Jeans were good enough for me. They hid my skinny legs and boney knees and the lumberjack shirt hid my flat chest. Each to her own.
One day after school we were in Portland’s Ladies Wear, the snootiest store in town, and Nakina wanted to try on a fur coat. A fur coat, for christ’s sake. I just had to get out of there. The owner, Mr. Portland, was about to throw us out because of that whole unwritten law about not being allowed in the store if you’re an Indian. He was doing that crossed arms thing, and Nakina waltzed in and said “I’d like to try…” She stopped speaking and put her head down for a moment, then looked up and said, “try on this fur coat please.”
I was worried. Nakina was getting these pauses between her words that happen just before she has a seizure. So I said we’d better go. Thought if I could get some food into her — we hadn’t had lunch — well, that was what I thought so I said let’s go to the Lorna Doone.
“Order me a burger,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.” Mr. Portland gave her the coat to try on but he didn’t look happy. I didn’t want to go but she gave me the look, the raised eyebrow look that said don’t mess with me, so I went.
***
“Coney dog and burger please. And two Cokes.” Stavros the cook was listening to the radio full blast. He was from Greece and couldn’t speak much English so he listened to the radio and repeated everything he heard. It was weird but it worked for Stavros — his English was getting better.
Coming back to the table with the tray I could see Nakina coming out of Portland’s. I put the tray down and bit into my Coney dog. There was some secret ingredient in it, and I thought maybe it was sauerkraut. I looked out the window to see what was keeping Nakina but she wasn’t there. After a few minutes I looked out the window again. Nothing. I went to the door and looked down the street. Weird. I figured she’d gone back into Portland’s, and I thought I’d better drag her out because her burger was getting cold.
I walked down the street towards Portland’s. I crossed a laneway between the restaurant and Portland’s and a cop car caught my eye. It was parked in the lane with a cop standing behind it. I don’t know why I stopped. Something about the way the cop was looking at the ground. His back was to me and he was laughing and shouting at something on the ground.
I walked down the lane to the car and in the shadow behind it I saw a hand. Nakina’s hand with the turquoise ring I gave her at Christmas. I wanted to run towards her and tell the cop she had epilepsy and he needed to make sure she didn’t choke but I stopped. My hands pushed against the side of the car and everything went slow. Nakina’s eyes were open but she couldn’t see me, and her hair was spread around her head like a black halo. Her legs were spread wide and her skirt was pulled up around her waist. Then I saw the other cop lying on top of her. The cop who was standing shouted “Give’r good, Bernie.”
The cop on top of Nakina let out a groan, dropped down on her and turned his head. It was Bernie Olfson. Mr. Olfson from down the street. Then everything sped up — shouting — the cops were shouting at me or each other, and Mr. Olfson was doing up his pants and the car doors slammed and they squealed back out of the alley and I ran to Nakina and pulled her skirt down and then the waitress from the Lorna Doone was standing over me saying “Christ, what happened?”
“The cops.” I looked up at her and said “The cops had her on the ground and then Olfson…” I stopped, the word raped frozen on my lips. I looked at Nakina lying exposed and vulnerable on the gravel, then turned back to the waitress and said “She had a seizure. She has epilepsy and she had a seizure.”
chapter five
Rumours were flying around school. All true. Nakina got fat and started wearing my oversized lumberjack shirts that she hated. She was pregnant. I knew that. Just like I knew she was sick the day we were at Portland’s, and I walked out of the store and left her.
Nakina kept coming over to the house, but she stopped playing cards with Mom and Dad, and mostly she sat in my room, reading. We were reading To Kill a Mockingbird for school. Nakina was lying on the bed beside me.
“What’s a chifforobe?” I asked.
“What?”
“A chifforobe. What’s a chifforobe?”
“A wardrobe. You know, for hanging clothes in.”
“So what’s it doing in the yard?” I asked.
“What?”
“What’s a chifforobe doing sitting in the yard?”
“Molly shut up. I’m trying to read.”
“Doesn’t make any sense. I mean why would it be just sitting out in the yard.”
“Just read to yourself.”
“And why would Mayella Ewell ask Tom Robinson to come into the yard and bust it up?” I knew I was pissing her off and I gave her a kick. I was trying to kick her out of her bad mood.
“Leave me alone,” Nakina said.
“I mean what was she going to do with a bust-up chifforobe anyway?”
Nakina closed her book, got up quietly and said, “I’m going home.”
It was weird. She wasn’t angry. Usually I could really get her going and she’d tell me to fuck off, and I’d tell her to fuck off and then we’d start laughing. That day she just got up quietly and went home.
***
The week before Nakina disappeared we were sitting on the wharf in front of Elevator B at the mouth of the Kam River. Dad was going to pick us up in the boat and take us out to the Welcome Islands. There were some kids behind us on the tracks playing Whack-a-Rat. A Fort McKay sport. See, along the railway line behind the elevators were these rats that gorged themselves on the grain that spilled out of the boxcars. They’d swell up and get as big as beavers and waddle slowly along the tracks waiting to die. So kids would come out along the tracks with baseball bats and chase them and then … WHACK. Dead rat. Gross. I didn’t think it would ever become an Olympic sport.
