Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  “Did he do with you like what Ian done? Jenny, did he touch you inappropriate?”

  “There are three layers of worlds, Ann Toes. Did you know that?”

  We were at our wits’ end.

  The shrink, Marion, tried to get Jenny to draw what happened. Couldn’t get nothing but more cave pictures.

  Marion said, “I think she found the images in the cave so powerful that she could dissociate from her body very easily in there. She seems to have gone into the pictures and blocked out all other memory of whatever happened.”

  “Like our friend Sally. She used to go into a radio. Be with the people in the radio. Blanked out Mr. Mullen in the back room of the garage.”

  Police said they couldn’t hold Dad without no evidence.

  Dave’s life, at that time, was nothing else but pleading with Jenny. “You got to tell us, sweetheart! Please tell somebody. Tell Ann Toes or Marion. Or tell Dave, if you want. What happened, Jenny? What went on in that cave?”

  She clenched her arms around his neck and cried.

  I says, “Dave, she don’t know. She’s blanked it out.”

  Dave went to the lawyer in town. Lawyer said this wasn’t his line. “You want to talk to Frank Wilson,” he said.

  Dave says, “Lawyer Frank!” he says. “He don’t know c’mere from sic ’em. Can’t drain a tap.”

  “He’s no plumber. But he knows his own stuff. He’s got a reputation for this type of cases.”

  Al says, “Them big city lawyers are slippery as deer guts on a door knob.”

  But Dave calls Frank. Next I know I’m sitting in Frank’s screen porch, looking at the big view from up there, sipping iced tea. And take a guess what he’s asking me? He seemed to recall that he read something in the newspaper to the effect that I was a survivor myself. You’d have thought, by now, I’d be used to everybody knowing this. I might just as well be wearing a T-shirt printed I Done It With My Dad.

  “Could we talk about the present time?” I says, polite as I could manage.

  Frank, he says that the problem with Jenny’s case is the lack of evidence. He says, in my own case, we’d have something to go on.

  “My own case?” I says. “That’s thirty years ago!”

  “That would not exclude the possibility of pressing charges.”

  “You mean we could fight him on Rosie’s behalf?” Dave’s getting fired up with a new thought here.

  I’m sitting, looking at the wicker furniture, thinking about Pam at the shelter, who told me that the past don’t go away.

  At first, I said no. Jesus. No! Last thing I want is to go to court in front of the whole world and talk about the most embarrassing, painful, dirty thing that ever happened to me.

  But what were the choices? We could either let Dad go scot-free or we could do the way Frank here was saying.

  What the hell. Everybody and their aunt already knew my frigging story anyhow. If this is what it would take to shut down that old menace. I said okay.

  Dave told about my sister Sandra. “He done it with her too.”

  Frank’s all happy about that. More evidence. He’s going to contact Sandra.

  “Dad got a number of kids at the school where he works, too.”

  Frank was keen to get them all in on it.

  I said, “How would you ever find them people? They’ve all grown up and lots moved away. Most of them probably never told a soul in their life. Half them likely blanked it out and don’t even remember.”

  Frank, he says that he’ll consider possible ways to locate people that may be able to testify concerning my father’s abuse. In any case, we’ll have my sister’s testimony to back mine.

  I warn him she’s nuts and no help.

  He asks me if I have ever been in treatment with any mental health professionals.

  I tell him just a woman named Meredith Debenham. He says he’ll call her for our expert witness.

  “Oh no!” I says. “Leave her out of it!” I don’t ever want to lay eyes on Meredith again.

  But Frank and Dave, they go on at me. “Your psychologist’s evidence would be material to the success of the action, particularly if we’re not able to contact any other witnesses. Her expert opinion could be critical to the outcome.”

  “You’d let the old fuckhead go! Let him run loose screwing little kids, maybe getting Jenny again, just for some idea you don’t want to see Meredith…?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Okay.”

