PAPER STONES
Copyright © 2020 Laurie Ray Hill
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Paper Stones is a work of fiction. All the characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Paper stones : a novel / Laurie Ray Hill.
Names: Hill, Laurie Ray, 1956– author.
Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.
Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200330160 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200330187 | ISBN 9781771337854 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337861 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337878 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337885 (pdf)
Classification: LCC PS8615.I41725 P37 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Printed and bound in Canada
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PAPER STONES
A NOVEL
LAURIE RAY HILL
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
1.
HI. I’M ROSE. I don’t know if you’ve thought much about what the point of your life is? The point of mine, ever since I figured out that we’re in a rockslide, has been to keep the rockslide from squashing Jenny.
Mind you, I’m no use if I’m like a red splat, under a ton of rocks myself. So I been crawling out from under.
The way I see it, how most of the trouble in the world got started must’ve been a good-sized rock must have fell from a height onto some cave man. Smacked him. Bullseye in the bald spot. When he stood up, his brain had went haywire. He goes wandering back to the cave and he sees his own little boy running out to him. Hauls off and slugs the kid. Busts his jaw. Then he sees his little girl. Gets her behind a boulder. And he comes on to her, like she was his wife.
Them kids were soon screwed up, eh, living with this nut cake. So screwed up that, when their day come, they turned around and done wrong to their own kids.
And that’s the whole history lesson on an awful lot of families. Just over and over again, right on down, more sick-in-the-head people bringing up more and more sick-in-the-head people, whole frigging time the world’s been going. It’s like that first rock set off an avalanche that’s been roaring down the mountain, from then to now, gathering dirt.
My niece, Jenny, she was right in line for it. Knowing her grandfather. Me and my sister, Sandra, we’d got it from that old man. Our father, he “abused us physically and sexually,” if you want to sound like a shrink.
And now my sister Sandra, she’d took up with a creep who put me in mind of Dad. And they’d went and had baby Jenny.
I could feel the ground shake. Old avalanche heading for that little tiny baby girl.
She’s laying in her basket, learning how to smile, finding out she’s got toes, and I’m thinking Christ almighty, what am I going to do?
What I want to tell is how we got things fixed up. I like to think that reading this here will be somebody’s first step.
It’s quite something. We were wrote up in the newspapers. Good news for a change, human interest. Us losers from the abuse survival group that wound up doing so good. Bunch of Cinderellas getting like a free ride in a magic pumpkin, to hear the paper tell it. They want to talk about our good luck. Never mention that we also worked our brains to the bone (as Dave would say). If yous want to get out from under that rockslide, eh, yous might as well know right now: it’s a ton of work. You can do it, though. That’s what I want to say to all of yous. If you yourself have been ran over by something like this, there’s no need to lay there squashed flat all your life.
That makes me think of a joke Dave tells: “What would you call Batman and Robin if the rockslide had ran over them? Flatman and Ribbon.”
Anyways. First good decision I ever made was I joined this therapy group for people like myself that had got abused as youngsters.
Everybody always interrupts me when I get started telling this. They always ask, “What about the fortune teller?” They’re talking about the one member of our group, Josie, who seems to know everything ahead of time.
What can I tell yous? Josie’s got the second sight. I don’t claim to know how she does it. Gives me the goosebumps.
I’ll start off by giving some answers to questions about Josie that are asked frequent. Yes, she did see the lost gold that had fell in the lake. Yes, she knew the lake was behind the white church, in the town we had to find. Yes, she seen the house in the valley. Yes, she seen the man at the door with a lucky ticket. The toy cow that come out in the trial too. And, yeah, pretty well everything she says seems to come true, one way or another. Long as you’re not too “literal minded,” as our group leader, Meredith, would say. Even Sally and her thing with the hardware man come true, sort of. We had a laugh out of that one. So now just sit tight and I’ll tell yous more about Josie as we go along.
What got me started was I was back at the women’s shelter. That time, I was hiding from I think it was Darrell. The one who managed to bean me with the door of the broom closet. I’m walking by and he reefs on it, eh. Deliberate. Cracks my head open.
He was number I-forget-what. It was what I done in them days. I’d take up with some jerk and get clobbered. Never meant for it to go that way, of course. But that’d be the way she went, every frigging time.
Pam, at the shelter, sits me down in her office.
I always stare at this poster she’s got on her wall. Wide river. Dark grey cloud on our side. But, over on the far shore, it’s lit up in a patch of gold sparkle. My eyes get pulled to follow these stepping stones across the river. Something about them stepping stones! I can never quit staring at them, the way they lead off into that dark water and right on across to the light.
Wrote underneath the picture: Take the First Step.
