The Winter Helen Dropped By. W. Kinsella P.

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СКАЧАТЬ with Abigail Uppington, and Helen laughed and hugged the little pig, and Mama pointed out, even though Helen didn’t understand a word and couldn’t, as Mama said, say boo in English, that pigs were extremely clean animals, cleaner than dogs certainly, and possibly even cleaner than cats. One of Mama’s chief worries in life was that someone, anyone, would think she was a dirty housekeeper.

      Mama even got out some doll clothes she’d saved from when she was a girl, and she took a minute out of her work while her and Helen tied a pink bonnet on Abigail Uppington, and when Daddy came in from tending the animals he thought Abigail Uppington in a pink doll’s bonnet was about the funniest thing he had ever seen, and he laughed his laugh which was really a guffaw and could never be mistaken for anything else.

      I got out a jigsaw puzzle, which Mama and I both decided would transcend the language barrier. Helen caught on real quick and giggled every time she found a piece that fit, though the way she looked at me and the puzzle, which was of a group of dogs sitting about a table playing poker, the two English bulldogs cheating by passing cards to each other, I bet she wondered why we were doing what we were doing. Mama said she expected Helen spent most of her time just foraging for a livelihood and didn’t have time for putting pink bonnets on pigs or passing the time with jigsaw puzzles.

      On the night Fibber McGee and Molly came on the radio, sponsored by Johnson’s Wax of Racine, Wisconsin, Daddy pointed to the radio when Abigail Uppington came to call on Fibber McGee, and said ‘Abigail Uppington,’ and then pointed at the pig Abigail Uppington who was on Mama’s lap drinking from my baby bottle.

      I don’t think Helen understood, but she did like the radio and laughed whenever Daddy laughed, which was about two to one for every time me and Mama laughed.

      When Fibber McGee and Molly was over Daddy told Helen the story of how Matilda Torgeson of the Venusberg Torgesons was named for a dead pig. Seemed that Anna Marie Torgeson, when she was about seven years old, had adopted a runt of the litter, just like Abigail Uppington, only Anna Marie Torgeson named her pig Matilda. The runt survived and prospered, but Anna Marie’s daddy, Gunnar Torgeson, was a practical man, and when it came time for Matilda to go to market, off she went, in spite of Anna Marie’s wailings and weepings. To ease her pain, Anna Marie’s mama promised that Anna Marie could name the next critter born on the farm Matilda.

      ‘Well,’ Daddy said, ‘the next critter born on the farm was Anna Marie’s little sister, so the new little sister got named Matilda, in honor of a dead pig.

      ‘It’s a good job Anna Marie didn’t name her pig Runty or Big Snout,’ Daddy said, and guffawed again.

      Helen turned out to be a wonderful playmate. She enjoyed playing with my stuffed toys and with my motor cars, and she was particularly taken with a tiny baby with celluloid arms and legs wearing a blue polka-dot dress. That tiny baby had a key in her belly, and when she was wound up she crawled across the floor, making a kind of crying sound just like a real baby. Helen hugged that little baby and she leaned way back in her chair and let the baby climb right up her from her waist to her chin.

      While I had been caught once being totally unobservant, I wasn’t about to get caught a second time, and it was me who pointed out to Mama and Daddy that Helen was pregnant.

      I made sure of my ground before I brought the subject to Mama and Daddy’s attention. I cuddled the little mechanical baby and rocked it in my arms, and looked at Helen, and then I pointed at Helen’s stomach and pointed at the baby, and Helen smiled and pointed at her stomach and pointed at the baby. I had noticed that under all the layers of shirts and overalls that Helen’s belly was round and ripe, and her hips were wide. Just to confirm my opinion I got out a book that had pictures of babies in it, and showed them to Helen. Helen patted her belly and pointed at the picture of the baby, indicating with no possibility of misinterpretation that she was building a baby inside her, though the baby she pointed at was pink as a rose petal, with blue eyes. I wondered what Helen thought of when she dreamed of her baby, I wondered if she dreamed of a blond, blue-eyed baby, pink as a rose petal.

      ‘I do believe you’re right,’ Daddy said, after I pointed out that Helen was pregnant, and Mama also agreed and went and got some of my old baby clothes, and some of the new baby clothes that she had created or acquired during the time she was pregnant with my almost sister, Rosemary. And Helen smiled some more and picked out two pink baby dresses, and a yellow blanket, and put them on top of her dirt-glazed parka so she wouldn’t forget to carry them away when she left.

      Leaving was another matter. The good old freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey Alberta blizzard just raged on and on. The snow drifted up until the east window was blocked entirely, and the wind was so strong it blew the chickadees right off the branches of the chokecherry tree outside the west window and bounced them off the glass as they tried to pull the dried fruit off the frozen limbs.

      Helen continued to eat like she’d never had home-cooked food before, while Mama taught her to wash dishes and set the table and empty the ashes from the cook stove, and, Mama said, Helen caught on quick.

      I took to reading to Helen from story books I had outgrown. I read her nursery rhymes and Mother Goose stories, showing her the pictures at the same time, and even if Helen didn’t understand the words she was able to catch the rhythms, and she clapped her hands when the big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the houses of the three little pigs. And Helen pointed at the little pigs and she pointed at Abigail Uppington, and I clapped my hands and Helen reached right over and put her arms around me and hugged me.

      Helen particularly liked the rhyme about the three little kittens who lost their mittens, and she had me read that one over and over until I got plumb tired of it, and Daddy said now I knew what I had been like as a little kid and how he and Mama had read those books to me until they were engraved in their brains. The three little kittens rhyme ends with ‘There’ll be rat pie for supper tonight,’ and there was a picture of an ordinary-looking pie but for a rat’s tail sticking out of it. Helen, whenever we got to that part, would cover her mouth and shake her head. I tried to explain that the rat pie was for cats and not for humans, but I’m not sure Helen ever understood.

      ‘Can’t we keep her?’ I asked Mama. ‘She likes it here and she ain’t no trouble, and she’ll catch on to talking in a few days.’

      ‘Helen ain’t a pet,’ Mama said. ‘She’ll likely want to get on home soon as the blizzard lets up.’

      Which she did. But not before she said her first words. At supper on the third night we had apple pie. Mama had me go to the cellar and get a quart of preserved apples and she hammered out a crust and placed this big apple pie on the oilcloth-covered kitchen table right after we’d finished a feed of side pork and eggs.

      ‘Rat pie!’ I announced.

      And for just one instant Helen believed me. She had her hand halfway to her mouth when she realized I was teasing, and she smiled and shook her head, and then she said ‘rat pie,’ and pointed at the pie and laughed like a little girl.

      ‘Helen talked,’ I said.

      ‘Indeed she did,’ said Mama. We all raised our cups to Helen and said ‘Rat pie,’ and laughed like maniacs.

      ‘In the middle of a blizzard people tend to be amused by relatively simple things,’ Daddy said.

      I know Helen would have been talking with us like a regular person in just a few more days, but late that evening the blizzard died down, and deep in the night a chinook swept in, and by morning the powder-dry snow was soggy and the air was warm and moist, and Daddy said he guessed it had gone from -40° to almost 40° above.

      Helen СКАЧАТЬ