight of a can basket and the rediculous parody would come to me, "a thing of beauty is a boy forever." And Grandma. I see her always as walking toward the living room. Her thin body is very long and her shoulders curve forward. Her ankles move slowly forward after each other under the hem of her long skirt. A long twist of thin hair lies down her back. She is old. I accidentally saw her once when she was dressing. She was bare to the waist and her skin was unwrinkled and white. Her breasts were flattened but still soft.) The room is warm and my chair is soft. I feel tears in my eyes, and a strange restlessness grows in me. It is the beginning of winter. October 19 Snow - a blizzard all day. A box of apples arrived from the Okanagan. These were a source of great joy. October 20 On taking a walk 'over the hill' [to the outhouse] I discovered that it is a wonderful, fragile evening; that the snow creaks when you walk on it; that the sky is pale and the stars far away. November 20 The man who lives with my mother is a bitter, unreasonable old neurotic. December 10 A cool minus forty or 50 degrees kept us at home all Sunday to listen to the radio, read, work on the article I'm pretentiously writing for Family Herald. December 14 A long choir practice, the last of this year was spent exaustively on "God so Loved the World" for tomorrow night. December 16 Today's mailday brought my order - such an anguishing hilarity of substitutions! December 18 Suddenly its nearly 50 below again and time is spent busily sewing Christmas clothes, writing paragraphs in school. Mr. Shatts - "your writing is so alive!" December 25 He had a secret. I used means to convince him to tell me - he wanted to get it off his chest, he had doubts, but he told me, standing by the cupboard soberly, his eyes hurt but still hopeful. I wish he hadn't. He took a long time. First I had to promise to tell neither parents nor syblings, & he asked me to promise to take it with a grain of salt. Then he began to talk slowly. "I went upstairs. First Larry started, & I thought, what have I done to deserve this? And then Bernie joined in. They said, why wouldn't the old Ford start, anyway? He never takes them anywhere. They're always bumming rides off Sieberts or us." So I muttered brave words to him & he didn't know how much it hurt me. "You didn't have to be bothered by that, Frank." But as I stood beside him my teeth were biting my lip under my calm hands to keep back tears, and when Frank left, matter-of-factly this time, I rushed into my room & felt tears. There was a new feeling too, that of standing on the edge of adulthood faced with an abyss of bitterness & suspician it will be so easy for me to fall into. And then the tears were not for a soft hurt but for a hard terror that I will not be able to take it, that I will become as my father is, incapable of happiness, and incapable of giving happiness - bitter, suspicious, wary. Mother came in & asked hesitently if there were something wrong. I had to tell her a bit, but kept my promise. I wanted to tell her for the same reason Frank wanted to tell me - he wanted to share his hurt, & I wanted to share mine. It is a selfish wanting, tho', and was even selfish of Frank to tell me, but I'm glad he did, I think he felt better. "It's true tho', it's perfectly true," I said to Frank. December 27 The sun was amazing & cheerful & bright, especially because the air was so cold & so snappy. Bales & bundles were soon thrown down to the steamy backed cows. My hands got numb from the metal handled fork, and I was glad to hurry away from the cold & down to the warm sunshine in the bottom barn. Steam had frosted onto dangling straws, to make crystal chandliers. Sunshine landing on - of all things - a lump of manure - made it something throbbing with color, and lovely. I hezitated only a split second to look at it tho'. Dec 28, evening - Dec 29 morning "I thought it over yesterday and made some deductions. If you'd grown up in East Aldergrove I'd have thought you were just too smart for me." I felt the familiar anger at this, and a quick fear that, as my handicap has made him love me more, my strong-point will make him love me less. "You fooled me about that, & only about that. I thought you were just average. Your report card should have tipped me off but it didn't. But I read your paragraphs & I've been levering information out of Siemenses." Dismayed, I hovered around the table where he did jig-saws, wandered, wriggled, stared outside. "Look at how blue it is outside, Frank. It's getting dark." I walked into the kitchen, sat on the table, & stared out with my chin on my fists, my elbows on my knees. There was a strip of yellow along the sky, brushed by black tree-tips; a clothes line and a cement mixer were in the foreground. - He watched me wash doors in the kitchen. While I was scrubbing the fridge Pop brought