Winter Child

by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau

  “Have you done that?”

  I lied, said yes for form’s sake. The one friend I did confess my pain to steered the conversation around to cars, his renovation plans, and not just once, but every single time. Another wrote to say how well I was holding up, he could tell, and that we’d make time to chat one of these days. I thought of you, the way you never shared your problems; I realize it’s not something your generation of men, or mine either, likes to do. But once again, that’s not it; how many people I know, no matter their age, acted as though nothing had happened? I pretended to be strong, that suited them; few people really want to see. If I were to slit my wrists or throw myself into a lake, a weight tied to my ankles, wouldn’t that create a problem for them! Yet I had drowned, my wrists had been slit, my heart had stopped beating; part of me was destroyed with him. No one knew. Death is an excruciating topic. The doctor diagnosed post-traumatic stress, which affected my brain and made it hard for me to sleep; I was depression-bound. He prescribed tranquilizers before bedtime. Night is solitude’s sister.

  I set out by car for my sister Justine’s, who always welcomes me with an open heart. She was at work; on her break we went to a near-deserted restaurant for lunch. She took the time needed to gauge my state, her gaze like a laser beam tracking each hesitation, each word, each time my eyes avoided hers, her ears attuned to the silence mixed in with my laughter.

  “You’re not okay.”

  I didn’t cry in front of my little sister; I was protecting her and she knew it.

  I continued on the drive to Montreal, a long journey that lulled me: its departure through snow-covered landscapes and arrival to delicate flowers in my friend Hélène’s front yard. Entering the city, I drove past my son’s last apartment on Saint-Denis at Jean-Talon; it hurt. I hurt. There, it’s been said, it’s been written. I’d begun transcribing a jumble of words onto my laptop, words that gave momentary relief from the tormented agitation haunting me.

  Hélène wasn’t home, she’d left for Ukraine or Romania, I couldn’t remember which: she was a carrier pigeon, a world traveller, curious about lives lived elsewhere, she was also a sister of my heart, who let me use her house to rest, sleep, write … Her house key was one of my treasures.

  A walk before my evening meal preparations. The breath of air against my face like rippling water gently, almost too gently, enveloping me, its suave touch melting that already crumpling, wounded part of me. Six weeks earlier, that last meal, my last supper with my sacrificial son, took place here at Hélène’s home in Outremont. His shadow remained, intact, hovering by the table, sitting in the chair that had been his. We ate salmon. My motherly offer of the metro ticket I’d kept to catch the bus to Abitibi the next morning. The two jars of pasta sauce he’d already placed in a bag. He coughed, said he’d come down with a cold. My last words were, “I love you, be careful, son.”

  He said, “I love you, too, don’t worry!”

  Outside, spring’s jubilation, restaurant tables spilling onto sidewalks, bistro windows open wide to the sunlight, even the ice cream shop already serving cones in every flavour. Girls offered up their bare legs to the warm billow of the breeze’s caress, trees exposed their buds in a green spray floating above my sorrowing head; my son was present, in the haunting, secret space that was now his.

  The child clung to his mother’s bright skirt as it dragged along the carpet, too long by a few centimetres. He loved its ground-sweeping fluidity, a red river streaming over the feet of the huge woman to-ing and fro-ing between the table and the refrigerator, delivering the milk jug, setting it down on the counter to loosen his hands from the same fabric that brushed against his face as she turned then walked away after kissing his hair. He could barely stand, falling backwards onto his thickly padded bottom; his mother’s laughter, the tender joy. Immediately, he raced toward her at a crawl, a quicker means of locomotion thanks to limbs that were singularly powerful for a baby his age. “Mamma!”

