At the beginning of the school year, she had made up her mind never to see Michael again. She had stuck to that resolve for over a month. As the days had gone by, she had actually started to feel better about her decision. She thought of the man less and less. Everything seemed less exciting, but she had almost accepted that too. She would get through her remaining high school years and move away for college or university. Then she would put this chapter in her life far behind her.
The growing suspicion that she was pregnant changed everything. Instead of planning for future adventures, Brenda found herself sinking into confusion and worry about an outcome she could not even imagine. The only lifeline she had was fantasy.
There had to be a romantic scenario. Michael would recognize how much she meant to him, and what a wonderful life they could have together. He would hold her in his arms and profess his love. Then he would explain why he had been afraid to show his feelings earlier. Maybe he had been afraid that she did not feel the same way. Except there was nothing like that at all. As much as she tried to deny it, Brenda strongly suspected that Michael was avoiding her. When she had finally gathered the confidence to walk by the construction site, he had moved to a part of a house that she could not see from the road. The second and last time, he had simply pretended that he did not see her.
By December, her parents had pretty much returned to the daily routine that she and her siblings considered normal. Brenda could tell though that her mother remained slightly distracted. Too often Ruby was looking off into space with a dazed expression on her face, or staring straight at her daughter without really seeing her. It reminded Brenda of old Nona across the street, always looking out at them coming and going. At least Nona had an excuse. Like her mother said, the old lady was all alone since her husband had passed away and her son had moved up the coast. Ruby had no such reason. Then as if to make up for her occasional inattentiveness, her mother began to ask questions. They were the same questions, asked just about every other day. Was she feeling all right? Was everything okay at school?
The only person Brenda talked to about her suspicions was Marcie. Her friend had been through something like this when she had her son, Gabriel. One morning when she knew Marcie’s parents were gone, Brenda went to her friend’s house instead of catching the school bus. She told Junior that she suddenly did not feel well and was heading back home. She had taken plenty of not entirely truthful sick days lately, but this was the first time she had ever actually “skipped” school. She ended up spending most of the morning asleep on Marcie’s couch. In the afternoon, she played with Gabe. Then Marcie made popcorn and together they watched soap operas on television.
It was the second one that they watched. Neither one of them said anything aloud, but at one point, Brenda looked over at Marcie and nodded meaningfully. The woman in All Our Tomorrows was pregnant. She was scared to tell her boyfriend because she suspected he had another girlfriend. In fact, the more she worried about it, the more certain she became that she was not the only one the guy was seeing. She was trying to build up her resolve and determination to become a single mother.
“How old you figure she is?” Marcie asked during a commercial.
“At least twenty-five. No, more like thirty,” Brenda replied.
Marcie smiled. Then she added, “Nice house, too.”
Obviously, the white women on these shows did not live with their parents, and they were not on social assistance. Marcie and Brenda did not need to say anything about the contrasting lifestyle. They had grown up seeing that every time they turned on the television.
They continued to watch though. Maybe the woman on the screen would catch up to that dastardly so-called boyfriend. Maybe he would finally stop avoiding her calls and have it out with her.
Brenda asked Marcie to give Michael a message from her. Instead of agreeing, Marcie only protested and gave out excuses. She hardly knew Michael Clydesdale; she could not get out of the house too much with Gabriel; she would not be able to find him. Brenda soon realized what was behind Marcie’s hesitation. Her friend was not refusing to do her a favour — she was trying to protect her. She did not believe that anything Michael had to say was going to be good, and she did not want to return to her best friend with bad news.
No one from school phoned the house. Brenda knew that according to school policy, if a student was absent without notice, a phone call was supposed to be made to the parents. She had heard other students from Kitsum say that the school did not bother checking on the Indian kids, but she had not believed it. Plenty of people did not have phones in Kitsum, she had thought, and maybe that was why the school could not reach them. She cursed her own naivety. She was no longer a good student — she was probably failing most of her classes — why would the school bother with her? Why would they care enough to phone?
FIVE
Monica left Vancouver by herself in mid-December. She did not know if she would go back. When she had initially decided to leave the Department of Indian Affairs, she had thought that she would look for something different in the city. Then Saul had dropped his bombshell. He had been offered a position at Carleton University in Ottawa. The excitement had flushed his face and made his grey eyes twinkle. She heard the enthusiasm in his voice and realized in a moment just how desperately he wanted the job. An “opportunity,” he had called it, slowly enunciating each syllable of the word. He did not know then that she had already decided to quit her job. He told her that it would be easy to arrange a transfer for herself, a move within the Department that would put her in their Ottawa offices. She listened to him energetically making plans and saw that he fully expected her to go with him, to automatically bend her life to suit his own.
