On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  She pulls her debit card from her jeans pocket, inserts it into the machine and enters her PIN, presses withdrawal then $20. A shiny bill slides out of the slot. She folds it carefully and slides it into her front pocket.

  “Harriet, why would you talk about baby-eating demons to Uma?”

  “I thought it might help. The vinegar, I mean. It works for them. They have lots of babies. There’s ninety-three million people in the Philippines.”

  “Uma’s very delicate right now. You have to be careful what you say.”

  She always has to be careful what she says to Uma. “I’m sorry.”

  He pulls out his iPhone. “I’ve got to deal with these clients.” This means he’ll be on the cell for hours. She feels the twenty in her pocket and pictures herself hiking through the woods ablaze with crimson, tangerine and citron yellow. Mr. Chubak gave her his compass last Christmas and taught her how to map out coordinates. She knows exactly where she’s going and which trails to take. She just has to convince the Greyhound bus driver to let her off at Bissett Creek on his way to Ottawa. She’ll buy her final supplies in town before heading south. Lost Coin Lake is only seven kilometres from the park boundary. Already she is collecting bear-resistant coffee tins to fill with food and hang from trees.

  Seven

  Nobody talks in the Rover. Trent, when he isn’t shifting the stick, rests his hand on Uma’s thigh. Uma pushes her seat into the reclining position, cramping Harriet’s knees. Trent asks Oom if it’s okay if he listens to the news, and Harriet can’t believe he has to ask. Uma nods, closing her eyes. The lead-in is about an eight-year-old plane crash survivor. She and a university student were ejected from the plane, still belted into their seats. They sat in the freezing tundra while the plane burned behind them. The eight-year-old seemed unaware that her little sister was still in the plane. She said to the university student, “This is my first plane crash. Can you tell me what to do?” The university student talked to the girl about horses until help arrived.

  “I can’t listen to this,” Uma says, and Trent immediately turns off the radio. Harriet quietly hums “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” one of Gran’s favourite tunes, but Uma says, “Harriet, please don’t hum.” Harriet can’t move her legs with Uma’s seat in the reclining position. She’s afraid to mention this because she senses she is very close to being shipped back to Gennedy. She watches her father’s anxious eyes in the rear-view mirror. His son could be dying, but all he’s worried about is Uma’s eggs. Harriet hates him for this, and for all the times he has let her down, all the times she has sat waiting for him to take her to African Lion Safari. All the times she has listened to his excuses then said, “It’s okay,” because reproaching him was what her mother did and it never worked. During Lynne’s breakdown, he insisted on organizing a birthday party for Harriet even though she didn’t want one. He printed out party invitations decorated with balloons. Harriet invited her whole class, even the boys, because she was afraid no one would show up. On the invitation it said it would be a make-your-own-pizza party with a special guest. “Who’s the special guest?” Harriet asked.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  As Lynne’s oven fit only four small pizzas at a time, the kids had to wait in line gripping raw dough. “This is so totally lame,” Katie Bosley said. “Like, why would you have a make-your-own-pizza party if you only have one puny oven?”

  The special guest turned out to be Uma dressed as a magician, performing dumbass tricks like transforming her wand into a bouquet, or finding coins behind kids’ ears. Harriet hid in the bathroom until Kester Hubble pounded on the door, announcing he had to take a dump. In the kitchen, her father—wearing an apron with I swear to tell the trout the whole trout and nothing but the trout so help me cod printed on it—was talking in the goofy voice he reserved for children. “Are you guys telling me you’ve never heard about Rubik’s Cubes? No way! Say it ain’t so!” The kids stared at him. Roger Brocoli had his finger up his nose. “A Rubik’s Cube,” Trent continued, “is only the most awesome toy ever invented. I won a Rubik’s Cube contest when I was ten. It’s been downhill ever since.” Harriet knew he was making a joke but the partygoers, clutching raw dough, did not.

  And now these adults think they can be parents.

