“Whose bed is that?”
“Mine.”
“Is this what you seen in your bed?”
Jenny, she looks up at me. When she sees I’m not mad at her, she nods.
“Did you tell your mommy this went on?”
“Mommy says it’s bad to talk about.”
I says, “It’s something that needs talking about!”
“Mommy said I’m a bad, bad slut girl.”
“You? No! You’re not bad!”
I’m squeezing Jenny, smelling that little child smell of her hair, feeling her arms tight around my neck, telling her, “You’re not bad!”
I must have told her thirty times. “Oh sweetheart, it’s not your fault! You’re good as gold. Honey, listen to me. It’s not your fault. Okay? It is not your fault. Ian’s a grown-up. He’s the one that ought to know. Not you. You’re just little. The grown people are supposed to look after you. They’re the ones that did bad. Ian wasn’t looking after you when he done that. He was thinking of himself, not you. Oh, it’s not your fault!”
I was sitting with her on my lap. She held on tight to me. She’s asking me, “I’m not bad?”
“No, Jenny.”
“Ann Toes, what’s a slut?”
“Something bad, but you’re not.”
“Mommy said I’m a slut girl.”
“She made a mistake.”
“Ian said not to tell.”
“He shouldn’t have said that. It’s good to tell.”
I could see that little soul was all mixed up. Jesus. I thought, see? This is how you wind up what they call Deeply Confused.
When Dave come home, I put a movie on for Jenny and I told him.
Dave hit the roof. He’s got the phone book out, whipping through the blue pages. Says he’s calling Children’s Aid. I’m trying to pull the phone book out of his hands. I’m saying my sister would never forgive me if I told.
I says, “This is private stuff!”
“Keep it secret? That’s just what the dickhead wants!”
“Dave! Wait!”
He slaps the phone down. Looks at me. “Okay,” he says, “what do you think we should do?”
Well, that shut me up. What did I think we should do?
My dead mother was right in front of me, her embarrassed face not looking at me when she’d sneak me a tube of ointment, both of us knowing what it was for. My sores down there. Not a word spoke. The world would end if we ever breathed a word.
But then I thought about Sally coming out with it in Group. And how calm the shrinks reacted. I thought of Frances coming out with it to me. How matter of fact she told me. The world don’t end when you tell. I knew that much by now.
I put my hand on the counter to help me stand steady and I says to Dave, I says, “I changed my mind. You’re right. We got to tell.”
Children’s Aid made Sandra kick out Ian. She’s all like, “I miss him. We’re in love.”
I says, “Fuck that,” I says. So she quit speaking to me.
11.
AT GROUP, I YELLED, “I knew something like this was bound to happen! I seen it coming since my niece was born. I told yous all. I said, ‘That kid is in danger,’ I said. But alls yous could do was make me diddle around filling in frigging questionnaires on thirty years ago. Cutting out magazines. Doing blank all.”
“Rose,” Meredith says, she says, “you could not have prevented this.”
“So why didn’t you tell me? If there’s no hope, there’s no hope! What am I wasting time here for?”
“There is hope, Rose.”
I took a fit and shouted at them all that hope was done now. There was no use talking to me about hope. The worst thing had already happened. It was over and done with. Jenny’d be screwed up now forever. Sitting here when she was our age, messed up like us, all mixed up, ashamed of her life.
“Thanks for nothing!” I’m yelling at them. “Thanks for wasting my time, sitting here! I told yous what was going to happen to my niece! I seen it coming! Yous wouldn’t lift a finger!”
Frances, of course, she got the job of trying to cool me down. I don’t know how long I screamed at the poor woman, out in the other room, before she finally got through to me with the idea that all the hope in the world was not gone.
She worked on me, patient. It was not time to give up on this journey. Jenny was going to need my understanding now, more than ever. Jenny was going to need me healed up and well-informed. Jenny needed me to learn all I could. Jenny needed me to keep working on my own healing to be strong for her.
Hadn’t I learned a lot already? Didn’t I have some new perspectives? Couldn’t I see a glimmer of light at the end of this tunnel, for myself? Hadn’t I done the right thing phoning Children’s Aid? Would I have done that before?
That got me to think. Would I?
No. I wouldn’t. I would’ve just did like what Mom always done.
Frances kept on at me. Wasn’t I going to be able to offer a lot more to Jenny if I could keep learning and healing myself so that I could make right decisions like that in the future also?
I troop back in. Dump myself in a chair. Slam my homework on the table. I’m still in the frigging Group.
Sally’s apartment was so jammed with stuff she was rescuing from the Queen’s Hotel that Dave started calling her “the Sally Ann.” She had a box full of guest satisfaction questionnaires in the old colour scheme. (New paint job’s a sick grey. Josie calls it “Morning After.”)
“They should have left the decorating to you, Sal,” Marg says. Because Sally likes everything dolled up pretty.
Josie says, “Leave it up to Sally and the whole place’d be Pepto-Bismol Pink.”
“The Milk of Magnesia,” Marg says, like it’s the name of the hotel.
Josie says, “I seen the lake behind the church again last night.”
