1.

MRS. LUMSDEN WAS THE PROBLEM, always would be, of course, being the mother. One could understand how Miss Prewse at the Toronto Children’s Aid Society saw it, for there seemed little doubt from the outset on that day in 1951 that Ella Lumsden was a sex delinquent (possibly even dangerous).

It was Mr. Lumsden, Ernest Lumsden — or “Ernie” — the children’s father, a short, slight man, “obviously retarded,” wrote Miss Prewse, who had brought in the children that February morning: a little girl he called Daisy, about four-and-a-half; her sister Lizzie, age three, both clinging to his legs; and a baby, Pips, in his arms. He said he wanted to give them up; he was worried about the “babby.” The children were dirty and unkempt, tear-stained. The baby was listless, possibly undernourished.

Extraordinary. Apparently he had found his way by memory across the city from Cabbagetown, first to the old Infants Home on Charles Street East, then to their new offices on Isabella Street. He had gotten off the streetcar at Yonge Street and walked through biting wind and cold with the children. Mrs. Lumsden, it seemed, was holed up in a room somewhere down on Jarvis with a man; or more than one, Mr. Lumsden had hinted.

Miss Prewse tightened, at once on the alert.

Mr. Lumsden claimed that his wife had fits. Miss Prewse duly recorded: “Wife has fits periodically, and Mr. Lumsden frequently arrives home to find her in a coma, the furniture smashed and her clothes torn off…”

He had known at once something was wrong as he had turned the doorknob and noticed the darkness. It was a Friday. He had learned the calendar in Auxiliary Class for the feeble-minded as a boy and he knew Sunday started the week. The children were huddled sobbing in the centre of the room in the dark, frightened and hungry. They had not had their tea, and the babby was in Daisy’s lap with a dirty, empty bottle in his mouth. Ella was sprawled on her back naked on the living-room floor, her tits hanging sideways like balloons, her legs sprawled.

At once he covered her bush of hair there with his coat. Everything was smashed: the lamps, the pictures, the delicate Virgin Mary from the Catholic Women’s League. One chair had four broken legs.

Daisy ran to him sobbing, “Dada, oh, Dada!”

“Well, what have I got for my little girls?” He pretended not to see, then pulled out some biscuits he had taken when the boss wasn’t looking. He worked daytime at Christie’s Biscuits on Lakeshore.

Lizzie snatched the biscuit out of his hand and Daisy let her. “Now let’s share nicely,” he chided.

Then he lifted Ella up and half carried, half dragged her (for she was heavier and taller than himself) into the room off the kitchen that was their bedroom, and clumsily dropped her on the bed. He saw at once how it had been. Her brassiere tossed. Her skirt ripped fiercely. The sheets were crumpled. Then there was the telltale smell. He knew how his wife shook during orgasm, often tearing the sheet in her frenzy, falling to the floor in her pleasure as she was straddled, before passing out.

He hurried back to the children who were crying again. The baby lay still, his dirty bottle fallen off his chest, the thin milk congealed. He washed that first in the sink, then took some milk from the milk bottle on the shelf. The littlest daughter, Lizzie, stood stiff and unblinking as he put the kettle on to boil; for her, he would mix hot water with dried milk the way they had shown at the Mother and Baby clinic up on Parliament Street. Soon he put on baked beans and some chopped wieners for their tea, cut the last bit of bread and mixed up some orange juice from a dark little bottle from the clinic. He remembered what they told him: “Give them a teaspoon mixed with water every day.” He then noticed that she had let the fire die out in the grate.

The tiny row house had three rooms: kitchen, parlour and a small bedroom. But they had more than most folks, he knew because he worked regular. They had a nice used sofa from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul store, as well as an armchair, a deal table and hard chairs from the Women’s Auxiliary Club. The wallpaper peeled in tatters, cockroaches got at the linoleum floor and bugs crawled up the wall, but no matter.

“What happen to your ma?” he asked, though he had already guessed.

