Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  Sally nodded.

  “That must have been very confusing for you.”

  Sally nodded, staring at Meredith.

  Meredith told her that telling the group about Mr. Mullen was a very important new step in Sally’s healing. And to have this out in the open was a step forward for the whole group, she said.

  Sally, she sat there, blinking.

  You carry a memory for years and then finally spit it out? Wow!

  I could see what Meredith meant by a new phase for the whole group. I mean we all knew already that Childhood Sexual Abuse was what we were here about, but nobody hadn’t told the particulars about their own case before. It’s the particulars that’s real.

  We looked at each other. Wow. You could say a thing like that! Not some shrink words like Abuse, but the real thing of your own. The auto shop and who it was and everything. You could say it right in front of the whole group, and it would go on just like normal. Nobody was calling her a piece of garbage. Meredith wasn’t falling off her chair. Meredith’s helper, Frances, was looking at Sally with a satisfied face like she’d did good on her homework.

  Josie and Tammy, sitting on either side of Sally, were letting her squeeze their hands.

  Sweet Sally’s soft and gentle. But she’s been the bravest out of all of us, more than once, along the way. See, Sal is strong on hope. She can sometimes take them leaps of faith forwards, long time before anybody else.

  It was plain that nobody thought any less of her for coming out with the facts on Mr. Mullen in the auto shop.

  Meredith moved on, normal. Wanted to know how Tammy’s week had went.

  Well, Tammy, she told about our little adventure there, last Tuesday night. Asshole, he’s been making a nuisance of himself on the phone to the shelter ever since. But the workers, they won’t tell him if they have anyone by the name of Tammy staying there or not. That’s the policy. Meanwhile Tammy’s trying to get used to the idea that nobody’s going to slug her when she walks into the kitchen or pound the shit out of her kids.

  She’s scared that Asshole’s going to grab the kids on their way to school. The people from the shelter are helping Tammy get to a lawyer next week. She’s hoping she can get a court order.

  Josie just give us all a grin and said it was too bad she missed the high-speed car chase. Wouldn’t talk about how it was that she ended up in hospital.

  Marg’s old man hasn’t burnt her place down yet. Keeps showing his ugly face where Marg don’t expect it. He’s got Marg good and jumpy, so I guess he’s happy. Marg’s got to go to court over him first week in January. Maybe he still figures he can scare her out of it. Good luck, buster.

  I said what I knew about Darlene.

  Sally had saw her too. Won’t come out for nothing. Darlene’s talking to some man on the internet, though, according to Sally. Just what Darlene needs, eh—some guy from someplace in what used to be Russia there wants to come over and marry her. I wish I could say for sure that she was going to be careful on this. But Darlene, she’s only careful where you don’t need to be. She’s careful picking up her junk flyers off her stoop for fear somebody’s in the bushes. She’s scared to talk to the lady at the post office. But she’ll do the damnedest things. Darlene’s the dumbest one out of all of us, I’d say, even counting Tammy.

  Dumb is what dumb does, eh. Tammy don’t sound too swift when you talk to her. But look at her going forwards there, staying at the shelter, working on getting a court order to keep Asshole away from the kids. And then look at Darlene. She can sound real well-informed. Tell you what’s going on in the third world, who’s worse off than we are and all that. But there don’t seem to be any way to get a new crack of light into Darlene’s head. Meredith’s getting paid a bundle to make Darlene feel better. Darlene don’t feel no better. Meredith must be screwing up. That’s the way Darlene looks at it. Won’t lift a finger for her own healing. Pisses me off.

  It got around to my turn. If Sally could tell about Mr. Mullen there, maybe I could tell about Ken?

  But no, Sally was a little kid when that happened. Here I was, a grown woman. Mine was way more shameful.

  After she give up trying to pry stuff out of me, Meredith went on to what she calls our focus for tonight.

  She said we were going to talk about smells.

  Smells?

  “Yes,” she says. “What are some good smells?”

