The Exile Book of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama

by Daniel David Moses

  Personal experiences shut discussions down, the professor says, in front of the class. Now I know you are Indian, and your perspective is important, but what you need to practise is more open-mindedness, more awareness of other positions, more realization that there is no truth. I would suggest you read Gerald…

  I miss the rest of what the professor says, especially after you pull out your scrotum and put it on the overhead.

  But I do hear the laughter. At me. The whispers. The fingers pointing. The strokes of pens as each word of my shame is copied.

  Embarrassed, I retreat into silence. The class ends and I am alone with my realizations. The world thinks you are something else, and I can’t do anything to stop it. Shit.

  Hee hee hee heeeeee, you dance. Hee hee hee heeeeee. Hee hee hee heeeeee. Hee hee hee heeeeee.

  You repeat and repeat and repeat, growing louder with each round. Your hissing and footsteps grow so loud that soon they sound like permanent whispers, deep in my ear, like dance steps on my brain.

  Until I hear her voice. For the first time since you came into my life you go silent.

  How do you know tricksters? she asks, clearly.

  Lost by your muteness, I confusingly say, I see one every day.

  Tricksters aren’t real. They’re stories, she states.

  I wish that were true, I reply.

  I’m Aboriginal, and I don’t see the tricksters you’re talking about.

  You’re lucky.

  We sit together for a long time. I enjoy the stillness and calm of her voice. You sit off on the bench, quiet for the first time in years, watching us. We talk for hours. She tells me to study you, write books about you, speak up to you, confront you. She encourages me to think different things than whimsical stories and theories of untruths.

  Most of all, she trusts me. She tells me that what I experience is true. What I know was true. What I conclude is true.

  But that’s not the end, she states, your trickster might be beautiful too. He might even be fun, smart, and powerful.

  How do you know this? I ask.

  I’ve heard stories from my relatives.

  So you’ve seen him?

  Not yours. But one.

  I don’t believe it, I say. I tell her how you came into my life, how you are nothing but an asshole who makes my life hell, how you are nothing that I want to be, nothing that I want to become, nothing that reflects me or my life.

  Tell me more, she asks.

  We spend more and more time together, days, afternoons, evenings. She asks for details about you, about what you do, about what you say (which is nothing, I know). Then she talks about herself, her life, her interests, her dreams, and asks me about mine. It is the first time I speak about a time without you. It was easy, especially since I could concentrate. You were still there but you were calmly watching us, in the faded background of our community.

  One Friday, in my apartment, she kisses me. I pull away, scared.

  Okay, okay, she whispers. Don’t worry. Be with me. Shhhhh. Focus on us, on me. The rest will come. Are you upset? Oh god, I didn’t know. It’s okay. I’ll be gentle.

  Kissing my neck, she takes off my shirt. I tremble, a warm chill hitting my skin.

  Hearing you lick your lips, I feel your hairy hands help pull it over my head.

  We move in together soon after that. One night, she tells me she loves me. We marry. I get a job. We buy a house. You come, but you subversively make your presence known, makng messes only I can find. I clean up after you, take responsibility for your actions. Sometimes I even pretend you aren’t there. I don’t want anything to happen to us.

  Once in a while, she asks if you are around, if I see you, hear you. No, no, no, no, I lie, not anymore. He’s gone. It’s good. The trickster is just a fucking asshole. Just a jerk. Just there to make my life shit. Everything is better now. I’m happy.

  I decide to try what she said. I put up with you. I try to see the beauty in you. I try to listen to you. It’s hard. You are angry that I’ve been ignoring you. Pissed off that I have pretended to move on. You start doing different things. You drink, party, gamble, and do some horrible things. Sometimes I find the alcohol, drugs, and money you hide in my bag. Sometimes I find your used condoms. Sometimes I find blood.

  But I’m happy, I tell myself. I can’t let you ruin us. I can’t let you break up my first happiness. I can’t let you get to her. Why are you changing? Why can’t you be like you were before? Why can’t you go away?

