by Fran Kimmel
“Of course you did. You’re one of those people who can’t see beyond her cravings. The whole world must need what you need.”
“No. Not the whole world. But you and Rebee, you’re not like — ”
She threw her hand up then, wiping the words out of the air. “Leave us alone. Go somewhere else to find what you’re looking for. There’s a second-hand store down the street. Buy yourself a pretty little thing.”
I couldn’t stand any more, her words or mine. So I backed away from her window and walked out her door.
* * *
Delta has brought me turkey soup on a tray. A large china bowl covered with a tea towel, thickly buttered soda crackers on a little scalloped-edged dish beside, and a pitted silver soup spoon.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked when I opened the door. She was huffing heavily from her difficult descent.
“Much better, thank you. Here, let me take that. Please. Do. Come sit.” I didn’t like this about myself, the church voice I used around old ladies. Sing-song. Quaint. Yet I couldn’t seem to stop it.
“I thought some hot soup might settle your stomach.” She’d hit stormy seas on her way down the stairs. The soup sloshed everywhere, soaked the tea towel, splashing the thickly buttered crackers to a soppy mush.
“Thank you. You are very kind,” my church voice said. I put the tray down on the coffee table in front of the burgundy chairs and motioned Delta to sit. She lined herself up against the closest one and dropped backwards, feet lifting into the air before thunking to the rug. I looked at the tray. Chunks of turkey ice floated in the bowl like bog bodies. An archaeological find, preserved in the depths of her freezer.
“Just look what you’ve done with the suite,” she gazed with pleasure at her doilies and figurines, her petit point-topped stools and brocade curtains. I’d done nothing but move a few lamps and add a few nightlights. “It’s just lovely.”
“Thank you, Delta.”
“And you keep it so tidy. Your mother must be proud.”
When I left the farm for good, all my mother said was, “Don’t forget to soap the can opener.” Delta didn’t need to know this.
“When I was your age, I enjoyed dusting too.”
I did keep dusting.
“But these old bones aren’t what they used to be.”
“Well, I appreciate being able to borrow your vacuum cleaner,” I answered pathetically.
But she was looking down, picking a bouquet of yellow fluff from her afghan. “And I’d be pleased to do the upstairs anytime at all.” I raised my voice so the whole congregation could hear.
“Do you think you’ll be well enough to go to school tomorrow? Mrs. Bagot has been asking about you.”
For a moment I felt strangely inclined to tell the truth. To tell Delta that I was worried I might never be well enough. Delta looked right at me, ready to hear my words. I could have rested my head on her lap. Tell her how lonely I’d been. How confused. How I couldn’t sleep at night. We could have talked about my new friend, a woman, a beautiful woman who was lost like me.
But the moment passed. “Oh, yes. I can’t bear to miss a second day. There’s so much to catch up on. I’ve got tomorrow’s lesson still to plan. I’ll be at it all night.”
“Please, dear, don’t let the stress of the job wear you down. You can only do your best. That’s all you can do.” She leaned forward, reaching for my hand.
“Such a responsibility.” I leaned too, covering her warm hand in mine.
“Well, yes. It is that,” she smiled at me fondly.
I smiled back. Purpled veins flattened under the pressure of my fingers.
“But you’ve had quite an upset and mustn’t push too hard. No sense working yourself into a frenzy.”
I was startled when she said this, but then I remembered we were talking stomach bugs, teaching jobs.
“I insist on driving you tomorrow. Will you let me do that at least?”
She brought me soup. I nodded.
“Good. Well, eat up. Before it gets cold.”
I got Delta out of her chair with discrete little tugs and pulls, before hugging her gently at the door to my suite. Yes, most certainly, I would eat all my soup, and return the tray tomorrow when I caught a ride for school. She took the stairs, painfully slow, her grip firm on the railing, two feet to a tread before moving to the next. At the top, she turned and beamed, holding her thumb high, as though she’d already forgotten the climb. As though she were a sparkling young woman, just now returning from secrets and laughter in a rented room. Best friends forever, we could write in our diaries.
I closed my door. When I poured the soup down the sink, the shrivelled turkey chunks caught in the stopper and I dumped them in the garbage can.
