by Leesa Dean
MICHELLE LOSES AT rock-paper-scissors, which means she’s in charge of dinner. She and Amy walk through the fields, looking for vegetables that are ready to harvest. Only the lettuce is in full bloom. Amy tries to discourage Michelle from putting it in the stir-fry but she won’t listen. Dinner is mediocre yet again. Paul shows up just as they’re dishing out dinner, which is something that happens often.
“Sharon and I got married ten years ago today,” he says, picking out a slimy leaf. He throws it on the floor, forgetting he no longer has a dog to eat the scraps.
“Have you heard from her yet?” Michelle asks.
“Nothing. But my instincts tell me she’ll send a postcard soon from New Mexico.”
“You know,” Amy interrupts, not in the mood for Paul’s stories, “Michelle got married last year. Tell him about your wedding, Michelle.”
“It was long. African weddings are always long. Everyone makes speeches, sings songs, gives gifts. The ceremony alone was two hours, plus it started three hours late.”
“That’s worse than Kootenay time,” Paul says, referring to where he grew up.
“What about the party?” Amy asks. “Lots of dancing?”
“There was some. Not like weddings here, though. It was all over by sundown.”
“Really? Sounds lame.”
“Hey! That’s my wedding you’re talking about!”
“Sorry, but it sounds boring.”
“Well, it wasn’t. You know what, though? Funerals are usually more lively than weddings. People paint their faces and bang on drums and shoot off fireworks for days. We just ate and ate and ate at the one I went to. The whole town shut down. I’d never danced so much in my life.”
Amy stays for a while, listening to Paul and Michelle exchange wedding stories. Eventually, she excuses herself. It’s a still night, the kind where conversations travel for miles, lingering over faraway houses. She hears the clink of a glass somewhere followed by applause and wonders about the occasion. She walks along the stone path through the herb garden, stopping a few times to look at the moon, almost full but not quite, until she arrives at the greenhouse. Over time, she’s grown attached to the wheatgrass, forgetting that it’s in constant flux, being planted and then cut down. In her mind, it’s the same wheatgrass, day after day, keeping her company, not speaking or judging.
IN MID-JULY, a heat wave sears through the Okanagan Valley, and plants that were once bright with chlorophyll fade to a depleted green. The city issues a water conservation notice and Paul starts talking about the 2003 fires again—the Vesuvian air, how he watered the buildings at night. He and Sharon had been lucky that year, but some of the neighbours were not. On walks, Amy has seen black rectangles where houses once stood.
Matt tells Amy in a letter that things are bad in Toronto, too. The air conditioner broke last week, he wrote. Sometimes I sleep in the bathtub or on the balcony. Paul wears nothing but his underwear all day, mostly faded boxer briefs, and fans himself with an old newspaper. He gives Amy and Michelle a solar fan for the cabin, but it doesn’t help.
“Your boyfriend called again,” Michelle says. She’s lying on top of her bed in a bathing suit. “And I’m telling you, again. He thinks I’m not giving you the messages. Now he’s mean when he calls.”
“It’s so hot,” Amy says. “Every molecule of air is disgusting right now.”
“You think this is hot? You should have seen it in—”
Amy cuts her off. “I know. Africa. If I have to hear one more thing about Africa, I swear to God I will throw you out the window.”
Michelle’s mouth drops open. Amy feels bad but keeps pushing. She’s in a fighting mood.
“It gets annoying, you know. Africa this, Africa that. You were barely even there.”
“Yeah? Well, you don’t need to be a jerk about it.” Her voice, though an attempt at sounding fierce, still comes out small.
“You might want to watch it. I’m not kidding about throwing you out the window.”
“I think you should leave now,” Michelle says.
All at once, there are twenty things Amy wants to tell Michelle, starting with how she thinks Mensah doesn’t actually exist and ending with her ridiculous devotion to Paul, a man who interacts with all women in the same generic, flirtatious manner. Instead, she grabs her sleeping bag and pillow and slams the door on the way out.