  You continue to mess things up, especially when she’s not around. You pant in my ear, reek of booze and marijuana, and masturbate while you watch her sleep. I start leaving in the afternoon, just to keep you away from her. I go. I stay away and let you party, hoping you will pass out. I come home long after she is sleeping and stay on the couch. I keep you busy with beers to drink, floors to piss on, places to shit. I stay away as long as I can.

  In this way, I protect her. I live on an island of our love, surrounded by you.

  Until last night. When I couldn’t stop you. I don’t remember much, except for you and your drinking and your drugs and your dark fuzzy nights together when we can’t stay away any longer and we come home not alone and you convince me to fumble with the locked door and come into the living room with sweaty hands making back circles and shapes kissing lying on top singing singing singing singing calling out to god pulling pushing it out in harder harder harder harder until her face not her but her becomes you suddenly it is you I have been fucking all this time, my hands holding your coarse hair as you come into with through on me and I see her standing away looking at me crying, shaking, screaming, oh honey I’m sorry it won’t happen again I’m so sorry please come back please oh please I’m sorry, you saw him didn’t you you saw him didn’t you you saw him didn’t you you saw him.

  I wait until she is sleeping and slip into bed. You, of course, are already there.

  I just realized, I touched you for the first time last night. I think I’m going to throw up.

  I think I’m going to die.

  There’s no imagining the shit I have covered all over my hands, my body, my mind. It’s very real, and you created it. I can’t get to you. I will never get to you. The shit is too thick. I am too weak.

  I cry, little sobs at first, and then try to scream out her name, even though my mouth is so full of shit I can’t close it. I can make no sound. I am pathetic. I am lost. I am alone. And I should be dead by now, but I’m not. I can hear you giggling.

  I feel a long rubber staff, like a rope, near my hands. It’s bendable, firm, soft to the touch, kind of like a piece of wood covered in slippery moist plastic. I grab it and wrap it around my wrist as it pulls me free from the ooze. I breathe my first breath in what feels like days. Then, as soon as I free myself, the rope slithers back into the shit pile and disappears.

  Coughing and wheezing on the floor, I’ve got nothing more to say to you. I’ve got nothing more to take. I slowly walk and sob and cry, travelling down the stairs calling her name.

  I hear you coming down the stairs. Go ahead. I don’t care what you destroy anymore.

  I’m sorry, I cry out. I’m so so so so sorry, Sky. You deserve better. I’m sorry. If only my dad kept me from waiting. If only you hadn’t tricked me. If only I listened better to her. If only.

  Suddenly, you come in the living room and start to eat. It’s small at first. The pictures on the wall of my mother, my father, my degree, her, they all go down your throat. My jacket, my laptop, my shoes, my wallet. You eat the clock her mother gave us for Christmas.

  What are you doing, I scream, what are you doing, you asshole?

  Then, I promptly throw up shit. When I am done, my throat is so burnt, I can only croak.

  I watch, silently, as you smash the television set on the floor, and then munch on the pieces. You tip the cabinet over and it disappears into your stomach. You swallow the books whole, pages from my copies of Bearheart, Kiss of the Fur Queen, Love Medicine, and Ravenson
g spilling out of your mouth. You throw the bookcase across the room and it smashes into shards. You gulp those down too. You get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, too large for the rooms. There is no room for me anymore here.

  I scramble to the kitchen. You eat all there is left in the fridge, the meat, the apples, the old milk curdles that drip down your shin. You swallow the sugar bags whole, the brown and white granules sprinkled all over your hairy palms. You help yourself to everything, turning over tables, breaking lamps, tipping over the fridge. Forget it. I’m not cleaning up your mess.

  You get bigger, until your fat rolls fill up the entire floor on the first floor. All I can see when I look down is you.

  I have to go. You’ve never gotten this big before. Something’s different.

  All the while you are smiling right at me. Now that she is gone you are tormenting me. Making fun of my loss. I’d scream but my voice is raw and burnt, infected with too much shit, too many words, too many yous. I can’t speak.