  That night, me and Sally were standing on the hotel porch, watching a storm come in. The wind was up, roaring through the trees, lifting out Sally’s hair. We held on to our coats, to keep them shut at the neck.

  She says, “Dark is His path on the wings of the storm!” She give my arm a squeeze. “But there is joy in the morning. Things will get better,” she says.

  I says, “Sally,” I says, “I’m fresh out of patience with God.”

  I could feel her go tense.

  I kept on. “It’s like Something wants to torture me and mine! We can never get away.”

  Sally told me Saint Somebody said we had to run, with patience, the race which is set before us.

  In my mind, I seen Jenny running up endless stairs, trouble at every turn.

  Blew up and yelled at Sally. We’re standing out in that storm. Belting rain breaks loose. Wind to knock the breath out of you. Woods and lake roaring. And I’m out there screaming at Sally not to talk to me no more about frigging God.

  “I hate the thoughts of Him! He tortures innocent kids!”

  “It’s nothing to do with God,” Dave says when we’re in bed. “Your dad read the newspaper, that’s all.”

  Everybody’d read about us in the paper. Why wouldn’t the old man? He must’ve saw I was rich and headed up here to see what he could get off us. Wandered around out back, checking things out and come across that cave, and Jenny.

  Poor Dave. He looks so miserable.

  I says, “Darling, I’m sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for now that ain’t your fault?”

  “I’ve brought you so much pain.”

  “What did you do? Phone the old fuckhead and ask him to come sleep in our cave? I wish you wouldn’t have did that,” he says. He’s pulling me in close to him.

  I dreamed my stepping stones were getting pelted with rain, blew around like litter, wrecked in the storm, flying off into the woods and lake. I was running after them, trying to catch them and stuff them under my coat while they flapped and tore in the wind and fell apart, wet, with the words all running and blurred. My red pain stone was plastered to the flag pole. The blue cloth stone, it was soaked too but, when I picked it up, it didn’t fall apart. I set it in a patch of gold light. But when I tried to stand on it, I fell off. Fell down and down.

  If the old man didn’t go to jail, we were going to have to sell the hotel and move. Try to find somewheres to hide from him. Maybe we could go to a different country.

  In my dreams that fall, no matter where we’d ran to, he always come after us. The shadow of his lumpy chin would pass along the walls of foreign cities. I dreamed he was coming across a desert after me on an evil, grinning camel. I went into an igloo and crawled under a fur blanket to hide. But he was under there too, reaching for me.

  44.

  I WALKED INTO A BACK ROOM we got at the hotel, one Saturday afternoon in November, and there’s Tammy’s Meghan with Jenny. Meghan’s a teenager now. Pretty girl. Dark hair. She’s come out of herself a lot in the last few years. Her and Jenny got magazines spread all over the table. Scissors and glue.

  “Look, Aunt Rose. We’re making fear collages,” Meghan says.

  Fear collages!

  I looked at her. “Your mom tell you about those?”

  “No! You did!”

  “Me?”

  “When we w
ere kids. The night you came to Auntie Marg’s and made good macaroni. Matthew made a kite? You showed me about cutting out pictures of things that scared me? Remember? We were sitting on the orange shag carpet in Auntie Marg’s bedroom.”

  “You got quite the memory.”

  “I’ll never forget that,” Meghan says, looking up at me from where she’s sitting there with Jenny, all the pictures spread out in front of them. Jenny’s cut out a bed with purple sheets. A closet. Door glued on the ceiling of it.

  She was right into it, cutting off the top of a little girl’s head. I watched her glue a green scarf over the mouth.

  I said, “Meghan, thank you!”

  Told Sally what the two girls were up to. She said it was a blessing. Well, really what she said was that I was a blessing. I sowed the seed of loving kindness, years ago, passing on to Meghan what I’d did in Group. And here was the fruits, she said.

  Of course there was no such a thing as private life for any of us now. First Nations people, they were wound up about their legendary cave getting found and pissed off about the idea of dirty things going on in it. Of course, with a mythic cave and sex both together, the news people were having orgasms. Cheryl, the cave picture specialist, was on TV. Al was on the radio.