It takes her a while to fall asleep, lying under the stars at the bottom of the field. Judging by the silence, the neighbourhood dogs are too hot to howl. Her mind drifts to Toronto and she imagines walking along Bloor, past Palmerston where a man plays the harmonica while rattling a tambourine, past the basement bookstores run by sad men who dream of making it big. In the distance, an illuminated orange sign blazes the words Pizza Pizza into the night. Her legs stride toward the pulsing sign, almost mechanical. She is drawn to it despite the feelings the sign invokes. Just then, the man from the party appears on the other side of the crosswalk. The hand flashes orange and neither of them moves. When he raises a hand and points in her direction, she realizes he’s holding a gun.
Amy pulls herself from the dream and lies in fetal position, panting. There is a metallic sound in the air, like a stream of bullets. After a moment, she realizes it must be Michelle’s urine, streaming into the steel chamber pot. Amy closes her eyes, but she doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
THE NEXT DAY, August 1st, is Michelle’s twenty-fourth birthday. It’s also the night of Paul’s full-moon party, which he warned might get wild. Amy’s tired but she still cooks dinner and bakes a cake using fresh carrots from the garden, her version of a truce. They bring the cake to the lower field and eat it with their hands, laughing as crumbs fly from their mouths. “Give me wine!” Michelle says. They’ve barely had a drink all summer. “Chug! Chug!” Amy chants as Michelle tosses her head back and drinks straight from the bottle.
The tomatoes are bright red and hang in balloon-like clusters. Zucchinis spill across rows and the eggplants hang heavy from their thick, green stalks. At least for a night, the temperature has cooled. It’s a much-needed reprieve. In two weeks, Michelle will go back to Vancouver for school and look for a part-time job. There will be more paperwork to do for Mensah and fees to pay with no guarantees. Amy’s still not sure what she’ll do once the summer’s over, but she must decide soon.
“You should move to Africa,” Amy says to Michelle. “I mean, you like it so much better there.”
Michelle takes the last sip of wine and tosses the bottle aside. Amy waits for a snappy retort but Michelle remains quiet.
“Honestly,” Amy continues. “I don’t know what you’re doing here. I mean, you dress like an African, you talk like an African, and you’re married to one. You should be with your people.”
Instead of laughing, Michelle covers her face. It takes Amy a moment to realize she’s crying. Shit, she thinks. I’ve gone too far.
“Come here,” she says, putting an arm around Michelle. “I’m sorry. I know you miss it.”
Michelle’s shoulder is warm against Amy’s skin, reminding her how good it feels to be close to another person. Although Matt hugged her at the airport, she didn’t hug him back. Not really. She glances at her watch. It would be after midnight in Toronto.
“I can’t go back there,” Michelle tells Amy.
“Why not?”
“Mensah’s family hates me. We got married in a neigh-bouring village, but of course they found out. They’ve disowned him. If I can’t get him to Canada, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I thought you had a big wedding. All the speeches and stuff?”
Michelle shakes her head. “I wish. It was just me and Mensah and a minister neither of us knew. The whole thing was over in five minutes.”
Amy places a hand in the centre of Michelle’s back and spreads her fingers between the vertebrae. She imagines she’s sending energy through Michelle’s body, healing her somehow. Up at the house, she can hear the beginning of a drum
circle and people singing. “Come,” she says to Michelle. “Let’s go and have a good time and dance and forget about these things for a while.” She takes Michelle’s hand and they walk there together. Michelle stumbles more than once and Amy realizes she’s drunk. When they arrive, Paul lets out a whoop and drapes his arms around their shoulders. His Hawaiian shirt flaps open, exposing the grey hair around his nipples. He steers them to where a group of people sit in a circle, passing out joints.
There are many variations of Paul at the party—men with long hair and beards, most of them with thin, long-haired girlfriends. Some of them have organic farms nearby and one of them, Brian, actually co-owns the land with Paul. His house is next door. When the joint arrives, Amy decides to pass. Michelle takes it, though, and holds the smoke in before exhaling, probably the way someone taught her in high school. When Amy stands up to leave, Michelle follows her but then joins a group of people dancing near the drum circle. She falls seamlessly into their rhythms, her bare feet grinding in the dirt as she twists her hips. I could never dance like that, Amy realizes. Even with Matt, there is something clunky about her movements. She lacks grace. Instead of staying at the party, surrounded by strangers, Amy decides to go back to the cabin. Without Michelle, the small space feels comfortable. She lights a candle and takes out her notebook.
