Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  Dad said something quiet.

  “It’s on your head, then,” Mom said, sounding disgusted. “They’re your babies, mister. I want nothing, nothing, to do with them.”

  Uncle Mick howled when he saw Dad’s chicken coop. To Mom’s added annoyance, he began to sing the theme from “Green Acres,” the TV show that she hated the most. When he teased her long enough, she would give him a good whack to the side of the head, but she had to stand up on tiptoe to do it because she barely scraped five feet and he was nearly six. If he really wanted to bug her, he pretended to stagger around, clutching his head after she hit him, which drove her nuts and made her whack him even more. He never knew when to stop, and he sang “Green Acres” until the day she got out the broom and chased him through the house, and he tripped over the living-room rug and hit his head on the coffee table.

  For a few weeks me and Jimmy were the most popular kids around, because all the other kids wanted to hold the chicks and feed them. I ran home every day after school to watch them. Dad defended his latest project by saying that at least it got me away from the TV, but as the chicks grew older and less cute, the kids trickled away.

  Some time later, when Uncle Mick was babysitting us, we heard a chicken clucking on the roof. We looked at each other, puzzled. Dad had covered the backyard with fishnets so the hawks wouldn’t get at the chickens. Mick got a broom to chase it down, and Jimmy and I went out to help him. To our surprise, it was a crow, imitating the chickens, pretending to peck at the roof and then gurgling so it sounded almost like it was laughing. “I’ll be damned,” Mick said.

  The next morning, I awoke when I heard the chickens squawking. I thought they were fighting until I heard the hawks cry. I jumped up and ran to the window. There were large tears in the net over the coop. A chicken ran around and around, spurting blood from its missing head, until it fell over. Another chicken ran through the yard with its guts trailing behind it, flapping its one wing, shrieking. A hawk plunged through the net, squashed the screeching chicken in its grip and pecked its eyes. Mom chased the hawk out of the coop. She grabbed the half-eaten chicken as it ran by her. She picked it up and snapped its neck. Dad pulled me away from the window, and held me until I stopped crying.

  Seven of the chickens were killed that morning, and the rest escaped through the hole in the net and were hiding down on the beach. Mick and Dad tried to round them up, but the chickens had been badly spooked. They refused to be herded back. Reserve dogs got most of them, foxes got others, some German tourists ran over one on the highway and the hawks finished off the rest.

  “Lisa, we’re leaving now,” Mom says, shaking my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  Dazed, thinking of Uncle Mick and the chickens, it takes me a moment to wake up from the memories. I have a crick in my neck from the way I’ve been sitting. Mom stares down at me, frowning, the lines creasing her forehead and her eyebrows exaggerated by the harsh early-morning slant of the light.

  “Did you hear me?” she says.

  I nod. “Sorry. Daydreaming.”

  “You should go inside and get some sleep.”

  “Who’s driving you to the airport?” I say, struggling to get out of the patio chair.

  “Kate. She brought some lemon meringue pie, if you’re feeling hungry.”

  I shake my head. “Too early. I’ll have some later.”

  “You should eat,” she says.

  Dad is already loading their luggage into his older sister’s car. I wave and she waves back.

  “We’ll call you from Bella Bella,” Mom says, giving me a quick hug.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Oh,” she says casually, “Aunt Edith is staying over with you.”

  “Mom,” I say, exasperated. Lately they’ve been treating me like I can’t tie my own shoelaces. “I’m perfectly capable—”

  “Just to keep you company,” she says quickly.

  “And out of trouble,” Dad adds, coming up the steps. He gives me a hug too, squeezing my shoulders. “Don’t give her a hard time.”

  “Would I do that?” I say.

  “Behave yourself,” Dad says.

  “Eat,” Mom says.

  We say our goodbyes, and they wave as Aunt Kate drives them away. I stay on the front porch for a moment, then turn inside.

  I light a cigarette and Aunt Edith pointedly pushes a saucer my way. I nod thanks, but don’t look at her. My hands are shaking and I feel like absolute shit. Eyes are closing again. I need coffee but moving from this spot is going to be tough. Aunt Edith probably thinks I have a hangover. She caught me a few minutes ago, asleep in front of the TV, and woke me up to ask if I needed anything. I said no, but she is frying bacon and eggs and the smell makes me nauseous.

