“Marrakech,” she’d say, “In Marrakech we all wore little slippers and shuffled the streets, slow in the heat of the sun. Oh Aisha, those little slippers! Some of them satin and embroidered with flowers, some of them fastened with silver bells. Like harem girls we were, padding soft and silent around the sleeping sultan.”
I wore whatever shoes my mother could find at the second-hand store. Scuffed patent Mary Janes one year, a pair of clunky oxfords the next. The gym teacher would not let me take PE lessons without white sneakers, and sent increasingly strident letters home advising my mother of the school rules. My mother would fold and tear these notes, skewering the quarters to the nail protruding from kitchen wall. They would join the reminders of appropriate school dress, and the overdue library notices and electricity bills. I was instructed not to open our door should anyone come knocking. I hid the notes my mother sent back to my teachers; I could not bear the brown butcher’s paper they were written on.
I’d pick sly holes in my mother’s knitting out of spite. My mother would say nothing while her hands unravelled the wool to start over again. Peg’s Yarn Barn had agreed to take some pieces, after my mother had read the owner’s tarot over a cup of rosehip tea. Peg is a woman soon to be blessed, my mother told me, in both fortune and love. I thought this unlikely, as Peg was ancient and smelled of cat pee, and always seemed to give us too much change back. Nevertheless, my mother’s sweaters and scarves glared out their dissonances from the dimmest corner of the store from then on. My mother would drag me there at the end of every month and sometimes Peg would smile and hand us an envelope of money. More often, we would leave with our arms piled high with the unsold merchandise, the gaudy colours amplifying my shame.
I would have to wear the worst of it. No point in spending money when we had perfectly good clothes in our hands, my mother would announce, and look at the spice market shades of this or the desert sun in that; surely this is the antidote to all the rain we’ve been having lately? My hatred would spike pure and hot, and blacker than any storm cloud.
I hated it too, when the cold came. I knew I would have to hurry out the school gates, my bare arms freezing, until I reached the cover of the pines just before the apartment block. A quick rummage in my backpack and the sweater would be over my head, with the clashing hat pulled low over my face. Then it was just a short slink through the side street and I would be safely home.
Sometimes I was caught out. Someone would eventually point out the beany smell of my packed lunch or the lack of parent on open afternoon. It might be a substitute teacher trying to pronounce my name to the delight of my classmates, or a girl in the company of other girls, each with a sing-song voice and a head tilted in concern. I would come home drenched in drizzle and bristling with humiliation. My mother would peel off my rainbow colours and run me a bath.
“Aisha, did I tell you,” my mother would ask, her hands aflutter, “Did I tell you about the Hamman, the public baths?”
It didn’t matter if she had. I could dunk my head, block my ears with bathwater, and still she would talk.
“Picture us then, a line of women making our way there in the afternoon. We’d enter the steamy room one by one to wait our turn, we’d stand there naked in all our ages but unashamed. This was another country, Aisha, and the usual rules of propriety did not apply.
They’d float petals in the water for us and the smell of roses and jasmine made my head drift. The bravest went first into that scalding hot water and the frailest waited until it had become tepid and cloudy. They’d scrub us down with rough loofahs, and they were not gentle with it, but how clean you were after! How floaty free you felt! Darling, you will take the Hammam with me some day.”
I’d ask where the men were, my eyes averted.
“The men? Ah the men. We never saw them; they went to the baths in the morning.”
Sometimes I would wonder aloud about my father, about why there was no father in our home. I was crafty; I’d let the question drift out like an afterthought. My mother would change the subject. She would tell me about Marrakech.
“Did I tell you, Aisha,” she’d say, “Did I tell you that I had an admirer there?”
She’d met him at the medina. His dark eyes followed her as she wandered, as she pointed and mimed at the exotic fruits, as she laughed when they did not understand her garbled attempts at their dialect. The men brushed past, sometimes lingering a little too long and a little too close. One of them smiled and made reassuring sounds while he tried to force her into a narrow close. Her admirer rescued her, and he became both her interpreter and her protector.
