by Fran Kimmel
The south wind was icy and I wrapped my hood tighter. Elizabeth’s face was unprotected. I wished I had a scarf to give her.
“Do what you want,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.”
“The other day, when we were having our picnic, you said I was running from my mother.”
The houses had dropped away. We reached the ravine, the forgotten place, a hint of wild in the middle of this Winter Lake town. She turned at the fork to the smaller path, and we started our descent. I fell behind her as we slid down the slippery slope.
“Remember,” I yelled ahead. “You said some kind of mad justice was blowing me north. But that’s not true.”
“Fine,” she said. “It’s not true.” I’d caught up again. We were in the valley, heading north. Following a frozen creek bed, ducking under branches. Black Bear area, the old sign said. There was barely any snow down here. No sun, just shadow. Arctic explorers, Elizabeth and I.
“I’m going north to find my Uncle Walter.” Elizabeth didn’t answer, didn’t slow down. We passed under a ridge of rocks. Someone had painted Fuck You Bitch on its underbelly.
“He was a good teacher, my uncle.” We were being woven into the dark forest. There was not the faintest breath of wind down there, just a reverberating stillness. If we didn’t keep moving we’d be swallowed whole.
“Well, you’re the teacher now. Go teach.”
“I can make the Northern Lights. With my mouth.” How foolish this sounded, like child’s words. “I can imagine what your Uncle Walter taught you.” The anger this woman brought out in me. I bit it in. “In the barn cellar.”
“Figures,” Elizabeth answered from some point ahead. I wanted to take the words back. To make them more notable, less sick-sounding.
I’d fallen behind again. How far had we come? Miles from the warmth of her empty room. But she was plowing through the frosted underbrush, and we were not even on a recognizable path now, circling the trees like dogs. My toes jammed against the curved end of my boot, calves aching. If only we could sit on the milk-white stones.
“Did your uncle have a good time with you?” she twisted her head backward, still marching on.
What had I said? Something about the barn cellar.
“Probably sweet-talked the whole time. Sticky little sentences. You’re my best girl, aren’t you, Miss Bel?”
I had one good burst left in me. I ran, six steps, seven, hit her hard from behind, pushing her against cold bark and pinning her there. She folded her arms around the sleeping aspen, forehead pressed against the tree trunk’s rippling skin. I dug my boots into the mushing decay and wrapped my arms around her so our bodies draped that tree.
“Your uncle, not mine,” I whispered, my mouth close to her ear. I could feel her jagged breath, the sting in her lungs. I held her pinned to the frozen tree, but I was afraid to let go, afraid of myself, those feelings.
“I don’t have an uncle,” she said against the rough bark. She said it matter-of-factly, as though being held prisoner was expected, nothing more than she deserved.
I wanted to tell her of that summer. That there was goodness in this world and it sparked when you found it.
“He wasn’t like that,” were the words I managed.
“And it’s a perfect world, Belinda.”
Belinda. She said my name. We untangled from each other, from the sturdy trunk that had been shoring us up, and as she turned to me her sadness turned with her like a coat made of stone.
“Go, then. Go north. Stop wasting my time.” She shoved me backwards with the tips of her fingers, a push compared to my violence. Her forehead was red and swelling, three jagged scrapes, pinpricks of blood.
“I’ve hurt you,” I said.
“Go. You don’t belong here.”
* * *
I am trying. Trying to do this right.
I phoned Mrs. Bagot this morning. “I’m not cut out for the classroom. You were right, Mrs. Bagot, I have too much to learn.” I think she’s relieved to see me leave with no fight. Vanessa’s mother caught me pacing the streets when I was supposed to be on my deathbed. I waved several times as she slowed down her van. I even blew a kiss. She and the other bannock mothers must be whispering madly, beating down Mrs. Bagot’s door.