“Rose,” this Pam woman says to me, she says, “I strongly recommend that you join. It starts this coming Tuesday. The leader’s name is Meredith.”
I drag my eyes off the pinkish stepping stones leading into gold sparkle. Start rubbing my thumbs together. My head’s sore as fire. Nine stitches. I says, “I don’t need that.”
Pam, from the shelter, I can feel her looking at me. She’s trying to get me to go to some therapy group.
“Alls they’ll do is whine,” I says, talking to my thumbs.
I’m fidgeting around in the chair, eh. What if I went to that group and they asked a lot of nosy questions? What if they found out? At that time, I used to think the civilized earth would end if anybody ever knew about me, that I done it with my own dad.
This Pam woman, she’s going on about how it’s free. It’s a great opportunity. I’m so fortunate the Family Ser
vices Alliance is providing this. There’s not many places you can join a group like this for free. I’ll be able to stay in the group as long as I need to.
I don’t care if they’re offering to pay me.
“Would you like to talk about why this feels so scary, Rose?”
“What it feels is useless. I picked a loser. He hit me with a cupboard door. What’s some shrink supposed to do about it?”
I was being Defensive. I know the name, now, of every stupid thing you can be.
Back then, I never knew what the frig I was being.
Pam at the shelter, she says, “The therapist will work with you to take a look at some of the events in your past.”
“That’s over and done,” I says.
Which just shows what I knew in them days! Thought I was being smart. Acting practical. Moving on. I says, “I can’t do nothing about the past. I got here-and-now to think of. I’ve missed a week’s work. I got the rent to pay. Asshole Darrell’s took off.”
“It’s surprising how much of the past is not over and done, until we have dealt with it.” That’s what Pam said.
I said I had more important things to think about.
Avoidance. That’s the name of when you say you got no time to do whatever it is you know damn well you need to do.
I never went to no group that time.
Never went the next time, neither, after Gary. But I remembered what the woman at the shelter said about the past. The past don’t go no place. Sits right where it is, like the garbage under the sink, ripening up, until you deal with it.
That was the year my sister had a baby. Jenny was born.
I held baby Jenny and I wanted the world fixed. I held her head so careful. Just the thoughts of somebody cracking that adorable head some day! That sweet-smelling, warm little head with blonde fuzz hair.
Or worse. Screwing with her. I thought about the jerk my sister was living with. I thought about old Dad, there, dropping in for visits.
A baby is so beautiful, eh. When I changed her, I cleaned the little flower folds between her wee legs. That’s when I started to hear the rockslide rumbling, heavy, up there, heading for that baby. And I’m thinking, “No! Nobody’s going to mess with this darling little baby! Not while I’m still kicking!”
To do anything about it though, it took me all the way to Donny, who broke my dollhouse and my thumb.
It’s three years later. I’m back at the shelter, laying low till they catch Donny.
My sister Sandra is living with a different creep now. No different than her other creeps before, far as I can see. She’s putting up with horse shit. Just like I tend to do, and our mother always done, when she was living.
Our poor mother was one of them real nice people, eh. Soft and sweet as candy floss. You felt ashamed to think a thought around her that wasn’t just peachy. I used to think she was a saint. The way I see it now, she’d have did better to speak up and say what needed saying. Willing Victim. That’d be the shrinks’ name for poor Mom.
Anyways, there I am. I’m back in Pam’s same old office at the women’s shelter. Nothing’s changed. She’s still got her same poster up. I’m in the hot seat again. Jenny’s three years old. World ain’t fixed.
I’m sitting there thinking about my little Jenny. She couldn’t quite say, Aunt Rose; christened me “Ann Toes.” I’m thinking, ain’t that cute!
Pam’s talking to me: “Rose, I would strongly encourage you to join a therapy group this time. There happens to be a new group starting two weeks from this coming Tuesday. I don’t know if this particular group would interest you?” she says, and she looks me in the eye. “It’s for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.”
I’m like hit by lightning. Pam knows! How does she know? Is it wrote all over me? Can anybody see, just looking at me? Am I walking around naked and don’t know it?
I don’t know where to look. I want to say No! Nothing like that would be any interest to me! Why would I take an interest in anything as puke gross as child abuse? Nothing to do with me! No!
But nothing come out.
I just sat there. Couldn’t rub my thumbs this time because the left one was broke. Felt my eyes getting hauled into that poster. River looked cold. Fast. Dark. Dangerous. But there was the stones to step on, all the way to the other side, where the sun was shining. Solid-looking rocks, big enough for your feet. I’d never saw stones that pinkish colour.
Take the First Step, it says.
I said, “I am worried about my little niece. I want to do something to help her, so she don’t ever get diddled with.” I’m hoping Pam will think I’m just taking an interest for Jenny’s sake.
