Smoke River

by Krista Foss

  The temperature broke with the arrival of August. The cooler air woke her mother’s craving for freshness, for food. They pulled beans off the runners in front of the snack shack, shelled peas by the bushel for freezing, and squeezed their neighbour’s corn husks, testing them for fatness. Her mother stopped men on their riding lawnmowers, pointed to their fruit trees and offered to pick them for a cut. They ate sweet cherries by the handful and salted the green apples they’d taken too soon. But her mother seemed most pleased by the peaches: three six-quart baskets for two days of picking. Cherisse shimmied into the higher branches and lowered them with her weight so her mother could reach.

  Pie, her mother announced. I am going to make Joe a couple of fresh peach pies for his birthday. This was an exciting development: there had never been any baking in the trailer. Cherisse sat quietly at the Formica counter while her mother spread open a book on the table, pushing her palm down on the crease so it would stay flat and tracing her finger under the black type, squeezing her eyebrows, pushing out her lower lip. The studying of the book went on for a long time, and Cherisse began to wonder if baking was like schoolwork. Her mother picked things out of the cupboard, slowly at first, reading the label of each, then reading the book. She chose spoons from the drawer, and a bowl and a cup.

  Everything was lined up but nothing seemed to be happening. Run over to Mrs. Porter’s and tell her we need these things to make pie. Cherisse was handed a scribbled list and released from the dull tension of the trailer kitchen to sprint through a ditch of Queen Anne’s lace. When she returned, her mother seemed to be frozen over the same arrangement of ingredients and utensils, worrying them with her eyes. Cherisse started to unpack the bag from Mrs. Porter, careful to put each item in the right category.

  Her mother’s eyes flitted down. No, no, not there, she said, hands batting at her as if she were a tiresome housefly. Cherisse backed away into a corner, and for the next hour her mother mixed and sifted and rolled. When she lifted the pastry, it stretched and tore like damp newspaper. Her mother tried to patch and plug it enough to cover the pie plate, until finally she cried out in anger, balled up the pastry, and threw it at the sink. She looked at Cherisse and said, Go find something else to do. I need some time.

  Cherisse sat outside the trailer, played hangman in the dirt with an old stick. She sang to herself to misplace her hunger – her mother had forgotten about lunch again. She snuck back into the trailer, into the cubby with her mattress and treasures, and flipped through her comic books and counted the change in her piggy bank. Finally she lay her cheek on the little mound of quarters to cool her face and promptly fell asleep.

  Hey, little one, her mother whispered when she woke up and wandered into the trailer’s quiet and dark main room. The kitchen was clean but for a pie with a braided edge and a golden crust that smelled the way Cherisse imagined newborns smelt: buttery and floral. Only took me three tries and eight hours, her mother said with a tired laugh.

  Okay, little wolf, back to bed for you. And her mother returned her to the mattress in the corner. I’m hungry, said Cherisse. Her mother kissed her again. No mind. I’ll make you a big breakfast tomorrow. Now you must sleep.

  Outside the trailer, Cherisse heard a man clear his throat and she knew it was Joe returning late from work, impatient to go visiting. As she lay in her bed, her eyes filled with tears at being alone all day, cast out of the kitchen and the pie making, only to be left behind again. Her stomach cramped from hunger and her mouth was gummy with a terrible urge – the very worst kind. She flung all her quarters at the trailer’s walls so they made a loud noise, flickered, and fell like dying stars. It was over too soon.

  In the morning, her mother was singing, the same as always. The taps were on. Cherisse woke up smelling coffee. Her tongue found sweetness in the crook of her mouth, glazing her lips. She looked down at her fingers; they were stuck together with crumbs and glue like dried honey. Her first impulse was to bolt from the trailer, yet her mother continued to sing. Cherisse washed her hands and face in the small washroom at the foot of her parents’ bed and entered the kitchen, afraid and curious.

