Kalila

by Rosemary Nixon

  A wad of paper whaps into the garbage can.

  A whispered, Right on!

  Freddie, just for you, we know you love your sport, fifteen minutes after school today. A coaching session — no, I’m uninterested in excuses, fifteen minutes in which to perfect your hoop shot. I understand your obsession. I’ll be here for you. Three-forty. Sharp.

  You move your pointer along the timeline trail. It squeaks and sings.

  Caleb, are you listening? Five years later, 1905, a young German physicist, Albert Einstein, verified Planck’s findings. But Einstein, too, veered off the safe path and in the process made a discovery that changed our view of the world.

  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity suggested a brand new view of the universe, based on Planck’s quantum theory. He proposed that light moved through space in quantum form. He proposed that light had at the same time the properties of a particle and a wave. Sometimes it showed one set of properties; sometimes the other.

  Yet this was not the most astounding feature of Einstein’s discovery. The most astonishing was his rejection of absolute space and absolute time. All we need to do, Einstein said, is pick a frame of reference against which to set the happenings of the universe. Einstein believed time meanders like a river around the stars and galaxies, slowing and speeding.

  Now move forward a decade. Trenton, are you with me? Well, try to look it. Remember mid-term’s in five days. Do I review for the hell of it? Niels Bohr, a Dane, carried forward the idea of quantum physics. In 1913, he was first to suggest that the energy of atoms are quantized as well. It was Bohrs who discovered that electrons simply shift from one orbit to another, without being seen to travel, existing simultaneously in two different orbits. It’s called quantum theory because they make a quantum leap. Quantum Leap? You guys watch old TV reruns?

  You perch on your desk. The superposition of states of quantum mechanics is truly mysterious, grade elevens. Remember the experiment of two holes in the screen? The light can zip through both holes at the same time, instead of having to choose one over the other. Yes, the impossible can occur: a photon, a quantum of light in other words, can be in two or more states, here and there, at the same time.

  That doesn’t make sense, a voice pipes from the back.

  Sure it does. Anita leans forward. It’s like my boyfriend — nice guy, son of a bitch —

  Anita, you get my gist. Reflect, grade elevens, on how far quantum mechanics has brought us. Humankind has moved from gazing in awe at the unattainable and distant sky, to a particular and detailed study of what light might be, melding the poetry and mystery of the heavens, to the rational logic of scientific inquiry.

  Mid afternoon light washes the window. Everything ghosts white. I expect the scent of calla lily, trillium, jasmine, snow, picture my mother, standing motionless in a gauze curtain of thought, then turning to finish the dishes at her small sink, feeling their way through grey light into the cupboard. Last night she phoned to say she dreamed she was tattooed in large words and people read her. The dream awash in colour. My dad gone ten years and still Mom’s house in town feels strange and new though she’s been in it six. Each day her world fades deeper into grey-white twilight. Frost stars the ground. She spends less time with her large-print books, more afternoons listening to old tapes. This morning, she said over the crackling telephone wire, she came across one of us girls singing. She pressed Play, leaned into the window, and my dad appeared. I saw Wilf, bent forward on the chesterfield across from the piano, grinning at you girls. His voice lurks in the shadows by the coat hooks, his step on the cellar stairs, she smells his Sen-Sen though she keeps none in the house. Remember, Maggie? She hummed, then sang across the wire:

  When the sun in the morning peeps over the hill,

  And kisses the roses round my windowsill

  Then my heart fills with gladness …

  My mother, imagining colour. The brown of a lonesome cowboy song, the soft mauve of a hymn, the wagon-red of “Way Up High in the Cherry Tree.” She used to sing that song to us when we couldn’t sleep.

  Way up high in the cherry tree

  If you look, you will see

  Mama Robin and babies three …

  Song calmed me, after shouting out my childhood nightmares.

  Mom had an eye specialist appointment in the city yesterday, she said. The Sawatskys drove her up. The doctor said, Congratulations, Mrs. Watson. You have excellent sight. You’re registering 20-25 in both eyes. Quite a feat for someone your age.

  Och, why can’t I see then? my mother said.

  You have macular degeneration, Mom, I reminded her gently. Your retina is full of tiny holes.

