by Dawn Dumont
“It means I made him do what I wanted by using information against him.”
“I thought that was a ransom.”
“No that’s when you take someone or something from someone and then you make them pay you to give it back.”
“God I’m such an idiot.” Julie laughed. Nellie could feel the guys’ attention turning towards the sound. It was a pretty laugh.
“It’s sort of the same thing.”
“I wish I had half your brains.”
I wish I had all my brains and all of your beauty. And you had nothing.
Nellie ran her index finger across the sharp part of the can’s mouth. “Yeah, but now my professor hates me.”
“When you take what people want, of course they’re gonna hate you. But they’ll respect you. And that’s good, right?”
Nellie nodded. “That’s what Death of a Salesman said.”
Julie smiled, nodded and shrugged all at the same time.
There were times when Nellie would drink and it would feel like she never got drunk. Like everyone was laughing and joking and she was locked on the outside pounding to get into the warmth of the good time. This was one of those nights. She could still feel the pain when the boys gathered back into the room and Everett made sure to sit next to Julie and Chris made sure to pull his chair in between Nellie and Julie. Then when the drinking games started, Nellie threw herself into them with an enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. She crowed when people lost, stood and chanted, “drink drink drink!” She pounded on the table with her fist, spilling drinks everywhere — she didn’t care, she was a warrior. When Everett told her to “relax,” she told him “to quit being a little bitch.”
Her fervour blew the party’s fire out. She tried to bring the embers back by joking around but her jokes were harsh ones, about bad teeth and greasy hair, and nobody laughed.
She got the couch. It looked directly at Everett’s bedroom door. Not at the TV. And she sat there stubbornly staring at that door. Any second now, any second now. He was going to walk outside and sit next to her and tell her that he was putting Julie to bed, that he was doing it because he was the nicest of guys. Nellie felt a pain that settled over her entire body, into her bones so deep that it linked with other hurts stored there where they melded and made her into stone. I am paralyzed. She tried to scream but couldn’t. Instead she sat and stared.
She woke to someone’s hand on her boob. Expert-like, it teased her nipple. She felt a tongue in her mouth. He came for me. But wait, after he was with her? That’s not right. But still, can’t I have this? Maybe he’ll change his mind when he sees how . . .
Nellie realized it was not Everett’s tongue in her mouth. Not that tongues are that easy to identify. But she knew.
Without opening her eyes, she went for the throat. One quick punch and the guy fell backwards. As she hopped over him, she saw Chris rolling beside the couch hissing the word, “bitch” at her as she rushed for the bathroom. She locked the door. Her shirt was gaping open. She quickly buttoned it with shaking fingers. She noticed a button missing where he’d impatiently groped her. She checked her jeans. Still clasped shut. She gulped back some bile.
There was a knock at the bathroom door. A whispered, “Nellie?”
“Go fuck yourself,” she growled out. She knew what voice to make, what tone, what volume. It wasn’t her first time on the merry go round with some disgusting fuck.
Focus on something else.
I want to go home. The thought was red and capitalized. Now.
Nellie looked at the bathroom window. She opened it and looked down. The sidewalk was one quick jump away. She saw the concrete wind around to the front of the house. There would be no bus but she could walk it. She would stay to the shadows, duck into alleys if she saw people or the police — she’d heard the stories about them. She hooked her purse over her shoulder and jumped. Easy peasy. She would be tired but she would be safe in her bed before the night was over.
Julie came home around eight that night. Not her home, I should kick her skinny ass out.
Nellie had heard the phone ring earlier, saw the number come up as “M. Bennett” — Everett’s number (he never bothered to change the number from that guy who murdered his ex-girlfriend) — and ignored it. She had nothing to say.
Nellie had thought about stopping in Shaylene’s room and sitting on the edge of the bed and telling her. But what? “I escaped.”
Instead Nellie climbed into the shower and washed everything away. Threw up in the toilet and showered again. She wrapped herself in her big yellow comforter and sat on her bed with her knees to her chest. I want my mom. But what would she say? Because talking meant telling.
So she read — a chapter of biology, then micro economics, then the history of the western world (two chapters). Then she fell asleep. Then she had a peanut butter sandwich. She let herself watch one episode of The Simpsons (they played three in a row on Sunday afternoons.) She stopped watching because it was where the neighbour’s wife dies. I just want to laugh today, idiot writers. She tossed the remote control onto the coffee table where it made a slight dent (their coffee table was two twenty four beer boxes taped together).
She did more readings. She started drafting a fifteen-page paper that was due in three weeks. She made a research schedule for herself. She ate seven cookies. Then fell asleep, face down, her feet hanging off the bed.
About half an hour into Nellie’s nap, Julie slipped into her bedroom. She hadn’t made a sound as she walked in and turned on the light, she was a ninja too that one. Nellie sat up and wiped at the drool at the corner of her mouth. They stared at each other, unsure of what the other was thinking.
“My head hurts.” Julie did look pale.
“Mine too.”
“So you studying?”
“Yeah.”
“I have to go to work tonight.”
“Right.”
Julie stroked one of Nellie’s scarves hanging from the closet door. “So you guys are okay with me staying here?”
