All I Ask

by Eva Crocker

  “Call the cops,” the security guard called into the supermarket, holding fistfuls of the man’s jacket. The man dropped to the floor and wriggled like a fish. The security guard planted a foot on either side of his writhing body and bent down, grabbing at the man’s coat. I stood limply outside the glass doors. The man in the windbreaker was trying to roll onto his stomach. The doors shut in front of me and opened again.

  “I’ll have you charged, you’ll be charged for this,” the security guard was saying. He had managed to tug the man’s coat open. Three bright red steaks in white Styrofoam trays, a box of Uncle Ben’s Mexican-Style Rice, and a block of cheese spilled onto the grey, slush-covered carpet. People were bottlenecked behind the gliding doors on the supermarket side of the porch, their carts heaped with plastic bags stuffed with groceries.

  “Get up, get up,” the security guard said, his voice full of disgust.

  The man stood slowly, putting a hand on his bent knee to help himself up. Then he bolted — the doors stuttered open and he ran out into the starry night, sprinting across the parking lot. The security guard cursed and started picking the food off the floor.

  “No-chase policy,” he explained as I passed him, sounding sorry for himself.

  I went to the produce section, I wanted to make a stir-fry — something fast but hot with vegetables in it. I picked up mushrooms and an orange pepper; I put back a bag of snap peas because I realized they were almost seven dollars and already speckled with black spots. The sprinklers above the broccoli were sending down a shower of mist. I hesitated before reaching for a head of broccoli, I didn’t want to get my sleeve wet.

  I felt eyes on me and looked around. A woman in a black pea coat with short grey hair was standing behind me. I grabbed a head of broccoli and turned it in my hand; when I looked back the woman was still there. A spike of fear shot up from my feet and hardened like a stalagmite in my chest.

  She wasn’t the plainclothes security guard who wandered the aisles, loading and unloading her cart, watching for shoplifters. That woman was in her thirties and had bright blue hair. I often wondered if they hired her because of her edgy look or if she transformed herself to go undercover. I liked picturing her at home in her bathroom with a towel over her shoulders, reading the side of a tub of Manic Panic Blue Steel dye. Then sighing as she untwisted the top and scooped a glob out with three fingers.

  The broccoli I’d picked was old: the stalk was rubbery and the flowers on top were open and yellowing. I put it back and chose another. My sleeve got covered in tiny beads of water. I could feel the woman behind me. She looked like a cop — just the way she held herself, there was a macho confidence about her posture. I imagined her trailing me on foot through the park. The thought of her seeing me wave to Fatima and her kids made my stomach turn over. But no, she’d probably followed me in a car and drove around the park.

  I picked a stiffer head of broccoli, still covered in the crystals of ice, and added it to the vegetables I was squishing against my coat. I veered away from the produce section and into the bakery area. I stood beside a table of white cakes with red poinsettias piped on them. I picked up a cake with my free hand, turning it like I was inspecting it through the clear plastic lid. There was a tremor in my hand.

  I watched her choose her own broccoli and add it to the mound of bagged fruits and vegetables in her cart. I was waiting for her to look my way again. Then I would know. But she swung her cart around and headed towards the pharmacy.

  I wandered through the freezer section, the thud of panic dying down in my chest. The store was closing soon and the lines were long. I joined the shortest one. The woman was in line at the opposite end of the store. I couldn’t stop staring at her. She was typing on her phone, one finger hovering over the screen before plunking down again and again.

  The man behind me in line made a noise to let me know it was time to move ahead. I dropped my things onto the conveyor belt. I had to ask the cashier to repeat what she’d said about the weather because I was distracted by watching the woman leave the store with bunches of plastic shopping bags.

  I walked through the park on the way home but the skating loop had cleared out and the music was shut off for the night. The emptiness of the park felt menacing. I started rushing across the snow, slipped and banged my knee on the ice beneath it. The orange pepper rolled out of my shopping bag; I wiped the snow off it on my jeans and dropped it back in the bag.

