Gracie's Mink Sometimes my husband tells me I remind him of my Aunt Grace. I'm never sure if he means it as a compliment, especially as he always laughs. Anyhow, he only saw her twice in his life. Actually, I only saw Aunt Grace on three visits myself. Now when I look back over the thirty years I knew her, I recall those visits as though they were the first, second and third act in a play. Act One took place at the old family homestead in Saskatchewan when Grace must have been about forty and I was twelve. My widowed mother had remarried, so we had very little contact with my father's family on the farm. But that year, they had to make a business trip to Regina, and my mother decided, "This will be an opportunity for Dorrie to forge some bonds with her father's relatives." The plan was for us to meet the family at my Aunt Lila's house in Dry Coulee. Then after lunch, I would go home with Aunt Grace, and stay on the farm with her and my old Grandfather Heddle, until my parents came back from the city. We drove down the main street of the bleak little town and found Lila's house sandwiched between the Pentecostal Church and the grain elevator. She had been watching for us. We walked up the steps, and before we could knock, she opened the door, "Well, look who's here after all these years!" she said, "Scrape the mud off your feet." She pointed to the mudscraper beside the doormat. We took turns dragging our shoes across the iron blade and then she let us into the house. My parents soon hurried away and I was left with relatives who were complete strangers. There was no hope of any bonding with Aunt Lila from her very first greeting, "So you are Dorothy. My, but you are a big one, aren't you! You must take after your mother's family. Our side doesn't have the big bones." Aunt Grace's approach was different. "Land sakes, so this is Dorrie! Come and kiss your Aunt Grace," she boomed, and limped over and grabbed me. "My but you have the same pretty eyes as your dad. His smile, too. Doesn't she, Lila?" Aunt Lila called me into the kitchen. "Come and meet your Uncle Willard. Take off your shoes," she ordered, "I jest polished the floor," and I tiptoed around the kitchen on stepping-stones of newspaper pages. I can no longer recall Lila's insignificant little husband, I only met him briefly while we had lunch. He stayed in the kitchen and I never saw him again. We moved back to Lila's 'front room' for the rest of the visit. I sat nervously in a high-backed padded rocker smothered in crocheted lace and whenever I leaned forward, the doilies fluttered with me, attached to my charm bracelet and clinging to my pony-tail. After Lila finished her interrogation about my mother and stepfather, she decided to fill me in on her version of my family history. "We always thought your father would take over the farm after he got out of the army. But then he went for a course in Ontario and took up with your mother. She wasn't much for farming, so we never expected it to work out. But it made no-never-mind anyway because he went overseas and got hisself killed." It was from Lila that I learned what had become of my Uncle Thomas. "He could have married the Pringle girl and stayed right here to look after the farm. But Oh, no, he went and married the schoolteacher. She was one of those you couldn't tell a thing to . . . thought she knew everything, that one did. She told Thomas she wouldn't be a farmer's wife and made him move to the city. And that left me, with the rheumatism in my joints having the burden to look out for Pa and poor crippled Gracie." Aunt Grace had spoken very little until that moment, but suddenly she got up and announced it was time for us to leave. "It's a fair piece down the road," she told me, "and I have to get Pa his supper." She took me out to her old truck. When I saw the way she could swing up into the seat, dragging her bad leg, and manage to shift the gears, as far as I could see, Grace needed very little 'looking out' for. I didn't really want to meet my grandfather, but I was curious. I once heard my mother say, "Dorrie's grandfather was a miserable old bugger . . . he dictated to his children and bullied his wife. Her timid little grandmother's only escape was to go to church or be sick in bed." My mother was right Pa turned out to be a bushy-faced, cantankerous old man who spent most of his time in his smelly room, where he chewed tobacco and spat into a brass spittoon. He showed no interest in me whatever and I kept out of his way. Aunt Grace had never been away from the farm. On a homestead in Saskatchewan, before World War One, a child born with a deformed hip didn't expect a great deal