We all shut up and leaned in. I could feel the goosebumps spreading over me. Like it was time for the campfire ghost story.
Josie says, “That’s one deep lake. And, in the olden days, when there was a lot of mining back north, a girl was crossing it in a canoe. Grey blue shawl around her. Late in the fall of the year, paddling over from the bush side, towards the church. She was gliding past the point there, where the secret cave is, that they call the Cave of Time. The woods, they were down to nothing but the last of the yellow leaves fluttering at the tops, and it was cold.
“Then, when the girl’s way out in the lake, the wind comes up sudden. It starts belting down icy rain. Waves start going in two directions at once so the canoe was getting it from both sides. There’s great big waves coming at the girl east and west, just throwing that canoe, crashing and roaring, and the spray is flying. The girl kneeling down, hanging on to the cross-piece. Shawl, it takes off in the wind, turns into a great blue heron. Paddle jumps out, slaps the water and dives like a beaver. Girl is choked with rain and wind.
“And then one almighty pair of waves comes together underneath her. Canoe goes flying one way, girl goes the other.
“Something else goes flying up out of the rib cage of the canoe. It flies way up into that grey sky. It tries to sprout wings and fly away. But it’s too solid. It falls back down and hits the water—smack—and it sinks down and down. It’s a bag of gold. And gold can’t change into nothing else than what it is. Alls it did was it sank down out of sight while the storm kept roaring up above. And that gold rested, quiet, at the bottom of the lake.”
We’re all limp, listening to Josie, following the pictures through the air.
It was March by this time, not so frigging cold or dark. The water was running under the ice in every creek and ditch. Bay was full of ducks coming through on their way north. The wind was warm and it smelled like good black topsoil. Hope was back. There was Dave to walk through the park with, holding hands, down to the bay. He
can tell you the name of every different kind of a duck.
And there was Group. They were doing work about having compassion for the child you used to be.
And there was Jenny, with her life a long, long ways from over, squatting down by the ditches. “Listen, Ann Toes,” she says, “the water is back to life!”
My own life, it was the same as them ditches. Still froze over, as far as anybody could see. I was still working for Ken there, telemarketing his “Spring into Spring” special. But there was something moving in me like the water running under ice.
Me and Josie and Sally all say we’re doing real good. Meredith takes a close look at us to see if we’re lying. We’re not supposed to be doing this good yet. That’s the feeling I get from the way she looks at us.
But then, of course, I think, that’s dumb, Rose. Why wouldn’t she want us healed up quick as possible?
“Are you still with the same man?” she asks me.
“Dave. Yeah.”
I can see this is the wrong answer. He’s supposed to have busted my nose by now.
I says, “Dave’s a true nice guy. Comes from good people. I figure I’ve finally drew the lucky ticket this time.”
A dark look come over Meredith. She swelled up and started in on a speech. Nobody but ourselves could be responsible for our own healing. Nobody could rescue us!
She slaps her hand on the table. “Do you expect some man to make your life into a fairy tale?”
(What’s the matter with Meredith? I don’t expect nothing like that.)
Dave can’t fix my life, she says. The work I do in Group is what’s going to help me! Meredith’s all excited. Pretty near yelling. Fidgeting around like there’s ants in her pants.
“We can’t expect some shining knight to come galloping over the hill and save us!” she says. “You may think that this Dave person is safe for you. He’s not! He’s dangerous to your healing process if you think that any man is going to be the solution to problems that stem from issues in your own childhood!”
She’s red in the face, leaning her big boobs over the table at me. “It’s no good clinging to some man,” she says. “It’s as bad as expecting alcohol to solve your problems. You have to do the work yourselves. There’s no short cut. Nobody’s going to do it for you or miraculously make you feel better.”
I’ve been bawled out. I don’t know what for. I catch Josie in the washroom at break, and I ask her, through the partition, “What’s Meredith got against Dave?”
Josie says, “Ah, don’t mind her.”
I says, “I’m doing the work! It’s not like I’m sitting back waiting for Dave to do it for me.” I flush and go out to wash my hands.
“You’re doing good, Rose,” Josie says.
“What’s she want?” I says. “I bust my butt trying to figure out everything we’re supposed to. I’m trying my hardest. I’m here every week. I take part. I do my homework. I feel like I’m getting someplace, too. She sounds like I’m the way Darlene is—just sitting there whining for pills. What does Meredith want out of me?”
Josie flushes her toilet. She comes out and looks at me in the mirror while she’s washing her hands. I’m dabbing at my eyes.
She says, “Don’t forget I seen that broken toy cow.”
“What?”
Josie says, “Alls I know is I seen that toy cow that was broke.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s what I seen.”
I stand there looking at her in the mirror.
Josie shrugs. “It comes when I’m thinking of Meredith. Something to do with her is broke, maybe. And once I seen that leaf land in the dark.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I says.
“You’re doing good with Dave for two reasons, okay?” Josie tells me while she’s shaking the water off her hands. “One is that Dave’s a decent guy.”
“That’s the whole thing right there,” I says. “I’m just damn lucky.”
But Josie, she says, “No. You know better. The other part of it is something about yourself.”
