by John Farrow
The night stayed hot and muggy. Katarzyna stayed out late. And she remembered, Doi did, how she bent over at her kitchen table, while waiting, bent over with both her arms across her belly, bent over and she moaned, the pain there, that memory of pain there and still Katarzyna was not home. Then she arrived. It seemed like the middle of the night. Later, she’d admit, not that late. But it seemed like the middle of the night and Katarzyna and her boyfriend kissed in the car in the back lane, then they both got out. They kissed outside the fence to the backyard and came into the yard and kissed again. His hand on her behind. Doi must have left the house by then for she was already in the backyard with them and yelled at the boy and her daughter screamed back at her. The boy laughed. He thought it was funny. Funnier when she shoved him away, funnier when she punched his shoulder, his arm. He was laughing even as he was leaving and Katarzyna, huffy, angry with her as if she was the one with the laughing boyfriend in the middle of the night, as if she was slamming the door in her mother’s face going into the kitchen. Doi, in a rage then, to have that boy laughing like that other boy laughed when she was sixteen and he was done with her and she would be disgraced in the city, handed over to the nuns there, until the birth. That child, that daughter she was told, taken from her and only then was she returned to her family and to her disgrace. Yet a soldier still married her only to die on maneuvers. In a war game, dead. A game. And Katarzyna, now playing her games, her anger as if the mother was to blame for ruining her night, her life, her chance at love and where was her bra? That smile. That coquettish smirk she had. Doi had left on her own for her second disgrace, she would not be sent away that second time, she went on her own, back to the city and to the nuns and when that child was born she would not take it, and left the world she knew for a world she did not know, walking across the border in exchange for a certain kind of sex that meant nothing to her, but not nothing, but nothing, what mattered was escape, leaving Poland, and Doi, was she screaming now? Perhaps she was screaming now, the daughter screaming back, the daughter saying, ‘Mom, he likes my titties, so? Live with it.’ Then the blood, the slashing, a real and different screaming now, more blood, the husband awake and wrestling with her but he was too lazy and she slashed again, the daughter screamed again, the blood, and finally the husband got her on to the floor and while she begged him then he did not let her up like those others had not let her up. So much blood on the floor she wanted to mop up. Then the neighbors came. And the ambulance came. And the police came. The trial after that. Then prison.
v
‘A question, as I see it,’ Émile Cinq-Mars said to her, his voice soft and slow and deliberate; she had been forewarned that he was smart and that he would ask questions that she did not want asked, and say things that she did not want heard, ‘has to do with how the small axe, the hatchet, the one you injured your daughter with, came to be in your right hand, Doi. It did not suddenly appear there. Did you pick it up in the backyard? Or on the porch? People don’t usually leave a hatchet just lying around. Had you already brought it into the kitchen with you, while you were waiting, so that you were waiting there with the hatchet at the ready?’
‘What?’ Doi asked. ‘What?’ This made no sense. He was wrong. The axe. It was in her hand. She admitted that. But it was not like he said. It just appeared there. What else?
‘That’s one question. At what point did you pick up the axe so that you could attack your daughter?’
‘Just to scare her, maybe. Only to show her that she was wrong. Her father didn’t care from nothing about the trouble she was in.’
‘Some would say she was in love, not trouble, but when and where did you pick up the axe?’
It just appeared. It was in her hand. It was not in her hand. Then it was in her hand.
‘The other question that I’d like you to take back to the dorm, to think about, is why you looked into the stall where Flo was killed. You told the police that you urinated in the middle stall, that that’s the toilet you used. But Flo was out on the end. Why did you go down to the last stall and look in there? Do you usually look in on other people doing their business?’
‘There are no doors.’
‘I know there are no doors. All the more reason to respect someone’s privacy, no?’
‘I looked in her stall.’
‘I know you did. Why did you? When and where did you pick up the axe, and why did you look in Flo’s stall? Can you think about those two things?’
‘Why?’ Doi asked.
‘You’re wondering why I want to know about the axe?’
Doi nodded.
‘That’s a fair question. I want to understand your anger. What is spontaneous with you? What is planned when you go off the deep end? I think it’s fair for me to know that. That we both understand it. That may help both of us to understand what happened in the toilet.’
‘I didn’t kill Flo.’
‘But you attacked your daughter with an axe, and I’m told that you still don’t believe it was all your fault.’
‘She was out so late!’
‘Why did you look in on Flo?’
‘Flo?’
‘Wasn’t that rude? Are you a rude person, Doi?’
‘I’m not. I’m not rude.’
‘Then why? For now, just think about it. You can tell me what you discover the next time we meet. The issue with the hatchet helps me to understand you. I’m interested to learn why you screamed, after you found Flo, when you didn’t scream when you slashed your daughter. Or did you? I also want to know what you did between the time you came across Flo in her dreadful state and the moment when you screamed to alert the others.’
‘What?’