  He again managed to grab hold of a fold of her skirt, which he crammed into his mouth while she prepared his bottle. A melodious sound issued from the box whose button she’d just pushed and, bending down, she lifted him high in the air, then let him slide down her body and settled his tiny legs around her waist. Her arms encircling him, she twirled from the kitchen to the dining room then the living room, ever spinning, transferring the child from one hip to the other, her eyes locked on his, her lips smiling: she sang, lala lala la la, her long hair flying round them free, like a black waterfall, a silken, living downpour. He didn’t know that the music she waltzed to was Strauss, the concordance between his mother’s steps and the sound enfolding them penetrated his being like his first time in the lake: the sudden chill, a shudder, then the keen sensation of an astounding discovery and lucid, simple, pure joy.

  Occasionally, she would look down and squeeze him tight, kiss his cheek, then whirl back to the other room, to the baby bottle that appeared and disappeared with each pirouette. Suddenly, the bottle nudged his lips — she had grabbed it from behind his back and pressed it up against his mouth, inviting him to take the bottle in his own tiny hands; he was no longer hungry or thirsty, lost in the bliss of the dance he thought would go on forever. He sensed silence surrounding them, his mother motionless now. She lay the child down on his blanket spread over the carpet. The explosion of joy had been so intense that his lower lip began to quiver — he cried. The skirt grazed his ear and he felt his mother’s arms around him again; she rocked him and fed him his milk and he fell asleep.

  I’d slept well, lying on light airy feathers, the mattress as soft and spongy as moss. I floated, drugged, on a cloud, although I couldn’t drink alcohol on the medication, so I didn’t use the drug every night because, I have to tell you, Papa, I liked red wine to wind down.

  I was outside on the street, it was a Sunday. Sun. In my eyes. I hadn’t brought sunglasses with me, my village had been overcast for so long. I made my way to the closest drugstore to buy a pair with UV-protection. Some tall fellow with an accent, an expat from France, came up from behind and reached over my shoulder, rifling through the display case; this happened to me too often, unwanted contact. A flashback: I was in Montreal visiting my son and stood waiting for the metro, it was summer, my red flowered dress was neither too short nor too revealing, nothing more than my arms left bare. I turned and felt a shiver down my spine: a man with long grey hair stared at me with the eyes of a wolf who’s spotted a hare, its paw caught in a snare. I hurried off, even though, because of the crowd, I was in no danger. He followed. I slipped behind two stunning, scantily-dressed young women, trying to divert his gaze, but no; he kept coming when, all of a sudden, he stopped. I have no idea what he read in my expression. An entreaty? Rage? Exhaustion? Regardless, he stopped, reluctantly, and stepped onto the train. I stayed put on the platform, my heart pounding.

  Yet I did nothing to bring it on, I didn’t dress provocatively. In the drugstore, I wore my sister’s extra-long fleece jacket and wide-legged jeans that covered my runners. I turned to stare down the fellow next to the sunglasses, but I haven’t mastered a glare — I’m told I have a velvet gaze. He apologized and stepped aside, letting me choose my glasses. He walked away, leaving my gut reeling in turmoil, angry at myself for my inability to shake the frightened-victim aura I bathed in, the one that attracted predators.

  In my loneliness, I’d imagine a stranger who’d become a friend, a companion, an ally, a lover above and beyond sex, one who would make love to me while his soul dove into my eyes — better yet, someone to bring warmth, his whole being. A man who would welcome my body next to his, part of his private landscape, inviting me in and I him in the glow of shared trust. A man who would see beyond the human face and reach that other, invisible face, which he would love despite all the scars, the tears, the fatigue and the despair. A love I’d never known.

  On my way back, as I passed in front of a closed bookstore, I remembered I still had to read my friend Julie’s latest collection of storie
s about the true North, the Inuit North, with its beautiful cover. Huh, I thought, your mind has turned to something other than grief, a good sign! I gave myself the occasional pat on the back to instill courage, I filled myself to bursting with the sun’s light, its wan heat trumped by the cold draft born of the night. Now that I think of it, Papa, without realizing it I’ve been using the familiar tu as I speak to you, proof I have changed. The winter just past that I’d tried to escape was my first since his departure and the longest ever etched in my memory since the day of his birth. The sun deserted my land, its presence altered by dense clouds bearing sorrow and snowflakes; in speaking to you of the cold, a polar wind brushed against me and penetrated my hands.

