There have been several iterations of this particular story over the years. I have been compelled to revisit this particular version. This early version has been the basis of a series of Gutta Percha stories, which are fictional essays based on actual incidents I heard from my grandmother, my mother and my aunt and I have reimagined.
The backyard was an eyesore of threadbare hollyhocks, deep purple and blackish or blood-red-flowered plants whose lobed leaves resembled tiny, tubular veins covered with rusty yellow pustules and skeletonized by invasive beetles and creamy-white, pear-shaped larvae.
"A rag of a flower," Miriam protested, "They look and remind me of the poverty of my youth, not a flower at all."
Miriam remembers leggy hollyhock stems substituted as firewood, the taproots having some vague healing powers for chronic pain, a sick headache, a sore throat, and other irritating undiagnosed gastrointestinal or respiratory ailments, and the dry taproots tasting like chalky marshmallows past their sell-by date when turned into a stomach-turning, revitalizing spring tonic.
"Do you remember Mrs. Kildare's fox fur with a squirrel pelt collar she draped ceremoniously off her shoulders and sometimes around her throat, with its mummified tail and rigid dangling legs and paws?" Miriam asked, “We called it her rat-squirrel coat.”
Her mother, Mabel, nodded affirmatively and batted her hand down like a swarm of mosquitos had suddenly appeared, and said defensively, "The poor dear was lonely, bereft of attention or affection. She could talk the hind leg off a donkey if given half a chance. Yes, I remember the coat with the detachable squirrel collar. I'll never forget it. Its appendages tanned tightly to secure the fur properly on the pelts. It was an elegant coat, a supple, deep brown shade with darker striped markings. There was a burgundy satin undercoat with an intricate oversized button and chunky loop Bakelite closure on the front made to simulate tortoiseshell. Mrs. Kildare, usually circumspect when it came to her personal finances, claimed it practically cost her her life savings and left her with a modest nest egg that later turned out to be more substantial than she reckoned or would ever let on."
"The animal welfare activists would have had a heyday," remarked Miriam's sister Louise, "I can visualize them hauling out buckets of blood red paint to splash the fur-wearing perpetrators." Mabel cut Louise off before she could hijack the conversation and launch into a repetitive diatribe about sentient animals' moral worth and rights. She was sick of hearing the revolting hyperbolic language of anti-fur agitators although she agreed with her daughter in principle but hated the histrionics.
Mabel pressed on, "She lent me the coat to wear to a Saturday night dance at the Palais Royale. I couldn't let the damn thing out of my sight in case someone snatched it from my chair. Forced to the sidelines like some abdicating wallflower with no prospects, I figured it best to sit it out and refuse all dance invitations. I remember she used to wear it on the Queen Streetcar on her way downtown to shop the sales or a celebratory splurge lunch at Simpsons Arcadian Court or Eaton's Round Room. TTC commuters often made strange faces or looked away in mock horror at the squirrel's penetrative glass eyes."
Mrs. Kildare invoked righteous authority, taking dignified silent satisfaction from the streetcar riders' startled interactions. She never for a moment entertained unpleasant consequences on the noble high ground she thought she safely inhabited.
Mrs. Kildare was an avid connoisseur of the canon of Modern Classics and a bibliophile who set up shop as an elocution teacher emphasizing articulation despite discernible traces of her Scottish working-class origins. She was a keen gardener early in the morning, gave classes during lunch hours, was a bookworm mid-day and gave classes after school during the school term. She walked home for a prudent one-pot supper of garden-variety ingredients purchased and haggled for with ration cards and meat tokens. She then retired early to read hardbound books and the upper echelon of horticultural periodicals and American literary journals to which she subscribed. A recognizable Shetland accent was only evident when she became agitated or anxious. An impervious authority on many subjects, Mrs. Kildare was never shy about correcting other people's grammar, incorrect pronunciations, manners or inappropriate attire.
She lectured Miriam and Louise at length and made an impassioned case for the hollyhock. Miriam claimed an abhorrent dislike for hollyhocks. Scolding her, Mrs. Kildare launched into an encyclopedic harangue, "Did you know, hollyhocks grow upwards of 3 to 9 feet tall on a single spike, featuring single or double blooms burgeoning from the bottom up—these cup-shaped blooms buzz with butterflies, hummingbirds, and bumblebees flitting from bloom using their proboscis to probe and gather nectar. Folklore suggests hollyhocks may have originated in the "holy" religious Crusade's military expeditions, during which soldiers made an anti-inflammatory salve from the plants to heal horses' legs or hocks. In addition to medicinal properties, hollyhocks are safe for human consumption and non-toxic to cats and dogs. In fact, in some regions of France, frilly-edged hollyhocks are emblematic funeral flowers, given in condolence for the death of a loved one."
