We’re loading the canoe back on the car on the side of the road. The paddles, life jackets, orange bucket, and blue tarp are on the pavement waiting too. It’s a very nice fall day, the kind that makes white people happy, the kind they call “Indian summer.” We’re happy too. We’re happy because the kids didn’t fight the whole time, because there’s rice in our blue tarp, because it’s warm and sunny, and because we didn’t have to try so hard.
If she were here, we’d find her a canoe for her and her kids. I’d drive hers and show her how. I’d worry she’d be too hot. The baby would be bored. Her older kid would sit in the bottom playing video games and talking about movies I’ve never seen. I want her to like this as much as I like when she takes down ducks.
You’re tying the canoe ropes down like you always do when we’re together and I’m loading the rest of the stuff into the car. When I’m alone, I tie the canoe down and load, and even though we both know you’re better at it, the canoe never falls off the roof when I do it.
I see a couple approaching you, and I hang back and wait. I look out onto Ball Lake and disappear the cottages, the docks, the manufactured beaches and waterfront. I imagine just two people in a canoe, with un-fancy sticks from the bush, knocking rice into the boat. I imagine my arms circling, circles upon circles. I hear the grains hitting the bottom of the boat. I hear the wind. I see ducks and geese sitting and eating and smiling because they showed us this first and they remember. There is nothing more gentle than this — nothing is killed, nothing is pierced, nothing stolen, nothing is picked even. I sing the song the old one taught me, even though he can only remember the first two lines. It’s the kind of song you could sing while running a marathon. It’s repetitive and you’ll get lost in the canter. I suppose that’s why it is a ricing song. Actually, it’s the only ricing song we have left.
You’re still talking to the couple and I wonder what’s taking so long. I know you hate idle chit-chat. Your people recount the weather report and the news as a way of connecting without adding a single interesting thought to their tell. It’s boring as fuck for me and I wear noise-cancelling headphones in public so I can’t hear it. The kids are already in the backseat, plugged into their ipods, lost in screen. I walk by and I hear, I thought only the Indians did that. The sun spotlights his camo jacket and ball cap, and her faded high-waist jeans, her perm, her tennis shoes, their pride at living rurally instead of in the city. I turn and say, “What makes you think I’m not an Indian?” and I keep walking, leaving him to deal with the aftermath.
I’m old enough to know this isn’t about how I look and I’m glad she’s not here. I’m glad I don’t have to explain the cottagers who poison the rice. I’m glad I don’t have to explain how to hunt geese over cottages. I’m glad I don’t have to explain that this is a road allowance and that’s why we are allowed to launch a canoe here. I’m glad I don’t have to explain what my love is doing right now so I don’t have to feel the weight of her pity. It matters where pity comes from and hers would come from kindness. She would feel the trauma of this for us without knowing how hard we tried. But that’s not what I’d feel. I’d feel like a fuck-up. I’d feel humiliation.
What I want her to say is:
“I didn’t know it was so hard for you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I get it” meaning “I get you.”
This is the part I never want her to see and I know she is watching from the lake. This is the part that doesn’t exist for her. Oh Minomiinikeshii, I’m sorry. We’re sorry. We’re sorry we let them destroy so much of your body. We’re sorry we’re trapped in a hurricane of guilt and shame. All you want is for us to love you anyway.
The most terrifying thing in the world is for her to see me here, in the ruins of my people, because what if she thinks, even for a second, that we’re trying too hard with too little, that we are no longer.
I sit in the car and the kids ask what’s taking Dada so long. I tell them what happened. The youngest one asks what an Indian is, and I struggle to explain, self-critiquing each word as it comes out. I’m sounding like a goddamn prof, not a real person. I’m explaining four hundred years to a seven-year-old like it’s complex when it’s simple. She asks, “Why didn’t you just say we’re Nishnaabeg? Why isn’t Dada in the car yet?”
I unroll the window and hear, “Yeah, as a white settler . . .” and I roll it back up again.
