Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  Our net was a five-minute ride from the docks. One end of the net was attached to the shore, and the other to a buoy, a few hundred feet out. The net was held up by a series of corks, which was how you could tell if you’d been skunked or not. If a section of the corks was underwater, it meant that the net was holding up some weight. It could fool you, though, and just be driftwood. We would pull up beside the net, and Mick would cut the engine. With one cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he would reach down and, beginning from the buoy end, pull the net up section by section, pulling out weeds and gunk as he went. The weight of the net and Mick together would make the speedboat tilt so the bilge shifted and gurgled under our feet. At first I was afraid, convinced we were going to tip over, but after a few times, I trusted Mick to know if we were in danger. Sometimes, the fish would still be alive, and Mick let me club them on the head. I wanted to prove I wasn’t a wussy girl. He’d shake his head and grin, telling me not to turn them into mush.

  That summer, the ocean was clouded with jellyfish—small, translucent ones with an oily rainbow sheen. They got stuck in the net, and when we were pulling it up, they stung my hands. Mick kept smoking and pulling. I swallowed my tears, and that night my hands burned. I smeared them with Noxema. I swore to myself that if Mick didn’t say anything, neither would I.

  He baby-sat us five more times that summer. If it was hot, we’d make a trip to the corner store and get double-scooped ice cream and candy. Mom protested, but he said it was his job as an uncle to get us hypered up before he sent us home. If it was raining, he’d drive us around to the mall or the library. Once, he took us to Mount Layton Hot Springs and stayed in the hot tub while me and Jimmy tired ourselves out in the big pool.

  The last time he was supposed to baby-sit us that summer, Mom dropped us off but stopped outside his door, listening to the sounds of breaking glass and swearing. Neighbours cautiously stood in the hallway, staring at Mick’s door. The walls vibrated as things were thrown around inside. Jimmy’s eyes went wide and he held my hand. Mom looked down at us. “Go wait in the car.”

  I took Jimmy back, put his seat belt on him and told him to stay put. I ran back to Mick’s apartment. The door was open. Mick was in the living room, pulling apart his eight-track tapes. Mom watched him, hugging herself. Finally, she reached out and tried to stop him. She said something I couldn’t hear.

  “He’s dead!” Mick yelled at her. “Don’t you get it? D-E-A-D.”

  She took a step back. He crumpled and sat with a heavy thud, the pile of broken eight-tracks crunching under him.

  She went over to the phone. As she talked in a low voice, Mick’s head rolled listlessly, as if he couldn’t keep it still. Mom turned around and I ducked out of sight before she could spot me.

  Wow, I thought. He’s really drunk.

  I went back and waited in the car. Jimmy asked if we were still going swimming. He looked so hopeful when he said this, I said maybe.

  Mick’s drinking buddy, Josh, walked up the apartment building steps. As he headed inside, I slouched in my seat so he wouldn’t see me. The times that he came to pick up Mick at our house, he would stagger over, wanting to talk about their glory days on the basketball team when they were teenagers. If he cornered you, he’d go on and on about how hard he’d trained, how good he’d been and what a great team he’d made with Mick. Mom came out of the building a few minutes after Josh went in, frowning, but no longer looking lost.

  “Uncle Mick’s not feeling too good,” she said as she clambered into the car.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  She slammed her seat belt in and gave the ignition a yank. “The world has come to an end,” she said very dryly. “Elvis is dead.”

  “Who’s Elvis?” Jimmy said.

  Mick took off for almost a month and we later learned he’d driven to Graceland. Not knowing this at the time, Dad phoned and phoned, and when Mick didn’t answer, Dad banged on his door, yelling at him to let them in. Mom phoned Mick’s friends, his ex-girlfriends, his fishing buddies, all the family. By the time he came back, he’d lost his job and his apartment. My parents put him on the missing person’s list and had to call the police department to tell them he was okay. When Mick said that if they pushed the panic button every time he took off, they’d be grey-haired by the time they were forty. Dad picked up his brother’s eight-track machine and threw it against the TV.

