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twenty-two
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
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Renate shrugged her shoulders and turned her back to them. Lexi bit into a pickle and watched Maria run up to the table with two other girls. The thought of Maria’s white envelope made her unable to swallow.The injustice of it. She dropped her half-eaten pickle on the plate and looked at John Doerksen hunched stiffly on his chair beside his mother and then at Heinrich Willms, sprawled like a cheerful walrus on his family’s blanket. She hated them both. She hated all Mennonite men. twenty-two For two days after the picnic Lexi and Maria circled each other like wary animals, each unsure of what the other was going to do next.The evening after the picnic, Papa too had been particularly pensive, sitting at the table staring into space. She wanted to say something to him, to register her protest that it wasn’t fair, but nothing had come. No one said anything at all about the twenty-five dollars. The blue cheque hung over the room like a ghost while Hildy and Renate chattered about the races and games at the picnic. Maria had been very quiet at supper, her exuberance of that afternoon , so unusual for her, completely dissipated. Every time Lexi looked at her, Maria was looking back. Then she would adjust her glasses, drop her gaze and bow her head. Three days after the picnic, Lexi had just plunked the darning basket down on the kitchen table and begun mending a hole in one of Hildy’s stockings when Maria sat down too. Lexi glanced at her once and stabbed the needle into the stocking. “Lexi, I…” Lexi said nothing. “Lexi…” Maria placed the white envelope on the table. Lexi saw it out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve been thinking and thinking,” Maria said.“I want you to have this.” Lexi jabbed a finger with the darning needle, winced and then pressed the wounded finger to her teeth before she looked up. Maria 198 Annie Jacobsen jacobsen_text 8/27/07 10:06 Page 198 was holding the cheque out to her. She wanted desperately to stop the thumping in her chest. This could not be happening. She stared at Maria, willing herself to calm down, shushing the small voice that had secretly wondered what she would do with the money, if it had been hers. “Don’t be ridiculous, Maria,” she said in Mama’s voice, flicking the cheque away. “You earned it.” “But I want to. I know it’s not fair. You should have gotten to go to grade nine too. I know how upset you were when you couldn’t go.And now it’s too late for you, and Mama’s dead, and you’ll never get to be a nurse unless…” Maria pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “How did you know I want to be a nurse, I never…” “I heard you talking to Willy, and…” “You were spying on us? What else were you listening to?” “You can use the money for the train back to Waterloo and then pay me back when you can. Papa will still let me go to high school. With my marks and the scholarship, he has no choice.” “This is…” Impossible, she wanted to say.And yet, now that Maria had offered, her head was flooded with selfish thoughts. “No, Maria.” “You could help me open a bank account and then I could give it to you. Or most of it anyway. Papa wouldn’t even have to know. And then you could go back to the Olivers’.” “But what about you and the girls? I have to stay and look after things. Papa…” “I can do that now. I’m mature enough.” “You’re not. How are you going to go to school and do all the washing and the cooking and this?” She held up the black stocking with the needle stuck in it. “Hildy and Renate can help me. And Papa. I’m perfectly…competent .” Lexi was silent. She could see herself on the train back to Waterloo , undoing her hair. Her heart was beating fast. “No, Maria, I can’t.Thanks for wanting to help, but…I just can’t.” A hard lump was pushing up into her throat. “It’s my money. I can decide what I want to do with it.” Maria adjusted her glasses. Her eyes were dark and steady. Lexi suddenly saw who Maria would...