  We come up with a bunch. Frances the helper, she was up there with a marker and a white board, writing them down. She can’t spell to save her life, Frances can’t. But you know what she does about that? She just says she can’t spell and gets Marg to help her. Marg’s a real good speller.

  Who knows if Meredith can spell? She’d never let on. She sits tight, making sure to look wise and not risking no comment as to how many Ns might be in the word cinnamon.

  Can we name some good smells? Roast turkey, air-dried clothes, baking bread, cut grass, clean babies, carnations, new leather, the beach, oranges, cinnamon, talcum powder, chocolate, summer rain. I wanted to say Dave, but I said lilacs. (My second favourite.)

  “Okay. Great. And now, What are some bad smells?”

  Sally says, right off, “Motor oil, grease, rusty metal.”

  I seen where this was going!

  We had our break then. We’re outside, freezing, having a smoke. The rest of them are talking about where Josie’s town probably is. They’re cooking up the idea that we’re going to go looking for it next summer. The Abuse Group road trip.

  There’s a rock cut where the road goes off the edge of the picture. That tells you that it’s the north, where they’ll blast through a hundred foot of rock and put a road in. Josie’s pointing out a crown on the highway sign sticking up over a bush, so it’s Canada, not the States.

  Marg laughs. “Oh, well good,” she says. “Somewheres in north Canada. Narrows it right down so we shouldn’t have no trouble finding it.”

  Me, I’m quiet, smoking, thinking about the flash that just come into my head. I’m on to Meredith! I know what she’s driving at with this smells business. She’s tricked Sally already into coming out with details on the place she was abused. Motor oil and rust. Sally don’t like them smells because of that Mr. Mullen and what he done to her in the back of his auto shop.

  I get Defensive. Meredith’s not getting nothing out of me.

  I know what bad smell comes into my mind. Smell of my own cunt. But I’m sure not saying that!

  When it’s her turn to say bad smells, Marg says, “Tide laundry detergent, Old Spice after shave.”

  It’s like she might just as well have told me, right out, that her old man, that’s trying to burn her place down, wears Old Spice and that he done it to her in a laundry room.

  Tammy says, “Vegetable soup, garlic, pepperoni, wet wool rugs.”

  All right. So she must have got it on the floor, out in the back room of some Italian restaurant or Italian relatives.

  I wonder if this is what it’s like to be Meredith and sneak secrets out of people. I wonder what all she’s guessed about me?

  I thought Josie’d make some smart answer when it come her turn, but she never did. She said, “Alcohol on people’s breath—rye, beer, rum—and pine trees and men’s sweat.”

  I thought to myself, shit, I’m seeing through this! I can quit telemarketing right now and be a shrink!

  So then everybody’s looking at me and it’s my turn to say a bad smell and there’s only one bad smell in my mind. I blurted it right out!

  Didn’t talk to nobody afterwards. Ran straight home. When I got there, I rubbed my face in Dave’s good smelling shirt and hid. “I can’t believe I said that!” I kept saying to him in a whisper. I was feeling so ashamed and low I could’ve walked under a snake’s belly, wearing a top hat.

  The minute it had came out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe I said it. All the wa
y home, alls I could hear was me saying, “Women’s smell, from like the vagina.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting Dave to say. Guess I figured he’d tell me it was okay to name a bad smell when they asked me to.

  What Dave actually come out with, blew me away. Got me to what Meredith would call “a new stage in my healing.”

  “That,” he says and he nuzzles me, “to me,” he says, “that’s a good smell. I’d put that smell in the first list you had there, along with the line-dried clothes and the fresh cut grass, and the baking bread,” he says.

  10.

  THERE WAS REASONS behind Meredith’s little exercises. Now that I was starting to get a notion how to see what they were, I couldn’t wait for next Tuesday.

  I’m Sherlock Holmes all week. Figuring stuff out and piecing it all together. I’m walking around thinking things like, Josie said pine trees has a bad smell. Funny smell to not like. Most people like pine. Five minutes later, I’m thinking, ah-ha! When she was a kid, somebody must have did it to her under a Christmas tree! And then I’d get it. Oh ho! So that’s why she don’t like Christmas!

