Bishop's Road Read Free Page B

years old. She kept Ginny Mustard in the room with her but she never nursed her when she woke or changed her wet diaper or bathed her small smooth body. She sang
hush little baby
while she sat and stared but she never stroked her sweet face. Only once did she touch her fingers and frowned when Ginny Mustard curled her tiny brown fist into the centre of her own strong pink hand. Then that woman packed her suitcase and put on her blue dress and make-up and high-heeled shoes and left the hospital and no one ever heard tell of her again. Ginny Mustard cried for a long time before one of the nurses discovered that she was alone and nobody wanted her. And she grew tall and brown and her hair grew long and yellow and most people didn’t bother with her after those first few days.

    When dinner is through, Ginny Mustard tells Mrs. Miflin that she is not feeling so good and can’t help with the dishes. Mrs. Miflin says Judy can have her turn tonight and that way she’ll stay out of trouble. And while they clean up, Mrs. Miflin fills the girl in on the dos and don’ts of life in her house. What not to touch, where not to go and there’s no point in thinking she won’t be found out if she crosses the line because Mrs. Miflin has eyes in the back of her head and will be quick enough turfing Judy out on her ear if she messes up. And then she tells everything she knows and more that she doesn’t about the other tenants.
    Ginny Mustard walks to the harbour. Tries to think thingsCatherine Safer over but there’s a boat in and the gulls are hanging around looking for scraps as the fish are cleaned and life being the way it is for Ginny Mustard, she forgets all about the little song and the tiny bones and sits on the dock to watch the birds awhile. She stays until the sun is down and the moon fat over the water before she trudges back up the hill. Way inside her head, Ginny Mustard knows that she needs to tell someone about all of this - the bones and now the singing - but it is hard to remember sometimes and for all her good intentions she can only keep her mind on one thing at a time and is so easily lead astray by birds and cats or any number of interesting things in the world. Something is wrong and it nags away at her but for such brief intervals in her living that it may be someone else’s duty to work it all out.

    Eve and Maggie are in the sitting room. It is rare that any-thing happens in this room but for some reason Eve decided to draw Maggie out tonight and has come up with a project that might do the trick. On a white cotton tea towel she has printed large letters.
The kiss of the sun for pardon. The song of a bird for mirth. We’re nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth
and expects Maggie to embroider the whole thing. Not all at once of course. Eve would never ask that.
    Maggie has never embroidered anything that she knows of and is having difficulty with the concept so Eve does a sample. Whips up a blue Y as slowly as she is able. In a little tin can that once held English toffee, the kind with pretty shiny wrappers, are needles and a dozen skeins of floss and Eve suggests a colour scheme. Now she threads a needle and places it in Maggie’s right hand. Steers the white cloth to her left, just clear of the shoe box.
    â€œAnd after you’ve done the letters you can put little flowersand birds in the leftover space. I didn’t draw them. I think you’ll have more fun doing them freehand.”
    Maggie, to whom the concept of fun is as foreign as that of needlework, nods rapidly and takes a stab at an ‘h’. The shoe box is in the way and there’s a bit of a struggle to get the needle out of it to make the return stitch but it’s really only time it takes and neither of them has much else to do tonight. Eve has brought home the errant hedgehog and settled it among the new shoots of the hosta and the moon won’t be on Maggie’s bed