Delta was harder. I spent much of last night trying to write her a letter. Page after page of false starts. Left hand, right hand, I never could get my pen to work. So this morning I picked up a single red rose and one of those blank Winter Lake cards she likes, and I simply wrote, “Goodbye, Delta. I won’t forget.” I placed the card and the rose on her kitchen table, along with my key. Then I waited for Buttercup to round her next corner, predictably, not like a chicken. I stopped her with my knees, scooped her up quickly and twisted her neck. I did this so quickly she couldn’t have felt a thing. After she went still, I held her in my arms like a baby for the longest time. Then I filled her water dish and food bowl, gathered her little toys, mopped up her urine, and placed her lifeless body gently on the embroidered pillow I took from Delta’s couch. I arranged all the toys around the pillow, then curled her into a ball to make her look as though she’d found peace and had chosen her moment to stop chasing her tail.
I know I’m not right in the head. I get confused about what’s real. But there was a time when I was a little girl and my heart was pure. Elizabeth was pure once too, I’m sure of it. If she had the uncle with the wandering eye, her loveliness would light the entire sky.
Rebee’s still could. She told me once, “Monsters aren’t real, Miss Bel.” Ever since bannock day, I’ve thought about how fiercely she fought against the other wolves. “This is me,” her actions shouted. “I won’t let you make me disappear.”
I stood in the hallway of the Messenger School, well to the side of the door so the children wouldn’t see. This was my last stop, possibly my last chance to do one right thing.
“I’m here for Rebee Shore,” I announced when the substitute teacher answered my knock. She was very large. I wondered if those were her paper scraps in my top drawer, if she’d stopped weighing in and felt angry with herself for giving away her big clothes.
“And who might you be?”
“I might be the teacher. Miss Bel. The one you’ve so abundantly replaced.”
“Oh. Well. Yes, then.”
Rebee stepped tentatively into the hallway, obviously frightened, but then she saw me and smiled wide. I put my finger to my lips to keep her quiet until the door closed.
“Miss Bel,” she whispered. “Are you going to be the teacher again?”
“Only for you, Rebee. I have something to give you before I go.”
She took my hand and clung on tight as we tiptoed down the hallway. I had my other hand in my pocket, clasping two rolls of wintergreen Life Savers and the fairy mirror with the sparkly frame. We were heading to the boiler room. We’d make it black as a starless night before we burst into light.
REBEE
SOME MOTHERS CHEW THE ENDS OF THEIR BABIES’ FINGERS AND SPIT OUT THE NAILS. This keeps the babies from scratching their noses and cheeks when they bat their fists at nothing. I asked my mother if she did that for me. She looked out the window and said I should ask about French kissing or rosebud tattoos like normal girls.
If you’re left-handed, the fingernails on your left hand grow faster. Visa-versa for right-handers. When people die, their fingernails keep growing after they’re buried in the ground. Toenails too. They grow straight, like daggers. When they run out of room in the coffin, they curl and loop like roots.
I don’t use my left hand much anymore. My fingers must be confused. All my nails are stubby dead ends. They stopped growing after being hammered by a volleyball. When gym class was over, my first finger drooped at the knuckle like a candy cane. I could pull it straight, but when I let go, it curled back under. Mallet finger, the school nurse called it. She told me to get it splinted at the hospital. Said I’d be right as rain in six short weeks.
Mom doesn’t beli
eve in hospitals. Does it hurt, Rebee? she asked. Look at that, like pokin’ a caterpillar. She laughed and said I could point at people, and they’d never know. I tried a Popsicle stick and Scotch tape, but my finger just turned purple. When the Scotch tape ran out, I gave up.
I can’t button shirts or pick up a jellybean with a floppy finger that has no feeling. But if I rest my left hand against my coat sleeve or desktop, it almost looks normal.
* * *
I collect nail clippings and keep them in a plastic box that used to hold elastics. Nobody knows.
My nails come from all over. Most are my mother’s. She calls herself Harmony. Harmony leaves the slivers lying in the tub. I come along afterwards, scoop them up and drop them in the plastic box. Passion purple pinky trimmings from the lousy bed hotel. Carstairs. Sparkly red glitter bits from the place with ceilings that peed when it rained. Fort McMurray I think. I’ve picked up a few from the floor of the van. Harmony could do without shoes year round if her toes wouldn’t fall off in the snow. I read somewhere that it’s illegal to drive in bare feet. When I told this to her, she said, “So hand me over, Rebee. Here’s your chance.”
