On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

by Cordelia Strube

  “You do art,” he says. “I bet you’re going to be a famous artist one day.”

  “Do you want me to read you some poetry?”

  “You mean like nursery rhymes? I’m too old for those.”

  “No, these are grown-up poems by drug addicts who died a long time ago.”

  “Cool.”

  Harriet pulls out Mr. Chubak’s piece of paper and reads one of his selections.

  “That’s pretty,” Irwin says. “What’s it mean?”

  “I think it means death is friendly.” She reads another one.

  “Is that about dying too?” Irwin asks.

  “It could be. Poetry means different things to different people. I’m not sure what triple sight in blindness keen means but it sounds wondrous.”

  “Maybe it’s kind of like seeing better without seeing,” Irwin suggests. “There’s a boy at the hospital who’s blind, like, from when he was born. He can see way better than any of us. He knows when the book cart’s coming before we even see it. It’s like he’s got X-ray vision.”

  “I think maybe dying’s like that. You see things you couldn’t before.”

  “Because you’re up in heaven looking down. Especially if you get to be an angel, because then you can fly around.”

  “How do you get to be an angel?”

  “By being good, of course. Everybody knows that. The lady who showed me how to make pipe cleaner people told me I’m a shoo-in for angel wings. She told me I must always make sure to fold them properly before I go to sleep. She said some angels get careless about their wings and crumple them in bed. The wings get wrecked but the angels are out of luck, the lady says, because God only gives you one pair of wings. I’m going to take really good care of mine.”

  “Would you like me to paint a picture of you with angel wings?”

  “Wowee wowee. When?”

  “Maybe tomorrow. It won’t look exactly like you though. I’m not very good at drawing.”

  “I love your drawings. They’re so weird.”

  Nobody says they love her drawings.

  “I wish they’d stop fighting,” Irwin says. “I’m scared he’s going to leave.”

  “He’ll never leave.” She turns over Mr. Chubak’s sheet and looks at the cabin poem.

  “If you could have a superpower,” Irwin asks, “what would it be?”

  “Flying.”

  “I want to be able to breathe anywhere, like, even in outer space. I want to be able to breathe on all the planets. Even Pluto.”

  “And I shall have some peace there,” Harriet reads,

  for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

  “What’s a linnet?” Irwin asks.

  “Some kind of bird.” She listens for noises from the bedroom. “I think they’ve stopped.”

  “If you could fly, where would you go?”

  She doesn’t say Lost Coin Lake because, once she’s gone, he’ll tell them and they’ll find her.

  “What about the Caribbean?” Irwin suggests. “If I could fly I’d want to go there and have a ship like Captain Jack Sparrow’s.”

  “They’ve stopped fighting. Go to sleep.”

  “Can we invent a poem now?”

  “A short one. You start.”

  “Tomorrow is another day,” Irwin begins. “That’s all I can think of.”

  “Another day for us to play,” Harriet adds.

  “We’ll sing and dance and eat ice cream,” Irwin says.

  “And have lots of time for lovely dreams.”

  “That’s really nice.” Irwin sits up to look at her. “Does that mean you’ll play with me tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to paint you with angel wings.”

  “I forgot. That’s sooo cool. Wait till I tell Mum and Gennedy.”

  “Don’t tell them. It’ll be our secret.”

  “We’ll surprise them.” His head, listing to one side, looks too heavy for his skinny neck.

  “Go to sleep,” she says.

  “You’re the bestest big sister ever.” He rests his head on her chest, calming her heart.

  Seventeen

  Harriet pours Irwin’s Cheerios and reads him Curious George even though she thinks he’s too old for it. He chimes in whenever the Man in the Yellow Hat appears. Harriet’s explained to Irwin that she needs to buy more paint before she can paint him with wings, but he doesn’t want her to leave the apartment without him. As usual Gennedy is flicking urgently through the newspaper, as though it’s imperative that he read it and that the mere knowledge of world events makes him important. When the paper’s late he gets hysterical, like life on planet Earth will end if he doesn’t read about it.

