Some People's Children

By Bridget Canning

***2022 WRITERS' ALLIANCE OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR FICTION AWARD: FINALIST***

***2021 THOMAS RADDALL ATLANTIC FICTION AWARD: SHORTLIST***

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***49TH SHELF EDITOR'S PICK***

Imogene Tubbs has never met her father, and raised by her grandmother, she only sees her mother sporadically. But as she grows older, she learns that many people in her small, rural town believe her father is Cecil Jesso, the local drug dealer—a man both feared and ridiculed. Weaving through a maze of gossip, community, and the complications of family, Some People’s Children is a revealing and liberating novel about the way others look at us and the power of self-discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books
• Release date: Apr 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781550818130

Bridget Canning

Bridget Canning’s debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was a finalist for the 2017 BMO Winterset Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the NL Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. It is currently being adapted to film. Her second novel, Some People’s Children, was a finalist for the 2020 BMO Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Award. Bridget holds an MA in creative writing from Memorial University and a Masters of Literacy Education from Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2019, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL. She lives in St. John’s, where she writes and teaches.

Book preview

prologue

August, 1974

Maggie wakes on the bed. The bedspread is itchy on her bare skin. Smells like cigarettes. She is alone. It is not her bed.

She remembers standing outside the bathroom. Tony’s voice was a hiss: I thought you said you were seventeen. She tried to speak around the lump in her throat: Please.

Someone walked by and laughed, sharp and small like a bee sting. Tony pulled her into the bedroom.

But we care about each other. She kissed his neck. That’s one of the things he likes. He shook her off. He slammed the bedroom door as he left.

She was crying on the bed when the voices started. The party banged on around the edges of the door, but these were new sounds. Mostly barked commands:

Get back in there, my son.

If you don’t, I will.

Get it get it get it.

And then Tony was back. He shut the bedroom door to a rising cheer. She remembers reaching for him. They’d never been inside before—twice in the woods on a blanket, twice in the backseat. She remembers wishing hard for no one to come in. Please let the door be locked.

And now he’s gone. She has to go home. She sits up.

Cecil Jesso stands by the bed. Her jeans and pullover are bunched in his hands. His pale eyes are bulging like marshmallows. His pants are undone to reveal a triangle of white cotton. Matted hair. She buckles into a ball.

Cec! Get out of here!

This is my room. He points at her. You’re on my bed.

She pulls the bedspread up from under her, to cover herself. Cecil clutches her things to his chest with one hand. He reaches out with the other and grabs the bedspread from her hand. Lemme see, he whispers. His bottom lip trembles.

No! Maggie swipes at his hand. Her naked breast brushes his forearm. She scrambles to the foot of the bed. It is hard to move away and keep herself covered. She hears Cec’s breath suck in, wet and beastly. He moves closer. No no no no. Everything is no. Everything is help. Her guts fold in on themselves. They remember something sweet and sickly from earlier and don’t want it anymore.

Now Cec is gasping mouthfuls of garbled fury. He drops her clothes and puts his hands to his wet face. Maggie wipes her mouth, panting. The smell of her own bile hits her and she’s sick again, this time off the side of the bed. Cec backs out of the room. Jesus fucking Christ.

Her hands move without thought, top on, legs in jeans, underwear and bra shoved in pockets. She stands. Her body sways. Get out, get out. The hallway outside the room reeks of cigarettes and rum. Everyone is gone. She half skates down the hallway, through the kitchen. She snatches her shoes from the porch. Cecil stands in the doorway to the living room, rubbing his face with a towel. You’re a little savage, he says.

You’re a piece of shit. You ever touch me again, you’re dead.

I never touched you, Maggie Tubbs, he says. His voice is sooky and slurry.

A half-empty Labatt 50 bottle sits in the porch, like someone left it when they were tying their shoes. Maggie grabs it around its stubby neck and flings it at him. He steps back, missing the splash of beer. It hits the floor and rolls away.

When Tony finds out, he’s gonna kill you, she says. You’re fucking dead, Cecil Jesso.

part one

one

Fall, 1986

Imogene wants out of this house before the store closes. She has enough change for a Charleston Chew bar and about five Dubble Bubble. The coins are lined up in the side pockets of the Kangaroo sneakers Maggie gave her. She was the first kid at school with zipper-pocket shoes, but now the fabric over her big toe is near transparent.

Nan and Great Aunt Bride are at the kitchen table for one of their big yak attacks. Their fingertips are ashy with tea-bun flour. When they laugh, it sounds like two crows trapped in a wooden box.

Look, Bride, Nan says. She got those shoes this spring and they’re already wore through.

Yer gettin’ some big.

