In your mind’s eye, take your shoes off with me. Undo the muddy laces and let your feet emerge into the world. Take off your soggy socks. Wipe your feet with me, along the dew of the grass. Feel each cool blade between your liberated toes.
I look at you. You are smiling. You are saying something to me, but your voice is replaced by the sound of rustling woods.
“What did you say, my love?” I ask.
I am alone in the reeds. I hear something stirring in the woods. I follow the sound. I feel foolish, like those people who go into the dark room in horror movies, but I can’t help myself. It’s been so long since I could walk through places and spaces. It feels so good to move my legs. I touch each tree trunk as I make my way into the thick of the bush.
In a clearing of cedar, wading in a pool of fog, stands Beck in his undershirt and pyjama bottoms facing away from me. He holds a long wooden staff and stands at attention like he is about to begin a phrase of martial arts movement. Just as I am crouching down, Bahadur appears beside me. I stifle a scream. Jesus Christ. Bahadur mouths out the word “sorry.” I roll my eyes and hold my heavily beating heart in shock. We slowly shift our focus back to Beck. What the hell is he doing?
“When I do not act, I am complicit!” Beck says while simultaneously raising his staff above his head horizontally, one end in each hand. He takes a deep breath here, steps forward with a lunge and strikes down his staff.
“When I know wrong is happening, I act!”
Bahadur and I flinch at this. It feels strange to observe Beck instead of receiving the blow. Beck rocks back in his lunge as if receiving energy; his staff gracefully rocks with him.
“When the oppressed tell me I am wrong, I open my heart and change!”
With his back leg in a lunge, he kneels and raises the staff above his head.
“When change is led by the oppressed, I move aside and uplift!”
Bahadur and I look at each other, then back at Beck. He goes through the movements and phrases again and again until his undershirt is pasted on his torso with perspiration, until the fog of the morning dissipates.
When I do not act, I am complicit!
When I know wrong is happening, I act!
When the oppressed tell me I am wrong, I open my heart and change!
When change is led by the oppressed, I move aside and uplift!
Raise arms, step forward, lunge back, kneel.
Beck finally sits on the corpse of a dead tree for a moment before closing his eyes and catching his breath. Bahadur shifts slightly, and Beck startles. He looks in our direction and wipes his face on his shirt.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
We quietly follow Beck back to the cottage. He sees a hose running from the side of the cottage. He turns the tap on just out of curiosity and sure enough, only mud sputters out, a snake of filth. He sits himself on the porch and looks at us.
“Can we talk for a second?” Beck asks. Bahadur and I sit on the porch with him. In the heat of the rising sun, I adjust my blanket to my waist and listen.
“You didn’t wake us up. We were just watching,” I say. I look over at Bahadur, but they avoid eye contact with me and begin to pick at the crumbling siding along the cottage’s exterior.
“It’s just . . . It’s not for show. It’s for me. For people like me. For white folks. You know the creed of the Renovation, right? Through our work, our nation prospers. Through our unity, we end conflict, and all that nonsense? The Others who led the Resistance knew we had to come up with a response to that creed. The Resistance challenged us allies to train ourselves out of this behaviour just as someone might train for a marathon or learn new dance steps. It had to be embodied the way white supremacy is embodied. It wasn’t meant for you to witness. It’s more like a prayer for change, but in movement.” Beck looks out at the black bird returning to the wilted crops, this time with a companion. Up and down through the reeds.
“Bahadur, you were right about what you said yesterday. I followed orders. I am responsible for what happened. I didn’t ask questions. I have blood on my hands, too.”
I shift uncomfortably under my blanket.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking you to help me feel better about what I’ve done. I know those demons are inside me. When I was in training for the Resistance, there was something the leaders said that really stuck with me. You know when someone says something important to you that just ruins you? That feels like it tears you apart and you have to put yourself together again? Anyway . . . part of our training was understanding that we are not these white saviours, because a liberation from the Renovation isn’t just a liberation for the Others. It would mean white people could be liberated from maintaining the status quo.”
He shakes out his arms and looks at them pensively. “Even that word affects me now. ‘Liberation.’ I thought about it a long time and I realized how much of a price my body has had to pay. Every day, my body works to keep itself separate from and above the Others. My body forces me to fear, to see threat in the joy of the Others. To buy all the things, to display all the objects to show how much better I am than you. It’s empty. It’s so empty. I can’t tell you how liberating it feels to work through this emptiness and allow myself to be soft, to be wrong and vulnerable. If I survive the uprising, I want to teach other white people to know this feeling. It feels like . . . like . . . taking off your backpack after wearing it for a lifetime.”
Beck looks at us directly. “In the military, I was trained to do things. To protect my body, to fight. You’re not obligated to fight alongside me. Not at all. If it were my choice, it would be us allies fighting for your safety while you all were on a beach somewhere enjoying a piña colada.”
Bahadur stifles a laugh and looks at me, trying to figure out what I am thinking of this strange testimony.
