Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  “Screw you,” Mick said, shoving Barry, who shoved him back.

  “Hey, you’re not my type,” he said.

  “Kids are present,” Dad said.

  “I got to get going,” Barry said, standing. He towered over Dad, but slouched so he was Mick’s height. “Think about it, Mick.”

  He shook his head. “I’m retired. Good to see you, though. Stay out of trouble, you crazy bastard.”

  Barry slapped his shoulder. “Take your own advice.”

  They laughed again and his friend nodded to us, then left.

  “What was that about?” Dad said.

  “Barry? He’s getting together support for another hopeless cause. Some caribou thing up north.”

  Dad asked if we could stay until ten or so, and Mick said that was no problem. Jimmy settled down in front of the TV and I waited until Dad was gone before I asked Mick if he was really married.

  “Another life,” he said. “Long, long ago. Who wants ice cream?”

  Mick took me q°alh’m picking in the spring. We wandered through the bushes, stopping to examine interesting trees or listen to birds or throw rocks in rivers. We scanned the ground for the serrated, broad leaves of thimbleberry and salmonberry shoots, q°alh’m. You had to be careful not to pick the ones higher than your knees, because once they were that tall the stalks became woody and no amount of chewing would make them soft.

  Winter in Kitamaat meant a whole season of flaccid, expensive vegetables from town. Q°alh’m was the first taste of spring. The skin of the shoots had a texture similar to kiwi skin, prickly soft. Once you peeled them, the shoots were translucent green, had a light crunch and a taste close to fresh snow peas. Q°alh’m picking lasts a few weeks at best.

  Mick had two large bundles of q°alh’m under his arms. I had a smaller one that I had reduced to two shoots by the time Mick was ready to go back to his truck.

  “Let’s drop this one off at Mother’s,” Mick said, holding up a bundle.

  Ma-ma-oo’s house was one of the oldest in the village, a box with a low-ceiling basement and a steeple-like roof. It was painted a plain, flat brown, which was peeling back to reveal grey wood. The glass in the windows was so warped that the world outside looked like it was being reflected through a fun-house mirror. She never liked gardening, so the lawn was wild, with tree-high elderberry bushes and a tangle of untrimmed grass.

  Mick opened the door and stepped inside, then said, “Yowtz!”

  “Mick!” Ma-ma-oo said. She was brushing her hands against her apron as she came out of the kitchen.

  “Here,” Mick said, handing her the bundles of q°alh’m.

  “Oh, I was wanting her,” she said. “Come in, sit, have tea.”

  We followed her into the kitchen where freshly baked biscuits were cooling on the countertops. Once I was eating and quiet she turned to Mick and they talked while I watched everything around me. Inside, she kept the house tidy, but she didn’t bother to decorate like other grandmas I knew. There was nothing on the walls, no doilies on the chairs, no knickknacks on her coffee table. Her saggy, orange sofa never moved from its spot by the front window. I was afraid to touch the curtains because they were so threadbare. If you breathed hard, they whispered against her cracking linoleum, which still had a few sparkles not worn out of its yellowing surface. She had a heavy, black rotary phone that rang like a fire alarm. On the phone stand, she kept a picture of her husband, Sherman, who had died before I was born; another picture of Uncle Mick holding a giant halibut; and a popsicle-stick house I’d made for her in kindergarten and painted hearts all over. Even when the glue wore out and the popsicle sticks fell off one by one, she didn’t throw it out.

  Ma-ma-oo wore Salvation Army thrift-shop clothes. Shirts and dresses she turned into aprons when they got too thin. When the aprons wore out, she made them into wash rags, and when the rags disintegrated, she used them for stuffing in her pillows. This habit of wearing things until they fell off her body annoyed Mom to no end. She would regularly buy Ma-ma-oo stylishly cut dresses, slacks and shirts. Ma-ma-oo would carefully put them in her storeroom and say she’d wear them when she was trying to impress someone.

  Her fishing nets, on the other hand, she kept immaculate, so they looked brand spanking new. Much later, I suggested that since she was so good at fixing nets, she’d probably be good at crocheting. She threw her head back and roared, laughing so hard she had to sit down.

