Читать книгу So Few on Earth - Josie Penny - Страница 16

5 Mommy’s Work

“Whass fer supper, Mommy?” we’d all ask as we bounded inside after playing.

“Oh, havin a bit a fish tonight, maids,” she’d say. Or sometimes she’d say, “Never ya mind whass fer supper. Ya’ll fin out soon nough. An stay away from dat pot!”

The rules were very strict in our house as to what went on around the stove, and we dared not disobey Mommy. Food was all-important. The stove was dangerous, and everything had to be shared to keep the entire family alive. My mother’s work was all-consuming, not only in the physical sense but mentally and emotionally, as well.

My mother, or Aunt Flossie as she was affectionately known to the community, was a short woman about five feet two inches in height. She looked quite frail at first glance but was actually very strong, both in physical strength and in character. Her strength showed in the way she ruled her household.

Mommy’s pale blue eyes stood out against dark olive skin, revealing her Inuit, Innu, and European heritages. Her dark brown hair, fine as silk, was worn in a neat bun at the back. I seldom saw it worn any other way. When she let her hair down, it fell to her waist. Before she went to bed, she sat and combed it out. It was pleasing to see that softer side of her.

My mother was orphaned young and suffered a terrible childhood. Her mother died when she was only 11. Her father passed away a year later, leaving four orphans; my mother was the eldest. But even those early years weren’t happy. I heard her say of her mother many times: “She was a cruel, evil woman.”

The mission wanted to separate the children, but Mommy refused to go to the boarding school in Mary’s Harbour down the coast. Instead she decided to take a job with a family. It was a job done solely for her keep; she was never paid a salary. The family was very harsh, and two years later they left my mother alone in a cold, unheated cabin to die. Thankfully, someone went to the pond for water, heard banging from a distant cabin, and rescued her.

Mommy’s rescuer brought her to a kind and caring family where she stayed until she met Daddy when she was 17. Even though my mother had had a baby already, my father, Thomas Curl, wanted to marry her and adopt her infant son, Sammy. They married in 1938. For the first several years they lived with my grandparents, John and Susan Curl, until Daddy built his own tiny cabin in Roaches Brook. On Spotted Island he inherited his father’s big house, and we lived in it until we moved to Cartwright in 1953.

Thomas Curl was a quiet, gentle man. When he married my mother, he gave her a sewing machine and a .22-calibre rifle as a wedding present. When Daddy went away to his traplines or out on a hunting trip, Mommy had to find her own way to keep us alive. She’d put on all the warm clothes she could find, strap on the snowshoes Daddy had made for her, tuck her gun under her arm or over her shoulder, and head into the woods, leaving us in the care of neighbours. Being a sure shot with her little .22, she always came back with a few partridges or a porcupine. Mommy also had her own line of rabbit snares set up around the cabin, and we had many delicious meals of rabbit. When Daddy was away on an extended hunting trip, before Sammy was big enough to help, Mommy also had to saw and chop firewood, fetch water, and nurse us when we were hurt or sick. My mother knew many home remedies for everything, from small cuts and scrapes to major cuts and life-threatening illnesses.

During the spring snows when we were outside all day and came in with our clothes soaking wet, Mommy was the one to dry them out. She hung everything, including our saturated mukluks, around the stove to dry. In the morning our mukluks would be so stiff we couldn’t get them on. To make them more pliable, she got out the special softening stick Daddy had made for her. It had a wooden base attached to another piece of wood about three or four inches wide, and stood about three feet high. At the top it was shaped like an axe blade. Mommy took the boots by the toe and heel and ran them over the board, making them supple again. It wasn’t an easy job as I found out one day when I tried to do it.

Mommy worked from pre-dawn until well into the night. She was busy knitting, sewing, making new clothing, mending old clothing, creating bedding from bleached flour sacks, fashioning new dickies (parkas), hooking floor mats, and producing soap. One of the most challenging jobs was crafting sealskin boots or mukluks. When I was little, I couldn’t understand how she could make them waterproof just by her skill in sewing.

Spring was seal-hunting time. When Daddy was due to return from the hunt, Mommy searched the horizon for the safe return of her man. Usually, he came back with a seal or two strapped onto the komatik.

“Whass dat, Mom?” I asked, eyeing the huge bulk strapped to the komatik.

“Dat’s a harp seal,” she explained, not that I would know the difference.

Already exhausted from the hunt, Daddy had to skin the animals before the dogs could get to them or before they froze. If the seal froze, it would be almost impossible to skin. I watched intently as Daddy skillfully removed the skin. His sharp knife separated the fur from the carcass. Huge mounds of fat were put aside for dog food. Once the skin was off, then it was Mommy’s job to clean the skin.