At my Aunt Vic’s place I saw on Ripley’s Believe It or Not the old man from Bangkok with the longest fingernails in the world. Over twenty feet of nails. His one hand had five golden twisted ropes that dragged the floor and curved back up again like a ram’s horns. He couldn’t ride a bike, turn pages of a book, or sleep through the night. He tried to sell them for $20,000, but nobody wanted nails. If I had the money, I’d buy them in a flash. Nails are like magic. Roll someone’s nail between your fingers, it brings back a slice of somewhere you’ve been. A whisper, the smell of oranges, fridge noises. Somewhere forgotten, but it’s out there somewhere.
* * *
We move around a lot. Harmony gets restless. For her, a new place has a three-month expiry date, same as fruit bars. Harmony loves moving day. She skips between rooms, pink cheeked, eyes glowing with the thought of waking in a place where she has to hunt for the light switch. She collects her candles, crystals, incense sticks, her bear claws and peacock feathers, creates a pile on top of the Indian sari we use for a tablecloth, and folds it like a diaper.
We roll foamies and quilts. Stuff our clothes into green garbage bags. Fill cardboard boxes with our garage sale dishes and mismatched cutlery, half-empty jars of mayo and peanut butter. Harmony laughs as we struggle onto the street with the giant blue pillows, the folding wooden table and old chairs, the ghetto blaster and the rest. Everything we own fits in the white van.
My stuff goes into a bag I keep at my feet. My toothbrush and Walkman, jalapeno chips and Sour Pusses, my sparkly mirror and my nail clipping box.
We arrange ourselves on the front seat. Be a doll, Rebee, quit smacking your gum. She places her sugared coffee in its holder beside mine. I pull out my Walkman and plug myself in. Shake it down ladies. Make this your night. Be free, uh-uh, be free. Are you ready?
I flick the tip of my bad finger against my zipper pull and watch it flop like a fish. I stare at my fingertips. At least I won’t be like the Oklahoma nurses. The nurses cuddled the sickly babies, changed their diapers, fed them warm milk, loved ’em to death. All that bacteria festering under their long, shiny nails. When I have babies, I’ll nurse on their curled fists and hold their slivers in my mouth — tiny white slivers. One at a time.
We rumble along the highway under a watery sky, past wheat rolled into giant soup cans, cows frozen in muck. I think about where we just came from. I can’t remember the colour of the walls or feel of the curtains or shape of the bathroom sink. Blank as water, like on a test day in a new school and I end up at the fountain, gulping, drowning.
I slip off my runners and slide my toe across my bag until it touches my nail box.
We’ll get to wherever we’re going tonight. Unload the white van. Light an incense stick. Find the little hidey spots.
Harmony will crash, a smile on her lips.
I’ll wait awhile. Sprinkle the brittle bits on my blanket. Sift them like seashells.
JAKE
I CAME TO, GULPING, CLUTCHING MY RIBS, opened the eye not nailed to the table, and stared blearily through the empty Jack Daniel’s bottle. I tried to think, to find one quiet body part. I rolled my ankles in circles, right, then left.
After several minutes I unfolded and stood, wobbled painfully to the trailer door, opened it, and pissed into the gravel. I took in Matt’s view. I liked coming here. Matt lived in squalor but our visits were clean. He never asked questions. It didn’t matter if it was six months or a year in-between, he always acted like I’d never left.
It’s been nine months this time. Except that Matt’s missing, nothing else has changed. Rockies to the west. A pumpjack pawing the ground to the east. Close by, the well house and dripping tap, rotting outhouse, cobwebbed shed for rusted tools. Out further, the vomit-green swamp that glows in the twilight and Matt’s quarter section of scrub brush.
I stumbled into the sticky July heat, squinted into the naked sky and wished for a baseball cap. I thought I could hear the oil-sucking sounds of the pumpjack, the thump, grind, hum, but it was all in my head. It was Farley’s truck I heard. He eased down the gravel and stopped in front of me. Farley has the section of land beside Matt’s. Three years ago he gave up on potatoes, planted hay, and pounded in row after row of fence line. His number one job these days is grazing rotation, trundling his bison and elk herds from one square to the next.
