“No bag!” the soldier’s gun falls heavily across Martin’s knuckles making him squirm in pain. The child screams in fear. The young novice reaches out across the aisle and pats the sobbing child.
“I was only searching for a bar of candy,” Martin shouts at the soldier in Sinhala.
The man is surprised at this foreigner speaking the local language, but continues with his reprimand, “No bags are to be touched,” in a softer tone this time.
“They are very scared and nervous,” Professor Silva explains. “Don’t do anything suspicious.”
“Take your seat,” the soldier orders the novice. She carries the child back to her own seat, places the little girl on her lap, and talks to her gently in Tamil.
The bus inches closer to the checkpoint and Martin sees the tail-end of the line-up of travellers waiting to get their ID and belongings checked. The child’s mother, in her red sari draped in the style that widows use to cover their midriff, is lurching forward with her heavy bag in hand.
Martin turns to the nun-to-be. “What is the girl’s name?”
“Kamini.”
“Does she have any brothers or sisters?”
The novice talks to the girl in Tamil. Kamini shakes her head several times.
The novice says, “She does not know her family. I think she is an orphan. She is travelling with that woman, who she says is an aunt.”
The soldier interrupts by ordering the rest of the passengers to disembark.
As he rises, Martin sees the woman in the red sari, Kamini’s aunt, talking to a soldier, as another soldier roughly tugs at the bag in her hand.
Then the world explodes.
There is a ringing in his ears and a body is pressing down on him, smelling of sweat, fear, and blood. Martin is having difficulty breathing as all he can inhale is smoke, acrid cordite that burns his nostrils. He pushes the body away from him and gropes towards the light on his right. It is a window ringed with shards of glass that cut him. He sticks his head out and a cleaner burst of air fills his lungs. He stays there until the ringing is partially replaced by moans, screams, and sounds of rushing, panicked people.
The smoke clears and he sees bystanders on the street taking pictures with video cameras, cell phones, camcorders—any photographic device available. Some of the onlookers are staring at him, others are pointing to a spot just out of his sight. He gets his bearings: he is staring out of one of the bus’ windows. Then he remembers the explosion; it went off on the other side of the vehicle. He slides back into the bus. The last of the passengers are scrambling towards the door in the thinning smoke. He has lost sight of the novice, Kamini, and Professor Silva. The soldier lies on the aisle, groaning, his back a mess of splintered glass and round holes seeping with blood; he has taken the bulk of the explosion for all of them. Martin grabs the soldier by his feet and pulls him towards the door, but his own feet have no life left in them. He tries again. After several attempts he makes it to the door. He calls for help but no one responds. Ambulances are blaring sirens.
He stumbles down the steps and his knees give way at the bottom. “There is a man who needs help in there,” he gasps. Still no response. “A soldier,” he shouts at the top of his lungs. Then someone pays attention and two policemen enter the bus cautiously.
The novice is by his side, helping him to stand up. With her help, he rises, and the strength slowly returns to his legs. “Where is Kamini?”
“She is okay. You and the soldier blocked us from the blast. She is being checked in the ambulance.”
“And the professor? The man sitting next to me?”
“I don’t know. But there are many people being treated at a portable unit down the road.”
Martin checks himself. The ringing in his ears is ceasing. He has surface cuts on his neck and arms, and his back is stiff. But he is okay and decides that he does not need medical treatment.
“Walk this way,” the novice says, still holding his hand. And he sees why. The road between the obliterated checkpoint and the bus is strewn with blood, body parts, mangled machinery, a bloody boot, an exploded sand bag with its contents mingling with oil, blood, grease, and garbage. Strands of a red sari are scattered over the debris. The bile rises in him and he retches involuntarily. The novice holds his forehead as he vomits. He thinks she is an angel sent to him from heaven.
“Thank you,” he says as he lets her lead him toward a police barricade, with ambulances lined up beside it. Volunteers are running, bearing stretchers and mangled bodies. He realizes that he cannot get back to the bus even though his camera and all the photographs taken on this trip are still inside.