  Dad didn’t talk to his brother for two weeks. If Mick came over, Dad would go into his bedroom. He hung up if Mick tried to call. But the more he ignored Mick, the more cheerful his brother became. He was staying with Josh, but visited our house almost every night, trying to make Dad say something even though Dad was ignoring him.

  Mick came by with an offering of freshly killed deer. As he held the carcass in his arms, covered in a blue tarp, Dad stood in the doorway, not letting him in.

  “I’ll just leave it here then,” Mick said.

  His footsteps clunked down the stairs. Before he got to his truck, Dad yelled out, “Do you expect me to carry this in myself?”

  Late one afternoon, Erica and I were playing hopscotch in front of the rec centre. Erica was cheating, but I had to let her, or she’d go home and I’d have no one to play with but dumb old Jimmy. It was getting cold. The streetlight flickered on early, then spasmed and flashed like a strobe light, yellow against the blue sky. Erica was almost finished, balancing on one foot as she bent over to pick up her rock. As she straightened, I saw her freeze, then she was running, her shoes clicking fast against the pavement. I turned just as someone pushed me down.

  I put my hands out and managed to scrape only my palms. Three boys about my age circled me on their bikes, laughing. One of them was Frank, who kept trying to run me over. I had to roll fast to keep out of his way. He was bigger than anybody in grade two, and if he decided he didn’t like you, you were in trouble. His hair flopped all over his face and his shirt flapped as he drove his bike towards me.

  “If you touch me again, I’m telling my mom!” I shouted.

  “Mommy!” Frank said, making another run at me.

  “Waaa!” the other guys said, pretending to cry. “Waaaa! She wants her mommy.”

  “Go on and cry!” Frank said. “Wussy baby.”

  “Wus-sy ba-by, wus-sy ba-by!” the other two sang.

  “I’m not!” I said. “You take that back or I’ll … I’ll—”

  “Moooommy! Mommy!” Frank said, kicking my arm as he rode by. “Come on, wussy baby, cry.”

  I stood up, blood leaking through my shirt. My lips trembled, and I felt the first hot tears sliding down my face. Frank pointed at me and laughed. The others joined in. He was going to tell everybody at school that I was a wussy baby, and that was what they were going to call me forever. Last week, he’d chased Erica around, and when he and his friends caught her, they pulled her dress up. She was wearing pink panties but they told everyone she was wearing diapers. They still called her Pissy-missy.

  Rage scorched my face. I balled my fists up, held them in front of me and rammed into Frank. His bike tipped over and he yelped. I landed on top of him. I sank my teeth into the closest part of him, which happened to be his butt. He howled and tried to punch me off, but I dug my teeth in harder, until I could taste his blood through his shorts. I wrapped my arms around his leg and held on with all my might.

  He was really screeching now, scrambling to get out from under the bike and away from me. As he dragged me with him, my legs scraped against the chain and the pedal. His friends had jumped off their bikes by now and were kicking any part of me they could get to, sometimes hitting Frank.

  Frank punched me in the face. It hurt so bad that my eyes swam in their sockets. I fell back, pulling him with me. We rolled together on the ground, and I made my hands into claws and raked his arms.

  Someone was shouting at us to stop fighting, and I saw Erica’s brother J.J. above us as he kicked Frank’s friends, who hopped on their bikes and rode away. Frank rolled
away from me and sprinted after them. I thought of chasing him, but I was too slow so I stomped on his bike. The spokes bent and the chain flew off. J.J. watched me, grinning. When I got tired and paused, he said, “You done?”

  “Oh my God,” Mom said when J.J. carried me into our house. I cried so hard that I couldn’t tell her what had happened.

  J.J. said, “If you think she looks bad, you should see the other kids.”

  Mom gave him a dark dirty look and took me from him, lowering me slowly to the ground and giving me a gentle hug.

  While she was cleaning my cuts, Mick dropped by. He drove us to Emergency. Frank and his mother were already in the waiting room. She pursed her lips and stood. Mom tucked me behind her and glared.

  “My Frankie needs shots because of your daughter,” she said.

  “Oh?” Mom said.

  “Look at what she did.” She pulled Frank to her, spun him around and pushed his shorts down.

