She slipped into the crowd. No one noticed her until a booming voice – El Toro’s, I think – called out, ‘Hey, there’s Tommy.’ Her dark, velvety gaze fell and, behind it, I saw the rock wall that awaited me if I asked her to save us one more time.
I will never pretend to be Angèle again. Not if they ask me on bended knee, not for money or atonement – never again will I be forced to bear her cross.
Angèle is dead. She died a horrible death, and I won’t again wear her smile or the twinkle in her eye, like her standard bearer, with everyone in on it, to keep the family intact.
Angèle is dead. Dead under tons of rock. Crushed to death, mangled, ripped apart, eviscerated, brains spilled out. Dead forever-more. Dead for all eternity. So don’t ask me to bring her back.
The Old Maid can hound me all she likes, but her quartermaster’s eyes will meet only hard, black stone. Angèle, my Angèle, Angèle of my heart, my sister, my friend. My Angèle is gone, out of harm’s way, unseeable, intangible. Her soul fused with mine when she was buried under the rock, and together we withdrew behind a fortress where eyes cannot follow.
Only Noah, my love, my husband, knows where the hidden part of me lives. He has never asked to go there with me. He knows, that’s all.
When Noah enters our messy bathroom and sees me smiling in the mirror, he leaves. Softly, on tiptoe.
‘Qarinniik uqaqatiqarpit?’
Yes, Noah, I’m talking to my sister. Thank you, Noah. It takes a special man, a special Inuit man, to share his wife with a dead girl’s soul. You’re more comfortable with the mysteries of life and the hereafter, but how many Inuit women have felt the cut of a savik for no reason?
Noah is my companion at night and in life. He is the most important man in Kangiqsujuaq, the manager of the co-operative. He studied in the South. He knows the ancient legends, stories and customs of his people, and, at his centre, he has pink, shuddering flesh that explodes in my mouth. The first time, you looked at me, surprised, almost ashamed. It was new to you. Then you didn’t resist, you offered yourself to me, and I discovered, incredibly, that I could lose myself in your fleshy thighs, that my entire life could sink into them.
We have been married for over twenty years, and we still reach for each other in the warmth of our bed. We have made three children in that bed, three boys – Tamusi, Joshua and Timarq, three chubby, rambunctious little bears who climbed, ran, hung from anything they could find and left our house in ruins when three female cubs appeared in the wake of their snowmobiles.
Angèle never left me in spite of the boys’ boisterousness, in spite of their father’s tender, musky flesh, in spite of the emergencies at the health centre. Moments of grace are hard to come by at the health centre, and yet Angèle’s smile manages to find its way to me, surreptitiously, softly, while I’m stitching a wound or examining an eardrum. Angèle looks at me and smiles. It’s light and velvety. An archangel’s feather twirling in my heart. A benevolent thought that protects me. Slowly, I feel a secret joy bubble up and tickle my lips, and I surprise myself by responding, by smiling back at her. The impassive face of the Inuit whose wound I have just sutured can’t help but light up in turn. This is why, along the entire Ungava Peninsula, I am known as Qungainnaaq, The one who smiles. They come from Koartac, Kangirsuk and Salluit. They have lost their way in the storm or have come to visit family, and they ask for Qungainnaaq.
Angèle’s smile is a source of tenderness in my life. When it hasn’t appeared inside me in a long time, I settle in before the bathroom mirror and I summon it. I just have to puff out my lips and stretch them a little while pressing them to my teeth for Angèle’s smile to be resurrected on my face. It’s as easy as that. We were alike, exact duplicates, identical twins. Not a mole, not the tiniest patch of skin distinguished us. We used to kill time by searching our bodies for something to tell us apart. On one of those boring afternoons as summer was drawing to a close, we even tried to count the hairs on our head to see whether we had the same number.
Absolutely identical, and yet so different. The look in your eye, the way you held your head, your gait and, most of all, that heaven-sent smile that fluttered around you like butterflies. Everything about you had the grace and ease of happiness, whereas I was as hard as rock. There was no confusing us. You were Angèle, gentle Angèle, and I was Tommy, a Cardinal, the real deal. When we walked side by side down the streets of Norco, everyone knew who was who.