  My womb, like my life, was a gaping wound through which his winter entered.

  It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect weather for errands pushing the little one in his stroller. He refused to climb in though and stayed out front, bent on walking to the heart of the village without climbing into the four-wheeled conveyance: “Me do it, Mamma!”

  He came to a stop in a puddle and, without hesitation — splish, splash — he stomped his boots, laughing as sprays of water reached his mother’s legs. She let him play for a while then led him away by the hand, promising candy if he was good.

  The minute they stepped into the shopping centre, he made a beeline for the toy store. Fascinated by a plastic tow truck in the window, he hopped from one foot to the other and pointed, “Mamma, pretty, want that!”

  She approached and swept him up in her arms, acknowledging how pretty the toy was, and steered the conversation around to the shopping to be done for the family. She pointed out a little girl nearby, happily sitting in her stroller.

  “No, not me!” he cried.

  She began to consider putting off the shopping trip until another time; he wanted to run free and was getting heavy so, exasperated, she set him down, “Come, I need to get you some diapers!”

  She set off toward the drugstore, he followed, fussing all the while and, without taking her eyes off him, she grabbed a box from the shelf. As she slipped into line to pay, still pushing the stroller, she lost sight of her son. Busy pulling bills out of her purse, she told herself she’d catch up with him back in front of the toy tow truck, and she hurried, stuffing her purse and the diapers into the stroller and dashing out of the drugstore, but he was nowhere to be seen. Inside the toy store, she walked all the aisles, asked the cashier if she’d seen a little boy wearing blue-and-white-striped coveralls, went back out into the mall and ran from one store to the next, nothing. A surge of ice-cold panic hit her. He couldn’t be outside, the doors were too heavy for him, unless someone else had let him out, but why? Anyone could see he shouldn’t be on his own at his age. Unless that person had taken her child; her fear became unbearable, tears streamed down her cheeks, she made no effort to wipe them away. Just then, a young man approached, he wore a local hockey club’s ball cap, had the same sky-blue eyes as her son. The young man said, “Ma’am, are you looking for a little boy?”

  She nodded frantically. “Yes, he’s wearing striped overalls …”

  The teen had come across the child alone splashing about in a puddle on the street leading to their house and, not knowing what to do with him, had simply taken the boy to the police station. She thanked him again and again, embarrassed by her tears, not knowing how else to express her gratitude and the return of joy. He gave a kind smile.

  When she saw her child sitting on the station secretary’s lap, his cheeks streaked with tears, his jacket striped with mucus, uninterested in her presence, busy drawing on a yellow sheet of paper, it took all she had not to drop to the ground and howl like a wounded she-wolf.

  At home as a teenager, I sometimes felt so lonely that I’d sit at the window watching for visitors who never came. Maman was often away; I don’t want to tell you everything, Papa, just what the dreams told me, the images they chose to reflect my life back to me. One image is of me running to the river, fleeing an awful woman, a witch out to hurt me. She drew near, close enough for me to see hate contorting her face. Reaching the end of the dock, I was trapped, either I let her catch me or I’d have to jump into the water full of broken bulrushes and floating feces; I gagged at the filth. I dove in and swam to where the water was clear, it seemed to take forever, I knew there was a small island somewhere and, eventually, it rose out of the dark. Rocks, rigid and imposing, loomed behind a curtain of mist. A canoe was beached there, a paddle stored inside; I stayed on the island for the longest time until I heard voices coming from that other shore I’d left behind, the movement of humans I couldn’t see because day hadn’t broken since my arrival. When I heard my name being called, a faint light appeared on the riverbank, I climbed into the canoe and paddled toward the strange voice. A sea of people came out of the fog, multiplying as I approached; it included my brother and sister, grown. They seemed to be waiting for someone and I turned to look as everyone scanned the cloud screen surrounding me. When I emerged at last from the mist and the boat grazed the muddy bottom, an outstretched hand helped me ashore and I realized that I was the one they’d been hoping to see.

