In Case I Go

by Angie Abdou

  “Will Tamara stay?”

  “One never knows. Tamara will stay as long as Tamara wants to stay. That’s all I know.”

  “What does that mean for Lucy?”

  Sam won’t pretend not to understand me. He doesn’t tell me that the adult world is complicated, that there are things I do not understand. But he won’t hurry his answer either. He pulls off his Ktunaxa cap and studies the fraying threads on its brim. “Lucy and I will be what we always should have been. What we mostly have been. Neighbours. Friends.”

  “That should make Nicholas happy.”

  “Nicholas is very busy at the mine. I don’t know if he can be happy as he long as he’s there. This morning he went to move some troublesome beavers out of one of the mine’s settling ponds.”

  “Move them to where?”

  “Heaven.”

  The old Eli would have cried at this news, but I am not that Eli anymore. I don’t know what to put in place of Eli’s sadness and outrage. It’s wrong what Nicholas will do to those beavers, but there are so very many wrongs.

  “Let’s talk about you, Eli.” Sam settles the cap back on his head. “Any plans to get out of this bed? I miss you next door. Every day. More so with Mary gone. There’s nobody to listen to my stories.”

  I think of Sam’s Mary and my Mary and get that same dizzy feeling, so many Marys spinning round and round. Sam lifts his ball cap again, this time to scratch his head, and then puts it back down. He’s more comfortable in his own backyard. I’m starting to think he wears the cap just to have something to fiddle with. I’m glad he’s not wearing the blue toque Lucy gave him, even if it means she wasted her time knitting it. I don’t answer his question about when I’m coming back because I do not know.

  “Tamara might stay this time,” Sam says. He doesn’t seem to mind if I talk or not. “She might. We could all settle into a nice little neighbourhood then, couldn’t we?” A laugh plays at the corners of his mouth, but I don’t find him funny.

  Sam and I don’t have much to say to each other after that, but we sit together anyway. I enjoy him more when we stay quiet. After a while, I start to hum Mary’s song into the silence.

  Eye ya ah nuss hewk zoo kah nee.

  Soon Sam hums along with me. He doesn’t ask where I learned the song. He doesn’t seem surprised to hear it come from me. After we have hummed the song for long enough, Sam adds the precise words over my rough tune: hu qayaqamⱡ hukⱡukni. I listen hard to the unfamiliar sounds: hu qayaqanaⱡ hukⱡukni. I will practice those words, memorize them so I can sing them for Mary. I will get them just right.

  Sam must think the song makes a good end to our visit because when he finishes singing, he leaves without saying goodbye.

  ***

  When Tamara comes, my Mary doesn’t go away like she does when others visit, but she and Tamara don’t speak to each other either. Tamara nods in her direction, and Mary nods back. That seems enough for both of them. Tamara has many questions for me, though: Are you thirsty? How’s your appetite? Do you have loose stool? Stomach cramps? Is your urine dark? Your breathing strained? Your hearing dull? Your vision blurred?

  When she finally leaves an opening between her questions, I blurt my own. “Are you some kind of Indian doctor?”

  I mean it seriously, but she laughs, a rough and joyful bark that rises to the ceiling and fills the room. Mary cannot help laughing along. Mary’s laughter, like the music of bells, is soft and light beneath Tamara’s rough bark.

  “No, no, no! I’m a welder.” Tamara laughs again and Mary laughs and then even I must laugh. Lucy will come soon to see what has caused the commotion. I would like to know what Tamara welds and if she will find work in Coalton so she can stay with Sam this time. We need you to stay, I would say, so things settle down and we can be normal neighbours. But Tamara’s laughter stops, and she starts questioning me again: Do you have vivid dreams? Do they seem real? Do people come to you when you’re awake? Do they make you dizzy? Do you black out? Do you remember all your dreams? Do you wake with a taste in your mouth? Does a taste come to you before the dreams?

  “Yes, yes, yes, no.” I try to keep up, but her questions wear me out.

  “All right, all right, all right. I know,” she finally says, as if she’s talking to someone else, someone I don’t see. “Let the boy rest. He deals with a lot. I know.” Tamara puts her hand across my forehead, and makes some noises that sound more like tonsils rolling together than they sound like words. A calm washes over me. When Tamara stands, Mary repeats her strange sounds.

