Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

Olive held vigil over herself.

  The fact that she would probably not be able to cope without sight has always been a very real concern and she often imagines herself even now with just the one good eye.

  Men would not like her with less than two working eyes.

  This kind of thinking makes her want to hide away inside somewhere and never go out again. Not just inside, but farther inside, as far inside as she can go, under the blankets, down into the cushions, deep inside the springs of the couch. Olive wishes she could honey-shrink-her-body-down which feels bigger and more repulsive when there are bruises on her topcoat turning a little bit purple a little bit blue. She does not want to be awake to feel the bruises come out and then go back in again. She curls into the couch.

  Olive’s body is familiar with this recovery position.

  Allowing a semi-conscious state, the fluid transition of wakefulness to deep sleep with no start or end, just approximations of time, morning, mid day, night, mid night, morning. Olive never turns the lamp in the living room off during these changing states. She sleeps in full light, waking to look around the room repeatedly during the darkest parts to keep her mind’s monsters in her mind. Olive would perhaps sleep with an overhead light on if there was one. But there isn’t. Just the one floor lamp from Walmart that seems to go through a lot of light bulbs. More than is normal. And Olive knows it probably has something to do with surges in electricity.

  Power is unreliable for Olive.

  She often hears a little pop when she flips the switch. A connection connecting with a tiny sizzle. She has told the landlord but he doesn’t care. He asks her what does she expect him to do? And does he look like someone made of money? The answers: fix it and yes are never uttered. He barks at her about what odds because heat and light are included in her rent. But that is not what Olive is talking about.

  Olive is talking about fire. There is a soot ring around the light fixture in the hallway. It is like the ceiling is warning her that it is hiding something hot. So she asked her landlord to inspect for safety and he walked into her space like he owns it because he does. He owns all her space. And what space he doesn’t own is owned by another.

  They refuse to acknowledge Olive’s claim.

  Silly half-something baygirl from a non-existent bay believes herself deserving of her own safe space. Acknowledging any part of her would undo the whole setup, and so Olive’s person goes unacknowledged. Her landlord is only following a precedent previously set. One time he brought over a torn green leather recliner he needed to store somewhere until his new cabin was finished. He told her not to sit in it so Olive never does.

  Not that she wanted to sit in his ugly fucking chair anyway.

  She mostly sticks to the couch. She does not go sleep in her bed when she feels poorly, which is often. A bed is too good for her. She doesn’t want this Olive sleeping in her bed. If it were warmer, she would sleep on the floor. But it is always dead cold and drafty on this city floor even though she rolls towels against every doorway to trap the little baseboard heat in, the rectangle tops speckled in many different shades of beige paint. Nothing colours flicked over by decades of tenants hoping it would cheer the place along. Never being permitted to have real colours. Vibrancy is for homeowners. Beige is for the poor. Olive has tried to apply more appetizing words to the colour in an attempt to shift her thoughts. The apartment is biscuit. But it’s not. Oatmeal. Wheat. Nope. Neither.

  This is just a trick; people love to trick themselves. But hey . . .

  If you can believe your brown nan is white, you can believe anything.

  Olive constantly gets tangled up in her own rebrand. She’s some part Indigenous, rural Newfoundlander, former foster child from a single-parent home now. Before that she was some dark-skinned young one whose mother ran off and left her. Later on they called her a piece of jackytar ass. Someone’s unclaimed youngster. Father unknown or wanting nothing at all to do with her. Sometimes whore and squaw are thrown in the mix as added seasoning to keep the slurry call-down fresh and tasty.

  Iris had to tell Olive it was wrong to call herself tarry.

  Don’t say that, it’s racist.

  It’s not racist if I says it about my ownself.

  It’s like calling yourself a Newfie.

  What’s wrong with being a Newfie?

  There is nothing wrong being anything.

  Then why not say New —

  Just don’t say it, okay?

  Nan says it.

  That’s cause your nan can’t read and don’t know any better.

  What am I supposed to call myself?

  Nothing.

  You don’t call yourself nothing.

  Baygirl then.

  But there’s no bay where we’re from.

  Everything that isn’t town is bay.

  We’re not even girls anymore.

  Women are always girls in Newfoundland, Olive, Jesus.

  Olive thinks that the apartment/unit/suite/single is the sad house version of herself.

  The dividing walls are barely sturdy enough to divide. They never saw enough plaster, the webbing clearly visible underneath the thinnest layer of paint. Olive has overheard her landlord telling John, while he shovels Iris’s driveway, that he has no intentions of sinking another penny into “that” house. He winks at John and makes a comment about having her scald.

  Olive wonders who he’s got scald and worries about finding herself in hot water.