  When I got home the thought of chopping up the vegetables with my back to the door was so unpleasant that I left the groceries on the counter and went to bed without eating.

  * * *

  I had trouble falling asleep because I was hungry. When I’d tripped in the park I’d landed on my hand in a weird way, the hand I thought of as my bitten hand. Now it was aching. The day of the bite I’d gone for a walk in the Battery. This was last spring, when I was still living on Patrick Street with Viv and Mike. I liked to go up there early in the morning. I’d pet the pack of cats that loll on their bellies under cars up there. They’re marmalades with white splotches, skinny with matted hair and black crust in their eyes. I’d climb up the wooden platform beneath the cannon that points at the harbour and make a wish on the ocean, touching the cool metal for good luck. I always go up there when I need to make a wish. Usually I wish for acting work or for some unexpected money to show up in the mail — almost always selfish wishes.

  On my way down the hill that morning I ran into an old co-worker, a server at the restaurant. Madonna. She was about my mom’s age and when we’d worked together her daughter had just moved home from Alberta with a two-year-old son. Madonna had a German shepherd. The leash was wrapped around her fist three times and the dog was dragging her.

  “Who’s walking who?” I said as we approached one another on the narrow road.

  “Sit,” Madonna said and the dog obeyed.

  I had been hoping I wouldn’t have to stop.

  “Where are you working now?” Madonna asked. “They’re hiring for summer at the restaurant.”

  “Oh, I have a job,” I said.

  “Where? They’d hire you back. You know everything already.”

  “How’s your daughter?” I asked. The wind was blowing right through my sweatshirt.

  “Oh wonderful, she just got Tyler into daycare, the place had a three-month wait-list.”

  “Great, well nice to see you,” I said.

  “Give me a hug,” Madonna said. “Don’t mind the dog, he might bark but he’s harmless.”

  I stepped in and put an arm around Madonna’s shoulder. Madonna was taller than me and thin. I felt teeth meet in my hand. Teeth brushing against each other inside me. I held up my hand and two bright streams of blood ran into my sweatshirt and all the way down to my elbow. There were drips of blood on the sidewalk around us, there was blood on my jeans and on my sneakers. Madonna pulled the dog away and stood in the ditch with the ocean behind her.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Oh fuck, can you move it? Can you move your fingers?”

  “I don’t know.” I was afraid I might faint.

  “I’m sorry, he doesn’t usually, let me give you my phone number.” Madonna tried to get at her phone in the zippered pocket of her windbreaker.

  “I think I’m going to go.” I turned and started down the hill. I was nauseous with the pain. It was a hot, throbbing pain. I breathed through my nose. I wanted to get away from Madonna.

  A silver car pulled up next to me. Kyle Patterson put down the window. Ding-dong.

  “Stacey? Are you okay?”

  I could imagine how absurd I looked, speed-walking past a garden full of purple tulips and fat-breasted hens with blood dripping out of my sleeve.

  “I got bit by a dog, a German shepherd.”

  “Do you want a ride?” he said. And then, with urgency, “You need to sit down.”

  Kyle
opened the driver’s-side door and got out, the car still running. He put his hands on my shoulders and steered me around the front of the car. A jeep pulled up behind us and rolled to a stop; I saw the driver looking at my hand. I felt tears on my cheeks. The kind of tears that come when you’re trying not to cough while someone else is doing public speaking.

  “Do you want me to call someone?” Kyle Patterson opened the passenger door and gave the jeep the “one minute” signal. I sat down, keeping my feet on the pavement and my thighs together to catch the blood and keep it off Kyle’s seats.

  “No, I don’t know.” I knew Viv was at work and my parents were an hour outside of town, visiting relatives. I felt something rumbling up my throat with the force of projectile vomit. A dramatic, childish noise bleached out of me. A sob. Kyle Patterson was looking me right in the eyes when it happened and he didn’t flinch. I could tell he’d cared for people, he’d been subjected to wailing in the past. He touched the side of my knee, directing me to put my feet in the car, a touch devoid of sleaziness.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or the jeep. He shut my door and walked around the front.

