Illustration by Anderson X. Lee
The bold, green eyes staring at me through the screen door belonged to our neighbour, Joyce. “Too bad about your movin’ van bein’ late. Here’s some dishes and pots yus can use until your stuff gets here.” She pulled open the door to our new apartment and shoved a box full of dishes and kitchen utensils towards my feet. Startled, I backed away. Stepping over the box in her unlaced sneakers, she stared at our empty living room. “I got a couple of chairs yas can have. Come up and see which one yus want.”
I followed her outside and up the steep, rickety staircase to her tiny attic apartment. Listening to the thunk, thunk, thunk of her heavy tread on the warped wooden planks, I warily considered the thirty-foot drop to the ground as I peered over the banister.
“Railin’s not too good up here.” Joyce looked back at me and grinned. “You might fall off. I almost did.”
The small living room of her apartment was cramped—pieces of furniture jammed up against one another, like passengers during rush hour on a crowded subway train, which I remembered from our life in Toronto.
Joyce nodded her head in the general direction of a few chairs. “Which one do yus want?”
“Whatever you can spare.”
“Take the one that flips up at the bottom so’s yas can rest your feet.”
“It looks heavy. Let’s wait for Justin.”
“I’m workin’ the afternoon shift at the fish plant.” She grabbed the chair like a crate filled with frozen haddock and pulled it towards her. “Get the door,” she yelled.
“Let me help,” I offered.
“Jus’ get outta m’way, dear!”
I rushed out the door and jumped against the chipped aluminum siding, carefully avoiding the wobbly railing as she rumbled past me.
Joyce set the chair down in our living room with a thud and collapsed into it, her sandy hair streaked with sweat from the August heat. “Don’t forget to sign up for a box down at the post office if you want yas mail. There’s no delivery service here.”
A week later, Justin started his job at the college. Our furniture and the mail we’d begun receiving at the Pitt Mines Post Office had arrived by then. Inexplicably, we also found letters on our doorstep. Curious to know why, I stopped at the post office to inquire.
The Pitt Mines Post Office was easy to spot even in the rain. The red brick building was next to Tim Hortons, where retired miners gossiped over their double-doubles before strolling across the parking lot to pick up their mail.
I parked on the street to avoid the congestion in the parking lot, and yanking the hood of my raincoat over my head, I dashed to the crosswalk. With my arm extended, I crossed one lane and headed into the next. A driver, failing to stop, nearly hit me.
Shaken, I staggered into the post office lobby, where rows of silver mailboxes gleamed against the dull white wall. Straight ahead was the entrance to the inner office, where people offered up packages to be sent to their relatives working as far away as Fort McMurray.
I could see no one on duty at the counter, so I checked for mail before proceeding into the office. As I pulled open the small door to the steel mailbox, limpid, blue eyes peered at me through the opening at the other end of the box.
“Drivers don’t stop like they should at the crosswalk!”
I blinked. “How’d you know?”
“There’s a window back here. I can see everything going on outside.”
“They really should put up a stop sign or traffic light out there,” I suggested.
“Why don’t you talk to Billy?”
“Who’s he?”
“Our MP.”
I laughed. “Patsy, since you’re here, do you know why I’m getting mail at home?”
“Maybe your neighbours are getting your mail by mistake and leaving it on your doorstep.”
A few days later, my postal box had two letters, one for Joyce and the other for Mike, who lived across the street from us. Rather than delivering the letters, I took them back to the post office and spoke to one of the postal clerks.
Standing at the counter, I noted that the calendar on the wall still displayed last Tuesday’s date. Eventually, a woman sauntered in from the back room, reeking of cigarette smoke. Someone was always smoking in the back office, but I could never figure out which clerk it was. This one wore a badge saying “Anne Lewis, Manager.” She had an abrupt manner, accentuated by her blunt hairstyle, which was fashioned straight across her forehead and along the nape of her neck—the casualty of a cut attempted at home.
I passed my neighbour’s mail across the counter to her and said, “I seem to have gotten these by mistake.”
Anne picked up one of the envelopes and looked at it with blanket indifference. “When did this happen?”
“This week. They were in my box.”
“Maybe the new guy they just hired got mixed up.”
“Whoever’s doing the sorting needs to read more carefully.”
“I told you, he’s new.”
“Do you think you might talk to him?”
“I’ll try—but no guarantees.”
A few weeks later, I returned to the post office with a package for my brother, who was working as an investigator for the US Navy in Japan. Anne stared at the address label. “I never seen an address like this one. Where’s it going?”
“To someone in the military.”
“But it don’t say where it’s goin’.”
I squinted at the label. “You have to look at the postal code to figure that out.”
“What do you mean?”
“See here,” I pointed. “It’s going to a military mailbox in the States.”
She weighed the gift to my brother and rubbed the postage label she’d printed onto the parcel.
