by Amber Dawn
“My lost weekends,” she called them, dragging herself home with lipstick smears on her shirt collars, leathers and suits smelling of cigar smoke and strong liquor and some lady’s perfume.
Whenever I asked her if she had a girlfriend she’d just laugh it off and dance me around the kitchen, saying, “Nah, you’re my best girl.” I think Baba closed her heart to loving anybody but us, for many years after Mama died. I know it wasn’t love she was looking for when she went off for her weekends because when we were older and they didn’t think I was listening, I once heard Paul ask Baba, “Are you going whoring?”
Baba didn’t tell him to watch his mouth, but looked at him like you’d look at another adult, and answered him like he was a grownup. “Well, I call it hunting. Yeah, I’m going down to the bar next weekend.”
“What’s it like, to bare yourself to a stranger?”
“Well, the women I like do most of the baring, and they think I’m the stranger. Sometimes it’s like growling into the void: you can feel the past erased and have nothing etched on the future. That’s really all I want, just to take something for myself in the moment. But maybe it’s just all I can bear.”
“Can I come with you?” Paul asked, just as serious as she was.
“You’re a bit young for it, boy. When you’re older I’ll introduce you around,” Baba promised him. They shook hands, all solemn, then laughed and hugged each other.
It’s not like I didn’t know that Baba dated women. So I wasn’t really paying attention that summer when Baba went down to the Big Smoke weekend after weekend, returning late, grinning and looking pensive at the same time. I had my own adventures—me and the twins and SkyBear had finally found his cousin’s secret pot patch in the woods and we were busy stuffing our pockets and our pipes. And I’d spent most of the summer hanging out at the lake campground, playing ping-pong and swim-racing with the summer kids. I’d even kissed a girl that year, though she said she was just practising for when she got a boyfriend. So I really wasn’t paying attention to Baba’s affairs. It certainly never occurred to me that Baba was romancing a shark. But a shark she was, I discovered the first time I met her.
That Sunday Baba returned home early. From the widow’s walk at the top of the house I watched her help some lady down from our truck. She took Baba’s arm and strode assertively up the porch ramp, her stiletto heels clacking against the wood. She looked with disdain at our house, scraped a pointy fingernail over the weathered cedar siding and waited, tiny nose wrinkled, for Baba to open the front screen door for her. She acted like she owned the place, and Baba.
“Brooke, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Lambeth. Lamby, this is my girlfriend Brooke.”
“That’s Brooke with an ‘e’,” she directed.
“Uh, there’s no ‘e’ in brook,” was all I could think of to say.
“There is in my name, so don’t you forget it.” I stared into the eyes of a shark. Not a woman with sharky eyes, but a real shark.
The room stayed the same, and so did Baba and the view outside our window, but Brooke had turned into a shark. I could smell her, an oily crushed reek overlaid with rotting guts exuding air-drowned puffs from her gills. Her grey-white skin stretched taut over cartilage, fins and tail flexing. Teeth bared in limitless hunger. Murky black shark eyes, reflecting nothing, fixed on me. I fled from the room, from the house, from my childhood, and hid in the forest.
Baba came looking for me at sundown, and I let her find me.
“Oh Lamby, I’m sorry that this seems like such a sudden change.
I’ve been meaning to bring Brooke home for some time now. I didn’t think you would be so upset.” Baba cradled me in her arms with her leather jacket wrapped around us both, just like she had done when I was little and needed comforting. “Brooke is going to have a baby and I’ve asked her to move in with us. I was hoping that maybe you and Brooke would like each other,” Baba said to me.
“Do you like her?” I asked. “Or do you love her like you loved Mama?”
Baba looked uncertain, like she had gotten lost in a fog patch and couldn’t find her way out. “Lamby, your mother was the only woman that I ever loved with all my strength and all my soul and she loved me right back. And I never thought I’d want to love like that again or let anyone else love me. But I think I want to try, with Brooke. She needs a home and family. It will be good for us to have some femme energy in the house again. You and the boys might like it. I know I do.” And though I was filled with foreboding, I promised Baba I would give Brooke a chance.