Dear Matt, she writes. This time, she has many things to say. She fills one page and then another before she realizes what she’s writing is a breakup letter. Too much has happened, she writes, trying not the blur the ink with tears. It blurs anyways.
THE NEXT DAY, Amy wakes up to find Michelle’s bed empty. It’s six o’clock in the morning. She walks up the hill, hoping Michelle got up earlier than usual, though she hadn’t heard her return to the cabin. She passes the chicken coop, the tractor shed, the onion patch. No Michelle. At the barn, Amy opens the door and calls her name. She is met by silence. Beside Paul’s house, the fire still smoulders and empty bottles litter the veranda. The screen door is open. Amy walks in. Please don’t be here, she thinks. Someone is sleeping on the couch, but it’s not Michelle.
Paul’s bedroom is in the hallway, past the kitchen. The door is closed, but she opens it a crack. Paul is lying naked on top of his covers. There is a used condom on the floor. No one appears to be in bed with him.
Amy decides to have breakfast and pay her morning visit to the wheatgrass. Paul swears they’ve maintained their rapid growth under her tutelage, but she knows it’s bullshit. Half the time, she doesn’t sing at all. She just sits in there and reads. After the wheatgrass, she checks the cabin and the barn again. Still no Michelle. Harvest has begun and there is much to do, so she digs in silence, filling milk crates with dirt-caked potatoes.
At nine, she decides to check Paul’s house again. There is still someone on the couch but they’ve changed position. She walks toward Paul’s room, thinking she’ll wake him up and ask him to help look for Michelle. As she approaches, she hears the toilet flush. She pauses outside the bathroom door and waits. The person washes their hands for a very long time. There is silence afterwards. Minutes pass and still there is no movement. Finally, Amy knocks on the door.
“Just a minute,” Michelle says.
When she emerges, her hair is stringy and she won’t make eye contact with Amy. Unable to remove the judgment from her face, Amy turns and walks back to the field. Michelle follows her like a ghost, not bothering to stop at the cabin and change her clothes. She goes straight to work in a skirt and tank top. Hours pass with no words exchanged. At lunch, Amy makes them sandwiches and they eat near the cabin. On her way to the mailbox where she’ll mail her letter to Matt, Paul intercepts her.
“Your boyfriend called. This is what he said: ‘If you don’t call, I’m flying out there first thing tomorrow.’ Buddy means business.”
“Thanks,” Amy says, walking past without stopping.
The afternoon is hot and the two women spend it in the onion patch, where they’d concentrated most of their weeding efforts all summer. No matter how often they combed over it, the invasive plants always seemed to regenerate. Nonetheless, the onions grew to a decent size. Amy shoves a spade into the ground and lifts, separating roots from soil. Michelle digs with her fingers and pulls. They use their shirts to wipe the sweat from their faces.
“I’m going to call Matt tonight,” Amy tells Michelle, hoping for something other than silence.
“Good,” Michelle says, still avoiding Amy’s gaze.
She wonders if she should ask the question that’s been on her mind all morning. No, she thinks. I’ll let her tell me if she wants to. But then she changes her mind. Before speaking, she puts a hand on Michelle’s arm. “Last night with Paul,” she begins. “Were you conscious of what was happening?”
When Michelle starts to cry, Amy sits close and talks to her the way Matt used to when she was upset, in a voice that sounds like a soft ocean. Michelle’s skin is pink from exposure—she didn’t put on sunscreen. Amy can feel the heat of it against her skin. In the distance, the ripe eggplants pull toward the ground and the tomatoes stand out, bright red in a sea of green. Amy tries to think of what to say next but none of her ideas have any substance. What she wants is one of Michelle’s proverbs. Amy doesn’t know the exact phrase in Ghanaian, but she remembers enough of the translation for Michelle to understand. “You can find a worm,” she tells her friend. “Even in a ripe pepper.”