  Dave, he got to hear a lot of this, and he says he’s happy for me that I’m getting into it.

  Haven’t found out the downside of Dave yet. I can’t hardly believe he’s for real. Jenny’s sweet and she’s for real. But how could a grown person wind up still being as much of a sweetheart as Dave seems to be?

  I mean, he ain’t perfect. He’s bad to belch. He don’t clean house. He’ll leave his shirt on the floor. He don’t notice what way I’ve got my hair or what I’ve got on, or nothing like that. He’s not the type to go out anywheres fancy. He likes the Pig & Whistle on a Friday and he’ll go out with Josie’s Brent and some of the others once in a while. He likes a game of pool. They play hockey on Thursdays. He’s not one to get dressed up.

  But, Jesus, I don’t have a problem with none of that. I’ve got this even-tempered, fun, kind-spoken guy here, paying more than his share, fixing everything, making improvements around the place, treating me like I’m one of them princesses of Jenny’s, made out of sugar and spice, that he was so careful not to dent.

  We took Josie’s dog back to her in the truck Wednesday night and sat with her and this Brent fellow of hers. There wasn’t one scrap of a Christmas decoration no place in there. Josie’s on the wagon, so we had a Coke with her while Brent drank whiskey.

  Brent, he never done nothing but boast about what he shot out of season and how many games he’d won at cards off of some mentally slow guy. He’s laughing at how the poor bugger never caught on he was cheating. And even, right in front of Josie, he starts talking about some woman who is stacked and he figures likes him.

  I asked Dave on the way home why it is that he puts up with Brent.

  Dave says, “Me and him go way back. He was a good kid.”

  “Well, what happened to him? He’s a piss poor grown-up.”

  “His old man was awful rough on him. Beat him down.”

  That story again. “Is there nobody that lays down and makes a kid that can stand back up again and raise one?”

  Dave says, “Wait till you meet my dad.”

  Christmas morning, we went and seen Jenny and my sister Sandra. Dad was there too, which Sandra never told me he was going to be. I hadn’t saw him in a long time and I was none too happy to see him now.

  Me and Dave are sitting on the couch, Ian and Dad in two chairs. Dad’s got Jenny on his knee. I don’t like it.

  Jenny, she wiggles down off of Dad’s knee and comes over to me and Dave. I put my arm around her. She leans against me.

  There’s Dave, trying to be friendly to my folks, eh. He takes the odd glance at me. I can see he’s wondering why I’m so clammed up and cranky.

  Dave says to my father, “So, Albert,” he says, “what line of work you in?”

  Dad says he’s a janitor.

  I’m stiff as a chunk of froze fish.

  “Oh yeah?” Dave says. “Where do you work?”

  I hear Dad telling him the name of the school. Ferry Street Public School. Right here in town. Just the thoughts of him still at it over there, more little kids coming in every year! Including Jenny. He likes them young, eh. The mop closet and the boiler room. And him never getting caught once in all this time. He’s held that job for twenty-eight years, he says.

  Dave’s saying, “Ain’t that something.” I’m feeling sick. Sun’s coming in, and I can see my father’s shadow on Sandra’s wall. Same lumpy-chin shadow used to slide along the pale green boiler room wall. The windows in there were little, dirty, high-up things, with wire over them on the outsides. This very same shadow slid along under them windows when I was a little girl.

  I wish they hadn’t made me remember that, in Group. But then again, it’s no use forgetting them shadows neither, is it? If I blank that out, what am I? I’m like a shadow on the wall myself.

  My sister’s boyfriend, Ian, he calls Jenny over to him. Starts playing a game with her where he tries to grab her with his feet and legs. She’s kind of laughing. I’m not.

  Me and my sister Sandra had a low-voice fight in the kitchen.

  I says, “What did you have to ask the old man for?”

