Nothing but Life

by Brent van Staalduinen

  “Wendell, stop,” I hear the girl say to my back, laughter still in her voice. “We’re not making out or anything.”

  The curiosity comes back in a rush. She knows my name. Huh. I feel my feet carrying me back to the opening in the hedge, into the darkness. Branches arch up and over the path. My eyes take a moment to adjust, but there’s enough light to see them meet overhead, like the bones of a big church. A cathedral, even.

  Gal and the girl are sitting together on the ground, their backs against the worn trunks of a pair of trees. Gal’s head is turned, ready to hear me though I’m not saying anything. He’s not smiling but he looks content. He has a tiny joint in his hand, the smoke swirling lazily around the space. The girl has a blanket over her legs, a book face down on her lap to mark the page. I recognize her right away. From my class. In the dim light, her short hair and her eyes are the same dark colour, almost black. She’s wearing a tank top, and I can see her arms. Muscular. Lean. Strong. I don’t know much about her. She’s a competitive wrestler away from school, so she doesn’t hang around. Always sits at the desk closest to the door. Last to arrive, first to leave. No one in my class talks to her. The girls can’t relate. The guys are just plain scared.

  “You’re Mia,” I say, a little stupidly.

  “Yep. And you’re Wendell. Or should I call you Cutter, like everyone else?”

  “I’m not —”

  Mia laughs. “I know. Kidding. Personally, I think Pat had it coming. The knife was maybe a bit far.”

  “It was definitely a bit far.”

  “Most entertaining thing to happen all year.”

  “Knife?” Gal asks. “Who is Pat?”

  Mia laughs again and gives him the ten-second version of my story. Laid out plain and brutal. Hearing it feels like thorns behind my eyes. Am I a terrible person or what?

  At the end, Gal simply nods. “So that is why you are here.”

  “You didn’t know?” I ask.

  “Not specifically. Your caseworker did not tell me. Confidentiality rules, I imagine.” He shrugs. “It is no matter. You are doing a fine job, so I have no need to know.”

  Between his scowling face and the scars, it doesn’t seem like a compliment.

  “Want to sit for a bit?” Mia asks. “I have some protein shake, if you’d like.”

  “I shouldn’t. I’m on lunch and then back to work.”

  But there go my feet again, carrying me in farther. Maybe it was the offer of protein shake, which I have no idea about. It sounds gross. And yet.

  I feel some branches snagging on my socks and the ankle monitor. I’m wearing shorts all the time now. It’s too hot to wear pants. At first I thought the little black box on my ankle would be like a billboard advertising my delinquency, but no one pays attention to me. I reach down to clear the —

  “Wait-a-minute branches.” Jesse’s voice drifts forward from the past, from the one time he took me hunting. That’s what he called the loose branches that snag your clothes. “Two things,” he said. “One, never hurry through the brush. Too many bad things can happen when you’re not careful and you’re carrying a rifle. Two, never break the branches out of the way. No one needs to know you’ve been there. Clear as mud?” Mom was so pissed at him when we got home. That he’d take me out of school without telling her. That he’d sneak me into the woods to shoot at things. To kill for sport.

  Jesse tried to explain that he didn’t hunt for fun, but it didn’t matter — Mom’s mind was made up. Jesse never took me out again. He taught me things at home. I was so mad at her. The memory is as scorching and heavy as the sun, and the dim corridor through the hedges becomes a blurred, conflicted tangle of black and green and blinding white all at once.

  “Wendell?” Mia’s voice. Concerned.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I can’t get home fast enough.

  COLD CARROTS

  I blunder in through the side door, kick my shoes off, and nearly bowl Aunt Viv over as I rush into the kitchen. I mumble an apology, open the fridge, and stick my head in, savouring the cool air on my hot, red face.

  “Hey, kid,” she says behind me. “Everything okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look like someone pantsed you in church.”

  I shake my head. Then her hand is on my back. Patting, like a new father when he gets his first chance to burp the baby. “Uh, breathe, Dills. Breathe.”