  Ma-ma-oo never locked her doors, reasoning that she had nothing anyone would really want. I think it was because no one she knew had ever locked their doors and doing it seemed rude. We always locked our doors because once someone had broken into our house and taken our videos, video player and TV.

  Mom and Dad had shaken their heads at the state of things in the village.

  “It’s one of those druggies,” Mom had said.

  “Well,” Dad had replied, “now we can buy a VHS.” We’d got Beta because he claimed the quality was way better, but now it looked like everyone was going VHS. Because it was vaguely embarrassing to admit we’d picked the wrong machine, we’d never made the switch.

  Ma-ma-oo didn’t even have a Beta. Her TV was a relic from the black-and-white era, with foil wrapped around its rabbit ears. Sometimes it picked up truckers on their CBs or a radio station out of Vancouver. We’d be watching some soap and suddenly the characters would be interrupted by a voice saying that 16 was slick today, good buddy. The steep roof, the creaky, dark wood, the crooked steps, the smell of age and mildew would have been enough to keep all but the desperate away, but the truth was that no one broke into her house because everyone thought it was haunted.

  Mick liked to bring her things. When the salmonberries came out, we picked two buckets. I liked to pick out the red ones because the sweetness depends on the colour of the berry, with red being the sweetest, orange less sweet, and yellow the mildest. Ripe berries can be as long as the tip of your thumb, and are best picked before they become mushy. People who haven’t grown up with salmonberries call the taste watery and seedy. I think of the taste as a soft sweetness, a gentle flavour.

  Hand-high salmonberry shoots unfolded from tight fronds. Serrated, raspberry-like leaves unfurled as the shoots became stalks, then bushes. Hard, nubby buds opened into five-petaled hot-pink flowers about the diameter of a quarter. The petals formed a deep cup with a fuzzy yellow centre where the heavy, zingy nectar sparkled. As the petals fell, salmonberries poked through. They started off green and hard, looking like unripe blackberries. They plumped up and softened with the rain and ripened in the sun, suffusing jewel-bright red, orange or yellow, glowing against the green of the bush.

  Thimbleberries are completely different from salmonberries and come out just a bit later. The flat, white flowers don’t have the easily lickable nectar that salmonberries have, but their smell is sharper. The berries themselves are intensely sweet, like strong, fresh raspberries, but drier. I used to crush the berries against my lips because they left behind a stain the colour of the matte red lipsticks that Ma-ma-oo wore in the pictures of her youth.

  We picked berries for Ma-ma-oo, and then she made salmonberry stew. When we had a big bucketful of salmonberries and thimbleberries, we’d bring them to her and she’d soak them in a large pot with cold water and a bit of salt to chase the bugs out. She’d open her jars of blueberries and huckleberries then leave them on the table. We’d sit in her living room while the fresh berries were soaking and watch “The Young and the Restless,” “All My Children” or in the evening, “Dynasty.”

  “Lauren,” she’d shout at the TV, “leave him, he’s no good for you! Na’. What a crazy woman.”

  “Mother,” Mick would say. “It’s only TV. Everyone’s stupid on TV.”

  “I know, I know. Wah. She’s taking him back.” She shook her head sadly.

  After picking out the bugs, leaves and twigs, Ma-ma-oo would transfer all the berries to a clean bowl and mulch them all together. She added a few tablespoons of oolichan grease, s
tirring all the time, then added a sprinkling of sugar. She’d leave the bowl in the fridge for another hour to let the flavours meld and we’d watch some more TV until the salmonberry stew was ready, then we’d go into the kitchen and Ma-ma-oo would give me a little dessert bowl. We’d eat in respectful silence, Ma-ma-oo closing her eyes in ecstasy as she ate. The grease makes the berries sinfully rich, as thick as cheesecake. We’d split the stew, and I’d take my half home, so full I felt sleepy.

  Late in the spring, on Ba-ba-oo’s birthday, Ma-ma-oo took me down to the Octopus Beds. She brought a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a pack of Player’s cigarettes. She made me carry the box of Twinkies, with a stern warning that she knew exactly how many were left.

  “Go get wood,” she said, her face pinched.

  I ran along the beach and up into the bushes, picking up all the dry driftwood that I could carry, running back to her and laying it at her feet. The wind shook the trees. Down the Douglas Channel, I could see the white curtain of rain advancing towards us. The pre-rain air, muggy and thick around us, made it hard for her to light the fire.

