The Lemon Tree (11 page)

Though Leila sustained a friendship with Jeanette, she never became close to anyone else. The Harding homestead was less than five miles from the little Fort, but it was too far for frequent contact, particularly when the narrow trail along the river was often very muddy or, in winter, choked with snow. Except for the Indians and a few trappers, most of the activity of the Fort was with its connections downriver; what small traffic there was went that way and did not pass the Harding place. Even with Jeanette, both Leila and Wallace Helena sometimes found themselves at a loss, because they had had some education – Jeanette could not even read – and, further, they had had the experience of living in two other countries. On Jeanette’s part, she could not understand Leila’s disinterest in children – or her lack of them.

When Tom first married his pretty Lebanese, he had hoped for another son, but when he saw Leila collapse during her journey to Fort Edmonton, he realized that, as his mother had warned him, she had not the strength a pioneer life required. He began to fear that he might lose her in childbirth, as he had done his first wife. So, as the months went by and his new wife did not become pregnant, he was relieved. He soon tumbled to the fact that the few days each month during which she refused to make love, on the grounds of religious observances, had a twenty-eight-day cycle, and probably had something to
do with the avoidance of pregnancy. Haunted by the fate of his first wife, he humoured her and settled down to being cosseted by a wife trained, since the day she took her first tottering steps, to please a man.

He appreciated the tremendous effort she made to do her part in running the homestead as well as a Metis woman would have done, except that she did not give much help in the fields or garden. He knew he was fortunate in having three women on the place who got along very well together; they rarely quarrelled and soon made up again; and, as he said one day to Joe, ‘Between the three of them, they shift a hell of a lot of work.’

Joe grinned. From the hill that sloped upwards behind the cabin, he could see how far they had extended their cleared land since the advent of Leila and Wallace Helena. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘and you and I’ve shifted a lot, as a result of being freed up a bit by them!’

Tom nodded agreement. ‘We’ll fence this section before the fall,’ he said.

‘The Company’s not going to like it – it’s still their land.’

‘The Company won’t last forever. They can’t hold the land, as it is. If they could, they would’ve tipped out every Metis who’s built himself a cabin and dug a vegetable garden, not to speak of running me out of town.’

‘Well, mebbe you’ll have a son who’ll own it.’

‘Humph.’ Tom flicked the reins of his horse and started it down towards the cabin. He had been married three years, and Joe must be wondering why he had no more family. Well, he could keep on wondering.

Wallace Helena was seventeen. She had fully expected that by this time she would have some small brothers and sisters, and one day after visiting Jeanette and her brood, she asked her mother why none had arrived.

Her mother smiled secretively, and said, ‘I’ll explain it next time the boys are out and Agnes has gone to visit her
sister at the Fort.’ It was time, she felt, that Wallace Helena should understand these things.

Seated by the fire, one cool autumn evening, some mending in her lap, she said frankly to her daughter that, once she had seen the lonely little Fort and the still more lonely cabin, she had decided that she did not want to bear infants in such a deserted place only to see them die.

‘An awful lot of them do die round the Fort, I know,’ Wallace Helena agreed, holding up the sock she was knitting to see how she was getting on.

‘I lost both your little brothers and that was enough. Thank goodness I have you, my darling, and that you are strong and healthy. And I have dear Tom, bless him.’

‘I would hate to see my babies die,’ Wallace Helena said. ‘I felt awful when the boys died.’

‘I know, dear.’ She looked suddenly old, as she sat with needle poised over the patch she was sewing and stared into the fire, to visualize the world from which she had come, the warmth, the vivacity, the sophistication of it – and the two small graves.

She shook her head and forced herself to attend to what she wanted to say. Smiling gently, she said, ‘One day, perhaps some nice Lebanese will find his way here – and he’ll marry you and take you away to a more civilized place. Then you can give me some grandchildren.’

Wallace Helena smiled back at her mother, but said nothing; Mama was entitled to her little flights of fancy.

