Sander picks up Isobel’s photo album and walks over to the bed. He sits next to me and flips to the back of the album, where the photos give way to newspaper clippings.
“I always thought I knew a lot about the Melting Queens,” he says. “But I never realized how many of them were so unpopular in their own times. The official story of the Melting Queen is that she’s our city’s first lady, our universal mother, beloved by all. But so many of them have been ‘wrong’ in some way or other.”
He points to a photo of a young Asian woman.
“May Abashiri was wrong because she was Japanese,” he says. “She was born in Edmonton but she moved to the west coast when she was little. They had to go get her from an internment camp in Lethbridge when she was Named. And that was in 1945. Four months before the bombs.”
He flips the page and points to another photo, an unsmiling queen.
“Jolene James was wrong because she was Indigenous, an ‘Indian’ Melting Queen. She didn’t even get to have a signature initiative, because her whole term was dominated by the question of whether she should be allowed to stay on as Melting Queen.”
Another, a queen I recognize.
“Iris Zambezi was wrong because she was a lesbian—and not just a lesbian, a big Black butch lesbian, barely even a woman at all.”
He turns to look at me, a sombre expression on his face.
“Every first is fought,” he says. “Every time a Melting Queen is something new—Irish, Indigenous, from Strathcona, whatever—everyone freaks out about it. What’s happening now with you and Odessa isn’t something new or exceptional. It’s the norm.”
I take the photo album from Sander, flip through its pages, see the parade of misfit Melting Queens amongst their more-acceptable sisters.
“Some of these Queens might have ruffled feathers,” I say. “And I’m not saying that racism or homophobia aren’t a big deal. But none of them were wrong like I’m wrong. Even if they were Black or Japanese or gay, they were all still women.”
Isobel lifts her old, gnarled hand, beckoning me over.
“Come here,” she says.
I put the photo album on the bed and walk over to her, stand beside her chair.
“Come closer,” she says.
I kneel beside her chair, so that she can look down into my face. She reaches out and brushes my hair back from my face, touches my skin, traces the lines of my masculine jaw and my feminine eyebrow.
“I’d never heard of genderfluid before you came along,” she says, pronouncing the word carefully. “I didn’t get it at first. I just thought you were a young man who wanted to explore his feminine side. But I talked about it with Sander, and now I understand better. There are probably hundreds of people having conversations like Sander and me, because of you. It might not seem like it now, but you are changing things. Maybe by the end of the year, people will change their minds about you.”
“Or maybe they’ll all just vote for Odessa,” I say.
“Maybe,” says Sander. “But you can’t just give up on yourself. To be honest, I didn’t really understand when you first told us you didn’t feel like a man anymore. I wanted to be a good friend and support you, but part of me just didn’t get it. I read all the Wikipedia pages about being genderfluid and nonbinary, but those didn’t help either. But then, as I was talking with Isobel about it, I realized that I do understand.”
He stands up, goes over to Isobel’s bookshelf and picks up a dust-capped globe.
“You know about the Demilitarized Zone in Korea, right? The DMZ?”
I nod as he brings the globe over and sets it on the floor in front of us.
“When my grandparents left Busan with my mom during the war, they made a promise. They wouldn’t return home until their country was whole again. Not artificially divided into two. But unified. One Korea.”
Sander scratches at the little Korean peninsula on the globe, as if he could erase the heavily guarded border with a swipe of his finger.
“I can only imagine what you’re going through, River. But to me it seems like a reunification. We split our species into two genders, two completely opposite halves. They’re not at war, but there is a DMZ dividing them. It’s invisible, but it’s just as heavily guarded, in its own way. We’re just as upset by people going across it.”
He spins the globe and an ice cap of dust disintegrates.
“I’ve never really talked about this with you and Odessa,” he says, “but some days I feel really white. Really assimilated into my dad’s Euro-Canadian culture. But most days I’m reminded of the fact that I’m also Asian—whether it’s a white person complimenting my English or other Asians asking me what my real name is. But then, I’m also reminded that I’m not really Asian enough. I don’t speak Korean very well, and my mom would kill me for saying this, but I don’t really like her kimchi.”
He smiles at me.
“So I guess what I’m saying is, at a certain level, I get you. I don’t know what it feels like to be genderfluid. But I know what it’s like to flow between two categories, depending on how you feel or who you’re with. And if other people think about it, they’ll realize that they probably feel the same way in some area of their lives. They probably understand better than they think they do.”
I look between Sander and Isobel, this unlikely team that’s knitting together an alternate history of the Melting Queens. I don’t know how they found each other, but I’m happy for them. I wish I could share their optimism.
“I hope you’re right,” I say. “I hope I’ll be an Isobel Fraser, and not a Jolene James. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
A chime rings out through the loudspeaker in the corner of Isobel’s room.
“That’s the bell for dinner,” says Isobel. She presses a button and her chair starts lifting her slowly to her feet. “Will you stay and eat with us?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think I need to get going. But thank you.”
Sander takes Isobel’s hand and helps her take a shaky step forward. He fetches her walker and we head downstairs to the dining hall.