in the kerosene. By a twist of irony, it slipped, spilled because of the way he set it, just as he's prophecied it will happen when Mom brings it. I sat back on my heels & snickered before thinking. Pop snapped "You shut up!" right in front of Frank and grew quite "disturbed." However I escaped to the living room to wax the floor. While I was beginning Mom came around and told me off solidly for laughing. This of course made me feel quite miserable. "What's more," she said, "I'll bet you anything Frank is on his side too." I said "that won't break my heart" with some decisiveness, but that one sank in all the way. After that the depression grew, & when I caught Frank smiling around the door at me on my knees waxing, I closed the door quickly. He was wonderful to have here - cheered Daddy up, coaxed him into a good mood. He supervised setting up our tree and decorating it. I found myself telling him what had been bothering me & has for a while. "I'm terrified I'll grow up to be like my father. I see a gross selfishness, a tendency to nag, an unkindness that is near ruthlessness, a self-centeredness. Am I doomed to be incapable of happiness, as he is?" For an example, I said "I made Daddy mad this afternoon." "Yeah," he said, "that was you all right." There were sudden sounds behind the kitchen door - slaps, screams of rage from Daddy. Something strange happened to me. I found myself shaking with horror and breathing into my arms. Frank sat motionlessly & silent. When the noises had ended he told me about some of his own experience with spankings. Again I felt horror at a story of a rubber-cord whipping his father gave him, of the welts, the mental agony greater than the physical. February 1 Our house seems so dirty and everything so sordid. Food is sad. I want to escape. Feb 3 Something really is wrong. After writing Frank yesterday I burst into tears. Not only salt water trickling either - a salty taste in a sobbing mouth and sounds rising above the radio's song. Strange agonized sounds alien in a quiet evening alone. I'm going crazy I'm going crazy. Then I went to bed, but the pain crept under my cover with me. I, maudlinly, cried myself to sleep. Not for piddly small things like clothes or my parents don't love me. It was fear, shaking me in its teeth until I gasped from the pain of it. Fear of the future, generally. Fear of myself, particularly. Fear of finding that there is no happiness. That there is nothing good and lovely in me. That I have lived too long with evil and dirt. That I will not be able to leave it because it is melted into me. Fused. I told mother this morning. She said trust God. Yet, later today, tho' I had told her absolutely all of it and with tears, she told me harshly that I was a nagger and high handed. - An aimless study period. All other good grade 11's are whacking away at their Remmington-Rands but I took that last year so have to be banished to the staff room for their typing periods. It's very nice here, tho' understandibly a bit stuffy. I've got the door shut and the window open so road sounds and melting-water sounds blow in. We're having a delicious chinook. Last week it snowed and froze and howled but now, suddenly the snow melts and carves baby river beds in the ice. (if you look down at the ground and pretend you are a bird it seems that you are high in the air and there is a small river below) A self-made regulation states that this study period is supposed to be spent doing something creative Is this creative? There are interesting non-creative distractions here, trying on teachers' hats and their wobbly shoes, reading magazines. Sugar lumps - I conscientiously don't eat them - often. Books "too adult" for our shelves. Har. Feb 10 Then I came home, and father was there. I sat in the big chair with my book over my face feeling the same misery as I felt hearing him rant when Frank was here. His voice became high and whining as he complained that he needed a handkerchief. I didn't mourn for him or even for mother. I mourned for myself, March 18 Here March is nearly through and I haven't done any important writing at all. No time. No time. Sociability at Sieberts, singing tenor in a trio tonight. Tricky. March 24 I said to Pop "get the mail?" just before he went out. In ten minutes he was back, shoved the groceries onto the table and disappeared. I wandered across the shabby floor. Judy was rifling through the letters. "Anything for the mail?" "Nope - an ad. For you." She handed me an ordinary white envelope. The little address "Miss Ellie Epp, La Glace, Alberta" was typed in black on a patterned green paper under the peep hole. It hadn't been pasted shut very well, and opened easily. The return address said, "The Montreal Star, 241-245 St. James St. W, Montreal, Canada. Inside was just a plain check, green and bland looking. A check with $30 & 00 cts stamped on in dusty