The shark moved in with us. She got started right away, whipping Baba and us into her version of what we should be. Re-arranging furniture. Asking Baba to buy her new things. Like a shark agitating an orca pod, she stirred up our home.
She was a shark that only I could see. No one else seemed to notice the fishy smell, either. Well, she wasn’t always a shark, sometimes she was just a shallow and demanding woman. She’d been some kind of child-protegé dancer and had won some big international scholarship way back when. Now she was supposed to be a choreographer, but she just seemed to spend her time leafing through magazines, talking on the phone with her friends, and criticizing anything that moved. I guess early accolades need to be backed up by mature work, but Brooke seemed to think that her job was to be dissatisfied, instead of writing dances.
Brooke even wanted to toss out Mama’s sea chest. “Why are you keeping this smelly old box?” she questioned. Baba explained that it contained some of Mama’s things, and that it was mine, for when I was older. Brooke had me drag the chest up to my bedroom, out of her sight.
The boys did their best to help her feel at home. Paul spent hours reconfiguring a computer for her, and he pretended not to care when she didn’t thank him. Castor shyly brought her fresh-caught rock cod and spring salmon, which she ate all by herself, greed moistening her painted lips. She became frantic when she didn’t get the best and biggest portions of whatever Baba cooked for dinner. She used her pregnancy as an excuse for her voracious need to feed. Baba deferred to her on everything.
All Brooke would have to do was flash her toothy smile or pout a bit and Baba would agree to just about anything.
I wondered what would make someone into a shark, so I asked Paul about it. He knew an awful lot and nothing seemed to scare him. He knew where he was going in life. “An out-port cripple with a high GPA ? I’m going to get skookum scholarship bucks.” This was Paul’s plan. Paul told me that the world was divided into predators and prey—everyone was one or the other.
He wasn’t too clear on what would turn a person into a predator. He thought it might have something to do with hunger, or wanting something and not caring what it cost, or maybe it was about preying for the sheer pleasure of the hunt.
“What are you?” I asked him.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“What is Baba?”
“She’s a good catch.”
I didn’t dare ask him about Brooke.
I read all through Mama’s field journal, hoping that she’d written something, anything, about a shark-woman, but all her notes were on sharks that stayed sharks. I missed Mama whenever I opened her sea chest to read her field journal, or looked at photos of us all when she was still with us, or stroked her leather jacket.
I learned that sharks don’t care for their young. Most women around Spencer Pass have their babies at home, with their mother and sisters and SkyBear’s old Kokum helping out, so I knew about babies getting born. Brooke had a positive hatred of childbirth. “Just knock me out with drugs until it is all over,” she demanded. She and Baba went down to the hospital in the Big Smoke. Baby Carling was sawed out of Brooke’s belly, born in a pool of arterial blood. Of shark, but not a shark.
I tried to hate little Carling, really I did. I wanted to ignore her and reject her, but I couldn’t. She was just so tiny and trusting. She couldn’t help it if her mother was a shark. And just like a shark with a newborn pup, Brooke seemed to wa
nt little to do with Carling. She put me in charge of caring for the baby when Baba was away at work. Brooke spent more time complaining, in lengthy phone calls to her friends, about the trials of mothering us.
I’d been scared that Carling would be born a shark, but she wasn’t, I soon satisfied myself of that. Her eyes were green as the tidepools and filled with life. Her mewls held no menace, her mouth was toothless and birdlike. She smelled like the rainforest after it rained. She couldn’t swim, not in the bath, where I carefully examined her—no fins, no gills, no cartilage, and no tail. After that I knew for sure that Carling wasn’t a shark. She was just my little sister.
I wondered if maybe Brooke had come from a family of sharks, but when I met Brooke’s mother at the wedding I could see that she certainly wasn’t a shark, just a carefully dressed church lady who looked a bit stunned by all the commotion. Baba and Brooke got married the summer of Carling’s first birthday. Castor and Paul were the best men, dressed in their new best suits, ties knotted neatly just like Baba had taught them. I carried Carling who carried the ring. Fussed up, both of us were, in the matching purple crushed velvet pageboy outfits that Brooke made us wear when I’d refused to wear a dress. Baba took out her old best suit and shirt and bought a brand new wedding tie.