  She is especially quiet when her landlord is around. She tries to have little or no contact at all now that she has learned what kind of fellow he is. Even before the pipes had burst under the kitchen sink. Even before that, she learned not to interact. The pipes burst under the kitchen sink on New Year’s Day. Olive’s landlord claimed it was because she didn’t keep a sufficient amount of heat on in her unit. She tried to defend herself. That was as much heat as she could pull off the grid. The heaters were trying their best but the door in the kitchen led directly to the back path. There was no porch or weatherstripping. There was no way to keep the warm in. She had a sheet hung up but he had barked at her about the sheet’s appearance.

  What would the neighbours think?

  And Olive thought: nothing, because they never see it.

  But the landlord knew it was there and this was really about what he thought of himself.

  Worse than gypsies, he growled as he pulled the sheet down with a tug of his hairy wrist. All the thumbtacks came free and scattered around like little hidden daggers waiting to catch themselves on the underside of Olive’s feet. It had taken her ages to get the sheet up with those tacks.

  Olive spent most of the Christmas season half froze in the fetal position holding herself between her legs. The pulse in her hands reverberating the pulse in her vagina. Pushing the throbs back inside, a barrier against their escape, Olive was attempting to hold herself together though her mind was all in pieces. The pressure slightly eased her, it made her feel like she was doing something to comfort her ailing parts. It was the smallest gesture toward forgiveness she could bring herself to make. Olive knows she needs to forgive herself. Has always known. But knowing something and doing it are two very polar notions.

  Sometimes she would wake up having already drained her face through the night. Olive checked and rechecked to see if the pain was still there by pressing down lightly on her big bone. The little shot of hurt would send a nauseous feeling to her belly. She needed to pee the entire twelve days. The tiny tingle feeling niggling away at her, reminding her of what had occurred to her body physical when Olive emotional was not there to take care, m
aking it hard to sit still or concentrate or ignore. She would sit on the toilet and sob as the little dribble of urine ignited the splits along her soft folds.

  These little rips in her private fabric hurt more than the toonie-sized welt on her chin that was yellow like a banana only fit for bread. Olive tried not to pee that often. There was so little of it left, and she had no desire to put liquid in. This: another fake out by her jokester brain which reasoned that less hydration would equal less grief. And she hadn’t the stomach for more grief. So she poured just enough water down to keep her flower from fully wilting. Besides, the pain far exceeded output. She thought if she held herself in place, barely moving, hardly breathing, then her insides would forget that they were trying to get outside. But there was a constant sting where the moisture of her hurt body tried to repair itself. Olive’s swollen vagina fought to soothe the small gashes because Olive’s body had tried to tell the other bodies that it was not ready and willing for them. Olive’s body had not given consent in the way that bodies sometimes do.

  And the attempt to communicate for Olive, who could not communicate anymore, just got her poor body further hurt as the stark unyielding entry was forced upon. Now it too felt guilt for having been pliable. Regretting even the blood it let loose after it had torn. That same blood meant to scare had proven to rally the remaining who found the little opening more manageable when wet.

  She really wants it now, b’ys, one had said, then after, yelling that the bitch had bled all over him. The others disgusted at the sight of proof upon the sheets. A horror show, one said.

  But not for Olive, laid out on her belly with both hands over her eyes, for the room.

  The concern was mostly for the linens themselves because this one yelling man had put his credit card down for the damage deposit. Deposits had occurred beyond any expectation and now he would have to pay. He announced to the room that they would all have to chip in for this state. A declaration not unlike the one he had made hours earlier when the hard drugs came out.

  Oh no, he said when noses were upturned, we’re all going to do it together.

  She had only agreed to go because Calv had started texting her again after weeks of silence. She had no idea why he had vanished. They had messaged each other for months and then suddenly nothing. No response to her banal question which was merely a polite reply to his initial banal question.

  How are things going?

  She had answered cheerfully and asked the same in turn. And then nothing. He didn’t even look at her message for eight days. He was the only reason she kept Messenger on her phone. The main reason her phone was a priority over food. It was the only way he contacted her.

  Olive obsessed over her message in those eight days because silence hurts girls like Olive.

  Silence encourages paranoia that can’t be fended off because the battalion is busy defending other fronts. Olive had thought how it had not even been the truth.

  She had never been great.

  But she had wanted to appear pleasant and uncomplicated. Someone worthy of Calv’s time. And lying about herself took on the shape of betrayal in those eight days because she had tried to sugarcoat her sourcoat for this person who did not even care enough to fake say he was fine too.

  He refused to open Olive’s little pleading request for interaction as if she was not deserving of polite niceties. A fine was too good for her. Four letters took too long to type. And she felt so silly for having thought Calv had liked her. Iris warned her not to catch feelings.

  You’re not important to him if he doesn’t want to eat dinner with you.

  And sure as shit Iris knew how that felt, but Calv had eaten dinner with her. Taken her to diners outside of the city where he said they served the best turkey soup. Better than your nan’s, Calv had said.