  “I’m on my way to work at Caines,” Kyle said. “You can come in and clean up in the bathroom and we’ll get you a cab to the hospital.” He did up his seat belt and we rolled out of the Battery, the sun catching on waves in the harbour, sending up searing white flashes.

  “Sometimes stuff bleeds a lot and it’s not that serious,” Kyle said. There was congestion downtown, a warm Sunday morning. I whined about the pain as we crawled along Water Street. We passed groups of people carrying ice creams and takeout coffees.

  “I would take you right to the hospital but I’m already late and we’re short on staff, I know it’ll be busy today,” Kyle said.

  We parked around the corner and walked down the street to his work, leaving drips of blood behind us. People moved to the edges of the sidewalk to let us pass. Most of my arm was covered in blood; in some places it had gone black and crusty, in other places it was gooey. In Caines’ I dripped blood on the floor. Kyle waved to his co-worker, an old lady with a gold cross hanging in her wrinkled cleavage. He led me up a set of stairs in the back.

  “Just get cleaned up, I’ll call you a cab.” Kyle closed the bathroom door and I heard him jog down the stairs.

  In the square mirror above the sink I saw palettes of canned goods stacked behind me. Mix-and-matched rows of bright labels, tinned peas and meatballs and chopped-up carrots. I could see my face was pale, even my lips looked pale. I bent over to unroll some toilet paper and when I stood up the room dipped. I held onto the edge of the sink with my good hand; everything was black but I could feel the cool lip of the sink in my hand, I was thinking “Just hold on tight.” Then I was on my knees, the bloody hand was coated in grime from the floor, grey scuzz and rocks and some long hairs. My head was pounding. My good hand was above my head, still holding the edge of the sink.

  “Stacey?” Kyle Patterson said from outside the door. “Stacey? Cab’s here.”

  I realized he was knocking. I’d heard him knocking but at first I hadn’t been able to differentiate it from the pulsing in my head and hand.

  “Come in,” I said.

  “Whoa.” Kyle put his hands in my damp armpits and lifted me off the floor. It was brotherly, the way he held me. He helped me wrap rough paper towel around my hand. Blood soaked through it almost immediately. Kyle paid for a can of Pepsi and ran out to speak to the cab driver.

  “The sugar might help,” he said. “Might wake you up a bit.”

  I sat on the steps leading up to the storage room/bathroom, a few feet from where I’d passed out. The woman behind the counter was dealing with a steady stream of customers. I was trembly and cold. The pain in my hand felt like a bouquet of needles driving deep into the hollow between my last two knuckles and pulling out slowly, over and over.

  “You don’t have anyone to call?” Kyle Patterson asked.

  “I’m okay. Get the cab to swing by my house, I’ll get my wallet.”

  “I’ll pay for it, just worried about you getting home.”

  “You don’t have to pay, you already got me this,” I held up the can. “Thank you, for everything.”

  “It’s no problem,” Kyle said. “It’s nothing, I can pay.”

  The woman at the counter was looking at him, the line at the cash had swelled and lost its shape.

  “No.” I stood up, I was unsteady but determined to make it to the cab. I pushed the heavy door with my good hand and the bells tied to the door frame bounced against each other in the breeze.

  At the hospital, the nurse disinfected the wound and put three neat stitches on the back of my hand and another four on my palm. The doctor gave me a sheet of paper with illustrations depicting the stretches I would need to do to stop the bite from diminishing my mobility. The nurse wrapped my hand in gauze while the doctor demonstrated each of the manoeuvres.

  “You’re lucky, he went right through you but he missed all the important stuff,” she told me.

  I started walking home, passing the duck pond with the gazebo where hospital staff and university students gathered to smoke. A horn honked and a car slowed beside me. My grandmother was driving. I climbed into her pristine car. Rescued for a second time that day.

  “I was in talking to the specialist about my knee,” she said. “Oh no, what’s wrong with your hand?”