Maggie was the same, grew up all of a sudden.

She was an early bloomer. You’ll be one too.

Imogene does not want to talk about blooming. Bad enough they have to notice how big her feet are. Cousin Rita likes to say Imogene’s shoes are like pontoons.

Nutrition is almost too good today, Great Aunt Bride says. Everyone’s taller and girls start developing younger all the time. Sure, Dina’s daughter already wears a bra and she’s only ten. Great Aunt Bride jiggles her head at the thought. She has puffy white curls and the tips are tinged with the last stains of blond. From a distance, her head is a fresh popcorn kernel.

It’s true, Nan says. Even the Chinese that comes over and eats like us grow tall.

"And the early puberty. I didn’t start my monthlies until I was sixteen."

Imogene is gone at that, doors banging. But it’s colder than she thought. She needs her mitts. The door leading from the porch into the kitchen is open a crack. Nan and Great Aunt Bride now speak in regular, honest tones.

She’s sensible, Great Aunt Bride says. You don’t have to worry about her.

I know. But it started so young with Maggie. Would have been different if Gus hadn’t passed. Or if her brothers were home. That bastard would have been too scared to touch her.

Gus was intimidating.

Maggie minded her father. But I never knew what to do with her. As soon as she developed, it was men sizing her up. And she knew it too, the way she’d walk, her chest stuck out. Deep down, I knew she’d end up with a baby.

Imogene slips back outside. Her stomach shifts in confusion. She stuffs her bare hands in her pockets and makes her way up the path. The tops of the mud puddles are frozen, but hollow inside, and the ice shatters like glass when she steps on them. She does it to each one in her way. The tang in Nan’s voice was the same sound she makes when she talks about the price of getting the transmission fixed on the car. Everything is urgency and high cost.

Last week on the ride to school, her cousin Rita used a saying Imogene hadn’t heard before. Anyone can get their skin off her, Rita whispered as Rosarie Coish climbed on the bus. Mrs. Coish brought back a crimping iron when she was last in Corner Brook. Rosarie’s blond hair hung down her back in perfect crinkled strips, like fried bacon, her hips swaying in tight faded denim. Imogene thought Rosarie looked beautiful.

She’ll be gettin’ her skin tonight, Rita said, corkscrewing her elbow into Imogene’s side. Imogene nodded. She thought of Rosarie Coish with arms outstretched, receiving a neatly folded blanket made of some kind of skin, like cured leather. Rosarie passing on the skin to someone else. This can’t be what it means.

Imogene starts down the road to the Kwik Stop. Maybe someone will offer her a ride. Although, really, she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Imogene would like to avoid the road altogether and walk along the beach all the way to the store, but there aren’t many places to climb up the banks. They would be solid now, but they soften in the spring and you can sink into the mud. Aubrey Murphy has lost a sheep or two like that.

She feels the wind lift her hair and shake it, as if to see if it will come loose. One time, her hair was blowing all over the place and Rita said it looked like her head was on fire. When Rita makes comments like this about Imogene’s red hair, it’s never clear if she’s joking. Imogene pulls up her hood. There’s always some kind of wind in St. Felix’s. Sometimes a cold wind off the water to spoil a warm summer day. Or a Wreckhouse blast that gouges the breath from your mouth and tries to suffocate you right out in the open.

A pickup truck passes. Rosarie Coish and her dad. His fingers rise briefly off the steering wheel. Imogene waves back. Rosarie is sixteen. A year older than Maggie when she had Imogene. Must have been A Scandal. Last year, everyone talked about that girl in grade twelve who had a baby—Susan Benoit—but everyone knew Dan Snow was the father. No one knew who Imogene’s father was, so it must have been Big News.

Maggie will likely call tonight. She calls every week from Markham where she lives with a man named Robert Cronin. Robert Cronin is a real-estate agent, a nice man with thick ashy hair and crinkly eyes. Good for Maggie, Nan likes to say, just what she needs. Both Nan and Maggie agree on that; a good man is good for Maggie.

When Maggie and Imogene speak on the phone, Maggie talks about the real-estate projects she and Robert Cronin work on. Their focus is primarily in the GTA, but Maggie says they plan on buying at least one property in St. John’s. If you decide to go there for university, Maggie says, you’ll have a place to live. And later she’ll say, Robert says hello, and Imogene will hear him sing Hello! from some nearby room or the opposite side of the table. Then Imogene will hand the phone to Nan, who listens and sighs and clucks her tongue.

Imogene starts down the hill towards the Kwik Stop. The Sampson’s van is parked in front. Good, they’re home. Even though the Kwik Stop is supposed to be open until five, sometimes they close up early and you’re shit out of luck, as Doug Sampson says. It’s getting close to four thirty, which means Loretta Sampson leaves the door leading from the store to their house open so you can see they’re getting ready for supper and won’t waste time shopping.