of medical attention or education. Although Gracie was considered 'too poorly' to finish school, she was expected to do farm chores and housework. Despite her lurching gait, she managed to milk the cows and slop the pigs. The people in town referred to her as 'the crippled Heddle girl'. Her family spoke of her as 'our poor crippled sister'. Grace accepted their labels with shame, and guilt because she caused them embarrassment. After Pa's stroke, Thomas and Lila jointly took on the position of Head-of-the-Family, making all the decisions for Grace and their quiet little mother. But their mother died, Thomas met his schoolteacher and left the farm, and Lila escaped spinsterhood by marrying the quiet old widower at the grain elevator in Dry Coulee. It was taken for granted that looking after Pa was now the responsibility of their old-maid sister. Then, to everyone's surprise, a different Gracie emerged. She gloried in her new status as head of 'my farm'and 'my house'. When she found how capable she was despite her disability, she realized how she had been held back by her family, and she became a domineering rebel. Telling them to "Keep your damned advice to yourselves," she ran things in her own stubborn way. She covered up her ignorance with bluster and bravado, and delighted in shocking them with newly acquired profanity. As their father grew senile, Grace became the only one who could handle the old man. With Lila, who had always considered herself 'Pa's favorite'. Grace maintained a constant feud. There wasn't much for a twelve-year-old to do at the farm except trail Aunt Grace around the house. I followed her into her bedroom. The walls were covered with glossy pictures of movie stars. "I wrote to all them famous people," she told me proudly, "and they were real pleased that I wrote. Each one of them signed their name on their picture and wrote me a nice note thanking me, just like they were real friends of mine." She showed me a shelf, "Maybe you'd like something to read, there's some real good stories in these," she offered, pointing to piles of True Romance, True Confession and Silver Screen magazines. "I've had a real lot of romance in my own life," she confided. For the rest of my visit I spent my days feasting vicariously on a three-year collection of romances and confessions. In the evenings, I sat enthralled while Grace confessed to me about her own many lovers. "You'd never know it now, but I was a real beauty in them days," she boasted. Each affair had ended sadly with the lover pleading for Grace to marry him and Grace sending him away with a broken heart when she told him she had to take care of Pa and Mother. "There was one real special one I nearly married. When I wrote to say I would marry him, the letter got there too late. He told me that when I broke his heart, he had gone and signed up to be a priest." The day my parents came to take me home, Aunt Lila came to say good-bye. While Grace went in to tend to my grandfather, Lila lowered her voice and said to my mother, "Tom and us are all so worried about poor Gracie. After Pa is gone, I don't know what's to become of her. She's lived here for free all these years, but after we sell the farm, it's going to be hard to find a place for her. "I blurted out, "You don't have to worry about Aunt Grace she can go and marry one of her boyfriends. She told me so." "Boyfriends?" Aunt Lila was scathing. "Has she been telling those stories again? Why, the poor soul never had a boyfriend in her whole life. She used to write to the 'Lonely Hearts' in the Western Producer for pen pals, and then pretend they were boyfriends. She never told them she was a cripple. She even took a picture of our cousin Jane, who was the pretty one, and sent copies to the pen pals and said they was her. Then a fellow down in the States wrote a lot of mush to her for three years. That time she even started a hope chest. And then he wrote that all that time he was studying to be a priest. "Can you beat that?" Lila laughed. "That's the closest she ever came to having a boyfriend -- a priest. And that's God's truth." It was then I looked behind Aunt Lila to see Grace standing in the doorway. Surprisingly, she never raised her voice, but her eyes were cold steel. "I'll thank you not to talk behind my back, Lila," she said, "and you know damn well, I have never asked either of you bastards for help. And until Hell freezes over, I never will. So you can all bloody well quit worrying about poor Gracie!" Act Two took place twenty years later. After I went home, Aunt Grace and I wrote back and forth for a few years. Then as I grew up, our correspondence became reduced to