  I don’t get it. I don’t understand what the joke is. I don’t know what is so funny, why you laugh, joke, play games. Yes, you play tricks. But they are always on others. Fucking mean tricks, too. I hate you.

  At least no one can deny that you exist now. You’re so huge. You take up all of the first floor, and you’re oozing up the stairs. I can’t even see the front door.

  You’re eating everything, the plaster, the stairs, the banister, the hardwood. Very soon there will be nothing left.

  Oh my god. That’s it. You’re going to eat everything. You’re going to eat it all.

  The trick is that today you are going to eat me.

  I run upstairs and you continue to grow.

  I can’t stop you, can’t escape. You just destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy and eat, eat, eat, eat, and grow bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. You start to fill up the second floor, inches at a time.

  I go to open the windows in the hallway and the bedroom but they’re locked, and you’ve eaten my wallet. You have trapped me, and I have trapped myself, you bastard. I need something to break through this glass.

  You grunt and moan around me, pick up furniture, throw it against the wall, eat the pieces. I jump away from the glass, onto the bed of shit, now the only island in the room of you. Your slimy hair covers the windows and it grows dark and dusky.

  I slowly start to sink. What’s the point of this, I try to say, but nothing comes out.

  Your hands emerge from the bubbles of your hairy fat, pick up handfuls of brown slime, and throw it at me.

  But I am already sinking in this, can’t you tell? You can’t do anything more. Cover me completely, then. Here, I’ll take off my clothes so you can cover me with your waste. Have them. There, I am naked. I’ll cover myself with you. Are you happy now? Is this what you want? No history, no life, no possessions, no nothing? It is only you and me and shit now.

  You stop and stare at my discarded clothes. This is what you wanted, isn’t it. You want to replace me. You put them on and they explode with your fatness, your jiggling chest oozing out of my shirt and my pants bulging at your crotch. You smile. Damn you.

  You start to eat the corner of the bed, yourself oozing from your mouth. When you’re finished with the mattress you chew on the corner of the dresser. I grab one of your rolls and pull my naked self out of the waist-high slime, step on your jiggling back, and leap into the bathroom. Quickly slamming the door. I realize that I have nowhere else to go.

  No, you can’t destroy everything. No, you bastard. I won’t let you.

  I destroy everything I see, so you can’t. I rip the glass shower doors off, tear the photographs of us onto the floor, smash the mirror on the wall. I kick the floor and punch the walls until tiny slivers of plaster and tile are jammed in my nails and my hands and feet bleed all over. I eat the shards of glass on the floor, the photographs, and whatever pieces of plaster, chunks of wood, that I can grab. The shards cut my throat, and my cuts spread open with each step and piece I slide in my mouth. I cry and feel my body shaking, cutting, bleeding, crying out in pain. Still, I punch, kick, and eat until I lie in the bathtub and there is nothing left. I am in so much pain. I am dying. I am really dying. I am dying. I am dying.

  I smile. I have kept those little pieces from you, though. You’ll see.

  You eat the door and I see your stretched face cover completely the entryway. You are still wearing my clothes, but they are like shreds on your inflated self. I stand and feel all of my body scream in agony. Even if I cannot speak, my presence is ensured by this horrible struggle. I am so weak, but yet I am strong.

  You see what I have done, and I can see you are angry.

  I try to vomit up the shards, the wood, the pieces, the photographs, the memories, just to spite you, but nothing comes out. Nothing but blood oozing from my lips, nothing but parts of me slipping out onto the floor.

  Your fatness, growing from your chin, stretches across the floor and surrounds my bathtub island. I sit down and see your busy hands reaching out from your blubber and onto the sides of my enamel lifeboat. I see your mouth swallow down the pieces of broken toilet.

  I find a piece of the mirror in the tub and look at myself. I am bloodied, hideous, mangled – just like you. Take a look, see for yourself, you asshole.

  I hold up the mirror shard. You stop destroying, look at your reflection and smile. You love looking at yourself, don’t you? You, dressed in my clothes, looking just like me, your overwhelming fatness covering the floor, the walls, the space.

