Winter Child

by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau

  He was playing the blues on his guitar. It was summer; the two of them had planned a get-together for her birthday, for a meal he himself would cook. The door had been left ajar and she stood behind it for the longest time, listening, losing herself in the notes; she hadn’t knocked because the music was so beautiful, solemn, sensual and profound, thick with alluvial tones. Enthralled by the movement of his fingers over the strings, she slid next to him to watch him play, his torso bare, his wet hair cascading over his face, his back, his chest. It was as though he didn’t see her, caught in the spell of the magic streaming from his instrument through the loft. She had no idea where his imagination had transported him right then, but could see beneath lowered lids the dull blue-green waters of a bayou in which giant mangrove roots plunged, teeming with crustaceans, strange fish, even impassive alligators whose bellies were full, then on slender branches floating on a sea of sky, birds of blindingly luxuriant colours squawking loudly enough to rupture eardrums. There was a scent as well, liquid and sweet, of flowers, of faintly putrid ponds lying immobile under a blazing sun and of sleeping breezes that no longer blew.

  His guitar sounded a strident note like the hiss of a snake darting into thin air for no reason other than to gauge the force of its thrust, then he reined it in so skilfully that it seemed not false but calculated, in such a way that no other note could have filled the breach in his mesmerizing instrumental. He returned to a gentler, more ethereal shore, with delicate strokes like white ibis tracks on the sand, barely visible, instantly erased by the swell of a shimmering sea on a fine summer’s day.

  When she opened her eyes again, his steel-blue gaze, glowing with pride, took in her delighted expression; he finished with one last long drawn-out flourish that faded under his fingers to the flow of a warm, fragrant river and said, “Song of the Bayou for My Mother: that’s my gift to you, happy birthday, Maman!”

  That February, day broke with a crystalline light, the blue of stained glass on the eastern front. The family had invited me on a snowshoe outing followed by a meal; my brothers and sisters were happy to see me smiling, trusting that grief’s next chapter would be smooth. They had no way of knowing though that the joy they saw on my face came from my secret decision to leave them all on the summer solstice, that was the prospect that cheered me; I’d chosen the moment based on projects I still wanted to complete, all my papers in order with the lawyer. My leave-taking wouldn’t be a spontaneous, desperate gesture, but well-thought-out, at least that’s what I tried to tell myself, overwhelmed and angry at how life had taken so many of my loved ones away. The fact dame skeleton had gone so far as to attack my womb was the worst of all; convinced she wouldn’t stop there, I was ready to offer her the sacrifice of my own life’s breath.

  My brothers walked ahead, breaking trail through the thick snow, trading places as each one tired. Emanating from them was the beauty of men who had travelled down dangerous paths along which voluptuous sirens beckoned, yet here they were accompanied by their womenfolk, strong and loyal, thirty years or more of sharing a bed, bliss, tragedy, laughter and tears. Despite it all, I could still hear them conjugating their love in the present, taking their partners by the hand to drink the clear water of the sky with wide-open eyes and devour the wind with abandon, steadfast companions. They had prepared many dishes, various salads, pasta topped with a perfect sauce, a light dessert, their love of cooking inherited from you; they were heartwarming with their colourful aprons and the wooden utensils they handled like weapons, sword-fighting around the kitchen counter, anything to make us laugh.

  How strange, mon père, that you passed on your sense of coupledom to your sons but not your daughters. I imagine daughters inherit theirs from their mother, from her example; ours had been bitten by the nomadic bug. There were four of us girls and not one of us had inspired in any man of the moment the light that shone in my brothers’ eyes when they gazed on the women in their lives.

  She and Amélie had just bedded down for the night at Hélène’s house when his father phoned. The two women had spent the day at his bedside; a simple change of position to smooth out the sheets beneath him turned out to be enough to stop the beating of his heart. Already that afternoon, the doctor had warned them there was no hope left, or so little. She clung to his so little. The doctor mistook her for the child’s partner or older sister.

  “No, I’m his mother …”

  She saw pity in his eyes, and the long years during which she, amputated, would be obliged to endure life without him.

  “I’m so sorry, Madame … so sorry.”

  Untreated, his pneumonia had deprived his heart of oxygen and, to compensate, his heart had enlarged to the size of a bull’s.

  Slowly, they put their clothes back on and called a cab to take them to the hospital. On the way there, her daughter leaning against her, his mother tried to envision the transition from her living son to the corpse she would gather into her arms, an ordeal so great as to double her over, arms wrapped around her belly. The pain was such she had to cling to the bars of his bed to keep from falling, from blacking out; she could feel the roots of her hair stand on end, icy drops of perspiration rolling from her scalp along her neck. Despair inhabited her, her thoughts wild horses throwing themselves against barbed wire in the dark of night, she wondered if her own heart were not about to explode, it could happen at any moment; the pain on which she tottered was so intense it took her breath away, she slumped on the crest of a wave about to collapse, implode and ferry her to bottomless depths. She spiralled into a space where nothing and no one existed, spun there in the void, embedded in the unbearable, a living, breathing wound. It was then that she looked on his face, grown younger. His delicate features in their frame of long hair underwent a transformation as though in slow-motion, growing serene, the few lines of age fading from his flesh as though he had gently drifted off to sleep. She started to breathe again.