  “We’ll help you,” Tamara promises. She nods to Mary and moves to the door.

  “Tamara—” I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I know I can’t let her leave. She knows more. “How come ...” I pick my words carefully, not even sure what I need to ask. “How come you can see Mary?”

  “Her name is not Mary, Eli. But I do see your friend. I see a lot.” She presses her lips tightly together then, and I worry Tamara will say no more. Like Sam, she has nothing for me but riddles. “Your mom told me about you, your early birth. You almost didn’t make it. You wouldn’t have made it in the olden days. With technology, doctors pulled you into this world, barely. You tasted death first. You have a foot in the spirit world too. You easily could’ve gone there. My story is different, but not that different. I have a foot in both worlds too.”

  “Both worlds ...? I don’t know. I don’t see ... many people, besides Mary.”

  “You’re young, and Mary is part of your story—that makes her easy for you to see. You might see less as you get older, or you might see more. I don’t pretend to know everything, Eli.” Tamara’s face softens, and she steps toward me, runs her hand once softly down the side of my face. “I know for me, as I got older, it got a lot less frightening. After a while, it started to seem like the people without ghosts are the ones haunted. And maybe their kind of haunted is worse than ours.”

  I think about what Tamara has said. I almost liked Sam’s riddles better. I squeak out a thanks and blink hard against the traitorous burn of tears. When I open my eyes, Tamara has gone.

  ***

  “You don’t have to bring me food.” Mary sits on the mattress in her hotel room. I almost turn away, ashamed she should be forced to sleep on this dirty scrap of a thing in this suffocating room. She sits backed into the corner, her legs tucked up into her nearly flat chest. Her chin rests on her knees, her shiny black hair falling almost to her ankles. Her face and body look different than Ursula’s in almost every way. “I have my own work,” Mary says. “I can buy my own food. I won’t starve without you.” She doesn’t look at her toes anymore when she talks to me. She holds my eyes in her unflinching gaze.

  Such constant eye contact is rare, and it stirs a thing in me that should not be stirred, not by this girl.

  “I won’t starve without your generous wife, either.” Mary adds this with a challenge in her eyes, one I don’t understand.

  “Of course you won’t starve. We know that we don’t have to bring you food, Mary. We want to.” I stay in the doorway, leaning against its frame, pretending an ease that I don’t feel. This time I hold two paper bags—one with chocolate squares, the other with tomatoes from Ursula’s garden. “It’s our pleasure to share what we have. We want to.” I don’t say “I.” I want to. It’s my pleasure. That implies too much intimacy. I’m very careful with this girl. “We.” “My wife.” “Our pleasure.”

  Ursula would not like to know that I came up here to Mary’s room above the hotel. Ursula would want to know who saw me go in the back door. She would want to know who saw me head up the narrow staircase.

  “You are the mine foreman, Elijah! You have to be careful!” That’s what Ursula would say. “Your exemption from the war makes people quick to judge.” She doesn’t say that my dark skin also makes people quick to judge, though it might be true.

  But nobody saw me come here, Ursula. Not even you.

  “Are you going to bring me those treat
s from your wife? Or do you plan to stand there in my doorway until I come get them?” Mary’s eyes stay fast on mine. I step into her room, though its walls almost squeeze me, and its ceiling is so low I’m forced to duck my head, an awkward movement that reminds me how much I should not be here.

  Beside the mattress on the floor is one small wooden chair. I sit on the chair. I’m too big for it, and it creaks beneath me. I place my two paper bags on the mattress. I cannot hold Mary’s eyes any longer so I study the floor—there’s nowhere else to look—but I feel her gaze still on me, challenging, teasing. I would expect this tight space above the hotel to be stuffy. I would expect greasy cooking smells from the kitchen below to cling to the walls and blankets and Mary’s hair. But I smell only the outdoors. Wild grass and daisies. I will leave Ursula’s food, and go. I will go now.

  But I don’t move.