“But I would love to share how you can protect yourself. And if you do decide to fight with me, to learn to protect yourselves, I would be honoured. It will take a bit of hard work, but I can show you what I know.”
“What if we don’t want to do anything? Can we stay here?” Bahadur avoids eye contact with Beck and continues picking at the cottage’s siding. The particleboard is rotten and mouldy.
“Yes. You can stay here. But the supplies will only last so long. And there aren’t many allies around. I can’t trust that my parents will not betray you. And I can’t trust I will return after the uprising.”
“Why won’t you return?” I ask.
“Knowing there are rebels like you won’t be a major surprise to the Boots,” Beck says while dusting off the top of his brush cut. “But finding out that we allies have used this last year to double-cross them will be a huge betrayal. I might not get out alive. You might not get out alive. That’s always a possibility when it comes to war.”
By the afternoon, Beck is digging a trench while his father watches. Bahadur and I sit on the porch of the cottage, still considering our options. Peter stands at attention, wishing and willing his body from old age to the bottom of that trench.
“Dad. Go ahead and sit down. I can handle this. No problem.”
“I never asked you to do this. We don’t need this.”
“Yes, you do. Those carcasses are festering. You might not be able to smell it, but we could down the road.” Peter’s chest wilts at the weight of his emasculation. “It’s not your fault, Dad. I just wish you had asked someone close by for help.”
“I couldn’t ask for help.”
“Why?”
“No one . . . no one wants to speak to us because of . . . well. They know what you are. That I know is not my fault.”
“Yes, Dad. I know. It’s mine.” Beck and his father look at their feet in silence. This is my opportunity to speak.
“Can I help?” I offer, hoping I have the strength to actually do so.
“I suggest you find something to cover your mouth and nose,” Beck says while resting his arm on the handle of his shovel.
&nb
sp; Beck makes his way to the silo beside the cottage. Peter follows, his usual grimace growing more sour with every step. Despite all of us having covered our faces with old shirts, the smell of death sits unmoving along our path. While Beck inches his way up the ladder, Peter calls out to him, part apology but mostly an accusation.
“I didn’t know where to put them all!” Peter says as Beck peers into the silo. Hundreds of dead, festering chicken carcasses. I can see Beck stifling his vomit. I feel like purging too just at the sight of his reaction. Peter is ashamed. He can’t even look at me as he says, “First they couldn’t drink the water, then there was no water to give them. We weren’t even allowed to burn them because of the wildfires. We weren’t allowed to eat them because of the contamination. I couldn’t bury them because . . . because I’m too . . . because I was alone. This was the only place we could put them.”
We realize that we need the holes to be located farther away from the cottage. Beck and I dig four trenches in total. When I ask Beck if putting the dead chickens into the trenches may be an environmental hazard, he tells me the entire town is an environmental hazard. We create a system where Beck descends into the depths of the silo on the internal ladder, scoops putrid, soft chicken corpses onto an old shower curtain, gathers the corners together, then hands me the makeshift sack. I then descend the silo’s external ladder, open the sack and allow its contents to plop into our ditches to be buried. We do this one shower-curtain surface at a time. We do this as I gag, as Beck gags and reassures his father he is not a failure. We do this. We finish the work. We cover the shame of the carcasses with neutral-smelling sandy soil. We don’t have water with which to wash out the silo, but Beck pours three industrial-sized bottles of bleach into its depths, hoping to kill the stench. But we know it will do nothing. Once we are done, I use my face covering to wipe the mess off my arms and pants. Just as I am about to pinch the last feather off my forearms, I wretch into a bush. I wish we had water for a shower. I long for Liv’s bathtub. I decide to use sand instead, like those pigeons I watched at Moss Park with my mother near my old apartment. They would clean themselves using dirt. I find a reserve of dry sand and begin using fistfuls to cover my body. The sand dries my sweat, dries the muck of the chickens, and I brush it off. I continue to do this until my body is dusty but somewhat clean. I stop only when I realize the sand reserve is from anthills. Some ants remain angry on my scalp and arms. I shoo away their bites. But I am clean.
I rubbed the coconut oil until it softened and melted into the surface of my skin, highlighting the sinew of my shoulders. I admired my reflection in Nolan’s mirror, willing myself to leave the house.
It was Scorpio season. Nolan and I had planned to head to a joint birthday bash at some lesbian bar. There was a small cover fee to raise funds for someone’s top surgery happening later in November.
“Who’s getting the surgery?” I asked Nolan, while he flat-ironed his hair into perfectly silky sections. Smoke from his hair product filled the air and made me cough.
“Cole. Ex-lover. Long story.”
Nolan gave this suffix to many people in the LGBTQ2S community: “Ex-lover. Long story.” This description meant many things, ranging from having to change directions at the Trans march to holding Nolan’s hand while he laughed loudly to give the impression that he had moved on with his life. When Nolan asked me “Is that what you’re wearing?” I knew my job was to attend the party and appear to be his next lover and long story.
“Yes. I’m already wearing it.”