“Don’t blame me if it don’t get there.”
After several months of having to endure yellow water spewing from the taps in our apartment, the stench emanating from the coal-fired generator, and continuing frustrations at the college, Justin, with strong encouragement from me, began applying for jobs elsewhere.
I would take the large manila envelopes stuffed with his resumes to the post office to have them processed. The postage required for these packages, which were identical except for their destinations, ranged from fifty cents to a dollar seventy-five, depending on who happened to be working behind the counter when I arrived. I soon gave up trying to make sense of it.
The next time I tried sending a package out of the country, this one to my sister in California, I was frustrated once again. Unlike the ones in Glace Bay and Sydney, I’d forgotten that the Pitt Mines Post Office only took cash.
Evelyn, the tallest of the three clerks, said nicely not to worry when I apologized for my forgetfulness—after she’d already gone to the trouble of weighing and writing the amount of postage required on the corner of the parcel. She looked trim and efficient, well-turned out in a striped blouse and a matching pair of navy pants—in contrast to Anne, who always looked stout and severe, no matter what she wore.
“I’ll take it to the post office in Eagle River since I’m going there anyway,” I said. “They’ve got a credit card machine.”
The Eagle River Post Office—more kiosk than an office—was conveniently situated where shoppers could drop off their mail before entering the Sobey’s grocery store. I listened to The Carpenters sing A Ticket To Ride through the mall speakers while the lady behind the counter took my package and weighed it.
“You don’t need to do that,” I offered. “The clerk in Pitt Mines already wrote down the postage required on the corner there. Um…unless you think the amount might be incorrect.”
She looked at me and then at the chart in her hand. “What did you ask for?”
“The cheapest rate.”
“He should have charged you forty cents cheaper than what’s written down here.”
The next time I saw Evelyn, I mentioned the error. “That can’t be right,” she said.
I picked up the laminated rate chart from the counter and pointed to the amount listed. “Forty cents isn’t a lot of money,” I explained. “But the retired miners here deserve a fair shake, don’t you think?”
Evelyn shrugged. “Oh, well, nobody sends packages to the States anyway.”
And though that was somewhat true, a few people, like our neighbour, Mike, had relatives living in Massachusetts. But typically, as Evelyn suggested, Cape Bretoners sent packages to Alberta, where their men trekked, like herds of migratory caribou, to find seasonal work in the tar sands so their families wouldn’t be forced to relocate. By early November, the lineups at the post office were long, and the Christmas parcels being sent to Alberta were numerous and often unwieldy.
Joyce told me over coffee that the queue gets longer during the Christmas Island Post Office holidays. Enthusiasts across the Maritimes race to this small town on the Bras d’Or Lake to have their Christmas cards hand-stamped with two distinctive postmarks—one in green, the other in red, fashioned identically in the form of a wreath, each bearing the name “Christmas Island.” The postmistress is forced to work overtime, dealing with requests from people worldwide begging for their holiday mail to be stamped with the two iconic symbols of Cape Breton kitsch.
While dealing with the sketchy service at the Pitt Mines Post Office, Justin and I had to endure other frustrations—like driving long distances to conduct everyday business. When he was a young man in the Sixties, our new friend, Milton Simons, worked in the Pitt Mines grocery store on Main Street. He and his neighbours enjoyed having milk and eggs delivered by horse and cart to their front door.
Now, in 2006, there was no grocery store in Pitt Mines and very few other conveniences except for a lone gas station and an ATM nearby, a take-out pizza joint, Sammy’s garage, and a fish and tackle supplies store, where they rented DVDs and sold junk food along with fish hooks, rods, and bait. Residents were forced to drive to Glace Bay or Sydney for groceries, get their cheques cashed, or see a doctor.
After the incident with Evelyn, I avoided the Pitt Mines Post Office. There were the odd times, though, despite my better judgment, that I used the mailbox outside our post office. (Later, it would be vandalized by young ruffians, who, on a midnight escapade, decided to set it on fire.)
On one of these rare occasions, as I was flipping my letter into the mailbox, I noticed a man standing on the steps of the post office, shovelling fresh snow flecked with soot from the coal plant away from the front door. I dashed up the stairs and tried to open the post office door to see if we had any mail. But the door was locked even though it was ten-thirty on a Monday morning. I stomped down the stairs, and, trying hard to curb my mounting irritation, I asked the man, who was now spreading salt on the sidewalk, why the building was closed. With a flushed face, he muttered, “Funny tings goin’ on. Records missin’ in da basement.”
More curious than ever, I decided to see the one person who knew everything that went on in Pitt Mines. Milton had lived in this small mining community his entire life, leaving grade school to work as a grocery clerk and later alongside his father in the colliery to support his family.