The novice leaves him momentarily; when she returns, she is leading Kamini by the hand. She speaks in English so that the child will not understand. “Kamini does not need to know the truth. I have told her that her aunt died in the explosion. She is used to losing family members. We all are.”
Martin embraces Kamini. She is rigid with fright, but after a few moments she starts to tremble. Then she begins to cry. He holds her until her crying trails off. He fishes in his wallet and pulls out all his cash, local and Canadian. “Here, take this,” he says to the novice. “And look after this child.”
The novice shakes her head. “It’s okay. I will take her to the novitiate with me. We will try to find her a home.”
He gets her to accept some money. “Here’s my card. Let me know if there is anything you need to help her, okay?”
She takes the card. “Thank you. And God Bless you.”
She puts her arms around the child and they retreat behind the barricade, waving briefly to him.
“Wait, I don’t even know your name,” he calls after her. But they are gone amidst the babble of voices, sirens, loudspeakers, and onlookers.
He staggers away, limping, leaving this site of death. No one notices him; after all, he is one of the survivors. Everyone who walks these streets is a survivor of a harsh life. Only the dead warrant any attention, and then only until they are buried, forgotten, and replaced by others. His romantic illusions of ever returning to Sri Lanka are buried in that bus. He has been waiting for a push, and has received a kick. He knows now what he must do. His father was right.
As he clears the barricades, he sees a man with his head in a bandage sitting in a bus shelter, clutching a battered briefcase.
“Professor Silva…”
The man’s eyes light up. “I forgot to put it in my thesis: the use of decoys and diversions. I have it now.” He looks triumphant; as if the mortality strewn around him is inconsequential, because he, Professor Archibald Silva, has found another nugget for his research. He is even oblivious to his own injuries.
Martin passes the professor and makes for the main road. Trishaws descend like mosquitoes. He gets into one.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asks.
“Home,” he says and slumps back in the seat.
Star Spinning
Catherine Brunet
Is it perverse to take no souvenirs when I leave? One year. The North swallowed me up and spat me out, timeworn, in the isolation of this godforsaken res. The only escape route is a dusty, gravel runway and a twin-prop bush plane that I hope will come on time. I stuff my backpack fat, slide thermal socks between old books and shampoo. Somehow, the closer I get to my thirty-five-pound baggage limit, the nearer I feel to home.
I’m exhausted, tired of carrying the white man’s shame of residential schools, of toxic lakes and councils that don’t work. Outside somewhere kids are huffing gas or hanging themselves at the radio station, getting drunk and breaking their bones with four wheelers. I wish I’d bought a television.
The bristles of my toothbrush have begun to wear. I’ll leave it out for now and pitch it in the morning. One more goodie for the local dump, for the neighbourhood black bears. The toilet’s broken again, but when everyone else uses
outhouses with shower curtains, I’m not allowed to feel hard done by. It’s against the rules. And I’m not supposed to air my nation’s dirty laundry because that makes me some sort of hypocrite. Hell, at least I tried. It doesn’t seem right that to try and fail leaves you feeling more empty and selfish than the person who never knew enough to give a damn in the first place. Canada is the model neighbour who beats his wife when the curtains are drawn.
I keep packing: bandaids, bugspray, camera. I leave the dreamcatcher dangling in the bedroom. The sinew strands have unraveled and it never worked in any case.
A knock at the door, sharp and playful. It’s past eleven at night, but this is nothing new, especially now that summer’s here. The kids have been cooped up by nine months of cold. Finally the school year’s done, curfew hasn’t set in yet, and they’re enjoying the slow decrescendo of dusk. Nobody’s checking on them anyway, I figure, and then I hate myself for thinking it. One eternal year, and I need to remind myself that these people love their children too.
Down the stairs to the plywood door. Like every house here, the windows are all boarded up and each time I turn the doorknob, I do so blindly. I’ve been warned it’s not so safe, but it’s my one last half-baked holdout for the goodness of humanity. One final, tentative endorsement of hope.