  It works, though. I calm down enough to close the door and face her. “Thanks.”

  “So, are you going to greet your auntie properly or what? It’s not like I’ve been gone for a week or anything.”

  “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

  I go to give her a hug but she’s clearly expecting a high five. There’s an awkward clash of hands and arms and shoulders. Some laughter, which is good. I sit down on one of the barstools at the counter. She goes to the fridge and pulls out an old lidded container full of leftovers, sniffs it, shrugs, and leaves it on the counter near me. Not in front of me. She’s not like that. I pull it toward myself. Baby carrots and potatoes. I pinch out a carrot and eat it cold.

  She leans against the sink and looks long at me. I have to look away. There’s an intensity to her gaze I can never meet. She has the darkest, most penetrating eyes ever. Black hair framing her thin face. She’s Korean by heritage. Born there. Gramma Jan adopted her when Koreans could get away with sending girl babies away. They wanted boys. Mom’s adopted, too. Gramma Jan could never have kids of her own so she took motherhood seriously. All sorts of rituals. She and Grampa Vernon, who died before I was born, had some matching vision for parenthood and resolved to give all their kids V-names. Victoria. Vivian. But they’re so different. Mom’s rounded corners versus Aunt Viv’s hard angles. There was a younger brother, Vincent, who died young. He’s in only one of the photographs on the living room wall, his dark brown skin in dramatic contrast to the rest of the family, although it’s everyone’s smiles you see first. Great big grins. No one talks about him, though.

  “So,” Aunt Viv says. With purpose.

  “So?”

  “Saying ‘shit’ now are we?”

  “No, I —”

  “Next thing it’ll be drugs and F-bombs and tattoos. And pregnant girls. The horror of adolescent malehood. The crisis of —”

  “Okay, okay. I got it.”

  “Good. Definitely don’t let Gramma Jan hear you talk like that. She’ll have you scrubbing the bathroom floor with your tongue.”

  “Or Mom.”

  “Or your mom, exactly.”

  “You sound like you have some experience.”

  “I should tell you about the time Gramma Jan washed my mouth out with an actual bar of soap. I was picking bits out of my teeth for days.”

  “I think you just did.”

  “Smartass.”

  “How was your trip?”

  With that she lights up, and you could forget that she’s as tough as a calloused heel. She explains some obscure internet protocol she’s initiated, but I don’t understand a word. She’s some kind of online-security expert. Travels all over the place to help corporations beef up their online protection. A hacker for hire, although I’d never say that to her face. Mom says that Aunt Viv could bring the world to its knees if she wanted. She’s that good.

  I sit back and eat the cold leftovers, letting her monologue wash over me. Her enthusiasm is a nice distraction from my embarrassment at having lost it in front of Gal and Mia. Sometimes the memories arrive so quick and huge, I don’t know what to do with them. Mom and Gramma Jan and Aunt Viv are used to the moments when I need to stop and get away. But Mia and Gal aren’t. Gal? Whatever. But Mia is so strong and never lets anything get to her. The other kids talk, but she walks through the halls at school like she’s bulletproof. Made of Kevlar. I like that strength.

  CALL ME DILLS

  I’m here. Come see me.

  Windsor is about three hundred klicks from Hamilton. Klicks are kilometres in ar
my-speak. Jesse grew up in some hilly place in Pennsylvania before he joined up, hoping for a career. Mom says the war knocked the nobility out of military service for him. He doesn’t talk specifics about Afghanistan or Iraq but still has lots of those army-isms, like klicks. The army uses them instead of miles. Jesse calls himself “reformed to metric” and now hates that everything is in miles in the U.S. Says it’s a stupid way to measure distance. I’ve never seen him get angry at other drivers, but he sure can rant about the imperial system of measurement.