  Hotel was full. We were all hurrying like a herd of turtles. Trying to keep up, feeling heavy.

  Me and Dave made a decision to tell Jenny what was going on. We were charging the old man from the cave, her grandfather. To keep her safe. So he would never bother her again.

  Jenny said, “How can they put him in jail when I don’t remember if he did anything wrong?”

  I levelled with her. Told her he done wrong to me and her mom, too. Long, long time ago. And that’s what he was going to get in trouble for now.

  She said maybe her mom didn’t remember.

  We sat quiet.

  Jenny was thinking, nodding to herself, looking into the fire.

  I said to Cheryl, the cave pictures expert, who was getting to be a friend of mine by then, I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we got us another one along the lines of Josie. Our young Jenny sees stuff in the fire. Like she seen the Macaulay place burn down. She looks at the phone just before it rings. Okay and here’s an example too. She woke up last Wednesday. She says, ‘Let’s go to Grandpa Al’s.’ I said later, after school. But no. Not later. Nothing would do but we had to go straight over there before breakfast. And it was a good job we did. He’d went out to that frigging outhouse of his before dawn, tripped over a root. When we get there, he’s sitting on the ground. Needs a hand up. It’s like Jenny must have knew!”

  “A young seer,” Cheryl says. According to Cheryl, it was whatever happened in the cave that done it.

  When she gets talking about her religion, Cheryl quits making much sense to me. Just like Sally or Tao on either one of theirs. On a good day, I can go along with the basic feelings of any of them. But when somebody gets busy explaining why there’s air and bugs and us and everything, or exactly how come somebody’s a saint or a seer, they lose me.

  Dave’s the only one always makes sense on the religion topic. He says, “Who the hell knows?” Says his favourite author on the mystery of the universe is Howard I. Know.

  Dave says life’s like beer. It’s not in you very long. Only difference is, he says, with life, you got a choice whether or not you’re just going to piss it away.

  Jenny quit running off. Soon as we found the cave and the old man, that seemed to break the secret spell or whatever it was. So thank God we didn’t have that to worry about no more. Somebody was with her all the time, and she didn’t make no objection.

  There was a foot of ice on the lake, by this time. Al, he took a snow plough out there. Cleaned off a great big skating rink for the kids.

  “You’d never guess, to look at her, would you,” I says to Marg one day when we were looking out the window. Jenny was a blur of sunshine out there in her bright yellow coat. Blue hat and mitts. Stripy scarf flying. She was chasing after Matthew, trying to steal his red toque.

  Marg, she smiled. “You wouldn’t guess, to look at us now, neither. Running this place, doing good. I never used to do nothing but worry and eat double-chocolate doughnuts. Sally was snoring all day. Tammy trying to run back to what’s-his-face. And you, Rose—!”

  With all that had been going on, I hadn’t thought about any of that in a long while. “You got to keep that in mind,” Marg says. She says, “That’s what shows you how far we’ve came.”

  I leaned on the windowsill, watching them skate. Josie was by the lobby fireplace.

  “Come and see the kids,” Marg says to her and wheels her over.

  Josie looked at them kids, nodding, the way she does, and smiling.

  “What do you see, Josie?” Marg asks her. “Can you see how the kids are going to do, in the times to come?”

  “No!” I says. “I don’t want to hear!” I clamped my hands over my ears.

  I seen them eyes of Josie’s following Jenny, watching her fall and get up. The ice, it was striped blue with the shadows of the trees at the edge, and the colourful kids sailed in and out of shadow and bright.

  Josie watched our Jenny getting up again after another fall. She watched how Jenny brushed the snow off her knees. Josie nodded. You’d almost think the minutes couldn’t flow unless Josie give them the nod.

  Tammy come along with a housekeeping cart.

