"Bookmarks" by Victoria Windrem

You could always see the rain coming before it actually hit. Sometimes we’d just get the blanket laid out and the sunshade set up when Jo would point out over the mountains on the other side of the lake. It was like someone had turned on a tap beyond the clouds. The sunlit hills turned brooding with patches of darkness.

Usually, if there was no thunder and lightning, we’d stay anyway. It generally meant we got the beach to ourselves and Jo and I didn’t mind swimming in the rain. There was something fun about being just as wet outside the water as in it.

Mom never went in farther than her knees and even then it was mostly just to call us in for sandwiches or when it was time to go back. She preferred to stay on the sand with a book or just watching us play. Able to relax for just a little while. When the rain or the cold lake water or both finally drove us in, we’d huddle in beside her under the big umbrella, wrapped in our towels, and she’d read to us from one of her secret stash of library books.

He didn’t agree with novels, especially when it came to me being the boy. I was supposed to read about the real things that real men had done; math, science, history. I didn’t mind the history so much but the other stuff made my eyes droop. I could get away with reading the paper sometimes but usually, he’d gotten to it first and determined it to be inappropriate for my eyes. “Full of queers and hippies,” he said.

But Mom knew how much the stories meant to me, and Jo too later on. In those days you didn’t get a receipt from the library or I’m sure he would have inspected it after she went. As it was, she had a rough job keeping it from him. He had a habit of ripping through our things if he thought we were getting too comfortable. She only ever got two or three at a time depending on how big they were. Usually one for herself and one to read to us.

The time between each stolen chapter was sometimes terribly long. She almost always had to renew the books several times. As much as Jo and I ached to know what the characters were up to, we also knew not to ask.

In years since I’ve spoken to other children of angry parents and find we usually have much in common. For one thing, we all learn early when to keep our mouths shut.

Jo and I barely spoke around him anyway but pecking at Mom for one more chapter would have been un- thinkable too. Neither of us wanted to see that pained look she got sometimes when she felt there was something we ought to have but that she couldn’t give.

Summer was always easier. He hated the beach so she contrived to take us as often as she could manage. Sometimes two or three times a week when we weren’t in school. It was only a twenty-minute drive out of town and she kept the blanket and umbrella in her car at all times for quick getaways. I never understood why he let us go there so often while holding so many other things in our lives under his thumb. Maybe he needed a break from us too.

I started noticing the bookmarks in early spring when I was twelve and Jo would turn seven. At first, she didn’t let me see, tucking them away in her bag as soon as she opened the book for our precious reading time. But eventually, she stopped being so careful. I think she wanted me to know something was coming, perhaps to ask my permission in a way.

In the beginning, they were just scattered words on torn strips of paper. Barely any meaning. Eventually, they became longer conversations scribbled hastily in two hands. I recognized my mother’s tidy letters but the other was an unknown. I liked the way they made their y’s and g’s and j’s into large swoops which underlined the word.

The stranger asked about the bruises and cuts. About the sometimes limp. About the way she flinched at loud noises.

At first, her replies were the same clipped things she gave out to everyone else.

“I fell,” she said.

“Such a clutz,” she said.

“Breaking in new heels,” she said.

As the months wore on though, she started offering up more and more truths. The day after he hacked up her long, blond hair with the kitchen scissors, she came home from the library with two sheets of paper and a prettily touched up bob.

That summer began a cleaning frenzy like we’d never experienced before. She scoured each room with a finetooth comb, packing up boxes and boxes of things for Goodwill. He approved of it heartily because anything that he didn’t personally use regularly was always, automatically ‘junk’. Jo cried when her favourite dolls found their way into a box and got a bad wallop for it. “You have to grow up sometime, little lady,” he said.

Afterwards, Mom hugged her and gave her back one of the dolls. “Go put it in your beach bag,” she said.

She left stacks of boxes at the door for him to take to the centre when he was going out. “The ones I can’t carry,” she said.

We still went to the beach every week and she’d fill up her car with a load of boxes too but we never took them to Goodwill.

The same as always, she’d set up the blanket and umbrella and send us out to play. A couple times I thought to look back to shore and she was still up at the car but not on her own. Another woman, a stranger, was helping her load the boxes into a blue station wagon. Jo didn’t notice and I didn’t ask where the boxes went.

August was dying when she finally made her way to the attic. She pulled down suitcases and albums and bags of our old baby clothes.

“Let’s do luggage this Christmas for the whole family,” she said. “Those old cases are looking terrible.”

He grumbled about wasting money but didn’t argue for once.

Many more things went in boxes at the door.

The suitcases went into my room. “To keep them out of the way for now,” she said.

It was a week before school started. He gave her money to buy us some new shoes and clothes and then left for work.

“We’re going to the beach,” she said.

Then she filled the suitcases. In went as many clothes as we could fit. In went the last of our favourite toys. In went her secret stash of library books and other books which I hadn’t seen before.

The sky was already overcast when we got there with the car full of stuff. She set up the blanket and umbrella. The blue station wagon was already there waiting with a bookmark tucked under the windshield wiper. “good luck,” it said and there was an address too. I recognized a swooping g in the note.

“Go play,” she said.

We splashed in the water for an hour or so and I felt like this might be our last beach trip for a while. When Jo spotted rain over the mountain, Mom called us in but we didn’t huddle under the umbrella this time, trying to eke out every inch of freedom we could grasp.

Instead, we loaded up the umbrella and the blanket and our suitcases into the blue station wagon. She let me sit in the front for the first time.

From that vantage point I watched her look down at the keys to the old beige Chev he let her drive, then march back down across the sand. She waded into the water further than I’d ever seen her go. Her white dress billowed out around her like foam. I counted out ten deep breaths while she just stood there, swaying in the waves, rain making its way ever closer from the mountains. Then she leaned back and hurled the keys as far across the lake as she could. I didn’t even see the spot where they dropped, inevitably sinking to the very bottom.

She came back to the car, wringing out her dress along the way, and slipped into the driver's seat. Our latest novel was resting on the dash and she passed it to me after starting the engine.

“Read it out loud for us,” she said, smiling.