Ja Nei Bless
Written for Snowy.
The price of a new house, measured out in roses, Philippa thought, cutting and tying off bundles and bundles of them. Her arms ached. Her shoulders hurt. Clippers, she'd found out, chafe at your fingers until they blister. Still, there were more roses; red and white and purple and pink and yellow and orange and sunsettish ones and spotted ones and the five thousand different combinations you could make of just those colours, and five roses a bundle; there were more roses, and she had to be done by five o'clock when the shop closed, and she had to be done with all of them.
It was all for a good reason. Geir, impetuous as he was, had bought a new house. A nice house, he said, a nice house like the one Philippa kept describing. A nice house with pale blue siding and windows in every room (perhaps even the closets, if such a thing could be imagined) and gold-coloured curtains with dragons embroidered on them and thick furry carpets and a fireplace, and all of it somehow fitting into a house no bigger than the corner store in town that sold cigars and candy and newspapers. All this Philippa imagined passionately once when she wasn't thinking, and all this Geir bought; but now he had no money.
That was why Philippa was tying off bundles of roses to sell at the charity drive, three dollars a bundle, when it had cost her a dollar for five roses when they were on sale. She wasn't really sure how many of them would sell, but she had to be making some kind of profit if she remembered her school maths. And she would sell hundreds of cakes at bake sales and clean gutters and mow lawns and watch horrible, screaming children, all for Geir and his craziness.
She looked up for a moment, squeezed her eyes closed because they hurt, opened them again, and watched Geir saunter into the flower shop.
"Hello."
"Hi."
"How come it?"
"I only got an hour yet to go."
"I am sorry," said Geir, in his thick, warm accent. Philippa loved his accent. It made her think of furry rugs and hot coffee and snow and being a kid. He had white-blond hair and blue eyes--very blue eyes--and had only learnt to speak English a year ago, so sometimes he couldn't tell what word he wanted. He was old. He was old and very firm in his decisions, even when they were bad, and when he thought someone truly, truly wanted something, he arranged for it.
Philippa knew that. It was very stupid to have talked about that house in front of him. Now he'd gone and bought it and it was beautiful but there was a horrid mortgage on it and they had no money besides. She'd cried when she'd first found out, and Geir had apologised so many times, but the thing was, it was her house. It was the house she'd described, perfectly. Now that she had it, she wouldn't give it up. She'd just work for it.
But, of course, stupid Philippa had never been to college and didn't know how to do anything. She could do odd jobs, since she'd had three brothers and no mother and her father always expected them to help about the house, but she'd never learnt anything practical, she thought. She'd no idea how to write books or teach kids or be a lawyer or a singer or anything at all. She could only fix car motors and unclog drains. Of course, people paid you a dollar to do something like that if you weren't a professional with a van and a lot of stuff to carry around.
And Geir couldn't do anything. He didn't speak good English, after all, and he was very old (almost seventy-five, he'd told her once) and he was a fisherman, a farmer before. In his own language he could remember epic poems and recite and sing them for hours on end while Philippa sat on the sofa and watched him, sometimes making his voice loud and huge and reverberate and sometimes very soft, sometimes smooth and deep, sometimes high and sharp and falsetto. He told her all sorts of stories, but she couldn't understand a word of them; except sometimes she heard 'ja', and knew that was yes because he accidentally said that all the time when she asked him questions. All the time! And she'd smiled sleepily from the couch, and Geir would begin weaving his hands around in the air, probably talking about some tranquil grove where the breezes waved past and gently blew the grasses--or maybe about some drunk guy trying to find his way home. You couldn't tell, not with Geir, not with his face perfectly straight all the time.
So here she was, in the flower shop, tying off bundles of roses with her hurting hands, roses to keep a new house; and here was Geir, watching her with his blue eyes and looking curious and sort of sad.
"You are hurt, ja? The hands?"
"Yeah."
"May I take rose, put together?"
"No, it's okay. I'm okay."
"You are sure?"
"Yeah."
Geir stood for a little bit longer, watching her hands now until she thought if it were someone else she'd be nervous; but Geir didn't make you nervous. He just watched. She yawned a little and thought of the wheelchair-accessible ramp up to the post office, where she'd seen Mary Alexander just the other day, pulling herself up with her hands and pushing the big blue button so the doors opened for her.
