by Dolly Dennis
In these reflective moods, Adeen often wondered how many more years remained before she expired. She was prone to self-analysis. Why should she be the one to take care of everyone? She always prided herself on never being sick. Her only hospital stay, the birth of Irene, had drained her of all vitality, both physically and mentally.
“The baby takes everything it needs from its mother before birth,” her obstetrician had warned. She understood now.
Irene’s birth was as vivid as though it were yesterday; she wondered what her life would have been if she could delete that one night of reckless abandon in her boyfriend’s bedroom while his parents were away for the weekend.
“Man, you’re hot,” he teased his lips against hers, pushing his body toward her warmth until she yielded. She was seventeen and still untouched. He would be leaving shortly for Carleton University in Ottawa and then a career in journalism.
“It’s not like I don’t love you, Adeen,” he said. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” she demurred as he pulled up her skirt.
“You made your bed, now you can lie in it,” her mother’s words always a haunting beam away from reality.
“Shut up, shut up.”
This weekly hike always invigorated her and sparked a temporary rejuvenation of energy and creativity until the darkness would once again overtake her.
ADEEN
Twenty years later, I still live here because I have no other home. And there are the memories of Irene and Mona and Frosty. I sometimes feel like an unwanted orphan; I still don’t know where I belong. Other times I feel like a tourist. I’m really trying. Here’s the thing: I just don’t think like a prairie girl. Never have. And yet, I no longer feel like a Montreal girl. I’ve lost a lot of my French. Je me souviens? Non. Miss Pauline told me once cities, like people, can grow on you. After living through that horror, I don’t want this city to grow on me.
End of this month Edmonton will memorialize the twentieth anniversary of when the tornado hit. The days leading to the event are always the most difficult, so why do we need to capture that loss every year and endure more torture? How can anyone forget? The media named it Black Friday. Final count according to Environment Canada: 27 dead, 600 injured, 1,700 evacuees, and 750 families left homeless. “One of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history,” said the commentator.
The mayor at that time, Laurence Decore, coined the phrase City of Champions for Edmonton’s response to the tornado on July 31, 1987. It also became the city’s official slogan on its Welcome to Edmonton signs at the entry points, but then, as time elapsed — and I suppose that is why we need to recognize that day — the motto evolved to include sporting events, winning Oilers games. The City of Champions was now about Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton hockey team, the Edmonton Eskimos football team, and the famous Edmonton Grads — the champion women’s basketball team. It’s pathetic how everything eventually gets sanitized, commercialized. I suppose it is a marketing ploy to attract tourists: a sports event versus a tornado. Which one would bring you here?
Twenty years later and, for me, it’s as fresh as the day it happened. Global News, as they do every year, will broadcast a half-hour special report paying tribute to the victims. Don’t know if I’ll be watching. Will I be allowed to watch the ceremony on TV, sir, if I can’t attend? I have to water the trees, you know.
Anyhow, I don’t need a reminder on my calendar; it’s here in my heart and it’s enough to wear the scars. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about Black Friday, about Mona. Those images never leave me. On those hot summer days, like today, I was always out there looking up for the next one. Have you looked up lately? Sky okay? Never mind. Don’t answer. And every year I visited the Evergreen Mobile Home Park where twenty-seven trees were planted in a memorial garden for the people who died. I’d take special trips out there and make sure all the trees were watered, stayed fresh and healthy so they didn’t die.
And on every anniversary, newspapers insisted on interviewing survivors, publishing their stories and photos on the front page. Now, with the internet and social media, the news feeds have become agony, almost on par with a root canal.
I recently heard on the radio one Evergreen resident telling a reporter how she watched the funnel cloud approach her trailer, not realizing the threat to her family. It blew the roof off a house down the street from her, and suddenly she understood the gravity of the danger and ducked outside, gathering her children’s toys and carrying them to a back shed just in time. What was she thinking of? I mean, come on, lady!
