River Rites published in Grain 50th Anniversary edition, Fall 2023.
The Eaton’s catalogue arrived in our rural mailbox twice a year and I studied the spring 1963 edition the way dad said I should read the Bible. He was a fundamentalist Baptist. No shorts, no bikinis, he said.
One of the models, a girl with a blonde flip and long legs, sported a two-piece swimsuit. Her body was shaped like Barbie’s, the way I wanted to be. I filled out the order form, a short dull pencil in my grubby hand. Mum hesitated then signed the cheque in her schoolteacher script. I licked the envelope, ran down the lane and set it in the mailbox for pickup before the postman rumbled up the dusty sideline in his truck. On the far side of the fence, cows milled about behind the barn. If you climbed to the top of the silo, you could glimpse the Ottawa River in the distance.
A package with a torn corner arrived a month later. Released from the paper stuffing, the swimsuit top bulged like china teacups on my imaginary breasts. The bottom ballooned on my bony hips. I stuffed it back into the used brown paper, plastered it with scotch tape and roughly knotted the string three times to send it back.
When Mum handed me a red one-piece found at her Anglican church rummage sale, I recoiled. It was stretchy like the old-fashioned style she and my aunts wore at the lake. On the dock, they pulled white bathing caps snugly over permanent curls and eased themselves down the ladder into the water. They never dunked their heads.
Lumpy lining stretched over my chest and the bottom drooped like a diaper. It’ll have to do, Mum said.
About fifteen miles from our farm, a small bay on the river formed a refuge for a kids’ summer camp. Rough sleeping cabins nestled under the soaring pines and a glass-fronted dining hall faced the water. Dad arranged this site for our baptism. I stood obediently, a scrawny 12-year-old in the red swimsuit, shivering under a tattered beach towel.
We rarely swam in the river. The year I was conceived, the Chalk River reactor was disabled. Human error caused a breach of the core in the world’s first serious nuclear accident. The seal of the vessel was blown four feet up in the air. About 4,500 tons of radioactive water pooled in the cellar of the building. To clean-up, the water was dumped in ditches nearby. I grew up on a one-hundred-acre farm about fifty miles downstream.
My mum and aunts talked about the plant, especially when local women got breast cancer. In hushed voices, they mentioned mastectomies, then radiation with cobalt, which sounded scarier.
For the baptism, my 13-year-old sister wore a shift over her suit to disguise her breasts and rounded hips. My 14-year-old brother flexed his muscled shoulders. Standing at a public beach in our bathing suits was no problem if we were swimming. But the Anglican minister, Reverend Rowe, towered before us in a cassock that billowed up like a white flag. City kids played volleyball or practiced archery in the background. My mother respected the Anglican clergy, but she bit her lip and flushed when she saw him kick off his shoes. My oldest sisters teetered on high heels in the sand; their hats turned askew in the breeze. Prayer book pages flipped. I skulked behind the line of family in their Sunday dresses and suits. The rotting wharf tilted at a precarious angle towards us where we gathered at the water’s edge. It had seen better days, Dad said.
He declared we would burn in hell if we questioned his rules. But also, he didn’t believe in infant baptism at the church, like the other, normal people in town. Like mum did. She lost that battle and others concerning religion.
They need to understand what it means to enter the kingdom of God and become true believers, Dad said. An idea he got from the Baptists. The Baptists banned make-up and dances, but they rocked on their heels and moaned about salvation at church meetings. Mum didn’t agree with their showmanship.
Neither of my parents realized that being dunked in the river by a minister in front of town kids was bound to turn me away from the church.
In 1951, the five eldest children in our family were baptized in Zion, Illinois. At least they got a road trip out it. They were submerged in a pool in a Baptist church where no one knew them. My older sisters told me they wore robes for the dunking.
I never liked swimming in the river after the current snatched my inner tube when I was five. I slipped off backwards and saw sparkling bubbles as I plummeted to the sandy bottom, but my sister hauled me out and wrapped me in her towel. That was my first brush with death.
Reverend Rowe stood tall and gangly like a stick man. He had agreed with dad’s request to leave his comfort zone in the pulpit or by the stone font, so that we kids could take the next step. He needed numbers for his next confirmation class, and we had to be baptized before we could be confirmed. He hiked up his cassock and poked into the brown water, his skinny white ankles like deboned chicken legs.
My brother splashed in first. I wanted to run into the woods like a wild rabbit. He flung his head of hair sideways as he bobbed up, spraying the minister’s bowed head. The adults on the beach repeated serious words, but I didn’t listen. I heard the wind in the pines overhead and the kids screeching as they pounced on the volleyball. My sister waded in past the weeds. The minister’s long fingers clamped down on her head. She wasn’t a strong swimmer, but she held her nose, popped up and grinned after the third dunking. She wanted it over with.
I scrunched my toes under the sand and felt fragile and thin as tinfoil. Mum grabbed my towel, so my red suit beamed like a traffic light. My older sister and her new husband had agreed to be my godparents. She gave me an impatient nudge on the back. Weeds brushed my ankles. The water swirled and I picked my way into the water. River clams lurked in the sand and felt sharp and sinister on my bare toes.
The minister’s white ankles sank into the mud. I closed my eyes against the murky water as I went under. No time for dog paddle or the float. Mum had warned me to blow out, but I inhaled. I sputtered and coughed when I re-emerged after the third plunge. Nearby campers giggled. The minister’s cold thumb pressed along my forehead in the sign of the cross.
No shimmering mirage. No rainbows. Nothing changed, other than being wet and cold. I hung my head and Mum handed back my towel. More prayers, but I don’t remember making any promises. Then everyone sang, “Shall we gather at the river? The beautiful, the beautiful…river?” My teeth chattered. I was a new member of the flock. Adjacent to towering Reverend Rowe, my dad looked frumpy, my mum worn out, her head bowed sideways.
On the drive home, wedged between my parents on the front seat of the ’49 Ford, Dad fiddled with the radio until he found an evangelical broadcast. It reverted to static, and he tuned in the CBC. News reports about the cold war and nuclear testing in the Pacific frightened me. Mum turned it off.
We’ll stop for the service at the Baptist church, Dad said. A hard knot formed in my gut; no way was I going to church in this swimsuit.
Mum said, no, we’re taking the kids back home.
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