Farley’s stubby legs hit the dust. “How are you, Jake?” He ambled towards me like I was his best friend. I braced myself as he grabbed my hand, sending a jolt clear to my ear. “Saw car lights. Last night, late. Thought you might be back.”
Farley looked me over. My four days of stubble and a neck as shiny and dark as an eggplant. “Not much of a homecoming,” he added. “Your brother gone and all.”
“Where’s he got to?” I asked.
“Well, you read the note, didn’t you? Your guess as good as any.”
“Matt left a note?”
“Been gone — well, let’s see — going on six months now. He took the old truck. Saw him off myself.”
“Matt left a note?” I couldn’t find anything to lean against.
“I’ve been out here a dozen times at least.” Farley, the good country neighbour. “Just checking. In case he came back.”
“Chrissakes, Farley, Matt left a note?”
Farley wrinkled his fat cheeks and rubbed his finger up and down the length of his nose. “Thought you’d a read it by now. Plain as day. On the cot right where I left it.”
It was a long way back to the trailer. “Must have missed it. Give me the gist.”
“Matt says the place is yours, land and all. The deed’s there, too. Says he’s not coming back. Says you can burn the trailer like you talked about.”
“That it?” I was so dizzy I tilted into him. Farley hopped forward to take my weight, and I shifted my feet to get straight.
“That’s it. Make sense to you?”
Farley would like nothing more than to sit across from me and gossip about Matt’s peculiarities and this quarter section in need of a master. “Thanks for dropping by, Farley,” I said, guiding his shoulder towards his truck door.
“Well, yeah, sure. Let you get settled.” Farley hoisted his miniature frame behind the big wheel. “What happened to you anyway? Fall off a rig or something?” He actually winked he was so pleased with his joke.
I winked back and slammed his door with my one good arm, waving him away.
* * *
The company-sponsored doctor ran some tests. It took thirty minutes to drive to the office in Calgary, another fifteen to find a place to park. X-rays, range of motion stuff. Poking and prodding. I shuffled from one green-walled room to the next, filling in forms. I pissed in a cup and watched the blood lady fill six vials. Another lady made me take off my shoes and stand on a scale, then she pointed to a room and ordered me to strip down to my socks
.
Williamson, the doctor in charge of my file, knocked on the door.
“Your system has had quite a shock,” she said after considerable manhandling.
“When can I go back to work?”
“Kenya, wasn’t it?” She rummaged through her papers. “Your ribs will take eight more weeks. Your left arm — we’ll wait and see.”
“Eight weeks. Jesus.”
“That’s right. We’ll start you on physio. See how you do.”
“What am I supposed to do if I can’t work?”
Williamson looked up from the file, pushed her glasses up her nose, smiling. “Rest, relax, heal. Take Tylenol 3.” She wrote out a prescription. “Your insurance will cover your expenses. Consider it an extended paid leave.”
I bought the Tylenol at Shoppers Drug Mart. A herd of giggling girls blocked the magazine aisle, making it difficult to sidestep them. At the counter, I fumbled with the childproof lid until I finally asked Cindy the Pharmacist to open the bottle. She gave me that “sorry for you” expression, and I popped two, then one more, in front of her. She looked kind of frightened, like she just helped a child swallow rat poison.
“Maximum of two, sir, every four hours.”
“Sorry. I didn’t bring my glasses. I’ll be sure to read all about it when I get back home.”
I hobbled back to the truck, my shoulder throbbing — bong, bong, bong. I stopped for a case of beer before I hit the old highway and headed in the direction of Matt’s trailer. There’s a campground along the river where we go fishing sometimes, about thirty kilometres east of Matt’s land. It has five ramshackle sites with picnic tables, firepits and flat patches for tents. One self-pay station, seven bucks a night. One outhouse, one bear-proof garbage bin, one water pump, and the river. Nobody goes there. At the unmarked fork, the pavement turns to gravel, and I slowed down to a crawl to prevent my insides from falling out. Dust filled the cab as the road wound and dipped towards the river, clumps of rock and dried mud heaped high along both sides.