Nakina watched them for a while, and when the bat came down she said, “Lucky rat.”
“God, Nakina!”
“Better than lying there swelling up until it dies.”
My dad came along with the boat, but as soon as we got out on the lake Nakina got sick. We turned around and headed back to the dock.
***
Then she was gone. I didn’t know where she was, and I never asked. I heard my mom and dad talking about her one night in the kitchen after I’d gone to bed but I couldn’t catch what they were saying.
I missed her. Missed her like crazy. Missed her at home, missed her playing cards with mom and dad, missed her sleeping on the pullout cot in my room, missed her telling me what to do. I was so used to following Nakina that after she left I was lost. Just wandered around school in a daze looking like I’d taken a puck to the head.
I went back to being the weird, skinny, invisible kid I used to be, and I tried to fill the space with books — increased my habit to a book a day. It didn’t help.
I started to hang out with Anna. Her dad worked with my dad at the mill, and our families got together at the Hoito restaurant on Sunday mornings. I liked Anna; she was a straight-ahead kid. She had something wrong with her legs so she walked with canes most of the time, which wasn’t a big deal. When Nakina disappeared I started spending more time with Anna at school.
We had lunch together and joined the drama club, which was the first club I’d ever joined. Our drama teacher, Mrs. Miller, was amazing. She wasn’t just a teacher; she’d worked as a director in theatres all across the country and she was really well connected. It was because of Mrs. Miller that we had a big theatre production from out west visit our school. The play was The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. We didn’t know much about it except that the whole school was getting the afternoon off to watch it, so that was good.
After lunch we all headed to the gym. The bleachers were pushed back, and they had set up a stage in the middle. It was about two feet high with a ramp up the left side. At th
e back, right-hand side there was another ramp going up to a level about a foot higher, and on this platform was a big black desk with a gavel lying on the top. I had never seen a live play before. The gym was packed with hundreds of students, but it was totally silent as soon as the play began. We sat on the floor and there was one bright light, focused on the stage. Through the main doors came about a dozen actors. They walked across the gym floor and up the ramp onto the stage and faced us. The lights in the gym dimmed and a spotlight shone on a woman standing in front of a judge, who sat behind the big desk on the higher level.
The play was about this girl, Rita Joe, who was Cree I think. Anyway, she left home on the reserve and went into town looking for work. She was in town and had no money and men were harassing her. Rita kept talking to this guy she loved and he wasn’t there and you just wanted someone to … I mean her sister tried, and her father, well he missed her so much but they were far away. Too far away. And Rita couldn’t get out of the city, and the policemen …. I had to leave. I got up quietly and made my way to the door. I could see Mrs. Miller looking at me. I left without my coat and by the time I got to the parking lot I was running. I kept running until I got deep into the woods at the back of the school.
Where was Nakina? Where was she?
***
One morning about five months later she was back. Just like that. I was at my locker sorting through the books I needed for class and I looked up and there she was turning her lock. She had to do it a few times; I guess she’d forgotten the combination. She got her books, closed her locker and walked up to me and said “Hey Molly.”
“Hey,” I said.
“We got shorthand this morning?” she asked.
I said, “Yeah.”
“Do we have a spare after, or history?”
“History.” I said.
She said “OK” and led the way down the hall. I followed her.
I wanted to hug her and ask where the hell she’d been and what happened, but she just grabbed her books and walked past me down the hall like it was no big deal. So I followed her like it was no big deal.
She looked the same when she came back but something had changed. It was like that film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where people look the same but inside they’re empty pod people. It was like that with Nakina. People thought it was her but I knew it wasn’t. Not really. At first she started coming home with me again, and Mom and Dad acted like nothing had happened, and I told myself that maybe nothing had and everything was the same. But I knew it wasn’t.
She was in a new foster home. Said the Dekkers had kicked her out, which was strange because they seemed like really nice people. She was living with the school janitor, Mr. Starke, and his wife and she said it was OK. I thought it was creepy. He was creepy with his white shoes and gold chains on his hairy chest and always stinking of Brut aftershave and the disinfectant he used to scrub the floors. Nakina said he was OK. Said they knew how to have a good time. She stopped coming home with me after a while, and I got the feeling that she didn’t think my family knew how to have a good time. I felt hurt, but I wasn’t sure why.
It was small things I noticed at first. Like her laugh. She used to crack me up with her deep belly laugh. She didn’t laugh much any more and when she did I always felt like the joke was on me. I began to see things. She wore a lot of make-up at school. I noticed she had new jewelry and the chain around her neck looked like real gold. She didn’t wear the dime store turquoise ring I gave her anymore.
She came for Easter dinner. Hadn’t been over for ages and it felt good to have her back.