She got the huge galvanized tub from its nail in the porch, and a special board about a foot wide, three feet long, and rounded on one side and flat on the other. As soon as Daddy dropped the pelt into the tub, Mommy went to work. She pulled the pelt up onto the rounded side of the board and retrieved her ulu (rounded knife for cleaning pelts) from its special place. Holding the T-shaped handle between her forefinger and her index finger and stabilizing it with her thumb, she placed the blade on the fatty side of the skin. Making smooth strokes with the curve of the ulu, she slithered the razor-sharp, half-moon-shaped blade down the skin, employing the full width of it and leaving the skin clean. After removing every inch of fat, she turned the pelt over and cleaned the fur from the other side. Once she was satisfied that it was clean enough, she handed it back to Daddy. In later years when she learned to make fancier mukluks, she left the fur on.

Daddy then prepared the sealskin for drying. To do this he lashed it into a wooden frame, stretching it tightly all the way around and nailing it outside on the cabin to dry. Once the sealskin was dry, which took several days, it was ready to make into boots. One full-grown seal yielded enough hide to produce two or three pairs of mukluks.

To make mukluks, Mommy laid the large skin on the floor. She used paper cut-outs as patterns to trace around as she cut out the tongues that covered the tops of the feet. The bottoms and leggings were then trimmed to size, depending on who would be wearing the boots. Once she had cut all the mukluks out, she gave the leftover hide to Daddy. He cut it into thin strips and tossed them into a pail of water. After a few days, the strips became slimy and stretchy and were used to string snowshoes.

Mommy couldn’t soak the boot parts because the hide would be too slippery to grip and she wouldn’t be able to sew them. However, she had to get the edges soft enough to poke the needle through. There was only one way to do that. We had to chew it. I’ll always remember the first time I had to chew sealskin! I was about nine years old.

“Jos, ya gotta chew da skins, cuz I gotta make new mukluks fer Sam,” Mommy said as I stripped off my coat one day.

I didn’t want to do that, but we had to do as we were told. So I took the pieces of sealskin and settled down to chew. It tasted awful and burned my tongue, but I kept chewing and grinding it with my teeth until she was satisfied.

Once the skin was soft enough, Mommy sewed the tongue to the front part of the leggings first. While she was sewing that, we had to chew all around the perimeter of the bottom section, then around the bottom of the leggings. She then sewed them together, using a very fine stitch. Pleating and pulling tightly on each stitch with immense concentration, she made the boots waterproof.

With all of us children to practise on, Mommy gradually learned to make fancier boots with different coloured fur. She cut out diamonds and sewed them onto the front of the leggings, making them both beautiful to look at and to wear. As years passed and she got better at her craft, she began sewing all manner of items for the Grenfell Mission’s Industrial Store across the harbour, where authentic crafts were sold to visitors from around the world.

The main meal of the day was always dinner. And if food was available, I enjoyed watching Mommy prepare it. Sundays were our special days. For Sunday breakfast we always had fish and brewis. For dinner on Sunday, Mommy cooked a big meal of wild game, with salt beef, vegetables, pudding, and duff (dumpling). For supper we had fried fish — cod, salmon, arctic char, trout, or smelt. In later years we even had canned fruit with jelly for dessert on Sunday nights. Monday we had leftovers from Sunday. Tuesday was bean soup day. Wednesday was fish or wild meat. If we didn’t have meat or fish, we had to settle for stewed potatoes or doughboys (boiled dumplings) and jam. On Thursday we had fish and brewis, and on Friday we had fish. Saturday was pea soup day.

Mommy’s main concern was not to run out of flour. Homemade bread was our staple food. We could almost always rely on bread and tea, which in earlier years was our mainstay. For the most part, meals were basic: no treats, no frills, no snacks between meals, except maybe a piece of molasses bread or a clump of hard tack. And many times there was nothing at all.

Cooking wild game is an art. Ducks and geese have to be steamed to pluck the feathers out. Partridges don’t have to be steamed. They can just be plucked, and my mother performed this job efficiently.

“Mommy, I wants de crop!” I cried as she was pulling the innards out of a partridge one day.

The crop was the stomach of the partridge, which always contained spruce twigs. She blew it up like a balloon and hung it near the stove to dry. Once dried, it made a hollow rattle like the sound of maracas. When we were little, we argued over who was going to get the next one. We ate everything except the guts of the bird. We consumed the heart, the gizzard, the liver, and the head, and usually fussed over who would get the wishbone for good luck.

Cooking wild meat took several hours. First, Mommy boosted the heat by adding a few pieces of dry wood to the fire. Then she fried up some fat, filling the cabin with smitch (smoke). Next she dropped the meat into the hot fat. The small room was filled with sharp smells and sizzling noises. Mommy waited for the meat to brown a bit, then added water, salt and pepper, and an onion, if we had any. Lastly, she added a sprinkle of flour. After that she gave the whole thing a gentle stir to fuse the flavours, then placed the lid on the big iron pot. Filling the stove to capacity with carefully selected wood, she proceeded to her next chore.

