Cruelest Month

Ruth stood on the top step of the church, balancing a plate of thick maple-cured ham sandwiches on Sarah’s bread still steaming from the boulangerie, home-made potato salad with eggs and mayo, and a huge slice of sugar pie. Myrna came up beside her wearing a plank on her head scattered with books and flowers and chocolate. Villagers wandered around the green or sat at picnic tables, women in massive exuberant Easter bonnets and men trying to pretend they weren’t.

Myrna stood beside Ruth, her own plate sagging under an embarrassment of food, and together they watched the hunt. Children darted around the village, shrieking and screaming with delight as they discovered the wooden eggs. Little Rose Tremblay was knocked into the pond by one of her brothers and Timmy Benson stopped to help her out. While Madame Tremblay yelled at her son Paulette Legault whacked Timmy. A sure sign of love, thought Myrna, grateful she wasn’t ten any more.

‘Wanna sit together?’ Myrna asked.

‘No I don’t “wanna”,’ Ruth said. ‘Have to get home.’

‘How’re the chicks?’ Myrna took no offense from Ruth; to do that would be to live in permanent offense.

‘They’re not chicks, they’re ducks. Ducklings, I suppose.’

‘Where do we get the real eggs?’ Rose Tremblay stood in front of Ruth like CindyLou Who before the Grinch, holding three exquisite wooden eggs in her pudgy pink palms. For some reason the children of Three Pines always went straight to Ruth, like lemmings.

‘How should I know?’

‘You’re the egg lady,’ said Rose, wearing a soggy blanket. She looked a little, Myrna thought, like one of Ruth’s precious duck eggs wrapped in her own flannel.

‘Well, my eggs are at home getting warm, where you should be. But if you insist on this foolishness, go ask her for the chocolate ones.’ Ruth waved her cane like a crooked wand at Clara, who was trying to make her way to a picnic table.

‘But Clara has nothing to do with giving the kids their chocolate eggs,’ said Myrna as little Rose took off, calling the other kids until it looked like a tornado descending on Clara.

‘I know,’ Ruth sneered and limped down the stairs. At the bottom she turned and looked up at the massive black woman popping a sandwich into her mouth. ‘Are you going tonight?’

‘To Clara and Peter’s for dinner, you mean? We all are, aren’t we?’

‘That’s not what I mean and you know it.’ The old poet didn’t turn to look at the Hadley house, but Myrna knew what she meant. ‘Don’t do it.’

‘Why not? I do rituals all the time. Remember after Jane died? All the women came, including you, and we did a ritual cleansing.’

Myrna would never forget walking round the village green with the women and the stick of smoking sage, wafting the smoke around Three Pines, to rid it of the fear and suspicions that had overtaken them.

‘This is different, Myrna Landers.’

Myrna didn’t realize Ruth knew her last name, or even her first. For the most part Ruth just waved and commanded.

‘This isn’t a ritual. This is deliberately disturbing evil. This isn’t about God or the Goddess or spirits or spirituality. It’s about vengeance.

‘I was hanged for living alone,

for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,

tattered skirts, few buttons,

a weedy farm in my own name,

and a surefire cure for warts;

‘Oh, yes, and breasts,

and a sweet pear hidden in my body.

Whenever there’s talk of demons

these come in handy.

‘Don’t do it, Myrna Landers. You know the difference between ritual and revenge. And so does whatever’s in that house.’

‘You think this is about revenge?’ asked Myrna, dumbfounded.

‘Of course it is. Let it be. Let whatever’s in that house be.’

She jabbed her cane at it. Had it been a wand Myrna was certain a bolt would have shot from it and destroyed the brooding house on the hill. Then Ruth turned and limped home. To her eggs. To her life. And Myrna was left with the memory of Ruth’s keen blue eyes, her permanently sunburned skin, her tattered skirt with its missing buttons. She watched the old woman walk back to her home with its abundance of words and weeds.

The rain held off and Easter Sunday moved along quick like a bunny. Timmy Benson found the most eggs and was awarded the giant chocolate rabbit, filled with toys. Paulette Legault stole it from him but Monsieur Béliveau made her give it back and apologize. Timmy, who could see into the future, opened the box, broke off the solid chocolate ears and gave the rest to Paulette, who punched him.

That night Peter and Clara held their annual Easter Sunday dinner. Gilles and Odile arrived with baguettes and cheese. Myrna brought a flamboyant bouquet which she placed in the center of the pine table in the kitchen. Jeanne Chauvet, the psychic, brought a small bouquet of wild flowers, picked in the meadows around Three Pines.