  He drops them off in front of the house before driving into the garage. Uma climbs regally up the steps. Harriet follows at a respectful distance, hoping Oom will cook noodles but Uma ascends to the bedroom and closes the door. Harriet hurries to the kitchen to see if Uma’s laptop is still on the table. She grabs it, along with two granola bars, and scampers up to the violet room to watch clips from Hogan’s Heroes. She clicks “The Best of Schultz,” and when Schultz says, “I see nothing. I was not here. I didn’t even wake up this morning,” Harriet says it too. Her viewing is interrupted by her father howling as though he is being mauled by a bear. Harriet charges downstairs and out the sliding doors to the deck where Trent sits hunched on the steps. “Dad, what happened? Are you hurt?”

  “My bike’s gone.”

  Harriet glances at the side of the garage where her father habitually leans his bike before locking it in with the Rover.

  “Some fucker stole my bike. I can’t fucking believe it!”

  Uma appears with her hair mussed from lying with her butt and legs propped up to make it easier for sperm to reach her eggs. “What’s going on here?”

  Trent, head in hands, sobs.

  “Somebody stole his bike,” Harriet explains.

  “From the garage?”

  “No,” Trent says with a venom Harriet has never heard him use with Uma. “I forgot to put it in the garage because I was marching to your fucking ovulation drum and rushing to the fucking jerk-off clinic!”

  “Don’t be so reactive, Trent. It’s only a bike.”

  “It is not only a bike. It is my bike that I have customized to make into my perfect bike.”

  “So, you’ll fix up another one.”

  “I can’t just ‘fix up’ another one!” Trent wails. “Do you know how hard it is to track down quality parts? Everything’s made in fucking China.”

  Uma sighs heavily and shakes her head. “You shouldn’t form attachments to things. They’re inanimate objects. They don’t live and breathe, they don’t die.”

  Trent stands and jerks his arms around like a robot. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re so wrapped up in this baby bullshit a fucking tornado could spin me off the planet and you wouldn’t notice until sperm drop-off time.”

  Uma strikes a baboonish pose and Harriet expects her to bare her teeth and snarl. Instead she says, “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” and steps back inside, closing the doors behind her.

  “That’s good,” Trent yells, jerking his robot arms. “Walk away from it! That’s real constructive.” Harriet considers pointing out that this is exactly what Lynne used to say when he walked away from arguments, but her father resumes sobbing so hard that, from behind, it looks as though someone is punching him repeatedly in the gut. She has never seen her father cry, not even when he sat in the dark plucking absently at his eyebrows because Irwin had to keep returning to the hospital. And now Irwin might be dying and her father is sobbing uncontrollably over the loss of a bike. This must be what Lynne means when she says Trent has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old.

  Harriet climbs back upstairs to search for the dancing inmates video where Filipinos dance to “They Don’t Care About Us” by Michael Jackson. Next she watches “Maglalatik,” a Filipino folk dance. Harriet wishes she could go to the Philippines. When Mrs. Rivera looked like a skeleton and could no longer get out of bed, she told Harriet she missed the Philippines because everybody there wants to have fun and dance and sing karaoke. She asked Harriet to sing and dance for her. “Don’t be shy, anak. Try it, you’ll like it.” Mrs. Rivera attempted to wave her arms to suggest dancing but she was too weak.
Harriet tried to think of a song or a dance because she wanted to please Mrs. Rivera. All she could think of was the “Hokey Pokey,” and there was no way she was singing that. Her feet felt duct taped to the broadloom, and she was certain an evil spirit was squatting on Mrs. Rivera’s commode. She waited for Mrs. Rivera to stare down the multo, but she’d fallen asleep again.

  She hears Trent trudging up the stairs and down the hall to the bedroom, probably to beg forgiveness from Oom.

  Harriet searches “Moymoy Palaboy,” a video with two Filipinos lip-syncing to the Gypsy Kings’ “Volare.” Their fake moustaches come unstuck and their curly black wigs slip. One of them strums a broom while the other waves his hands like a flamenco dancer.