  Marg says, “Look at that, Tammy. Look at them kids of yours, growing up here with us all for family and nobody beating the shit out of them.”

  45.

  NOW THE HOTEL WAS FULL of people that knew our story. Marion the shrink, and a fellow, Ed, who was also a shrink, they were running retreats and weekends and whatnot for groups. Everybody that had ever got abused, and had any money, seemed to know about our place. (We said we’d have to figure out a way to help the poor ones, too, which we’ve did now, with a fund. If you bought this book here, you’ve chipped in.) Somebody was always putting out their hand, wanting to greet us as their sister.

  I took a break and went and whined to Josie one day about Meredith coming up here for the trial. Told her I had this firewall in my head about Meredith. Felt like I could not face seeing her.

  “There’s something wrong about Meredith. Remember you used to say she’d missed the patch of light like that leaf you seen? Landed in the dark. She’s like she wants to drag me into the dark too. She pretty near kept me from marrying Dave and adopting Jenny. She like undermines me. I don’t have a leg to stand on around her. Feel like I’m just sinking down, helpless. Floor turns to chewing gum. I got to let her come. They say we need her for the case. I know I’m being a baby. I don’t even have to talk to her. But I feel like all my strength will be gone if she’s there. I won’t be able to give my own evidence or answer the lawyers or the judge. I’ll screw up. We’ll lose. If Meredith’s there.”

  Josie, she’s got this bag that hangs on her wheelchair, you know. She keeps it full of her pictures that she likes and little weird stuff that means something to her. Josie fished in that bag and she brought out a jar. If it wasn’t that same mason jar Sally had in her apartment, way back when, the one with the little red-brown, china cow!

  See, Tao, he won’t put up with clutter in the house, eh. Says it’s bad chi. So Al’s barn and Marg’s spare room, and even Josie’s bag, were storing crap that Sally couldn’t part with.

  I unscrewed the lid. Dumped the cow into my hand.

  Josie’s dog tilted his head and looked at it.

  Josie, she reached out and took hold of the ends of my fingers, pulled my hand towards her. I knew that, for Josie, this little cow was tied in with Meredith. Josie looked close at the way the cow was laying in the palm of my hand. She took and traced along the lines in my skin with her see-through finger, studying my hand and the little broken toy that was laying there across the l
ines of my life and heart and wealth and children and whatever else them lines in your hand are supposed to be.

  I says to her, I says, “You got no business taking offence when people call you a fortune teller.”

  Josie frowned. But she was showing me that this Meredith woman was in my fate or fortune or whatever you want to call that. Part of what Meredith herself would call the “pattern.”

  I’d drew the Meredith card again. No way out of it. That’s what Josie was telling me, just with the light little tickle of her finger tracing the lines in my hand.

  We all had bad dreams, in them weeks. Dave would cry out. I’d reach for him. “It’s okay, Davey. Wake up, love. It’s all right.”

  We go back to sleep and the next thing, I’ve hollered out and Dave’s rocking me.

  And Jenny, half the time, she was in bed with us too, curled up against me.

  “It’s okay, Jenny. It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”

  I had so much I wished I could ask Josie. What was going to happen now? Would we ever bust out of the curse that seemed like it was out to get us, in spite of all our love and luck? Was all this heat and noise what Sally calls it, a refiner’s fire, baking us to solid gold? Or were we just plain getting burned?

  Now, lawyer Frank, there, he keeps fishing disgusting details out of me about what happened with Dad years ago. Writes it all down.

  Dave says, “He’s going to make your old man pay for what he done to you and your sister too.”

  “That’s not the way I’m looking at it.”

  Dave got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Started going on about that’s the trouble with me. I don’t think I matter. I only care about Jenny. I don’t see that I was a poor little girl once, too, same as her.

  “Honey,” I says to him, “it won’t help me for that old man to suffer.”

  “He’s got to pay.”

  “The kind of a cost we’re talking, nobody can pay it.”

  Dave said, “How can you feel sorry for him, after what he done?”