He finished pulling his straightened hair into a high ponytail, then attended to my fashion choices.
“Listen, handsome. I know you wanted to wear that mesh top to show off your six-pack, but I want Cole to understand how my tastes have matured. That’s why I need you to wear this Victorian puff-sleeve blouse with this top hat.”
I cocked my hip and pursed my lips. Nolan pleaded. “It’s like upscale fag meets high-paid banker!” He went through his Rolodex of comparisons. “You’ll look like Queen Victoria . . . on the day of her coronation.” I raised my arms and permitted him to continue fussing over me. In truth, I wouldn’t have done anything. I would have stayed home alone. It was my birthday, after all, and I hated my birthday.
“Bitch, what?!”
“Yeah.”
“It’s your birthday? Like, today?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Girl, I would have never thought you were a Scorpio.”
I didn’t know what being a Scorpio meant, so I nodded in befuddlement. I knew little about astrology on the whole and often wondered if I should return my Queer membership card until I at least knew my sun, moon and rising signs, which Fanny once said were essential.
“Well . . . we will just have to celebrate tonight, won’t we?” Nolan said while pinning a brooch to my lapel. “There! What do you think?” I looked into Nolan’s long mirror. A tiny top hat sat sassily off one side of my head. The sleeves of the blouse were extraordinarily voluminous.
“I look like Queen Victoria after she discovered the open bar at a wedding.”
Instead of Nolan’s usual music playlist, our low-rent television broadcast a low-volume soundtrack to our club preparation time. He began his contouring regimen as he watched a news program in which the American president, Colin Pryce, addressed a news reporter’s questions about mass deportation.
“You know what? If they come in illegally, they have to go out. These people are felons. These people are convicted of crimes. Next week, we will begin the process of removing millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they came in.”
A cut to Canadian prime minister Alan Dunphy addressing media on Parliament Hill with a superimposed caption at the bottom of the screen reading “Two Nations, One Vision campaign launched by Dunphy.”
“As Canadians, as neighbours, we will work alongside the United States in our endeavour to rid this land of invasive forces. Two Nations, One Vision is our joint strategy to target any threats to the values, to all we hold dear, which we have woven into the fabric of our collective societies.”
“Shit. If Pryce doesn’t watch out, he’s gonna get his ass killed.” Nolan began powdering aggressively, unable to peel his eyes from the screen.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” I said, pinning my small top hat onto my hair so it sat askew.
“Hell, no. That’s not a good thing. You know what happens when a white supremacist gets killed? They become a martyr. Last thing I need is for a bunch of KKK bedsheets to have a patron saint of hatred. You heard about his last executive order banning hijabs? Fucking hell. You might as well go back to forcing people to wear Stars of David.” Nolan moved on to painting his eyebrows. He took a deep breath to calm down and steadied his hand. As he drew arches across his forehead, he added, “We’re in some critical times, my friend. I can feel it in my belly button. And I don’t have just any belly button.” He lifted his blouse to show me the peculiar pucker on his stomach.
“You see this? I was born with my intestines outside of my body.”
“What? No way.”
“Yes, bitch. If my parents were still in Cambodia, I would have been long gone. It took two months for my insides to go back into my body. Then the surgeon gave me this off-centre piece-of-shit belly button.” He looked down at it, caressed it with his acrylics and looked at me with fire in his eyes. “But I’m telling you: every time I get a bad feeling in this fake belly button, the thing I think is gonna happen, happens.”
“What’s it saying now?”
“That something bad is gonna happen. Like, really bad. Beyond anything we can ever imagine. Pryce is gonna burn things to the ground, and we’re gonna be the first to burn with it.”
“Us? Here? But we’re in Canada.”
“Are you kidding me? That shit’s been happening already with the Indigenous people here for hundreds of years. It still is happening. Why would we be surprised? The h
omos, the Trans folks, the freaks, the Brown people, the Black people, the Disabled, the old folks. They’re picking us up and shipping us out, one by one.” He began lining his lips with a blood-orange pencil.
“That can’t happen.”
“And why the hell not? It’s happened so many times in history. Why not now? Why not here?” He pressed his lips into a tissue and assessed his work. He seemed satisfied but uneasy. “And that, my friend, is why I live every day as drag as I can, as Brown as I can, as loud as I can. We aren’t safe. Not now. Not ever. Our days are numbered, Kay.”
The news program cut to two Black women addressing an audience. “Identical twins Adea and Amana graced the stage at Yonge-Dundas Square today at a concert in downtown Toronto.”
“Whoa! Who are they?” I asked Nolan.
“You don’t know Adea and Amana? They are Queer as fuck. I love them. They travel the world doing anti-oppression work, teaching people how to be woke,” Nolan said before pointing frantically at the television screen. “Oh my gah, look at those dresses! They always have these larger-than-life skirts that are joined together. You can fit an entire town under them.” The fabric featured twinkling lights, while the twins sang a song of resistance.
From scar tissue we are born
From bones we rise
Everything you fear
Everything you despise
We are the Others
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