Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [27]
“What does it mean?”
“Come to dinner.”
“Mother, is Mary an Indian?”
“Yes child; run along, Mary will be hungry.”
“Chahko muckamuck—chahko muckamuck—” I said over and over as I ran across the yard.
When I said to Mary, “Chahko muckamuck,” the little woman looked up and laughed at me just as one little girl laughs at another little girl.
I used to hang round at noon on Mondays so that I could go and say, “Chahko muckamuck, Mary.” I liked to see her stroke the suds from her arms back into the tub and dry her arms on her wide skirt as she crossed to the kitchen. Then too I used to watch her lug out the big basket and tiptoe on her bare feet to hang the wash on the line, her mouth full of clothes-pins—the old straight kind that had no spring, but round wooden knobs on the top that made them look like a row of little dolls dancing over the empty flapping clothes.
As long as I could remember Mary had always come on Mondays and then suddenly she did not come any more.
I asked, “Where is Wash Mary?”
Mother said, “You may come with me to see her.”
We took things in a basket and went to a funny little house in Fairfield Road where Mary lived. She did not stay on the Reserve where the Songhees Indians lived. Perhaps she belonged to a different tribe—I do not know—but she wanted to live as white people did. She was a Catholic.
Mary’s house was poor but very clean. She was in bed; she was very, very thin and coughed all the time. The brown was all bleached out of her skin. Her fingers were like pale yellow claws now, not a bit like the brown hands that had hung the clothes on our line. Just her black hair was the same and her kind, tired eyes.
She was very glad to see Mother and me.
Mother said, “Poor Mary,” and stroked her hair.
A tall man in a long black dress came into Mary’s house. He wore a string of beads with a cross round his waist. He came to the bed and spoke to Mary and Mother and I came away.
After we were outside again, Mother said quietly—“Poor Mary!”
JUICE
It was unbelievably hot. We three women came out of the store each eating a juicy pear. There was ten cents’ express on every pound of freight that came up the Cariboo road. Fruit weighs heavy. Everything came in by mule-train.
The first bite into those Bartletts was intoxicating. The juice met your teeth with a gush.
I was considering the most advantageous spot to set my bite next when I saw Dr. Cabbage’s eyes over the top of my pear, feasting on the fruit with unquenched longing.
I was on the store step, so I could look right into his eyes. They were dry and filmed. The skin of his hands and face was shrivelled, his clothes nothing but a bunch of tatters hanging on a dry stick. I believe the wind could have tossed him like a dead leaf, and that nothing juicy had ever happened in Doctor Cabbage’s life.
“Is it a good apple?”
After he had asked, his dry tongue made a slow trip across his lips and went back into his mouth hotter and dryer for thinking of the fruit.
“Would you like it?”
A gleam burst through his filmed eyes. He drew the hot air into his throat with a gasp, held his hand out for the pear and then took a deep greedy bite beside mine.
The juice trickled down his chin—his tongue jumped out and caught it; he sipped the oozing juice from the hole our bites had made. He licked the drops running down the rind, then with his eyes still on the pear, he held it out for me to take back.
“No, it’s all yours.”
“Me eat him every bit?”
His eyes squinted at the fruit as if he could not quite believe his ears and that all the pear in his hands belonged to him. Then he took bite after bite, rolling each bite slowly round his mouth, catching every drop of juice with loud suckings. He ate the core. He ate the tail, and licked his fingers over and over like a cat.
“Hyas Klosshe (very good),” he said, and trotted up the hill as though his joints had been oiled.
SOME DAYS LATER I had occasion to ride through the Indian village. All the cow ponies were busy—the only mount available