The Journey Prize Stories 22

by Various

  I’ve come to her because she revels in taking part in conspiracies, hoarding forbidden knowledge, that kind of thing. She’s our family’s Eve, only she guards what she knows ruthlessly. To let the secret slip would be to ruin the power it gives her.

  “Sorry?”

  “There’s no sense denying it, Libanka. You don’t write love poems to nobody.” She sucks on her cigarette and blows a stream of smoke over my head. “At least you’ve got the good sense to pick a Ukrainian.”

  Olga’s boyfriend of two months – an American working in Canada for an advertising firm – recently broke up with her via email. History has shown that anything Aunt Olga touches wilts. Dead plants litter her apartment. Romance novels about chesty Victorian women and even chestier Victorian lords are strewn on the floor, their spines broken. Her cat, a mangy tabby, has yet to make an appearance during my visit, leading me to believe that it’s either dead or has had the good sense to escape.

  A part of me is afraid that Aunt Olga will screw the translation up. Another part of me concedes that there’s really nobody else to ask.

  She puts out her smoke in an ashtray the shape of Elvis’s head and leans over the table. The tiny fissures in her makeup remind me of a Da Vinci fresco that’s starting to crack. “So who is this boy?”

  “You wouldn’t know him.”

  “From the sounds of what you’ve got here, he sounds like quite the hunk. ‘Arms like oak trees?’ ‘Lips thin as the ice I find myself on around you?’ A bit sappy, but the thought’s nice.”

  “Um.”

  “Don’t be so embarrassed. You should have seen the crap I’ve written to men in my life. Feh.”

  “So you’ll translate them for me?”

  “Into Ukrainian? Sure, why not.”

  Her smile is the outstretched hand of a waitress waiting for a tip. I know the rules.

  “Only, can you not tell anyone, Aunty?”

  She winks. “It will be our little secret. Just promise me I’ll be there first to meet him.”

  It’s Saturday. I dipped into my father’s beer and after one and a half cans I’m drunk enough to take Olga’s translation and seal it in an envelope. I consider stamping the envelope’s flap with a kiss but question my ability to put on lipstick. Slipping out of the apartment is easy. Dad’s asleep on the couch, his reading glasses sitting low on his nose, a boxing match muted on the television. My mother’s working on her memoirs in the bedroom, pecking ferociously at the typewriter Dad got her last Christmas. I wait in the lobby of Alana’s building for twenty minutes before a pizza delivery boy gets buzzed in. I press my ear against Alana’s door and pretend that the heartbeat I hear belongs to her. It sounds like someone’s watching Jerry Springer. I can’t bear to look down, so I drop the letter and use my foot to slide it under the door. When I step back I notice that the half sticking out on my side has the crescent imprint of my sneakers. I bend down and lick my finger, hoping to rub it off. I’m on my knees when the door opens. Her hand touches my shoulder. I stand and hold the letter out dumbly. She’s wearing a housecoat, lime green, her hair a frizzy bouquet of blond helixes. She steps back and I step forward. When the door closes, I feel the chaos of atoms colliding.

  —

  We’ve started playing a new game. For every word or phrase I get right, she loses an article of clothing. Every time she stumps me, something of mine is stripped and cast off to the side.

  She writes: “Pes volossia.”

  “That’s easy. Dog hair.”

  Alana removes her shirt. “Fine, what about ……Raduha?”

  “Rainbow. You’re going to have to try harder than that.”

  Off go her pants, her boxer briefs a glint of white between the tanned muscles of her thighs. “Okay, try this one: Brodjachaja sobaka.”

  “Dirty dog?”

  “Vagrant dog, but very close.” She points at my shirt and I strip it off.

  “That’s a weird term. Is it common?”

  “No, not common.” She stops, considering my body. “It’s what my mother called me when I told her I was in love with a woman. She didn’t know how to say lesbian so she just said that. It was the name of a gay bar in Kiev that was near our house.”

  The game stops after she says that. The pen she’s been using runs out of ink. I kiss her mouth, my hands moving against arms, feeling her pulse through a vein that’s like rope on her bicep.