  Do you know what the doctor told me? my mother said, exasperation in her voice. If you stare sideways long enough, things may grow clear.

  I want to report a missing child.

  I sit on the front step, seven-forty in the morning, and watch the sharp lights of Jupiter and Venus, brilliant and singular against the darkness. Joyce and Larry arrived last night on the way through to Kelowna. Second time in six weeks. Brodie disappears inside himself when his parents come. Joyce is in the kitchen, scraping up the last of her eggs and ketchup. The air so chilly, minus twelve degrees. I open the porch door and Skipper wriggles through, tears once around the yard, poops, and rips back in.

  Where’s the mustard? Joyce’s head is in the fridge. Don’t you guys keep mustard? Rice crackers, lettuce, mayonnaise, pickle jars strew the table.

  It’s too damn cold to go, Larry says, splashing skim milk on his porridge.

  Well, Larry, Joyce says. In case you didn’t notice, what this house needs is a little cheer.

  Cripes, she says to the dog. Stand on your own feet, will you?

  It’s too damn cold, Larry says. Who wants to tramp around the mountains in the cold?

  Joyce has been mad all morning. The doctor said her neighbour Grace Proproski died of lung cancer. She didn’t die of lung cancer! She died of pneumonia. Caught it in the hospital too! Cripes! Joyce could’ve told them that! And now she’s livid at the refrigerator delivery man who chipped a nick out of the wall when he wheeled their new fridge in six years ago. Don’t they give these guys some kind of training? That’s what I’d like to know! Can somebody give these lunkheads driving lessons?

  I stand in my kitchen, reciting to myself the unread books that have found their way onto my shelves: Motherhood and Mourning; The First Year of Life; The True Story of the Three Little Pigs; A Farewell to Childhood; Transformation through Birth; A Complete Guide to Achieving a Rewarding Birth; How Shall We Tell the Children?

  So I told him. I said, You want I should call up the manager? Is that what you want, fella? I tell you, that lit a fire under him.

  I’m going to the hospital, I say. I swing on my coat and reach for the doorknob.

  Now? Joyce whirls. Good God Almighty, it’s seven-thirty in the bloody morning! Breakfast hasn’t even settled. What’s a few hours? She’s not going to run away.

  At the hospital, a mother exits the gown room, crying. She isn’t coming back! She’s had it. Blessed are they who mourn. I won’t become attached! she sobs. A child herself, no more than eighteen, her yellow hair spills down her back, her lipstick fierce.

  You look after him, she hiccups to the startled nurses who stand in the open doorway. I’m not allowed to touch him anyway. I won’t have my heart broken. I won’t! This unit’s like living inside a ventilator! the girl-child cries. You breathe for us. You do it all!

  A crowd has congregated at the far end of the room. A redhead is standing, hand on a careless hip, surrounded by nurses, chatting excitedly.

  She’s keeping her food down?

  She’s gaining weight?

  Her hair’s grown back?

  I lift my head, strain to hear above the machines.

  You have to bring her in!

  We’ll see you at the Christmas party!

  The woman stands regal among them, accepting their words as if praise is her due.


  When at last she turns to go, nurses trail her to the door. The woman steps through the doorway with a final wave.

  I follow. Excuse me.

  The woman looks down at me.

  I was just wondering — it sounded as if —

  I took my kid home? The woman pops a Dentyne stick into her mouth, Well. I did. She eyes her teeth, her eyebrows in a tiny mirror extracted from a messy purse.

  I’ve never met one. A mom who got her papers, passport, and checked out of this place. I can’t imagine. Our eyes collide.

  Can we have lunch? I say.

  Fact is, I only have hours, I say.

  Don’t we all, sighs LaFlèche. We sit at the window of the Heartland Café, this winner and me. This redheaded stranger. This woman with the ten-stroke. With the trump card. This woman who defied them all and marched her baby home. Brodie has taken his parents to the mountains. The aroma of bean soup steams the room. Beneath it, the scent of soaps and candles from the adjoining shop. I stare at my face reflected in the steamed-up window. Now that I have the woman here, I can’t think what to say. I’d hoped to see the child, but she left her at her mom’s. Teething. Screeches bloody murder. She’s a pain in a restaurant too.

