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28 Rhubarb Elk Velvet By K. Manning Enns I am elk velvet, a pulse in every spot, beating the pussy willow soft temper of my heart: return to me, return each measure of soft memory, that fragile light. Place a finger here at the bony tip where self and phrasing should begin. Here you can find a version of solitude, find evidence of the green shoots and leaves I nibbled, restless, wanting and tasting springtime on my tongue. Know that I raised my hooves and I ran out of the night and into the morning’s hour. Anyone could see each mark made in the soil as I ran. If you were watching you’d sense the thrum of my lifeblood as I leapt over pine needles and the deadfall on the forest floor: now I am afraid of nothing, now it is more than I can ever bear.
Liese is ten years old, and she’s hiding in a thicket of mulberry bushes, spying on the children of the English-speaking family next door. It’s not the first time. She’s been watching them on and off since they arrived in the colony center a week ago. She’s new to Filadelfia too, but Liese hasn’t come from far away. She’s always lived in the Paraguayan Chaco, in the Mennonite settlement. She’s never been anywhere else. Her father got a job in the peanut processing plant, so they left their farm in the village and moved into town. She’ll miss her village friends but Liese knows the town is more important; which the presence of these foreigners confirms. There are two boys and a girl. Liese thinks they’re younger than she is, though the oldest—a boy—may be close to her age. He bosses the play. On this particular day the children burst from their house with an assortment of boxes, dolls, cars, and trucks, and arrange them on the yard. Each has a property of their own, it seems, and they meet at other sites as well. The girl takes care of the dolls and the boys manage the vehicles. The children range without caution between sun and shade, as if oblivious to the difference between them, and Liese nearly calls, “Stay out of the boiling sun,” as her mother does during the hottest season of the year—just beginning now, in November, the summer holiday—but then she remembers this will give her away, and besides, the children won’t understand her German. But perhaps their skin won’t burn as hers—pale and freckled—does. Their hair is dark and hers is blond, heavily tinged with red. Liese knows the children come from America. The adults around her speak often of America or Canada, found (as it’s been explained to her) on the top half of the White By Dora Dueck earth ball, where Russia also lies, though further around it, over the ocean. Canada and America are overlapping places to her, full of Mennonites too, but luckier, richer ones who seem cheerful when they happen to visit the Chaco, though their faces sometimes glimmer with astonishment Liese can’t quite trust. She fears they’re as pessimistic about the prospects of Mennonites here, in this hot and difficult place, as the Chaco Mennonites are themselves. Liese’s father says their neighbors moved to Paraguay so the man can help the farmers with their problems concerning cattle and crops. Liese as- sh e feels t h a t s h e’s l o o s e l y c o nstruc ted a n d vulnerable, l i k e a spider’s w e b , instead o f r e a l a n d s u b s t a n t i a l a s t h e am e r i c a n c h i l d r e n. sumes that when the problems are solved, the family will return to their home. She expects, coming from America, the man will have many answers already. Her mouth may be hanging open. (“Close your mouth,” her oldest sister Tina, impatient as a broom, often hisses at her, even when Liese is sure it’s closed.) But she’s mesmerized by the strange sounds of the children playing in English, comprehensible to one another, amiable too it seems, but a great provocation to her, like a shrieking tree-full of wild parrots. Then the children’s voices grow angry and there’s a skirmish over one of the boxes. The girl breaks away and dashes to the house, yelling “Mom-my! Mom-my!” as if injured. When she reaches the door, the children’s mother steps through it. Then Liese realizes “Mommy” is the English word for Mama. How clever she considers herself this morning, deciphering a piece of their speech! But hard on the back of that pleasure, like an unexpected shiver in the heat, is her consciousness of being alone, Winter 2008 29
Page 1 and 2: Rhubarb Winter 2008, Issue Number 2
Page 3 and 4: I’ve always, frankly, been a litt
Page 5 and 6: Belinda rearranged the porcelain fi
Page 7 and 8: together sometime? Maybe we could h
Page 9 and 10: Me and Him and the Moon It’s 3 am
Page 11 and 12: Moonlit macadam By Brenda Sciberras
Page 13 and 14: They had each entered the kitchen t
Page 15 and 16: Author’s Note: Unlike a novel, in
Page 17 and 18: The reddish-blond hair he was alway
Page 19 and 20: teeth and a hundred cameras would b
Page 21 and 22: Not a Chicken By John Goossen Jack
Page 23 and 24: It was an out of season thing, snow
Page 25 and 26: Afternoon Walk with Mosquitos and C
Page 27: Damp Ode By Jeff Gundy Life, friend
Page 31 and 32: She argues against it and sometimes
Page 33 and 34: The women took turns telling Liese
Page 35 and 36: Children alone in the hospitals By
Page 37 and 38: What you need the least Ike hasn’
Page 39 and 40: Warm day, I say. Still too wet to s
Page 41 and 42: An unfriendly takeover Mierau, Maur
Page 43 and 44: and possibly mean, they can’t be
Page 45 and 46: Quite a number of the characters in
Page 47 and 48: CBC radio. Her novel, One Smooth St

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