“Sexually abused, do you mean?”
I give a nod.
“Do you suspect anyone of abusing her?”
“Not yet. No. But I can see where it could happen. I want to help her. I want to teach her so she knows to look out for herself.”
Just like my mother. I was trying to look like a saint. Help somebody else when I was the one needed help the worst right then. This Pam woman told me. Said I had to help myself first. She talked to me about the oxygen masks on an airplane. In an emergency you got to put your own mask on first, she said. Make sure you’re breathing first, and then help the next person.
That made some sense. You’re no use to nobody if you’re passed out with your tongue on the rug.
“You have to help yourself, Rose, before you can help anyone else.” She said that again. Could she really know about my father? How in the world would she? Was it all over town? Did everybody and their aunt know that about me? Did the shrinks have some secret file on me?
I was dying to get away and hide. Could’ve ran out, dove into the first compost bucket I come to, pulled the squash skins and dead tomatoes over me, and rotted, for shame.
I’m staring at the poster. If I could just get away, get myself to someplace else, like on the far side of that river. And take Jenny with me!
Jenny playing on that sunny shore, where the sand’s warm! Jenny safe! Out of the danger. Both of us away from here. Out of the disgusting stuff. Over there in the sparkle!
I surprised myself. I said, “Okay,” I said, “sign me up, would you mind.”
Pam, she’s been trained not to faint. She don’t shout, “Well, it’s about freaking time!” or nothing.
It’s funny to think of going to that building by the park, finding the side door, like they’d told me, and climbing them stairs for the very first time.
I’m climbing and I’m thinking, okay, I’m going. But I’m not talking. I’m just doing this to find out what I need to do to make Jenny safe.
Even if they did somehow know something about my father, they weren’t going to dig no dirty particulars out of me. They could think what they liked. I wasn’t telling them nothing. I figured one or two meetings should about do it.
What do you do to make sure a kid don’t get abused? Maybe there was some way to warn her without scaring her. I could teach her. Like they talk about street proofing. Only in her own home. It wasn’t no strangers in the street I was worried about. It was my own dad and these prize winners my sister shacks up with.
There was three women in this waiting room, memorizing their shoes. They looked up.
Fattest one give me a smile and a little soft hand. Aunt Marg, the lionheart. That’s what Jenny calls her now.
The pretty one with the long, blonde hair said she was Sally and this was Tammy.
So there I am, seeing Marg, Sally, and Tammy for the first time! Not planning on talking to them.
Tammy, she had her collar buttoned up, but you could still see the top of a dark blood bruise on her neck.
I sat on an orange plastic chair.
Then we all froze. There was this out-of-the-old-horror-movies, slow clunk … clunk … clunk in the downstairs hall. Then it w
as coming up the stairs. We looked at each other.
Sound kept coming. Clunk … clunk … clunk. Up the stairs. We heard it cross the first-floor landing. It kept on coming. It was in the hall. Coming along towards us. We stood up.
Black-and-blue face peeked in.
Tammy yelped.
Marg laughed.
Gleaming out of that beat-up face was the brightest eyes I ever seen.
Josie’s eyes are even more like high-beam headlights, the way she is now. But even then, with her bruises, first thing anybody seen was them halogen eyes.
Josie, she gets pissed off if you call her a fortune teller. But she must have saw something about this group. She took in solid Marg. She took in wide-eyes Sally. She took in Tammy with the bruises on her neck. She looked me through and through. Them eyes of Josie’s, running over us one by one, put me in mind of the sun through a magnifying glass. Seemed like if she stared at a piece of paper, it would catch on fire.
Josie’s a little shrimp. Looks something like a lawn gnome. Had her left leg and foot in a cast, which is what made her sound like The Mummy Returns, eh, dragging herself upstairs.
Well that broke the ice. Sally (the pretty one, with the long blonde hair), she dragged an extra chair over and got Josie set there, with her foot up.
We told the whole thing over to Darlene, when she showed up. They take six in a group. Darlene was number six to show up.
Pretty good joke. Josie Returns, sequel to Josie and the Swamp Thing.
Marg says, in a spooky voice, “It’s turning on to your street.”
Sally says, “It’s coming up your stairs.”
“It’s going to suck your blood.”
We were laughing when the leader, Meredith, showed up with her helper. They stopped in the door. I don’t think they’d ever saw a bunch of the losers that they work on having a good time like that, before a first meeting. We were supposed to be still all nervous there, picking lint.
What went through my mind was that this leader lady, Meredith, did not like us sitting back, laughing. Frances, the helper, she just smiled like a human. But something weird went over Meredith’s face before she thought to smile.
Paper Stones Page 1