  I go to court Monday. LaFlèche snaps a fingernail. Mace wants time-sharing with the dog. Baxter’s my dog.

  A woman says earnestly at the adjoining table, Denial is a form of protection.

  I twist to peer at her. That’s what they say. They say that at the hospital. How did you do it? I ask LaFlèche.

  Mag, mind if I call you that? I’ll be frank. LaFlèche digs muffin from between her braces. It isn’t pretty. We’re not talking the Gerber baby dying.

  I squash a crumb. But you didn’t lose — I haven’t —

  LaFlèche flaps a hand and flops back in her chair. Dead easy. Two-step program. One. Say fuck off to the doctors, and Two. Cart your kid home.

  It’s as easy as that? And she’s doing all right?

  Eats like a lumberjack. Melissa’s fine. For Christ’s sake, hospitals carry disease. Once you’re in, you’re up shit creek. Events escalate, Mag, until you’re one, LaFlèche makes quotation marks in air, of those! Suddenly a woman blames any occurrence in the next thirty years on having lost that baby. I gained weight. You know it all started when I lost that baby. I lost interest in my job when I lost the baby. In the end we lost the house, you know. Spent all our money on the baby. Lost. Lost, LaFlèche waves a muffin, I turned lazy, fat, dull, I had no business sense. Maggie, I know you’re skinny. I’m just saying. Losers. You’re on that road. I need to clean my cupboards. Do you want your fortune told?

  People keep opening the door. I’m getting chilled.

  LaFlèche takes another bite, says, I swing open a cupboard door to grab a can of soup and everything spills out. The mess’ll kill me. It was me who named him Baxter. Melissa? Gained three pounds. She’s eating like a pig. LaFlèche tips her wrist. Got to skedaddle, honeybunch. Mom goes to work at three.

  I’m going back to the hospital this afternoon, I say.

  I tell you, Mag? My mom named me LaFlèche cuz I was conceived in the back seat of a Chevy II in the gravel pit outside LaFlèche, Saskatchewan. Mace used to call me Flesh. LaFlèche sucks cider up her straw. Did you know that dragonflies are promiscuous? Like totally.

  You had slight scoliosis as a child, a doctor said once, fingers climbing my eleven-year-old spine.

  Will it get worse?

  The curvature is very small. You’re lucky.

  He said, You’re lucky.

  So Melissa’s perfectly okay? She’s perfectly okay?

  She’s hunky-dory. Fat. She has three teeth. Forgets she ever saw a hospital. LaFlèche is heading back to the counter for a raspberry yogurt muffin to go. She holds up two redpimpled ones. I signal no.

  Right, whatever, LaFlèche calls.

  She bursts back to the table, undoes her coat, dabs butter, talks lawyers and dogs.

  … was drowning, Maggie, LaFlèche smudges pink crumbs. Both marriages. Suffocating. I was, she leans forward, palelipped, I was breathing water. LaFlèche crumples her napkin, rises.

  I say, My cupboards are in order. It’s my in-laws that need organizing.

  If I was on Prozac, LaFlèche throws her scarf over her shoulder, maybe I’d like my job. Did you see the fire on Brisbois? A laundromat. Hell, fire, Maggie. I need fire. She takes a long last drag of apple cider, head thrown back. Baby, I need flames.

  I take the bus home from the Heartland Café. Poetry scrawls its walls. Chinook wind. The river’s melting. Ask anything in My name and I will grant it. I float the two blocks from the bus stop to our little yellow house. I’ve wasted all the salt water I am going to waste. A light-filled day. See-through to the sky. Kalila’s lungs are breathing without fifty per cent oxygen. It’s down to twenty-three per cent. The doctor says that she could catch up to her enlarged heart. And her right kidney’s fine. Women with only one kidney have been known to give birth. I can live with scars, can live with a child who may have to sit out phys ed.

  I let the dog into the yard, but soon he’s back, scratching at the door. There’s so much heaven. It’s not so far away. I pick up the morning paper, arrested by page three. An article advertising a faith healer, in town for seven shows. A week of miracles, the paper fairly shouts. My heart does one big flip-flop.