“Iron your own damn shirt,” Brooke sniffed. So Baba did and she ironed some of Brooke’s things, too. Baba didn’t see the shark circling; she only saw her beautiful bride wearing a glittery wedding dress and satin stilettos. Their wedding was the best party this side of paradise, most of the guests agreed. All of Baba’s (and even some of Mama’s) friends came—a convoy of leatherdykes roared up the coast on their motorcycles, Birken-stock-clad Volvo-driving feminists arrived, all the fishing and logging families from miles around, and all of SkyBear’s relatives came to our house for the festivities. I remember the tiniest femme leatherdyke licked SkyBear’s dad at arm wrestling and made him say “aunt” to a girl. SkyBear’s Kokum and aunts and some of the other women cooked and baked and cleaned and decorated far into the night. The meanest looking leatherdyke sobbed into a handkerchief all through the wedding service.
Brooke’s friends came too—artists and musicians and writers.
A whole minibus full of boy dancers arrived from San Francisco (they stayed downstairs with Paul, I could hear them laughing and talking all night).
I have to admit that it was a beautiful wedding ceremony out there on our dock with the sun being swallowed up by the sea just as a full moon rose out of the horizon and eagles circled overhead. For one night everything was all right. The next morning Baba and Brooke took Carling and departed for their honeymoon touring the dance halls of Europe—revisiting Brooke’s old glory days.
There were several extensions on their honeymoon, and many delays getting home. By the time they returned, everything had changed. SkyBear left home and moved as far away as he could go. Paul had started university down at the Big Smoke. When I asked him if he liked it there and if he was making friends, he answered, “There’s a wheelchair-accessible gay bar.”
Soon after Castor shacked up with a woman he’d just met; they were living up in the bush. “What does that boy know about women, and what does she see in him?” Brooke grumbled. She refused to join Baba when she hiked up to visit them. Baba got home before dark, looking thoughtful. “Castor is where he wants to be. Let’s be happy for them.”
I hoped Castor was happier than Baba seemed to be. Baba didn’t dance around our kitchen anymore. There weren’t any giggling children hanging off her, and Brooke just pushed her away, sneering about her two left feet. Her shirts went un-ironed; Brooke wouldn’t even drop them off at the drycleaners on her frequent trips to town. The only domestic task Brooke relished was the nightly ritual she’d imposed on us before bed, when she would make us all mugs of hot chocolate. It always tasted like curdled cream. And I never drank more than a sip before I’d dump it down the toilet on my way to bed. I began to lock my door at night. I swear somehow the shark would still slip into my room when she thought I was asleep and circle my bed. I dreamed of shark and woke to shark. It got so it seemed almost normal.
In all that time the shark lived with us it seemed that I was the only one it eyed with menace and bared its teeth to, until Baba finally stood up to Brooke. One evening, Baba announced at dinner, “Castor and his girlfriend need something of their own. I’m going to give them the woodlot with the cabin. Guess I should put both their names on the deed.” Brooke started circling the table, screaming horrible accusations that Baba cared more for strangers and idiots than for her own wife. “Castor belongs in an institution,” she snarled. “I should be half owner of our house and the woodlots. Put my name on the deeds, you bastard.”
Some sharks can pursue their prey for days. Brooke fought with Baba and just wouldn’t let it go. Baba tried to reason with her, tried to explain that all the children, even Carling, should have a share of the property she’d bought with Mama’s insurance money, that Brooke too had a share, that we all owned everything together, and everyone would be provided for. The louder Brooke screamed and the filthier her accusations, the quieter Baba became, and the more insistent she was that Castor and his partner would have their woodlot.
Finally, Baba silenced Brooke. “I’m going to town next week and have the lawyer draw up the papers. I’m going to do the right thing for our family, for all of us. And that’s the way it’s going to be.”
The shark, which had been circling us, locked its eyes on Baba and bared its teeth. I yelled “Watch out!” and they turned and looked at me.