Monica had lived with Saul for nearly five years. They were not married. She had been twenty-two years old and working on the last year of her degree when they had met. He had been a teaching assistant for her fourth-year ethnography class. He had been older than most of her classmates, in his late twenties. He had appeared tall and distinguished looking to her, a grad student on his way to finishing his doctorate. It was a doctorate that, the first time they spoke after class, he told her he had nearly completed. Nearly, Monica allowed herself to think sarcastically now, because that degree had taken Saul another three full years to finish. In the meantime, she had given up on grad school for herself and had taken the DIA job.
It was strange how Ruby and Martin’s troubles had affected her. They had not caused her to become disillusioned or cynical about relationships. Ruby and Martin had weathered a really turbulent time, and their relationship had survived their troubles. Monica continued to view their marriage as a model of loving commitment. When Monica looked at her own relationship with Saul in comparison, she could not help but find it lacking. What she and Saul had was insignificant — almost negligible — compared to what Ruby and Martin had. Was this, she began to ask herself, really what she was willing to settle for?
The offer to teach and do research in Ottawa would be great for Saul’s career. Monica could see that readily. For her, however, it was an unexpected opportunity of a different sort. It did not take her too much thinking to come to the realization that she could simply choose not to move with him. She could stay. She did not discuss this with Saul; she did not phone and discuss the matter with Ruby. Instead, she let herself stew. She vowed to think everything through and make her final decision over the Christmas holidays.
Saul wanted — needed, he said — to go to Ottawa before Christmas and look for an apartment. “See how perfectly this all works out.” He had said this to her before explaining his plan for them to visit his parents in Toronto.
“You go ahead,” she had assured him. “Ruby needs me. I’m going to Kitsum.”
She was not being entirely truthful, but Saul was too excited by his own possibilities to delve into what she was doing. He did not even appear to be all that disappointed. He told her that he wou
ld be sad to spend Christmas without her and suggested that Monica return to Vancouver for New Year’s instead. They would pack and arrange for things to be moved.
“I’m staying in Kitsum for the whole holiday,” she had responded.
Saul had promptly dropped the subject. Monica knew that no matter what she said about remaining in Kitsum, he still expected her to be in Vancouver by the end of December. A few years earlier, she would have confronted him about what she saw as his thoughtlessness, but now, she could not even be bothered.
Not once had she indicated to Saul that she was willing to move. Nevertheless, he had started packing. He had actually begun to query her about saving this or saving that. In the end, under the guise of helping, she had collected the few things she considered to really be hers: photographs and gifts from Ruby and the kids, a few old mementos from her mother and father, a handful of books and school materials. She packed those into a pair of sturdy boxes that she would take to Kitsum for storage. She packed two suitcases, a bin of clothes, and another bin full of shoes, boots, gloves, and hats. What clothing of hers was left over, she brought to the Salvation Army drop box.
She should have voiced her feelings to Saul by now. He had already made one cross-country trip to formally accept his position and “introduce himself.” Had he ever seriously considered not taking it? Had he ever intended to really listen to her? The answer was probably no to both questions, but still the man deserved some indication that she was contemplating not accompanying him. Somehow she could not find the words or the time. In the end, she just loaded her things into the back seat of her car and left for home.
The second Monica arrived, she embraced Ruby fiercely. She was relieved to see that her sister was really well and that things were okay again between her and Martin. After a self-doubting drive from Campbell River, her family’s genuine happiness reassured her that she had done the right thing in coming home. Here she could finally put aside her worries until she was ready to think through them clearly; she could relegate that which she was unsure about back to a Vancouver that felt very far away.
She noticed that Brenda was quieter and less enthusiastic than usual. Her niece seemed to have developed a slouch and had put on weight. Monica remembered Brenda as a young child proudly copying her mother’s straight-backed style of walking and standing. Monica had teased her about it, although she had also begun to use the word “elegant” to describe both her sister and her niece. In spite of being short, Ruby and Brenda maintained a stature that even taller people could not emulate. Maybe, Monica thought now, it was the extra weight that was making Brenda slouch and feel less energized.
Over the late dinner that Ruby served her that first evening back home, Monica noticed her sister looking hard at her eldest daughter. Something was up there. Ruby had also seen a change in Brenda. She was worried. On her October trip home, Monica had found no time at all for her niece. It had become a sort of tradition between them that each visit Monica would take Brenda out to do something, just the two of them. This was something that had evolved as Monica spent longer and longer periods away and as Brenda grew into a teenager. If Brenda was annoyed with her for neglecting their time together the last time she was home, that was easily remedied.
It was Brenda and Junior’s third-last day of school before the holiday. Monica parked in front of the high school and waited to pick Brenda up. Port Hope Secondary had aged considerably since she had been in Grade 12 there. That had been the first year that the school was open — 1977, it must have been. Then, everything was still shining new. On this grey day, however, the small two-storey building did not look like it had seen fresh paint since the decade-past grand opening. Even the once shining letters of the PHSS sign looked faded and forlorn, as though they had lost interest in themselves. The parking lot looked recently paved though, and was filling up. The vehicle selection consisted entirely of brand new pickup trucks on the one hand, and trucks that looked as though they might rust through at any moment on the other. There did not appear to be any middle ground whatsoever. The only students who lived any distance away were the Kitsum kids, and as far as Monica knew they all still took the school bus. It had to be the Hope kids and teachers who were now driving the short distances between their homes and the school.