  Mom agreed with him but still ribbed him whenever we were driving and he got into it. “So the Brits aren’t civilized?” she’d ask. Then they’d argue in a laughing way about bad teeth and colonialism and the legacy of fish and chips, and they’d look at each other a lot, and she’d run her nails through the stubble on the back of his head and give him goosebumps. When we got home they’d send me to my room. When I was really young they said I needed quiet time. When I was older they said they needed a nap, though they didn’t nap and were obviously having sex. Anyhow.

  Klicks or kilometres or miles, Windsor is a long way away. No matter how many times Jesse calls to me, getting to him is going to be hard. Not old enough to drive. No job, so Uber or bus or anything requiring money is a bust. Can’t ask for the cash. Won’t steal it. Can’t ask anyone for help or everything will come out, so no. Deal breaker.

  The height of the sun and the saturation of my boxers are telling me it’s almost lunchtime. I take my helmet off and let the air evaporate some of my sweat. I’m in the woods cleaning the Princess Point Trail so the shade helps, but it’s a scorcher today. Thirty-five degrees, feels like. Ninety-five in Fahrenheit, which Jesse never talks about, but I bet he thinks it’s another dumb system. Why not measure up and down from zero, rather than from a freezing point of thirty-two? Weird.

  I put my helmet back on, tie the garbage bag off, and walk it out. There are large oil-drum trash bins beside every set of benches throughout Churchill Park. The bags go in there when they’re full. Well, as full as I can comfortably carry, which is usually about half. Things that decompose on damp ground get heavy.

  I heave the bag into the garbage can, stepping back from a cloud of yellow jackets that drones into the air. I haven’t been stung yet, but it’s only a matter of time. You can’t understand how many kinds of bees and wasps and hornets there are until you work outside. They do their thing and don’t seem to care much, but you never know when you’ll disturb them in the wrong way. Next thing you know, you’re being swarmed and stung and they’re leaving their stingers in you and dying. I always forget whether it’s the bees or the wasps that leave their stingers.

  Out here the sun blazes straight down and I have to squint against it. Through the humid haze I can see Mia walking across the grass and waving. I want to wave back, but for an agonizing instant my hand won’t work. I just stare. Then my hand creeps up to a low wave and I feel almost human again.

  “Hi,” I manage when she comes close enough for conversation.

  “Hi yourself.”

  She’s wearing another tank top today, a light-blue one this time, and khaki shorts. A few wisps of hair escape from her baseball hat. As she walks up, I can’t help but notice how her muscles flex on her legs. Not an ounce of fat on her. She’s about my height but wider than other girls our age. But not awkward wide. Powerful wide. Like she’s already been given her set of adult dimensions. It feels odd to think of her as a girl. Maybe I should say young woman. A young woman who could bench-press me.

  “Leg-press, definitely,” she says. “My bench isn’t quite there yet.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You were wondering if I could bench-press you.”

  Oh my god, I think. “I said that?”

  A bemused smirk. “You talked to yourself at school, too.”

  And now I’m blushing and stammering and embarrassed. Why, Dills? I ask myself. This is not news. And then she looks embarrassed that she embarrassed me. A chorus of awkward noises and apologies. Finally, we both let ourselves off the hook with a good nervous laugh. We meet, kind of.

  And for the first time in a long, long time I have a new friend. Just like that. No worries, no doubts, just the pleasant company of another person who can stand you. You lose that feeling early in your life, don’t you? Moving to Hamilton in the middle of a school year and not being able to talk about my former life because I might let it slip that it was my stepdad who killed all those kids at another high school like this one is a difficult formula for finding friends. Much less one who makes me itch in a pleasant way. Maybe more than friends. At some point.

  “I’m sorry for running away yesterday,” I say. “That was awkward.”

  “Totally.”

  “And it’s Dills.”

  “Huh?”

  “Call me Dills, not Wendell.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “It’s weird, but I like it better.”

  “No, that makes sense. Wendell seems like a birth-certificate name, not a real name.”

  “Exactly. I like that. I may use it.”

  “Make sure you footnote me.”