Mrs. Kildare's constant tutelage is why Miriam claimed she preferred the simplicity of hot house carnations or the rock garden climbing capriciousness of heat-tolerant portulaca, with cheerful palettes of fuchsia, magenta, lavender, salmon and crimson.
Miriam cemented her disdain for the flower after reading in the gardening section of a threadbare farmers' almanac that hollyhocks were also known as an outhouse or prive flower planted around outhouses to disguise them. When people saw a thick grouping of hollyhocks, it was like an illuminated marquee with directional arrows and flashing lightbulbs that projected "lavatory" or the more detestable term "latrine" of her youth with its connotations of a communal trench.
In late middle age, Miriam wondered if she had been too contemptuous and dismissive of Mrs. Kildare's well-intentioned, pedantic ramblings. While these errant indiscretions seemed trivial in the grand scheme of things, she still felt the sharp sting of remorse for her juvenile ignorance and unwarranted provocations. As Miriam began to mellow, guilt about life's inevitable offences and predicaments once deemed inconsequential, or "small potatoes," materialized, and doubts spread like deadly spores on a rampage. Now, with time to reflect on forced retirement, blighted memories weigh heavily. Miriam became more flexible and could no longer stand her ground in the unyielding verdicts she imposed and the resolute stubbornness she defiantly upheld. She has ceased sitting on tenterhooks vacillating about past indiscretions or peering in the trompe l'oeil mirror above her well-ordered vanity table. She did not enjoy
Decades later, touring Paris on a whirlwind sightseeing coach tour to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo at the inverted pyramid-shaped Louvre and the outdoor statuary and intricate plantings at the Tuileries Garden, Miriam gained a more in-depth awareness about hollyhocks after reading in a French pictorial magazine with a stunning rotogravure, "Elegant columns of hollyhock cultivars bloom for an extended period during the hot summer months. Blossoms begin as rosette foliage at the base, gradually working their way up the stalk and unfurling slowly into larger blooms. Once fully developed, the flowers open simultaneously, creating kaleidoscopic columns ranging from yellow to pink to purple to black. With a cultivation history of over 2,200 years in China, hollyhocks have been a constant subject of admiration for many intellectuals. Poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, and Su Shi have all praised the flower, with the Tang Dynasty's Chen Biao even comparing it to the revered peony, known as the 'King of Flowers'. Beyond its beauty, the hollyhock's resilience is inspirational, as it can thrive in any extreme environment. This resilience has made it a cultural symbol of perseverance."
Miriam's sister, Louise, has always had a contrary take on life. This tendency is a part of her DNA, one of the few traits that have resisted change. Now that they are older, the sisters generally agree on the critical aspects of their memories, though they still differ in specifics. As children, neither sister had a fondness for Mrs. Kildare.
Louise recalls, "She was always trying to keep track of our whereabouts and tell us what to do." Over time, the sisters began to view Mrs. Kildare with generosity and a hint of affectionate derision. She has become a central eccentric character and often a main protagonist in their childhood stories. They even speculated whether their mother and Mrs. Kildare had some unspoken understanding, working clandestinely to keep an eye on them while their mother worked the night shift or took on overtime to make ends meet.
Mrs. Kildare often claimed, "Talking to plants helped them grow." It pained her to cut back the tangled rose bushes in her garden. When the elements forced her or pruning became necessary, she would consider a restrained clip for health reasons. But only when it was dire. Mrs. Kildare, who stood barely five feet tall, seemed more impressive up close. Her small, blue, veiny hands were perfect for the delicate tasks required in her gardening work. While standing on a wobbly, collapsible kitchen step stool, she made shallow cuts with great precision, ensuring she always cut above the bud and only after flowering. She believed in preserving early blooms rather than sacrificing them for later, larger, and more showy flowers.
