Mountain

by Ursula Pflug

  She lived across the street from me and Kenny then; it was back when there were still streets in that part of town, before we started up the squatters’ community. Funny the things you remember about people. Like if she was here now, and she had her period, I’d know that’s what I could do to make her happy. I’d clean up a space all around her, and then I’d make her some tea and a tuna salad sandwich. She told me how this one time Kenny walked in on her. It was four o’clock in the morning; she was in the kitchen, doubled over from cramps. Kenny walks in, gets himself a drink of water, says, “I’m glad I’m not a woman,” and goes back to bed. It was around then she decided she didn’t like him much anymore.

  When I was sad, she always knew. She’d know, and she’d come and let me cry on her shoulder, for as long as I wanted.

  I’m alone now; it’s been that way for years. You travel, you meet people, you even live with some of them, but you’re alone. Maybe people don’t know how to take care of each other anymore; they don’t know how to run you a bath, how to keep an eye on you so you don’t get too thinned out. I’m never with anyone now—including the people I’ve lived with—the way I was back then, the way I was with Kenny and Sofia. Especially Sofia. But that was one of those things I didn’t figure out till later. It’s bad for you to live alone too long. You start seeing things, hearing things. Sometimes, I go out on the street, and I think all the people I see have rat faces. But maybe that’s not so strange. I’ve talked to other people who see the rat faces, too. It’s just a little spooky, is all.

  Kenny knew her before I did. They were still lovers, even after he and I got together. It made me jealous, and so I asked him to stop, and he did. Then later, she and I got to be best friends, and Kenny got mad. We used to sleep in each other’s rooms, too, sometimes, and make love, Sofia and me, but we were best friends first. You’re another kind of lover when you’re best friends first, but that was something Kenny couldn’t get. Still, I would’ve been mad, too, if I was him. She used to hold my head when I was crying about what a rat he was.

  I always wondered what would happen if Sofia and I lived just with each other, with no one else around to bug us. There was always some guy she liked around, or Kenny, getting mad because we were having too much fun. When Sofia laughed, there wasn’t too much more I wanted in the world.

  Now it’s far back enough; I’m trying to figure out what was going on all those years when we lived there. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how I’d been dumb enough to spend four years with a moron like Kenny. Then I realized that Sofia had been there the whole time, too. Oh, yeah, right. Sofia. It’s weird how you can miss the really obvious things like that. It’s like living in the middle of the war and not knowing, till later, that’s why everything was so weird. When I left him, I lost her, too. It was almost like I could be with Sofia only if I was with Kenny at the same time. And I always wondered what it would be like if I was just with her.

  Now I’m not with anyone, and when I came to the gathering, I came looking. I think if I stay here long enough, maybe she’ll show up. She always could tell what I needed, like I never could with her. I never knew what she needed from me till I went back to the squat, years later, and found nobody there. Sometimes you didn’t hear anything except the sounds of cars way out on the road. I’d sit and listen to the cars for hours, and then all of a sudden, I realized that some part of me thought they were driving right through me.

  THE END

  20

  DAY TWENTY coincides with July first, Canada Day, my country in which I am not.

  I wonder what sex is really like? Like everyone else in my position, I’ve seen enough movies and read enough books to have a pretty clear idea, but those are out of body experiences, can’t be an accurate description of something so subjective and physical.

  21

  DAY TWENTY-ONE. “Hey Skinny,” I said over breakfast.

  “Yeah?”

  “How come the mountain didn’t do it for you?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Take away your need for cigarettes. Just being here is supposed to help you clear addictions. I’ve heard it said.”

  “It’s only bad for you if you think it is,” he quipped. “And I smoke all natural First Nations tobacco. It’s the chemicals that are bad for you, more than the tobacco.”

  “Do you actually believe that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “No. How about sometimes?”

  “Sometimes is good.”

  “And one other thing,” he said.

  “Being what?”

  “Maybe I carry deeper pain than you.”

  “Could be,” I said. “Hey, Skinny.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever get raped?”

  “Several times. Between twelve and fifteen. I already told you that.”

  Had he? I didn’t think so. He’d hinted, but that was different. I touched his arm, tentatively, as though his skin was different now. Maybe it was. Or maybe it had been all along, all those times I didn’t listen. Maybe there was something fragile and damaged under all that, that, Security. So many different ways to use that word.

  “Hey, Security.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what? You’re really attractive, Camden Town, don’t get me wrong. It’s not your fault I’m fucked up.”

  He got up and walked away. I thought of calling him back, telling him to finish his coffee, help me and Nan wash dishes, chop carrots, shell peas, go hang out on the Second Meadow log pile, anything. But I didn’t.

  22

  DAY TWENTY-TWO. Laureen should have listened to me about Peter. I know there are far worse kinds of child abuse out there than what happened to me, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t traumatized. It’s hard to forgive her. And what’s harder is that she went to San Francisco to look for him. Then there’s what Skinny said yesterday. Did he want to talk? I couldn’t tell.