Monica kept her eyes glued to the front doors. The rain and wind kept her from rolling down her car window, but she heard the shrill bell anyway. Students immediately began to stream out of the doors. White students first, she saw. Things really had not changed. Towards the back of the pack, Monica spotted some of the Kitsum kids. They were still a solid bunch, Monica noted, but they were mostly younger girls and boys. But there — before she had a chance to second-guess her decision to make the meeting a surprise — were Brenda and Junior amid a handful of older students. Most students she no longer recognized. She likely knew their parents, she realized. When had she joined the older generation?
She need not have worried about Brenda or Junior spotting her. Her small car was, after all, the only one out front and it was parked directly in front of the school bus. Monica saw her niece’s face brighten as she rushed directly towards her. Junior waved, but went straight to the bus. Monica smiled briefly into her rear-view mirror. Maybe it was so obvious that she and Brenda needed to talk that the whole family expected it.
“Hey you,” Monica laughed as Brenda opened the passenger door. “Want a ride?”
Brenda laughed in return and fell into the vehicle. “Don’t mind if I do,” she replied. Just like that, things were back to normal.
The cold had reddened Brenda’s cheeks and the north wind coming out of the inlet had blown the hair from her face. Her thick winter jacket was zippered up to the top, protecting her neck. Ruby and Monica had teased Brenda a lot when she was small about being forever worried about her neck getting cold. Every Christmas, one of them was sure to give her a scarf for a present. Such a little thing — having her jacket zippered up to the top — reassured Monica. This was the same happy Brenda she had known and cared for and loved since she was born.
They were sitting at a booth in the Port Hope Hotel Café. It was like old times. This was another in a long line of occasions on which Monica and Brenda could treat themselves, and share their news, their gossip, and their thoughts on everything from Ruby’s latest rearrangement of the kitchen cupboards to who was running in upcoming Kitsum Band Council elections to the most recently released movies in Vancouver.
“Same old, same old, No-Hope Hotel,” Monica said. She never forgot to use the local nickname. Looking around the mostly empty dining room, she saw that the booth seats were still covered in heavy orange plastic. The walls were still painted a dull yellow. Giant photos of loaded logging trucks in homemade picture frames were still the primary decorations.
“The hotel’s got new managers again,” Brenda informed her. “Look, there are three or four new items on the menu.”
The joke was not really funny, but they both laughed anyway.
Monica would not remember exactly what they ordered, but what she would recall in vivid detail was the instant when Brenda took off her heavy jacket. That was when she really knew what had changed with Brenda. She wore a loose baggy sweater of some sort, but the sweater clung in unplanned places. Only Monica’s shock kept her from immediately blurting out the questions that immediately filled her mind.
“So,” she began with some difficulty. “What’s up?”
Brenda had to have been waiting to tell someone. She talked only a little about school and Junior and basketball. Within minutes what she really had to say came out in a flood. She was pregnant; she knew that she could not hide it much longer. Monica could not bring herself to tell her niece that she was not hiding it very well at the moment. She was in love, Brenda told Monica, in love with Michael Clydesdale, and she had been seeing him since the spring.
Monica scrambled to place the name. She recognized the familia
r Kitsum family name, but when she tried to think of someone Brenda’s age, someone who was also a high school student, she drew a blank. The only Michael Clydesdale she could recall was well past high school age. He had to be at least in his early twenties. He was the late Cindy Clydesdale’s son. The Clydesdales were not an overly large family. There was no other “Michael” that she knew. It had to be him. What was Brenda thinking?
Monica had to consciously work to maintain her composure. To do otherwise would only upset her niece even more. She was the older aunt now; she knew she had to say what needed to be said.
“You need to tell your mom and dad. Soon.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to, Brenda.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
Monica felt forced to be sterner than she would have liked. “Don’t you think that your mom has been worrying about you?” She could hear herself almost lecturing, but she continued anyway. “She knows there’s something happening with you. Give her some credit, Bren. She must have her own suspicions. She’s just not sure what to believe. Your mom needs to know what is really going on.”
Only the fact that they were in the Hope Hotel prevented Brenda from completely dissolving into sobs. She finally nodded her agreement and made an effort to sit up a little straighter.
More than anything, Monica wanted to console Brenda. She wanted to hold her and protect her, to shield her from any harm or unpleasantness. She was still a child in so many ways; she should not have to deal with something this big, this heavy. A large part of Monica simply could not believe it. Brenda was going to be a mother; it seemed impossible. What the girl had told her about her relationship with this Clydesdale fellow did not sound good. No matter how Brenda glossed it up, it really did not sound like much of a relationship at all. The fact that Brenda had not even told him yet about being pregnant spoke volumes.
Through Different Eyes Page 5