At his words Daisy burst into sobs and shook. She had shit and wet herself again. Lizzie’s thin tight face was pinched, her long hair straggled with grime, her knickers also soaked with piss. He held the baby close and pushed the bottle in his mouth, but the baby, Pips, would not take it; there were deep circles under his eyes. Ernie sighed. Ella had been shown at the clinic up on Parliament Street how to breastfeed him, but she gave up after a few weeks, said she could not stand that milk dribbling all over. He just wanted to fuckin’ suck suck all day.

He found dry underwear, though not clean, and changed the girls, then went back to the bedroom while they ate, leaving the baby in a small box by the stove. He pushed his wife’s breasts into her brassiere and pulled on another skirt to cover the long heavy legs he knew so well, and then a sweater. He could not manage the girdle or the suspenders. His fingers couldn’t work the claw-like metal grips. He smelled her smell and felt suddenly dizzy with desire. And anger at the man.

He heard the tenants next door on the other side of the wall. They were yelling, children screaming. Babies were crying. There were thuds. Ernest knew the old man’s fists were on poor Mrs. Eagleston. She cried hoarsely.

“Let’s go see Ganny,” he said. He had a decision to make: which Ganny? Ganny Hewitt or Ganny Lumsden? He had to be at the docks for his second job, the night shift down at the wharf on Cherry Street loading vans. He was known as a steady worker who never asked for no raise. He did not want to lose his job.

His parents, the Lumsdens, lived furthest away on River Street. He would have to carry the kids past the icy bridge at Queen Street, about a twenty-minute walk he knew by his big watch. Ella’s mother, Florrie Hewitt, lived closer down on Sumach Street. Florrie was a nervous woman, fearful of her husband Henry, as was Ernie. Their house was tiny, and there was no bedding for the little girls, let alone a baby. Ernie was afraid of his father-in-law; he knew how much he beat Florrie. Much depended on his drinking, and how much he’d had. He was older now, over sixty.

Daisy began to cry as soon as he got the jackets and boots. “Wanna Dada.”

“S’okay, Do-do, Dada sees you t’morrow morning, have a nice time at Ganny’s.”

Lizzie stood frowning. Who was Ganny? She was only three and did not have glasses yet, so her father was a blur. She was to have her too-big second-hand coat (passed down from Daisy) put on her and a woolly hat and newspaper wrapped round her feet with string to keep out the wind.

He held Daisy close to him. She was to hang on to his pocket. The baby was wrapped under one arm, and Lizzie was in the other, and in this formation they plodded slowly down Berkeley Street to Shuter Street, past the old Wesleyan Methodist Church on the corner. It was snowing lightly in the crisp afternoon. The streetcars rumbled and clanged their bells. Vendors sold vegetables near the sidewalks. Fumes, grey and acrid, drifted from the factories. A wind rose over the bridge at Queen Street, the Don River far below a long stretch of ice and dark grey. Somewhere down there beyond the girders and Eastern Avenue, Ernie knew lay the dockland where he sojourned nightly amongst the ghostly ships and cargo.

Soon they had reached Lower Sumach Street, a rundown place, the houses in long drab rows. Garbage bins were outside and trash was blown around. Papers and beer bottles were strewn along the gutter; refuse clogged the pavement.

The city was supposed to be building a housing complex some day soon for the poor, to be called Regent Park.

“What the bleedin’ hell has the devil brought in now?” grunted Henry Hewitt whom they all feared. You never knew what he would do with his fist. He was a thin hard-bodied man with a lean face and light blue eyes.

“Ella’s not well, Dad … had the fits agin”

“Out bloody whoring again, you mean.”

Florrie Hewitt gasped trembling, full of fear of her husband, but fluttering softly with delight as she took the baby. “Oh, ’Enry, jus’ look at him, the dearie,” she cried.

She was a tiny, toothless woman with washed-out, greying hair. Ernie knew she was also half-deaf from the many beatings she had received from her husband. A worn frazzled woman of fifty-nine, she’d had at least twelve children, plus one that had died, one that had been adopted, and two “miscarriages,” which Ernie had heard about over the years. (“They was abortions,” Daisy once told me in conversation.)