“I’m not doing nothing different.” I dab a bit of makeup over the red, to hide from Meredith that I’ve been crying.
“Yes, you are.” Josie tosses her paper towel.
“Tell me what I’m doing different.” I stand there with my makeup tube open.
“Like you said. You’re doing your work here in Group. It’s like with the lake behind the church.”
That’s how Josie thinks. Alls she can ever tell you is the picture she’s got. I have to laugh at her the way she figures she’s explained everything. Meredith’s a broke toy cow or a leaf, and I’m the lake behind the church. So that’s all cleared up nice.
On the way back to the meeting room, I says, “I woulda liked to seen your tests in school. I bet they asked you how many people live in Hong Kong. You put down bugs in the woods or sand on the beach. And figured you’d answered the question.”
Josie says, “Better than sixteen million or whatever it’s supposed to be. Bugs in the woods, you can picture. Same as a broke toy cow.”
Meredith walks in. Now, you sit and stare at a big woman you’re mad at lumbering in and you try your damnedest not to picture a cow.
Tammy’s still at the shelter. But trying to find someplace else to live. Every day she wants to just go back home and make up with her husband and not have to think for herself and do all this hard stuff with lawyers and social workers and landlords and the bank. Tammy gets all mixed up. She don’t understand what they tell her and she has to ask over again.
Josie, she’s serving alcohol at the Queen’s Hotel, thinking of how it would be to just get drunk and forget about everything. Her ex-boyfriend Brent’s bugging her to take him back. But she hasn’t caved.
Sally’s working as a waitress, keeping her eyes open, doing her homework, running up and down the stairs to get out stress, sewing.
Meredith turns to Darlene and she starts asking her about her week. Of course, Darlene’s no farther ahead. She’s not stuck indoors now. But she’s running all over town getting drunk, going home with strange men, taking drugs she don’t even know what they are that make her fear and pain go away for a while. With Darlene, it’s the one extreme or the other.
“What do you think you are Avoiding by getting stoned?”
But Darlene won’t think about it, won’t do nothing for herself. Still just wants to get sent for more medication. Whines about it every meeting. “Oh, Meredith, I just want the pain to stop!”
She’s the one that needs a lecture, as far as I can make out. She’s the one in this group that needs to hear that nobody else is going to fix this for her.
Pain? Jesus. There’s no getting away from that, is there? Walking home, I was thinking about that. If you do like Darlene and refuse to stand any pain, if you just want to run away from pain all the time and never stop and feel it, you’re no place.
Meredith, she’s long forgot about the stepping stone thing, I guess. But, when I got home, I got out some construction paper and markers that I keep in a drawer for Jenny.
I take a red paper. Cut me out a stepping stone, big enough to put my both feet on. I write on it: I can stand pain. Put it down on the floor.
I’m standing there on my stone when Dave comes in. I’m embarrassed, but I show him what I’ve wrote.
He just took it in, shaking his head sympathetic.
To me, just about everything Dave does has the right feel to it.
He learned how to be from them people in that tarpaper house back north, where we sang on Christmas Day and I wished I could’ve took Jenny.
I says, “Is that what they do back home when somebody’s got pain? Just keep quiet and show by their face that they care?”
Of course, he never thought about where he learned how to be or what was showing on his
face. He loves them people. But he’s got no idea.
“Your folks are so good, Dave. Lots of people aren’t like that. You got no idea—no idea!”
He says, “What do you call a deer if it can’t see? No-eye deer.”
I wasn’t in a mood for jokes. So Dave shut up
He paid attention to what I was trying to say, too. Dave’s smart, eh. He listened to me explain about the solid gold that’s gotten handed down in his family, through the times that’s past, parents to kids, all the way to lucky him.
Got a thoughtful look on him. And he said, “The human race, it must be a relay race.”
I like the way Dave puts things. I told him how some people don’t want to deal with their own problems. Like my sister Sandra and Darlene. Won’t try to fix their own problems. Always change the subject to the problems of somebody else who’s worse off. Start yapping about Sick Children’s Hospital or Africa or somewheres.
Dave says, “That’s like saying you don’t have to fix a flat tire because it ain’t a busted gasket. Standing there by the side of the road in the rain, eh, doing nothing, talking about worse things that are wrong with somebody else’s car. Instead of getting at her and changing the tire on your own.”
The next day at breakfast, I says to Dave, “I don’t like working where I am now.”
Nothing’s overly complicated in Dave’s world. If something’s broke, you look at fixing it.
He says, through his half-chewed Shreddies, “Had you thought about looking for somewheres else?”
I go down to the employment office first thing Saturday. I read the notices. I phone for a job at McIlveen’s Plumbing and Heating.
I tell them I’m good with people. Good on the phone. I’m reliable. I work hard. I can keep track of things.
“And I don’t get in a flap in emergencies. I really want this job, and yous won’t be sorry if you hire me.”
I never said half so much in my own praise before. But it was true, and I knew it. I relaxed my shoulders, and I told it to them straight out, thinking of how Frances, the helper at Group, is, how straightforward she tells you the truth about herself.
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