Bored with knitting, she got pen, ink and paper down from a shelf, to write a thank-you letter to Uncle James for the small box of Arabic books he had sent them. The wonderful present had taken nearly a year upon its journey, and Leila had cried when she had lifted out the works of her favourite poet

After the letter was written, Wallace Helena went over to the fireside, to pick up her knitting again. Tom and Joe
were in the barn dealing with a mare which was having difficulty in dropping its foal.

‘Mama, how is it that you can avoid having children? Agnes says children simply come, whether you like it or not.’

Her mother was mending a rent in one of Tom’s jackets. She broke the thread with her teeth, as she considered the question. ‘It is a delicate matter. You have to watch the moon and your monthly show of blood – and you have to find an acceptable excuse to give your husband for not lying with him on certain days.’

Wallace Helena picked out another ball of the coarsely spun knitting wool with which she was making socks. ‘The moon, Mama?’ she asked, a little incredulously, a suspicion of laughter in her voice.

‘Yes. The moon. I’m not teasing you. It’s a system usually used to help women conceive – if they’ve had no luck in becoming pregnant. But it can be used in reverse, to avoid children.’ And she went on to share with Wallace Helena the observations of generations of women, that there appeared to be certain days in the monthly cycle when a child might be conceived – and that these days were limited. By watching the moon’s twenty-eight-day cycle or by consulting a calendar, one could relate a
woman’s
twenty-eight-day cycle to it – and thus know that at the rising of the moon, say, one should try for a child – or avoid those days if you did not want one.

Wallace Helena sat spellbound. ‘What do you tell Tom, to avoid him on the wrong days?’

‘I tell him I have certain religious days when I must make special prayers each month,’ she replied placidly. ‘And he humours me.’

Wallace Helena had always understood the relationship between man and wife; there was little privacy in the crowded busy homes of Beirut, and women
talked and complained endlessly about their menfolk. Now, however, finding the young woman was interested, Leila began to instruct her in how to please a man. ‘When you are older, you will marry,’ she said, ‘and you’ll keep a man faithful, if you give him pleasure.’

‘Do women get pleasure?’

‘Certainly, my dear. But sometimes men are stupid and ignorant – and then you have to teach them what pleases you.’

‘Humph.’ Wallace Helena found it impossible to relate what her mother said directly to Tom; it was as if the faded, knowledgeable woman was a teacher, not her mother, and the man about whom she spoke was not Tom, but some abstract man conjured up to use as an example.

When Leila fell silent, Wallace Helena did not know what to say. Her mother had opened up a weird world which she had always known existed but had never really considered; it made her feel very uneasy.

Finally, she said lightly, ‘It’s easier to make moccasins than to knit this awful wool.’ She flung down her needles irritably.

Leila agreed, and no more was said about the art of sex. Wallace Helena began to look at men with new eyes, however. Black, white or brown, were they all the same? She began to speculate whether women were as powerless as they often appeared; her mother seemed to believe that men could, through sex, be easily manipulated.

She got up briskly from her chair, and said, ‘I’ll go over to the barn.’ Then she paused, and asked idly, ‘Mama, do you feel it has been worthwhile – leaving Chicago, I mean?’

The unexpected question startled Leila. She looked puzzled for a moment, and then said slowly, ‘I don’t think
about it very much. When I first came I thought I was going to die, and I wished I had sent you, at least, to your Uncle James.’

Wallace Helena bent to kiss her mother lightly on the top of her head. ‘I’d never leave you, Mama.’

‘Bless you, child,’ Leila responded absently, and then reverted to Wallace Helena’s question. ‘Once I was here, I was sure I could never face the return journey – or any similar journey – so I have made the best of it. And Tom is very dear to me,’ she added defensively. ‘I didn’t make any mistake about him. He works like a devil for our sake.’

‘Yes, he does,’ admitted Wallace Helena. She sighed. ‘We all work very hard.’

Her mother spread her hands on her knees and looked at the broken nails, the ingrained soot and their redness. ‘Yes, dear,’ she agreed, and then her usual optimism reasserted itself, and she said, ‘Tom’s saving to get us a proper iron cooking stove.’

‘Good heavens! Where would he get that from?’

‘He’s trying to find out – and see if he can get one sent overland, now the trail is better.’ She got up from her chair and shook out the jacket she had been mending. ‘Up to now, he’s had to collect farm implements – tools of every kind. Now it’s my turn to have something, he says.’