I went into my bedroom, lit up my clown nose in the socket by the dresser and clicked both tri-lamps to high. I went to my drawer. Rebee’s tooth was there. It lay on a bed of cotton inside a tiny gold heart-shaped container that used to hold mints. Elizabeth’s rock was there too, wrapped in the folds of my favourite silk scarf. It was glittery cold stone with jagged rose edges, like an opening flower. I lay face down on my bed, that rock cutting into one fist, that tiny gold heart pressed to the other. I breathed deeply, imagining the scent of the Shore girls. But it was Delta’s talcum on the comforter, her Lily of the Valley was all.
* * *
It was bannock day. Mrs Bagot had set this up. Mary Seta was in charge. Mary wore a colourful beaded dress that went down past her knees and moccasins with a quilled piece of velvet on top of the tongue. She was as old as Delta, with a deeply grooved face and soft brown eyes, a thin grey braid hanging down to her waist. Mary has had grandchildren or great-grandchildren in every grade for years and years. None of her descendants was in my class, but Mary would teach us to make bannock anyway.Mothers were everywhere. They flitted like moths around hot little bodies, straightening collars, tucking shirts into pants. The children came polished this morning, scrubbed clean. Peter wore a tie under his sweater, his mother a black dress buttoned all the way to her chin. They had identical round glasses, mother and son, and the same frozen frown. Kenny had his nose wiped and his church shoes on, shiny leather without any scuff marks. The girls wore skirts and leotards, princess and fairy sweaters, and bows in their hair. Except for Rebee, who was in yesterday’s pants and black T-shirt, hair matted at the back where she hadn’t thought to brush. She was prettier than the others without even trying.
Everyone seemed to know about bannock and about one another, children and mothers alike, calling out first names, laughing and jostling, milling about at their own private party. Rebee and I stood off by ourselves at separate corners of the room, watching the tumult.
Mrs. Bagot, who’d suddenly had enough, clapped her hands violently, ordering the children to go sit on the mat. The mothers gathered in a circle behind, arms crossed, a few reaching down to touch a head or shush up a child, one of their own or one of their neighbour’s. I sat on top of Peter’s desk, over to the side. Peter kept looking back, scowling at me, anxious I’m sure that I’d crumple his papers.
“Our people used to hunt and fish and live off the land,” Mary began, her voice low and pure, nothing churchy about it. “We lived in family groups and set up both summer and winter camps, travelling between them by foot or by dog team.”
Mrs. Bagot looked pleased, nodding her head as though she remembered these days.
“But that was a long time ago,” Mary continued in her beautiful voice. “I was taken from my family to live at a residential school. Our land was taken away too. Stolen because of the war and the oil industry.”
The mothers shuffled. Throats cleared. Everyone knew someone who worked at the weapons testing area. I wanted them all to go away, to leave me alone with Mary in a wide-open space. She could pour out the story to someone who cared about this social breakdown, a way of life lost forever. But Mrs. Bagot stepped in. The oil people were coming to the school assembly next week; it had all be
en arranged.
“Thank you, Mary Seta,” Mrs. Bagot said. “Now, please, tell us about bannock.”
Bannock, she said, was a food of her people and a taste of the north. It was a special bread of flour and lard and black currants, the dough wrapped on a long stick and cooked over a campfire until golden brown.
Kenny asked if we could have a fire. Peter said that would be against the fire regulations. Peter’s mother nodded approvingly. Mary explained we would use the school stove instead. It was going to take us all morning. The first cooks were given their folded aprons, which they were to hold in their arms until they got to the kitchen. A line formed behind Mary. Off they went, children flanked on both sides by most of the mothers, Mrs. Bagot taking up the rear.
I stayed with the rest to work on our craft. The coloured construction paper had already been cut into animal shapes. Rabbits and bison, wolves and elk. I had nothing to do with it. The children were to choose an animal to decorate with felts and gluey glitter bits and then make up a Chipewyan name to write in the centre. The mothers were to help print the letters, then punch holes in both sides of the paper, which would hang on wool strings from the children’s necks. We were to use only the Chipewyan names for the rest of the day.