‘It’s in the guard’s report. You were standing right at the opening to the toilet room when the guard located you. Flo was in the stall at the opposite end. You found Flo, then went to the doorway so that people could hear you better when you screamed. That’s what it seems like. Then you screamed. Strange delay. Why? But that’s a question for another time. In any case, I think you understand me. I’m quite sure you do. Time now to do your maps. Do you know what they are? Did Abi tell you? I bet she did. The maps, then that’ll be it for today, Doi.’
Understand him? She didn’t understand a damn thing. He didn’t seem so smart to her. Maybe Abi was wrong. No, not smart, not smart at all.
She diligently, angrily, sketched out the stupid maps.
ROZLYNN
i
Within their quarters, Rozlynn strode back and forth like a caged animal approaching its wits’ end. Never a good sign. She walked a straight line across the room, a straight line back. Abigail joined her for a minute in each direction, keeping silent the way Rozlynn preferred, then whispered, ‘Roz, Rozlynn girl, we got word, you know? He’s gone home, the detective. Is that what’s bugging you the most? You don’t have to talk to him, not today, nobody does, so don’t worry.’
Roz did not ignore her yet neither did she respond. She stopped walking for about twenty seconds, which indicated to Abigail that she was mulling the news. Then she returned to methodically pacing once more. Across the room and back to her bunk. Across the room and back to her bunk. Not looking to either side. Facing forward to the floor. Abigail waited; with a gesture she warned others not to intervene. Then she sat on the end of Rozlynn’s bunk and continued to wait. Not looking at Roz, not signaling to her, just waiting. Finally, Roz sat down at the head of the bed, and folded her pillow onto her lap.
Doi had upset her. Nobody knew that, and if they did, they wouldn’t know why. The way that Doi returned from her meeting with the cop disturbed Rozlynn. The woman’s evident distress affected her. She normally didn’t have much to do with Doi and if the truth was told – she would not herself say it – she didn’t like her. That’s not what mattered. Doi was distraught as though she’d been beaten up on the inside, which was always worse than the bruises a person might show on the outside. A bruise on the skin vanished over time; those on the inside hemorrh
aged and hung around forever. They never healed properly. Forever tender.
Abigail let her settle. Even after Rozlynn had done so, placing the pillow behind her back and holding her head up, her hands relaxing on her lap, she didn’t press for a discussion. She waited on Roz to say what she needed to say, if anything, and if she said nothing that was fine, too. She wanted Roz to know she could count on her silence in their interactions. They could both stay mum, or not, as she wished.
She chose to speak.
‘How come he bugged out so soon?’
‘Lazy, maybe. I don’t think I wore him out. Maybe Doi did.’
‘Maybe,’ Rozlynn said. ‘She wears me out sometimes.’
Abigail gave her a look. That was a lengthy statement for Roz to make. Lit by humor, which was rare from her as well. She didn’t challenge her on it. She said, ‘I hear he has a girlfriend. Maybe he was missing her. Went to see her.’
‘What are you talking about? How’d you hear something like that?’
‘I asked him. He didn’t give me a straight answer. Not quite anyway. That’s not like him. I don’t know for sure, but I think he’s in love. Are you worried about talking to him?’
Rozlynn didn’t usually care about how things looked but she knew how this must look and it wasn’t good. She was afraid to talk to the police. She saw how Doi came back, wretched, forlorn, ready to pull her own hair out. Doi was on the verge of tears and at times she was obliged to dab those tears away. Talking to the cop had caused Doi grief and that’s what Roz didn’t want, that’s what she feared the most. More grief.
She could not explain it, to Abigail or to anyone else, because people never understood. It made no difference that it was a simple thing. When she’d been arrested for the murder of her father the cops brought her into an interrogation room and asked her questions she didn’t answer – she didn’t refuse, she simply chose not to answer, she didn’t feel like it – and then one detective put a pad of white foolscap down in front of her and plopped a pen on top. He said, ‘Write up your confession if you don’t want to say it out loud.’ So she did.
She wrote, ‘I did it.’
The detective looked at what she wrote. ‘You could add a few details,’ he suggested, but she did not do that.
He asked her to sign it, so she did.
When they asked her in court if she did it, she said, ‘I did it.’ That’s all. Then they sentenced her.
Talking with this cop wasn’t going to be the same. She could tell that by the way Doi came back and the shape she was in. With this cop, she’d write down ‘I didn’t do it,’ and then she’d really be in trouble. No one would believe her. No one would accept her word. They’d twist everything she said, and if she didn’t speak they’d put words in her mouth. They’d drill down into her. If she insisted that she didn’t do it, they’d kick her around the room then stomp on her properly until she changed her mind and saw everything differently in a new light. They’d force her to sing a different tune, one she didn’t know. That would happen. She couldn’t win and she accepted that. If she protested her innocence, she’d be found so guilty she’d scream.
‘I did it,’ she said.
Abi looked at her ‘Did what? No. You didn’t kill Flo.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘I killed my father. I did that. That’s what I did when I said I did it.’
‘Tried and convicted, Roz. That goose has been cooked. And eaten. The bones tossed. No need to chew on that carcass anymore.’
She couldn’t say to anyone, especially not to the cop, ‘I didn’t do it.’ He’d be on her then. She couldn’t explain her dilemma to Abigail. This was the kind of deal where it’s better to keep your mouth shut and fret about it on your own.