  Next she searches “Yosemitebear double rainbow.” She listens to the guy shout “Oh my god!” and “What does this mean?” over and over as he films the double rainbow. She’s not sure if he’s laughing or crying, maybe both. And then, of course, she looks at the capybara nibbling the Popsicle again.

  “Harriet?” Uma knocks on the door. “Do you have my laptop in there?”

  “Yeah. I thought you were resting.”

  “I still have to work. Please don’t remove my laptop from the kitchen table. I always leave it on the kitchen table so I can find it when I need it.”

  “Sorry.”

  Uma takes the laptop and returns to her room, closing the door firmly behind her. Harriet smears black all over the dragon painting, and eats the two granola bars but is still hungry. Downstairs she finds her father drinking the Steam Whistle beer he buys because one of his bike buddies works there. He sticks his fingers into four empty bottles and rolls them around on the table. Harriet fears they’ll slide off his fingers and crash to the floor.

  “That’s too bad about your bike,” she says.

  “It is.”

  “At least you’ve still got the old one.”

  Her father makes a sound like air escaping an inner tube. She looks around the kitchen for signs of food preparation but the counters are bare. “Dad, is Uma making dinner?”

  “Uma doesn’t cook on insemination day.”

  “Are you going to cook?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Oh yes you do, Harriet. You care very much. You have very fixed ideas about what you want, and when you don’t get it, you torture the rest of us. You’re just like your mother.”

  He has never accused her of torturing before. She thinks of the Spanish Inquisition, or anyway, Monty Python’s version of it, with a man in a black robe shouting, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” and beating people watching telly with a cushion. “I could make grilled cheese,” she says. “Do you have any cheese slices?”

  Trent stares at her as though she has asked if he has any crack cocaine. He begins to laugh as hard as he cried, and Harriet has no idea what to do. He beckons her with limp hands. “Come here, sweetheart.” His words sound gooey. “You’re a funny one.” He pulls her to him. “Cheese slices.” He starts guffawing again, reminding her of Irwin. His breath smells of beer and he’s holding her so tight it hurts. “How ’bout some hambangers like your grandma makes? Nothing like fried, greasy, hormone-saturated cow. That would get Uma off her ass.”

  “I want to call Mum.” Harriet breaks away from him and grabs the cordless. Her mother doesn’t pick up, probably because she thinks it’s Trent. “Did she call you today?”

  “She did, your majesty, mostly to check up on you. The prince is still in status and the queen is suitably distraught. What would your mother do without the drama of the sick child? No one suffers like your mother.” He swigs more beer.

  “Irwin suffers.”

  “Yes, well that’s the point, isn’t it?” He waves his beer bottle around. “Why should Irwin suffer? A boy who will probably die before he gets to high school? Why is he being made to suffer? Because his mommy saved him, that’s why. Saved him from what?”

  Harriet has heard Lynne brag about saving Irwin, saying the doctors were ready to give up but she insisted they keep him alive. “My sweet boy,” she says. “They would have let my baby boy die. Where would I be without my sweet boy?” This is all about her, not Irwin. Maybe if Lynne hadn’t saved him he’d be flying high in the sky, or swimming deep in the ocean. Instead he is trapped inside a stick body with tubes running in and out of him.

  She watches her father open his sixth beer. “Do you think Mum should have let him die?”

  “Who knows, Hal? All I know is it’s not going to get any better and there’s been a lot of collateral damage.”

  “You mean the divorce?”

  “And you, kiddo, why are you so freakin’ messed up? Why are you painting hell? You’re eleven for fucksake, you’re supposed to be painting rabbits and butterflies.” He lines the empty bottles up and stares at them as though searching for hidden meaning. “What’s hard for you to understand,” he says, rubbing his fingers into his eyes, “is that I loved your mum. Very much. She was the absolute love of my life.” Harriet worries he’s starting to cry again. “We should have stopped at you, kiddo. We should have counted our blessings.” He drops his head onto his forearms on the table.

  “What about Uma?”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you love her?”