  “Is Mum getting up today?” Harriet asks, fearing her mother has relapsed into smoking-in-bathrobe mode.

  “Your mother went jogging.”

  “Wowee wowee!” Irwin bounces. “I want to go jogging. Buck said he’d take me and show me one-arm and clap push-ups.”

  Gennedy looks over the paper at him. “When did you see Buck?”

  “Yesterday, when me and Mummy got freezies. He let me steer his truck.”

  “What?”

  “It was parked,” Harriet explains.

  “Oh, so you’re in on this too? Am I the only one who doesn’t know about the rendezvous with Buck? What kind of name is Buck anyway?”

  “What kind of name is Gennedy?” Harriet says.

  “Excuse me? Is there something wrong with my name?”

  “Shouldn’t it be Kennedy, like, what’s with the G?”

  “Your small-mindedness never ceases to amaze me, Harriet.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Irwin waves his spoon. “No fighting.”

  “You’re right, champ. Let’s do something fun today. Just you and me.”

  “Harry’s going to paint me with angel wings.”

  “What?”

  Her brother’s inability to keep a secret is another thing she can’t stand about him. “I have to get paints first.”

  Irwin bounces. “Please, please, please let me go with you. I love shopping.”

  “You’re just back from the hospital, little man,” Gennedy says. “You’ve got to take it easy. We don’t want you traipsing all over town with Harriet.”

  “She doesn’t traipse.”

  “I do, Irwin. I’ve got lots of errands. You’re better off staying with Gennedy.”

  Irwin tries to sink the few remaining Cheerios in his bowl with his spoon.

  Lynne bursts in, sweaty and energized. “How are my chickadees?” She kisses Irwin’s and Harriet’s heads.

  Irwin flaps his arms. “Cheep cheep cheep.”

  Lynne runs the tap and drinks several glasses of water. “It’s so hot, even first thing in the morning. I’ve got to take a water bottle with me next time.”

  Gennedy lowers his paper. “Did you jog with your friend Buck?”

  “No, and it’s called running. I run, I don’t jog.”

  “I gather you and Buck met up over freezies last night,” Gennedy says.

  “Actually, it was before freezies.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “You let him take our son in his truck.”

  “The truck wasn’t moving, Gennedy.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  Apparently unsure of the point, Gennedy snaps his newspaper.

  “You better hurry up and finish reading that,” Harriet says. “I’m pretty sure the prime minister is waiting for your call.
” Her mother, mid-sip, does a spit take.

  “Oh,” Gennedy says, “I see. So I’m supposed to remain ignorant like most of the population. Amuse myself with online trivia so I won’t notice what’s really going on.”

  “How does your knowing what’s really going on make any difference?” Harriet asks. “And who believes newspapers anyway? Everybody knows they’re controlled by corporate interests.” Mr. Chubak says this. He stopped reading the mainstream press when Ralph Nader didn’t become president. Still at the sink, Lynne has her back to them but Harriet can tell she’s stifling laughter.

  “So glad I’m here for your entertainment,” Gennedy says, pushing away from the table and taking his paper into the living room.

  Harriet knocks on Mr. Rivera’s door to see if he wants bananas, but really she’s checking to make sure he’s all right. Madame Le Drew in 110 lived alone and never talked to anybody. Mr. Shotlander referred to her as Her Imperial Highness. One day she called an ambulance. It kept being redirected to other emergencies and took three hours to get to the Shangrila. Madame Le Drew was dead when the EMS workers arrived.

  Finally Harriet hears Mr. Rivera’s slippers shuffling towards her.

  “Anak, how nice to see you.” Rosary beads dangle from his hand. He looks tired but not sick. Harriet has learned to recognize signs of serious illness in the seniors.

  “I was wondering if you needed bananas.” Seeing the apartment empty of relatives causes Harriet to grip the floor with her toes again. “Are you having any visitors over later? Do you need any bananas?”