  She could not conceive of leaving her son’s body; how did other mothers manage to break away from this torment, this wrenching of the heart? She brushed his hair, cut a few locks for herself and her daughter, braided the rest, pulled back the sheet and drank in the warm hue of his still-living skin, the slenderness of his hips, the firmness of his legs and shoulders. She gathered him to her, wiped the sweat from his back, kissed his cheeks, his nose, his forehead; breathed in his vinegary scent.

  Amélie said, “He looks the image of Christ, don’t you think?”

  She was right: he the sacrificial victim so that, in his memory, other family members might stop drinking.

  Later, in the arms of her friend Marc, far from her daughter, a bestial howl escaped her lips, or more like one final cry before the agony of dying, which itself is silent and from which there is no return, its presence borne against our will, overriding the instinct to survive, as we realize the worst always comes to pass, eclipsing rash hope, the quest for new horizons or the endless pursuit of a love to come hoped to be immortal, the possible become impossible. When death is all there is, victorious, the regent of day and night and of the world, death alone, implacable, absolute.

  She collapsed against him, her unending cry dismaying in its shamelessness; she fell to her knees, he too crouched, wrapped arms around her, hugged her so tight she couldn’t breathe. His sobs mingling with hers, his moans matching hers and his words, “Stop … you’re hurting me, you’re scaring me … please!”

  She stood and hit his chest open-handed, “But I’m hurting! I’ve never hurt so much! Do you hear? Never, ever, ever …”

  Her voice trickled off in her friend’s damp shirt, she kept crying, sniffling, a trail left on its cloth; for the longest time he rocked her, his tears falling on her unkempt hair.

  Go through the motions, step into the shower, pick up the shampoo, pour it over head, both hands massaging in a soapy caress, the pleasure, despite it all, of hot water gliding over her breasts, her belly, then doubled over with the weight of a memory of the child floating in her inner ocean l
ike a miniature seahorse tied to the earth by a cord of flesh. She flung herself against the walls of the wet stall and collapsed, felled by the powerlessness of her rage, limp as a jellyfish washed up on the sand.

  The family decided on cremation without a wake. Amélie returned to her daughters and spouse; it fell to his mother to pick up the ashes at the funeral home, thankful for her friend Marc, so loyal and attentive he accompanied her all the way back to Abitibi. With the funeral urn on her lap, the air between them grew heavy. She knew her sobs cut him to the quick, but he waited for calm to be restored before speaking.

  Her brother Paul and his wife met them at the door without a word, the others waited inside, reverent, silent. They had prepared an altar with a picture of the child surrounded by bouquets of flowers. She placed the urn among the flowers. Her family showered her with love, a tender, comforting interlude. The day passed as one after another told stories of the deceased, punctuated with laughter and tears. They were readying themselves for a sacred farewell ceremony in traditional Indigenous fashion. Being the eldest, his mother would be the one to preside over the ritual to return the dust of her son’s remains to Mother Earth. As soon as Amélie and her family arrived the next day, the procession began to the cemetery a kilometre away.

  Lionel brought a shovel and dug a hole in front of the headstone engraved with the names of their parents, their brother Henry, their sister Céline. The group formed a circle, the child’s mother beat the drum, a low, booming note, and her clear voice climbed skyward in a chant as tender as it was heartbreaking while the members of her family, each in turn, raised the urn to each of the four directions and prayed softly. Then his mother emptied its contents into the hollow, entrusting his mortal remains to the loved ones sleeping there, offering an entreaty for peace for her son’s soul. Each person came forward to place a handful of earth onto the burial ground and returned to his or her spot in the circle. Peace settled over the group — the ceremony bringing acceptance of death — now left to live through the period of mourning and absence.

  A bird flew through the car window, only averting death thanks to the opening that kept it from smashing its skull. I stopped to roll down all the windows, raise the hatchback and free the bird; farther along, an otter ran across the road just under the car. I slammed on the brakes; the otter too, its underwater undulations a symbol of absolute femininity and sensuality, continued to live. Signs, messages linked to the forces of the invisible.

  I was on my way back to the big city when the bird and the otter taught me I would survive; I continued to visit my son’s favourite sites, always setting out from my haven in my friend Hélène’s home. I was reading Folle by Nelly Arcan who was anything but crazy; depressed, perhaps, but not mad. One passage stayed with me in which she spoke of her abortion, the heart-rending choice she had to make; I couldn’t help but wonder why life sometimes puts us in unlikely situations at unexpected times. To provide another avenue? Or the certainty of doing the right thing? Of making the right choice?

  Before the child, an earlier pregnancy had gone wrong at around the three-month mark, the fetus deserted my body for no reason; cramps in the middle of the night and that morning the fetus fell into the toilet bowl, a small white shrimp-like shape dropping down, and I pushed the handle. Without thinking. Flushed the toilet.

  It took a long time for life to adhere to my womb again. This time, unlike my other pregnancies, I suffered from morning sickness, the child announcing his arrival. When he was ten or so, I told him about that other experience. I hadn’t thought it through, and so was struck by his unexpected and pained reaction. He blanched, “Maman, if your baby had lived, I wouldn’t be here? Did I take that baby’s place, Maman?”