Anyhow, as she was closing the shed, the wind peeled off its roof and sent it skittering across the ground. She fought to get back inside when an addition to the building collapsed as someone’s airborne mobile home landed on top of it. With the house bouncing up and down, she and her four kids hid under a doorway off the master bedroom. I can’t imagine. Four years later the woman was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and began treatment. Stories like that are repeated to this day. I wish they would just stop it. You never forget. Let it go.
I sometimes wondered if I carry the same disorder. PTSD. Perhaps I should have immediately seen a therapist to unload all my emotional baggage, you know, going all the way back to my crazy mother, and Irene’s birth, and Frosty’s indiscretions and addictions, and then the tornado. But I’ve always been strong, stubborn; could take care of myself, thank you. The idea of talking to a stranger about my feelings didn’t appeal to me. I always had Mona but now … maybe … I should have talked to a professional. Instead, I would go to the library and read these self-help books about depression and PTSD, and once I understood what happened to me — perhaps I was going crazy. Well, at least I was aware and could pull back on my bad days. I just kept fighting back, trying to get rid of the anger. I read somewhere that the anger always remains and is the last to leave, like grieving a death. Why Mona and not me? Why not Irene, even? Those questions continue to haunt me. Told you not to judge me or I’ll stop right here. Again, it was only a fleeting rhetorical question, anyhow.
For a time I dug into various philosophies, religions, trying to understand the storm inside my head. I folded more and more into myself and became a shut-in for a spell. Doc gave me some antidepressants to take for three months; see how that worked for me. It did help, but I was concerned about side effects and stopped taking them after a month. I was sleeping my life into oblivion. The irony is that I kept pumping Irene with meds for her unpredictable behaviour, justifying her need as being a real health issue. Mine was fleeting.
We all have ways of dealing with traumatic events. Some will take the approach, here’s a tragedy and there’s a reason why some families survived the tornado, so we need to go on and be united and look at the bright side. The opposing thought is that this tragedy hit our community and so many people lost their lives, so how can we possibly recover? Everyone takes opposing views, especially when it affects their relationships or their own situation. It’s difficult to move forward when you focus on what could have happened, rather than on what actually did happen. Heard a lot of couples filed for divorce a year later. Each in their world of denial and blame, I guess. Others remained united, steadfast. Must be something in their genetic makeup. Or they really loved one another and took their vows seriously. Until death do us part, as they say.
Frosty and I remained together. He was good to me for a while, sympathetic, bending over backwards to console me after I found out about Mona. Whenever I went off the deep end, he would submerge himself in his cowboy poetry and let me be. Patient guy. One of his qualities, I guess. Nonetheless, our marriage was still rocky. I couldn’t trust him, but what choice did I have?
To this day, I still examine the skies and wait for the next tornado. I often thought about going back to Montreal alone, escaping. My mother was dead and there was nothing there for me anymore, as I told Zita. Keep moving forward, I kept telling myself.
I forgot to eat, sleep, and shower; just stayed in
bed for months at a time after Mona’s funeral. I didn’t care about anything or anyone. Life seemed such a chore. Frosty took care of Irene and the Complex Arms. He just kept feeding her the drugs the doc prescribed. They would relax her, make her sleepy, and she wasn’t a problem. Slept with that teddy bear blanket I found amid the wreckage of mobile homes. How can a sleeping beauty be a problem? She seemed to have forgotten about Mona, Mr. Pumpkinhead, and the Evergreen, but she wouldn’t part with that blanket.
A year after the tornado I reconsidered placing Irene in the Michener. There have been changes at the facility, and Frosty suggested we give it another try for a month, at least. Irene would be with other kids like her and she would not be our burden anymore. I almost gave in to the idea this time because I just didn’t care anymore. But we moved on, and things changed. Irene and I had come so far. Frosty and I got older and she grew up. Turned thirty! Hard to believe. When she had her birthday, I thought that perhaps I should give more thought to her future when Frosty and I die. I kept mulling over the idea. But there was still time. No?
