—
I turn a page in my school planner and it asks me what my dream is, with fillable bullet points to achieve it. This is my dream: one day I will fly over to Mr. Brown, P.O. Box 450, Miami, FL, and his arm will envelop me like it enveloped W once in a photo I found slipped between the wall and dresser. On the back of the photo: Wait for me and I’ll take you someplace perfect. I wonder if God promised W the same.
—
Edison school, gymnasium. The exhibits are covered in tablecloths, linens, blankets, ready for the unveiling. The girl enters. Her steps are even. She has decided against the swamp-green blouse with the buttons and front pocket. Her poster board, covered in black plastic, keeps slipping from her sweaty fingers. Under the covering: photos of W, diagrams, tallies and numbers, samples of the thin and thinning (hair, nails, other).
Klaus hops between exhibits, beaming at everyone. He helps Lisa Ferrell set up a tray of plants and a container with live flies for a demonstration. When Klaus sees the girl, he waves her over. He helps take the covering off her project, expecting to see Patches the martyr.
Klaus blinks once, twice. The third blink takes a good while to come.
What is this? he asks, stepping back, as if something about the poster or the girl is contagious. Klaus has it wrong. This is not how a person is supposed to act when they spot a winner.
It’s a study of a human feeding on light, the girl answers, her voice softer than intended. And that’s Subject Winifred.
Who’s Subject Winifred? asks Klaus.
Silence.
Who is Subject Winifred? he repeats. Ricky Fielder and a few others start to make their way over. Klaus’s hands shake as he covers the project back up. You’ll need to come with me, he says.
—
Labyrinth of offices. A corner of the poster board is uncovered. Covered again. My dear. My dear, my dear. My…your name? When did…? Why did she…? Who can we…? Isn’t there someone we can…? My dear. Stay here while we take a moment to…
—
Crouching in the closet, holding my flashlight to these pages. I did not submit the report at the end even though they tried to take it from me, Klaus. I’m not finished yet. I bet you think I forgot about the refeeding phase again. My ears prick up every time car tires crackle on the gravel outside. In the offices they asked me to confirm my address I don’t remember what I said. They had fresh flowers in clean vases can’t think of that now must finish this before they come.
In the next room lies W her body a crumple of sheets her hand cold. A minute ago the girl lay next to her humming touching the strangeness of that hand waiting for it to fuse into hers talking to it brushing the fingers over her face and the girl’s shoes were still on she hadn’t kicked them off when she burst into the house ran away from school.
Klaus, you asked the girl, Who is Subject Winifred?
She isn’t my mother, Winnie, just like the girl isn’t me. They must belong to a different exhibit, with a different outcome.
I’ll tell you what happens to Winnie. I like this version better, and hope you can believe in it with me.
In the next room Winnie wakes. She stretches. She searches the kitchen cupboards, ready to eat her own tongue. I offer her some mango syrup and we have a rosy time, just like this, spooning syrup into each other’s mouths, our cheeks sticky. Between spoonfuls she asks how I am and I ask how God is and she asks, God who? and our days stretch out like this, merrily merrily, one after the other until the closet door can’t hold any more tallies.
DARLENE NAPONSE
SHE IS WATER
The River ran along the border of the reserve and the township. It was once a popular area to paddle down. Freshwater trout swam the river. In 1957, the plywood plant on the north shore of Lake Dark started production, dumping liquid garbage, from employees’ shit and piss to formaldehyde, into the lake. Chemicals humans can’t even pronounce were pushed, pumped, and forgotten. Thirty-five years later, an implausible number of puked-out litres of toxic waste in Lake Dark, the company closed its doors, yet it never cleaned up a drop of their hate. Lake Dark’s natural outflow is The River.
Edna Redfoot once found a two-headed trout, or so she says at every band meeting, when she was fishing in the Lake. Robert Hurf once found a pickerel infested with vile, open sores. I believe that story ’cause I saw it in his garage. The pickerel had few scales left. As I stared at the sores, I felt them mutating, like alien heads rising from the circular, oozing tombs.
Every now and then, people sank cars, skidoos, bikes, washing machines, old love letters, boats, ashes, cans of Spam, cups, canoes, pants, panties, dresses, shoes, cowboy boots, fishing rods, beer bottles, cigarette butts, pop cans, and bodies in Lake Dark, the deepest lake in the region.
Kids swam at the beach in a roped-off area. The water was so turbulent and deep; I imagine it never has time to warm up. The last August swim is the most important. It is the one day you float on your back and watch the horizon disappear. You spend the day soaking in the sun and the water. You and your friends stay late at the beach. Once the sun falls behind the cedars, you know it is fall. The cool breeze makes the water unbearable to swim in after that day.
In the winter of 1989, two boys from town were crossing frozen Lake Dark. It was a warm winter, and many of the lakes in the area hadn’t frozen over. The boys were heading home from a party and instead of driving around the lake, they decided to drive across. Their bodies and truck were never found. All that remained was their tracks and one eyewitness who saw them crossing about six in the morning. I imagined they found a better place to live, away from this small town.