red. The attached voucher declared laconically "'Exams' Family Herald 30.00." Mom said "what is it?" I said "a check." She was more exited than I. She fluttered and babbled. I stood back and watched. When father came in I handed it to him. He took it absently between two greasy fingers and continued to scold Mom for not getting ready. He looked casually. (Mom said, "But look at it") and said, "it's a cheque? Well, it isn't the last. Why don't you go get ready? We have a sick steer on our hands." March 27 Mom and Dad disgusted me greatly last night by coming home fleeced from a "curiosity" visit to a phony sale at the Hall - a demagog type speaker invoked a crowd hysteria type of reaction and they bought useless stuff. April 10 I'm going to write an application letter to the Dept of Education for the expense-paid Stratford Shakespearian trip. April 19 I was stopped short. Reading "Gentleman's Agreement" was more absorbing than I had expected. Mom had called me to wipe dishes several times but my conscious shrugged it off. Then she was in front of me looking stern and chilly with her hands on her hips. She told me again. Unconsciously I kept on reading. I looked up. The chilliness had warmed to anger. She began to tell me. Something inside me, a nasty hard sophisticated part of me, laughed silently, brittly. "You look like the great stone face" I said condescendingly, cooly. "Why do you always talk down to everybody as if you were so superior to them?" she said. "Everyone?" And Judy said too, "Sure they do, not just Mom." I forgot the dishes again. This was a new thought, am I vain, conceited, superior, condescending? Do I really like people, or is it the shining polished inside me who pretends to like them because it is the thing? Pop does things to me. Or perhaps he is merely an excuse for ugly things in me to come up. When he scolds there is a certain whine in his voice that drives me into a frenzy. One night he muttered and whined in the kitchen. I, on the piano bench, felt my face twist and I sobbed insanely. That's how it is. I feel no affection for him. I don't like him. I don't respect him. I don't honor him. I don't even try to be decent about it. Its a sin, but what can I do? Certainly, I don't love him. Sometimes I think it is hate. I hope not. I am afraid of hate. April 26 It was a long shot in the dark, my application. When I stopped Mr. S. in the hall to say, "I'd like to apply for that Festival thing" he said, oh, about 1 in 20 chance. Alberta's a big place. Won't hurt you to try. So a letter was prepared, sent off to Grande Prairie. Today blown and pink-cheeked from playing ball with Alvina, I came in to look at the mail. The long white envelope addressed to Daddy didn't rate a second look until I noticed the return address. Dept of Education. "Since your daughter has been selected for the Canada Council Train, we should be pleased to ..." Read it again - "daughter has been accepted." Saturday, April 28 4 hours per day study for Psych 20 final exam written today; hours spent playing ball with the softball-fiend neighbour; sewing a dress for our grad party in May. The dress is a creation: silky rich-looking blue top, high-necked and sleeveless, yards of fluffy plain white skirt. April 29 In the café yesterday Pop and I sat and listened to four men remenisce. The four were lined up against the counter. Mr Lowe on one end with his white straight hair falling on either side of his leathery dark face with its alive features and strongly dark eyebrows. They swapped stories about the old days, "... when we were puttin through the railroad I was helpin' to build the roundhouse ..." "He pulls out this Colt 45 - he was a good shot in them days too - and he says to the Widder McCleod - he was the barber - 'I'm gonna scare all the hair off this guy's head.'" "... there was this railroad fence, you know, and all drifted up on one side. Well, he hits for this thing and drives over it with his feet wavin' up in the air and ol' Knobby still shooting after 'im." May 8, 1962 Remember this date. Mrs. Christianson said "Do you get a complimentary copy?" Lynn said, "So you're an author!" Cary said, "Where's your article?" I blurted - "Oh, is it in?" May 18: Friday night I went to see Mrs Kinderwater; I walked through the place where the gate used to be, and along the tilting broken sidewalk, and past the empty dining room window and the plants beside the front steps. It was like it had always been. But Mrs Kinderwater was not the same. She shuffled aimlessly around the kitchen floor, rubbing her stomach. Her stockings were a thick purple-grey color, folded around the bony ankles. She was distracted jumping from whatever topic I began (the leaves, the beaver dam, the grandchildren) to her dismaying health. This was the Mrs. Kinderwater, always cheery and garrulous, who gave me cookies after school when we found the