  Jimmy hates fried food. I tried to tell him that was all he was going to get on a boat. Staring through me, he said, “I’m not going out there for the cuisine.”

  “Well, why the fuck are you going?” I said.

  “To make things right.”

  “What things?”

  He ducked his head and muttered something about the money, and I know he told our parents he was saving up for his wedding. But he didn’t even tell his girlfriend he was leaving. “Jimmy?”

  He kept watching his feet. “Take care of yourself.”

  God, let this be an accident. Must have drifted off for a minute again. Or else Aunt Edith can move at superhuman speed. One second standing next to the stove, the next back at the table again. She takes the cigarette from my fingers and crushes it out. I realize I’m resting my face against the table. Can’t remember falling over. She shoves breakfast into my hands, murmuring a prayer of thanks. I taste the fuzz in my mouth.

  She moves through the kitchen with frenetic energy, wiping, sweeping, rearranging. My mother’s kitchen is tidy, but while I stir the eggs into a pale yellow pulp, Aunt Edith brings this room up to a level where you could perform open-heart surgery on the floors. I almost tell her to sit down and have a cup of coffee, but I decide to let her go. At least her way of dealing with stress gets the housework done. I force down some bacon with coffee. After I finish breakfast, she moves on to the living room. I watch her vacuuming the area rug and curtains and marvel at her stamina. Her fingers are swollen, but if you say anything about her arthritis, she glowers and tells you to mind your own beeswax. Dad says she’s already given her daughters her expensive jewellery. Practical yet morbid, she told them that if she made it clear right now who would get what there’d be fewer squabbles to mar her funeral.

  Jimmy would never hurt anyone. They must have had an accident. It would be the worst kind of irony if Jimmy died by drowning. He was never afraid of water. When we were kids, we spent almost the whole of our summers swimming.

  The village is squashed up against the mountains and the channel, a stretch of flat plain built up by Walth Creek. The beach in front of the village is mostly rocks and logs; you can swim there, but it isn’t sheltered like the bay, which also has the government docks and a breakwater made of logs linked together. The bay marks the end of the reserve, at the other side of the village from our house. The water there is relatively calm and shallow. We used to start swimming in late May, sometimes even in late April if the weather was hot enough. Jimmy was a drag, but Mom wouldn’t let me go swimming without him.

  On typical summer mornings, I would wake up late. Jimmy would already be watching cartoons. I’d change into my bathing suit and make myself some toast. Jimmy’s mouth would be smeared red with Jell-O powder, his favourite. I’d nudge him and he’d hand the Jell-O box over. I’d dip my toast in it, then hand it back.

  The day I remember most clearly was near the end of summer, the year after Mick came back. It started off the same: me and Jimmy watched cartoons until noon, then packed a lunch—a box of Jell-O and a peanut butter sandwich each, and greengages. We wrapped lunch in our towels and didn’t bother to dress, wore our bathing suits and headed to the bay. The pavement was too hot to go barefoot so I wore flip-fl
ops and Jimmy decided to wear his wading boots. He liked the sound they made when he didn’t wear socks and his feet started to sweat. Sort of a cross between a burping and a farting sound.

  Jimmy clomped behind me all the way to the bay. We claimed our spot on the docks by spreading our towels out. The tide was low and the sun was at just enough of an angle so that you could see the bottom, where there were piles of clamshell and a scattering of beer and pop cans. Minnows flashed near the surface. Jimmy kicked off his boots.

  “Bonzai!” he yelled. He hadn’t mastered the art of diving yet, so he belly-flopped into a school of minnows. He splashed around, trying to catch them, and I thought that six-year-old boys were possibly the stupidest animals on earth.