letters on Christmas cards. I married and moved to Vancouver, and after twenty years we almost lost touch, so it came as a surprise when we got a phone call from her. "Is that you, Dorrie? Remember me? It's your old Aunt Grace." "Where are you?" I asked. "I'm at the Vancouver Airport. Can you come and get me?" To our amazement, we found she was on her way home from a Mexican cruise. And what a sight she was! She had always been plump, but now she was a pink cabbage-patch doll. Even her fuzzy white hair was tinged with pink. She leaned heavily on a cane. I asked about the family. "Pa died a few years after you stayed with us," she told me. "He left me the farm in his will. Lila and Thomas carried on and got themselves a lawyer. The lawyer told them that even if they got a share of the farm from me, I could sue for years of back wages. And that ended that! Your Aunt Lila was madder than a wet hen, but there wasn't nothing she could do about it. I sold off most of the land and took in our cousin Alvie the one that was daft and he does all the heavy work. I made out real good until last year," she went on, "Then I got the arther-itis in my bad hip and the doc says I have fluid in my bronicals, so I don't get around so good." For a whole week, Grace sat in front of our television set catching up on her soap operas. "It's just like they was my real family. I got to know all the people and they keep me busy worrying about them," she laughed. "That way I don't have no time to get lonesome. I entertain a lot now a days as well. I started giving Tupperware parties and asked my neighbors in. Then they all asked me back to their parties and I had such a good time . . . so I began to give parties for all kinds of things. Lately it's been jewelry parties. See " she held up her hands, to show off her rings. "This is my favorite. I bet you thought it was made of real diamonds, but I got it for forty-five bucks." We told her it was lovely. "Hell, I can afford It," she said, "That's why I went on this cruise. What happened was, a nice man from the Real Estate happened to be in my neighborhood and said he knew someone who wanted a house just like mine. I thought, what the Hell, it's falling apart, so I told him okay. I got what he calls an Option. He'll give me the money in three months and I'll move into one of them Senior Citizen cottages. Then I thought, since I'm going to get all that money anyway, why don't I spend my savings and take a trip while our weather here's cold. So I went into town to a travel agent fella. I told him to get me a trip on a boat to some place where they have foreigners . . . and that's exactly what he did. "That boat stopped at places where most of the people was foreign all right. Hell, most of them weren't even the same color as us, but God made us all. And they had bananas growing all over. And I never thought to see parrots. Or coconuts growing up there on trees. I saw colored fish and beautiful sea shells . . . I tell you, your Aunt Grace had the most wonderful time of anybody in Dry Coulee. "Were the other passengers friendly?" I asked. "You bet! They was mostly from the States and wanted to know where I came from. Boy, I sure told them. Like all about how we used to grow wheat on our section and how big it was. I guess they decided I must be rich if I sold all that land and could afford all these diamonds. I didn't tell them different. Everybody took to calling me 'Gracie' and bringing their friends over to meet me when I was setting out on the deck. They seemed to think everything I said was real funny and I had such a good time. And they didn't care that my leg was crippled, either. "The ship people looked after me real good, too. There was this fellow all dressed in a fancy suit. He was good looking, I can tell you. Well, would you believe, every day he took my arm like I was the Queen, and escorted me to my table in the dining room. I could tell the women were sure jealous of me getting all that attention." Grace roared with laughter at the memory, "I was the only one he pulled the chair out for. That sure set them back on their ears, believe me! "They had these cute boys, with little red caps, to wait on people in their cabins. There were two of them who couldn't do enough for me, always fetching me chairs and pillows and the like. When the trip was over, they even came to say good-bye to me. They stood there like they didn't want me to leave with their hands out trying to shake my hand. I felt so sorry for them, I gave them each two dollars and they sure were surprised, like nobody had ever given them two dollars before. But I just told them, 'Go ahead you take it Hell, you