  Something’s stuck to my shoe. I look down. Skipper has dragged in a sea of leaves and a bloody pawprint. Cut on the ice. I am tending his foot when Brodie walks in the door. As he bends to untie his shoes, light catches the small scar on his forehead. When he was a kid, he barked at a neighbour’s dog, who jumped and bit him. One childhood event Brodie remembers. His past, for the most part, has forgotten him. When we first married, I would find Brodie’s notes scribbled to himself around the house.

  The measured acceleration of the picket fence was 10.4 mls. Could the picket fence have fallen from an angle, causing the readings to be off?

  Early model of the universe — a sphere with holes in it that light shone through. The fundamental elements — earth, air, fire, water, not counting celestial —

  Brodie! I hold up the loosened sheets of the morning paper. There’s a faith healer in town!

  You set your physics labs on the table and look at Maggie clutching the newspaper like news could save the world.

  You try to formulate an imaginative position. Your imagination can’t take you that far. You pick up Skipper’s foot, he yelps but shakes a paw.

  He was chasing the neighbour’s cat, says Maggie. Ripped a toenail on the ice. The radio is crooning, something about a rubber ball and everything turning out okay.

  66 CFR is giving away free tickets, Brodie.

  You hold the bloodied paw, dab with a paper towel.

  Brodie.

  Don’t be silly, Maggie, you say gently. Faith healers are con men. Bogus. Maggie has a way that makes the absurd seem plausible. You disappear into the bathroom and return with a cold wet washcloth, blood flecking your hands.

  Brodie, you’ve always said, even scientists know that there is power in unexplained phenomena.

  Scientists know nothing of the kind. Now that she comes out and says it, it just sounds foolish. Was your day okay? You lean over Skipper’s paw. Did you go to the hospital? It comes to you that you are craving licorice.

  Brodie! I’d do anything for her.

  You go tight-lipped. It’s hogwash. The doctors will bring her round. You feel your our-child-is-secure-in-the-service-of-medical-science face. Your hands sudden and light against Maggie’s hair. Touching her, you think with sharp-edged longing of the women at the school who chat about unimportant things: haircuts and cruises, meat loaf and buns for supper, the latest movies, the opera, closets to be cleaned.

  Skipper, finding himself not the centre of attention, whines. Sits on his haunches in the beg position. Barks, though no one suggested he speak. Extends a hopeful paw, though no one said shake. Whips over in a jaunty roll, though no
one has said, Play dead! He scrambles to his feet, looking expectant and happy.

  A memory. You were ten when your rabbit gave birth to five babies. The rabbit lived on lettuce and carrots, but the day after the birth, you brought her oatmeal: a festive brunch for achieving Motherhood. You came home from school that night and she was dead. Diarrhea. Pooped herself to death.

  That’s when you lost what little faith you had.

  You lay the washcloth against the pad of Skipper’s foot. Okay, Skip. Skip! Shake a paw! Skipper flaps his paw, whining delight, and licks your hands, grateful once more.

  Let me take you out for dinner tonight. You feel you owe her something, but no. Maggie doesn’t want to step into that world. So you make Pan. She sets the table while you fry two slices of bread, turn them over, break an egg on each and scramble, careful to keep the runny mixture safe atop each slice. Maggie slices tomatoes. You salt and pepper the eggs. The refrigerator motor cuts in.

  Maggie’s silence.

  I long to race out, start the car, drive to the hospital, kidnap my baby, escape on a healing pilgrimage to Lake Manitou. Brodie pours himself some milk, me water. My head bobs in the seaweed slap of Lake Manitou’s waves. Manitou. Saskatchewan’s saltwater lake. Saltier than the Dead Sea. A lake with magical powers. Manitou, which means intelligent, mysterious, invisible, and whole. The lightning storms that lit the lake, a hundred disparate zigzags, beckoning, signalling one another, me a child, crowded with my sisters at our summer cabin door, sweaters peeled off, shivering skin inviting the moist chill air, clutching each other at every thunder clap. Needles of rain stabbing the bent plants.

  Rain’s a miracle, our father said.

  Ask anything in My name.