Free Leaning, Leaning Over Water by Frances Itani Page A

to worry about this yet.”
    Mimi and I went to Mother’s sewing bench where the name book was kept. We looked up the girls’ section and found Trude, which was from Gertrude and meant spear-loved maiden. The name made me feel fierce. Mimi was from Mary so we looked up Mary, which meant bitter. I wanted to know what Mother’s name meant, too, so I looked up Maura, which was from the Moor, and meant the dark one.
    “Look up Jennifer,” said Lyd.
    But all we could find under Jennifer was “See Guinevere,” and Guinevere meant white.
    “It’s a disguise for red,” Lyd said. “That’s why periods are called Jennifer. It’s the perfect disguise.” She took off the rosary and handed it back to me and we returned the name book to the sewing bench.
    I went into the bathroom and examined the stubby bottles of nail polish lined up on the bathroom shelf. Sometimes Mother let us borrow one so we could paint our toenails while we sat by the river in the sun.
    I chose Siren Red and carried it out to the lilacs in the backyard. Mimi and I crouched in the shade while I painted the river-swollen beads, one by one. When they were dry, I slipped them over my head and hid the cross at the back of my neck. We headed for the front of the house.
    “No one will ever know,” I told Mimi. “It’s a new necklace I found. A necklace with powers.”
    But while I’d been painting the beads Father and Mother had returned and Father was slumped into his canvas chair in the front yard. He squinted against the sun and spotted the necklace right away.
    “Off!” he yelled. “Get the damned thing off!” He pointed to my neck and shouted again. “Take it off and throw it away!”
    “I found it,” I said. “It’s mine. I found it in the river.”
    “Then you just throw it right back in, young lady. Now.”
    Mimi cast a baleful look in Father’s direction and we headed down to the river. As we did, I heard Father mutter, “Damned mumbo-jumbo,” and I said to myself, “The beads must give him what Granny Tracks calls the heebie-jeebies.”
    When we reached shore I took off my Siren Red beads and pretended to throw them into the water. Instead, I kept themin my palm. I turned to see if Father was watching but he was not. He’d left his canvas chair and had gone into the house. Probably to tell Mother.
    “He’s going to kill you if you keep them,” said Mimi.
    “Quick!” I said. “Come on.” I led her farther downriver and squatted beside the chokecherry tree. I broke off a piece of shale and dug into the earth at the base of the tree. I scraped a hole six inches deep and lowered the beads into it and filled the hole with dirt. Then I raked the dirt with a twig and spread dried leaves over the top and marked the cache with a tiny scroll of bark. I walked ten paces away from the river and took my bearings. I memorized the line-up of trees and the formation of shale. Just beyond the cache there was a giant maple, the one that threw a wide shadow at dusk. When we ran through the shadow we had to hold our breath. If we breathed while we were still in shadow, the curse of Brébeuf would be upon us. We would feel hands around our throat and we would choke. I had never breathed in the shadow.
    “Never mind,” I said to Mimi. “We’ll always know where the rosary is and we can dig it up when we need it. No one will ever find it. It’s too well disguised.”
    We kept on walking, up through the Pines, past the cliff and the high wild rapids and the old hydro wall. Logs were jammed like pick-up sticks against the wall and waves rushed around them as if they were beating their way through. When we got to Mimi’s house, we found Grand-mère in the kitchen.
    “We’ll be going on our holidays soon,” I told her. “Back to Ontario. My Giant Ant always wants to know everything. She makes me sit on a chair and she says, ‘Talk French!’ I have to say: ‘Comment allez-vous? Quel dommage! Il a un chien. Il s’appelle