  “Everybody letting go of pain together?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little like four-seater shitters?”

  “A little,” Skinny laughed.

  The logs were slick from last night’s rain. He offered me a hand to steady myself after I scrambled up the pile behind him. Our pile. It definitely felt like that and I liked it, scowled when anyone else came up the trail into what I thought of as our private space.

  “They had to replace it with something.”

  “Huh?”

  “Money as status,” I said.

  He took up the litany. “Well-paying, yet soul and people and environment destroying jobs. Since all that’s mostly gone.”

  “Consumption to cover up the fact you’re afraid no one loves you. A culture that replaces community with shopping.”

  “Wow, Camden! Who have you been reading?” he asked. “Political analysis isn’t what I usually expect from you.”

  “Jostling for status because you think if you showed your vulnerability everyone would run away or worse,” I continued.

  He nodded. “And you might be right, too.”

  We both laughed. Maybe I should’ve touched the purple mountain instead. I’d wanted to make a window for him to talk if he wanted, but maybe laughing was better. “All those foreclosed condominiums are going to come in handy,” he said. “We’ll move into them, put windmills on the roofs. They’re going to have to write some new laws on squatting anyway, since it seems to be the way of the future.”

  “Sounds fun,” I said. “Looks like Estevan saw the coming thing twenty years ago.”

  “Looks like,” Skinny agreed. “Him and your mom.”

  I wondered if it was Estevan who molested Skinny? If I hear that story one more time, about some big healer or guru or other form of alternative celebrity turning out to be abusive like that EST guy Erhardt, I’m going back east. I’ll get a new credit card from Lark, hole
up, and go online shopping for a month.

  If there is online shopping anymore. Time slides by here so strangely, and things were crumbling pretty fast even before we left Toronto. Other people talk about the news, but I haven’t been paying attention.

  “When we leave here,” Skinny said, “I’ll bet you won’t notice much difference anymore.”

  I nodded.

  Where did he think I was leaving to?

  Should I be thinking about that?

  Easier not to. Easier to think about touching him.

  And then I realized he’d said we.

  And if not Estevan, then who?

  What if it was my mom, for instance?

  “Anyway,” I added, “Maybe it’s the acceptance of pain that brings the healing, as much as all the shiatsu, past-life regression, yoga, crystal healings, and colloidal silver-making demonstrations you can stuff on a mountain.”

  “Indeed. But don’t forget the Birkenstock shoes.”

  I looked at his feet.

  He was, indeed, wearing black Birkenstock sandals. They caused an interesting cultural frisson juxtaposed with his tattoos and piercings.

  “Where are your big black boots?” I asked. He usually wore Docs.

  “In my truck,” he said.

  “You have a truck?” I asked.

  “I do. It even runs. On bio-diesel, yet. Workshop on Make-Your-Own’s tomorrow. I’m helping run it. You should come.”

  “The poster child of the new age,” I said.

  “Poster child of the Cli-Apocalypse, don’t you mean?”

  “Same same. Where do you intend to take this truck, when this thing’s over?”

  “It ain’t never gonna be over, Camden Town.”

  23

  DAY TWENTY-FOUR. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “For what?”

  “Today I am going to show you what healing really is.” Once again, he brandished his crystal.

  “Hey,” I protested. “What do you think I’m sick with, anyway?”

  “Of, not with. Have you ever noticed no one uses prepositions properly anymore?”

  “What’s a preposition?”

  “You’re Sick of Everything. Am I right?” he asked.

  We laughed. And then he healed me. I was stretched out on a blanket he’d laid on the mostly dry ground, my eyes closed, while he moved the stone from one place to another on my body, humming a little song he made up as he went along. Funny thing was I really could feel it; it was better than Ecstasy, and more noticeable. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I had such a crush on him.

  “I’m thinking of taking back my original name,” I said eventually. “Amethyst, the one Lark and Laureen gave me, seventeen years ago. I’m totally cured, of all my existential teenage angst or whatever is the matter with me.”

  “Shut up,” he said, “I’m not finished,” and he kept passing it over my body, and singing, too. “What’s it feel like, then,” he asked. “Can you describe it?”

  “What’s what feel like?” I asked.

  “Being whole?”

  “It feels like being made of purple,” I said.

  “Cool. So that’s why they called you Amethyst, Amethyst.”

  I suddenly felt it from her side, how much Laureen loved me, had loved me all along. She’d just left because she felt too betrayed. Lark was the one with money so she felt he’d be able to give me a better life. Laureen’s was a fierce kind of love, like a bear’s. It would kill if it had to. I felt safe.

  Then she was gone.

  It made me sad. I wanted her to be there again, but I couldn’t find her, as if she’d left not just my mind, but the world.

  When I opened my eyes I saw there were other stones all over me. Some tumbled, some crystal; little stones of every hue, stones I didn’t have names for, so light I hadn’t felt him placing them. I closed my eyes again. It was better that way, I wasn’t sure why. I could feel more.

