This is why I cannot expect you to understand that when Jamie Burns came past me and started up that now infamous kick which won him the national title in the 1,500 metres – his wild, chased-by-the-train-sprint that carried him around me, past Bourque and all the way up to Graham – I cannot expect you to understand that when this happened, I was caught up, caught up for the first and only time in my life, in one of those pure ecstatic surges that I believed only religious people ever experienced. Even as it unfolded in front of me and I watched Graham hopelessly trying to hold him off, I knew I had never wanted anything more than this, just to see Burner come up even and then edge his way forward in those last few steps and come sailing across the line with both his hands in the air. I did not care that this was such a small thing or that it could be shared with so few. I knew only that this event, this little victory mattered to me in some serious way that was probably impossible to communicate. I didn’t pray for it to happen because there would be nobody to receive a prayer like that. But I did wish for it and even the wish told me something I had never known about myself before. We are what we want most and there are no miracles without desire. That’s why a mom can lift a car off her child after the accident and a guy can survive a plane crash and live in the woods for a week drinking only the sweat wrung from his socks. That’s how Burner won that race, by miraculous desperation.
If you are not the person who wins, then the finish line of a 1,500 can be a crowded place. There are bodies collapsing and legs giving out and people wandering around with dazed and exhausted looks on their faces. Burner’s kick caught everybody by surprise. Even the announcer lost control of the story. For the last fifty meters he just kept shouting “Will you look at that. Look. It’s Burns at the end. Look.”
I’d been so busy watching that nothing changed for me. I ended up exactly where I was before and never got past Bourque. I finished fourth, the worst place to be, but it was still more than I expected. People from the paper were taking pictures as I walked over to Burner. When he turned around we both just started laughing and shaking our heads.
“You bastard,” I said and I pounded both my fists against his shoulders.
“Where did that come from? How in the hell . . .”
“No idea,” he said. “I thought I was out of it, but I decided to go in the end and everything else just happened.”
Other people, strangers I had never seen before, were coming around slapping him on the back and giving their congratulations. The whole place was still kind of quivering because no one had ever seen a guy come back from being that far down. Every eye was on Burner and everyone was talking about that last stretch and trying to find a place for it in their own personal histories.
One of the drug officials came over and took Burner away to go pee in his cup and prove that everything was natural. As he was being led off, he turned back and told me to wait for him.
“You’re going to be busy,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Just wait,” he said.
For those next fifteen minutes I was kind of stuck between two different versions of my self. I wandered back over to my bag and started to get dressed again. I looked around the track and it seemed like this big chunk of my past was kind of crystallizing behind me and freezing into permanence. Whatever the next thing would be was still way ahead, indistinct and foggy and I had no idea what it would look like. I pulled off those ugly spikes and in a mock-dramatic moment I tossed them into a garbage can and I just stood there for a while feeling the cool grass on my bare feet.
Burner came jogging back from his test soon after that, but every step he took there was somebody else there shaking his hand and patting the top of his bald head. All around him people were smiling and a couple of younger kids asked for his autograph and wanted to get their pictures taken with him. Burner drank it in like one of those actors standing on the red carpet before the Oscars begin and even though it took him a while to make it across the track, he kept looking up at me every couple seconds, letting me know that I was still the final destination and our planned warm-down was still going to take place.
When he finally made it over he had this ridiculously huge grin on his face and he kind of shrugged his shoulders.
“What can you do?” he said. “It’s all crazy.”
“They get your pee?” I asked. “Everything okay in that department?”
“No problem,” he said.
He pulled on a dry T-shirt and his own pair of high-tech sweatpants and said he was ready to go.
When we made it out of the stadium everything quieted down very quickly. The announcer’s voice had moved on to the final of the women’s 400 hurdles and we could just barely hear him as we turned away and went backwards along the same streets we had run earlier. Whenever you do that – go back along the same course, but in the opposite direction – it’s strange how some scenes are so familiar and others look so completely different you wonder how you missed them the first time around. It’s just the change in perspective, but sometimes, especially when you’re in a foreign city, you can get yourself pretty disoriented and lost. Then you have to slow down and look around and try and locate a recognizable landmark before you can be sure you’re on the right track.
Burner and I fell into a nice rhythm right away and our feet clipped along almost in unison. We went back past all those houses where nobody cared and it felt fine and comfortable. Our breathing was the only conversation and it said that we were both relaxed and taking it easy. Some of the neighbourhood kids were still out shooting baskets in their driveways and practicing tricks with their skateboards.
We just floated down those anonymous sidewalks and carved our way though the maze of minivans and garbage cans. We made a turn and were just about to head back to the stadium when a bunch of kids came streaking past us on their bikes. There were four or five of them, a couple boys and a couple girls, probably between the ages of seven and nine. Real kids, not yet teenagers. One of the boys almost hit us as he went by and another one kept trying to jump his BMX up and down over the driveway cut-outs of the curb. There was a girl on a My Little Pony bike. She had multi-coloured beads on all her spokes and red and white streamers trailing back from her handlebars. Her hair was wispy and blonde. As she came by, she turned around and yelled “I’m faster than you are.” She sort of sang it in a mean, bratty way, using the same up-and-down teasing music that accompanies every “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”
“You can’t catch me,” she said and she stuck her tongue out and pedalled harder. Her pink shoes swivelled around in circles.