  I make you happy when I destroy, don’t I? I make you happy when I wreck my life. I make you happy when I hurt myself. You didn’t even know that I could do that. You thought you were doing it for me.

  I laugh at the absurdity of us both, even though it hurts so much. I laugh but no sound comes from my mouth. You laugh, mimicking me, but you’re so overinflated no sound comes either. For the first time you look surprised, like you didn’t expect that to happen.

  Suddenly, it comes to me, although I knew it the entire time. I give you life.

  I laugh again. So do you. Silently.

  I know what I have to do.

  I’m going to wash. I reach over to the faucet and turn it on, full blast. I stand in the hot and cold water, and feel it soaking my broken feet and ankles. It is tinged red from my blood. You just stand there, smiling, staring at yourself in the mirror. I will wash us both. Our destruction will be permanent, and we will be cleansed. I sit down in the rising water and watch you silently look at yourself. You have not moved.

  Water fills the bathtub and runs over the sides, covering your floor of skin.

  We are going to drown. We are going to be washed away. We are going to be together. We are going to be born. This is a flood, a beginning. No one will save us. We will be cleansed in this water, filled with chemicals, plaster, and glass. There will be no earth, no soil, no mud, no sand. We will have to be remade from these new things, if we are remade at all.

  I watch as the water fills the room, to our waists. You reach down and nibble on the shit floating around you. You are still eating, trying to consume the world, all the way to the end. All you’re doing is eating yourself.

  That’s it, I understand. I have finally played a trick on you.

  Hee hee hee heeeeee, I laugh, mimicking you.

  Then, just then, you look. Right at me. With your eyes. Your beautiful eyes. I see my reflection in them. They are filled, filled with me. I am in you.

  The water fills to our necks, and my body grows light. I’m no longer carrying it.

  Hee hee hee heeeeee, I laugh.

  Your eyes tell it all. You are shaking. You are scared. After all of this time, you didn’t know how this would end, did you? Amongst all of the shit, piss, vomit, saliva, grunts, and moans, you did not know the ending of this story.

  Hee hee hee heeeeee, I laugh.

  You reach out with your fat hands, like tiny sticks protruding from your blob. I take them. I am scared, too. I didn’t know how th
is would end, either. I only know how we got here.

  Hee hee hee heeeeee, we sing together, our space filling the air for the first and last time.

  And with our laughter we become one, one picture, floating in water that covers our heads. We dance, weightless, merging, one. Underwater our selves return, and we sing songs with spirits of presence as we enter the next world gripped in a gaze of each other’s love and hate. We are different but we are similar, each disgusting, each beautiful, each here, each there. With so many stories, so many confusions, so many thoughts, so many words, ours and others’, so many spirits, so many goods, so many bads, so many others telling our story. And we have let them. To grow, we need to tell our story now. The story of our lives together, each necessary, each important, each needing the other to tell, to listen, to write, to learn. This is how we heal. This is how we die. This is how we live. Telling our stories.

  Our world fills with the blood of the earth and is cleansed of our destruction. We are remade for the world that will be created tomorrow, when we will tell this story again. It will be new and it will be different, and it will be part of a story too. It will, though, be ours. We hope.

  Regardless, if we are here or we are there, you will be with me. Maybe my dad will be with us too, laughing and telling stories with soft candies beside him. Maybe we will wait for him to arrive, but, if he doesn’t come, we can’t wait anymore. We have made mistakes too, and we are sorry. I pray that he knows that. But we are ready to continue.

  Maybe Sky will come with us too, if she wants to come back. We have made so many mistakes. We don’t blame her if she doesn’t want to come back. She has her story to make too. Without her our story would have ended a long time ago, so she is acknowledged and thanked.

  We don’t know about tomorrow, about any of these things, because, in the end, that’s all we have: each other. There will be a world that we will be born into, here or there, that we know. This place is where our story will be. We have to learn to do better and tell it like we have been living it, like we have been doing all along. Even though we may not know that we were telling it, writing it, drawing it, all along, we were.