  “You must come to my birthday party tonight,” he says. “I’m cooking all afternoon for it. I’m making pancit bihon because eating noodles on your birthday makes you lucky. You must eat lots of pancit, anak. No gift for me, okay, just come. We’ll have smoked bangus and sing ‘My Way’ together. My son is ordering lechon from a restaurant. You must try it, it is delicious.”

  “What is it?”

  “Roast pig. The skin is crunchy, and everybody fights over the tail.”

  Harriet can’t imagine fighting over a pig’s tail, or singing “My Way,” but she doesn’t want to disappoint Mr. Rivera. “Sure, I’ll come.”

  “Everybody will be so happy to see you.”

  The thought of people being so happy to see her makes Harriet more self-conscious than usual. She glances down at her throbbing toe poking through the hole in her running shoe.

  “So long, mahjong,” he says, which is what Mrs. Rivera used to say.

  In the lobby, the seniors confer about Mrs. Tumicelli. They found her at McDonald’s staring up at the TV. She’d ordered a McFlurry but couldn’t pay for it.

  “One of these days,” Mr. Shotlander says, tugging up his trousers, “Tumicelli’s going to up and die from the stress of looking after the old gal, then what happens?”

  Mr. Chubak pokes a straw into his juice box. “Take me out and shoot me if I get Alzheimer’s.”

  Mr. Pungartnik corners Harriet. Mrs. Pungartnik hasn’t dyed his hair orange for weeks and his white roots are showing. “You scrounge me up one cigarette and I’ll pay you a buck.”

  Mrs. Pungartnik, also showing roots, stomps up to Harriet, gripping a crumpled Kleenex and looking straight at her and away at the same time. “Did he just ask you for a cigarette?” Harriet shakes her head. Mr. Pungartnik scuttles out the front doors with his fifty-year-old transistor radio pressed to his ear.

  Mrs. Pungartnik wags an arthritic finger at Harriet. “No matter what he pays you, don’t give him a cigarette. That’s assisting suicide. You could go to prison for that, prison.” Mrs. Pungartnik tromps out the doors in pursuit of Mr. Pungartnik.

  “Does anybody want anything from Mr. Hung’s?” Harriet asks.

  After filling the seniors’ orders, Harriet sets out the baskets of flowers for Mr. Hung because his back hurts. He doesn’t admit this but she can tell by his stiff movements.

  “Do you want me to wrap Mrs. Hung’s baked goods?”

  “No bake goods today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mrs. Hung in hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “She can’t breathe.”

  “At all?”

  Poker-faced, Mr. Hung stocks the magazine stand. Harriet knows there’s no point in trying to get more information out of him. “I can look after the store if you want to go to the hospital,” she says.

  “You too young. My son come tonight, after he study.” He hands her an Orangina, which is her favourite drink but costs way more than Orange Crush. She feels so honoured, she’s scared she’ll drop the bottle.

  “Sit.” He points to the stool behind the counter.

  “No, you sit. You’re the one with the bad back.”

  “Sitting no good for back.” He cuts dead flowers off the plants in the window. Normally Harriet is comfortable with long silences between them, but with Mrs. Hung in the hospital the silence aches.

  The Orangina bottle cools her hands. “Do you miss China?”

  “I miss China from my childhood. Sowing rice, harvesting rice. Rice paddies beautiful. So simple. Now more complicated.”

  “It’s like that everywhere, I guess.”

  “No good. Simple better.”

  Harriet sucks on her straw.

  Mr. Hung puts his hands on his hips and arches his back. “Mickey Mouse come to China.”

  “When?”

  “Long ago. When U.S. make friends with China, they send Mickey Mouse. He stand on Great Wall and wave, and Chinese cheer. The world take photos of Mickey Mouse on Great Wall. Nobody notice Great Wall, just Mickey. That’s all China want. They forget thousands of years of civilization to be like U.S.”

  Harriet’s never understood the Mickey Mouse thing.

  “Chinese build wall with millions of rocks. Only wall on Earth can be seen from space. But no wall can keep out Mickey. Everybody want SUV. Forget about wall.”