  Good morning, Cherry, her mother said and kissed the girl on her forehead. G’morning, Cherisse said staring at the table. Her mother put a plate of eggs in front of her, poured a small glass of juice. Hungry? Cherisse nodded. Her mother topped up her own coffee, turned her back to the girl, and started washing the frying pan, letting her voice glide lazily over the surface of a song. Cherisse looked at the eggs, made her favourite way. She wondered if eating them would be like a confession.

  Funny thing, her mother said, interrupting her song. Some animal got into the trailer last night and ate Joe’s birthday pie. Cherisse held her fork in the air. Had quite a party of it too. The counter was a mess. Her mother remained at the sink, looking out the small kitchen window, her voice light as cotton. What kind of animal do you think it was, Cherry?

  Cherisse thought about it for a moment; she knew what her teacher would say, and wondered if this was what her mother wanted to hear. A very bad animal?

  Her mother laughed. Oh no, I think probably a hungry animal, in a bit of a temper too. Maybe one of the Rim-Dweller’s owls whispered in its ear, put the thought in its head. Ya think?

  Cherisse wasn’t sure what to do with her mother’s interpretation. She nodded.

  Still, Joe doesn’t get his birthday pie, and that’s too bad, because it’s not his fault. Any idea what can be done to make it up to Joe? Her mother took her plate and washed it. She never once looked at her daughter but began to sing again until Cherisse answered.

  Another pie?

  Her mother picked up the remaining six-quart basket. Well, maybe. Some of these peaches have turned but there’s enough for at least one pie. Only one problem – we’re out of sugar and butter.

  Mrs. Porter? Cherisse asked.

  Her mother shook her head. Mmm, we leaned pretty hard on her yesterday.

  Cherisse hesitated, then left the kitchen and went back to her cubby, which was still scattered with her piggy-bank change. She’d been saving to buy something pretty, the kind of things the other girls at school had. Now she picked up the coins where they’d fallen, delivered them in fistfuls to the kitchen table. Her mother stayed at the counter, scrubbing the coffee maker and fiddling with the radio dial. When every coin from her piggy bank was on the table, Cherisse cleared her throat. Is this enough to buy what we need?

  Her mother turned and barely looked at the change before answering. Yes, it is, Cherry. That is the perfect amount.

  In the dreams that shepherd the knitting together of her bones and tissues, Cherisse calls out for her mother, this mother. When she is alone, she awakens briefly to the hospital room with a phantom sweetness still on her tongue. The people who love her have come many times; she knows by their smells of the outdoors, tobacco smoke, a familiar warmth so different than this place’s odours of plastics, stale air, and human seepage. Then it’s their voices that give them away, hanging over her low and sad as November clouds. She smells their good smells, feels their love, but also their desire to see her eyes open, hear her speak – and the force of their wills, the old tug-of-war, as if she is contested territory. For now that makes them too like the other, more recent strangers, hovering near and around her with their less welcome smells.

  She pulls away from them all to burrow back into the dream sleep where the sweetest smell of all is peach pie, one that her mother and she make together in silence, using ingredients purchased with all her change, a pie that spreads a smile over the width of her father’s face. If she sleeps, her mother will never leave, never slip unexplained from the trailer on a crisp evening in early September, only tucking a shiny quarter under her sleeping daughter’s ear. If she sleeps, her father will not sob himself into unconsciousness or burn dried tobacco leaves, blowing smoke in the direction her mother went, relying on the old ways to bring her back to them. If she sleeps, the failure of his magic will be forgotten
, but not the pleasure of warm fruit.

  Stephanie steps into the hospital elevator. Her parents think she has gone to find the cafeteria, buy them coffee. The sharp corners of her digital camera stick into her ribs through the book bag’s thin canvas. Hide it, Nate told her. She left the professional case, with its pockets for zoom and wide-angle lenses, filters, batteries, USB cords, at home. As many pictures as you can, he insisted. The more she heals, the more evidence we lose.

  But the police must have taken photos. The hospital … I mean, they do tests, keep notes. Collect samples. He kissed her then. On the cheeks and then behind her ears and then along her neck, her shoulders. Optimist, he called her first, Bambi next.

