Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

The Captain having been notified, two sailors came to carry my mother up onto the deck; and Mrs. Phelan came up with me, and we arranged her, with her eyes closed and her pretty hair down, because Mrs. Phelan said a body should not be buried with the hair knotted. I left her in the same clothes she had on, except for the shoes. I kept back the shoes, and her shawl as well which she would have no need of. She looked pale and delicate, like a spring flower, and the children stood around crying; and I had each one of them kiss her on the forehead, which I wouldn’t have done if I thought she’d died of anything catching. And one of the sailors, who was an expert at such things, tucked the sheet around her very neatly, and sewed it up tight, with a length of old iron chain at the feet, to make her sink. I had forgotten to cut off a lock of her hair to keep, as I should have done; but I was too confused to remember it. As soon as the sheet was over her face I had the notion that it was not really my mother under there, it was some other woman; or that my mother had changed, and if I was to take away the sheet now, she would be someone else entirely. It must have been the shock of it that put such things into my head. Fortunately there was a clergyman on board, who was making the crossing in one of the cabins, the same that had done the thanksgiving service after the gale; and he read a short prayer, and my father managed to totter up the ladder from the hold, and he stood there with his head bowed, looking rumpled and unshaven, but at least he was there. And then with the icebergs floating around us and the fog rolling in, my poor mother was tipped into the sea. I hadn’t thought about where she was going until this moment, and there was something dreadful about it, to picture her floating down in a white sheet among all the staring fish. It was worse than being put into the earth, because if a person is in the earth at least you know where they are.

And then all was over, so quickly, and the next day went on as before, only without my mother. That night I took one of the lemons and cut it up, and made each of the children eat a piece of it, and I ate a piece of it myself. It was so sour that you felt it must be doing you good. It was the only thing I could think of, to do.

And now I have only one more thing to tell you about this voyage. When we were still becalmed, and in the thickest of the fog, the wicker basket with Aunt Pauline’s teapot fell off onto the floor, and the teapot broke. Now, that basket had stayed where it was all during the storm, through the tumbling and the pitching and tossing; and it had been tied to the bedpost.

Mrs. Phelan said that no doubt it had come untied when someone was trying to steal it, but they’d stopped when in danger of being seen, and it wouldn’t have been the first thing to change hands in that way. But this is not what I thought. I thought it was my mother’s spirit, trapped in the bottom of the ship because we could not open a window, and angry at me because of the second-best sheet. And now she would be caught in there for ever and ever, down below in the hold like a moth in a bottle, sailing back and forth across the hideous dark ocean, with the emigrants going one way and the logs of wood the other. And that made me very unhappy.

You see what queer ideas a person can get. But I was only a young girl at the time, and very ignorant.

Chapter 15

It was fortunate that we were not becalmed any longer, or else our food and water would have run out; but a wind sprang up and the fog cleared, and they said we had passed Newfoundland safely, although I never got a glimpse of it and was not sure whether it was a city or a country; and soon we were in the St. Lawrence River, although it was a good while before there was any land. And when we did see it, on the north side of the ship, it was all rocks and trees, and looked dark and forbidding, and not fit for human habitation at all; and there were clouds of birds that screamed like lost souls, and I hoped that we would not be compelled to live in such a place.

But after a time there were farms and houses visible on the shore, and the land had the appearance of being more placid, or tamer as you might say. We were required to stop at an island and to undergo an inspection for cholera, as many before us had brought it into the country on the ships; but as the dead people on our ship had died of other things — four besides my mother, two from consumption and one from apoplexy, and one jumped overboard — we were allowed to proceed. I did have the chance to give the children a good scrubbing-off in the river water, although it was very cold — at least their faces and arms, which they were very much in need of.

The next day we saw the city of Quebec, on a steep cliff overlooking the river. The houses were of stone, and there were peddlers and hawkers at the dock in the harbour, selling their wares, and I was able to buy some fresh onions from one of them. She spoke nothing but French, but we conducted the business with our fingers; and I believe she made me a better price because of the children and their thin little faces. We were so thirsty for these onions that we ate them raw, like apples, which gave us wind afterwards, but I have never known an onion to taste so good.

Some of the passengers got off the ship at Quebec, to take their chances there, but we continued on. I cannot think of anything else I need mention about the rest of the journey. It was more travelling and most of it uncomfortable, sometimes overland to avoid the rapids, and then in another ship on Lake Ontario, which was more like a sea than a lake. There were hordes of small biting flies, and mosquitoes as big as mice; and the children were in danger of scratching themselves to death. Our father was in a bleak and melancholy mood, and often said that he did not know how he would manage, with our mother dead. At these times it was best to say nothing.

At last we reached Toronto, which was where they said the free land could be obtained. The city was not in a good situation, being flat and damp; it was raining that day, and there were many wagons and men hurrying, and quantities of mud, except for the main streets which were paved. The rain was soft and warm, and the air had a thick and swampy feel to it, like oil clinging to the skin, which I was later to learn was usual for that season of the year, and productive of many fevers and summer illnesses. There was some gas lighting but not as grand as Belfast.

The people appeared to be very mixed as to the kinds of them, with many Scots and some Irish, and of course the English, and many Americans, and a few French; and Red Indians, although they had no feathers; and some Germans; with skins of all hues, which was very new to me; and you never could tell what sort of speech you were going to hear. There were many taverns, and much drunkenness around the harbour, because of the sailors, and altogether it was just like the Tower of Babel. But we did not see much of the town that first day, as we needed to get a roof over our heads with as little expense as possible. Our father had struck up acquaintance with a man from the ship, who was able to give us some information; and so he left us with a mug of cider amongst us, crammed with our boxes into one room of a tavern which was filthier than a pig wallow, and went off to make further enquiries. He came back in the morning and told us he had found lodgings, and so we went there. They were east of the harbour, off Lot Street, at the — back of a house which had seen better days. The landlady’s name was Mrs. Burt, a respectable widow of a seafaring man, or so she told us, and quite stout and red in the face, with a smell like that of a smoked eel; and some years older than my father. She lived in the front part of the house, which was badly in need of a coat of paint, and we lived in the two rooms in the back part, which was more like an outbuilding. There was no cellar under it, and I was glad it wasn’t winter, as the wind would have blown right through it. The floors were of wide boards, set too close to the ground, and beetles and other small creatures would make their way up through the cracks between them, worse after a rain, and one morning I found a live worm.