  I thought often about death, life did nothing to lift the veil of suffering it had draped over us, our family. Being the eldest, I had to take the place you two had had with the children we still were; my childhood was stolen, my adolescence even more so. Wanting to leave this world, did I venture to that other shore in search of peace and to confront solitude, true solitude, the solitude that would greet me at the end of my days once I’d agreed to drink the dark, dirty water of my life’s long river?

  I was so cold. I shivered despite Montreal’s summer heat. My heart could no longer ferry blood to my body’s extremities. His death had turned me to ice.

  I curled up under the covers. Hélène had left me the duvet comforter on her bed; her pillows surrounded me the way my children used to in days gone by when they’d sneak into the bedroom and slide in between their father and me where they’d cuddle, one in front, the other behind. My husband would get up and finish the night on the living room couch. Soaked in sweat and their scent, I’d keep sleeping when they left the bed to be with their father come morning.

  I lay there waiting to feel warm again, especially my feet, then saw I’d fallen back to sleep by the clock on the bedside table that read an hour later. Light flooded the house. A girl in a red camisole flickered like a flame past the window; it must be hot out for her to be dressed so lightly.

  As I walked to the park, I breathed in sun and air, fortified by the explosion of warmth flowing over me. A woman on a bicycle stopped to ask the way to a neighbourhood church unknown to me; I used the address to point her in the right direction. I came across Hasidic children dressed all in black, boys whose side curls danced on their cheeks. One of them aimed a toy bow and arrow at me, ready to shoot; he was harmless but showed no respect for the person I was. He had no idea he was aiming at an Indigenous woman. If I had started ululating, what a scare he would have had. His arrow drooped, stuck in the cord of his bow; I laughed in spite of myself. The boys’ fathers wore tire-shaped hats and black coats, stockings and shoes; I didn’t wonder why; had my headdress been visible, they, too, given all the feathers on my body and head, would have been surprised to note I fancied myself a bird; they couldn’t see the eagles perched on my shoulders. Symbols of the Great Spirit in my mother’s culture, conveying our prayers to the universe.

  In the park stands a concrete monument engraved with the names of soldiers from the wars of 1914 and 1939, the war you fought in. Two names struck me. John Love — imagine going off to war with a name like that — and another that seemed more appropriate, Arthur Lacroix, a nod to that mindset anchored in defeatism. To carry one’s cross. You didn’t raise us in the Catholic faith and for that I thank you; you believed in nothing. As an atheist, you bore your blows stoically, without complaint, like a soldier in formation during battle; we never knew what missions you were tasked with because of th
e blanks you refused to fill in. Blood, the dead, victories yes, but you were only at the front at the end, what did you do during those early years? A mystery. One friend told me, years after your death, that you were part of the Intelligence Service, the term you used for espionage.

  I needed to give back the suppressed anger you had passed on to us, the constant fear of coming unhinged, I could take it no more: no more of never trusting a single soul.

  You saw deep into people’s hearts, knew their intentions, could sense each person’s truth and you were never wrong; those fly-by-night men you refused to address or only spoke the strict minimum to out of common courtesy, you were right, they weren’t upfront. But in each of them I looked for a part of you, you were there, both singularly present and absent, you were afraid of me, there was desire in spite of yourself; aside from Maman, I was the only female in your family, my sisters had yet to be born, you were raised among boys, you had sons; Maman could tell, she was jealous of me, couldn’t help herself. The witch in my dream: I had to protect myself both from you and from her. You didn’t like it when neighbour boys played with me, so they’d come calling while you were out, and when you stumbled across us lobbing rocks into the creek at the bottom of the hill, you chased them away. Your love imprisoned me, at least the sort of love you showed. And so, any man’s love became so much barbed wire surrounding me.

  You put your hand here, between my legs, when I was eleven, not yet menstruating. You and Maman had been drinking; my brothers and I sat with you on your bed and you talked to me about the birds and the bees, the blood that would soon flow from me and transform me into a potential mother, to be careful around boys, men, too, don’t let them take me here; and your hand made its move. No one saw.