courage to venture up the road past the caragana hedge. She talked delightedly of jet travel and the world. She bemused us with tales of grasshoppers and the old days. One day when I sat at the road and sobbed because down the road a flock of turkeys (blue-wattled and enormous) waited for me, she came out to the road and walked beside me past the almighty gobbler. She lent mother books. She let us read her magazines. She heard me touching her piano wistfully, quietly so father wouldn't shout, and said "she should have a piano. She doesn't just make noise like other children." I was grateful. But today she was nearly silent and always anxious. She was feeling just too badly to visit. She was sorry. She wanted to go to bed. ("Yes I should have stayed in the hospital like the ol' doc said, but I pleaded I thought of Papa alone. He needed someone to cook for him.") She touched my shoulder, ("But you're a young lady now.") "I wanted to walk down to the creek a bit ..." I said eagerly. I had been waiting to say it. I wished I hadn't come. Looking up there was a flash like a light bulb inside, I caught her profile tilted against the window, and my mind photographed it just as I would like to pose her and paint her lovely old face. Her hair wisps. There is dull sadness in her eyes. Her mouth twists in one corner. The skin is pulled taut over her narrow little nose, but wrinkles in sloping downward lines over the rest of her face. Her mouth pouts a little, it isn't the sunken line of most old mouths. She took me to the door and said again as I closed the screendoor that she was sorry. Both of us were near tears. The beavers are gone from the creek. Someone blasted their dam. I sat on the bridge to wait for mother, I listened to the scraping rubbing water going over twigs in the dam. Foam floated into a pattern of lines. A fish thrashed over the branches. I've never seen a fish in that creek before. Just now I went into the kitchen to wash my face. From Mom and Dad's bedroom came unmistakable heavy breathing, almost panting. I knew why. I splashed water loudly to cover the sound I both wanted to hear and wanted never to hear. The sound slowed suddenly. I went outside, and when I came back Mother was talking. I feel - pity for her, repulsion almost to horror at the panting sound (he must be groping and fumbly and awful), curiosity. She must place her stretched and misshapen body into an obediant position and stare into the darkness as his smelling body cries "satisfy me, satisfy me!" And when it is satisfied does she feel betrayed? She talks of ordinary things to him in a normal tone. How CAN she? May 22 I'm sick and tired of school, including Shattsie. He hauled me into his office to tell me off about the paragraph I wrote with good intentions of telling him to lay off bullying Henry Olidam. May 27 My picture and the write-up was in the paper. Mr Schmidt said not to get proud. June 16 Dear Journal, The smokey dim lamp is for atmosphere, and I am wearing something new and nice. It is a short smock; just above my knees; made of a firm stiff weave, very coffee-house and young. It is for inspiration. I say I spent the $2.99 (Saan Store) for something to study in and to put over me when Mother says I am indecent. But I bought it because it is a symbol of what I want to seem. It looks like a painter's smock, (red dabbed and pink smeared and gorgeous), a writer's glory gown. I bought something else too, something that I loved. It was in the Bay, a sleek roll of Sera-silk in pink and apple green with a life-shimmer about it and something I can only describe as "youngness." It will make a swishy elegant dress with a very elegant wide skirt. Thinking of things I love, this morning my mind named three things: my smock-thing, the dress to be made of that material, and my blue bag. (I must remember to call it a "bag", not a vulgar "suitcase". There is nothing vulgar about my incomparable "bag".) Love not things of this world ... I worried about that. I do love world things and status symbols. What were my three things symbolic of? Expense? - my glory gown was $2.99. No, not expensiveness. A full life, maybe - all of them have color and a vague thing I could call style. What they really are symbols of is the Ellie I want to seem. I yearn to be beautiful completely, or charming - special. Today began with a call to the fields and the bush. I rolled my jeans up and wore a tight tee shirt with the blue scarf. I felt desirable. We carried trees (fence post poles) from the deep woods to the less deep woods where the tractor was parked. The path was humpy with tree trunks and sinking moss clumps. We walked a long time and enjoyed it. After hauling poles there were rocks to pick. I worked hard. When we came in with the load for dinner I said "I feel as tho' I've done a good day's work." "You have" Father said. I've thought of this last