One of the boys, a kid wearing a tough-looking camouflage T-shirt, zipped around us and swerved in tight to cut me off. As he pulled away, he shot us the finger and said “Nice tights, loser.”
I glanced over at Burner and said “Let it go,” but it was too late. His face was tightening up and that angry stare was coming back into his eyes. He wasn’t looking at me.
“Hey,” he yelled and you could feel the edges hardening around that one little syllable. He pulled ahead of me and started tracking them down. I was caught unprepared and a step behind and I couldn’t figure out how we had managed to arrive at this point. Burner was charging again and the kids were running. They didn’t know. There was no way on earth they could have known. The little girl was pedalling as fast as she could and there was this strange, high-pitched, wheezing sound coming out of her, but there was nothing she could do. Burner had already closed the gap and his hand was already there, reaching out for the thin strands of her hair. It all disintegrated after that. He must have been a foot taller than the oldest one.
Wonder About Parents
Lice. The third week. Head checks in the morning and head checks at night after the baths. You need to go slowly. A separate bath for every person. New water. Fresh pillow cases every night. New sheets. New blankets. The washing machine is going to die. Hats and T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts. Brushes and combs and hair elastics. Water boiling in the kett
le. Everything that touches us needs to be scalded.
What to look for. The eggs, nits, stuck to the shaft, close to the scalp. Dark if they’re fresh, translucent if they’ve already hatched. A seven-day gestation cycle. The nymphs, freshly born, almost impossible to spot without experience. You learn to see. A dot that shouldn’t be there, smaller than a comma or a freckle, moving, but not mature enough to reproduce. Seven more days to reach full growth. The adults are grey and black, size of a poppy seed. They hate the light and run from it, down the part in a child’s hair. Wingless, flightless, they crawl from head to head. One mature louse can lay ten eggs a day, one hundred fifty eggs in a lifetime. Around the ears, the base of the neck, the crown: these are the warmest spots on the human skull. Kids scratched raw. Bleeding sometimes.
The shampoo is not so bad – more flower than chemical – but it tingles and has to stay on the head for ten minutes to work. The pharmacist will put it in a discreet paper bag and whisper to you about side-effects. Asthmatics should seek alternative treatment. Between application and rinsing, we walk around wearing matching towels and shower caps. Same treatment for everybody, even the two-year-old.
Don’t touch. Don’t rub your eyes.
Bag hat, she says, scrunching it with her fingers. Funny bag hat.
Ten minutes on each head. Enough time for the killing ingredient to soak all the way through. De-lousing. Then rinse. Naked kids, braced between our legs, standing under the shower. Facecloths over their eyes and mouths. Don’t swallow any of this water. Spit it out. Spit right now. A scar on our daughter’s stomach from before. We go through with a fine-toothed comb. It is made of metal, comes in a plastic sleeve with the shampoo. Every inch of every head every night. The box says repeat application after seven days. Repeat again if infestation persists. It has been three weeks. Thought we were finished and clear. Then, today, a perfect specimen, a text book example, crawling out of our daughter’s bangs.
Treats for everyone who is good. For everyone who can stay still, who doesn’t complain or scratch or talk about it. A secret. Only for the people who live in this house.
Chicken bugs, chicken bugs, says the youngest. Bugs that lay eggs on your head.
Notes sent out on blue paper. The school is overrun. Public health. A new look for the oldest. Tight braids woven close to her head. Stare at other kids coming off the bus. Which one of you is the source of this? Wonder about parents. The fine lines. Different levels of commitment. Who is lazy and who is not? Dirty or clean. It makes no difference. Together no matter how you feel about it. All of us moving through at the same time. Shared threats. Cross-contamination. One passed hat, two kids leaning over the same desk. Good Lego. A colouring book. Clay. Work too close and the whole cycle starts again.
WE DO BATH and we do pyjamas and we do story. The Magic School Bus becomes a lizard, then a moth. Ms. Frizzle. A lesson about camouflage. How to hide in plain sight. Tucking in. Kisses and hugs. Settling down. Noise. Whispers and rustling at first, then steady breathing in the rooms. Quiet. Nine o’clock.
I sit on the couch. Nothing for three minutes. Strange thick silence in the house. Water running in the pipes. The last two hours of a day. Aftermath.
She comes down, still wet from the shower. T-shirt and underwear.
Okay, she says, I’ll do you and you do me.
My head in her lap. Gooseneck desk lamp pulled down close. Bulb warm on the base of my neck. Our dishwasher hums. She works the metal comb through my hair. Rolls my skull from side to side, up and down, front to back. Ten minutes. Taps her fingers on my temple.