  “Sherman,” she said to the air. “Happy birthday, you crazy old bugger. I brought you some things.”

  Ma-ma-oo brushed her hair back and opened the bottle of Johnnie Walker. She said some words in Haisla that I didn’t understand. She passed the bottle over the fire, which popped and sizzled.

  “This is for Sherman,” she said, placing it carefully near the centre of the flames. “You’d better appreciate that. Say hi to your ba-ba-oo, Lisa.”

  “But he’s not here,” I said.

  “Yes, he is,” she said. “You just can’t see him, because he’s dead.”

  I frowned. “Can you see him?”

  “She gets it from you,” Ma-ma-oo said to the air again. “No, I can’t see him. He’s dead. He can come to you only in dreams. Be polite and say hello when you give him food.” She handed me a Twinkie and told me to throw it in the fire.

  “Hello,” I said. I looked at the Twinkie thoughtfully. “Will he share?”

  “Say his name. If you don’t say his name, another ghost will snatch it up.”

  “Hello, Ba-ba-oo. I can count to ten in Haisla,” I said. I’d been telling everyone that all day, but no one would listen. “Want to hear?”

  “Go ahead. He’s listening.”

  I counted to ten in Haisla, then told Ba-ba-oo about what I did in school as I fed four Twinkies into the fire. Ma-ma-oo fed another four into the fire and I eyed the last two.

  “Isn’t he full yet?” I said.

  “Sherman’s a big hog,” she said.

  “Can’t we give him something else?”

  She shook her head. “Sherman doesn’t like anything else. You never did, did you?” She talked to him for a while and soon I felt left out and bored.

  The rain hit, fat drops that spat up dirt and hissed on the choppy ocean. Ma-ma-oo said goodbye and kicked the fire out, took my hand, stopped one last time to look out at the water, to the place where Uncle Mick always put his net.

  Ma-ma-oo said that Ba-ba-oo used to paddle out with the tide in the morning and come back on it at the end of the day. When he was a teenager, he had such massive arms that he was always a sports-day favourite in the canoe races. Everyone wanted him on their team. One day, he slipped getting into the bathtub, hit his head, was knocked out and drowned. The water overflowed and ran under the door. Uncle Mick had to kick in the door when Ma-ma-oo got worried. He wouldn’t let Ma-ma-oo into the bathroom until he’d checked that Ba-ba-oo wasn’t alive, turned the water off and put a towel over him.

  As I was getting ready for school that night, Mom asked me what I did and I told her about everything except Ma-ma-oo and the Octopus Beds. I was uncomfortable sharing it with her. It felt like it was something private.

  When the weather was good, Tab and I would bike to the top of Suicide Hill. We didn’t go to my house much. Mom was always poking her head in my bedroom to see what we were up to. She watched Tab as if she expected her to tuck something into her pocket, which she had done once. As Tab was leaving, one of Mom’s earrings dropped on the floor. Mom held out her hand. Tab picked it up and, looking sheepish, gave the pair back to Mom.

  Instead of biking up Suicide Hill, Tab said we should go to the graveyard and smoke. We stopped near Ba-ba-oo’s grave. He had a white, stone headstone that read, “Sherman Hill: March 30, 1923—February 7, 1970. Beloved Husband.” Ma-ma-oo kept an ashtray at the foot of the headstone. Ba-ba-oo had lost his arm in the Second World War, at Verrières Ridge. When he came home, he couldn’t get a job or get the money he thought he should get from Veterans Affairs because they said Indian Affairs was taking care of him. Indian Affairs said if he wanted the same benefits as a white vet, he should move off reserve and give up his status. If he did that, they’d lose their house and by this time, they had three children and my dad, Albert, was on the way.

  “Geordie and Edith helped as much as they could,” Mick had told me, squeezing my hand. “But they had their own family. My father worked hard all his life, and now he would say things like, ‘Agnes, I’m useless.’ She didn’t know what to do.”