“We took mint tea in the café.” My mother would smile and look almost pretty. “He asked me question after question in that odd English of his, his hands stilled and waiting. His dark eyes never left mine when I spoke. I had his undivided attention and sometimes I fear it went to my head, for I would tell him the most fantastic stories. He would ponder whatever I said with the same sobriety. He had a bald head and he was not young but it didn’t matter, he was by far the best listener I had ever known. Soon I was in love with him.”
“What happened next?” I’d ask grudgingly, taken in again.
“Ah well,” sighed my mother, “Good listeners are few and far between, and that quality is particularly rare in a man. I had a rival, another western lady much like myself but blonder and with eyes a deeper shade of blue. She connived and lied; she worked her manipulations and soon my lover and I were separated. I saw him again, some time after, but his hands would not rest. They played with his spoon, they stirred the sugar into his tea, and round and round they went. I talked, and his eyes strayed from mine and to his hands, to the little whirlpool they made. I knew then. I knew I had lost him. I could not abide the smell of mint after, Aisha.”
She could tell a story, my mother. I would almost forgive her the gauzy skirts and circus colours, the frizzed and hennaed hair that made her look like a clown. I could almost forget the atrocities of my hand-knitted childhood. But I was getting older, and so were the kids from school. I dreaded being seen with her in town.
“Hippie,” they’d snigger, and mime the smoking of a joint. “Hey man, where’d I leave my weed?”
My mother never touched drugs that I knew, not even painkillers or penicillin. She distrusted doctors and modern medicine. My colds were treated with salt water gargles and teaspoons of honey, my rashes and pimples with rosewater. Later, I snuck out to the parties in those clean modern houses and I was passed acrid smelling pipes and little neon patches of paper. I saw how the girls glanced sideways at each other, then at me, and I knew I wasn’t one of them no matter what I did. I saw how the boys circled, both casual and insistent, and I knew I wasn’t safe. I stopped going to parties. I worked hard at school instead and I got a scholarship to go to university.
I studied sociology and learned we were disadvantaged; I studied history and learned we were the remnants of a counter culture. I studied cynicism and finally understood that the difference between rich hippies and real ones was the cut of their clothes and the duration of their delusions. I came home for the holidays and talked to my mother.
“What happened?” I asked, “Between Marrakech and this, what happened?
“Oh darling,” she said, “Life. Life happened.”
She was working part-time in the new age shop then. She dressed in all the colours of her aura and told the customers about crystals. Her hand-knit things still lurked in the back, and sometimes they sold for prices that almost justified their cacophony. The nineties had arrived with their promise of gentler times, and our way of life was nearly mainstream by then. The university students did yoga and hung tie-dyed scarves on their walls. They’d rediscovered patchouli and mismatched woollens, and suddenly it was hip to punch holes in tins and use them for candle-holders. The dorms looked like versions of my childhood home, albeit newer and more deliberate. My mother was oblivious to the changes. She got an employee’s discount on sticks of sandalwood and she
was happy.
I wore black and changed my major. I studied economics and learned that my mother was insignificant. My mother had drifted free of the system, she had made little contribution to labour, she did not bank or borrow, and she had neither savings nor pension. She had drifted free and she was not safe.
I went to work in a bank. I bought a pair of glossy red pumps with my first paycheque and took out an investment portfolio with my second. A percentage of my earnings appeared on the cheque I sent my mother every month. I bought a glossy red car to go with the pumps and I was happy. I worked hard, I spent money, I aspired to the same things as everyone else. I bought a condo and furnished it with leather sofas and pointy ornaments in neutral shades. I thought I was safe.