  It made her spin. She’d pictured being in love so many times, but she hadn’t the imagination for this. She does not sleep. She forgets to eat. Her life too suddenly wonderful, wrenching, and purposeful.

  Nate repeated rumours he’s overheard about the girl, the niece of a woman he calls his leader. He asked her point-blank, Stephanie, are you interested in justice?

  Getting to the ward takes longer than she expected; it’s in an entirely different building than the one where her brother dozes in their mother’s arms. When Stephanie steps off the elevator, the sound of her heart is in her ears.

  Act like you know exactly where you are headed. Take something, a plant maybe. It would be easier if he could remember the room number. Three doors past the nursing station, right side. This was as much as he could give her. Oh, and she’ll have a room to herself. That was unusual.

  Won’t there be security, a cop posted at the door?

  He shook his head. You watch too much television. He stroked her forearm. She wondered if he would kiss her some more. Being wrong had become so pleasurable.

  Stephanie pulls out a large teddy bear she bought in the lobby gift shop. It has a yellow sateen bow and a small red heart embroidered on its chest. There were smaller stuffed animals, Mylar balloons, stems of gerbera daisies, all of them cheaper. But this gift suggests a deeper tie to the patient. It emboldens her.

  There are several people behind the nursing station, moving in and out. She marches ahead with her eyes fixed on the doors beyond them, and nobody even notices her. At the fourth door she sees a single bed in dim lighting. Stephanie sees the outline of a petite body under sheets, a small head, a bonnet of smoky hair tucked behind small shoulders. Cherisse is sleeping.

  What if she wakes up and I’m taking pictures? It might scare her. She’ll start screaming. They were lying on the ground then, among the tobacco plants across from the fires and sounds of the blockade, her head cradled in the crook of Nate’s arm, her cheek against his chest. Through the plants, the porch lights of her neighbourhood twinkled like tiny pieces of broken glass.

  Nah. The talk is that it’s pretty brutal. She’s already had surgery for internal stuff. There might be others. She’s pretty drugged up right now, according to her aunt. Doubt she’ll come to while you’re there.

  Stephanie pulls a chair close to the bed so she is facing the door. The bag at her feet exposes the camera. She’s still deciding where to put the teddy bear when a nurse comes through the door. Stephanie startles.

  “Oh,” says the nurse. “She’s sleeping.”

  “Yes. I’m her half-sister. I’ll just sit with her a bit.” She uses a breathy voice, doesn’t make eye contact, clutches the stuffed animal. Nate says that Stephanie’s hair and eyes are dark enough to pass for part native. Indian pale ale, he calls her. It’s worth trying, he said. White people think we’re all hybrids. A friend would be easier to turf.

  The nurse checks the IV, makes a note on the chart, gives Stephanie a scrutinizing look, then pulls a curtain across three-quarters of the room’s width. She leaves with a tepid smile – sympathy, pity. Stephanie reaches down, grabs her camera, adjusts its settings on her lap, and risks flicking on the bedside light.

  Nate showed her an earring. I found it under the oak tree.

  It was small and cool in Stephanie’s hand. Shouldn’t we give it to the police? she said.

  He laughed. Are you kidding? They’re useless. Took them almost a week to collect evidence.

  Stephanie looked down at the earring, tried to imagine wearing such a thing herself.

  When I found it, Nate said, I thought it was a sign of good luck. But I was being greedy – everything’s already great in my life. I mean, you’re in it. So now I kinda think it’s a sign, like the Creator is asking me to do more than just walk around the blockade acting defiant.

  She kissed him then, convinced that there was nothing he could ask that she wouldn’t do.

  Click, check. Click, check. She brushes back the girl’s hair, photographs each side of her puffy face, the misshapen profile. Her ears are pierced, no earrings. Click. Check.