‘Great,’ responded Wallace Helena, with enthusiasm. ‘A stove will be a godsend.’ She took her shawl from a hook and wrapped it round herself. ‘I’ll go over to see if the foal’s born yet.’

Ice crunched under her moccasins as she walked across the yard to the barn. Her mother had not really answered her question regarding her inner feelings about living in such a primitive place. Did she find the small world of the homestead and its six inhabitants satisfying? Was the battle to survive each year perhaps a challenge that she
enjoyed meeting? Yet, she had cried when she saw the tattered anthology of Arab poems which Uncle James had sent.

She stood in the yard for a moment, looking up at a peerless night sky where every star seemed to twinkle with the clarity of a view of them from a desert. It was uncannily quiet, except for the muffled sound of the men’s voices in the barn. The wind was chilly and she began to shiver as she gazed at the cold silver of the rising moon. Living in the Territories was as lonely as living on the moon, she thought. There was nothing comfortable in the thousands of miles of unexplored forest and prairie that surrounded her. The untouched land sat there like a mountain lion waiting for prey – and it could spring nasty surprises on you just as quickly, she thought bitterly. And no matter what happened, there was no extended family to call on for help; no community. Nothing. Just nothing. Did Adam and Eve feel like she did, when they were cast out of Eden to face just such a world?

She began to shake with helpless fear, just as she had when she first arrived. Perspiration rolled down her face, and she wanted to turn and run. But there was nowhere to run, except into the very land which scared her so much.

The side door of the barn opened and Joe was silhouetted against the light of the lantern inside. He was wiping his hands and arms with some straw. He did not see her at first, but when he did, he asked, in surprise, ‘Hi, hon, what are you doing out there?’

She turned. Her blanched face gleamed in the lantern light. She looked at Joe for a moment as if she did not recognize him. Her mouth tightened and she seemed much older than her seventeen years, as she sought to control her terror. She said shakily, ‘I came to see if the foal was born.’

Joe threw away the dirty straw, and grinned. ‘Sure. He’s fine. And Queen’ll be all right.’

She tried to smile, but there was no rejoicing in her; Uncle James’s little lemon flower felt as bitter as a lemon fruit.

Leila was not the only one marked by the remorseless round of work on a homestead: Agnes Black was feeling her years. After talking the matter over with Joe and Simon Wounded, she suggested to Tom and Leila that they might take in an orphan girl from amongst those cared for by the Grey Nuns in St Albert, a small Metis and Cree community founded by an Oblate priest, Father Lacombe, about ten miles away.

‘The girl could help in the house – and I’d teach her,’ she promised. ‘We wouldn’t have to pay her anything for a while.’

They debated the problem of another mouth to feed, but, though the harvest that year had been good, the men were uneasy; some years they felt as if they had their backs to the wall. Another person was another responsibility. Leila, however, jumped at the idea, particularly since the girl would not be coming straight from her tribe, but would have been taught by the famous Grey Nuns. She had never met the nuns; they tended to stay close to their work in St Albert, but she had heard from Jeanette that they were white and were educated, and might even know what a Lebanese Maronite was.

So, speechless and terrified, Emily, aged ten, was added to the motley family. She clung to Agnes like a small brown ghost.

At first, Wallace Helena did not take much notice of her. She herself worked with the men outside; Emily
would work with Leila. Then she noticed casually that the child never smiled and did not seem to grow much, though she ate with the family and consumed a fair amount of food. When spoken to, the girl slid behind Agnes, who often answered for her. This bothered Wallace Helena and she mentioned it to Joe, while they sat on the fence having their usual evening smoke.

Joe carefully crumbed up some tobacco in the pink palm of his hand, before he answered. ‘Maybe she don’t understand anything but Cree,’ he suggested. ‘What do you talk to her in?’

‘English. She must know English. I tried French one day, but she just looked at me as if I were insane. I took it for granted that being with the nuns all her life, she didn’t know Cree.’

‘Try Cree – slowly.’