  Olive didn’t pay Iris any mind cause she didn’t have feelings to catch anymore. Hadn’t had them since the doctor hauled her out into the porch calling her a whore. Dirty little whore, she’d said. The doctor really meant it. Not in the way older girls at the centre or her foster brother meant it. Or even the way men sometimes yelled it from their cars. No. The doctor was convinced that Olive was a whore. It was not her son’s fault. Her son was a good boy. He had to be because she had made him and if he wasn’t good then she wasn’t good.

  So it must be Olive. She must be a whore.

  The victim-blaming Olive perpetrated against Olive was far worse than any external victim-blaming. This was a never-ceasing internal narrative that confirmed repeatedly that Olive was disgusting. So when Calv stopped responding, she did not demand to know why or even say anything at all.

  She missed the little kindnesses though.

  Still, her body felt it had betrayed Olive. And it had and it hadn’t. Because Olive was not really there when the blood came. Olive was gone. She had woken up to find the blood. But it wasn’t really her body’s fault. She knew that. It was hers. So she held herself on the couch for an added layer of protection.

  And Olive thought, poor body, a sin for you, body.

  In her couch dreams, which are many and sometimes awful, she is back home at Grandmother’s but Grandmother is not there. Olive is in charge of bringing in the dogs when the temperature dips toward danger. In the dream she has not done so and cannot bear to go out and search for the dogs in the snow. She knows they will be pressed up against each other against the house. Mounds of snow all around the perimeter. Everyone in the cove can see what she has failed to do and so done. They’ve more sympathy for dogs than Olive.

  She wakes from this dream feeling like the worst person.

  She had once tried to explain to her case worker that it doesn’t matter if she is the worst. It doesn’t matter if that is for real the situation because she feels like it and so she may as well be. Her case worker would ask her a series of questions meant to refute the thinking error but Olive often just felt worse.

  Other dreams, the better ones, are of riding in the family wood sleigh with her cousins, playing clapping games to entertain themselves under the heavy quilts Grandmother used to break the wind overhead. Pulled by snowmobiles because it made better sense in the country trails, their dogs then running wild abreast the wooden box and all exploding out onto the lake surface after having to hamper along at a frustratingly patient pace while going through the narrow tree path humped with ridges. Everyone still knew how to get into the camps on the lake back then. The smallest girl child still had a sense of which pond was which even though their names in any language did not lend themselves to easy navigation. Big pond, little pond, inside pond, outside pond, all the ponds in relation to the great body where the water ran south freely.

  They were always digging a tunnel while never digging a tunnel.

  Grandfather driving the tow ski-doo, Grandmother riding in the sleigh.

  She despised the fumy snowmobiles, thought it unnatural to ride long distances spread-eagle and forbade pregnant women from doing so. Grandmother thought it was worse still to ignore obvious danger. So she always chose to ride in the sleigh with the children, claiming to be providing supervision, but really it was just more pleasant and suited her principles. Sometimes, after a stretch of particularly fine weather allowed the snow surface to settle down, Grandmother would even nap in the moving box. Napping outside being one of her very favoured things. A trait Olive acquired from her natural as a child. Grandmother would parcel out handfuls of raisins frozen hard together and tell them stories of all their relations. She would explain how they had been spread out but remained connected to each other.

  Great-Grandmother Deck
er could cast out the real bad fever with her potions.

  Her open face tight and turned a little from the wind and sun as she matter-of-fact told stories of spells and hard feelings, the booman and mothers lost in childbearing.

  Grandmother never wore sunscreen. In the country, she did not mind a bit of colour. It didn’t matter if you were marginally darker cause no one would judge you for it inside. The animals did not care about the shade of you. The wind in the trees did not whisper harshly about your russet nature. Later on, it would come in style, a wholly confusing mix of tanning beyond this or that pond.

  But Olive’s dreams remain in the woods.

  The freedom Grandmother felt in the country radiated from her as she confided the best way to jig whitefish through an augered hole after informing them, repeatedly, of her fondness for the auger. They had to chip chip chip the ice away when she was a girl and this greatly restricted where you could fish. Grandmother has since become convinced that the best spots were always out of reach. A tin of kippers helps, too, she would say with a wink. Toss a can of kippers down the hole and haul them up hand over fist now they’ve got that brilliant blue auger.

  There were new tools she appreciated more than others.

  But her eyes are always kind and shiny on trips in the country, this feature further illuminated by the absence of tint around them where her snowmobile goggles had shaded spaces from sunshine reflected off the frozen earth. Grandmother releasing her happy laugh at the childish raccoon jokes heaved her way. Her cheeks plump, perfect hearts lifting themselves up when she grinned, and Olive could never resist poking her finger in the dimple until Grandmother cooed to be kind to her. Children rounded up, cousins all, cupping these precious apple cheeks in their palms, always amazed when they fit perfect into hands.

  The littlest cousin, looking back expectantly with upturned almond eyes, head to toe in OshKosh B’gosh handed down the line to her. Everyone clucked OshKosh B’gosh like a clutch of chickens. This was before expectations were perverted by the world’s weary divisions. Before they knew of accents or rural or poor.