I don’t remember when I last felt joy. I’ve become one of those menopausal women going through a midlife crisis, carrying a lifetime of anger in my pocket, ready to explode. No, I guess I couldn’t do that. I’ve lost my fighting spirit. Some days the fatigue and isolation overwhelm me. Some days I just want to run and keep running until I stop breathing. When sleepless nights exhaust me, I count the cracks in the ceiling above my bed and rewrite my life. Something to do. A comfort. Do you understand?
People’s lives are so sad, and they make the lives of others around them even sadder. I am still filled with rage. I am depressed. I know it’s not healthy. Frosty and Irene are still a burden. It’s gotten worse, not better. They have stripped happy out of me. Again, don’t judge me. It’s the way I feel. I just want everyone to find some empathy for me. That’s it. Empathy would solve some of the world’s problems. We can’t change people. Take care of yourselves, I say, then the world will take care of itself. People’s lives. They come and go. Touch us, good or bad. Take what they need and leave. I’ve become cynical in my senior years. I know I’m jabbering but I need to hear my words out loud.
For the longest time I had no inclination to go back to Mill Woods, see if the Complex Arms was still there. I had blotted out that part of my life as though it had never existed. And then three years ago, must have been the summer of 2004 because I was at Evergreen for the memorial, watering the trees, I made a visit. I couldn’t tell you what compelled me, but as I was leaving Evergreen, my car took a sharp turn toward Edmonton and then Mill Woods. I guess it was curiosity urging me to confront my past, or maybe I just wanted to see if Jack still lived there. Find out what happened to him.
I couldn’t find the Complex Arms. Circled the area several times and then I realized I passed by it twice. Didn’t recognize it. Two new add-on apartment buildings attached to the original. New aluminum siding replaced the wooden, and the sign in front now read “Birchwood Estates. No Vacancy.” I walked around to the parking stalls in back. Trees framed the perimeter. The original birch, now the height of the four-storey walk-up, showed wear and tear, stooped over in old age, like me. Pests had stripped the top branches, which pointed to heaven like arrows. The tree was dying.
I checked out the front of the building, flattened my face against the familiar glassed door, shading my eyes against the reflection of light. Then I walked in and buzzed Jack’s bell and waited. A loud woman’s voice on the intercom barked, “YEAH?”
“Is. Does Jack live here?” My timidity barely escaped my mouth.
“No Jack here.” And the intercom went dead.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. “May I help you, ma’am?”
Turns out he was the resident manager. Told him I used to be in his shoes twenty years before and that I was looking for a tenant who used to live there when it was the Complex Arms.
“That’s a long time ago,” he said. He was hired by the new property management group who bought the building in the midnineties, made renovations, added the adjacent buildings to the compound and upgraded the landscaping.
“Rents went up, so Jack might have moved out,” he said.
Disheartened, I left with an invitation to return any time and maybe we could have coffee or something. I kept walking; didn’t want to complicate my life further. He reminded me of an aging circus clown or carnival barker who had spent too many years working and sleeping in the sun. Perhaps we passed each other at the fairgrounds during Klondike Days at some point. Now he seemed just another lonely persona, another broken spirit, someone to avoid.
“You know where to find me,” I heard him shout as he waved. “What’s your name again?”
I turned the ignition, rounded the corner, and said goodbye to my past. I got lost trying to find my way out of Mill Woods. The farmers’ fields and wildlife were all gone now. Just a spread of new housing called the Meadows and more neighbourhoods along the way. The Pits had been levelled to make room for an extension to the circle road, called the Anthony Henday, to ease the traffic as Edmonton’s population continued to increase. I realize the danger of attachment to things, people, and places because everything changes eventually. I knew I would never return.
Anyhow, that’s the story there.