  Jimmy swam towards the beach where his friends were. I stayed on the docks, listening to my cousin Tab’s radio and suntanning. Tab was always a scrawny kid. She was born five pounds one ounce, and never grew past four foot eleven. Her thin hair escaped all attempts to tame it into ponytails or braids. She had two of her baby teeth made into earrings and told anyone who’d listen how she’d pried them out of her mouth herself. She wasn’t popular because people thought she was weird. I liked playing with her because she wasn’t worried about ruining her clothes and she taught me how to play poker and crazy eights. Everyone called her Tab, like the diet pop, but her real name was Tabitha. I thought her name was cool. I’d never let anyone call me Tab. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t give a flying fart what people called her as long as they left her alone.

  Another cousin, Erica, arrived, pausing at the top of the gangplank leading down to the docks. She shaded her face with one hand, surveying the territory. Her distinctive wavy blue-black hair was rolled into a ballerina’s bun. A gang of friends chattered behind her, wearing almost identical bathing suits. You could tell they’d gone shopping together and Erica had approved of this style, shimmering blue with spaghetti straps. They claimed spaces beside me. Tab shut the radio off. Erica pouted, artfully pursing her perfect Cupid’s bow lips. When Tab ignored her, Erica reached over and turned it back on. One of the boys who followed Erica around tried to get her attention by dumping a pail of water on her. She pushed him off the dock, and his friends grabbed her arms and legs and swung her back and forth like a hammock until they let her go and she fell shrieking into the water. Two guys came towards me, and it was either trust them not to drop me when they swung me or dive in myself. I plugged my nose and jumped.

  Although the ocean around Kitamaat warms up by August, this means that it’s no longer ice water but isn’t exactly tropical. Given a choice, I like to move in up to my ankles. Wait until my body adjusts. Up to the knees. Wait. Up to the thighs. Wait. And on and on, slowly, until I am dog-paddling around. Even then, I never enjoyed the first icy shock as much as Jimmy. I always felt panic, felt my heart stutter until I reached the surface. Erica swam up beside me and put her hand on my head when I surfaced. She let me catch a breath, then dunked me. After I struggled away, we went into a splashing fight that ended when Big Timmy did a belly flop beside us.

  I got brave and dived, opening my eyes underwater. Colours changed. Dark brown skin looked pale. Bright swimsuits looked dull. I surfaced. The blue of the sky was dark cobalt at its height, but became milky turquoise as it neared the mountains. I floated on my back until horseflies started to buzz around my head. I dived. Sounds changed too. The sounds of boats bumping against the docks and the docks creaking in the waves were magnified, but the yelling and tinny radio music were muted. My ears began to ache, but I felt light. I lifted my arms over my head and kicked my leg out so that I spun like the plastic ballerina in my jewellery box.

  When I came up for air, someone hit me on the arm and said, “You’re it!”

  I played tag until my arms and legs felt dislocated from the rest of me, then went back to the dock and ate my sandwich. I shared the Jell-O powder with Erica and her gang in return for Oreo cookies and Kool-Aid. “Look,” Tab said. She pointed with her chin out to the ocean.

  I turned. Jimmy was waving to me from the breakwater logs, thirty feet from the dock. I could see him slick and shiny with water, and watched him help pull his friends up. They ran to the end of the breakwater, leaping across the space between the logs, the space that opened and closed with the waves and the length of the chains that held the logs together. Every time they jumped, I imagined Jimmy falling. When they reached the end, they turned around and ran all the way back. Jimmy saw me still watching him. While his friends dived in, he waved to me again. I waved back. He shouted something. Probably “Bonzai!”

  He dived in. I waited. He didn’t surface. Long after his friends came up, he was still underwater. The skin on my arms and legs goose-pimpled. I didn’t move until I saw his head. When Jimmy pulled himself onto the dock, asking me for half of my sandwich. I said if he wanted more he could go home and he glared at me, but I glared right back at him. He was just about to tell me off, when he stopped, mouth open, eyes suddenly not seeing me at all, staring intently at something behind me. The chatter died off, and the other kids turned to stare. I twisted around to see what everyone was ogling.

  A new girl was coming down the gangplank. Without smiling or looking shy, she gave us all a flat, assessing glance. She paused, then flipped her waist-length hair behind her and walked over to sit beside a group of girls I never played with.