It’s Kiera and Shianna. Cousins. Everyone is related here, one of the things that rubs salt into the wounds of my un-belonging. I am not a Keeper or a Strang or a Moose or a King. I am a colonizer and a reject with long blonde hair.
Their Ojibway accents are thick, something they’ll never shake off despite the revolving door of missionaries preaching the latest southern isms: Christianity, English literacy, integration into the Global Market Economy. All slightly different versions of the same inexorable shit. (Reading shit properly is an art, useful in hunting. It can tell a skilled observer a lot about where people like me have come from and where we’re going, dumb brute beasts that we are.)
“Miss,” says Kiera. She’s fourteen, the leader within their little gang. “Me, I got a joke for you.”
I think I know what’s coming. The last teacher was from just outside St. John’s. She must have rolled west in one of those waves from the cod-starved coast, only to find herself on the banks of a lake system poisoned with mercury from the great white mining company upstream. There’s e-coli in the water and toxins in the breast milk. The kids live off soft drinks.
Whatever. (I picked up that expression, that rhetorical defense mechanism, from the kids. I wonder what else I’ve appropriated. The kids are good at sharing—I’ve got to give them that. But I don’t know anymore who takes and who gives.)
In any case, they seem to think we’re all from Newfoundland. They collect Dumb Newfie jokes the way my brothers and I used to collect hockey cards.
“Why is Newfoundland half an hour ahead of the rest of Canada?”
“I don’t know. Why?” I’ll humour them for a moment.
Kiera and Shianna break into pre-emptive laughter. They’ve probably practiced the delivery a dozen times already, and this has only made it more difficult. They’re giddy children parting with a fine, familiar treasure. Finally: “To give them…a head-start…” Kiera trails off.
“—in catching the punch line!” Little Shianna rushes to a giggly rescue and Kiera elbows her in the gut.
“You told me that one already.” I don’t know why, but this final absence of novelty bleeds me. I remember when I couldn’t watch human beings laughing without wanting to join in. I should have stayed a critic, a far-off commentator on the wrong and the absurd, watching documentaries and signing bland petitions, arguing in campus pubs about politics and justice, then laughing over nothing on the split-a-cab ride home. How to reclaim the lies that we were told: that we all can make a difference? Sometimes the line between being part of the solution and being part of the problem is as misplaced and fragile as I have become.
When the girls settle down from their brush with humour, Shianna says, “That’s not why we’re here.” She pauses. Comfort with silence still unnerves me. “We want you to see the stars.” She tugs at the sleeve of my green woollen sweater. Even on the cusp of July, the nights are chilly and the radiator buzzed to death in April.
I’m confused for a moment. I’ve seen the stars before. The other teachers are afraid to go outside so late, but I started buying smokes at the Northern just to have some excuse. People stumbling around at night sometimes bum cigarettes off me, but that’s the worst that’s happened. Anyway, I’ve had more than enough time to contemplate the stars. What can these girls show me that I haven’t seen before?
“The Northern Lights,” says Shianna, the little dispeller of mystery. Her black hoodie is too big for her and soiled. Her hair smells sour. Her smile is missing teeth yet is somehow pretty.
“You said you never seen ‘em,” explains Kiera. It takes me a moment. Of course I’ve seen them. Besides, now is the wrong season. And then I remember a conversation we had when I first arrived, what seems like years ago, before cynicism and defeat piled up like dirty dishes in the rusted kitchen sink. I can’t help feeling touched. These kids can barely spell their names, and they remembered all the while how much I wanted to see those lights. That was a different person, though, an idealistic puzzle piece that doesn’t connect with the rest of what I have become.
“Wait one second.” I haven’t packed my ragged sneakers yet and I pull them on and step outside. Most of the graffiti on the porch is directed against my old roommate. Except for the spelling mistakes, I might just as well have done it. Outside smells like summertime: fresh and heavy all at once. I look across the dirt road to the flimsy glow of a neighbour’s house. Sagging roof, tattered clothesline. Fifteen people packed into a patched and leaky cabin, living in the shadows of each other’s muffled lives.