Ella’s brothers and sisters had long left home, so there was room of sorts in the house (although the upstairs was rented to a family from Russia). But it was poor; all they had was an old chesterfield from the Salvation Army store, a weathered chair, a small table, and a bed in the other room. There was a coal fire going in the pot-bellied stove and the little girls suddenly ran to it for the warmth, their arms round each other. Ganny brought them biscuits and a cup of milk.

“If they could jus’ stay the night or so ’til Monday.” Ernie raised his voice so his mother-in-law could hear. “I got my jobs.”

“What’s he bloody shouting at?” bawled Mr. Hewitt.

Ernie had slurry speech himself. He knew why too; his own father had beat him as a child. Arthur Lumsden had worked at the Woodbine racetrack picking up the garbage and there had not been much love there, not like Ernie’s own love for his kiddies, Daisy and Lizzie, but especially the babby, Pips. Daisy ran back to his legs and pushed her face against his crotch. But Lizzie moved cautiously toward her Ganny, not sure who she was, but sure she was somebody who could give her something more.

“Let’s see the little devils, then,” Henry Hewitt said gruffly, pulling up the girls. “Well, she’s a little looker,” he said of Lizzie. “Boys’ll be on ’er later; but this older one’s spit of Ella, poor bugger. Hope she don’t grow up like ’er. Bloody whore needs a good hammering.”

Ella woke with a headache. The house was still. Then excitement flooded back. He had left dollars, lots of them. She was not sure how much or how to count, but she had done extra on him. She could smell his tobacco and oil. She pulled on stockings and clipped the tops into her suspenders. She put on lipstick and some scent her friend Maggie on Bleeker Street had given her. Then she went out through the back door and down the snowy path. She would find Maggie at the green door of the pub a few streets away.

She could not read, but she knew the shop windows, the corner grocery, the taverns with their billboards advertising beer and Black Cats. It was getting dark. Friday nights were band nights and dancing at the Isabella Hotel or Canada House Tavern on Sherbourne where there were fights when the Irish boys came. (“Oh, she used to go to the pubs all the time,” said Daisy. “The Winchester Arms, the Carlton down on College there — oh, that was a bad place!”) The rooms thick with cigarette smoke, Player’s Lights and Cats, the thrum of bands.

This particular night, Ella went to the Isabella Hotel, its front door a dark green. The Isabella Hotel had two bands, one up in the turret and one downstairs in the basement. Shoes clicked loudly on the linoleum. The walls, dark and sweaty, were stained with beer and tobacco. There was a long banquette to sit on, and on the glass-topped tables the spilled beer was shiny under the lights. Men and women got up to rumba on the tiny dance floor at a dizzying pace.

“Where’s th’ kids then?” asked Maggie.

Ella was confused. The kids? “Oh, Ernie got ’em. I want some fun before I knock off. I ain’t ending up like my mother with ten kids ‘n’ nothin’ to show for it.”

A swarthy man smelling of drink squeezed her arm and his hand slid down her thigh. “How about a beer, lovie?”

Ella knew what he wanted, what men wanted, and laughed loudly, her mouth opening wide. He was looking at her tits, they all did. She had big ones, and they liked that. Men at dark tables smoked in the back bar, but they would sidle over; a little wank out the back passage? And later perhaps, yes, down Jarvis Street to the big house with veiled windows and a cardboard sign in the front glass door that she knew said: “Room for rent by the week, by the day, by the hour. Two dollars a night.” She had learned that from Maggie.

Ernie paused and felt a whirl of snow and icy breath from the lake upon his face. He had to cross back under vast iron girders on the construction sites under the highway up from the docks. His shift over, he walked the lonely roads, and a thick smoky haze fell in long blue spirals over the warehouses. It was two in the morning and he hurried up Cherry Street past Gooderham and Worts and across to Eastern Avenue and Parliament Street, thinking of Ella where he had left her. Desire for his wife filled him, for her large open mouth, and loose, big breasts.

She was gone. He knew it right away. He slumped on the mattress in the dark, felt her absence, and began to sob. But now he knew what he had to do, for he loved the babby.