  That night, Mom asks me to write her something. Dad stands next to her. His newspaper from Ukraine is rolled up and tucked under his armpit, which means he means business.

  “Go on, Libanka,” he says, rubbing my shoulders as though I’m a pole vaulter or a boxer or a 10-pin bowling champion about to roll the ball. Shrugging him off, I ask what they want me to say.

  “Anything,” Mom says. “Whatever you spend all day doing.”

  Without meaning to, I flex my blooming abdominal muscles. They’re armour and a cage at the same time. My hair is messy and I think I smell like the balm Alana rubs on her sore body after she works out, a pungent odour that I’ve grown to find sweet and inviting.

  I take the pencil from Mom’s hand.

  In the moment where pen meets paper, Wonder Woman folds her arms and gets into her invisible jet and there’s just me and Alana and the blank page in front of me.

  I try to think of something like poetry.

  Brodjachaja sobaka is the only thing that comes to mind.

  ELIZA ROBERTSON

  SHIP’S LOG

  For my father, who once dug a hole to trap elephants

  An accounting of the voyage of

  HMCS Rupert

  (Led by Captain Oscar Finch and

  Navigating Officer Clementine Finch a.k.a. Nan)

  Sailed: Monday, April 17, 1919

  From: Sudbury, Ont.

  Bound for: The Orient

  Tuesday, April 18

  1600

  Light breeze from west. Temperature warm. Clear skies except one cloud the exact shape of the birthmark on my thigh, which looks like a bicycle wheel with spokes.

  I’m knee-deep in a hole to China. Progress has slowed since my Nan’s noon inspection – must shovel for width now, as well as depth. “China’s a long drop,” she said. “We’ll want room to stretch our limbs.”

  1630

  Went in for a glass of milk at quarter past the hour and Madame Dubois from No. 12 parked her Flivver over my hole. Progress further slowed. She’s brought fruitcake and belated regrets re: Granddad.

  Weather as above.

  1633

  I think Dubois’s Flivver is a jabberwocky. (See Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, page twenty-eight – “The Jabberwock with eyes of flame came whiffling through the tulgey wood and burbled as it came.”)

  1640

  Dubois’s fixing a pot of tea. Visit will be longer than hoped. Tried crawling underneath Jabberwock. Shovel wouldn’t fit.

  1650

  In China, people walk upside down. That’s why they wear those limpet-shell hats. The wide brims prevent the Chinese from falling out of the sky.

  1654

  In China, the sea is made from tea. During the third century, tea was so prized that neighbouring provinces boasted their wealth through triannual tea festivals where every member of every town paraded to the beach with masks and fireworks and dragon kites and offered their leaves to the waves in a celebrated public sacrifice. That’s why each coast tastes different. Most of the South China Sea (near Hong Kong) tastes like jasmine, but the Gulf of Tonkin is rosehip, and the Bay of Bengal, chai. The East China Sea is primarily green (there are a few local variations), and the tides of the Yellow Sea ebb and flow peppermint. The Formosa Strait swells with a particularly strong brew of ginger root (Nan says Taiwan prevents open-ocean dilution.) The Chinese don’t drink their seawater, though. It’s too strongly steeped.

  1700

  Madame Dubore still here. She asked me why I haven’t kept the roses hydrated. (The ones on the dining table, from
the parish memorial.) “Un petty dry,” she called them.

  2100

  Temperature: warm. Wind: not there. Sky: the colour of Granddad’s toe after he sailed home from Panama last May to fight the German alphabet boats, which he never did in the end because they wanted him in the Pacific aboard an “armed merchantman,” which is stupid because ships aren’t men and they don’t have arms and we’re fighting the Germans not the Chinamen so why send my Granddad to Hong Kong?

  Nan cut me a slice of fruitcake for dinner. She’d misplaced her own appetite again. John Cabot did not discover North America on fruitcake. I found a block of semi-sweet chocolate in the cupboard and ate that instead.

  I miss Nan’s old cooking. We haven’t much in the cupboards now. Oats, farina, dried apricots, molasses, chestnut paste. We should arrive in Hong Kong within the week if I maintain shovel speed. (I reckon I average a foot an hour.)