year in La Glace school as a gift. Remember when I used to say grade four prayers, "God, please you don't have to make them like me, but don't let them dislike me." I've been solitary a long time. Last year I was happy to be solitary. This year I am not solitary any more. I have friends. I am close to our class. I feel one of it, and proud to belong. That is why this year has been a gift. June 19 Our last test, last day of school, last year in La Glace. June 20 Caterpillars in swarms on the trees. June 21 Designed and sewed a green blouse, sewing a swish new dress (orange pink and green-gold). My Underwood came and is a thrill. June 26 Upon arriving in Abbotsford I spent money by phoning Frank and buying a white skirt red jacket suit outfit. June 27 A rather anguished day spent in writing a grim letter to Frank. Then went to Friesen's picker's hack and talked intensely to Frank about Project Dead. June 28 When Frank and I talked about the fatal letter it was indirectly. I was calmer than I'd thought I would be. I feel that way with him. We are such good friends. That is what I felt all evening, friendship. July 11 I've made over $100.00. F and I had ice cream and raspberries with pop, parked and burped and talked. July 18 I said, "What is bothering you Frank?" "How did you know? "It's natural. What is bothering you?" "Two things. One of them is religion." After another long time "The other is us." We finally talked about it, I lightly across his chest, he with his arm around me and his head leaned back on the open window. When it was darker and I saw his shadowy eyes and his sad mouth, he looked very young. He told me the three reasons, one two three, that we cannot marry. I recognized them and agreed. We talked and snuggled too, a bit, and finally came to a happy weak compromise. July 22 After tea with Grandpa and Grandma (good tea with lemon in it) we went back to my cabin. "I'll stay until the moon comes up" he said. We waited outside on the berry waggon. Sometimes we sat on the edge and he put his arms around me. After a while the moon crawled above the Yarrow hills and he went home. July 24 Last day on the strawberries, a half day really, evening driving lesson with F, nearly backed off a cliff. July 27 We've had such a good summer, and even this evening was wacky. We read parts of Walt Whitman's Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand; we drove cheek beside cheek, sadly; we admired my frivolous pink pyjamas; we ate cherry pie with ice cream; we backed into a sign; we made a feeble attempt to phone Grandma and 'pa Epp then left the phone booth gaily. I had been near-rushed into the train by the porter. During our long Chilliwack stop when I looked out I could see him looking into our windows distantly. July 28 Meeting people. Riding through the Rockies. July 29 Edmonton people, Saskatchewan people. Afternoon singsong. Intellectual discussion - moved first to edges, settled down to make notes on Alban on pink paper as he talked to Indra. Moved to table across from him. Got into the discussion. We talked books, sex, moral ethics, books, love, politics, religion. I took notes in the back of my book on books I want to read. I went for lunch - I with my comfortable lunch had settled when Judy and Terre invited me over. We began on the usual, real and unreal, true and pretended. It was sharp fun. July 30 All day through Ontario woods. Breakfast in Toronto, met Gilles on the special train, five of us to Mrs Beadle's boarding house. "The Tempest". First glimpse of the theatre. Miranda was lovely. Arial stole the show, nimble, happy. Waves! Loathesome Caliban, savage, snarling. August 1 Late for the tour of the theatre, walked with Marg and our Gilles so we were also late for afternoon's "Shrew". August 2 "McBeth" was dull but afterwards we snakedanced through Stratford, sang beside the river, home 3:35. August 3 Before noon, packed and went strolling with the fun mob (Liz, Indra, Rick, Al, Marg, Jim, Mike) sang. "Cyrano" in the afternoon got a standing ovation,. Sad goodbye to Gilles. I can still see his face. It is puckish, grinning, almost elfin. - We got to Toronto. Those vampishly inclined kissed all the fellows good-bye. I felt like kissing someone too, Gilles in particular, but everyone else was kissing him so I wouldn't have. Then Gilles walked down with me to the place where East became East and West, West. This is what he said: "I'm going to remember you. I'll write you. I'll remember most the times I was with you. Because that was when I was sincere." August 4 Snatches of railroad yard, rock in stark folds. Sad tale of how Mr. Baravelle and Miss Campbell looked for me. Mr. B. when he returned from the hunt, to the B.C. kids - "oh, she was out boying and girling." We sang again. Our favorites have become Yellow Bird, The Happy Wanderer, The Quartermaster's Store. Some of the nicer ones