We were hungry and knew there was at least a two-hour wait before dinner. About three-quarters of the way through the cooking time, Mommy started to make the duff. Out came her favourite mixing bowl, flour, butter, baking powder, and a little water to bring it all together.

“Wass ya doin now, Mommy?” I asked as she flattened the dough onto the table.

“Watch me an ya’ll see,” she answered in her matter-of-fact way.

Once the dough was flattened, she made a big hole in the centre and placed it gently on top of the meat in the pot. It only took 10 minutes to cook. That was our cue to set the table. Sal and I lifted the table out from the wall, exposing the long bench placed there for us little ones. When the table was set, we had to make the tea. I poured a handful of loose tea into the pot and filled it with water from the huge kettle, which was always at boiling point on the back of the stove. The clang of the teapot lid and someone placing the teapot on the back of the stove to steep were sure signs that the meal was almost ready. The next thing was to cut the bread.

“Can I watch ya cut de bread, Mom?” I asked, tugging at her apron.

“Awright, but don’t get too close ta de knife.”

Mommy always wore an apron. Placing the bread in her lap and holding the loaf firmly in her left hand, she picked up her long, very sharp knife and positioned it ever so lightly into the corner of the bread. With one smooth stroke she pushed the knife about a third of the way through the bread. Her second and third strokes made a perfectly even slice, as if the bread had gone through a slicing machine. Every slice was uniformly cut as she piled the plate high and put it in the centre of the table.

Every Monday we had to fetch water from the well for washing. Mommy lifted the huge galvanized washtub and washboard off the nail in the porch. She stoked up the stove to heat buckets of water and then sorted out the clothes that covered the whole floor of our tiny cabin. It was backbreaking work. I felt sorry for her as she scrubbed each piece of clothing, wrung it out, shook each garment, and placed it in a pile ready for hanging. On extremely cold days the clothes froze even before they reached the line. Steam from the warm clothes billowed around Mommy in the cold air.

The washing remained on the line for a few days to dry, and if it didn’t dry because of the extremely cold temperatures, Mommy had to bring it back inside and spread it over the stove to finish drying. It smelled wonderful. As the family grew, Mommy couldn’t continue doing everything herself. We had to help as we got older. The blisters on my knuckles would peel and bleed, but it didn’t matter. We had to keep scrubbing. I hated it!

Since my mother was never still, there was always something to be learned by watching her.

“Whass ya doin now, Mommy?” I asked as she scurried around with enthusiasm.

“I tink I got nough rags ta hook a mat, Josie.” she said, pulling out a bag from under her bed.

With amazing skill, using a piece of line and a huge needle, Mommy attached the burlap bag to the wooden frame Daddy had made for her. Once the burlap was sewn into place, she drew a pattern on it. It could be flowers or a winter scene or something around our cabin. She tore the rags into long, thin strips, keeping the colours separated. When she was ready, she placed a piece at a time underneath the burlap. She pushed the hook through the top, hooked the string up through the tiny burlap hole, making a neat loop, then poked it down for the next loop, and so on, until the whole pattern was filled out. Mommy finished the mat with a colourful border.

I didn’t know then that our mother was exceptionally talented in her work, and I don’t think that she was aware of it, either, especially in the earlier years of her marriage when we were all babies and so very needy. I wonder how she learned everything. I don’t know if anybody taught her, whether she had to learn as she went along, or if she learned out of the sheer necessity to survive. I know that she made good use of the rifle and the sewing machine Daddy had given her on their wedding day. It was all she really needed to keep us warm and fed.

My mother did the best she could under dire circumstances. Many times I watched as she rubbed her hand over her head, smoothed the straggled hair that had fallen around her face, and just kept on going. In later years she sewed every day for the mission store. Once her order was finished, she had to deliver it back over to the mission. Mrs. Keddie, who ran the store, was extremely pleased with Mommy’s work, and the store continued to sell it until my mother’s death in 1997. After Daddy died in 1967 at age 50, Mommy was left with seven children to raise on her own. She did this with money she earned from sewing and cleaning, and I never heard her complain. Being pregnant, giving birth to 14 children, and trying to keep them alive must at times have pushed her beyond all physical and mental endurance. She lost four babies in infancy. The pain from that alone is incomprehensible. Still, she did it. She raised 10 of us to adulthood, and we are a wonderfully warm and caring family today.

Mommy mothered us the best way she knew how, and I’m so proud of her accomplishments today. I only hope, as my story unfolds, that I can bring her the justice she so rightly deserves.

While walking down Water Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia, some 40 years later, I walked into a store and saw several exquisite pairs of duffle slippers on display. I lifted the tab of authenticity and was absolutely thrilled and overwhelmed to see written on the tag: made by flossie curl.