No. I hate you.
“It’s fine.”
“’Cause he asked me to move in with him . . . but I like it here. With girls. I mean, it’s Everett, I shouldn’t have messed with him. God, why do guys have to be so clingy?”
“Yeah.” Nellie stared down at her pen.
“You ever been to this Lorette’s? Shaylene says it’s pretty busy.”
“Yup, it’s the place to go. You’ll make lots in tips.”
“Why don’t you get a job there? Then we could work together.”
Nellie was too tired to lie. “I applied. But they didn’t call me. You know how it is. With faces and stuff.”
Julie ran her nail over a drip of dried paint on the closet door, sticking the tip of it into the bubble and peeling it off. “I’ll steal from the till for you then.”
Nellie smiled for the first time that day.
Stranger Danger
March 1994
HE WAS TAKING JULIE to a restaurant.
“What if it’s someplace fancy, like The Keg? Like holee what am I gonna do then?” Then, thinking it made her sound like her head was big, she added: “I mean, as if, right? Like he’s gonna take an Indian to some fancy restaurant?”
“But what if he does? And what if it’s somewhere even fancier like that steakhouse in the Delta Bess or someplace so expensive that we’ve never even heard of it!” Nellie was a fan of raising every single terrifying possibility.
“I won’t go in then.”
“Of course you’ll go in! What are you gonna do, sit in the car like a nutcase?”
“I would.” And Nellie knew she would; she’d seen Julie’s shyness stiffen her spine enough times.
Julie tried on all of her clothes. Then raided Nellie’s closet.
Then Shaylene’s. They didn’t mind. There was a mountain of homework to be done but this eclipsed all of that.
“I hate it when guys ask you out on dates, like why can’t you just hang out?” Shaylene said. �
�I would literally be crawling under the table.”
Nellie turned her head away from them so that she could roll her eyes properly and thoroughly. As if anyone would ever ask out Shaylene. She’d been cute once but now she never left the apartment, like ever, and she ordered pizza every single day. Nellie would tell her, “You’re turning into a pizza,” which wasn’t nice but it was true. Shaylene smelled like pizza, was round like one and even her face was dotted with red marks like pieces of salami. Nellie had to squint to see the smartassed biology major from Witcheken Lake she’d met in her first week of university.
Julie stuck her tongue at the face in the mirror. “Should I curl my hair?”
“No.” Nellie and Shaylene said at the same time. Easy answer. Her hair was a black cascade of shiny perfection. But then Nellie had a thought.
“White girls curl their hair.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You already look straight out Native, maybe you can look a little less. Like wearing jeans instead of a buckskin skirt.”
“Who the fuck owns a buckskin skirt?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re racist,” Shaylene piped up.
“I’m not racist. I’m saying he’s a white guy and you’re Native. You already look like salt and pepper, why make it obvious?”
“Curling my hair isn’t gonna make me fucking Barbie.”
“But it’ll make you less Poca-fucking-hontas.”
“No way, it takes forever and the curl falls out anyway.” Julie sighed. “Fuck. What am I gonna wear?”
“Those jeans, this shirt.” Nellie had it all worked out; she tossed the outfit on the bed. Julie studied them.
“That is a nerd outfit.”
“You’re nineteen. Time to dress more grown up,” Shaylene said firmly. Nellie was surprised. Shaylene never backed her up on anything.
Two against one. Julie pulled on the button up shirt. It was Nellie’s and was a bit baggy on Julie, except in the boob area where her breasts strained to break free from their corral.
Having Julie around was like peering into the world of movie stars. Nellie hadn’t realized that men really do stop women on the street and ask them to dinner until she started hanging out with Julie. Though when it happened, nine times out of ten, Julie would look past the guy at a point in the distance and snap her gum until he finally felt stupid enough to walk away.
But not this guy, he had waited until Julie made eye contact. He told her his name was Neil. Julie mumbled her name back while staring at the bus stop schedule. He asked her out to dinner and even though she looked like she’d rather set herself on fire, she said “yeah” woodenly. When he kept standing there, Nellie took pity on him and gave him their number and address.
When they were on the bus, Julie asked her why she stuck her big nose in and Nellie replied that she thought it would make an interesting experiment.
“You look great. Like Julie but a grown up version. It’s like you have a job and a car or something.”
“Ha, whatever, Shrimp. I look ugly.”
Nellie had never heard that word out of Julie’s mouth.
“You should wear a purse.”
“Nope, I forget them all over the place.”
Nellie insisted. “Women wear purses.”
Julie didn’t, she tucked her ID in her back pocket. Once Nellie was standing next to her in a bar bathroom mirror and Julie pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her bra. (Nellie thought it was the coolest thing she ever saw.) Nellie went everywhere weighed down with a heavy purse filled with makeup, hairspray, snacks and a book.
Nellie transferred Julie’s worldly goods — gum, twenty bucks and her pink lip gloss — into her spare purse and hung it over Julie’s shoulder. “You look like a preppy Asian girl.”
“Except she’s not rich and not in the College of Engineering.” Shaylene was really enjoying this.