I feel guilty because maybe I should be over there defending myself. Maybe I should be using my voice. Maybe this white man shouldn’t be speaking this. Maybe if I write this down, he’ll look like the one that’s racist or maybe I’ll look like the irresponsible one.
Who the fuck cares anyway, I think as my irritation rises into my neck. They won’t change and we won’t change and no amount of talking fixes that. They want a beach. We want rice beds. You can’t have both. They want to win. We need to win. They’ll still be white people if they don’t have the kind of beach they want. Our kids won’t be Mississauga if they can’t ever do a single Mississauga thing.
There is a zoo-like overtone to everything we do, and actually this couple isn’t that bad. They didn’t call the cops. They didn’t bring guns.
I lift my body over the stick shift and sit in the driver’s seat. I start the car, turn it around and drive over to pick you up. You get in and we don’t talk about it. The kids want ice cream and we know better than to make this the big deal it is for us, for them.
these two
two clandestine eagles find you in the front of this lineup, signing things & pretending nice, wearing professionalism like it’s a halloween costume. the leading one drops in from behind you & the tip of her wing grazes the small of your back in an oval that’s method & rhythm like it’s all you’ll ever have & she is not going to waste one fucking second of it. then the second one comes in on a sharper angle & tight circles your form starting at your roots, rising & then falling. her feathers are the wind on the hairs of your skin & she’s flying conical spirals up past your head & then down again brushing your heels, the backs of your knees, the cracks on your lips, all the while the first one’s wing is whispering to the skin of your lower back, while her beak is sucking the burning panic from the place you keep it hidden, behind the sorrow in your breast’s bone.
UNSUBSTANTIATED HEALTH BENEFITS
We were standing in the parking garage off of Queen Street when I told you I loved you. I made you walk me there because it was past midnight and the parking guy looked sketchy and better safe than sorry. You said it back immediately without the analysis I usually require of those three words. We hugged. You let go at the normal time. You let go and I didn’t. It felt too good like I was cheating life. Eventually we both let go. Took a step back to assess. We hugged some more. Then I left. Minomiinikeshii swirled around with a skirt made of rice stalks too happy like always.
Now I am sitting in my car trying to slow-drink kombucha even though I want to fast-drink komubucha because I’m nervous about the parking garage incident. I’m addicted to this shit like I’m a goddamn Amish-bearded soy-jerky-eating hipster. I was going to add the word “white” in that last sentence but that would make it redundant. Kombucha is sparkly and tastes good and has ninety kabillion live bacteria cultures in it and Russian communist scientists think it cures cancer! CURES CANCER PEOPLE. Even though I don’t have cancer just anxiety and depression and whiplash and maybe an old concussion and probably PTSD if it can cure cancer it can for sure cure me. I should be easy compared to cancer.
It’s been five minutes and you haven’t texted the “so nice to see you” required for reassurance.
If I can have kombucha twice a day it makes me happier than I should be. That’s eight dollars and I for sure can’t afford it, but I’ve already discovered four a day is too much. I’m old enough to know boundaries are good. Boundaries are our friends. Fences make good neighbours or something like that. I also have t
o buy it from fundamentalist gay-hating Christians or drive to Toronto which is not so great. However Ansley recently gave me kombucha culture or motherlode (well it’s not exactly called motherlode but mother something) because she is a hippie’s hippie so now I can make my own. It is a disgusting blob in a jar in the fridge that looks like a dead baby and I don’t go near it. The real problem is there’s like eight steps and I’m only good at three-step things. Actually I hate things that take place in the kitchen for the most part, that’s the real problem.
It’s been eight minutes now. You need to text me back before you get to the subway and before I start driving or I’m going to be checking my phone on the 401 and for fuck’s sake that’s an illegal thing that is sort of dangerous.
Originally I had no idea kombucha was sparkly. Sparkly with a hint of sweetness from blueberries or maple! How fucking amazing is that shit?! It is guilt-free. No caffeine. No alcohol. No GMOs. No polychlorinated biphenyls or animal testing or child labour probably! It’s or-fucking-ganic. Blueberries and maple syrup are both stolen Nishnaabeg things and sometimes stolen Nishnaabeg things are better than no Nishnaabeg things at all!! It’s reconciliation! It’s freedom in a jar! I’m kombucha-drunk and delusional. Which is good because I need a certain amount of delusional right now.