The small modern duplex Milton and his wife rented was only a block away, down toward the shore where the rough Atlantic wind tossed acrid waves of coal smoke, like bitter news, in my direction. Through his front door window, I saw Milton brewing tea on the kitchen stove, his dark brown hair slipping down over his forehead as he peered at the glass pot.
“Come on in, girl,” he called out over the noise of the television blaring from the unoccupied living room.
“What’s going on at the post office?” I asked.
“Dere’s an investi-ti-gation goin’ on. Dat’s what I hear.”
“For what?”
“Well, from what I hear, dere’s eighteen tousand missin’, and peoples bein’ investi—ti— gated.”
“They’re stealing money from the till?”
“Dat one’s been in trouble before.”
“Which one?”
“Da one dat looks mean.”
He poured himself a mug of tea and sat down, a hint of cinnamon and orange wafting in my direction. I felt a calm reassurance whenever I was in Milton’s company. His honesty and warm brown eyes made me feel less anxious about life.
“Why do they keep her on?”
“Da union’s protectin’ her. Dem two’s always up ta no good.”
“Which two?”
“Dat mean short one and da tall, tin one.”
“You mean Anne and Evelyn?”
“Yehs. Dem two’s always foolin’ around, takin’ two-hour lunches. We see ‘em from our front window here, walking round as plain as anytin’.”
“Not Patsy.”
“Not her, dear. No. Dey make her work when dey go off.”
“What about the new guy sorting mail?”
“What new guy? Dere’s jus’ tree ladies workin’.”
“My God, Anne was lying!”
“Don’t believe anyting dat one tells yus!”
“What about the books? How do they reconcile the books, if they’re stealing from the till?”
“Dunno, girl.”
“Evelyn’s been charging extra for my mail to the States too. Maybe that’s why the guy shoveling snow said the records are missing.”
“What records was he talkin’ about?”
“I thought you might know.”
“I’m goan ta find out, darlin’. I’m goan ta ask around. But dere gonna get away wit’ it. You jus’ wait and see. Jus’ like she did before.”
When the post office finally reopened, Patsy was the only clerk who continued to work. But her appearance had altered. She was pale and unkempt. Tufts of hair poked up from her crown like question marks. She made nervous offhand comments about weird things happening in the place and muttered how difficult it had been to work with the ‘other two.’
The morning light coming through the kitchen blinds drew my attention to a short news story in the local newspaper about a Canada Post investigation into two employees currently under suspension at the Pitt Mines Post Office.
I began to read the story more carefully but was startled by loud banging and scraping. I peered out the front door to see Mike pounding a nail into a wobbly step in the staircase leading up to Joyce’s apartment.
“Have yas got a flat-blade screwdriver in there?” Mike yelled. He looked hot and thirsty, so I ran back to the kitchen to get him a beer and grabbed the newspaper to show him.
“What do you think of this?”
He glanced at the article, handed it back to me, and calmly twisted the cap off the bottle. “They let her get away wit’ it.” He took a sip and sat on the front steps with his dog, Rusty, at his feet. “The short one took early retirement wit’ full pension. And the other one’s back workin’.”
“What did she get away with?”
“She hired Patsy to work while she and the other one buggered off. They cooked the books— gave her eighteen thousand in part-time wages and still got paid themselves.”
“That’s crazy. Why’s Evelyn still working?”
“Dunno.”
Clump. Clump, clump.
Joyce was coming down the stairs from her apartment. She stood on my porch, looking impatient, wearing a pair of beige shorts revealing her pale, chunky legs. “What’s goin’ on?”
Mike looked up at her. “Talkin’ about ’em bad ones at the post office.”
“Oh, Christ. Susan was drivin’ cab this weekend and saw that one walkin’ around town bold as brass,” Joyce said as she stooped down to pat Rusty on her bony black head.
“You mean Anne?” I asked.
“Yeehs,” Mike slurred. “They let her get away wit’ it.”
Suddenly, Rusty took off after a crow landed between our building and the wooden garage. The crow flew up to the empty laundry line and mocked her. Rusty kept running and yelping—first, under the laundry line and then behind the garage into the field full of early elephant ears.
“Rusty, get over here!” Mike called. He took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth with his torn sleeve. Placing a lanky arm on his knee, he looked out at the drift ice floating on the ocean. “That’s Cape Breton for yas.”
Diana Morita Cole is a winner of the Carver Award for Emerging Writers and is the author of Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit, a book about her birth in a WW2 internment camp for Japanese emigres. Washington State Library has recorded Sideways in an audiobook for upload to BARD. The first chapter of Sideways was published in The New Orphic Review, shortlisted in the Open-Season Competition of The Malahat Review, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. 2 Pacific Citizen, Nelson Star, and Discover Nikkei have carried her articles. “The Extraordinary Rendition of Japanese Latin Americans During WWII” was published by ScheerPost. Her writing is included in academic reading lists.