Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  “The next time I bake with this,” she said as I strolled into the kitchen, “you’ll be getting married.”

  “Yeah? To who?” I said.

  “Someone rich.” Then she said it was time to go and that she wanted to show me something. She brought the cake out to the car and I thought we were going to a funeral, but we went to the docks instead. We climbed into her boat, she cast us off and we left the village. I held the cake in my lap as we bumped along. She beached the boat just below the old graveyard. We struggled through the snow and bare branches to arrive at the first graves.

  “Lots of family here,” she said. She pointed out long-dead cousins, great-aunts and uncles, great-grandparents. “This is your great-grandfather. He was a good hunter. Never missed a shot. He was a sniper in the first war.”

  “Oh,” I said, staring at the plain white headstone. Hector Hill, it read, 1902–1943.

  “He loved my baking,” she said.

  “Is it his birthday?”

  “No,” she said. “Just visiting.”

  We built a small fire and she fed it her cake. “You been in a lot of trouble these days.”

  I stared at my feet and waited for the lecture.

  “Your ba-ba-oo was a fighter too. Second war. I was so proud of him. He was very handsome in his uniform. All the girls were jealous of me.” When I looked up, she was smiling at me. The graveyard was filled with creaking trees and skittering things. The woods were shadowed and eerie.

  “You scared?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good. Don’t be scared. Only ghosts here are relations.”

  I shivered, staring around, feeling the silence as a tangible thing, heavy and smothering. Imagining eyes staring at us and judging me.

  “Do you know where Mick is?”

  “Rotting in the ground,” I said bitterly.

  “I bet you anything he’s arguing away with your ba-ba-oo. Never got along for more than five minutes, those two. He’s meeting Hector. And Eleanor. And Phillip. Lots of singing, dancing. Good place, where he is. Good people with him.”

  “So you don’t miss him?”

  “All the time. So does your dad. He hides it. You hide it.”

  “I don’t see you crying.”

  “I cut my hair when he died. I talk to him every day.”

  “What do you say?

  She sang a low, sad song, first in Haisla, then in English:

  Food is dust in my mouth without you.

  I see you in my dreams and all I want to do is sleep.

  If my house was filled with gold, it would still be empty.

  If I was king of the world, I’d still be alone.

  If breath was all that was between us, I would stop breathing to be with you again.

  The memory of you is my shadow and all my days are dark, but I hold on to these memories until I can be with you again.

  Only your laughter will make them light; only your smile will make them shine.

  We are apart so that I will know the joy of being with you again.

  Take care of yourself, wherever you are.

  Take care of yourself, wherever you are.

  She touched my hair. I put an arm around her waist. “Your great-grandfather Hector made that song when his wife, Eleanor, died. Oh, he had a beautiful voice.” She looked at the sky. “Getting dark. Kick the fire out.”

  When I got home, I went into Mom’s sewing room and hunted for a pair of scissors. Mom caught me in the middle of cutting my hair. She let out a horrified shriek and ran into the room to grab the scissors away from me. We wrestled for them. She won after smacking me on the side of the head and saying, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m mourning,” I said.

  “God,” she said, touching the side that I’d cut down to the scalp. “God.”

  “It’s just hair, Mom.”

  “It was beautiful hair. Oh, sweetie.” She sat down on the bed, reluctantly handing me back the scissors and letting me continue to cut my hair, pressing her hand against her mouth and making squeaking noises as I chopped the rest of it off. Then she marched me down to the kitchen, threw a garbage bag over my shoulders and stared at my head for a long time, her eyes squinting in concentration.

  “Yes,” she said, starting her barber’s razor. “Yes, I think we can save this.”

  She carefully shaved the sides and the back and spiked the top, leaving the left side long so it all fell over in a prickly arch. She touched the ends with gel and sighed. She handed me a mirror. “It’s the best I could do.”

  “You are so cool,” I said, massively impressed with my new do.