Happiness. We talked about it a lot, you’ll recall, but I wanted no part of it. I had better things to do with my life than to be happy. I had dreams that were so big they were impossible to dream. Happiness was just a burden, a sort of lethargy that was going to sap the spice from my dreams. And life, in one of those cruel reversals of fortune it has a knack for, finds me settled into a sort of happiness in the land of the living, while you were ripped from its promise, dead at seventeen, never having known a loving husband, clean, well-raised children, a house and all the nice clothes that life dangled before you.
‘If you can’t dream of being happy, I mean, if happiness is something to scorn, what does that leave? Are we supposed to be unhappy? Is the point of life to pursue unhappiness?’
Angèle didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand. We had difficult discussions.
I never held it against her. She was under that McDougall woman’s spell.
We were five years old when the McDougall woman and her bloated husband set their stinky feet in our house. I will never forget it. They burst the bubble. They made Angèle and me different.
It was Sunday lunch. We were still at the table when the two ghouls – her, tall, dark and nervous, and him, an obese little mouse of a man smiling wide to show off his gold fillings – sat down on the dynamite cases that we pushed up against the wall for them. We were finishing our meal, and they kept staring at Angèle and me.
I didn’t understand what they were saying. They were talking to one other, pointing at us and working each other up with empty, limp words, which I didn’t understand but which smelled like rotten adult.
We already knew Mr. McDougall. He was part of the gang that paraded through the house: prospectors and money men, schemers and questionable mining-syndicate representatives for whom our father did some prospecting work.
It wasn’t like those men to hang around the kitchen, let alone in the company of a woman. Our father received visitors in the basement, where he kept his rocks, his maps and his dreams, and, after long conversations – of which we heard nothing more than a subterranean murmur – they left the house with only a distracted wave for those in it.
The McDougall woman’s flesh-eating smile was even more alarming.
She smiled wide at us, baring her big, yellow, witchy teeth, and she wouldn’t take her eyes off us. Angèle and I were at the far end of the table, between the Big Kids and that year’s baby, so the witch’s poisonous gaze escaped no one.
None of the Big Kids had left home at that point. Émilien, the Patriarch, hadn’t yet had his dreams of Australia. He was fifteen, which means that there were seventeen of us at the table and that Zorro was the baby. Our mother was at the kitchen counter. She was never far from her pots and pans.
I was only five, but I clearly remember thinking, ‘If that witch talks to me or Angèle, I’ll scratch a strip off her face.’
We were so connected, so close. It never occurred to me that while I was sharpening my claws, you were letting yourself be quietly devoured by the McDougall woman.
I had a plan for escaping the witch and her runt of a pig. The idea was simple, but I thought it was one of the great military manoeuvres of all time. My idea was to take advantage of the commotion of getting up from the table to slip behind our siblings, who would start fighting over the sofa while arguments in the kitchen over who would do the dishes would distract the two ogres.
The trouble was, with the two ogres there, no one wanted to fight. We got up from the table without incident or injury, and the McDougalls
’ eyes kept boring into us.
I still tried to escape to the living room, but our father’s voice intercepted us: ‘Stay here, twins. Mr. and Mrs. McDougall have something to tell you.’
I felt my nails slicing into the palm of my hand. My other hand, the right one, the one that was trying to usher Angèle into the living room, hung there helplessly; Angèle had abandoned it.
She moved toward the two ogres. They were licking their lips, the cannibals. Angèle had flashed her smile, which always sent happiness fluttering.
I was petrified. What were you doing, soul of my soul? Couldn’t you tell that they were vampires? That they would suck your blood?
I heard the monsters’ words, which our father translated with his limited knowledge of English as they came out of their hideous mouths. Their words offered a glimpse of a tree-lined house, a maple log fire in the living room fireplace, a big beautiful white bedroom for each of us, or if we preferred, an enormous bedroom to share, talking dolls, china dishes, frilly dresses, studies in France or England if we liked. They could give us everything if we agreed to go live with them in Montreal, in a marvellous place called Westmount, which, if we did, would become heaven on earth for them, since they didn’t have any children.
The words streamed by, treacherous, deceitful, but I hadn’t taken them in yet. I was too absorbed in following Angèle’s eyes. She was only a few steps from the monsters, within arms’ reach, within claws’ reach. She was smiling at them. The angels and archangels fluttered around her. And there was a stubborn gleam in her eye, a light beam fixed on the McDougall woman, following every bob of the horrible child snatcher’s head.