  I used to read with Granddad before bed. We’re more than halfway through The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and the Jane Guy has just been captured by the natives, but I won’t finish without him. Maybe tomorrow I’ll aim for two feet.

  Wednesday, April 19

  0715

  Pleasant Mermaidian breeze from east. Some clouds.

  Wanted to dig another foot before Nan got up. Found her in the living room on the arm of Granddad’s button-back chair. She was leaning forward and her shadow made a falcon on the secretary and the fishbowl that sits on top of the secretary. The ribbon of her nightgown was untied and it dangled in the fishbowl, but I don’t think she noticed. When she moved it glided across the surface like a Jesus bug.

  I saw her breast. It was shaped like a triangle and hung over the pokey parts of her ribs. Then I noticed the slice of fruitcake in her lap and the cashew clenched between her index finger and thumb and the dried cherry floating above the fishbowl gravel. I asked if she slept. “With the fishes.” She laughed and her bones made a stepladder in her chest. I took the plate from her lap and said I’d feed Aquinas later. Made porridge like Granddad: simmer the oats in milk and vanilla until the oats plumpen and milk clings to each grain like melted wax. Nan declined a bowl. Left her with the swordtail.

  1300

  Dead calm. Sky like when Granddad made blueberry sherbet for the parish picnic on Dominion Day.

  At the pit’s deepest I’ve dug to my thigh. Starboard side needs work. My shovel’s caused three worm casualties but I think they’ll grow back. The soil’s firmer now. Less like cookie crumbs, more like dough. Nan says it’s clay. In China they bloom bowls and teacups instead of tulips and that’s why we call it chinaware. There’s broken pottery everywhere and in Szechwan province the lawns are mosaics. I’ll bet Chinamen cobble shoes with ultra thick soles.

  My own Oxfords are soiled with mud. Nan hasn’t noticed. She’s in the front, milking the crocuses.

  1420

  Found a live floater abreast the keel! He wears a scarlet tunic and bearskin hat – potential deserter from the Royal Guard? I conducted a proper interrogation, but he said very little. (He appears to be made of tin so I suspect his jaw is quite stiff.) I don’t think he’s a threat as he is little bigger than the palm of my hand – he will stay aboard as boatswain and I shall watch his behaviour. I went inside to introduce him to my navigating officer and found her in the bathroom applying white paint to her face, an emptied box of cornstarch on the toilet seat. Conversation as follows: “Nan?” “Captain Oscar.” “What are you doing?” “Putting on my face.” The plaster terrified her eyebrow stubs into fossils and when she smiled her forehead cracked. “But you already had a face.” Her hand rose from the sink, which was filled with white gook, and she slapped her cheek. “Without makeup, I’d stand out in Hong Kong like a polkadot thumb.” Her palm smeared circles and stretched loose flesh to her nose, to her eye, to her ear. She reached behind her head and her cheek drooped to the corner of her mouth. She didn’t have enough hair to hold a bun and her fingers left sponge stamps on her scalp. I asked what I ought to wear and she suggested Granddad’s uniform and I thought Granddad sailed for Hong Kong in his uniform but apparently that was the British one and he has a Canadian one too but they look almost identical. I went upstairs and found the uniform on Nan’s bed. It’s large but I reckon the waistband will hold if I wrap the belt around twice. The pants are funny. The bottom of each leg is wider than the thigh. The shirt’s got a large collar and a blue and white – striped kerchief that I don’t know how to tie because I was only in boy scouts for a year and Nan secured the knot at the beginning and I never untied it. My favourite’s the cap. The tally reads “HMCS Rainbow,” which is a silly name for a ship so I’ll probably cross it out and write “Rupert.” Nan’s got a Navy photograph of Granddad on the dresser. I’m a spit image.

  I’m hungry but the weather’s fouling so I should return to deck. Winds blow fresh and there are dark clouds on the eastern horizon.

  1800

  In China, there’s a pyramid of mandarin oranges on every corner. Because there are so many orchards, everyone helps themselves and the farmers replenish the pyramids each morning.