  I wasn’t sure if there was a ceremony that went along with the hair burning, but just the cutting alone had made me feel better. Mom said she’d heard we were supposed to burn it. I didn’t know how to start a fire, though, and Mom said that if she tried to chop wood for the basement stove, she’d probably hack off a leg. I stood on the back porch and tried to use a lighter to set handfuls of hair on fire over a metal garbage can. But my hair had been long and thick, so it took forever and burnt my fingers. In the end, we fired up the hibachi and threw my hair on the coals.

  “I can’t believe we’re barbecuing your hair,” Mom said.

  “I like mourning,” I said.

  As I was drifting off to sleep, I thought of Mick. I wanted him back. I whispered his name. For a moment, I felt light, free, as if a warm wind blew through me, making my skin tingle. I was filled with a sense of calm, peace, and I saw Kitlope Lake, flat and grey in the early-morning light, mirroring the mountains.

  At school the next morning, Erica’s goon Lou Ann came up to me five minutes before the first buzzer rang and told me she was going to kick my butt good later. She was a head taller than me and about twice my weight. Since she told me just before classes, I knew she was trying to psych me out so I’d worry about it all day.

  Ironically, for the first time in months, I didn’t want to fight. But I didn’t want to get my butt kicked either and Lou Ann never backed down. No matter what I did or said, it was going to happen. I’d hurt Erica too much to be left alone. I resigned myself to getting creamed. So instead of waiting for Lou Ann to come get me, I went up to her at lunch and without preamble punched her in the nose. To my surprise, she collapsed to the pavement and began wailing so loud I thought I’d broken it. The teacher on playground patrol came running. I spent the afternoon in detention and was warned that the next time I was caught fighting, I’d be suspended for three days. The principal phoned my house and Mom yelled at me, telling me I was a disgrace. On the bus ride home, there was a circle of empty seats around me.

  Thoroughly depressed, I didn’t notice that Frank and his friends had followed me off the bus. They blocked my way as I tried to go around them. I frowned at him, secretly glad that we were going to have it out. Hitting someone who wouldn’t burst into tears would be a relief.

  “You’re okay,” Frank said.

  If he had ripped off all his clothes and set his hair on fire, he couldn’t have surprised me more. It must have showed, because he started grinning.

  “Big Lou had it coming,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, more to say something than because I agreed with him.

  “We’re going up to the old hall.” He watched me. I realized this was an invitation.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was a trap. It had to be. They were going to kick the shit out of me. That’s what was going to happen. But even knowing that, I wanted to go. I hadn’t played with anyone in months.

  We ran. The other guys didn’t say anything. I thought they were being snobby, but I didn’t mind. Council Hill was slippery. We scooted up, around the hairpin turn and right to the top, where the old hall had stood before they tore it down so kids wouldn’t play in it and get hurt. We were all out of breath.

  “She’s on my side,” Frank said.

  We split up. Three guys went one way and I followe
d Frank and his friend Pooch down the path that led to the graveyard. We dumped our books behind a waist-high snow fort. Frank and Pooch started making snowballs. Not knowing what else to do, I copied them. When we had a big pile, they crouched behind the wall and waited.

  The attack came a few minutes later. Two guys came straight at us, yelling and hooting, while the other snuck around the back and rained snowballs at us from the trees. I chucked a few polite snowballs in their general direction until I got hit in the chest so hard the wind went out of me. Then I started belting them, and to my surprise, none of the guys got mad at me when I hit them—in my experience, if you hit too hard the game stopped and everyone glared at you and called you a mean poor sport. The attack ended, and Frank and Pooch charged after them. We attacked their fort, then they attacked our fort again, and it went on until the sun set.

  By some unspoken rule, I’d never played with boys before. When I was friends with my cousin Erica, we’d agreed that they were icky and stupid. We’d even made a pact that if we ever kissed one, we’d cut our lips off. These days, I heard Erica whispering about this boy or that on the bus, and her friends would all agree that so-and-so was cute. I couldn’t understand it and didn’t want to.