I attracted my own admirers. I would reheat things from the better shops in my gleaming chrome kitchen and, after a glass or two of deep red wine, I would tell stories about my mother. Her ghastly colours and the hand-knitted horrors, her insistence on an open window despite the weather. I was good with the descriptions and my admirer would gaze at me, rapt. The punchline was always Marrakech and he’d laugh accordingly. I could smile too, I could afford to be a bit of a character now that I was safe.
If my guts twinged, if I remembered how my mother’s hands could flutter when I hurt her, I reminded myself of that monthly payment. It wasn’t as though I didn’t talk to her. I phoned every month and she told me about the colours she’d knit into her newest project, or how the man with the bad stomach had benefitted from the application of tourmaline. It wasn’t as though I didn’t listen. I’d tell her I was glad she was keeping busy, while I flipped through my accounts and answered my emails.
She began to talk about Marrakech again, about how she would go back one day. I didn’t hear any change in her voice. I could not hear the cells mutating and multiplying but I think she could.
The call came late one Tuesday, and I arranged a week off work. The hospital stank the way hospitals do, with the sickly sweet odour of urine layered between bleach and some kind of floral disinfectant. My mother lay with bright hair frizzed round her, like a pale stemmed rose between the sheets.
The doctors said it was advanced, and there would be little time.
“These doctors, you know I never liked them much,” said my mother from between parched lips. I pressed for more; I hated that these might be her last words.
“Marrakech,” I said, “Tell me about the medina, the souk. Tell me about your admirer.”
“Marrakech,” said my mother, “It was somewhere else, Aisha. It smelled of cinnamon and roses, of benzoin burning.”
They asked what I wanted done after, and I thought of our apartment, of every window open even in winter, of my mother’s fear of being shut in. I thought of ashes on the wind and chose cremation.
My mother had kept things over the years. I found a bundle of unopened letters in her dresser drawer.
My aunt was willing to meet with me. She sits across from me at my kitchen table now and her eyes are very blue. She smokes and I don’t stop her. I can smell something of my mother in that dusty sweet odour.
“Ah, your mother,” she says, “She was always an odd one. Off in her own world, you know? The stories she told! As good as real, with all the colours and smells so clear you could almost see it in front of you. She might have made movies or written books if it weren’t for the breakdown. Different days back then . . . you acted strange and you were noticed. Strange got you taken away pretty damn quick.”
I didn’t think it sounded all that different from now, but I keep my mouth shut.
“Your mother spent time in the hospital,” my aunt says, “Mental hospital, I mean. Went to visit her and was appalled. The stink of the place, that got you first; then that sickly pale green everywhere. Her doctor was a total creep. Sucked on breath mints and stared at you. Bald old bastard. Couldn’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar, I heard, especially with the young and pretty ones.” She takes another drag on her cigarette. “Now the last straw was the baths. You wouldn’t believe it, it was like something from the Middle Ages. They lined up all the women naked as jaybirds, no dignity or respect, and made them wait their turn. They ran the water so hot that the first in would be scalded, they scrubbed so hard they drew blood. I saw that and I knew I had to get your mother out. So. I argued, I lied, I sweet-talked that baldy doctor and finally I threatened. He caved in; he knew I had his number.” She exhales and it sounds like a sigh. “Your mother never forgave me. I think she was sweet on the creep, he’d done some of that mind control on her, you know? They had places for people just out of hospital back then and your mother lived in one of those for a while. Run by hippies. She had to leave after she had you; they didn’t allow kids. Jesus, I never even knew she was pregnant. I wrote at Christmas, I sent a card on her birthday, but she never wrote back.”
My auntie stubs out her cigarette and looks at me. Her eyes are a bluer version of my mother’s, and her hair might have been blonde once. I don’t ask about Marrakech. I can guess how her eyes will cloud in confusion and how her mouth will form the denial.
I will open the window once she leaves, then I will sit down at my computer. A flight will be easy enough to find; it’s popular holiday destination for those looking to escape the winter rain. I will not take my red pumps or my grey suits. This is another country and the usual rules of propriety will not apply. I’ll buy the gauziest of skirts at the souk; I’ll clash my colours freely and shuffle the streets in squat sandals.