  There was one I felt him place below my collarbone. I don’t mean his fingers brushing me, which they did, deliciously, or the new weight of the stone, although I felt those too. I meant it felt like a little pop.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “How do you know anything happened?” I asked.

  He laughed a little. “Just tell me.”

  “Like the stone was being passed through a subtle membrane,” I said.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “It was like the stone was carrying information I needed, and I was being made aware of that.”

  It was hard to articulate, and not just because I was afraid I might get laughed at.

  “The stone’s energy was entering your vibrational field,” he said nonchalantly. “You felt it. That’s all.”

  My eyes were still screwed shut. “So why that stone? I felt that one so much. I wouldn’t have believed anything about this back in Toronto, but I felt it, just as if—”

  “It likes you and you like it,” he said. I could hear the dolphin smile.

  “Oh,” I said. “What kind of stone was it?”

  “Labradorite. You should carry a piece probably. Now be quiet.”

  “You don’t have to say it.” I wanted quiet then, so that I could feel more of whatever it was.

  After about an hour he began removing them, carefully placing them in little cloth pouches he tucked away into a larger pouch. His best stone went back into his jeans pocket, carefully wrapped.

  “Who taught you that?” I asked. “I thought Estevan’s school was just for power and communications systems.”

  “This is a power and communications system,” he said.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “Your mother,” he said.

  “Wow. I’ve gotten back missing parts of myself,” I said.

  “Which parts?” Skinny asked.

  “The part that knows how much Laureen loves me. It was like she was here.”

  “Good. I have to go grab lunch before my bio-diesel workshop. You coming?”

  “I think I’ll just lie here for awhile staring at the sky and thinking about my mother.”

  24

  IWISH I KNEW what happened to my mom. I went to Shasta City with Daniel and charged my phone. I emailed and texted and tried calling her and Lark a whole bunch of times but it was to no avail.

  Daniel went back to San Francisco to look for her a couple more times, but she’d left no footprints and neither did Peter. Maybe they’ve gone to Belize or Costa Rica or Oaxaca City.

  We pretty much gave up hope that we would find them anywhere, so I was surprised when I got back from hiking to see Daniel and Skinny waiting for me. I knew right away they had news, but their faces were grim. They told me about my mother.

  Laureen was never coming back.

  25

  SECRET CAMPGROUND

  Bonnie Snow, age 16, as told to Amethyst O’Connor

  It’s different for girls. It’s like we have this big space inside us, and everyone wants it. Men, I mean. Some men. They want it because they haven’t got one themselves. That’s why they fuck. That’s why they sent rockets out into the heavens. They want control of space. Because space is nothingness, and it’s out of nothingness that everything comes. Anything comes. So if you want something, you have to have nothing first.

  You asked me about Secret Campground. Secret Campground was a good place, a place you could stay without being afraid someone would come and rape you or steal all your shit, like some of the other places. Like Lunar Beach. Jesus gave me a map to it, and that’s how I found it. Who was Jesus? A guy I knew back at Potter’s Curve, at the mission there. The Inter-Mission, we used to call it, for a laugh. But it was a good name, too, because it was where you went when you were between places, and isn’t that what inter means, between or somethin
g? It wasn’t a real mission, like a religious one, it was just a thing some people put together to try and keep their shit straight. Anyway, he gave me a pineapple for my birthday. No one else gave me anything, even though they knew it was my birthday. His name was Jesus but he called himself Potter, after the place, because he’d been there longer than anyone, and, he was, like, the mayor or something, welcoming new people when they came. The name Jesus was maybe an embarrassment for him, though there’s lots of Latino guys with that name; maybe he just liked to be associated. With that place, I mean.

  “Aries need birthday presents,” he said, pineapple in hand. And when he heard I was coming down to Oregon he drew me the map. “Secret Campground,” he said. “Don’t stay at Lunar Beach, that’s where everybody stays. Stay at Secret Campground; it’s the place for people like you.” He showed me where the path was at the edge of the woods surrounding the Lunar Beach Public Campground, how the path went through the woods until you got to Secret Campground.

  ***

  How old am I? I turned sixteen. You too? You know what it’s like then, travelling around on your own as a girl. The goods and the bads. Well, Secret Campground, then. I’d hitched a ride on a private plane, ’cause somebody told me you could do that and I tried it and it worked! Like so many things that nobody tries because they think it’s got to be impossible. After I left the airport, I hitchhiked to Lunar Beach and it was just like all those places. Sleazy. People doing T’ai Chi on the beach, sitting around fires in oil drums. At night hoping they wouldn’t be robbed, hoping they would get laid. No safes, too, I bet. A whole family had got their tent burned down the week before I got there, I heard. Someone didn’t like the homeless, or whatever. But a real family, you know what I mean? With a mum and a dad and little kids and everything. Not like beach scum at all.