The shark flickered in and out of existence, it opened its mouth to devour Baba and then it was just Brooke, who squeezed out a tear and changed her tune like you flip the dial on a short-wave radio. Suddenly she was sweetness and reason, agreeing that everyone should have a share, apologizing to Baba, enticing her upstairs to smooch and make up. I put Carling to bed, sang her every lullaby I knew, and tried to ignore the sounds I heard coming from Baba and Brooke’s bedroom.
Too worried to sleep, I stayed up late looking through Mama’s old sea chest. Brooke slipped into my room again and caught me wearing Mama’s leather jacket and hugging its empty sleeves. I braced myself for more yelling, but instead she offered me her nightly cup of hot chocolate. “I’m sorry you’ve had to see all this fighting,” she said sweetly. “Baba and I won’t be fighting anymore. Now drink up, I made it especially for you.” Brooke watched me with her shark eyes until the mug was nearly empty and I had laid my head on the pillow.
When I woke up in the middle of the night my head felt stuffed with fluff and fog. I tried to get out of bed and stumbled. It felt like an anchor was chained to my legs. I felt nauseous, seasick.
I dragged myself out into the hall and down to Carling’s room. I couldn’t wake her. She breathed shallowly and her eyes were rolled back when I lifted her lids. Panicked, I lurched up the stairs to rouse Baba to help me, but she wasn’t there. Instead I found an overturned room, furniture knocked about, her boots and jacket kicked under the desk, some blood on the floor, the stench of shark everywhere.
I stepped out onto the widow’s walk and saw Brooke, clipping up the dock in her stilettos dragging something burdensome and unwieldy. It was Baba, and I thought she was dead. I shook the sleep from my body and stumbled outside in the darkness down to our dock. “No,” I yelled, catching Brooke off guard just as she had dragged Baba’s body to the far edge. But she was only surprised for a moment.
“Did you want to attend your Baba’s suicide? I thought that mug of hot chocolate would keep you asleep,” she said, calmly and coldly.
“Baba isn’t going to commit suicide. That’s a lie.”
“Her suicide note is on her computer. Too bad you won’t get to read it. And it’s your fault that now it will be a double murder-suicide.” I shook my head, infuriated, as she spoke. “It doesn’t matter what’s true, it only matters what people believe. And they’ll believe me. And every last thing of yours will b
e mine.” She must have thought I’d cower as usual. But with Mama’s leather jacket sleeve covering my arm, I clenched my fist and decked her, sending her backwards into the water.
She surfaced slowly and made some feeble splashing motions. Her hair clung to her face like seaweed. Blood gushed darkly from her nose into the moonlit water. I waited for her to turn into a shark, but she didn’t.
“Lamby, help me,” she pleaded in an all too human voice. I wanted to leave her in the ocean and let her sink with the weight of her own wickedness. But as I turned away from her I caught sight of something surfacing out in the channel. A huge shark, white-tipped fin slashing through the water, was circling toward Brooke. I don’t know if the shark was drawn by Brooke’s blood, or by her stilettos sparkling and churning against the tide. As the shark stalked her, it was almost as if it recognized her odour and knew Brooke was of its kind. And no matter what Brooke had done, no matter who she had hurt, I just couldn’t leave her to that fearsome shark. I threw her the dock life preserver.
The look of triumph on Brooke’s face as I began to haul her in scared me more than all her transformations. For the rest of my life I’ll wonder if I let go of the life preserver rope before the shark reached her or if it was Brooke who let go first, when she saw the shark. The shark bumped its nose against her, tugged at her feet, dragged its pectoral fin over her. It looked like the shark was trying to mate with her. Brooke arched her back and reached out her arms to the shark in a gruesome, watery dance.
Then the shark seized Brooke just below the throat, crunching through flesh and bone, twisted its massive body around her, and dragged her underwater. Silence and a slick of blood on the water was all that remained. Only one shark surfaced, and it wasn’t Brooke. It circled in front of the dock one more time. It looked up at me with unfathomable eyes and then it was gone, forever. I fetched Carling from her bed and lay down on the dock with her beside Baba, who was groaning back to consciousness.