She was hypnotized by the McDougall woman’s feather. It was the only possible explanation for what happened.
The feather was flitting furiously on the McDougall woman’s hat, a horrible hat in faded purple felt, an old-fashioned rich-woman’s hat. The feather, bright red and gleaming, whipped the air with a twinkle of light. It was probably fake, plastic, fibreglass at best, but the barbs sparkled like diamonds against the old-fashioned felt. It was the artificial brilliance of the bait that the McDougall woman dispensed in dazzling sprinkles by jiggling and turning round and round like a weather vane unhinged that caught my Angèle’s eye and soul in her snare. Because it was toward the poisonous sheen of the feather that she pointed her finger when, throughout the kitchen, an outraged clamour arose.
The Old Maid was the first to voice her indignation: ‘What? They want to adopt the Twins?’
And everyone’s lips echoed her fury: ‘The Twins! They want the Twins!’
It was so unexpected, so grotesque, that nobody could believe it. And yet the McDougalls were there, in our kitchen, sitting on dynamite cases, sickeningly superficial, dripping with desire and holding out their arms to us: ‘Do you want to come with us? Do you want to come with us?’
That was when Angèle pointed to the feather and said in the voice of a spoiled child, a voice that we had never heard before: ‘I want that.’
The old bag started to coo. ‘Oh! Darling! Darling! Darling!’
The McDougall woman was turning into a puddle of joy. She was melting in our kitchen. She was bathing in her own stupidity.
‘Oh, darling! Oh, sweetheart!’ She hurriedly removed the feather from her hat and held out the faded felt.
I saw – I recorded it in my five-year-old’s memory – I saw the pains the McDougall woman took to keep the feather in Angèle’s line of sight. She removed the pin, took off the hat and smoothed the hair that tried to cling to it. She cooed and she simpered, but none of her gestures interfered with the shimmering of the feather. She saw to that. The red diamond sparkled with all the fire it had, at Angèle’s eye level, when she held out the battered felt to her: ‘Here you are, honey. It’s yours.’
I was happy, relieved, we all were, to hear Émilien’s anger rise up: ‘You’re not going to let them take the Twins away!’
He was the eldest, our leader, the pride of our family. Geronimo hadn’t yet dethroned him, and he was going to show the shrew that it would take more than just flashing the trappings of her wealth to suck us in.
He was standing at one end of the table and addressing our father, who was sitting at the other end, facing the McDougalls, watching the scene with an amused smile. His answer left us with questions we still haven’t found answers to.
‘The Twins are old enough. It’s up to them to decide.’
And that’s when – Oh, Angèle, they never forgave you, even me, after all these years, I have a hard time – that’s when Angèle moved toward the feather and grabbed the hat. She let the McDougall woman take her in her arms, she sat in her lap and she gave in to the ridiculous, simpering airs of the two scoundrels.
The others didn’t believe me. All they could see was the affront, the appearance of what you did. Angèle didn’t give herself up for adoption; she was bewitched. She was hypnotized by the damn feather. I know it better than anyone. Angèle and I were of the same flesh. We were of the same essence. I know who she was at that moment, what she felt, what she wanted and what she didn’t want. We were a whole that couldn’t be divided.
She wanted the feather, just the feather. She didn’t want what they offered her afterward, but consented to it, and the others nicknamed her the Foster Child because she accepted the McDougalls’ dolls, dresses and finery.
They never forgave her. Geronimo was the most heartless. When he spoke to Angèle, there was a hiss in the air.
I was torn between my allegiance to my family and protecting Angèle. My childhood was over.
What would have become of Angèle, of our poor mother, of all of us, if I hadn’t screamed like a banshee?
The McDougalls had Angèle under their spell. They pampered her, whispered obscenities: the big house in West-mount, the trees in front of it, the backyard, the white room and all that happiness dripping with dresses, lace and vanilla ice cream. It was sickening. And while Angèle sullied her soul drooling over plastic twigs, the McDougall woman’s eyes flushed me out behind the kitchen ladder where I was holding her dead in my claws, her and her little runt of a husband.
‘You want to come with us? You come? Come with your sister?’