Julie flopped onto Nellie’s bed. “I don’t wanna go. I’m gonna call him and tell him I have the shits.”
“You have to go. It’s a real date!” The closest Nellie had ever come to that was when Everett asked her to meet him at McDonald’s. She still had to pay for her Big Mac though. And his.
“You guys should come.”
“I’m sure it’s every white guy’s dream to date three Native girls at the same time, but no.” Not that Nellie knew anything about white guys. She barely talked to anyone in her classes other than, “what mark did you get?” or “how long did you study?” or if she was feeling frisky, “sure is cold outside.”
“My palms are sweating.”
“That’s ’cause you like him.”
Julie made a face at Nellie. “No it’s ’cause this is stupid and I don’t know why you’re making me do it.”
A car horn beeped.
“Oh fuck that’s him.”
“Why isn’t he coming in?”
“I told him not to.”
Nellie was disappointed, she wanted to see him again. She liked how he talked in complete sentences. She needed more practise around people like that.
Julie reluctantly got to her feet and paused in front of the mirror leaning against the wall. Nellie had it angled to make her look as skinny as possible so Julie looked like a runway model in it.
“You look beautiful,” Shaylene said breathlessly.
“I don’t wanna go.”
Nellie gave her a shove. “For fuck sakes, get out of here!”
“Fuck you.” Julie shoved her back. But she went. The girls followed her to the front door and watched as she trudged down the steps. They saw as she spit her gum out near the front steps and got into the car. They watched even as his car pulled away.
Nellie felt the same wild curiosity that had driven her to lick a metal pole, many winters ago.
Nellie was struggling with an English paper. Her professor had said at the beginning of class: “There are no right answers only answers that you are able to support.” Nellie hated open-ended shit. She just wanted to know which argument would give her an A.
She called Everett. There was no answer. He had no answering machine but he had call display which showed how many times she called. Right now, if he bothered to glance at it, he would see: twelve.
She had been angry six calls ago. Now she was disappointed. And horny.
She opened up her political science binder, it was filled with photocopied readings. She had to read about Aristotle even though she’d already read about him in philosophy. It must be nice to straddle two subjects with the same boring writing. She went to the kitchen to refill her tea. She was drinking green tea these days, it was supposed to fire up her metabolism by getting rid of all the free radicals lurking in her body. She didn’t know what those were but Oprah said they were bad. Nellie hadn’t lost a pound but then again it was hard to eat healthy when the entire apartment smelled like pizza.
Nellie padded into the kitchen and saw a pizza container on the counter. She squelched a scream of frustration.She opened the pizza box; it was sausage and pepperoni. The top of the box was rimmed in dark where the fat had soaked into the cardboard.
Nellie spit on the pizza and spread the spit over the top of it with her finger. She was closing the box carefully when the front door opened.
She looked around the corner as Julie stalked past her. Nellie hurried behind her.
Julie sat on Nellie’s bed, her back against the wall, her legs stretched in front of her. Julie’s bedroom was the living room so during the day she used Nellie’s. It wasn’t the best situation but Nellie didn’t feel like giving up the extra rent money.
Nellie started small. “Did you have fun?”
“I guess.”
“Did you make out with him?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
Julie made a damn-I-stepped-in-dog-poop-and-I’m-wearing-sandals-face.
“Okay then.” Nellie’s disappointment was writ clear.
“He wants to see me this weekend. So I t
old him I work this weekend and then he’s all like what about before work and so I said yes to get out of the car.” Julie turned her gaze to the ceiling. “He wants to hang out at the park — what the fuck is at the park?”
“There’s ducks.”
“You and Everett ever go to the park?”
Nellie and Everett never went anywhere together. It was her house or his. Sometimes she saw him at the bar and she would wave to him and he would act like he was going to come over but he never got to where she was sitting.
One time she asked him to meet her at Place Riel at the university. She saw other girls meet their boyfriends there.
She explained to him how to get there, walked him through the streets one by one. He never showed up. He told her that he made it to the University Bridge but then some woman gave him a weird look which made him feel weird so he turned around and went home.
“I don’t like ducks,” Nellie replied.
“There wasn’t a single Indian in that place. Me and a bunch of white people. I felt like everyone was looking at us and I couldn’t stop looking at his arms. He had this blonde hair all over them. Like lots of it.” Julie made a face that she saved for the smell of rotten garbage.
“That’s how white people are.” How would Nellie know? She’d never studied one up close. “Was he nice?”
“He asked me if I liked being called Indian or Native.”
“Always say Native.”
“I know that, Nellie. But I don’t have to answer that question if I’m with an Indian guy.”
Nellie wanted to argue from the perspective of diversity and being open minded but she was tired and felt nauseated from the smell of pizza. So, they walked down to the Rainbow Cinema where movies were three dollars on Sunday afternoons. As they stood in line for popcorn, Julie laughed suddenly and sharply.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was thinking about the date. You know when he asked me if I liked Native or Indian.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked him if he liked white or honky.”
Nellie rolled her eyes as Julie doubled over at her own joke.
When they got home, Nellie checked the phone: Ball, N. had called. She showed it to Julie who shrugged and then turned on the TV. Nellie went back to her homework.