  The day after the snowball fight in the graveyard, I was a part of Frank’s gang and, as such, untouchable. At recess, while the other girls stayed in the undercover areas, out of the snow and wind, I went off and had a smoke with the guys. Frank brought out the pack. He handed it around and everyone took one. He lit his with a practised ease that the other boys tried to mimic. I had never been so grateful to Tab in my entire life. If she hadn’t shown me how to smoke before she left, I would have looked wussy. When Frank threw me the matchbook, I made a decent go of it. I didn’t even cough. Frank was impressed, and I was officially cool.

  In PE class that afternoon, we had dodge ball. Those of us in Frank’s gang formed our own circle. We agreed that you got out only if you were hit in the head. The game was fast, hard and dirty. After one of the guys got a bleeding nose, the teacher broke us up and made us join the other circles, and I was put in with all girls. I won every time because none of the girls would even breathe my way. Apparently, it was all right to want to date a boy, but not to go out and play with one, let alone join a guy gang. Intensely bored, I looked wistfully over at Frank and Pooch, who were hurling balls at the ceiling. In the change room, I got a lot of looks. But when I stared back, the girls turned away. A part of me still wanted to be like them; but somehow it didn’t matter.

  Contacting the dead, lesson two. You are in a large mall near closing time. It’s Christmas Eve. You turn away for just a moment, look back and your toddler is gone. Even through the noise, even through the confusion of bodies bumping and swearing as you push through the crowd, even as you yell your child’s name, you are listening for that one voice to call for you.

  Names have power. This is the fundamental principle of magic everywhere. Call out the name of a supernatural being, and you will have its instant and undivided attention in the same way that your lost toddler will have yours the second it calls your name.

  Passing Clio Bay, and the squall has just ended. I can see the next one coming, the sleek curtain of rain angled by the wind. Clio Bay has an appropriately picturesque mountain in the background, with the kind of peak kids draw when they think of mountains, sharp and pointed. The bay itself is small but deep. I forget which family used to live here—Ma-ma-oo told me on one of our fishing trips.

  The coming squall is near Ga-bas’wa, the mountain in the middle, which divides the channel in half: the English name is Hawkesbury Island. Going north around Ga-bas’wa will take you right to Hartley Bay and the ocean. But going south is faster even though the channel twists and turns, because I’m aiming for the inside passage, a stretch of water sheltered by islands from the extreme surf and chancy weather of the open Pacific Ocean. To get there, I’ll be traveling down the Verney Passage. I’m going by Ursula Channel so I’ll pass Monkey Beach first, then the ghost town of Butedale, then Bella Bella and finally Namu.

  I wonder where Mom and Dad are now. They probably didn’t sleep much either. Dad hates boats. He gets seasick. I hope he remembered to get Gravol. He likes his boats big, ferry-sized, heavy and steady. Boats are second nature to Mom, who spent a summer as a cook on her cousin’s seiner. It toughened her up, she said, made her realize what she wanted out of life, decide what was important, and gave her enough money to rent a nice apartment when she went to beauty school. She was thrilled when Jimmy decided to go fishing. “It’s just what he needs,” she’d said as we waved goodbye to him barely three weeks ago.

  Jimmy phoned us when he and Josh stopped over in Bella Bella before going on to their fishing point in Area 8. I wasn’t there when he called, but Mom said he was sore and tired and didn’t want to talk long. As she gushed about how mature he sounded, I felt an intense surge of relief. If he was chatting to her about his aches and pains, he could hardly be planning anything stupid.

  Jimmy was in awe of Frank and his buddies, but the awe didn’t transfer to me. I avoided breakfast with him because it always ended with him lecturing me on the evils of smoking. I would be stirring my cereal, trying to pry my eyes open, and he would sit across from me, yapping about how black my lungs were getting and how I was going to die of cancer. One day, I flicked a spoonful of Cheerios at him. He sat with a deer-in-headlights expression and a Cheerio stuck to his cheek while the milk dripped down to his chin. I hocked another spoonful to see what he would do.

  “That’s mature,” he snapped. He wiped his face with his napkin and glared at me. “That’s very mature.” When he rolled his eyes and looked disgusted, I grinned.