Before there were buttons, Mary Alexander had to wait outside the doors until someone like Philippa came along and pushed them open for her. But Mary Alexander was very old, and she didn't mind waiting outside in the sun and being warm until someone came--sometimes she slept. She never could sleep in bed. She lay on the mattress and felt crippled and small and cold, and never could sleep. Left out in the sun outside the post office, she listened to the birds and the cars going by and children shouting at each other down in the creek, and she dozed off for a while and dreamt of her seven cats and her husband, who had all died last January--and then maybe Philippa or Susan or Chris would come and push the doors open for her and smile and say Hello Mrs. Alexander and she would wave to them as she went in. Now, she pressed the big blue button and the doors opened right up and she went in. This was was more efficient, and the people who put it in had been so proud, so vehement ("That Mrs. Alexander should have to wait outside for more than an hour before someone sees fit to open this door for her! Well, that's not going to happen any more!"), that she thought it was unfair to disappoint them. She went in by the button.
Philippa missed having someone to push, but then things changed. Sure. Yesterday, there was construction going on at the pizza parlour, and to-day it was fine and the smell was everywhere. Pepperoni. If she thought she could spend any of the money she was going to get on pizza, she would. She loved pepperoni. Geir only ate anchovies and peppers, and complained about poisoned mushrooms and dangerous, chemical-stuffed pepperoni, but she thought he kind of liked the smell too.
"Pulverise they the poor creature that is pepperoni-beast, smash it into pieces, grind it in meat-grinder, make it flat like panakokas, on--" Geir wrinkled his nose "--'pizza' put it. Poor pepperoni-beast!"
Philippa giggled and ate her pizza, and shook her head, and watched Geir pick off the anchovies one by one and eat them, and thought he was crazy. It was okay, his being crazy, because it was funny, but still. Eating anchovies instead of pepperoni.
In their new house, she didn't dare eat pizza, and anyway they couldn't afford it. Pizza was too expensive. Eating out was too expensive. She shopped at a discount store for products that hadn't worked and Geir called it the Shadow Store and they had green beans with Japanese labels, macaroni and cheese in the shape of body parts and chocolate kangaroos for dessert. Geir snorted and muttered something in his language that could have meant she was restricting his rights and he resented that she did and that he demanded to be given good food, but probably meant that she was a crazy bitch.
She told him in Spanish that she never would impinge on his rights without good cause, because they taught Spanish in middle and high school, but she didn't remember it very well, and she thought probably she'd said something obscene, really.
They both glared at each other for a little while, and then went back to their green beans and macaroni and cheese, and afterwards Geir, with a chocolate kangaroo in each hand, sang about a baby coming back to haunt his mother because she'd murdered him by drowning him in some place called Gulfoss. Philippa shuddered and pulled a threadbare throw rug up to her chin. It was a shivery song.
Now, she was kind of warm from working in the shop where the windows were so big and let in so much sun, and she leaned on the desk as she bundled, and Geir looked over her work and held up the bundles critically. She didn't know what he was doing, and she didn't really care, and she went on putting pink and purple and white roses together with her blistered fingers until she decided she'd die if she worked another hour. She looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes to go.
Geir laughed.
"It is not long, you see."
"Yeah, I know."
"You are my nice, staid girl."
"Stayed?"
"Nei, nei, you misunderstand me. To-day I have buy the dictionary at Shadow Store, and have look up words to make my English better, ja? I have find word. 'Staid'. Meaning 'earnest, demure, sober'. You do earnest good work and pay for our nice house. You are my staid girl, good girl."
"You're nuts. Lemme finish up here. Forty-five minutes, and we're going home, and we'll have beef jerky. 'Cause I bought some on sale."
"Oh, my staid girl, my beautiful girl." Geir began waving his hands around frantically. "Some day we ascend to heaven! Some day we be perfect, and we have our nice house for nothing! Heaven! My beautiful girl!"
Philippa shook her head, because she was afraid from his voice that he might cry, and that was the last thing she wanted him to do in the middle of the flower shop when she was already feeling so frustrated. "Oh, be quiet. Here's a rose for you."
Geir stood still the moment she told him to. He took the orange rose and smiled. "I like beef jerky. What is kind beef jerky?"
"Pepperoni-flavoured," said Philippa.
Geir groaned. "Nei, nei, nei, nei..."
Philippa giggled, and put together another bundle of roses.
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