The others have told me the whole story, so I know that if the scream hadn’t ripped from deep inside me, if my cry had stayed caught in my throat and hadn’t broken the spell, my brothers would have advanced in unison and snatched Angèle from their arms. Émilien, Mustang, Yahoo, Fakir, the ones we called the Big Kids, even Tut who was not yet ten, they all told me that they would never have allowed a hick – whether dripping with money or manure, whether from the next town or a big, arrogant city – they never would have allowed a hick to show up at our home and take Angèle.
I roared, I howled, like a lion, like the damned, and I scaled the kitchen ladder.
I can’t remember if there was any sense to my howling, if there were words in my outpouring of fury, if I spat out my abuse, my revolt or my pain. I remember only my rage and our mother looking devastated.
My cry broke the spell. Angèle jumped down from the McDougall woman’s lap; she ran to the ladder, taking the feathered hat with her, and she came to join me in the laundry room, under the mountain of dirty clothes where I had crouched, and we cried together.
We were only five years old, and yet we knew that the long road that lay before us had suddenly forked. My destiny was clearly mapped: it followed the straight line that would take us all, the proud, peevish Cardinals, to dizzying heights. But what would Angèle do on the wayward road she was taking?
As we were crying in each other’s arms, tangled up in all the dirty socks and shirts, we knew that it was our last real moment together, that afterward everything would be different. Angèle didn’t go with the McDougalls, but they had taken her soul, and our hearts would no longer beat as one.
The McDougalls went home to their mansion empty-handed. They wanted a matched set, two little identical twins to put in front
of their fireplace, and they had been thwarted by my savage cry.
But they kept prowling. The McDougall woman didn’t come back, but she sent piles of gifts through her husband. Hats, dresses, petticoats and other trifles of barren women – everything was in lace, ribbon and pairs, in boxes that arrived two or three times a year and that were savagely torn open on the kitchen table so that the short, fat McDougall would know just what we thought of rich people’s spew in this house. If it hadn’t been for Angèle’s wonder-struck eyes, McDougall would have stopped bringing the boxes.
Angèle wore the McDougall’s lace and frills innocently, as if she didn’t expect that this frivolous display would raise ire and create grudges. I could hear the whole house’s disapproval, and every time she wanted to put on one of the rustling dresses I would ask her, ‘Why? It’s not as if you’re going to a ball.’ And she would say, gracious and light-hearted, ‘It’s so pretty. You have to see how it looks in the sun.’
I let her enjoy them, and I did as well. I liked to see the flounces of her dress dancing in the sun. I couldn’t help it, even though I knew she heading straight for humiliation.
They didn’t hurl abuse or heap criticism on her. Our brothers had finesse when it came to demolition operations. Geronimo was particularly gifted for comments that cut to the quick: ‘Where are you going dressed like that? Is it Halloween already in Westmount?’ If Angèle continued to swish and pirouette about, if he saw that she was still enjoying the dress, he would propose an expedition: a shed to burn, the brain of a bear to blow up, a raid to punish the hicks. The expedition involved crossing fields and forests, and its sole objective was to make sure the frilly dress saw some action: ‘You coming, Foster Child?’
When I see the little girls of Kangiqsujuaq dressed up in flowery dresses under their winter parkas, I can’t help but think of Angèle. The little girls of Kangiqsujuaq are plump, sturdy and merry. They wear dresses to celebrate spring, colourful dresses that stand out in the sun. From the window of the health centre, I see them running through puddles, through the garbage the melting snow offers up, through the blocks of ice piled up on the shore of the bay, and I see Angèle, dark skinned like my little Inuit girls, but scrawny, running behind the others through the rubble of Norco. Angèle is wearing her iridescent green tulle dress, her prettiest, the one that best summons the sunshine and joy and that pirouettes, skips and dazzles me with lightness. It’s springtime in Norco too. The snow has turned black; it clings to the crumbling remains of the town. Norco has started to look like a battlefield after the fight. And it’s a celebration. We’re running, Geronimo at the head, off to discover what winter has left for us. But I can’t help but see Angèle’s pretty dress splashed with mud when Magnum or Big Yellow would run alongside her and jump with both feet in a puddle of dirty water.
Twenty-One Cardinals Page 5