  I smile and agree to make sure that every time I say it, she’ll get the credit. I like that explanation. I really like it, in fact, and not because she’s a girl and I’m not and there’s a kind of magic when a girl notices things like that. I think it explains things. That tension I’ve always felt about my own name. How Mom avoids my questions about why she named me Wendell, which is a name for old men who wear dark socks and sandals on sweaty days like today. I kind of tune out for a moment thinking about it, and return only to find that Mia is saying something that sounds important.

  “Huh? Sorry?”

  “I was saying I should apologize for yesterday, too,” Mia says. “For how it must’ve looked over by the aviary.”

  “Oh, that. Uh …”

  “Gal’s a friend. A strange friend, but still a friend. That’s all.”

  “I shouldn’t have barged in.”

  “I don’t own the hedge.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. You were having a private talk.”

  “Yes and no. We were in private, but it was just a conversation. He speaks Arabic, too. I don’t get many chances to practise.”

  “Don’t you speak it at home?”

  She frowns. “Not anymore. We used to, all the time, but my parents are trying to improve their English. And not get noticed so much.”

  “Is it okay if I ask where you’re from?”

  “Hamilton.”

  Another blush. “No, I mean, uh, where is your family from?”

  Nothing.

  “Your ethnic background? Your, uh, heritage, culturally speaking? The part of the world, maybe, where you and your parents and their parents and —”

  Mia laughs and holds up a hand. “Okay, stop. Watching you squirm was fun at first, but now it’s painful.”

  “Sorry. I’ve never asked anyone that before. Windsor, where we came from, is pretty white, and —”

  I cut my voice off as cleanly as if I’ve used a box cutter on it, too. Shit. “Windsor” was out before I could stop it. Definitely one of the pieces of information we’re trying not to advertise. My mind turns over itself, tumbling damage control around like wet clothes in a dryer. Heavy and ungiving. But Mia looks concerned, like she’s gone an inch (2.54 centimetres) too far.

  “That’s okay,” she says. “Hamilton’s pretty white, too.”

  “That’s true.”

  “We’re Palestinian, although we hold Jordanian passports.”

  “Why?”

  “Our family was cut off when Israel built another one of its walls. Jordan gives stateless Palestinians passports, and we were able to come here.”

  “Oh wow.”

  “Yeah. You couldn’t know. Sorry for giving you such a hard time about it.”

  “I’m sorry, too, for … uh, can you forget I told you where we came from? I’m not supposed to talk about it.”


  “Windsor’s where —”

  “Yeah.”

  A beat. A nod. “I’ll keep your secret, Sir Dills. As long as you promise never to tell anyone about my conversations with Gal.”

  “Of course. I —”

  “He’s Israeli. That’s why it could be a big deal. Plus, smoking up isn’t my thing at all, and I don’t want that to get attached to my stellar reputation.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I do. Not about the assholes at school, but what my coaches would think. Weed’s terrible for athletes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Gal needs the dope. You’ve seen the scars. He has severe pain almost all the time.”

  “Oh wow.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Right.”

  As I speak I feel that heat, like it could turn into yet another round of blushing. But it doesn’t. A plain old smile rises instead. Mia doesn’t seem to notice. She talks some more about her odd friendship with Gal, how he noticed that she likes to spend a lot of time reading in the park. About how her parents would go postal if they ever found out she was speaking with an Israeli, much less developing a fondness for the older, formal, scarred guy in the park who basically represents everything they escaped. She actually said “go postal” like it was no big deal, and I get that itch behind my eyes again. Mass shootings normal enough to create everyday slang. Most people don’t think about their language.

  “I know all about the hardships Mom and Dad faced,” Mia says. “But I can’t seem to hate Gal because of where he’s from. He agrees that things are messed up over there.”

  “Why is he here? In Hamilton, I mean.”

  “He immigrated after he got injured in the army. It was like twenty years ago.”

  “What’s with the scars?”

  “His vehicle got hit by a rocket when they attacked Ramallah.”

  “They?”

  “The Israelis.”

  I shake my head. “Unreal.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now he looks after a park.”

  Mia smiles. “Can’t get much more peaceful than that.”