fellows deserve it'." Before Aunt Grace left, she confided, "I guess maybe I'm a foolish old woman, but there's two things I always wanted to go some place on a ship and to buy a mink coat. So I've had the boat trip and as soon as I get that money, I'll get me that mink." On her Christmas card that year, she wrote, "I let on to Lila that I changed my mind about selling the house, but the truth is that bastard backed out of the deal. But even if my savings are gone, that boat trip was worth every penny. And I put my last two thousand into a Savings Bond. Someday it'll grow into my mink. Besides, now that I'm broke, I can get a Homemaker lady twice a week because I'm a cripple. That sure sticks in Lila's craw." Act Three, was another ten years later, when I saw Aunt Grace for the last time. When she wrote to say she was in a nursing home, I promised to make a side-trip to see her on the way home from our cross Canada vacation. I found her in Twilight Lodge, in a room she shared with three other old ladies. "Dorrie! Landsakes, but you're a sight for sore eyes. Sit right down and tell me all the news about the outside. I don't get out of bed any more, you know." We talked for awhile and then she remembered, "You came at a good time. I'm expecting Lila. She doesn't get here very often. I better get gussied up or she'll say I look like Death-warmed-over." Gracie's moon-face peered into her hand mirror as she circled rouge on her prickly cheeks, patted her thin frizz of hair and squirted herself with cologne. She had me fasten a pearl necklace around her neck. "This pair of beads was my mother's. Real good pearls they are, too." She took an envelope out of her purse and put it on her night table. "Now I'm all ready for Lila," she said. My Aunt Lila greeted me with, "Well, so you came all this way to see Grace and I suppose you'd have gone back again without seeing me." Then she leaned over Grace, pursing her thin lips to peck her on the cheek, and said, "I see you're wearing Mother's pearl beads." "Why not? She left them to me," needled Aunt Grace. "So you finally got around to coming to see your sister. I was just about to send you the money for a bus ticket." "I've been feeling poorly again. I got pains in my kidneys so bad . . . I'd like to have died if I hadn't kept rubbing my back with liniment . . ." Grace interrupted, "Hell, Lila, if you'd quit putting all that crap on yourself, you wouldn't be so sickly." Lila bridled, "I'm not sickly, I got worn out taking care of other people all my life. And if you'd listened to me and rubbed your leg with 'Lectric oil, your crippled hip wouldn't of given out and landed you in here, a poor old woman in a nursing home." "Lila," said Grace, her voice rising, "I'll have you know, this "poor old woman" you're talking to could buy the whole damn family now." She waved her envelope in Lila's face, "See this? It's from my banker. You'd never believe how well off your sister, the cripple is, these days. I didn't get peanuts for my house, you know. And if these bastards here don't start feeding me better, I'll move in with the big shots in that new private hospital." "I wouldn't put it past you . . ." Lila turned to me, "Grace always was foolish about spending her money." Grace raised herself up and pointed, "Dorrie, go in that closet and get what your Aunt just spent her money on. . . Gracie got her mink!" I did as I was told and laid it across her bed. "How do you like this here fur?" she said, stroking it. "It's real mink, you know, not one of those imitations. Not for Gracie! Five thousand dollars it cost. If you wasn't so skinny, Lila, I'd put it in my will that it goes to you . . . along with Mother's pearl beads," she added. Aunt Lila stood up and buttoned her coat. "I never could abide fur. And poor Pa would turn over in his grave if he knew how you wasted his money," she snapped, as she snatched up her purse and gloves. After she left, Aunt Grace handed me the envelope. It was from the Public Trustee Your property has been sold to defray the cost of maintenance in Twilight Lodge . "Junk mail," she grinned. Then she told me, "Someday Lila's going to be real surprised when she finds that along with Mother's beads, I left her my Bond money. I know nobody ever liked Lila, but after all she is my sister, and I can't but be sorry for her when my own life was happy." Then she chuckled, "Maybe it was mean of me but this time I sure fixed her little red wagon, didn't I?" Aunt Grace gathered up the mink coat and put it in my arms. "Now Dorrie, will you hang this back in Mrs.Corbin's closet," she said. "Put it back real careful She doesn't know I borrowed it." |
March |