The children ran to the craft table by the window and found chairs. Susan and Vanessa’s mothers spread out the felts and poured glue blobs onto newsprint. Susan and Vanessa had been whispering on the carpet so they couldn’t find two chairs together and were forced to sit on either side of Rebee.
Everyone chattered excitedly. I leaned against the window counter and let the mothers take over with their flattery and baby talk praise. “Such a pretty design, Meagan. Look what Alice has done with her colours. My, my, what happy triangles. Haven’t we great artists in this room.”
The children lapped up the praise like puppies at water bowls. Look at mine. See what I did. Do you like my design? All except Rebee, who kept her head down, who concentrated on drawing a jagged line in blue, then yellow, along the edge of her wolf. Vanessa and Susan leaned around her, giggling and chatting, as though Rebee were invisible and her chair empty. The mothers too. They circled Rebee, moving to the next child before bending over.
Kenny chose Feather Brain for his name, which Vanessa’s mother printed for him, misspelling Brain as Brian. Vanessa was Little Rabbit. Susan asked how to spell “Buffalo Legs,” which she wanted to print herself.
One by one the children chose their names, finished their decorating, and showed off the animals flapping on their chests.
“How are you, Feather Brain?”
“I’m good, Jumping Boy.”
“Nice to meet you, Freckle Owl.”
Rebee’s wolf was the last to be done. She’d made swirls of colour, pink for the ears. When she finished her final glittery bit, she picked up the blue felt marker and painstakingly printed “REBEE” in thick, perfectly formed letters.
“You did it wrong, Rebee,” Vanessa yelled.
“You got to choose an Indian name,” Peter piped up.
“Too bad you used a felt marker, dear,” Susan’s mother wrinkled her nose at the matted hair.
“Do you want to try again dear?” Vanessa’s mother said, getting all the children’s attention.
The table went quiet. I could feel myself shrinking, smaller and smaller, until I was a tiny dust speck floating over the place where Rebee sat. Again, Belinda, do it again. Do it again until you get it right.
“I want to be Rebee.” Rebee didn’t take her eyes off the paper.
Vanessa’s mother glared over to the window where my empty shell leaned. She thought the teacher should take charge. She didn’t know the teacher had left that place, had become a floating speck in her farmhouse kitchen. A little girl tied to a chair with her mother’s pantyhose.
Susan’s mother leaned down to offer Rebee another paper. Rebee’s cheeks went fiery red as she spread her fingers over the glitter, pressing her wolf to the table.
“There’s lots more wolves,” Susan’s mother soothed. “I could help you make another one.”
“I don’t want to do it again,” Rebee said, not letting go. I was floating on top of her, willing her to stay strong.
Susan’s mother backed away. The children whispered and pointed. Feather Brain shouted, “Rebee’s dumb,” and everyone laughed.
“I only want to be Rebee,” a voice so small you could hardly hear.
Vanessa leaned over and pulled at the paper under Rebee’s fingers. Rebee pressed harder. The paper tore in two. There was a collective gasp. “Oh dear,” Susan’s mother said. Vanessa’s mother flapped her arms.
I’d had enough. I jumped back in my skin and reached for the tape, marching towards her. On the way, I kicked the back of Vanessa’s chair and told her to stand up and go sit on the mat. I told the others to go too, including the mothers, and that they’d better be quiet, that I wanted it so quiet in that room I could hear my heart beat.
Rebee slumped in her little chair and I sat down beside her. I turned the wolf halves upside down, lining them up carefully and joining the tears with tape. Rebee looked up at me, then slowly flipped her paper over. It had lost some of its glitter, but unless you looked closely, you could hardly tell that the wolf had been broken. I tied the wool through the holes with double knots, slipped the string over her head, and draped her name over her heart where everyone could see. Then we stood and held hands tightly as we marched to the mat.