Three figures bounce out of the store and yank bikes off the ground. Maybe it’s Quincy and his cousins or Nick Cleary. No, by the way they move, it’s definitely Liam and Randy Lundrigan and Donny Martin. Frig. She sweeps her hair back and composes her face: eyes cool, chin out.

The wind comes up from the bottom of the hill and makes water in her eyes. It gives the boys an extra push and they bounce towards her, jogging the pedals of their bikes. They pant and grin. Liam Lundrigan aims the front wheel of his bike at her and hunches forward, eyes slurred. She forces her legs to keep moving. Liam’s pale hair blows forward around his face, like a bud of dandelion silk. He waits until he is about two feet away to squeeze the handbrakes. Randy and Donny squeak to a stop behind him. Donny plants both legs on the ground and plucks his jeans off his arse. Randy snorts and rumbles snot in his throat as if to hawk it, but doesn’t. Too windy for that.

Not chicken much, Liam says.

Don’t need to be.

Where you going?

Store.

Gettin’ smokes for your nan.

My nan don’t smoke.

She tries to step around the front wheel of Liam’s bike, but he pushes it forward. There is a crust of something reddish-brown near the edge of his mouth and he has dried sleep in the corners of his eyes. He wipes his hand on his shirt: red and black checkered flannel covered with about ten million flecks of lint and mystery stuff. He reaches out and runs a finger along her sleeve.

Nice coat. Where you get it?

It is a nice coat. Maggie sent it last Christmas from Toronto. It hangs past her hips, corduroy in a kind of deep fuchsia. No one else in St. Felix’s has a coat like it.

My mother got it for me.

Your mom’s good at getting all kinds of things, isn’t she?

Frig off.

She is good at getting things. She got you, didn’t she?

He grins at her. Tiny crack lines appear in the crust on his mouth. Imogene steps over the wheel of his bike and keeps on. The wind blows their laughter out of her ears. When she gets close to the bottom of the hill, she looks back. They are gone, pedaling fast with the wind’s support.

two

In class, Sister Patricia gives an assignment which everyone fails. It is a list of directions:

Read all the instructions before doing anything.

Get out of your desk and stand on one foot.

Hop up and down on one foot.

Stop hopping and fold your arms.

Nod three times.

Spin around.

Whistle.

Clap your hands.

Sit down.

Wait for the teacher to say go before doing directions 2 to 9.

And so on. Everyone hops and bops and laughs. Afterwards, Sister Patricia announces they have all failed because they didn’t read and pay attention to the first and last directions. She hopes this will teach everyone to pay closer attention. You people would have learned what the activity was all about if you’d just paid attention, she says.

Imogene didn’t read the list well. But in general, she has been paying more attention to everything since overhearing Nan and Great Aunt Bride. Like last week when she was with Nan in the post office. Marie Whalen looked her up and down.

Which one are you? she said. Eli’s girl?

This is Imogene, Nan said.

Marie’s eyes met hers and there was a click of recognition. Oh yes. Young Maggie’s child. Nan’s mouth made a sharp line. She nodded to Marie and collected the flyers in silence.

Imogene will have to listen hard because she only knows four things about her father and no one talks about him. Last Christmas, when Maggie was home, Imogene asked her about him and received another version of the four things. And then Maggie cried and said she was sorry.

These are the four things Imogene knows:

Her father’s name is Anthony Green. His name is on her birth certificate.

He was a young fisherman who worked on the crab boats for a season. He and Maggie started going out. She told him she was older than what she was. When he found out she was underage, he disappeared.

Nan sent letters to his old employer looking for him. There was no response. The letters were sent to Marystown, where he moved after St. Felix’s. The last letter was returned from the employer stating Anthony moved away. No forwarding address.

Anthony told Maggie he was from Port aux Basques, but according to Nan, no one there named Green knows anything about him.

Anthony Green is spoken of in blasphemous tones; he is Unmentionable like dirty underwear and the secret name of God. And Maggie went to work in St. John’s when Imogene was about four, and then Ontario, and now she can only come down once or twice a year. When she’s home, every day is an event and it never seems to be a good time to request more information.

Imogene’s memories of Maggie are like a vine which grew straight at first and then sprouted branches, spreading in all directions. Her earliest recollections are lying next to Maggie, waking to the shape of her back and cloak of dark hair. Maggie’s arms swinging hers as they danced on the carpet to ABBA songs.