Nine minutes. I’m going to start driving at fifteen. Minomiinikeshii gets into the passenger seat by just pouring herself through the door. She does up her seat belt, plugs in her iphone full of death metal and punk and is looking at me wondering why the car isn’t on.
It’s disgustingly hot out today in the city in a way that makes everyone no longer care about how they look, as a basic mechanism for survival. I like it when Toronto gets pushed past what it can handle fashion-wise. I fit in better. The air is yellow-brown and it smells like exhaust; the sun is out and the light isn’t right. I never remember hot days looking like this when I was a kid. I remember clear blue skies on disgustingly humid days. Now humidity and smog bring a yellowish dusk-like tinge to the mid-day. Now I try my best to not be anywhere near here for the entire summer and when I am, I am reminded of apocalyptic failure.
Twelve minutes. I should try and be more secure than this. I really should. It would be good for me. Minomiinikeshii has unplugged her iphone and is making a new playlist because apparently I need it.
I wonder how rapey the parking guy really is. I think not rapey at all. He is just the overnight parking garage guy and he just has opportunity and nothing else. He is no more rapey than the average guy. That still doesn’t mean I should trust him or unlock the doors or sit here much longer or roll down my window more than a fraction when I have to hand him my ticket. This is the perfect place to disappear me. No one would even notice I was gone until morning. But then it doesn’t really matter if anyone notices you’re gone. It matters if you are born with a target on your back or not.
Fourteen minutes. It looks like this is turning into another opportunity to be brave.
I wish I had warm black coffee instead of this crap cold black coffee from eight hours ago. I could wean myself off of kombucha with coffee, which is backwards but addictions aren’t logical. I wish the spirits didn’t always get to pick the playlist. I wish my hole would close so that when someone offers me respite it could just feel good not like a drop in an empty bucket with no bottom. I’m lost, I’m afraid. A frayed rope tying down a leaky boat to the roof of a car on the road in the dark and it’s snowing.
Then I hear a bleep, see a red dot in the corner of imessages, swipe a “so nice to see you. safe travels. XO” and start the ignition. I finish the last maple and blueberry kombucha. Minomiinikeshii rolls her eyes moves the passenger seat as far back as it will go and presses play.
TIDY BUN
She probably shouldn’t be the most irritating mom at ballet, but she is. She has sort of liberal politics — like she cares about the environment, breastfeeds, and homeschools. That’s three more things that her and I have in common compared to the lawyer, the ER doctor, and the chiropractor. So I should like her. Just like I feel like I should like white-people artists, musicians, and yoga. Even though that’s insane and also not even true at all.
Ivory is kind of a hippie. A rich hippie. I never ever talk to her, but she is one of those white people that just will not have that and no matter how much I give her my go-fuck-yourself face she doesn’t see it and so I focus mostly on folding my arms in front of my chest in case she tries to give me an assault hug.
The first day she started homeschooling she made a beeline for me, because she knew I was also a homeschooler. She went on and on about conspiracy theories about schools that made very little sense to me and then told me about her curriculum, which was based on a scavenger hunt. The one man, an Asian man, beside us said: “Scavenger hunt?” and she said, “Yes. SCAVENGER HUNT. Do you have those where you’re from? You HUNT AROUND for things on a list.” He replied yes, that they had those in Toronto and that he was not hard of hearing. Then she continued to explain how life is a scavenger hunt and for example she had to renew her health card and this was also a scavenger hunt, going here, doing this, checking it off her list, running back over here, signing this.
I couldn’t think of any words to say. Finally she left and started scavenger hunting on someone else.
Most times, Ivory is fluttering around the waiting room, putting the girls’ hair into tidy buns. One Monday, she said the words “tidy bun” thirty-eight times in sixteen minutes. She asked me if I would like to learn how to do a tidy bun in case my kid grew her hair long like the other girls.