CONFLICT ZONE
LESLIE’S PORCH LIGHT ILLUMINATES ALEX’S furled, snow-flecked hair and his thin coat. He’s wearing shoes, not boots, and they’re completely soaked. Snowflakes pixelate the night, and through that filter, the neighbourhood looks like a grainy photograph of some forgotten past. “Come in,” Leslie says, taking his carry-on bag. Alex follows close behind her on the stairs. When they reach the top, she tries to imagine her apartment through his eyes—dirty dishes, overflowing garbage, a bicycle in the middle of the hall.
“Merry Christmas,” Alex says, forgetting that she’s Jewish. She glances at her watch. 12:23 already.
“You too. It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? You being here?”
“Yeah,” Alex admits. “A bit.”
Leslie was surprised by his call, especially since he’s supposed to be en route to the Middle East. She imagines him for a moment on a plane with a black ocean below, or maybe by now a blue-blitzed dawn, halfway around the world. At first, when he called and asked to stay at her house because his flight was cancelled, she wanted to say no. For days, she has been hibernating, living off lentils and Sriracha, wearing the same jogging pants in and out of bed, letting her hair become a helmet. But the more Alex talked to her, laughing and joking about the mayhem at the airport and their own recent misfortunes, she felt a surge of emotion, the kind she hadn’t felt in months, not since before the trouble started with Kevin.
“Do you want a drink?” Leslie asks Alex, heading for the kitchen while he drops his luggage in her bedroom. She’s been drinking too much for weeks, months now.
“May as well,” he says.
“I’ll make you a strong one. God only knows what you’ll be able to get in the Middle East.”
His laughter echoes down the hall as she free-pours bourbon into each glass. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll be able to drink in Turkey. I would never intentionally put myself in a position of sobriety.”
She puts two ice cubes in each glass and carries the drinks to the bedroom. She hands one to Alex who is lying on the floor, looking around her bedroom. She did a hasty clean before he came, but there are still dirty clothes in the corner and piles of recently marked exams she was supposed to return to the college.
“So are you going to tell me why you got fired?” he asks.
Leslie and Alex had been colleagues for three years, but Alex suddenly quit teaching just two weeks before the semester started. She hadn’t seen him in months until they ran into each other at a party where she found out his wife had left him. They smoked a joint together before he wal
ked Leslie home, holding a broken umbrella to shield them from frozen rain.
“Nope,” she says.
Alex makes a pouty face. “How about later? After a few drinks you’ll tell me, right?”
“I punched a student,” she teases.
“Liar,” he says, grinning.
“Okay, it wasn’t a punch. I threw a textbook at him. Hit him in the head. Gave him a concussion.”
Alex laughs and pokes at her shin with his toe. There’s a hole in his sock. Men, she thinks. They can never seem to manage their socks. She blushes and takes a long drink before placing her glass on the bedside table.
“Right now,” she says to Alex, “I’m more interested in how you’re feeling. You’re going for six months, right?”
“Yep, six to start, but I’ll stay longer if things go well.”
“How does it feel, trading in your cushy life for a dangerous one?”
Alex pushes his hair, still wet from the snow, back from his face. He narrows his eyes, scrutinizing her.
“I’d hardly call my life cushy,” he says.
She knows Alex’s background. Rich doctor father and a mother who’d paid for his plane ticket. “Fine, but the Middle East is obviously more dangerous than Toronto. Aren’t you scared?”
“Not really. It’s not like I’ll be on the front lines.”
“You don’t consider Syria front lines?”
“I’m not going to Syria, Les. Just Turkey.”
“Still, near the border, right? Journalists get injured. Kidnapped. Have their heads cut off.”
Alex sighs. “I’m getting tired of trying to convince people that won’t happen to me. Seriously. I’ve been through hostile environment training. I’m part of an organization that protects journalists. I have proper safety equipment.”
“Like what? Chain mail? An invisible cape?”
Alex frowns. “No. I have a flak jacket.”
“Which is?”