The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

picking beans on the next fine day. You know you can’t pick them when their leaves are wet.”

“Can’t you. Missy smart-one, you are. Don’t know what the missus would do without you.”

That, too, was a worry. She was both beholden and indispensable.

He set down the hammer and chisel, running a finger along the incised line, drawn lips exposing his teeth. The scritch-scratch of Flora’s glass paper was loud, as if expressing her feelings, and she laid it down. Their eyes touched.

“How much money have I given you?”

I earned it, she thought, indignant, but suddenly could not speak, could not stand up for herself, as when she bargained for firewood and hay or argued robustly for her pricing on eggs and butter or snapped at Mr. Sprague if he complained You tuck them sheets so tight a man can’t get into them. Enid’s presence had made her aware of her strength and determination; yet, also, more careful.

“How much?” he repeated.

“Five dollars and seventy-three cents.”

He glanced down at the money drawer. “You and I have a secret. Don’t we.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t get much money from Josephine, do you? No. No, you don’t. You going to pick them beans or sell a house?”

“Sell a house.”

There was no need, she thought. He could have treated her like a partner. He could have asked her pleasantly.

“You and me going to make a business, aren’t we? One day I plan to live in a house like this.” He reached over and drew a finger along the roof of the little house, like stroking the ridge of a dog’s skull. He grinned, his eyes hard. He made a vague gesture towards the lower streets lined with large, shingled buildings: the boot factory, a tannery, a woodworking plant, greenhouses, foundries. “Tuck’s Miniature House Factory…one day you’ll be my main girl.”

She resumed sanding. The future that he sketched was so real that she pictured herself passing Mr. Tuck’s mansion, set on the hillside with a view over the eastern hills, as she walked home to her own imaginary house, where Enid would be tending a flock of hens.

“How you doing with that glass paper?”

He hooked his chair back with one foot and came across the floor. She folded her hands in her lap and hunched her shoulders. It occurred to her that whenever she caught Enid in such a posture she always whispered Enid! straighten your back, look up, stop fanning your skirt—a kind of pleading, since Enid’s pain was a thing she did not want to witness.

He stood behind her. She felt as if a draught blew over her head, stirring her hair, a vague brushing. Or as if a daddy-long-legs had wandered over her scalp. She did not dare move, although in the effort to remain still, her neck quivered.

—

Harland arrived at tea time. It was a hot, still afternoon. The sky was lurid; thunder crumpled, a sense of danger prowling the outskirts. The wisteria-shrouded veranda seemed a place of safety, threatened.

“Sometimes, yes, I do wonder,” Josephine said. Her throat thickened at the question—Did she wonder, worry or fret over how he had died. She was snapping the stem ends from green beans. She had not worn a corset for months, now. She felt the soft swell of her freed belly, hidden beneath an apron; saw the bright green of the beans in her lap. An ash basket held the snapped-off stems; woven, honey-coloured strips held lines of shadow and light. “There’s no one who can tell me how he died, only that the ship went aground and they saved the women.”

“No doubt he was in the process of saving them,” Harland said. He leaned forward, picked a stem end from the floor and dropped it into the basket in her lap.

Even if Permelia should die, she thought, flushing, and Harland were to ask for her hand in marriage, she could not imagine removing her clothes in front of him. She could not imagine his moustache pressed against her face or his fingers touching her breasts. She did not know how other women did this, marrying for a second time. She had given herself to Simeon; together, they had graduated from embarrassed fumblings into discovery of the body’s magnificent gifts. Now she was on the cusp of allowing the past its due and proportion, a reduction, while gathering to herself this day’s weather and the needs of the present; and as the past drifted away, day by day, the more frequently, it seemed, Harland visited. She became aware that it was she who had found direction and he who was lost.

She longed to ask him about Permelia—how did he feel about her—so instead spoke of her love for Simeon. Like plunging one’s hands into the carcass of a hen, she thought. Grasping the heart.

“I loved Simeon so dearly. He was my best friend. The only person I felt truly knew me.”

“You had a good marriage,” he said, as if conceding something long unspoken. “I’m glad, Josephine, although I am grieved that it has come to an end.”

She snapped the ends from several beans, listening to the muttering thunder. She would ask, then. Since the question lay, waiting.

“And you?”

“There are difficulties, as you have no doubt realized. Yes. Difficulties. I will admit to my part in her frustration. I am too engrossed in my…my interests. My other interests.”

“Weather records,” she said. She snapped the beans more quickly.

“Yes, weather, of course. And the store. And, now, Flora and Enid. Which Permelia simply cannot understand.” He flushed, fingering the rim of the straw boater he held on his knees. His lips tightened over the words Josephine knew he would not speak, the words Permelia used to describe such girls as Flora and Enid, who had been brought over to Canada by the boatload. The worst elements. From the poorest class. Infesting our country.

“Flora worries, terribly,” she said. “She wants to repair the damages done to Enid. She feels responsible.”

Flash of lightning, a crackling boom. Josephine started and the beans spilled