“You’re sure you can’t stay?” asks Isobel as Sander goes to claim a table.
“No,” I say. “I need to get back to Clodagh’s house. But thank you, for everything.”
I bend over and give her a light, careful hug.
“Please come again,” she mumbles into my ear. “Whenever you can. Please don’t forget about me.”
“I won’t,” I say as I pull away. “I promise.”
When I get back to Clodagh’s, Kaseema is waiting for me, tablet in hand. Without her quiet managerial efficiency, this whole venture would have imploded long ago. She seems not even a little bit stressed as she delegates and organizes.
“Rosemary Silt wants to sit down with you and Odessa,” she says.
“Why?”
“I guess because it will make great television. But from our point of view, it will allow you to address the lies Odessa has been spreading. Convince the people that she is false.”
“A debate? This isn’t a political campaign.”
“It is,” says Kaseema. “I think this is a good chance to clear up any misinformation.”
“Fine.”
She nods and makes a note. She’s wearing a green hijab which brings out some pale green flecks in her eyes.
“Is there something else, Kaseema?”
“Literally dozens of things,” she says, deadpan. “But I can take care of them.”
I nod, and she goes to the door.
“Kaseema.”
She looks back.
“What will happen if everyone votes against me?”
She looks me in the eye. She’s steady and cool as always.
“Something bad will happen. Then everyone will realize they made a mistake. And then you’ll forgive them.”
{13}
Howling winds lay waste to a thriving city
Over the next week, Odessa’s attacks i
ntensify. She continues to revel in the spotlight and call me a confused young man. She continues to winkingly agree with her supporters who say I’m a disgusting monster, even if she herself is the picture of tolerance. She continues to build up her mythology, concocting the confection of the perfect Melting Queen.
It seems to me that we should be able to find traces of Odessa Steps online and prove that Olechka Stepanchuk is a fabrication. But ECHO must have a diligent digital team, because we can’t prove the existence of Odessa Steps any more than we can disprove Olechka’s fake backstory. Odessa always looked down on any kind of recordings or social media, preaching the value of live bodies in real spaces and the ephemeral nature of performance. But she still should have some kind of digital footprint.
Sander could probably help us, but he’s busy digging into the murky past of the Melting Queens with Isobel. Kaseema is computer savvy, but she’s organizing dozens of volunteers to go out and speak to people on my behalf and help with our campaign. They’re both fine. I don’t worry about them.
But Clodagh has returned to her old self. To her mind, the fountain is dead, eclipsed by something more dire, just like it was thirty years ago. She lurks in her room, never coming out, even when I try to convince her it’s going well, even when Kaseema tries to give her updates on our project.
Hundreds of people are donating small sums of money on our Fountain Lovers of Edmonton website. We only have a few thousand dollars at this point, but the messages of support and optimism keep trickling in. The fountain has become a symbol of my fight to remain as the Melting Queen, and although my small core of supporters is being shouted down left and right by fans of the surging Olechka, they’re still quietly donating.
As much as I want to forget about the whole distracting sideshow of Odessa and focus on the fountain, I need Clodagh to take the lead on that while I fend off this challenge. I keep trying to rouse her from her funk, but after a while the battle takes precedence over the war.
“I need you to find someone for me,” I tell Kaseema the day before my Great Debate with Odessa.
“Name them,” she says.
“His name is René Royaume, but he also goes by Magpie. He leads a troupe of drag queens. I need them to make me magnificent.”
In no time at all, Magpie flaps into our little base of operations, followed by Mary Cone and Cherry Poppins. They’re all in their masculine civvies, so I guess I should call them René and Andrés and Carl.
“Thank god you finally called me!” squawks René the moment he traipses into the room. “It was torture seeing what that bitch did to your eyebrows.”
René and Andrés and Carl work through the night. They scurry around me like magical mice, painting faces over mine and then peeling them away until I’m a genderfluid goddess. I am myself. I’m not hiding who I am. But I’m also majestic in a way that I’ve never been before. My genderfluidity doesn’t flow between male and female so much as it does between “both” and “neither.” René and the drag queens sharpen my cheekbones to hard-edged swords. They plump up my lips and make my eyes swell to deep freezing glacial pools. I’m masculine and feminine and neutral at the same time, like an iron-faced statue on top of a victory column, a national icon or a herald angel.
“No matter what happens, Odessa won’t look half as good as I do,” I tell my drag queen posse. “Thank you.”
“Have you thought about what she’s going to say?” asks René. “How she’s going to attack you? How you’re going to respond?”
“She’s going to keep calling me a man,” I say. “She’s going to keep trying to confuse people about what I am, even though she’s the one who called me genderfluid in the first place. She’s the one who recognized what I am and helped me find the words to express myself.”
René looks at me in the mirror, unwinds the braids in my hair so that strands spill out in loose tumbling spirals.
“No,” he says. “You found yourself on your own. You named yourself. Just like me.”
“Well not really like you,” I say. “I’m not a drag queen.”
