Some People's Children Read online

  All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

  Breakwater Books

  P.O. Box 2188, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1C 6E6

  www.breakwaterbooks.com

  Copyright © 2020 Bridget Canning

  ISBN 978-1-55081-812-3

  Cover image: Mike Gough, We Left at Night (acrylic, acrylic transfer, pastel, and graphite on panel, 48" x 36"), 2012, © Mike Gough.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  Library and Archives Canada.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation for our publishing activities.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Breakwater Books is committed to choosing papers and materials for our books that help to protect our environment. To this end, this book is printed on a recycled paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  For Mark

  Content

  Prologue: August, 1974

  Part One

  One. Fall 1986

  Two

  Three Fall: 1988

  Four

  Five: 1989

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten. 1990

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven. 1991

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty: 1992

  Thirty-One

  Part Two

  One. May 1993

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Acknowledgements

  prologue

  August, 1974

  Maggie wakes on the bed. The bedspread is itchy on her bare skin. Smells like cigarettes. She is alone. It is not her bed.

  She remembers standing outside the bathroom. Tony’s voice was a hiss: “I thought you said you were seventeen.” She tried to speak around the lump in her throat: “Please.”

  Someone walked by and laughed, sharp and small like a bee sting. Tony pulled her into the bedroom.

  “But we care about each other.” She kissed his neck. That’s one of the things he likes. He shook her off. He slammed the bedroom door as he left.

  She was crying on the bed when the voices started. The party banged on around the edges of the door, but these were new sounds. Mostly barked commands:

  Get back in there, my son.

  If you don’t, I will.

  Get it get it get it.

  And then Tony was back. He shut the bedroom door to a rising cheer. She remembers reaching for him. They’d never been inside before—twice in the woods on a blanket, twice in the backseat. She remembers wishing hard for no one to come in. Please let the door be locked.

  And now he’s gone. She has to go home. She sits up.

  Cecil Jesso stands by the bed. Her jeans and pullover are bunched in his hands. His pale eyes are bulging like marshmallows. His pants are undone to reveal a triangle of white cotton. Matted hair. She buckles into a ball.

  “Cec! Get out of here!”

  “This is my room.” He points at her. “You’re on my bed.”

  She pulls the bedspread up from under her, to cover herself. Cecil clutches her things to his chest with one hand. He reaches out with the other and grabs the bedspread from her hand. “Lemme see,” he whispers. His bottom lip trembles.

  “No!” Maggie swipes at his hand. Her naked breast brushes his forearm. She scrambles to the foot of the bed. It is hard to move away and keep herself covered. She hears Cec’s breath suck in, wet and beastly. He moves closer. No no no no. Everything is no. Everything is help. Her guts fold in on themselves. They remember something sweet and sickly from earlier and don’t want it anymore.

  Now Cec is gasping mouthfuls of garbled fury. He drops her clothes and puts his hands to his wet face. Maggie wipes her mouth, panting. The smell of her own bile hits her and she’s sick again, this time off the side of the bed. Cec backs out of the room. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Her hands move without thought, top on, legs in jeans, underwear and bra shoved in pockets. She stands. Her body sways. Get out, get out. The hallway outside the room reeks of cigarettes and rum. Everyone is gone. She half skates down the hallway, through the kitchen. She snatches her shoes from the porch. Cecil stands in the doorway to the living room, rubbing his face with a towel. “You’re a little savage,” he says.

  “You’re a piece of shit. You ever touch me again, you’re dead.”

  “I never touched you, Maggie Tubbs,” he says. His voice is sooky and slurry.

  A half-empty Labatt 50 bottle sits in the porch, like someone left it when they were tying their shoes. Maggie grabs it around its stubby neck and flings it at him. He steps back, missing the splash of beer. It hits the floor and rolls away.

  “When Tony finds out, he’s gonna kill you,” she says. “You’re fucking dead, Cecil Jesso.”

  part one

  one

  Fall, 1986

  Imogene wants out of this house before the store closes. She has enough change for a Charleston Chew bar and about five Dubble Bubble. The coins are lined up in the side pockets of the Kangaroo sneakers Maggie gave her. She was the first kid at school with zipper-pocket shoes, but now the fabric over her big toe is near transparent.

  Nan and Great Aunt Bride are at the kitchen table for one of their big yak attacks. Their fingertips are ashy with tea-bun flour. When they laugh, it sounds like two crows trapped in a wooden box.

  “Look, Bride,” Nan says. “She got those shoes this spring and they’re already wore through.”

  “Yer gettin’ some big.”

  “Maggie was the same, grew up all of a sudden.”

  “She was an early bloomer. You’ll be one too.”

  Imogene does not want to talk about blooming. Bad enough they have to notice how big her feet are. Cousin Rita likes to say Imogene’s shoes are like pontoons.