  I hadn’t seen Ma-ma-oo for a few weeks now. She’d been cranky ever since the feast. Tab broke open a pack of cigarettes and handed one to me. She managed to make it look cool, but I still hacked and had to hold the headstone when the buzz hit. My throat itched and the sour taste of stale cigarettes lingered on my tongue. Tab’s lighter clicked and the hiss of the flame was followed by the smell of her lighting up another cigarette. “You ever think of just leaving?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah.” She rubbed her arms. “As soon as I’m sixteen, I’m going to go work in the cannery in Rupert and save all my money. Then I’m going to buy a house. It’ll be small, and I’ll have to do a lot of work on it, but it’ll be mine.”

  She said it with such seriousness, I was convinced it would have to happen that way.

  At Kemano, there is a graveyard. Leave our house with its large, black-eyed windows staring out at the channel. Follow the path down to the beach. Follow the beach to the point, about a three-minute walk. Enter the trees, step over the fallen logs and watch out for the prickly, waist-high devil’s club.

  All graveyards should have moss-covered trees creaking in the wind and the sound of the waves grating the round stones on the beach. The trees are so high and large here that under this canopy, even the brightest day is pale. Wander slowly, careful where you step. No neat row of crosses, no meticulous lawn, no carefully tended flowers will guide you. Too sterile, antiseptic. Headstones carved into eagles, blackfish, ravens, beavers appear seemingly at random. In the time of the great dying, whole families were buried in one plot. Pick wild blueberries when you’re hungry, let the tart taste sink into your tongue, followed by that sharp sweetness that store-bought berries lack. Realize that the plumpest berries are over the graves.

  Night and everything is quiet again. Aunt Edith’s voice is low and sad somewhere inside. Tupperware is piled and squashed in the fridge, all loaded down with my favourite foods. Tradition. A human need to express sympathy with tangibles. Cards. Brownies. Our living room is crowded with flowers. Jimmy has a lot of friends.

  I stand up. Stretch my neck, my arms, then shake out my legs. I ended up napping on the porch again. Staying inside is out of the question. Feel antsy. Must move. Must do something. Aunt Edith has probably scrubbed the house right down to the foundations. The clouds have blocked the stars and moon. The lights from the village twinkle in the high tide, but much farther down the channel only the red beacon flashing against the black shows that there’s anything out there. I lean against the railing, get the chills as the dream comes back in snippets, flashes of bright Technicolor.

  Aunt Edith speaks urgently into the phone, but when I walk into the living room, she smiles at me. “It’s your mom.”

  I take the phone. “Any news?”

  “No,” Mom says. “We’re going out to
Namu tomorrow morning. Edith said you were sleeping. Sorry to wake you.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “Good to hear you made it down in one piece.”

  It must have come out odd, because there is a long silence from Mom’s end. “We had a good flight.”

  “Good, good. That’s good.” As the awkward pausing goes on and on, I think, if you say a word long enough, it loses meaning. What’s “good”? What the hell am I trying to say? Fuzzy thinking. Need a hit of coffee. I say this and she laughs.

  “No more coffee. Just get some sleep, Lisa,” she says. “Your dad wants to say hi.”

  “Okay.”

  The phone clunks down. Mom says something I can’t quite catch, and Dad comes on, breathless. “Hi, how ya doing?” Overly cheerful, in full and complete “nothing’s wrong” mode.

  “Tired,” I say.

  “Just got out of the shower,” Dad says. “Everyone’s being friendly. They say there’s a good chance we can pick him up on one of the islands. He’s such a strong swimmer, they think he made it even if”—a couple of words from Mom that sound like For Christ’s sake—“even if we can’t find anyone else,” he finishes quietly.

  “I know you’ll find him,” I say.

  “You be good,” he says.

  “You too,” I say.

  We mumble goodbyes, and as I’m hanging up the phone, Aunt Edith hands me a mug of chamomile tea. It’s got at least a half-cup of honey and a sprig of mint. She sits beside me. “Why don’t you just go to bed?”

  I nod. “In a minute.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I just ate.”

  Aunt Edith lowers her head and gives me a stern look over her glasses. “You missed lunch.”

  Caught, I don’t bother to deny it. My stomach growls.

  “How about some half-smoked?” she says.

  “Sounds good.” I say this mostly to stop her from hovering over me. I know she’s being considerate, but it gets on my nerves.

  She opens a jar of half-smoked salmon and boils it. She peels some potatoes, puts oolichan grease on a saucer, cleans some green onions, then we wait for the potatoes and fish to be done.