  Harriet has heard about the pollution over there, that you can’t put your hand in the poisoned rivers, or safely breathe the air without a mask in some places. But she doesn’t say this because it won’t console Mr. Hung.

  Dee doesn’t answer at first but Harriet can hear the TV.

  “Buzz off,” Darcy says.

  “It’s me, H.”

  Darcy opens the door. “Come and join the party.”

  “What party?” Harriet sees the cough syrup and liquid NyQuil on the coffee table. Darcy makes cocktails with over-the-counter medications to get a buzz on. She pirouettes clumsily and collapses on the couch.

  “When are we going running?” Harriet asks.

  “Running?”

  “With Buck.”

  “Oh, fucky Bucky. How should I know?”

  “We’re supposed to arrange a time I can tell my mom.”

  “Your mom is so fucking desperate, seriously. It’s like all Bucko has to do is look at her and she’ll put out for him. She’d blow him in a fucking public toilet.”

  Darcy turns mean on cough syrup and NyQuil. Harriet usually avoids her when she’s drugged, but she needs to contact Buck. “Okay,” she says, “I’ll call Buck. Where’s your phone?” Darcy gestures vaguely towards the bedroom. Buck’s on speed-dial but unavailable. Harriet sees Dee’s laptop on the bed and quickly searches for the “Albatross Encounter” video from Kaikoura, New Zealand. As the birds spread their magnificent wings, she feels a tautness lifting off her chest.

  Darcy waddles into the bedroom. “Get your honky ass off my computer.”

  “I just wanted to check something.”

  “The giant mutant rodent no doubt.”

  “Buck’s not available.”

  “You know what, H? There’s a world out there, an entire universe that doesn’t give two fucks about you and your tight-assed mom.”

  “He said he wanted to meet up f
or a run today.”

  “He says a lot of things.” Darcy tumbles onto the bed, shoving her face into the pillow. Harriet memorizes Buck’s number to try again later.

  “I gotta go,” she says.

  Dee flips over. “Excuse me, I’m in crisis here. You’re supposed to be my best friend and all you can think about is my horny-assed father.”

  “Why are you in crisis?”

  “That Caitlin ho bag tagged me in a photo from the DQ.” Darcy sits up and signs into Facebook to show Harriet a shot of her wedgied ass.

  “You can’t see your face,” Harriet says. “Nobody knows that’s you.”

  “Can’t you read?” She points to the comments: Hey, Darcy, take it easy on those Choco Cherry Love Blizzards, yo. Time for the fat farm, girl. Oink Oink!!!!!!!!!! “It’s got twenty-six likes.” She slams the computer shut. “That’s the last onion. I’m going to lay some shit on that bitch.”

  Harriet knows this isn’t going to happen. “I’ve got to buy paint.”

  “Are you deserting me?”

  “You can come with me. I promised my brother I’d paint him.”

  “Can we stop at Shoppers? I need liquid liner.”

  As soon as they step through the automatic doors, Harriet is on the alert for the clerk with burnt orange hair. She follows Dee to Cosmetics.

  “Quit looking at the security cameras,” Dee mutters.

  “I’m not. Where are they?”

  “On the ceiling, genius.”

  Harriet looks up.

  “For fuck’s sake, keep your head down. They’re the round glass things. Never look at them. It draws attention.” Darcy slips a liquid liner into her hoodie pocket. “Let’s dip.”

  On the street, Dee tears the packaging off the liner. “I want Cleopatra eyes. I saw how to do it on a tutorial.”

  “One of these days you’re going to get caught.”

  “Not me. I’ve got a system. You’re in, you’re out, easy-squeezy. Let’s go to 7-Eleven and get Slurpees. Do you have any cash?”

  The Slurpees cost $5, leaving not enough money for paint. But Dee is in crisis and won’t stop talking about what Caitlin did to her in Guides. “I was a Sprite and she was a Pixie. That ho bag made like all the cool girls were Pixies.”