  With her old camera, Stephanie recorded thousands of images: Japanese maples on groomed front lawns, SUVS with vanity plates, golden retrievers, yoga pants on women who didn’t know sivananda from bikram, Australian gumboots on men who ironed pleats into their khakis, jogging strollers, and MP3 players. But her art teacher, Mr. Ward, who was usually supportive, complained that there didn’t seem to be an entry point to any of them, a place to begin their deconstruction. The punctum, he called it. Did you ever consider allowing a face – an actual person – into the frame? he asked.

  What the fuck? Stephanie had thought. But my pictures are about what’s missing – uniqueness, originality, she argued back.

  Yes, but as far as photographs go, they’re not telling a story. Sorry, he said. And Stephanie, who made it a practice to adore her art teachers, adored him less.

  Now she wants to ask Mr. Ward if photos can find the story. Can they discover a truth the photographer can’t see? Stephanie takes a deep breath and grabs a corner of the hospital sheet. Nate has said, Yes, if you can. That’s important. This will take nerve she doesn’t know if she has. She closes her eyes and imagines the earring, and she wonders if she can borrow some of its meaning for herself.

  She peels back the sheet without waking the girl The bunched-up hospital gown reveals fading bruises along her legs; they gather like thunderclouds on her upper thighs. Click. Click. Click. The gown is untied, and Stephanie lifts it. The girl is bound up around her ribs. Her pelvis, the skin a patchwork of welts and abrasions. Beneath the injuries’ distortion, Stephanie can tell that the girl is beautiful, perfect. She feels a prickle of jealousy, then shame. Click. Click. She does not check these shots. Stephanie pulls the sheet back up, turns off the bedside light, sits down. She’s out of breath, fighting tears. The girl’s head moves slightly.

  Nate said, No, we cannot count on anyone – your police, our police, your government, our government – to protect us. The pictures are insurance. She combed through a week’s worth of newspapers and there was no report about what happened to the girl. Nate said the reserve papers hadn’t touched the story either. Why? It didn’t make sense to her, not when every stolen bicycle, new graffiti, or lacrosse game dust-up got headlines. She’s native, said Nate. A native woman getting assaulted is not news. Even in a town as small as this one.

  Cherisse moves again, and Stephanie delicately takes one of her hands, rubs circles against her palm. Her fingers are long and delicate, curled with tension. A wonder they didn’t snap. Stephanie pulls to straighten them. A single beautifully manicured nail is intact on the ring finger of the girl’s left hand. The index fingernail has been torn down to a sharp nub. Stephanie gently pushes the two digits together and compares them. She stands up out of the chair and moves closer. Her throat is dry and an ugly heat constricts her chest. Without thinking, she presses the two fingernails into the soft flesh of her own forearm and drags. The girl’s eyes startle open. Stephanie drops the hand and jumps back.

  A nurse appears from behind the curtain. The girl has closed her eyes again but is forcing sound through her swollen lips. The words are impossible to distinguish.

  “You’ll need to go,” says the nurse. Sh
e carries a tray with a packaged syringe and a vial.

  Stephanie grabs her bag. At the end of the bed, the teddy bear has toppled over. She rushes out of the room, off the ward, out of the hospital like a thief. All the time she is aware of a subtle stinging on her forearm. But she’s not ready to look at this thing she has taken with her.

  Outside the hospital, in the wee hours of the morning, Ella lights a cigarette she found in the pocket of her son’s shorts. She is slipping, she can feel it, under the ether of small things: the extra glass of wine at dinner, the one she takes with her to bed, the lack of exercise. She has not jogged for three weeks, the longest she’s gone without a run since she was pregnant with Stephanie. The oversleeping. This cigarette. Her failure to remain positive when everything is going to hell.

  What story is there to explain Las’s troubles? He does not speak – he is too stunned, too confused. The possibility that somebody might have deliberately hurt him fills her gut with such a bubbling molasses that she takes a long suck on her cigarette to calm down. She has set her son up to be the hero of his own life, like a prince unaware of his pedigree. And he is screwing it up on purpose. She can feel it. Ella drops the cigarette to the pavement, squishes it with her foot, and instantly misses its comfort.