“I didn’t mean Magpie,” he says. “I meant René Royaume.”
He comes around in front of my chair.
“I wasn’t always René,” he says. “My mother named me Angélique, when I was born. I spent ten awful years as Angélique, until I had the courage to tell her that I was a boy. And then I had to tell her that I was a gay man. And then I had to tell her that I was a drag queen. It was very confusing for everyone. ‘Mais ma belle, pourquoi pas rester une fille si tu veux porter des robes?’ she asked me. ‘Because I’m not a girl,’ I said. ‘But I am a queen.’”
He brushes an eyelash off my cheek.
“It’s really not that difficult to accept people who are different from you,” he says. “All you have to do is shrug your shoulders and say ‘Oh, okay, cool, whatever.’ I do it every day, for all the assholes I have to talk to. It’s actually way more work to get into big arguments and be an asshole. But people freak out about people who blur gender lines—whether you’re genderfluid or a trans gay male drag icon like me—because they think we’re special snowflakes making this shit up for attention.”
He blows the eyelash off his finger and comes back around the chair to work on my hair.
“You’re not going to convince any of those people with rational arguments about equality or justice. So don’t waste your time on them. Don’t put any energy into arguing about what you are. Just be who you are, and the people who actually deserve to know you will accept you.”
“Did your mother accept you, in the end?”
René pauses a moment, then meets my eyes in the mirror.
“I showed my mother my stone, so that she would understand what trying to be a girl for her was doing to me. She held it in her hand, and she screamed and screamed. It was hurting her, and she begged me to make it stop. To help her. But I didn’t want to. Hearing her scream gave me so much joy—to know that, just for a few moments, she was feeling what I felt every second of every day. Hearing her in pain made me happy. And that scared me more than anything. The next day I left home. We haven’t spoken since.”
René goes back to brushing my hair, mechanically moving the brush while he stares through my head, off into some vast internal distance.
“Do you want to see your mother again?”
He breaks out of his trance, gives me a bitter smile.
“Never,” he spits. “I know that’s not the answer anyone wants to hear. Everybody loves a story of time healing all wounds and families coming back together. But sometimes people don’t deserve another chance.”
Andrés puts a reassuring hand on René’s shoulder, and the drag queens share a look. In that one glance, I can see the years of history they’ve lived together, the strength they’ve given each other in dark times.
“The world is full of cruel, stupid people,” says René. “All we can do is not be one of them.”
René finishes up my hair and adds some final touches to my makeup. Andrés and Carl make some last-minute adjustments to my outfit. It’s a simple green smock, a couple of white flowers in my hair. A little while later, Kaseema says it’s time to go. I knock on Clodagh’s bedroom door and tell her where I’m going. She doesn’t make a sound in return.
Odessa sits across from me, showing not a hint of the real person I saw for a moment at the nursing home. That’s all buried beneath a shiny immaculate veneer. She’s wearing her blonde wig, a pink dress, and a teeth-aching smile.
“Good evening,” says Rosemary Silt into the camera’s leering black eye. Our host is a bubbly, peppy Black woman whose constant on-air feasting has done nothing to detract from her obvious physical fitness. “Welcome to a very special edition of our program. Tonight our guests need no introduction. River Runson—”
I see Odessa’s tight smile across the table from me. She’s been soundbitingly consistent in her use of my former name.
“—was Named Melting Queen only a short time a
go, but in that time you’ve managed to make quite an impression.”
I can only imagine what graphics are accompanying my face on screen.
“And Olechka Stepanchuk—”
Odessa smiles glowingly into the camera, places a hand on her baby bump.
“—has been teaching kindergarten for years, but only recently have you caught our attention with your bold and controversial campaign to claim Edmonton’s most cherished title.”
“I’m happy to be here, Rosemary.”
Odessa’s voice is colourful and light.
“Thank you for having me,” I say in my dry-mouthed baritone.
“Well, before it gets cold we had better tuck in,” says Rosemary, gesturing at the dinner before us.
“Thanks, it looks delicious,” says Odessa. “I’m famished—I’m eating for two after all.”
“You’ve outdone yourself,” I interject. Kaseema’s voice rings in my ears: Don’t let her talk about her baby. Don’t let her dictate the terms of the conversation. The table groans with an enormous feast.
“Don’t you recognize it?” asks Rosemary.
“Of course,” says Odessa. “These are all the dishes from The Melting Queen’s Cookbook.” She gives me a smile and raises her eyebrows and assumes the tone with which one would lecture a child. “In 1952, Alma Lake collected the favourite recipes of her predecessors.”
Advantage Odessa. Damn you Sander if it was you who told her that. I dish myself out a helping of saskatoon berry pie as Rosemary attacks a turkey with an electric carving knife.
“So,” says our host, “there have been some heated words on either side of this issue. I invited you here tonight for a casual chat, so our viewers can really get to know both of you.”
I take a deep breath and swallow the rich saskatoon jelly that dissolves on my tongue. I take a sip of water and stare into the camera lens.
The Melting Queen Page 18
