The Ducks

By Liv Mazerolle

May had been five when Grammy died, five when she went to a funeral for the first time, and five-and-a-half now by her count. On long car rides like this one, May liked to look out the window and count things as they went by, like road signs, white houses, cows, and all that. May always sat behind Mummy on the passenger side. Sometimes she put her stuffed toy duck on the opposite seat, behind Daddy. She liked imagining that she and Duck were telling jokes in the backseat while Mummy and Daddy said big words in low voices up front.

The words real-estate made May wonder if there was such a thing as a not-real-estate, like how there were real ducks that were different from her duck because they could quack and Duck couldn’t unless May was playing pretend. But Duck talked to May and he was good company, which was better than quacking. When Daddy turned into the driveway of Grammy’s old house he parked the car behind a big blue truck, which meant that Uncle Mark was already here.

Uncle Mark was leaning over the countertop pouring out a steaming cup from a coffee pot. May wrinkled her nose up at the smell of coffee. Grammy’s kitchen had always smelled like cocoa before.

The grown-ups sat around the little wooden table in the kitchen by the window, sipping their coffee and passing around some pages with a lot of small black words on them. May sat Duck on the cool countertop and leaned over toward him, as if they were old friends catching up in a café or a cozy bake-shop while it rained outside. But the coffee smell was so unpleasant that even playing grown-up couldn’t make it nice.

It wasn’t comfy, being in Grammy’s house when Grammy wasn’t there. May thought that maybe Mummy might take her down the hill to the duck pond in the backyard, like Grammy used to do. Mummy said that she was busy, but that May could go down to the pond if she really wanted to and they would keep an eye on her from the house.

When it rained, the water always trickled off the rooftop of Grammy’s old house, ran down the small hill and collected in the duck pond. May giggled at the squishing noise the ground made with each step of her rubber boots. Reaching the pond, May turned her head and scanned the windows to see if Mummy or Daddy or Uncle Mark were watching her. She couldn’t see any of their faces through the grey glass.

May held Duck in two flattened palms in front of her chest, so that the beads of his eyes gazed out at the pond. Together, May and Duck watched the real-ducks floating on the greenish surface of the water. The air was bitter and wet, the soupy marsh tinged with an earthy scent like chamomile. Reeds and lilies and other things grew out of it, making homes for the frogs and the crickets that filled Grammy’s yard with music. From where her rubber boots were planted, May leaned over and plucked a stem with a fat cattail on it and offered it to Duck as a gift.

Grammy had given Duck to May as a gift, so she might always have a memory of the duck pond. Grammy’s skin was thin and velvety like flower petals, and when she wrapped her arms around May they were soft, a bit like Duck was. A chill moved through the air and tickled May’s bare arms. She hugged Duck close to her body, and rubbed his fuzzy velvet bill along her cheek.

At the far edge of the pond, a real-duck had her three little ducklings tucked in at her side, all four of them fast asleep. A stony feeling crept into May’s throat, like she had swallowed something hard. Was Duck happy being May’s gift? May was not Duck’s mummy, though she loved him so. Solemnly, she kissed the top of Duck’s head and lowered him into the pond. She gave him a light push so he might float across to join the other ducks. As she watched Duck glide slowly out into the water, May resolved that she would always return to visit the ducks, even after Uncle Mark sold Grammy’s house.

The stone in her throat dropped to her stomach and told her that she would miss Duck terribly. Without Duck in her arms they felt empty, without him near her May felt awfully alone. She glanced up the hill again. Mummy and Daddy would surely be proud of May for the kindness she had shown Duck. But the windows were empty.

She shifted her eyes back to the pond and they nearly popped out of her head. Duck’s stuffing was all soaked and heavy and he was disappearing under the murky water. May’s pleading eyes darted around to each of the other ducks but none of them made any move to save him.