  Sandra said, “Did I have to be so mean on Christmas Day?”

  I says, “Mean?” I says, “I don’t want to see him, but that’s besides the point,” I says. “You shouldn’t have him around Jenny. You know what he’s like.”

  This is the closest I’ve ever came to talking about it to my sister. Up to now, it’s been like the boiler room never happened.

  But she just says, “How is Dad going to do anything to Jenny with us all sitting there?” (Which shows you that she did remember.)

  I says, “Even the way he talks to her, asking her if she’s got a boyfriend at junior kindergarten. Makes my skin crawl.”

  “He’s just joking.”

  “And the way he gets her on his knee. It’s inappropriate, Sandra.”

  “You and your big words you’re picking up from that shrink. A grandfather can hold a kid on his knee.”

  “But did you see the way he done it? He was pulling her back against him! He was rubbing on her.”

  Sandra just made a snort, like I was disgusting, and poured the frozen peas out, rattling, into the pot.

  “And another thing,” I says. “I hope you’re watching that Ian around her.”

  I wasn’t crazy about that game he was playing with Jenny, grabbing her with his legs.

  My sister gets mad. She says, “Jenny’s a good girl.”

  “Of course she is,” I says. “I’m not talking about Jenny. I’m talking about Ian. How long have you knew him?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Long enough so you know for sure everything he might and might not do? Do you keep an eye on him with Jenny?”

  “Jenny’s a good girl. Or I’m teaching her, anyways.”

  “Don’t keep saying that! Who’s talking about Jenny!”

  “Well, I thought we were.”

  “Jenny’s four years old,” I says.

  “Well, what are you talking about?”

  “Ian.”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you leave him alone with Jenny?”

  “So what? Do you think she’s a slut?” Sandra says.

  “I think she’s three feet tall. What’s she supposed to do if some hockey-playing—?”

  “This Dave guy of yours plays hockey too.”

  “Alls I’m just saying is Ian’s a great big grown man.”

  “Rose, what is your problem with Ian?”

  “I don’t happen to like the way he plays with Jenny. And I’m just saying promise me you won’t leave her alone with him.”

  “Open this, would you mind.” Sandra whips a can of cranberries out of the ba
sket the church sent her and bangs it on the counter in front of me.

  A change was starting to come over me. Yous will find that yourself, too, once yous start your healing. You get a good deal more mouthier. I would have never paid attention to my own hunch about Ian before, and I sure wouldn’t have came out and talked about it. Now I’m in there, cranking Sandra’s can opener, putting out my views pretty definite.

  I says, “Don’t leave Jenny alone with Ian or Dad.”

  Sandra, she didn’t know what to make of me. The two of us wound up good and pissed at each other. She told me to mind my own business.

  I was making up my mind that, the next time I seen her, we were going to have a long talk about Dad and the boiler room.

  In the afternoon, we drove up to Dave’s dad’s place. Took about three hours. By the second hour, I’m thinking of Josie’s picture. We were starting to drive through rock cuts, eh. All that pink stone they got back north. First time I’d saw it for real.

  I start checking every little one-horse town we drive through as if I’m going to see Josie’s magazine town. I seen a gas station sign that could’ve been hanging a tiny bit crooked and yelled for Dave to stop.

  “What?” he says. He’s sitting with the truck running, looking around.

  Me, I’m staring at the row of old frame houses along the main street there, trying to see if they’re the right ones. There’s a little white church all right, with bush behind it but no lake, so I let Dave go on.

  Dave’s dad’s place was a plain-looking little tarpaper house on what had tried to be a farm once. Three rusted out cars were sitting in the front yard, covered in snow.

  In the house, there was like a whole clan of Daves, with their families. Most of them’s built similar, on the big side. Their eyes runs to honey-brown and tends to be fair-sized and spaced apart good. They look at you humourous and friendly, same as Dave does. And, when you get talking to these people, they make you think of Dave even more. Kind-spoken, easy-going. Tell corny jokes.

  Dave’s dad put me right at ease.