Wallace Helena followed his advice, though her own Cree often made a gleam of amusement rise in the eyes of Indian visitors. And slowly she began to unravel the small, grubby, miserable person that was Emily.

She was startled to find a mirror image of herself, when she first came to Fort Edmonton, a child uprooted, its origins and forebears either ignored or disparaged. In addition, she was parentless. Agnes Black, though not unkind, was often short with her because, as Emily told Wallace Helena, ‘I’m slow, because I don’t know anything. And Mrs Harding – I can’t understand what she says. So she gets cross.’ She did not cry; she avoided looking directly at her questioner, her face expressionless.

Wallace Helena nodded, her own face suddenly grim. Poor Mama had declared that knowing three languages was enough – she was not about to start on Cree; she spoke English to Agnes.

Emily slept in the bunk in the living-room where Wallace Helena had herself wept through her first weeks
in the homestead; Tom and Joe had since built on a little room for her which backed on to the living-room fireplace and was warmed by it. She sighed, and looked again at the child before her. It was late, and Agnes, Joe and Simon had long since gone to their shack. There was a faint murmur of voices from her parents’ room, as they, too, prepared for bed. With a sudden surge of pity, Wallace Helena took both the youngster’s hands in hers. ‘I think I understand how you feel,’ she said. ‘It happened to me once, when I couldn’t speak any English.’

Emily’s eyes opened wide and, for the first time, she stared directly at Wallace Helena.

Wallace Helena continued. ‘I’ll explain to Mrs Harding, and she will ask Agnes to translate for you. And you can speak Cree to Joe, Mr Harding and Simon Wounded.’

At the men’s names the girl looked frightened.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Wallace Helena.

‘The Reverend Mother said we must never, ever, speak to men; it’s dangerous for us.’

Wallace Helena leaned back in the old wooden chair and laughed. Emily looked totally discomfited at her sudden mirth.

‘I don’t think any of the men here will hurt you; they are more likely to protect you from other men. If any one of them does touch you in a way you don’t like, tell me immediately. I’ll take care of you.’

The girl squirmed, and then smiled slightly. Wallace Helena got up and suggested cheerfully, ‘Let’s have some hot milk before we go to bed. And tomorrow I’ll teach you how to milk a cow.’

The next morning, she rode out with Joe to look for a missing steer; their herd was small and any absence was noted almost immediately. Unlike further south, where cattle ranged on the hills, Tom kept his in fenced pasture
land, which he had taken a lot of trouble to improve.

Joe’s handsome, high-cheekboned face creased up with laughter when she told him of little Emily’s woes and mentioned the Reverend Mother’s warning. His black eyes flashed, as he rose in his saddle to squint across the country in search of the lost animal.

‘Tell your ma about her; she’ll spoil her to death, once she understands what’s the matter.’

His assumption was correct, and Emily became another little daughter to train, always a quiet shadow in the house, but devoted to Wallace Helena and Leila.

They found enough remains of the steer to indicate that someone had slaughtered it and taken almost all of it away with them.

‘Must’ve been a party of ’em, blast them,’ he muttered. ‘I sometimes think we were crazy to bring cattle up here. Nobody else did for a while. I guess we lost this one to Indians last night – but if it isn’t them, it’s cougars – or they go eat something they shouldn’t and make themselves sick; they haven’t got the brains of mice. I’ll never forget the time I had bringing the first three up from Fort Benton.’ He bridled as he continued, ‘I got them here, though – a bull and two cows, as scrawny as they could be and still stand on their feet.’ He chuckled again. ‘The fellows down at the Fort laughed their heads off and said it was a lot cheaper to hunt; but we nursed ’em along and we got calves and had meat when they didn’t.’

As they went back to the cabin, laughing and making jokes about the chickens he had also bought, on another occasion, from American settlers further south, Agnes Black looked up from the barrel in which she was doing some washing, outside the door, and she sighed. Again, that night, she suggested cautiously to Joe that he should take a Cree wife.

He told her dryly that he and Tom had enough mouths
to feed, without his adding to them. ‘Tom looked as black as Old Nick when I told him about the steer this morning,’ he added, as if to confirm the difficulty of feeding everyone.