  I can hardly bear the memory because he was right, his father hadn’t wanted any more children after him; I stammered out a reply, all the while knowing that a wound had been opened deep in his fragile sensibility, his piercing gaze announcing he was an imposter, yet no one could ever have replaced him, my son of light, but there was no convincing him otherwise. Now though, I think he knows.

  Italy came to her in the shape of a friend, Gabriella, with her tales of dreams, islands, cuisine, art. The country had beckoned to her on several occasions, through artists with whom she exchanged letters in those pre-email days. Each exchange ended in silence when she stopped responding to invitations after several visits, not that she hadn’t enjoyed the Italians, their way of seeing a woman’s unique cachet, her fire; she had seen works by the great masters, Botticelli’s Primavera, Michelangelo’s too-perfect David, the sensuality of its lines and shapes; she had visited the rocky hilltop of Assisi and communed with St. Francis’ energy, palpable and deeply moving, whatever one’s beliefs, once mental barriers were let down.

  This time, it was for Gabriella that she agreed to one day travel to the heart and soul of Italy, Gabriella, whose daughter had quit eating, food become her enemy, Gabriella, who feared death awaited her daughter. Their words intermingled, red-suffused words issued from rent motherhood, coloured with helplessness and stubborn hope, tear-soaked evenings that flew by all the same since she was no longer alone speaking of the same sorrow, the intrinsic vulnerability, its essence painful and pure, of those who bear the world’s children. That day in early May, as they strolled through Montreal’s botanical garden, she invited Gabriella to go with her to Abitibi.

  She told Gabriella her dream of an encounter on the twelfth floor of a building, in suite 1212, an empty room save for a desk at the back behind which a man in a jacket and tie waited, fingers interlaced, the desk bare of files, paper, pens. On the wall behind his head hung a safe from which a gentle golden light emanated. The man told her the safe held the store of happiness reserved for her.

  “I’m not ready, there’s so much work I have to do …”

  He answered, “No matter, it’s yours, it will wait for you, come back whenever you like.”

  At the time, the dream troubled her, unaware that death would soon visit her family, and she grew to see it as a sort of talisman hidden in her memory, a tenuous link to the hope that, in passing, the years would bring her isolated moments of serenity as did colours on paper. The dream came shortly before the knife to her brother’s chest, her mother’s ruptured liver and her departure nine months after her son, a pregnancy’s span, her sister’s drowning in firewater and her father’s silent leave-taking. And now, the disappearance of her child.

  Gabriella told of her Sardinia bathed in sunshine.

  “You’ll see, there’s a secret place, an enclave among rocks, where the sea rests from the roar of its waves, a small beach of white sand, you’ll love it, we’ll swim there, in the hush, far from the din of human beings.”

  She’d also say, “Enough of the cold, winter, death! Open the door to happiness, open your heart, despite death, in defiance of death … come, my friend.”

  The rising sun cradled the flight of the eagle’s feather, its light caught in the deep lake of the feather’s eye; she had returned for a while to the wilderness of her lands, what words to express how, if she ripped away the arrow planted in her womb, the last of her blood would drain away?

  It was the day before Mother’s Day, so painful, so sorrowful, too much to bear; snowing, of course, in May, there would be no phone call with his sleepy voice on the other end, “Happy Mom’s Day, Maman!”

  Talons ripped through the place his body had rested, where his weight had lain heavy and his feet and fists had struck the living walls. Every night since his death, she spoke his name haltingly, half-asleep, a call, a plea. Then one night, a dazzling light shone in the confines of her room; he was there, took his mother into his arms, his embrace bathing her in a love so absolute she could barely breathe. There with him, she gave herself over to the liquid perfume of perfect joy; a feeling she had never before experienced that met every expectation, she clung to him, tried to pull him closer, into the shadows. He pushed her away tenderly, said, “No, Maman, my place is no longer here.
But you, go, all will be well, you’ll see.”

  A dream so real she groped blindly, felt the sheets with her fingertips. The wind raged outside, blasting snow against the windowpane, an accomplice to the sudden winter that accompanied his nocturnal visit; she rose and caught sight of her face in the mirror, two new worry lines below each eye, channels running along her nose to catch invisible tears, furrows within which he buried himself, hidden from sight. And so he returned her life to her, the assurance that he lived on elsewhere, in a state of bliss beyond the grasp of the human mind.

  Her Italian friend came with her to Abitibi. She let Gabriella soothe her, listened to her, shared in the bubbles of laughter that burst through the tears, a fast-moving river flowing over their secrets. They let the waters guide them, motionless, waiting to see what lay around the next bend, and held onto each other, soul sisters, their anguish transformed into a spring lapping against their banks. On a day when the sun shone and a warm breeze dried perspiration as it formed, easing the heat’s intensity, they drove down the dusty road that led to Nepawa Island. Gabriella was fascinated by the covered bridge, there were none in her Sardinia; on the long dock jutting into Abitibi Lake, they spread out a blanket on which they set down a picnic basket.