  “Mom!” Frank said, pulling his shorts back up.

  “If Frankie hadn’t been torturing my daughter, he wouldn’t have got bit, would he? I’d say he got what he deserved.”

  “I could sue you.”

  “Try it. I’ll see your juvenile delinquent in foster care faster than you can say court date.”

  “Ladies, ladies, ladies,” an orderly said, jogging into the waiting room to stand between them. The nurse hastily called out Frank’s name and ushered them out.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” Mom said to Uncle Mick, who immediately sucked his smile into a pucker.

  She paced the waiting room while he cheerfully gave the duty nurse our address and phone number. I sat by the TV, wiggling a loose tooth with my tongue.

  While Mom was in the bathroom and Mick was flirting with the nurse, Frank and his mother came back out. She came right up to me and said, “I think you have something to say to my son.”

  I knew I was supposed to say sorry. But if Frank wasn’t going to say it, neither was I. “You taste like poo.”

  “You are a monster,” she said to me. “You are an evil little monster.”

  “Takes one to know one!” Mick shouted, looking up from his potential date.

  She scowled at him. “Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?” She hustled Frank out of there.

  Mick came up and knelt beside me. “You okay?”

  “I’m not a monster,” I said.

  He grinned at me. “You’re nowhere near as bad as your mom was. Now, she was a holy terror.”

  “Nobody likes me,” I said.

  “Kiddo,” Mick said, kissing my forehead, “you are my favourite monster in the whole wide world.”

  Three days later, I answered the front door and Mick’s friend Josh stared down at me. He said, in a loud, tipsy stage whisper, that he had taken care of his nephew Frankie for me. “You want me to bring him over to say sorry, I can do that, too.”

  I shook my head.

  Josh leaned over. I turned my face away and held my breath because it smelled like something had died in his mouth.

  “He’s spoiled, that’s what he is. He just needed a good kick in the pants. He’ll learn, God love him.”

  Later that evening, Mom and Dad offered to fix up the basement for Mick, but he decided he was going to live with Josh until he got back on his feet.

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. “Your mother said he isn’t right and I think she’s on to something.”

  “He’s okay.” Mick said.

  “He is kind of haywire,” Dad said.

  “He’s a bit fucked up, but, hey, who isn’t?”

  “But—”

  “It’s my own mess, Albert Hill. You don’t have to clean up after me any more. I’m a big boy.” When Dad still looked doubtful, Mick noogied his head. “Stop worrying, will you?”

  Mick took me Christmas-tree hunting that winter. We drove along the highway between Terrace and Kitimat and stopped when Mick thought we’d reached a good spot. As we drove, Mick played Elvis and homemade tapes that his friends had sent him, with songs like “FBI Lies,” “Fuck the Oppressors” and, my favourite, “I Shot Custer.” Despite my pleading that they really were socially conscious, Abba was absolutely forbidden in Mick’s cassette deck.

  “She’s got to know about these things,” Mick would say to Dad, who was disturbed by a note from one of my teachers. She had forced us to read a book that said that the Indians on the northwest coast of British Columbia had killed and eaten people as religious sacrifices. My teacher had made us each read a paragraph out loud. When my turn came, I sat there shaking, absolutely furious.

  “Lisa?” she’d said. “Did you hear me? Please read the next paragraph.”

  “But it’s all lies,” I’d said.

  The teacher stared at me as if I were mutating into a hideous thing from outer space. The class, sensing tension, began to titter and whisper. She slowly turned red, and said I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “Ma-ma-oo told me it was just pretend, the eating people, like drinking Christ’s blood at Communion.”

  In a clipped, tight voice, she told me to sit down.

  Since I was going to get into trouble anyway, I started singing “Fuck the Oppressors.” The class cheered, more because of the swearing than anything else, and I was promptly dragged, still singing, to the principal’s office.

  Mick went out and had the teacher’s note laminated and framed. He hammered a nail into his wall and hung the note in the centre of the living room. He put his arm around me, swallowed hard a few times and looked misty. “My little warrior.”