  “Nutrition is almost too good today,” Great Aunt Bride says. “Everyone’s taller and girls start developing younger all the time. Sure, Dina’s daughter already wears a bra and she’s only ten.” Great Aunt Bride jiggles her head at the thought. She has puffy white curls and the tips are tinged with the last stains of blond. From a distance, her head is a fresh popcorn kernel.

  “It’s true,” Nan says. “Even the Chinese that comes over and ea
ts like us grow tall.”

  “And the early puberty. I didn’t start my monthlies until I was sixteen.”

  Imogene is gone at that, doors banging. But it’s colder than she thought. She needs her mitts. The door leading from the porch into the kitchen is open a crack. Nan and Great Aunt Bride now speak in regular, honest tones.

  “She’s sensible,” Great Aunt Bride says. “You don’t have to worry about her.”

  “I know. But it started so young with Maggie. Would have been different if Gus hadn’t passed. Or if her brothers were home. That bastard would have been too scared to touch her.”

  “Gus was intimidating.”

  “Maggie minded her father. But I never knew what to do with her. As soon as she developed, it was men sizing her up. And she knew it too, the way she’d walk, her chest stuck out. Deep down, I knew she’d end up with a baby.”

  Imogene slips back outside. Her stomach shifts in confusion. She stuffs her bare hands in her pockets and makes her way up the path. The tops of the mud puddles are frozen, but hollow inside, and the ice shatters like glass when she steps on them. She does it to each one in her way. The tang in Nan’s voice was the same sound she makes when she talks about the price of getting the transmission fixed on the car. Everything is urgency and high cost.

  Last week on the ride to school, her cousin Rita used a saying Imogene hadn’t heard before. “Anyone can get their skin off her,” Rita whispered as Rosarie Coish climbed on the bus. Mrs. Coish brought back a crimping iron when she was last in Corner Brook. Rosarie’s blond hair hung down her back in perfect crinkled strips, like fried bacon, her hips swaying in tight faded denim. Imogene thought Rosarie looked beautiful.

  “She’ll be gettin’ her skin tonight,” Rita said, corkscrewing her elbow into Imogene’s side. Imogene nodded. She thought of Rosarie Coish with arms outstretched, receiving a neatly folded blanket made of some kind of skin, like cured leather. Rosarie passing on the skin to someone else. This can’t be what it means.

  Imogene starts down the road to the Kwik Stop. Maybe someone will offer her a ride. Although, really, she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Imogene would like to avoid the road altogether and walk along the beach all the way to the store, but there aren’t many places to climb up the banks. They would be solid now, but they soften in the spring and you can sink into the mud. Aubrey Murphy has lost a sheep or two like that.

  She feels the wind lift her hair and shake it, as if to see if it will come loose. One time, her hair was blowing all over the place and Rita said it looked like her head was on fire. When Rita makes comments like this about Imogene’s red hair, it’s never clear if she’s joking. Imogene pulls up her hood. There’s always some kind of wind in St. Felix’s. Sometimes a cold wind off the water to spoil a warm summer day. Or a Wreckhouse blast that gouges the breath from your mouth and tries to suffocate you right out in the open.

  A pickup truck passes. Rosarie Coish and her dad. His fingers rise briefly off the steering wheel. Imogene waves back. Rosarie is sixteen. A year older than Maggie when she had Imogene. Must have been A Scandal. Last year, everyone talked about that girl in grade twelve who had a baby—Susan Benoit—but everyone knew Dan Snow was the father. No one knew who Imogene’s father was, so it must have been Big News.

  Maggie will likely call tonight. She calls every week from Markham where she lives with a man named Robert Cronin. Robert Cronin is a real-estate agent, a nice man with thick ashy hair and crinkly eyes. Good for Maggie, Nan likes to say, just what she needs. Both Nan and Maggie agree on that; a good man is good for Maggie.

  When Maggie and Imogene speak on the phone, Maggie talks about the real-estate projects she and Robert Cronin work on. Their focus is primarily in the GTA, but Maggie says they plan on buying at least one property in St. John’s. “If you decide to go there for university,” Maggie says, “you’ll have a place to live.” And later she’ll say, “Robert says hello,” and Imogene will hear him sing “Hello!” from some nearby room or the opposite side of the table. Then Imogene will hand the phone to Nan, who listens and sighs and clucks her tongue.

  Imogene starts down the hill towards the Kwik Stop. The Sampson’s van is parked in front. Good, they’re home. Even though the Kwik Stop is supposed to be open until five, sometimes they close up early and you’re shit out of luck, as Doug Sampson says. It’s getting close to four thirty, which means Loretta Sampson leaves the door leading from the store to their house open so you can see they’re getting ready for supper and won’t waste time shopping.

  Three figures bounce out of the store and yank bikes off the ground. Maybe it’s Quincy and his cousins or Nick Cleary. No, by the way they move, it’s definitely Liam and Randy Lundrigan and Donny Martin. Frig. She sweeps her hair back and composes her face: eyes cool, chin out.