  “It’s different.”

  “How?’

  Her father lifts his head and stares at the row of empty beer bottles again, apparently unable to find words to describe how his love for Uma is different.

  Harriet looks in the fridge at weird vegetables, hummus and goat cheese. She finds peanut butter and spelt bread. She pulls out four slices, spreads peanut butter on them then cuts a banana and carefully arranges the pieces on top of the peanut butter. She presses the bread slices together and places a sandwich on a plate in front of Trent. “I’d like to go home tomorrow.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She nods.

  “Wow.”

  “Can you drive me? You’d have to stop drinking.”

  “I won’t drink tomorrow, Hal. I don’t get to drink during stud duty so after the dirty deed, I go a little wild.”

  More adult excuses for bad behaviour. Harriet’s not allowed to make excuses. “Don’t make excuses,” Lynne says.

  Trent tugs on Harriet’s ponytail. “Are you sure you want to go home? Is it because of Uma? She’s a little scatty right now. It’s the drugs.” More excuses.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Whatever you say, kiddo.”

  They sit side by side, ejected on the freezing tundra, while the crashed plane burns behind them.

  Eight

  The seniors are abuzz under the broken chandelier in the lobby because Mrs. Butts found a snake on her toilet.

  “It’s those goddamn Japs,” Mr. Shotlander insists, tugging up his polyester trousers. “The minute they moved in I knew they were trouble.”

  “They’re not Japs,” Harriet says. “They’re Filipino.”

  “Whatever, they party all night and cook stinky fish.”

  “That’s tuyo. Dried sardines.”

  “I don’t care what it is, it stinks to high heaven, and now they’ve brought snakes into the building.”

  “Who says?” Harriet resists an urge to yank the hair growing out of his ears.

  “And where in heck have you been anyway?” Mr. Shotlander demands. “Mrs. Schidt’s fit to be tied.”

  “Has anybody been walking Coco?”

  “Mindy in 408 was supposed to take the mutt out but then her nutjob husband showed up. The dog’s shitting on the balcony. Mrs. Schidt’s going to have your hide.”

  Mrs. Pungartnik—with her crazy eye and orange hair—shuffles towards Harriet, staring at her and away at the same time. “Are you the one who bought my husband cigarettes?”


  “I haven’t even been here.”

  Mr. Chubak, wearing his Che Guevara T-shirt, digs around in his worn corduroys for toonies. “Hey, Harry, I could use a Mango Vanilla Marble fix.”

  Harriet takes the toonies. “What happened with the snake?”

  Mr. Shotlander sits on one of the leatherette chairs and expands his chest, preparing to recount the event. “Well,” he begins, “Mrs. Butts had just eaten her Bran Buds when she looked in her bathroom and saw a five-foot python curled up on her toilet seat. She screamed so hard Bhanmattie, who happened to be on her floor, knocked on her door to find out if she was being murdered. Meantime Mrs. Butts had the good sense to close the bathroom door so the snake couldn’t get away. Bhanmattie takes a gander and, what do you know, the python was in the bathtub. He said it was big and strong like the snakes in Bollywood movies. He figured it came in through the plumbing, up the toilet and pushed open the lid. How do you like that? So he closes the door and calls 911.”

  “The police are up there now,” Mr. Zilberschmuck says, brushing cigarette ash from the lapel of the three-piece suit he wears when he smokes out front. “No need to be alarmed.”

  Mrs. Pungartnik wags an arthritic finger at him. “Was it you who gave my husband cigarettes?”

  “Certainly not, Ava, I would never do that to you.” Mr. Zilberschmuck is what Gran calls a ladies’ man. Whenever he’s in the lobby Mrs. Pungartnik, Mrs. Butts and even Mrs. Schidt in her wheelchair fawn over him and play euchre.

  Mr. Shotlander takes his finger out of his ear. “The cops said yesterday they found a corn snake in a building two blocks over.” He wipes his earwax on his polyester trousers. “They said it must have slid through the wall.”