Free The Badger Riot by J.A. Ricketts Page B

company. Jennie was too scared to carry on a conversation. Used to her easygoing Sullivan family, Jennie had never before met anyone like Suze and she didn’t know how to respond to her at first. Her mother-in-law had a way of undermining her self-confidence with sly remarks. Suze had a mean and dirty mouth when there was no one around to hear her but Jennie.
And to see her,
Jennie thought,
so pious and holy, testifying in church
.
    Jennie didn’t want to force a confrontation and hurt her beloved Tom. As her quick temper and saucy tongue were clamped down she became withdrawn and nervous. And she was too ashamed to tell Mam about the things her mother-in-law said about Catholics.
    Back when they got married, Tom had encouraged Jennie to stay working at Plotsky’s. The morning after their wedding night,which Tom had enthusiastically consummated in the bedroom where he had slept all of his life, Jennie had come downstairs. Tom had left at dawn to go back across the River to the woods camps. It was barely eight o’clock and Jennie had to be to work at nine.
    â€œGood morning, Mrs. Hillier.”
    There was no answer from her mother-in-law, who looked like she’d been up for awhile, already dressed in her severe black dress and white apron. Jennie had reached for the kettle on the stove but Suze quickly brushed her aside without as much as an “excuse me,” picked up the kettle and, walking to the back door, dumped the entire contents over the step.
    â€œOh, I was hoping for a cup of tea before I went to work, if that’s all right,” Jennie had stammered.
    Suze had slammed the empty kettle down on the back of the stove. She’d gone to the cupboard and got out her stove blackening and her brush. “Well, if you wanted tea you should have gotten up at a sensible hour like a decent Christian instead of lolling about in bed until eight o’clock.
    â€œI’ve been up since six,” she’d continued. “Got my breakfast eat and am ready to work now. This is my day to blacken me stove. The fire is died down now and I’m not building it up for the likes of you.” She’d waved the blackening in Jennie’s face and motioned toward the door with the black brush. “So be off with you now!”
    From then on, Jennie kept a pack of biscuits in her room to munch on in the mornings. She wasn’t about to try and face Suze again in her kitchen.
    At first, she’d tried going back to Suze’s to make a sandwich for her lunch, but her mother-in-law quickly put an end to that. “If you thinks you can come traipsin’ in here in the middle of the day, dirtying up my clean kitchen, wasting my firewood to boil the kettle, you can change your mind on that.” Jennie ended up walking up the track to Mam’s place where she was always welcome.
    When Mr. Albert and Tom were at home, Suze Hillier was all goodness, cooking their dinner every day. Suze tolerated Jennie being there during those times; otherwise Tom would be asking questions.
    The only happiness she had was when Tom came home and they were in their bedroom and in bed. They made the bedsprings creak, but they were so in love they didn’t care.
    In the morning Suze would say under her breath, “You two are like rabbits. Kept me awake all night with the noise, you dirty Mick. Certainly I wouldn’t expect much more of you, the way you were reared. Eleven children! He must’ve been at her day and night.”
    But to Jennie and Tom’s great disappointment, no matter how much loving they did, Jennie didn’t become pregnant. She longed for a little baby to hold and cuddle and call her own, but every month, like clockwork, she would get the cramps in her belly and her flow would start. She came to believe that her monstrous lie, plus the fact that she had left the Catholic Church to marry a Protestant, was God’s punishment on her.
    Before long, to please her new husband