were Green Grow the Rushes-O, Jamaican Farewell, Fires Burning. I sang leaning against the wall, looking sometimes at Ron, sometimes at the indistinct mirror image on the window, sometimes alto, sometimes tenor, sometimes an explorative descant, sometimes silent. After a while of this I staggered back to our car, to find Indra, Pat Mooney, Lynne and Al being intellectual. At the edges of their group I paused, and then melted slowly into good fellowship. We discussed perverty teachers, religion (disturbing), more books, personality quirks; spoofed Freud (defecation!). Then Burgess, Dear Battle Axe, was shooing us away into our berths. Rick popped his head into mine. "Sleepy tonight Ellie? Good. I'm not either. Let's talk a while. Careful." I buttoned up my berth curtains, unscrambled my purses and bags and luggage. Then Rick crawled in from the underside of my curtain - I was a bit taken aback - man in my berth! ("Here?" I said. "Where else?" "The observation car is that way." "Hey! So it is." I do like his quick smile and equally quick interest and then the contrasting dreaminess in his feelings for Michelle. "I was singing some songs I knew, some of the nicer ones, and she had her head on my shoulder. I wanted it to last forever.") He was handing me some peanuts when Burgess, Dear Battle Axe poked her head in. "How many of you are there in this berth?" "Two at the moment. We're dividing peanuts". Rick was chased out with much clucking. Burgess, Dear Battle Axe, by the way was the one who cracked yesterday "You're the one who was leading my boy Ron astray last night - he told me you'd been talking about my drama class." Afternoon we stopped at Hornepaine - ice cream, chips, hot dog and sunning on the hill. Back on the train during and after supper Ron and I had a groping fast-paced conversation about the usual things - why are we here? Are we here or are we a dream in one man' mind? Is there a reason for anything. Is there a Reason? "I feel as tho' I've grown little tentacles all over me that have been storing things up to think about when I get home." "You're right! That's it exactly. I'm not thinking about anything now. I'm just receiving." August 5 There was a fogged pink glare in my eyes and a lake to wake up with. A house outside the window, early, early. It stood squarely on a scraggly yard. Its windows were square and black. Before the door was a curved brown and white dog, sleeping. The entire house was solidly silent. Indra was in the dining car with her lovely dress - bright yellow with crooked rickrack and red buttons to match. She wears it with red dangly earrings, sunglasses, sandals, and her long cigarette holder. She looks a gold skinned goddess in it. The sky is a solid smoke blue like a wall from wherever to trees. [Gilles Pruneau, Montréal; Rick Parker, Calgary; Terre Larsen, West Vancouver; Indra Kagis, Prince Albert; Judy Hilderman, Yorkton; Marg Clark, Swift Current; Ron Uldrich; Al Goulden, Medicine Hat; Lynne Murphy, Kensington PEI; Mike Glisinski, Atikokan; CNR newsy Morris Brass; CNR waiter Mario Cianflone] August 13 Late at night uncle somehow jumped on the table to kill a moth - crash went table, moth, lamp and uncle. An unholy racket, children howling. August 14 [letter to Frank] Do you ever compare this July with last summer? There's a difference. Last summer seemed more light-hearted. This summer we seemed continually to be tangling with some sort of tension or another. Yet in all my life there's never been a more peaceful existence than in John's shack (washing my face in the morning under the cold water tap, talking to Marg for hours, seeing you sometimes at night when you came over in your blue sweater, sleeping like a whole forest of logs and not hearing the drunken mutterings of poor Irish next door. - I was supposed to take the 3 o'clock plane home on the afternoon of the 6th, but as soon as the chaperone was gone I cancelled my reservation and set it ahead to the 9:20 a.m. flight next day. Then I reserved a room at the YWCA and traipsed off to see "West Side Story," my reason for staying over. Afterward I walked a few streets just for the alone independent feeling - and then I took the dear old familiar bus to my hospital, made friends with the girl who's in "my" bed, spent an hour visiting a dear friend on sixth floor station #6 (paralytic ward), and wandered extatically through my alma mater. Next morning after an extravagant CNR meal-ticket breakfast at Edmonton's nicest hotel I took the limosine to the airport and had a very brief and comfortable flight to Grande Prairie. Mom and Dad being in B.C., I decided to hitchhike home but my friend the county superintendent of schools picked me up, took me to his house for dinner, and eventually ferried me home after inventing an excuse for "coming out to La Glace anyway".
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