All done, she says. Nothing new. Nothing I can see.
My mouth on the elastic of her underwear. The smell of lotion. Soap.
We switch. Her face in my crotch.
I wouldn’t get any ideas if I were you, Romeo.
Fold the rows of her hair with a skewer from the shish kebab set. Need to follow straight lines. Keep everything systematic. Front to back, side to side, up and down. It takes half an hour with long hair. She falls almost asleep. I pull an egg down the whole length of the shaft. Find one living insect, mature. Pluck it from her skin and watch it wriggle on my middle finger. Bring my thumb down hard. All the strength I can muster. The pressure between two points, crushing. I separate my fingers. The legs are stilled. Its body rests in a circle of her blood. Red seeps into my fingerprint. Parasite. Life sucked from our lives.
My hand on her cheek.
All done.
She comes back. Sleepy drool. The open slot of my Christmas boxers. Wetness around Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Are we good? she says.
Yeah. Only one live one.
I guess that’s progress.
Can’t go on forever.
No.
She touches her fingertips to her forehead and runs them from the hairline over her eyelids and down to her cheeks.
Tired.
I know.
I’m going to go up now. Don’t you stay too long. Big day tomorrow.
Yes.
Night.
It’s going to be okay.
I know.
Good night.
If you blow up an adult louse three hundred times, you can see its claws. Black and white shots in all the brochures and pamphlets. Textured stills taken with a good camera and a microscope. The things I have learned in the last three weeks. Websites. A book from the library: Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser, written in 1934. What he tells me: “As far as we can ascertain, since man has existed, the louse has been his inseparable companion.” Aristotle believed they came from nothing, that lice were the only creatures in life that ‘generated spontaneously.’ Part of our bodies, he thought, proceeding directly from us. Born out of human sweat. He couldn’t get close enough. Couldn’t imagine their cycle. But look now. Obvious when you magnify. Females and their eggs. Sticky, water resistant sacs glued to a thread. Three pairs of pinchers for each adult. Tight and knife sharp. Worse than a lobster. Look at the stills. Each of the six legs wrapped around a single strand of hair. Or digging into the scalp. They drink your blood. Found one in a 5,000-year-old Egyptian tomb. Still there. Holding onto the carefully braided hair of a mummified little girl.
The present tense. Everything happens here. A guy banging on the front door of the university house she shares with four other girls. Late on a Friday night. My first time in this place. One of her roommates moaning in the next room. Our beds less than a foot apart, separated by drywall and air. Give it to me, the girl on the other side says. Coos up high like a bird. Give it to me.
We are her unintended audience. Quiet. Rolled eyes and suppressed giggles. Oh, the ecstasy, she whispers to me. Back of her hand on her forehead. Half-open mouth. The ecstasy. We laugh. Move in silence.
The knocking comes loud and fast. Shakes us up. Somebody with a purpose in the middle of the night. He screams her name. Hammers on the aluminum door frame. Her name first, then the strike. Knuckles on the windows. Glass rattling near its breaking point. Hear the ping. We are nineteen years old. Four or five in the morning. What was his name? The guy banging on the windows that night? The guy calling for you?
He howls for five minutes. Gets tired. Goes away. We think he’s played out, but no.
I know you’re in there.
Banging. Hard cracking in his voice.
I’m sorry, he says. I just want to talk. I screwed it up. I know. I’m sorry.
I know you’re there.
Two seconds of nothing, then he turns.
I swear to fucking God.
Hard strike. Something rattles loose in the frame.
If there’s anybody else in there with you.
Bang.
His shoulder and a running start. Slamming himself against the door. Feel the give in the walls. Deep tremor moving through the house.
I’m coming in. I told you I’m sorry. There better not be anybody there.
The roommate shouts, I’m going to call the cops.
I move
to get up, push the covers away. I am taller than I am now.
I’ll talk to him, I say. He needs to move on before the police show up and it gets ugly.
Pants and shoes. Fumbling for a shirt. Her hand on my arm pulling me back down. A shushing finger. Something extra, left over from another episode.
Stay, she whispers.
Come on. He’s just a drunk. He’ll move along.
She shakes her head.
What?
Nothing. Just stay and be quiet. He’ll give up.
Origins. A pretty girl in a bar. Notice her Clash T-shirt. Combat Rock. Probably second-hand. Thin and worn out. Almost see through. The way it follows her body. We walk out of the city snow and into the same place at the same time. That is it. Strangers. Open mic night at The Bridge. Cold swirl of white moving in the air behind us. See it again whenever the door is opened. Unwind our scarves. Pitchers of draft. Nothing to each other. Small talk. What is your middle name? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Where exactly do you come from? Band flyers taped to the walls in her room. A beaded curtain and candles. Starting off. How to do this the right way. Then the noise. A guy banging at the door. He is the entire past. The only person I have ever met who knows who you are.
Light Lifting Page 4