  Dad was not impressed with Mick’s influence on me. He gave his older brother a hard slap to the side of his head. Mick got him in a headlock, then wrestled him to the ground. Once he got Dad pinned, he held him there until Dad called him the most handsome, bravest and smartest warrior in the world. He let Mick get away with “brainwashing” me because my uncle was one of the only people willing to be my baby-sitter.

  Our Christmas-tree hunt was something Dad didn’t mind. Their father used to take them on the same yearly trek. “I had to go even when I told him I hated it,” he said to me as we put the dishes away. “Dumb idea anyway. Who sat around and decided a dead tree in the house would make the winter that much more festive?” And Mom agreed, then grumbled about the dried needles in her carpet and said that she was the only one who watered the stupid thing. Mick invited Jimmy, who looked up from his homework with a puzzled expression.

  “Outside? In the cold?”

  “It’ll be fun,” Mick said.

  “Why don’t we just buy a tree from Overwaitea?” Jimmy said.

  “Come on,” Mick said, lifting him out of his chair, “stop being an old man.”

  “Oh, leave him alone,” Dad said. “If he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t have to.”

  I loved the long slog through the bush in snowshoes, walking as awkwardly as an astronaut in zero g. I loved the wind’s sting on my face. I loved the steady hiss of our breath, the crunch of our snowshoes and the tinkle of snow blown from the trees. Mick loved the exercise; Mom loved it that I was so tired when I got back that I collapsed into bed; Dad loved the free tree.

  Mick and I would examine the trees carefully, discussing the balance of the branches, the plump or dry feel of the needles, the thickness of the trunk. I preferred spruce, for its harmonious triangular slope; Uncle Mick leaned towards pine, for the squirt of scent it gave off when you crushed the needles between your fingers, the aroma that filled a room like the heavy smell of oranges. Inevitably, Mick picked for himself only the scrawny, half-dead trees we came across. Mom called them his Charlie Brown trees and said God only knew why he liked them. I figured Mick always went for the underdogs. Which was fine for Mick, because no one saw his tree but him. Mom would kill me if I brought home a tree that butt-ugly.

  We ended the day of the first Christmas-tree hunt with hot chocolate and sugar cookies for me, and a beer and a slice of mincemeat pie for Mick. Jimm
y, Mom and Dad argued over where the decorations would go, while Mick sat at the kitchen table and ignored them. We had done our work. After I finished my cookies, I fell asleep at the table. Later, as I got older, we’d end the hunt by sitting in a comfortable, satisfied silence until Mick decided it was time to go. He would lean over me, kiss the top of my head, then leave without saying goodbye.

  A week before Christmas, while my parents were doing last-minute shopping, Dad dropped us off at Mick’s new apartment. Some people were roaring so hard, we could hear them all the way from the lobby. His visitor was a man with two long braids, high pockmarked cheekbones and a crooked nose. He seemed familiar, even though I’d never met him before, and then I realized he smelled like Mick. He was surrounded by the strong odour of cigarettes, the same brand that Mick smoked.

  “Al!” Mick said. “Come meet Barry. Barry, this is my brother, Al. That’s Jimmy, the future Olympic star, and this,” he grabbed me and noogied my head, “is our little warrior, Monster.”

  “Heya,” Barry said in a deep, raspy voice. He shook Dad’s hand.

  “I didn’t know you had a guest,” Dad said.

  “Guest?” Barry said. “You didn’t tell them about me? And me, your family, you ungrateful bastard!”

  Mick grinned. “We were in Washington together, at the BIA building—”

  “Are you still trying to sell that load of crap about being a warrior?” Barry said, elbowing Mick in the ribs. “Ah, tell the truth. You just joined A.I.M. to get in my sister’s pants.”

  Dad frowned. “I can ask Edith to look after the kids if you want to visit—”

  “No, no, stay,” Mick said.

  “I—”

  “Al, this is your brother-in-law,” Mick said, sitting back, waiting for Dad’s reaction.

  “Yeah?” Dad said, looking skeptical. “Was the invitation in the mail?”

  “Nah, it was an Indian marriage,” Barry said. “Medicine man and everything. How long’d you stay together, Fly-by? Two, three days?”