  “Who’s the snot?” I heard Erica whisper.

  “Adelaine Jones,” Tab whispered back. “Just moved back with her mother.”

  This girl was not just pretty, she was actual model material. Puppy-dog-eyed boys watched her sunbathing. Erica glared venomously. The new girl ignored us all. I hoped she went to our school, so I could watch her duke it out with Erica.

  “Adelaine,” I heard Jimmy whisper.

  We stayed in the bay until dinner. Jimmy wanted to go with me to Erica’s house, but I was tired of babysitting and told him to go home. When he didn’t, I told him we were going up the graveyard and we’d be playing there until dark.

  “I’m telling,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  I ate at Erica’s, a large house up the steep hill near the band council office. Aunt Kate frowned at our wet bathing suits, made us dry off on the porch, then stuffed us with huge chunks of watermelon, fresh buns and homemade blueberry jam. Then we all trooped outside and played a variation of tag by spitting watermelon seeds at each other until Aunt Kate called Erica in and told me and the rest of Erica’s gang that it was time to go home.

  Mom was waiting for me in the living room. “You shouldn’t have left Jimmy like that. You should know better.” I glared at the floor. “He’s your brother. He wants to be with you.”

  “He’s a poop-head.”

  “Lisa—”

  “He is! He’s a big, stupid poop-head.”

  “Enough.”

  Mad at the unfairness of it all, I started crying. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t raise my head, not wanting it to show.

  “Come here,” Mom said. When I didn’t, she came and stood over me. “He wants to do everything you do. He wants to go where you go. You think he’ll want that forever? He’s going to go his way and you’ll go yours, and this is what you’ll miss.”

  “Won’t.”

  She kissed the top of my head. “Will.”

  If you stand on your tiptoes and lean out the window, you can see the bay from our house. The bay curves out, and the part that juts into the ocean everyone simply calls the point. Beyond the point, there are the Octopus Beds, rocks that have long, smooth indentations where it looks like giant octopuses sleep. The channel itself is wide and deep, a saltwater sea. As I stand by the window, the channel is dull grey-blue under the clouds. The Greeks ironically called the Black Sea Euxinos: friendly to strangers. Those who know the ocean know it doesn’t make friends. Exitio est avidum mare nautis—the greedy sea is there to be a doom for sailors.

  I never understood Jimmy’s implicit trust that the water woul
d hold him safely. The first time we were at the Sam Lindsay Memorial Pool, Jimmy got in line for the swing, a thick, knotted rope that hung from the ceiling. The lifeguard asked Jimmy how old he was, and when he admitted he was six, the guard herded him back to the shallow end, where I’d been watching him. I shook my head, “Told you so.” He sat miserably on the side of the pool and kicked the water.

  The pool was a novelty. Usually we went down to the docks at the bay and splashed around. Jimmy liked the diving boards and the swing and the balls and other toys. I think he had no sense of smell, otherwise he would have been be as nauseated as I was from the bitter smell of chlorine. But that year in school, all the kids in my class had gone to the pool for swimming lessons. You had to be able to duck underwater twenty times in less than five minutes, stay underwater and blow bubbles through your nose, float on your back and do the deadman’s float before the swim instructors would allow you to progress to dog-paddling. I hadn’t even managed the bobbing-underwater part. Once underwater, my ears would ache and the water would press against me unpleasantly. I was afraid to open my eyes, afraid of the darkness and of not being able to breathe. I would shoot to the surface, gasping and frantically splashing. At the beginning of the lessons, there had been ten of us in the shallow end. By the last lesson, there was only me and a frustrated instructor, who put her hand on my head and held me under to show me I wouldn’t drown. I hit her shin until she let me go. She passed me on condition that I wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d done.

  I was determined not to be the only kid in the shallow end when we started swimming lessons again in the fall. I had four weeks left before school started; I was going to learn to bob if it killed me. It didn’t help that Jimmy copied me effortlessly. As I scrambled for the surface, he would stare up at me from underwater. If he’d been smug, I could have coped with it. I would have given him a good whack. But he gave me these soft, pitying looks that people give only when you are being truly pathetic.