A string of tiny bubbles rose to the surface and then it went glassy still again, leaving no trace that Duck had ever been there. When he was gone the crickets were too loud. She could hear Daddy and Uncle Mark laughing inside the house.

The sticky mud couldn’t hold May’s boots any longer. Dropping Duck’s cattail where the others were growing, she charged headlong into the pond.

Her boots full of silt, her legs shocked by the cold April water, May fought her way toward the place where Duck sank, near the centre. As the ground sloped into the crater, the water crept higher and higher up May’s body until it reached almost to her neck. If May sank too, how long would it take them to come find her?

May tried to make herself brave. She told herself that all she had to do was find Duck and then she would feel okay again. She carefully moved her arms around under the water. Any moment now her hand would brush against something fuzzy and she would know it was Duck and she would pull him up out of the water and hold him against her and tell him that she was sorry.

Her fingers cut through the empty water like it was air. May prepared to take another step, then hesitated. She had been to the beach before and had felt how the ground under the water sometimes drops off like a miniature cliff’s edge. Gathering every bit of hope in her tiny body, May took one big step.

May’s rubber boot didn’t land on solid ground. It fell softly down on something squishy. It was Duck! It had to be. Duck was stuck in the mud! May would have to give him a bath.

She didn’t like putting her head underwater, even in swimming lessons, and that water was clear blue and warm. May squeezed her eyes shut tight, pinched her nose, and took a deep breath in through her mouth. All she had to do was crouch down.

There was sticking your fingers in your ears quiet and graveyard quiet, but this was underwater quiet, like outer space quiet. May fumbled around with her hands near her boot for a few moments. Finally her freezing fingers found Duck and she wrapped them around his body. He didn’t even feel soft, all wet and cold like this. But May knew it was her Duck. She raised her boot just a little, and shot up to standing with Duck clutched to her chest.

“May!” It was Mummy’s voice. It sounded the same as when Mummy was hurt, kind of the same yelp she made whenever she stubbed her toe against the leg of their dinner table.

May turned around cautiously in the water, wary of the slippery silty mud beneath her boots. Mummy was part of the way into the pond and frighteningly pale. Daddy and Uncle Mark hurried down the hill. May went toward her mummy, and her mummy toward her, until they were in each other’s arms with Duck between them.

Mummy carried May to the edge of the pond and handed her, along with Duck, over to Daddy. May had never seen Daddy look scared before. His arms were shaking with her in them. Uncle Mark helped Mummy out of the pond and they followed as Daddy carried May into the house. Her legs were a bit numb from the cold and the fright, but she probably could have walked.

Mummy sat criss-cross on the mat by the tub while May and Duck took their bath. May was washing the dirt from Duck’s velvety bill. One of his little eyes was missing, so he seemed to wink sadly now. It made May’s own eyes fill up with tears to see her Duck like this, all stained and missing pieces. She knew that he wouldn’t be the same Duck that Grammy had given her anymore. She wished she could drain the pond and find the bead. But if May drained the pond the real-ducks would have no more home. And Grammy wasn’t here to sew it back on anyway.

“May, look at me please,” Mummy said, gently, but with a serious tone that May imagined meant she was in trouble. “I need you to understand something very important,” Mummy went on. “I know your duck is special to you, but you can never put yourself in danger for him. A toy isn’t everything.”

Duck was everything to May. Mummy didn’t understand because Mummy couldn’t remember her own toys anymore. Even when Grammy was very old, it seemed to May that Grammy always remembered. Probably Grammy had never forgotten in the first place.

But then May thought about her Mummy calling her name and her Daddy carrying her into the house and wondered what their faces would have looked like if May hadn’t come up out of the water when she did. And she began to understand that their tears for losing May would have been like hers for losing Duck but even longer and sadder.

May saw that Mummy and Daddy were sad already. May would talk with them tomorrow in the car on their way back to the city, and it would be good company.

Liv Mazerolle is a student at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She was born and raised in New Brunswick by a family of artists and writers.