“Turn it off.” Shianna points at my porch light, and she’s right. As soon as I duck back in to flick the switch, there is a new distinctness to the sky, to its yawning breath of monstrous constellations. Necks craned up, we gaze. It is awesome and awful to stand here.
“Fuck, it’s cold,” says Kiera. Whether it’s forgetfulness or a wilful act of rebellion, she has never succumbed to our efforts to gentrify her language. Part of me respects that.
I’d set aside a pile of old clothes I meant to leave behind. The Education Authority will take them, pass them along to those most in need. I go inside and fetch a faded fleece. It’s big for Kiera but I hand it to her and she slips it on. I notice the cigarette burns on her forearm. They’re infected again but I know she won’t go to the nursing station. They ask too many questions.
The night is moonless, clear, a stroke of cloudless luck. “Come on.”
They lead me around the back to a patch of weeds and darkness, where no other houses can be seen. All of a sudden, we are plucked out of context. We become ahistorical, aloof from all the madness of two competing worlds. Only the forest surrounds us. It is thick with a complicated logic all its own. On its edges, a few wild strawberries are emerging, green and hard and hesitant, from amongst the thorny brambles.
Shianna has a question: “You coming back next year?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.” I’m startled by my own vagueness, by this slackening of certainty. Or am I just trying to protect them from another disappointment, from one more blunt betrayal? But they have lost before, will lose again, and how am I a loss? I made up my mind months ago to leave, the last time a not-quite-adult casket was wept for in the subdued school gymnasium. I listened to the service beside the complicated meshwork of a well-loved hockey net.
“You don’t like us?” As with many Ojibway speakers, Kiera’s tone rises at the end of a sentence, and it is difficult to know if this is crafted as a question or as a half-sure accusation.
“It’s not that.” What then? “I guess I’m just tired.” And weaker than I’d thought. “And I guess I miss ho
me.”
“Fuck, we’re tired too but we ain’t going nowhere.”
“But Kiera, this is home. For us it is.” There is a gentle pride in Shianna’s voice, and I picture for a moment this place through her eyes: the exhilaration of a motor boat ride over smooth, sparkling water; waking up to the smell of a neighbour’s fresh moose stew and bannock; the childhood freedom to explore all day, never fearing getting lost because everyone you meet knows who you are and who you belong to—and you belong, after all, to everybody.
I wonder whether I will miss something that wasn’t mine.
“Kiera, Shianna?” I have a sudden idea. “Do you know how to star spin?”
They giggle. They say something in Ojibway that I don’t understand. And then they finally answer me, “no”.
“It’s easy.” I’m in teacher mode, and for a moment I check myself. These openings usually go nowhere, leave me tired and deflated. But two of them is not the same as thirty, and I have an escape planned for tomorrow.
“Take a few steps apart. Give yourself plenty of room.” Yeah, I’m just one more silly white person, but they take their steps and wait. “Now look up, way up, and choose your favourite star.”
“How’m I supposed to have a favourite?”
“It doesn’t matter, really. Just choose one you like. One you can see clearly.” I crane upward myself, choose one so bright it might be a planet. I glance at Shianna and Kiera. They’re looking up too. “Have you got one?”
“Sure.” Kiera sounds skeptical, but she’s chuckling.
“Now keep looking up at that star and start spinning around… Like this!” I whirl around in a circle. What starts gently as barely a pivot winds itself up until my legs are criss-crossing crazily, and I’m twirling twirling twirling. And then I’m so dizzy the only thing to do is to collapse in a pool of laughter.
The girls are beside themselves. They’re on the ground and I assume they’ve star spun too. But they’ve proven that it’s just as much fun as a spectator sport. I bumped my knee on the way down, and there’s a strange co-existence of pain and joy, ache and exultation.
Everything Is So Political Page 11