Later in life, she maintained an immaculate window sill of healthy African violets that promised to be in continuous bloom year-round combating winter doldrums. Mrs. Kildare spent daytime hours and sleepless nights worrying about plants. She remembered feral rose bushes proliferating along the edge of the crumbling fence next to the Gutta Percha and the hand-tied bouquets she made for the neighbours until the edges of the petals turned pitch black from the first frosts. Sometimes, she would press flowers in her King James Bible as bookmarks to access scriptures that propagated Christian knowledge in case she needed to avail herself of a critical point or a bone of contention. She believed this proficiency was not a hindrance to faith but a needed catalyst.
The narrow semi-detached two-story house on West Lodge Avenue in Parkdale in Toronto's west end seemed much smaller than Miriam and Louise remembered. The former garden plot in the backyard, paved now with asphalt, was deteriorating. Much to their surprise, the new owners had never renovated their half of the duplex, the street had never gentrified, and the once leafy surrounding streets with umbrella-shaped deciduous trees had died off due to the ravages of Dutch elm disease.
Just a few years ago, Parkdale, often referred to as "the Dale," resembled other marginalized neighbourhoods in the city—isolated, transient, and home to diverse ethnicities of people, many of whom were living in squalid exile alongside deinstitutionalized mental health outpatients who were left to fend for themselves. There were no plans to demolish the dilapidated, barely habitable rooming houses or evict tenants to build shiny new condos or million dollar townhouses. This area of Parkdale would never mirror the Distillery District or Liberty Village, promoted as prime examples of urban vitality; at least, that was Mrs. Kildare’s hope—not in her lifetime.
The Gutta Percha itself, once the largest all-Canadian rubber company, was now long gone. Miriam knows it fell to demolition in the 1960s and a two-tower apartment complex constructed that became a notorious slum known for its infestation of fast-moving, unassailable cockroaches and, later, an epidemic of blood-feeding, parasitic bed bugs.
The tidy, modest, semi-detached house they lived in was next door to the Gutta Percha and leased to Mabel, who had been an employee of the company for over a decade. Affectionately referred to as the "Gut" by the sisters, the Gutta Percha manufactured mechanical rubber products, such as firehoses, belting, rubber boots, and many wartime items and footwear for the British Royal family.
Miriam lived in the West Lodge Avenue house from age four to a precocious fifteen. There was no central heating or hot water tank in the house. The family managed with two Quebec heaters, a copper tea kettle to boil water and a small upright Heintzman piano, a bequest passed down to Mabel by her mother. The piano and the picture show had been the focus of the family's entertainment after their father went to the back shed and returned with an axe to split the piano for needed firewood. Mabel cherished the piano and would have given her eyeteeth to keep it, lamenting the loss for decades.
The sisters' hearts palpitated as they walked through the small rooms, recalling where every piece of furniture had once stood. During the war years, Miriam remembered how many of her mother's acquaintances had never had to cope with domestic economics before. They found themselves disadvantaged—not just because of the restrictions imposed by ration cards and wartime food shortages. Mrs. Kildare remarked, "They did not understand what it meant to be economical. Economy is essential a virtue, a way to order your thoughts and household and is why necessity has become the mother of invention."
Times got tougher, and Mabel maintained a positive outlook. She often thought of the hundreds of rubber workers—more than half of them women—who had struck at Gutta Percha for a month, demanding wage increases and the abolition of a recently enforced "team system" for piece workers. The strike union failed, and Miriam recalled her weary mother lamenting to Mrs. Kildare, "All that picketing, day after day, night after night, week after week, did a hell of a lot of good."
A resident of West Lodge Avenue for eighty years, Mrs. Kildare lived to the impressive age of ninety-eight and remained in her beloved home until her passing. Her nephew took exceptional care of her gardens, ensuring they were always immaculate. The sisters discovered a detailed article about her in the Toronto Star. A few years later, they were captivated by her obituary in the Globe and Mail, which revealed her philanthropic efforts. Eventually, they met her nephew at Mrs. Kildare's memorial service, where rumours resonated that she had owned several well-maintained licensed rooming houses on Jamieson Avenue that she let to the disenfranchised for a pittance.
In a turn of events, the fox coat found a new cachet when Miriam's daughter-in-law found an almost identical fox coat with a squirrel collar, purportedly owned by Lady Eaton, on a luxury consignment site, listed for an outrageous sum. That spring, Miriam and her husband planted rows of disease-resistant hybridized double-bloom hollyhocks abutting their cedarwood privacy fence, temporarily blossoming into her garden's crowning glory and a source of personal redemption and penance.