  “I thought it was funny.”

  “See me laughing?”

  “Yeah, you’re a riot too.”

  If Jimmy had no sense of humour, it didn’t seem to bother the girls in the preteen set. Gaggles of girls left notes in his locker, phoned our house after school then hung up when I answered, knocked on the door and stood there giggling, trying to peer over my shoulder to see if Jimmy was home. He could have had his choice of girlfriends, but he wasn’t interested. It would, he said solemnly, interfere with his practice schedule. His aloofness didn’t discourage any of them, and even seemed to add to his mystique. On his tenth birthday, so many girls gave him teddy bears and chocolate boxes that his dresser was covered in gifts.

  I dreaded my birthday. Mom wanted to send invitations to all my cousins, which was actually my fault, because I’d been telling her that I was playing with Erica and her gang when in fact I was horsing around with Frank. I told her I was too old to have a birthday party.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, washing a plate and handing it to me. “You’re only turning twelve.”

  “I don’t want a party.”

  “Why?”

  “Parties are for babies, Mom.”

  She stopped washing dishes and stared at me with a wistful expression. “Sweetie, don’t try to grow up too fast. You’re only young once—”

  “I just want a cake,” I said, trying to compromise.

  In the past, I’d always wanted a birthday party on my birthday, but Mom thought it was disrespectful because it happened on Remembrance Day. When I was ten, I’d told her that if Ba-ba-oo had fought for freedom, why weren’t we free to have a party? Mom wasn’t impressed. This year, with the party safely moved to the weekend, I could honestly say that Erica had gone to Terrace, which she did every weekend to see an orthodontist.

  All that was left to do was invite one or two friends. At recess, I brought out a bag of Mom’s homemade candy and handed it around. After everyone agreed it was pretty good, I decided it was now or never. “My mom wants to throw me this birthday party,” I said as casually as I could manage. “She’s gonna have candy and stuff. Any of you wanna come?”

  Frank looked around at the guys and shrugged. “Sure.”

  They came trooping up the steps five minutes early. They w
ere quiet and most of them had combed their hair, which was unusual. Mom had forced me into a dress. Frank’s eyes went wide when he saw me. I invited them in, and we stood in the hallway in an awkward silence.

  “Come in,” I said to them. “Take a load off.”

  When I asked Mom if I could invite boys, she must have thought I meant one or two in addition to the girls, because when we came into the kitchen she goggled. I remembered then that she hadn’t seen Frank since the time in Emergency. She had been planning to have some party games, but after seeing the guests, she went straight to the video, which was The Terminator. We all cheered Arnold, and Mom gave us hot dogs and cake, hurrying the party along nervously.

  At the end of the movie, I opened presents. The guys mostly got me socks and stuff, but Pooch got me a Crazy Carpet. Mom and Dad got me a pink dress that I stared at and couldn’t quite picture wearing. Then Frank went to his jacket and came back with a small box. When I opened it, I gasped in delight.

  It was the most beautiful slingshot I’d ever seen. I was close to tears as I pulled it out of its box. I wanted to give Frank a big hug, but I slugged his shoulder instead and said it was cool. Mom looked appalled as she handed out the grab bags, and we sat on the front steps and ate the candy. The guys laughed their heads off at the presents, which she’d chosen, expecting only girls to show up. Pooch got a Smurfette figurine, Frank got a mood ring, but best of all, Cheese got a candy necklace with little hearts saying things like “Wuv U 4ever.”

  Dad brought home a kitten that night. Mom didn’t even bawl him out for not asking her. It was orange and mewly, with wide, frightened green eyes. I sat with it on the porch and scratched beneath its chin and behind its ears. I’d never named anything before. I didn’t want something cutesy, like Fluffy or Pumpkin. I decided to wait a few days and see what my kitten did.

  This was also the time Mom started cutting hair to make a few extra bucks. Women would phone her and ask for trims and colourings, but mostly for perms. They had to pay for the perm kit, and she charged ten bucks to do the work.