* * *
I woke full and warm all over. 4:17 AM. I pushed Delta’s blanket away and closed my eyes, clinging to Uncle Walter before he evaporated. There, there he was. I’d found him — his soft whiskered cheeks, his drooping eye wandering every which way. I was never sure where to look as he described the northern skies, dancing with the colours of the ocean, like music. He talked about the Beaufort Sea. Of squeezed ships, crushed by polar ice, those who set sail in search of the Northwest passage and never returned. My uncle was painting the barn a ruddy red, mending our fence. I was let out of my bedroom to be his helper. Twelve years old, all limbs and longing. He told of summits shaped like cathedrals, glaciers like rivers, and walls of sculpted stone.
We had the whole summer, my uncle and me, days passing like minutes. He never stopped talking. He knew how trapped I was, how unhappy, so he gave me every story he had. A Rapunzel he called me, without her long hair. After our chores, we sat on the veranda and swatted at mosquitoes in the leftover shimmer of the sun, heat pressing down like an iron. The world came to my door with his booming laugh, like a tumbling waterfall, coating my parched lips and the dust in my throat. Even my mother cracked a smile once or twice and shed real tears when he left without warning on the twenty-fourth of August. He’d forgotten his silver eagle on a chain. I found it on the bathtub rim, hidden behind the Ajax bottle.
“Belinda, let’s you and me make some light.”
He suggested this on the day before he disappeared. We were in the barn and he told me to go find my flashlight. When I got back he’d pried open the trapdoor on the floor with the metal crowbar. I followed him down the rickety ladder and stood in the dirt while he reached up, pulled the trapdoor down, and closed us in. The cellar smelled at first of decay, damp earth and fermenting crabapples. After we settled in, it smelled only of my uncle, sweet tobacco and warm leather.
“We’re gonna make a light show, you and me.” His voice was a whispery echo. The cellar was cramped, and it was only a small light we shared. I’d never been down there and could see a few shelves looming like mountains in the night. My uncle reached into his pocket and pulled out a green roll. I held the flashlight while he unwrapped two Life Savers.
“Wintergreen. The only kind that works,” he said. “Now you just suck on that for a minute. Soften it up. Whenever you’re ready, just flick off the light so our eyes can adjust.” We scrunched down in the tight, black wintergreen space. I flicked off the light. “You all right there, Bel? I’m right here beside you.” I could hear him breathing.
He was right there beside me. I didn’t think to feel fear.
“Ready, now. Okay, start chewing. Keep your mouth open so we can see the show.”
Our mouths shimmered and sparked. Dancing greens and blues. I expected to be shocked, some kind of jolt as my teeth sank through the layers, all crackle and flash. But light did not hurt. “Look at you, girl, you got your own Aurora Borealis inside your mouth. Atoms ripping apart and coming together again. The same thing that makes the sky glow. In case you never get north, this’ll have to do.”
We finished igniting, swallowing the last tiny fragments of wintergreen. Then we scrambled up the ladder and into the glorious day.
I turned towards my uncle with breathless laughter. “Can we do it again?” I begged.
His wandering eye found mine for an instant and held. I felt so on fire, so a part of this world, I no longer recognized my body as my own. He pulled the green roll from his pocket, placed it in my damp palm. “Get yourself a little mirror. Find a dark place. Make your own light, any time you want.”
I could hear Delta rumbling around upstairs. The neighbour’s truck started up with a roar. The Rottweiler barked and barked. Buttercup started her frantic racing. It was 5:54. I tried to hang on, but Uncle Walter vanished, utterly, as though he might never have been.
* * *
I’ve missed school all week. Mrs. Bagot said that I had to get a doctor’s note, that if I was not back tomorrow, she was going to dock pay. Delta slipped an envelope under my door. It was one of those all occasion cards, a Winter Lake summer shot of a girl in a rowboat. Please get well, Belinda, she printed in watery letters.
Elizabeth walks the snow-covered trails in the afternoons. I waited outside the dilapidated house and let her march ahead, far enough that she wouldn’t turn back when she saw me. She didn’t say anything when I came up beside her.
“I’m not running away,” I told her. “I want you to know that.”
I wanted her to know this, though I could not explain why exactly. I was not seeking approval, nor asking for permission. I needed her to know there were patterns to my life, a semblance of order. She was running from something — I was sure of that. I suppose I wanted her to think I was someone she could turn to.