THE MONARCH
On hot breathless days like today, when Adeen needs to escape everything that is Frosty and Irene, she drives to the mountains and hikes alone to restore her sanity.
So many trails to explore near Hinton: Athabasca Ranch Trails, Beaver Boardwalk, Bighorn Trail, Emerson Lakes. Today she treks the Bighorn Trail, which runs through to the foothills of the Rockies. Didn’t need to walk too far; just enough to experience some space and communicate with nature, and then she could go home and face her world. Lost in the stillness of the woods, the distant mountains for a backdrop, she spreads an old blanket on the earth’s flooring to create a bed among the cluster of tall reed grasses, a semi-private nest of her own. She meditates.
Adeen can hear echoes of Mona’s voice and wicked laugh from whenever her friend cut a client’s hair. “I decided to grow mine long and let the premature grey show through. What do you think?” Mona was ballsy and dared anyone to criticize her sense of style.
Adeen tries to remember instead those childhood years of happy, warm days growing up in Montreal; how she and Mona bonded against a life of poverty, played in cat-stained sandboxes until the park closed down for the day. Mona would challenge her to hang upside down on the monkey bars and view the world from the perspective of a trapeze artist, but she would experience vertigo and fall into the sand below. They would end up in hysterics, on the verge of peeing, but Adeen would pull back, trying to resume some sense of decorum in her seven-year-old self.
“Stop it, Mona, I have to piss,” she would giggle, but Mona loved to take risks, jump off roofs from low-lying sheds in the laneway, run past the wicked witch’s house, old Mrs. Mombi, with her stringy carrot-coloured hair, toothless grin, and black clothing that she wore as though every day were Halloween. The girls dubbed her after the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, their favourite story. Mona would toss bits of grit at Mrs. Mombi’s bedroom window, which overlooked the alley, and dart to the main street as fast as her cheap shoes would allow. Adeen always lagged behind and Mrs. Mombi would howl at her like a wolf, threatening to call the police or tell her mother. “I know where you live,” she would intimidate. They were like sisters, Mona and Adeen, and twenty years after her death, Adeen still senses Mona’s presence every day.
Adeen would always tie herself into a knot whenever it came to men, food, or career opportunities. She realized now that her penchant for self-destruction was her way to seek attention, as though she didn’t deserve anything good. Mona, on the other hand, was smart and full of steam: confident, precocious. After her first failed marriage, she vowed never to marry again, adding that if she did, it would be for money so she could purchase beauty salons acro
ss Canada and create a franchise, be the next Vidal Sassoon and get Adeen a house because she never lived in one and she should have that experience. Neither had a desire to move back to Montreal. There was nothing left for them there but referendums on whether to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada, and that was a political tension neither wanted to submit herself to. Their lives, especially Adeen’s with Irene, were stressful enough. No turning back.
ADEEN
Most grateful to the childless Miss Pauline, my neighbour from Vulcan, who at seventy, still spry and ballsy, had a real affection for Irene. I thought that the feeling was mutual.
Irene seemed to relish her moments with Miss Pauline. She seemed to have no memory of the Complex Arms or the day of her rescue at the Evergreen Mobile Home Park. Perhaps that’s the solution to a happy life. Rewire the brain to that of an amnesiac; live only in the moment, obliterate the past. There must be a pill for that.
It was lovely to see Irene happy, skipping after butterflies and moths in the playground across the road from our mobile home. She only showed her dark, violent side when she was alone with me or off her meds. Who could believe that Irene was anything but an affectionate daughter? I would fuss over her long blond hair, still braiding it even though she was now thirty, and then unravelling the weave so the strands fell in tight waves down her back. From afar, she was a lovely young woman, and several men flirted with her until they came within hugging distance and realized there was something wrong with her.
I will always remember the first week we moved to the Arboreau. This incident really left me reeling. Irene and I were sitting out front on the seat swing enjoying the summer breeze when a stranger stopped to say hello and Irene smiled back at him. I thought, What a friendly place.