Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [13]
The beds had all been taken away.
“When is the funeral?”
“I dunno. Pliest go Vancouver. He not come two more day. ’Spose I got lots money he come quick. No hully up, except fo’ money.”
She laid her hand on the corner of the little coffin.
“See! Coffin-man think box fo’ Injun baby no matter.”
The seams of the cheap little coffin had burst.
AS SOPHIE AND I were coming down the village street we met an Indian woman whom I did not know. She nodded to Sophie, looked at me and half paused.
Sophie’s mouth was set, her bare feet pattered quick, hurrying me past the woman.
“Go church house now?” she asked me.
The Catholic church had twin towers. Wide steps led up to the front door which was always open. Inside it was bright, in a misty way, and still except for wind and sea-echoes. The windows were gay coloured glass; when you knelt the wooden footstools and pews creaked. Hush lurked in every corner. The smell of the church seemed fusty after the fresh sea air outside, the paper flowers artificial.
The rope of the bell dangled dead in the entrance. It was a new rope and smelt of tar. Paper flowers stood stiffly before the Virgin. Always a few candles burned. Everything but those flickers of flame was stone-still.
When we came out of the church we sat on the steps for a little. I said, “Who was that woman we met, Sophie?”
“Mrs. Chief Joe Capilano.”
“Oh! I would like to know Mrs. Chief Joe Capilano. Why did you hurry by so quick? She wanted to stop.”
“I don’ want you know Mrs. Chief Joe.”
“Why?”
“You fliend for me, not fliend for her.”
“My heart has room for more than one friend, Sophie.”
“You fliend for me, I not want Mrs. Chief Joe get you.”
“You are always my first and best friend, Sophie.” She hung her head, her mouth obstinate. We went to Sara’s house.
Sara was Sophie’s aunt, a wizened bit of a woman whose eyes, nose, mouth and wrinkles were all twisted to the perpetual expressing of pain. Once she had had a merry heart, but pain had trampled out the merriness. She lay on a bed draped with hangings of clean, white rags dangling from poles. The wall behind her bed, too, was padded heavily with newspaper to keep draughts off her “Lumatiz.”
“Hello, Sara. How are you?”
“Em’ly! Sophie’s Em’ly!”
The pain wrinkles scuttled off to make way for Sara’s smile, but hurried back to twist for her pain.
“I dunno what for I got Lumatiz, Em’ly. I dunno. I dunno.”
Everything perplexed poor Sara. Her merry heart and tortured body were always at odds. She drew a humped wrist across her nose and said, “I dunno, I dunno,” after each remark.
“Goodbye, Sophie’s Em’ly; come some more soon. I like that you come. I dunno why I got pain, lots pain. I dunno—I dunno.”
I said to Sophie, “You see! the others know I am your big friend. They call me ‘Sophie’s Em’ly.’”
She was happy.
SUSAN LIVED on one side of Sophie’s house and Mrs. Johnson, the Indian widow of a white man, on the other. The widow’s house was beyond words clean. The cook-stove was a mirror, the floor white as a sheet from scrubbing. Mrs. Johnson’s hands were clever and busy. The row of hard kitchen chairs had each its own antimacassar and cushion. The crocheted bedspread and embroidered pillow-slips, all the work of Mrs. Johnson’s hands, were smoothed taut. Mrs. Johnson’s husband had been a sea captain. She had loved him deeply and remained a widow though she had had many offers of marriage after he died. Once the Indian Agent came, and said:
“Mrs. Johnson, there is a good man who has a farm and money in the bank. He is shy, so he sent me to ask if you will marry him.”
“Tell that good man, ‘Thank you,’ Mr. Agent, but tell him, too, that Mrs. Johnson only got love for her dead Johnson.”
Sophie’s other neighbour, Susan, produced and buried babies almost as fast as Sophie herself. The two women laughed for each other and cried for each other. With babies on their backs and baskets on their arms they crossed over on the ferry to Vancouver and sold their baskets from door to door. When they came to my studio they rested and drank