“Would you like to learn how to do a tidy bun in case your daughter ever grows her hair long?”
“No.”
“She’ll eventually want to look like the other girls, unless she is a lesbian.” (She mouths the last part.)
“No.”
“Do you already know how to do a tidy bun?”
“No, I’ve lived my life in a particularly deliberate way such that I’ll never be in the position of having to know how to do a tidy bun.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Burn. She’s sort of right. Like if my kid did grow her hair long and did want a tidy bun I would be in the bathroom right now on my phone googling youtube videos of tidy buns and doing my best. And yes, I would produce a go-fuck-yourself dykey mess of a bun and my kid would be embarrassed and Ivory would rush over and fix it, like the white saviour she is. This week alone I’ve already bathroom-googled “games white people play at birthday parties” (and then learned to leave out the “white people” part because white people think of them as just birthday parties), “how to tie a karate suit belt,” and “offside in youth soccer.”
I fake a phone call and leave to take it outside.
I hate ballet so much that I took to texting mean things about Ivory to Kwe in front of Ivory. Like the entire “tidy bun” interaction.
The next week Ivory brings a chick to ballet. She ordered eggs from the farm co-op, bought an incubator, and this was the first one that hatched. Since all the chicks from last year died, having been eaten by cats or fallen down heating vents, there is no mother so the chick has imprinted itself to her.
She is proudly attachment-parenting a chick. Cheep. Cheep. Cheep.
The chick follows her around as she puts all the girls’ hair into tidy buns, undoing the buns the other moms have done if she doesn’t feel the buns are tidy enough.
All the little ballerinas love the chick, including my ballerina. All the other moms love the chick because it is so cute.
Sooooooo cute! Oh. My. God. That is so CUTE! Cheep. Cheep. Cheep.
I feel bad for this chick. It’s in an impossible situation. Imprinted to a crazy person of the wrong species. Alone in the world. At the mercy of these nutbars. Stolen from its natural habitat. Destined to serve humans. Colonized. Dispossessed. Oblivious.
It’s how I feel about the cult
of domesticated animals. It’s wrong.
Also, I don’t instantly love it like everyone else because it looks cute. Maybe I’m a psychopath. I think about stamping on it to liberate it from its disaster of a life and because I can always think of the most offensive, subversive thing to do in these situations. I text all of this to Kwe, who finds my ballet situations highly entertaining. She votes for stamping on it. “Just hunt that fucker,” she types. All these people are going home to eat chicken for supper for fuck’s sake, yet if I stamp on this thing, they’ll call the police. Cheep. Cheep. Cheep.
What would I want me to do if I were the chick? Would I want me to say something smart and critical of the situation that the chick wouldn’t quite get now but might turn into a light-bulb moment when she reaches adult chickenhood? I would want me as a human to save me as a chick. But how? This situation is so fucked I can’t think of a way of saving that chick. Except maybe to get it away from Ivory, but I cannot in any way be responsible for this chick, because I hate it. It cheeps too much, for one thing.
The next week Ivory is not weathering the homeschooling well, and I can tell, because when you’ve had the biscuit, so to speak, and you’ve been pushed past what you can handle with kids, the tiniest thing can set off a waterfall of dysfunction. Ivory lost her car keys even though she just drove her van to ballet, and it’s her husband’s fault because it’s always the other person’s fault in these kinds of situations. She is racing around the ballet room, frantically looking everywhere. ER doctor went to her car to get a flashlight so they could look I-don’t-know-where in the dark corners of the ballet waiting room. Finally, she dumps out her mega-purse onto the floor in front of me. It is a fascinating zhaaganash archeological dig of treasures. There are sandwiches in cloth ziploc-like bags, homemade granola bars, diva cups, Tibetan prayer flags, rope, chick food, tidy bun supplies, sewing stuff, an e-reader, and several other regular purse items. There is also a pair of scissors, which Ivory uses to chop her purse into strips in case the keys are in the lining.
This Accident of Being Lost Page 6