  I hear Mary lean forward on her mattress and rustle the paper bags, looking to see what Ursula has put inside, what I have brought. I let my eyes follow the noise, and Mary is there on all fours over Ursula’s gift, her chin nearly at my knees in this small, small room. She holds a tomato in her palm and takes a big bite out of it as if it’s an apple. Some juice dibbles down her chin. I see the little green seeds at the corners of her mouth. She doesn’t wipe the liquid away. Still—her eyes stay on my face. I meet her challenge and refuse to look away.

  I deal with more challenging people than her. At work. Every day. I tell myself this again. I am the mine foreman. I can go if I want.

  “Delicious. Fresh from the garden. I can taste it. Would you like a bite, Elijah?” Mary reaches the tomato toward me. I see her teeth marks in its flesh.

  With Mary stretched before me like this, I could look straight down the neck of the dress she has strategically loosened. I could see her small breasts hanging free of any brassiere. I could see her nipples, pointy against the thin fabric of her dress. I could see the cage of her ribs, the dip of her waist, her pebble of a belly button. But I do not let myself look.

  She has won our staring contest. I cannot hold her eyes anymore. I see only the fine, fragile bones of her neck and chest, her smooth, golden-brown skin. I try to think of how to get myself out of this chair, past this girl, and out her door.

  “Come here, Elijah. Have a bite.” She moves closer to me, and the tomato brushes my bottom lip, the acid touch of it alerting me before its taste. I smell the pungent green leaves and dirt and sunshine of Ursula’s garden.

  Mary gently pushes the tomato forward until I am forced to bite from it and then she is between my legs, my thighs tight against her rib cage, and my mouth is on her mouth and everything is sunshine and wild grass.

  “Don’t worry, Elijah,” she says in my ear, my hands full of her beautiful hair. “We’ll just have a little bit of fun.”

  “Okay,” I agree, my breathing already fast. “Once. Remember,” I say, lowering our bodies onto her mattress, “this will not change our lives.”

  MARY

  The first time a man came to the door in the back of the hotel and up the stairs, Mary didn’t know enough to be frightened. She’d just finished cleaning for the day, her hands wrinkled and rough from being wet too long. She hadn’t found time to wash yet and knew her own unpleasant smell. The look of her wrinkly hands worried her. Her strong scent worried her. The man at the door—he himself did not worry her, though she would prefer nobody see her in such a messy state.

  She recognized him right away. This lodger, Mr Nowak, came through Coalton often—to do inspections at the mine, Mrs Knowles said—and he always reserved the biggest room. Mary liked the kind, attentive way he smiled at her and his habit of bringing her a gift of saltwater taffy. He left two or three colourful candies with a thank-you note for Mary to find each morning when she cleaned his room.

  Mary had turned fifteen the previous month, and Mrs Knowles told her fifteen was too old to take candy from men. Mary worried that Mrs Knowles would soon declare that fifteen was too old to live in this small room in the back of the hotel. Where else would she go? Who else would have her? Nobody since her father died. That’s what Mary was thinking about when Mr Nowak came to her room—that Mrs Knowles might be mad if Mary took the candy, that Mrs Knowles might tell Mary to go live somewhere else when she had nowhere else to live.

  Confusion fluttered in Mary’s chest when the man stepped into her room and put his hands on her clothes and on her body, but the flutter didn’t feel like fear. Mary liked this customer. He’d been kind to her. He’d been attentive. He gave her candy. He had a generous smile.

  It didn’t hurt too much, what he did. It happened fast, and at first she felt confused and then she tried to say no with her hands and her face—she could not speak—and then it came to an end. He turned his back to her as he dressed, and when he faced her again, he was the same safe man with the generous smile, as if nothing had changed. “We’re okay,” he said, nodding slowly. And then again, steadier, like he believed it, “We’re okay.”

  Mary pulled her legs into her chest and stared up at Mr Nowak without making a sound. Still, she couldn’t settle upon what had happened, couldn’t have put words to it if asked (she was never asked). Only afterward, when he handed her two dollars and left without kissing her goodbye did she realized what she’d become.

  That evening, she went down to the Knowles’ kitchen behind the lobby for dinner. She prepared the meal, but when she set the places at the table, Mrs Knowles put Mary’s plate back in the cupboard.