  The wind comes up from the bottom of the hill and makes water in her eyes. It gives the boys an extra push and they bounce towards her, jogging the pedals of their bikes. They pant and grin. Liam Lundrigan aims the front wheel of his bike at her and hunches forward, eyes slurred. She forces her legs to keep moving. Liam’s pale hair blows forward around his face, like a bud of dandelion silk. He waits until he is about two feet away to squeeze the handbrakes. Randy and Donny squeak to a stop behind him. Donny plants both legs on the ground and plucks his jeans off his arse. Randy snorts and rumbles snot in his throat as if to hawk it, but doesn’t. Too windy for that.

  “Not chicken much,” Liam says.

  “Don’t need to be.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Store.”

  “Gettin’ smokes for your nan.”

  “My nan don’t smoke.”

  She tries to step around the front wheel of Liam’s bike, but he pushes it forward. There is a crust of something reddish-brown near the edge of his mouth and he has dried sleep in the corners of his eyes. He wipes his hand on his shirt: red and black checkered flannel covered with about ten million flecks of lint and mystery stuff. He reaches out and runs a finger along her sleeve.

  “Nice coat. Where you get it?”

  It is a nice coat. Maggie sent it last Christmas from Toronto. It hangs past her hips, corduroy in a kind of deep fuchsia. No one else in St. Felix’s has a coat like it.

  “My mother got it for me.”

  “Your mom’s good at getting all kinds of things, isn’t she?”

  “Frig off.”

  “She is good at getting things. She got you, didn’t she?”

  He grins at her. Tiny crack lines appear in the crust on his mouth. Imogene steps over the wheel of his bike and keeps on. The wind blows their laughter out of her ears. When she gets close to the bottom of the hill, she looks back. They are gone, pedaling fast with the wind’s support.

  two

  In class, Sister Patricia gives an assignment which everyone fails. It is a list of directions:

  Read all the instructions before doing anything.

  Get out of your desk and stand on one foot.

  Hop up and down on one foot.

  Stop hopping and fold your arms.

  Nod three times.

  Spin around.

  Whistle.

  Clap your hands.

  Sit down.

  Wait for the teacher to say go before doing directions 2 to 9.

  And so on. Everyone hops and bops and laughs. Afterwards, Sister Patricia announces they have all failed because they didn’t read and pay attention to the first and last directions. She hopes this will teach everyone to pay closer attention. “You people would have learned what the activity was all about if you’d just paid attention,” she says.

  Imogene didn’t read the list well. But in general, she has been paying more attention to everything since overhearing Nan and Great Aunt Bride. Like last week when she was with Nan in the post office. Marie Whalen looked her up and down.

  “Which one are you?” she said. “Eli’s girl?”

  “This is Imogene,” Nan said.

  Marie’s eyes met
hers and there was a click of recognition. “Oh yes. Young Maggie’s child.” Nan’s mouth made a sharp line. She nodded to Marie and collected the flyers in silence.

  Imogene will have to listen hard because she only knows four things about her father and no one talks about him. Last Christmas, when Maggie was home, Imogene asked her about him and received another version of the four things. And then Maggie cried and said she was sorry.

  These are the four things Imogene knows:

  Her father’s name is Anthony Green. His name is on her birth certificate.

  He was a young fisherman who worked on the crab boats for a season. He and Maggie started going out. She told him she was older than what she was. When he found out she was underage, he disappeared.

  Nan sent letters to his old employer looking for him. There was no response. The letters were sent to Marystown, where he moved after St. Felix’s. The last letter was returned from the employer stating Anthony moved away. No forwarding address.

  Anthony told Maggie he was from Port aux Basques, but according to Nan, no one there named Green knows anything about him.

  Anthony Green is spoken of in blasphemous tones; he is Unmentionable like dirty underwear and the secret name of God. And Maggie went to work in St. John’s when Imogene was about four, and then Ontario, and now she can only come down once or twice a year. When she’s home, every day is an event and it never seems to be a good time to request more information.

  Imogene’s memories of Maggie are like a vine which grew straight at first and then sprouted branches, spreading in all directions. Her earliest recollections are lying next to Maggie, waking to the shape of her back and cloak of dark hair. Maggie’s arms swinging hers as they danced on the carpet to ABBA songs.

  And then came the calm explanations. “Mommy will only be gone a little while. See this square on the calendar? This is when Mommy comes home. She’ll call all the time on the phone and tell you stories. She’ll have presents for you.”

  Then Maggie’s pink, streaming face. Maggie lifting her suitcase. Nan prying the damp hem of Maggie’s red sweater out of Imogene’s fists. Maggie’s brown hair whipping straight up in the wind as she walks to Uncle Eli’s truck. Her shoulders quaking.