  In China, they have dens where sages and scarlet women and gamblers and poets puff on the stems of poppies like pipes. Then they have extraordinary dreams, like none that you could ever imagine, and sometimes the dreams tell the future.

  1830

  Tried to make porridge for dinner but the milk wouldn’t pour from the pitcher. Gave it a slosh and tried again. One drop dripped out the mouth and down the side of the jug. Lifted the lid and found a golden bulb lodged in the spout and six more goldenbulbs floating in yellowish liquid. Fished one out for inspection. Its skin felt like a waterlogged chicken thigh with a hundred spots where the feathers might have been. I squeezed and milk gushed through my fist, trickled down my sleeve into the crease of my elbow. Called for Nan. “Apricots,” she said. “I’m necromancing the apricots.”

  Made porridge with water.

  1900

  Nan’s face is paper maché and the whites of her eyes look yellow like she’s been soaking apricots there too.

  I think she’s been in my room. Found a pile of white shavings on my pillow case.

  2030

  Monsoon! Brisk gale, downpour of rain. I worry my pit will cave.

  2040

  Tried standing over pit with umbrella. Proved terrifically dull. Went back inside.

  2045

  There is a slice of fruitcake on a plate in the fishbowl.

  2300

  Tried to play Chicken Foot with Nan but she preferred to spell words with the line of play. Had to find Granddad’s Double 18 set so that she’d have enough tiles. He bought them on his first sail to Bombay in 1892. They’re ivory with ebony inset pips.

  Nan’s poems:

  “Tick tick tick tick.”

  “Cherry tart, crispy heart.”

  My poems:

  “Tongues clicking, licking.”

  “Mango meat. Yum.”

  This game would be easier if the tiles had letters instead of dots.

  Thursday, April 20

  0800

  Rains have ceased, clouds clearing. Light airs, temperature like dishwater. Pit walls have maintained structure, but there are two inches of mud at the bottom. Will commence drainage after breakfast.

  0830

  Breakfast: one quarter jar molasses plus two necromanced apricots. Painted a molasses moustache above my lip and Nan said I made a very fetching George the Fifth.

  Told her that the hull flooded two inches and she said that was the size of my mother’s tumour. I don’t remember my mother well but Granddad said she was a dish, which means pretty.

  1100

  The boatswain and I drained the pit and dug another half foot. We’re hip-deep stern to bow. It’s harder to shovel, which means we’re getting close. (We could be digging through a cement road in Hong Kong and we wouldn’t even know.) Crew’s complaining of thirst. Maybe the Navigating Officer will have lemonade ins
ide.

  1105

  Nan’s not in the house. The dining table roses are face down in the vase. Stems spike from the glass at 180 degrees and the water magnifies the heads into clown noses.

  1109

  She’s not in the yard either.

  1400

  Scoured the coast. Found Nan in Mr. Arden’s wood picking flowers from the riverbank. (Fortunately we’ve had a dry spring and this stretch of the stream is dry.) She says his April daylilies are the finest in all of Ontario. We gathered four baskets then lay between the stones in the riverbed and watched an eagle collect grass. Nan tried to string the lilies together stem by stem, but her rings kept sliding off her fingers and we could never remember where the clinkity-clink clinked from and they’re coloured the same as the pebbles. So I did most of the stringing and my chain grew to two fathoms long. We wound it through her hair over her shoulder across her collar around her waist up her arm. She looked like The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. I had to memorize Canto Thirteen last year for school. “Be bold, be bold, and everywhere, be bold.”

  1800

  Light airs, some clouds, temperature cool.

  I’ve promoted my boatswain to quartermaster. After writing my last entry we dug for four hours. The pit’s to my shoulders now and if I bend my knees slightly it’s as deep as my chin.

  My shovel ripped a hole in Granddad’s trousers. Nan wasn’t mad. She helped me trim the pant legs to above my knees and now I trip less and my shovel speed has increased by at least a couple inches. We were sailing south at almost a foot and a half an hour, but we’re inside now because I feel like someone is shovelling the inside of my stomach. In China they believe in karma which is like Galatians 6:7 “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap” and I wonder if I feel like this because I cut those worms in half?