  “You will eat upstairs now, Mary.” Mrs Knowles did not look Mary’s way. “Go now, before Mr Knowles comes for dinner. He and I have talked. We prefer to eat on our own. You’ve come to an age where it’s best.”

  Mary never knew if they had talked. She never saw Mr Knowles again. She cleaned the upstairs rooms when he worked downstairs in the lobby. She prepared their family meal but retreated to her room before he came in for dinner. She followed Mrs Knowles’s orders and tried hard to think of where else she could go, what else she could be.

  Then she waited in her room when Mrs Knowles told her to. The men gave her two dollars each time. She always wondered how much they gave to Mrs Knowles. She didn’t ask. She had nowhere else to live, nobody else to hire her, not enough money to leave.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tamara walks into our kitchen in her dirty work boots and says, “This fucking hot weather can bite my ass.” She takes her work gloves off and slams them on Lucy’s kitchen table. A cloud of dust rises. “Okay, do you want your boy to get well?”

  Lucy bites her lips together. I don’t see any trust of Tamara in Lucy’s eyes, but she moves her head in one quick bob. Yes. Lucy will try anything. She’s ready.

  “Then let’s go for it. Road trip. Me, you, him. Tomorrow morning.”

  Lucy nods again with more conviction.

  We take Tamara’s truck, its bed filled with dirty welding equipment, its cab spotless. Tamara loves her truck. She says she chose it for its looks. “Red is the fastest colour,” Tamara says. “Anyone who says otherwise can bite my ass.”

  Only Tamara knows where we’re going. “Trust me,” she says and then laughs, the rough joy of it filling the truck cab.

  Lucy has forced Patricia to come with us.

  Patricia didn’t need to ask why.

  Lucy doesn’t make me sit in the booster or even wear a seat-belt. I bring my blanket, and Lucy props a pillow behind my head. The three woman squish in the front seat—Tamara at the wheel, Patricia in the middle—leaving me to take up the whole back seat. I stretch out my legs and watch the world blur by in the side window, trees and grass and mountains in the distance. All three women worry about me, not just Lucy. The further we get from home—from Mary—the more well-placed their worry seems. Something’s going awfully wrong. The dull ache in my chest turns to a burn, and my vision blurs at the edges. I know I need my strength when Sam’s riddle finally clicks, and I understand what I am supposed to do, but my strength is at home. Still, I want Ta
mara’s plan, whatever it is, to work. I will go with her. To try. I pull the blanket tighter around me and push the heel of my hand hard into the burn in my chest.

  “So where exactly are you taking us?” Patricia fidgets anxiously as we get farther away from the big fancy houses like hers.

  “Trust me,” Tamara says again, reaching her arm over the back seat to squeeze my knee. The weight of her touch hurts. I am not well. I tilt my head back and breathe through my nose against the rising swell of nausea.

  “Would we go if you told us?”

  Tamara tilts her head and says nothing.

  I need Mary. This churning in my gut, the pain in my skin, it’s from the stretch—the stretching distance between me and Mary. I’m not meant to leave her, not again, not until we figure this out, how to step out of the sucking muck of our past into something new. Something better for her and for me.

  I take short gulps of air and press my palms against the side of my head to ward off the sharp painful whirring deep in my ears. I try to think of this world. I focus on Nicholas this morning over breakfast, his work phone ringing, and Lucy’s heavy sigh when he did the only thing he could do and answered it. This time the caller reported a domestic goat loose on the mine site. The order from the Minister of Environment came down: “Dispatch it ASAP.”

  Dispatch means kill.

  “Don’t give me those eyes, Eli. Do you know what will happen if that goat comes in contact with the wild sheep? The sheep will all go blind. What am I going to do? Let all of the sheep go blind for one pet goat? One day you’ll understand the kinds of decisions adults have to make and then you won’t look at me like that.”

  The decisions adults have to make. I know about those, Nicholas.

  Mary wants me back. This time, she will keep me until I give her what she’s owed. I sense the fairness of that in my bones, but my bones also dread the unknown. Dread hurts.