  I explained about the bite, I stressed how the doctor said the teeth hadn’t snagged on any nerves or veins. That everything would go back to normal. When we pulled up in front of the house on Patrick Street my grandmother told me, “I’m going to say a prayer for you tonight, Stacey, a prayer for your hand. I’m going to ask for you to heal up properly.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my good hand on the door handle.

  “You know what?” my grandmother said. “I think you’re ready for your spoon. I’m going to give it to you next time I see you.”

  “Thank you, Nanny,” I said, opening the car door.

  Eventually the tunnel the dog’s teeth made in my hand closed up, and the stitches fell out. My fingers wiggle a little looser on the other hand and probably I’ll have early-onset arthritis, but basically it’s fine. Before the bite I would stick my hand out and pet any dog I saw in the street. Now I never pet a dog I don’t know.

  * * *

  When I woke up, my T-shirt was damp with sweat. It was cold in my room and I’d slept with the electric blanket on the highest setting. I’d wriggled out of my underwear and socks in the night.

  The blanket gave me strange dreams. My grandmother had warned me that electric blankets cause brain damage. I had been trying to reassure her that I wasn’t too cold in my drafty downtown house: I had slippers, a space heater, the electric blanket. But my grandmother had heard a program on the radio, those blankets send waves of electricity through your body. There was frost on the inside of the window. Snot and Courtney were curled together under the covers, down by my hip. The air I breathed in was cold in my nostrils and on the back of my throat. The sun streaming in was pissy yellow.

  “Don’t have it on all night, Stacey, it’ll fry your brain. You don’t leave it on all night, do you?”

  “No, no, not all night.” But I kept it on all night. I’d have wild dreams and wake up every morning soaked in sweat.

  I couldn’t check the time because I didn’t have my phone. The reality of the situation with the cops came back each morning a few moments after I woke up.

  This morning the electric blanket had pulled a memory up to the surface of my brain like a poultice. A music video I made for a friend’s band when I was in university. I took the opening shot. It’s my feet walking through hundreds of squirming tadpoles at Massey Drive. The bottom of the pond is yellow sand, there are legions of tadpoles, their plump, gyrating bodies fill the screen. I sh
uffle forward, moving to avoid a smashed beer bottle, the water laps against my hairy, muscled calves. My toes are painted baby pink.

  We filmed it in a day. The tadpole shot was spliced together with video of me and another girl making out in an inflatable chair covered in glow-in-the-dark polka dots. Sweating beneath the electric blanket, I tried to fish her name out of my memory but it was lost.

  We were wearing candy necklaces and matching fluorescent bikinis we’d picked out at Wal-Mart. Mine was neon green and the other girl’s was electric pink. The chair was off Amazon. It was a new version of the inflatable furniture and backpacks that were popular when I was in elementary school. The photo on the front of the box was a teenage boy in cargo pants, slouched in an inflatable chair that was covered in pentagrams.

  The camera was set up on a tripod in the corner of the room. The other girl was a good kisser and I liked the way her body felt against me but I couldn’t quite lose myself in it. I wasn’t sure how much we were supposed to be faking for the camera. How real did it feel for her? I didn’t want to give over completely if she wasn’t.

  After a while it became tedious. The plastic chair got sticky and made farting noises when we moved.

  Someone I knew had a short film about BDSM in a porn film festival in Germany and she suggested we enter the music video. But I thought it was too tame to count as porn or even be of interest to anyone. It was still buried somewhere in my computer, though. And maybe the cops would spin it into something to justify storming through my house at seven in the morning. I tried to remember what the file was called. It might have had some pretentious title but hopefully it was something innocuous like “video2223.” There were probably countless other things I’d forgotten about buried in there. I threw the hot blanket off.

  I pulled on my fleece-lined leggings and put my blue bathrobe with the burnt sleeve over my sweaty T-shirt. The cats crawled out from under the covers and stretched. Usually they stalked around the room in the morning mewling for breakfast, but the electric blanket did strange things to them too. The second they touched it they went limp. Under the blanket they let me haul them into my body and cuddle them in a way they’d normally refuse by swatting at my face. My grandmother had also warned, “That thing could burn down the house.” I yanked the cord out of the wall.