“Molly, can you set the table?”
“I’m peeling the potatoes. Nakina can do it.”
“Get Nakina to finish the potatoes. She does a better job than you.” Mom took her apron off and put her hand on my shoulder. “There’s no potato left when you peel them.”
“Thanks a lot.” I handed the paring knife to Nakina.
“Fork on the left, Molly,” Mom said.
Mom made a fantastic turkey dinner and Nakina raved about the apple pie and after dinner they played cribbage. Dad got out the slide projector and screen, and I teased him about showing us hundreds of pictures of his racing boats, but we looked at slides of Loon Lake and laughed about how short and goofy we were. Pictures of me and Nakina rowing the Little Tink across the lake, sitting around the bonfire at night roasting marshmallows, carrying the water pail back from the well.
I was watching the slides and thinking maybe I was wrong — maybe nothing had changed. I was thinking maybe the problem was me. Then Dad took the picture.
“Come on girls let’s get a picture of you two. You’ve grown a foot since last summer.” It was true. I had grown up a foot but not out. I was tall and skinny and flat chested and awkward, and I was wishing my dad would just put the camera away.
“Come on Nakina, get over there with Molly in front of the chair … perfect. OK, everyone say ‘cheese.’” We were laughing and had our arms around each other and it felt like it used to. But a week later when the photos came back I saw it.
I looked about ten years old — skinny as a rail with no hips or breasts. I looked like a little girl. Nakina looked like a woman. Sophisticated. She was wearing a sleeveless dress and had her hair pulled back in a bun.
I looked at the photo for a long time, and then I went to my room and crawled under the blankets and let the waterworks roll. I don’t know if I was crying because I was ashamed of how I looked, or because I realized how Nakina saw me — how everyone saw me. No wonder she didn’t want to hang out with me anymore.
After that Nakina took some different classes and didn’t eat with me in the cafeteria. We started to drift apart.
chapter six
“You look like you’re wearing fishnet stockings.”
“Fuck off.”
“You fuck off.”
Anna was in a wheelchair after her operation and her legs were a crisscross of scars.
“Let’s celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“I don’t know. You getting sprung from the hospital,” I said. “Let’s take the day off and hang out down at the river.”
We went down to the Kam River with a pack of smokes and a bottle of 772B. You had to fill out these forms in the liquor store and I’d memorized the cheapest brew, 772B — Old Sailor Sherry. We knew how to have a good time.
“What if a train comes?”
I was pulling Anna’s wheelchair backwards over the tracks. “It won’t,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Two trains a day. One in the morning and the other about ten at night.”
“You sure?”
“Have I ever been wrong before?” I said.
“I’m dead.”
“Seriously. They hardly use these tracks since the elevators closed.”
“Christ Molly, go easy. Do you want me to end up back in hospital?”
“Sorry. Just one more track and we’re home free. Don’t drop the wine.”
“You’re shaking me out of my freakin chair and all you care about is the wine.”
“Right,” I said, “hold on to the wine.”
When we got down to the waterfront I had two brilliant ideas. The first was that Anna should put the brakes on her chair because the wharf was on an angle and if she rolled into the Kam I would be in deep shit. The second idea came when I was lying on my back looking up at Sask Wheat Pool Number 7. We had just polished off half a bottle of 772B and everything had a rosy glow.
“Hey, look up there,” I said.
“Where.”
“Top of the elevator.”
“Yeah. So what?” she asked.
“The square building on top.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That’s the
electrician’s office. My uncle used to be the electrician and that was his office. He took me up one day — very cool.”
“No shit. How’d you get up there? The fire escape?”
“No idiot. There was an elevator.”
“An elevator in an elevator! Good one! You know, this place has been closed down for a few years.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So that office is empty.”
“Yeah. So what.”
“So it’s perfect,” I said.
“Perfect for what?”
“A studio,” I said.
“What?”
“A painting studio. Lots of windows, good light.”
“Lay off the Old Sailors,” Anna said.
“Philistine.”
“Asshole.”
“I hate your face pretty much.”
I got up and walked toward the rusted ladder that went up the side of the elevator. Worth a try. I began to climb.
Near the top some screws that secured the ladder to the concrete had come loose.
I hung on tight but my legs started vibrating with the ladder. Not good. I kept going and at the top stepped onto a flat gravel roof and walked toward the door of the wooden building. I figured it would be locked but it wasn’t. Inside was a long room about six times the length of our house. There were windows all along one side — the side that looked out to the Kam. There was a lot of crap on the floor — pieces of wood, broken furniture, some weird electrical stuff — but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Along the front of the room under the windows was a long workbench. I cleared some of it off, pushing all the stuff into a metal garbage can. I found a stool upside down under some wood and pulled it out, dusted it off and pulled it up to the workbench. Not bad. Not bad at all.
After a bit I climbed back down and bummed a Cameo menthol off Anna.
Wake The Stone Man Page 4