And then came the calm explanations. Mommy will only be gone a little while. See this square on the calendar? This is when Mommy comes home. She’ll call all the time on the phone and tell you stories. She’ll have presents for you.

Then Maggie’s pink, streaming face. Maggie lifting her suitcase. Nan prying the damp hem of Maggie’s red sweater out of Imogene’s fists. Maggie’s brown hair whipping straight up in the wind as she walks to Uncle Eli’s truck. Her shoulders quaking.

And then, everything was busy. Legos with Rita on Aunt Trudy and Uncle Eli’s rug, being pushed on the swing in their backyard, whispering with Rita over their sleeping dolls. Being scolded as a pair: Good girls share. Good girls don’t fight. Nan lying on the couch with a damp facecloth on her eyes: Imogene, go over to Eli’s for a bit. It’s their turn.

Uncle Kenneth got Maggie a job in St. John’s. She stayed with him to save money, working at the Purity Factory all day and finishing her GED at night. Then it was secretarial courses and a new plan. When there was enough money, Imogene would join her.

Imogene recalls the house changing whenever Maggie was home, the way it smelled like Love’s Baby Soft and watermelon-scented hair spray. Eli’s truck rumbling down the driveway and Maggie bursting in to sweep her up, her long dark hair over her shoulders, her brightly coloured clothes. Maggie pulling gifts from bags, chocolates, new shoes, a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit with a brown toy bunny which Imogene named Teeny.

And then school and firmer, more concrete events. Maggie home for Christmas. Imogene had asked Santa for a puppy, a golden retriever, like the one on the long-distance telephone commercial: two blond children open a big box and the puppy bounds out. She remembers Maggie handing her a box. Inside, a stuffed toy dog. Oh, Imogene said. That’s not the kind of puppy I wanted. Maggie shrugging. Your letter to Santa said puppy. It didn’t say what kind.

A summer visit, Maggie’s legs long in jeans with patches and zippers, her hair down to her elbows. Giving Imogene a piggy-back ride down to French Brook. Pretending to throw Imogene into the water. Mommy! No! Imogene screeched. And Maggie’s fingers stiff in her armpits as she was deposited on the grass. I was only playing, Imogene.

And the boyfriend she brought home when Imogene was seven. Shane Hearn. He had eyebrows like caterpillars and black, curly hair that was long in the back. He wouldn’t stop tickling Imogene’s feet. He’d sweep her up on his lap as she walked past, then pin her arms to her sides with one arm and tickle her feet. Every time she squealed and kicked and said no and he said things like, You like it, you’re laughing. And twice he did it at night, when she was going to pee, ready for bedtime in her nightie. She wanted to kick out at him, but was too scared he would see she didn’t wear underwear to bed.

He stopped the evening Imogene wouldn’t kiss him good night. That was the routine; she’d kiss Nan good night and any other relatives in the house when she was going to bed. Nan, Maggie, and Shane sat in the living room. She kissed Nan and Maggie, then froze in front of Shane. He held open his arms to her. Where’s my good-night kiss? And her legs wouldn’t move. Imogene, Maggie said, don’t be rude. But Nan spoke with a hollow darkness. That’s okay, Imogene my love. You go on to bed.

After Shane Hearn, there was Robert Cronin. She remembers a visit to St. John’s, her and Nan on the bus. Robert taking them all to Ponderosa. The back of his giant head in front of her on the Trinity Train Loop. And afterwards, the change in plan: Robert would return to Ontario to start his own real-estate company. Maggie would help him organize it. Imogene would join them when they were set up.

That summer was a long visit with both Maggie and Robert. Imogene was going into grade four and it was the first time she heard the word quaint. The word Robert used to talk about everything in St. Felix’s. The houses were quaint, the church was quaint, the school was quaint. But when Rita, Wish Benoit, and Natalie Sampson came over to play, they weren’t quaint. Don’t go jumping on the furniture, he said. And this was a strange thing to say because it hadn’t crossed their minds at all. Wish laughed. We aren’t monkeys, he said. Robert said it wasn’t funny.

He talked about Ontario all the time, the way the houses are made of brick there and it’s so strange there wouldn’t be brick houses in a place called the Rock. He said things like, Why don’t people use garbage cans instead of wooden boxes? It’s like everyone has a bread box for their trash. And, It’s too bad you can’t sell beauty. It’s the only way this place wouldn’t be poor. When Robert talked, Maggie laughed a lot and Nan squeezed and released her fingers, over and over.

In the fall, Imogene’s Ontario move kept changing time frames. It would happen once the house is sorted out. Once the office is organized. Once their client base is established. Finally, Nan said no. It’s too much to yank her out of school, she said. She’s got roots here. Sheldon Cleary says they hold youngsters from Newfoundland back a grade when you move up. It’s not fair. And all talk of it ended. Now it’s phone calls and maybe two visits a year. Now it’s the name Maggie spoken more often than your mother.