Abi let her keep her silence. She knew that that’s why the two of them got along so well.
ii
When she was small her father was ending his days on the trapline in winter. Fox pelts and ermine, wolf and beaver. He got by for decades. As he grew older the work became increasingly more difficult for him, the results less encouraging through no fault of his own. She helped out by walking the trapline with him. Those days were the best. She didn’t mind that he took her out of school. She loved being with him in the woods, on the snow, under the stars, in the silence of the cold where all you could hear on a windless night were the trees crackling and the wolf howls. She understood why wolves howled in the dark and in their torment. She’d howl too if she had the ability. The crackling trees confused her. She asked her father once if it was the bark of the trees that barked in the night, if that’s how bark got its name, but her father said that tree limbs went crack because the cold was so cold.
‘Bark is English word,’ he said. To him, that mattered. ‘Trees don’t speak English.’
‘Do they speak Cree?’
‘Sure.’
Sometimes she found herself in trouble when she came home from the trapline because she had skipped school, but mostly the teachers only hung their heads. Or they sighed, their hearts heavy. As though a transgression had occurred and no hope existed to undo the wrong. Her girlfriends were unhappy with her also because they thought she was as snooty as a white girl after she’d been out on the trap, but the boys were the worst. They were so jealous! She didn’t care that the boys were mad. That was their problem, she said. And it was.
Her father was going out for longer times and returning with fewer pelts. Then he started getting paid less for each pelt. Then he went out for shorter times on shorter traplines and came back with fewer skins than ever. And got less money for them, too. Then he went out less often and stayed home and played cards. He played solitaire. Their cabin was two miles outside the village, so she walked to school although sometimes in winter her father took her on the snowmobile when he had money for gas. In the spring and the fall she could ride her bike. Walking in the winter was fun on snowshoes but she didn’t like to walk to school in the spring or in the fall because coming home she passed near her uncle’s place and he would talk to her, not in a nice way, or one or two of her boy cousins would talk to her, also not in a nice way. Or the boy cousins would yell at her sometimes. In the summer she could speed away from them on her bicycle until that time they put a wire across the path which sent her flying and the boy cousins were on top of her then. They never could do what maybe they hoped to do because she could fight back, and even though they pulled her skirt up and grabbed her there she still got away when they both decided at the same moment to pull down their own pants. She bolted away and got on her bike and she was gone before they got their pants back up.
She watched for a wire after that.
The boy cousins were not good. Her uncle was also not good, but he was a man, not a boy, and too strong for her to handle. She said she’d go to the Mounted Police. He said he wasn’t stupid. She didn’t know what that meant at first. Then he explained one time when he was drinking – and when was he never? – that he was waiting for her to turn eighteen. He’d have her then. She didn’t know what that meant, and he explained, ‘When my dumbass brother-in-law is shit-faced and you’re pissed too I’m gonna take you out on the grass, you bet. You won’t forget it. You wait for that. When you’re eighteen. The Mounties won’t say nothing then. You’ll be too old.’ She didn’t know what that meant either, but time went by and then she did know. She was ten the first time he said something like that to her and eighteen seemed an eternity away, as far away as the stars in the night sky in winter while the wolves howled.
He said it for years. Then the time wasn’t so far away, and her uncle kept reminding her that she had a birthday coming up real soon, and on that day, he planned to visit.
She thought it was him on the night of her birthday, creeping around in the dark outside. She’d been expecting him, not her father. She’d gone out to sneak a smoke, heard him, or heard something, then went back into the kitchen and crouched down. Nobody came in the back way,
and they didn’t have lights, no electricity, and when he stepped through the back door, she slammed a knife into his chest. She thought it was her uncle, her dead mother’s brother, but it was her father who came back late from playing cards and had gone around back to pee in the woods maybe, probably, and fell down dead at her feet. She didn’t mean to kill her loving father, the man she adored, but she did.
How could she explain to anyone that she’d been so scared she couldn’t think? She could scarcely breathe.
‘I did it,’ she wrote on the foolscap pad, and not a word more.
Why explain what no one would understand or believe?
iii
‘White people never understand,’ Rozlynn said. ‘Basically, they’re stupid in the head. They don’t believe me.’
‘I’m white. Don’t I understand?’ Abigail asked her.
‘Probably not,’ Roz said.
‘OK,’ Abi backed down. ‘I don’t. Tell me anyway what I don’t understand.’
Rozlynn remained quiet for a long time. Abigail never knew if she was thinking when she went that still, or if she drifted off somewhere, or if she fell asleep on the inside while appearing to be wide awake on the outside. She could never figure that out. She didn’t know that on this occasion Rozlynn was thinking about white people. Eventually, she put it to Abigail this way, ‘Take my name.’
Abigail waited some more. Then she prompted her friend, ‘Where do I take it?’
‘It’s Rozlynn.’
‘I know that.’
‘With a zed. The Americans call it a zee. I don’t know why. Isn’t it the same language? I don’t write my name with an S; do you know why?’