Will also referred to the troubles I had caused at home, demanding to go to school in town. I knew I had to speak up for myself so rather smartly told him that my Pa wanted me to go to school just like Bertha and Nell and Will himself, and my eyes were violet, not purple. He grinned at my sass and bluntly reminded me that it was my job to get the evening tea on the table in time. Then he left me in the room and clumped down the stairs. I could hear him laughing at me and wanted to just fall on the bed and stay there. But I straightened my shoulders, brushed the dust off my traveling dress and marched down the stairs.
Once inside the tall brick house, Cousin Will walked ahead of me up the narrow stairs at the right of the front door. He had not offered to carry my valise, but I should have refused anyway. I knew I was small for my age, but working on the farm had made me strong and I was determined not to ask for help. He did carry up my box of books though, and I felt it was wise to let him do that. Will was a tall, gangly young man, with red hair and freckles, who had to duck through the doorways and under the sloping ceiling of my room. I thought he was about twenty-four, a year older than Nell. He liked to tease me about my black curly hair and purple eyes, always asking where that colouring came from, as the rest of the family were all redheads with pale skins and light blue eyes. He laughed and called me black Irish and I knew it was not a compliment. He also made it clear that he missed Nell and was a bit put out that I was now in her bedroom, suggesting that I was a poor substitute for his sister. Among her other virtues, Nell was a good cook and I knew that although my mother had taught me well, I could not hope to compete. Will also referred to the troubles I had caused at home, demanding to go to school in town. I knew I had to speak up for myself so rather smartly told him that my Pa wanted me to go to school just like Bertha and Nell and Will himself, and my eyes were violet, not purple. He grinned at my sass and bluntly reminded me that it was my job to get the evening tea on the table in time. Then he left me in the room and clumped down the stairs. I could hear him laughing at me and wanted to just fall on the bed and stay there. But I straightened my shoulders, brushed the dust off my traveling dress and marched down the stairs. When I reached the foot of the stairs, I ignored Will’s smirks and announced to Uncle John that his tea would be ready in no time. In my head, I could hear the voice of my Grandmother Ryan, black Irish herself, telling me to begin as I intended to go on, so I did.
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When Pa said yes to my request to go to town for further schooling, my mother was furious. She was adamantly opposed to me leaving the farm, believing as she did that I had enough education to prepare me for the job of wife and mother. Besides, Ma argued that I was much too young to board out and she needed my help at the farm as Bertha had left home to board in town and attend school when I was a toddler. I knew, even as a little girl, that my father would prevail. He was a small, soft-spoken man, but his word, however quiet, was law. Unlike my mother, he believed that girls should be educated beyond the minimum of reading, writing and sums. He said that it was important for women to have a trade, and pointed to the examples of Bertha, going to school in town, and my cousin Nell, who had left our small town to go to Toronto to learn to be a teacher. The plan was that I would stay in Nell’s old bedroom at Uncle John’s through the week, and come home to help on the farm at the weekends.
Uncle John and Cousin Will came out to greet us and together we unloaded the wagon. With no more ceremony, Pa exchanged a few words with Uncle John, climbed back into the wagon, clicked his tongue to the horses, and and my life in town began. *Wagon and house samples of what to expect for the times.
I don’t remember my birth mother, who had died just after I was born. Pa re-married within a year following my first mother’s death and I had been loved and cared for by my new mother for as long as I could remember. She had been kind to me and my older siblings as well as the four younger children she had borne my father. A slender, soft spoken woman whose domain was the big farm kitchen, where she cooked and baked and canned, she seemed always to have a new born in a sash across her chest or a baby on her hip. As far as I was concerned, she was my Ma and I hated to make her unhappy. She had taught Bertha and me all about cooking and cleaning and looking after babies. In the evenings, she spent what little spare time she had at the kitchen table under the lamplight teaching us all to read and write and do our sums. Images of what would have been a typical dwelling of the time.
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