Imogene decides if she’s to learn more about Anthony Green, it’s a good idea to listen closely to Nan’s conversations. This is easy, since Agnes Tubbs likes to know what’s going on and St. Felix’s one main road functions as a conveyor belt of information.

St. Felix’s itself stretches down the coast with fields cut off into steep banks and rocky beaches. The main road exits the highway past the occasional house or cluster of homes, the school, the church, the post office, the Youth Centre, the Kwik Stop, trees, field, trees, field, until the pavement ends right after Joyce MacIssac’s house. Then it becomes a dirt road leading Up Back, where people cut wood for Abitibi-Price and teenagers go parking.

If a police car or an ambulance passes Agnes Tubb’s house, Joyce MacIssac is the strategic destination for the first phone call. If the cops or ambulance pass Joyce’s, it means there might have been an accident or something happening Up Back. Nan frets over this—after all, that’s how Pop died. If a man like Gus cutting wood all of his life can get caught under a falling tree, it can happen to anyone, she says into the phone. Then sighs of agreement. Yes, girl, safety first.

If the cops or paramedics haven’t gone Up Back, this means the commotion involves someone in one of the ten houses between here and there. The next house up is Bryce and Arlene Benoit. No news? A couple more phone calls narrows it down; if they passed Sheldon Cleary’s place, but not Charlotte Whalen’s, it’s down to four households. If it’s an ambulance, it might be poor Mrs. Collier, finally going, God bless her. If the cops, it’s most likely the Lundrigans, with their issues, or that Cecil Jesso. Nan’s detective work is a thorough process of elimination.

On a Thursday, Imogene arrives home from school to find the phone cord stretched across the kitchen. Nan has the earpiece wedged between her cheek and shoulder as she stirs chicken stew. Her voice is crisp and peppery. How long have they been there? Are they searching his place? When she hangs up, she immediately dials someone else. Can you see the cops from your house? I bet they could get him on all kinds of garbage. She eyes Imogene, standing in the doorway holding her bookbag. Go bring in some wood, she says.

That night, Imogene goes to bed early so she can read Harriet the Spy. She likes how Ole Golly takes Harriet for egg creams. She doesn’t know what egg creams are, but imagines it’s what people in New York eat all the time, like vanilla cake batter you can drink.

Now Harriet’s friends have read her notebook and no one likes her anymore. They do horrible things out of revenge. Imogene turns the page and hears Nan’s voice in the kitchen. She’s on the phone with Great Aunt Madonna in Moncton. Her voice is barely audible through the wall, but there’s that fry, the sound she gets when she’s feeling confessional.

Imogene creeps to her bedroom door. Through the dim light of the living room, she can see Nan’s shadow in the kitchen. She sits at the table, holding a glass of something.

The cops were at his place today. Oh yes, he’s still at that. If it’s three a.m. and you want liquor or drugs or smokes, go knock on his door. I wish the cops would throw him in jail. Maybe someone in prison can take care of that fucker.

Nan’s swear makes Imogene curl her toes into the fibres of the carpet. She hears her take a long sip.

Honestly, Madonna, I try my best not to think of it. But there’s the hair and the height. And Maggie’s state that night. All she could say when I asked where she got the alcohol was ‘Cecil Jesso.’ I remember thinking, Oh Christ, and I helped her to bed and goddamn if her sweater wasn’t on inside out. And two months later, she’s pregnant. And suddenly, there’s this Tony Green. Tony Green’s the father, she says. Who’s that, I said. I never once laid eyes on any Tony Green.

Nan pauses and drinks again. The shadow of her hand runs through the shadow of her short hair. "No, she definitely wouldn’t be buying booze. I would have noticed if she’d taken money and we never gave her any allowance. Because she never did any friggin’ chores, Madonna! So you can’t blame me for thinking what I’m thinking, can you? Anyway, the thought of it upsets me. When are you coming home?"

Imogene creeps back into bed. She hikes the bedspread over her ears. Nan’s voice becomes a dim trill in the background. She closes her eyes and pictures Cecil Jesso’s house. It’s down the road, a one-storey bungalow with faded yellow siding, sitting in a graveyard of dead cars and trucks. She passes it twice a day on the route to school and back. Rita and some older kids on the bus say he’s a bootlegger, good for a bit of hash or maybe something stronger. Always loaded. A wall of a man with a halo of frizzy red hair. Face like a boiled dinner with permanently sunburned skin, crimson and chapped