My grandmother told me eight canoers died on Lake Dark in 1954. They went in the water too early. Spring is a bitch sometimes. The winds shifted them into the water.
Bodies began to be discovered, south of Lake Dark, in The River. Suzy Highground was found face up, naked, stuck in Tom Hunt’s dock. She was twelve and from the reserve. The police never investigated; they said it was a swimming accident. Suzy won every swim contest on the reserve. She was walking home from school, twenty-one kilometres away from The River when she disappeared.
Annie TwoToes never had time to tell her story. She was found upriver by the Mayor’s farm. No one ever heard what happened to her. Her parents closed their eyes and were never seen again.
When I was in school, I learned that rivers, creeks, and streams are tributaries. The word sounds like it should be known as greatness. These tributaries, the branches of Lake Dark, all had greatness.
The creek that ran north had the best trout run around. Me and my dad once pulled a fifteen-pound trout from that creek; my family ate trout for four days.
West of Lake Dark was a small stream that had this distant way of being. It was hard to walk along and full of rocks and deadfall. My older brother James once found a bear cub stuck in the rocks. He watched him for fifteen minutes and waited for the cub’s mother to come back. As he was going to move the rocks, the mother bear returned. She walked around the cub, then started to dig. My brother hid behind a boulder. The mother bear growled, which my dad later told us was a moan of fear as it ripped apart the rocks. The mother bear and her cub ran away. James ran home to tell us his tale.
The western stream was the one area most townies never went. In the spring me and my cousins pick fiddleheads along the shoreline. My aunt June Feather would buy them for five cents a fiddlehead. She’d make a stew from them or fry them up. I never tried them. Aunt June said fiddleheads are the most wonderful thing in the world. I always thought Saturdays with my mom and brothers were the most wonderful thing in the world.
In the south is a small river and rapids. We liked to camp there. The water runs constantly, and my mom says, “It’s the best place to catch whitefish.” She told me the water is the cleanest in the area, because the water is always moving. I was confused till one hot day I watched the water in Lake Dark, and it never moved. I’m sure it did, but as the sweat dropped off my forehead in
to the water, the ripple was the only movement I saw.
We always gathered, fished, hunted, and lived near water when I was young. In the summer, we were never at our house. We often set camp out on The River for weeks. We ate fish and swam the whole summer. All my cousins would either stay with us, or their parents would set up camp. At night we played kick the can and hid in the hardwood bush. When the person who was IT finished counting to twenty by the can, they would go around looking for everyone and when they saw you they would run back to the can and say, “I see Julia.” Then Julia would be out. If you were not good at finding people or not a fast runner, your cousin would come running out of the bush and kick the can, then you would be IT again. The older cousins always cheated and teamed up against us young ones. Then we teamed up and ’cause we were faster, we managed to be the ones hiding, not looking for everyone.
I asked my grandpa about The River. He said his mother was born across The River downstream. We lived where the water changed direction. In school, it is referred to as the area that separates the Atlantic and Arctic watersheds. They say the water starts to run north from this point.
He told me about the natural borders, the divides, and the height of land. He told me stories about the settlers divvying up land using the natural divides. I wondered how they could do that if the land wasn’t theirs to give away?
In the east, I was left to sleep. The water was deep. No one liked being around that part of The River. It always seems to take more away than you imagined.
My grandpa lived on The River. He had a small farm that ran two kilometres along The River’s bend. The bend is where all the fun starts. After the bend, the rapids begin. It’s not like the Colorado River, but it was our rapids. When you paddled down it, you often lost a paddle or put a good dent or hole in your canoe.
When I was eleven, I tried taking an inflatable tube down The River. My cousins, my younger brother Davis, and I were pumped. Cousin Jack hit the jagged rocks in the front part of the rapids and never made it down; my other cousin Gent watched on the shoreline; Davis rode the tube like a knee board. He was fearless. Then right after the last calm, he dove into the water and knocked himself out on a boulder. I swam to get him. He was a big boy, always was. When he was born, he looked like a four-month baby boy. By age two, he stood taller than any of his cousins.
He floated to the surface face down. Jack ran to get my grandpa. I tried flipping him over. Gent jumped in and helped me drag him to the shore. We turned him over. Davis didn’t breathe. Gent ran home. I kept screaming at Davis, hitting his chest, moving him sideways. I breathed into his mouth. I looked inside his mouth and asked the fish, the ants, the eagle, the crow to help him breathe but they all disappeared.
My grandpa sold his farm after Davis died. He moved us closer to the village, on the flattest, driest land, away from The River. My mother didn’t say a word to me for seven days.
Weeks and months after Davis died, I wondered why the fish, the ants, the eagle, the crow all went away? They were always with me, aside from that evil salamander, who always seemed to escape my sight. The fish, the ants, the eagle, the crow watched over me.
The truck came from behind me. I was trying to remember the words to “We Got the Beat” when he grabbed me. I was walking into town to meet up with my study group. I never saw him, nor did I know him. His large rough hands smelled of old ashtrays and gasoline.