I’ll go with my mother of course. I think of her carried like a little pouch of aromatics around the neck, and I smile. I think she will forgive me the aesthetics for the semantics. We will wallow in the perfumes of the medina and our memories will unravel like bad knitting. We will drench ourselves in the rainbow hues of the souk and be safe. We will take the Hammam and we will float free as rose petals scattered. I’ll go with my mother and we will be somewhere else together.
THE LAKE OF BONES
STACI TELLS ME IN THE KITCHEN when we hardly got any time at all, maybe twenty minutes, maybe half an hour before her auntie gets back. She’s wearing her skinny jeans and stands bent over the sink, running water into the kettle. We got this thing going; she pretends to make me tea and I pretend that I’m going to drink it. She’s so sweet and curved standing there that my hands find her hips and I press against her, not thinking anything much except that we got twenty minutes.
Oh God, she says. Would you just stop.
And I lean back a bit. She calls the shots and I’m okay with that. Most times.
She pulls away from me and puts the kettle on the stove. Oh my God, she says again and pushes her hair back from her face.
I see the bruised look under her eyes, the cluster of little spots next to her mouth. And I think maybe it’s her auntie, maybe it’s the cancer come back.
When she tells me she’s late I don’t feel anything at all. I say the first thing that comes to mind, which is that she’s still got time to do something about it. That I got money and I can pay.
The Lake of Bones is what I think about when she kicks me out. And I get this crazy idea; if I could take her there, if I could find the bones, everything would work itself out. Everything would be okay. If we could go back again.
The Lake of Bones is something we all know. We know it if we’re Carrier or Chilcotin or some kind of white, if we’re reserve or ranch or if we got one of those fancy apartments in town. It’s part of being from here, like the sweathouse and the shot-up road signs and the pack of horses left to run wild down the stampede grounds. The Lake of Bones is handed to us by the old men on the salmon run, mouthed around a bottle of Jack like they don’t want the women to hear. The Lake of Bones gets told in skookum accents by the brush-cut white boys, at the Bible camp where we all went on account of it being free and the food not too bad, and not because we were any kind of Christian. The Lake of Bones is passed around a crouched circle with a joint, taking on a sparkle with every telling, g
littering like broken glass in the playground after dark. Yeah, we’d go to the Lake with this girl or that one. We’d take them there and they’d be so freaked they’d let us do anything we wanted. The Lake of Bones is a terrible thing, terrible because of what’s underneath and hidden, but it’s a comfort too. It’s something that belongs to us.
My Grandfather told me. He said, “Listen, hey boy you listen, this is for you. But don’t listen too hard to the words. You got to see what’s there, even if you go to the lake and don’t see nothing at all.
There’s no people in Grandfather’s story. It happened before the people came, when the elk were still here.
It’s winter in this story, late winter, and the days are shifting between crackling cold and watery sunlight. Sometimes there’s a smell of sap in the air. There’s nothing to eat; it’s too early for that. The Elk People step through the brittle birches, steaming and snorting, stopping to gnaw at lichen, and hoof at the crusted snow. They’re padded with winter fur but underneath that, the rib and hip and spine bones poke. There are many of them and each is bound to the other, and in each acid-pool eye there’s a long history of grandmothers and sisters and aunties, in each throat a song of names. This is the time before the people, when the animals had voices.
The winter night comes early and each morning there are fewer of the Elk People. The wolves and coyotes and ravens follow by day, and when the moon rises, their eyes flash silver. Grandfather and Grandmother Elk look around and see their people are starving. They head south. When they come to end of the forest, there’s a lake, a lake so huge the treeline is a fringe of lashes around an unblinking eye. The winter sunlight warms their backs and the ice creaks and shifts underneath their hooves, singing a water song under its breath. Grandmother stops and Grandfather looks back at the wolves flickering between the birches. The Elk People step onto the ice.
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