When he put his hands over my mouth, I gagged and started to get sick. He pulled my arms and tied them behind my back. I was screaming. No one was around to hear. He tied a cloth over my eyes and pushed me into his truck. I threw up all over the truck and he punched me in the face.
By the time I started to breathe we were driving away. My stomach convulsed as he was shouting at me. Death metal rang and phased out his voice.
“‘Jumpin’ get down we got the beat. Round and round and round, We got the beat,’” I repeated over and over.
The River ran through the reserve, with its many creeks and streams running into it. We always seemed to be running south, following the creek. The reserve was a small area, a few houses, a band office, and a clinic. The clinic was in a rundown portable. We were all shipped out every morning on the yellow bus into town to go to school. School was fun for me. I liked all the classes. I never really liked the teachers; they were mean, but I liked the books. Science class was always interesting.
I imagined myself being an astronaut. I wanted to search the sky for intelligent life. I wanted to explore, like Captain Janeway, Commander of the Starfleet starship USS Voyager. I wanted to float in space, and walk on another planet. My mother bought me books on space.
We lived with my grandpa for a few years and my mother was making decent money at the truck stop. All the truckers liked it when she talked back. My mother had the worst potty mouth. She swore just like them. The truck stop was the perfect place to make tips. The men loved her comic rudeness and rewarded her for her antics.
When she came home she was exhausted. She would come in and kiss me goodnight. My mother wasn’t that great with money so she gave me her tips and told me to hide them till Christmas or for school clothes for me and my brother.
I hid the money in a space book. The one space book I never really liked because its pictures were childish. I cut out an area and stashed the loonies, toonies, and five-dollar bills in the book. It filled quickly, so I cut up the encyclopedias we had. I was the only one who read in the house. My brother or my grandpa would never look in the books.
My grandpa had satellite. There were so many channels it was ridiculous. You could watch old films, new films, channels just for sports, channels just for music, channels in Spanish, and lots of commercials.
Each week we watched Star Trek: Voyager. My grandpa sat in his La-Z-Boy and I lay on the floor. I could smell the maple wood burning and the heat was constant. I didn’t need a blanket or a pillow. During the commercial, I heard the cast-iron lever creak open; Grandpa was putting more wood in the fireplace. I loved watching the red-hot embers roll around. It was hypnotizing. Grandpa was slow putting the wood in and I always got extra seconds to see the embers turn to flame.
We watched as Captain Janeway and her crew travelled through space, moving past every obstacle challenging them. Would they make it home? They were diplomatic, saved lives, and kept to the Starfleet’s ethical code of conduct. I wanted to work on a spaceship like the Captain. She kicked ass. She also sounded like she smoked a hundred Export As a day. Captain Janeway had a thing with Chakotay, the hunky Native American who was her First Officer. It was the first time I saw a native character who didn’t have a loincloth and speak like a stoic illiterate on TV. I loved satellite TV.
Everything was aligning for me. I felt like I was a planet in the solar system.
My first kiss was under a full moon. I stood still waiting for something to happen in my body, a sign he was the one. He drove a dirt bike and sang with the Eagle Claw drum group. His hair was longer than mine. His lips were small and so soft, I wanted to plump them like a goose. We dated for a bit and had more fun running around in the bush than making out. We broke up and I decided to search only for boys with luscious lips and strong hands. It was a tall order, but I knew there was someone out there.
Davis always teased me about boys and said I would marry an ugly man with no teeth and have ten babies. I knew I was going to marry the hottest Indian at the Pow Wow and may not have any babies.
Our mother worked three jobs. She worked at the truck stop, was a part-time librarian, and sometimes she sold Tupperware. After Davis died, I went to work with her and didn’t go to school for six months. She told the teachers she was home-schooling me. The school fought with my mother and said she didn’t have the skills to home-school me. She said to test me when I returned and then if I was not up to their standards, I would lose my year.
The months after Davis died were strange. I liked being with my mom but when we had moments of fun, we stopped quickly, and started to do a c
hore. We both kinda looked at each other, then turned around and went our separate ways. I often found her outside in the yard looking west.
My older brother James was in his last year of high school and worked in a garage. We only saw him at breakfast or when he was home for dinner because he was broke. He never spoke of Davis nor of our father, who had disappeared one night on the reserve when I was seven. It was better our father had left; he wasn’t that nice to our mother. He was an asshole from the drink.
I helped my mother at the truck stop in the mornings, then I read all afternoon while she worked at the library. She ordered so many books about space and aliens that year, the librarian had created a special section titled The Universe, The Cosmos, and Extraterrestrials. The magazines were the most popular thing for people to read at the library, and the librarian put the space collection, with a huge globe and planets hanging from the ceiling, right beside the magazines. It was the best place in the world.
Lake Dark recognized my obsession with space and aliens. I was walking to my friend’s house. It was a cold December night and I was not dressed properly. I cut through old man Bob’s farm and walked along the shoreline. I kept hearing this noise. It felt like it was under me. At first, I thought I was on the frozen lake. I stopped and looked for some ailing cow. Nothing was around me but the cold. The cows were in the barn. I was still along the farmland.
The Journey Prize Stories 29 Page 15
