Bozuk

by Linda Rogers

  Mine never has. I still sleep in the same bed in the same room in the same house in the same neighbourhood where I was born in the middle of the twentieth century. Sometimes I think I am afraid to leave in case I might miss something, or maybe like Istanbul, perched between Asia Minor and Europe, my room might be a fulcrum between heaven and hell, past and present.

  That might be the message from my father, his voice captured in the bottles with those of all the unhappy spirits who hang around after their time is up.

  My mother said that was where I got Coon. Like a genie, he came out of one of my bottles. She never believed in him, even after I took her to see the bottle tree we made outside his cave.

  Stella huffed and puffed but I held her hand and dragged her up the hill behind me. My mother was rarely sober enough to greet the sun, so this was a big day. I wanted to make it even bigger by showing her the secret world I had hidden from her all summer. What the heck?

  “I’m teaching him to read,” I squeezed out between breaths. “He’s an orphan.” I snuck a look at her to see if the word registered, but she just puffed along in her pink quilted housecoat and fluffy slippers, her eyes on the ground, as if a hand, maybe my father’s or that of his other partner, might reach up and take her to dance in the underworld.

  We stopped in front of the cave. I pointed and Stella looked up at Coon’s beautiful arbutus, festooned with bottles and ribbons. Her eyes must have hurt looking at the light, but she walked all around the tree, catching every angle of the sun in its branches.

  “You made it, Mother. It’s got you written all over it.”

  “How come?” I asked her. How the hell could she tell what did or did not have my name written on it? She had been looking at me through the end of a bottle for more than a thousand nights. This day, however, Stella was sober and I wanted a straight answer. This was our moment. She’d waited up for me, all the way to morning. I was so happy to see her sitting in her chair actually missing me, actually asking the question I’d been waiting to hear, “Where were you, young lady?” that I told her about Coon. When I finished, she said I’d been with the fairies and come back telling lies.

  “It’s all blue bottles.”

  I whistled, but Coon wasn’t there. He must have been off foraging. I took her inside the cave and showed her his bed and his fire and the provisions he’d gathered. “You see,” I said. “He’s real. This is where he lives. That bottle tree you saw outside is his. He’s waiting to hear from his mother who died in a terrible accident. She was smeared all over the road, like peanut butter.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “He did.”

  “That’s a lie. No real kid would say that about his mother. That’s a joke. Everything you say comes out of books or your cockamamie brain, Mother.”

  “You’re a liar.” I tried to yell louder than crying because I was so ashamed of my tears. She didn’t deserve to hurt my feelings. “And you’re a terrible mother. I’m not supposed to even know your name. Hardly any of the kids at school know their mother’s names. They’re real mothers and they don’t embarrass their kids by being drunk and dancing to music from the Stone Age. Their mothers dance to the Rolling Stones and they drink real coffee, not that crap in a jar.”

  Stella ran down the hil and I ran after her screaming, “Stella. Stella. Stella!” I hated her. “No wonder my daddy left us. You are so butt ugly, you scared him to death!”

  I threw that word “ugly” all the way down the hill. It hit our fence and I watched it turn around and smack her right in the face. I know that happened because I saw the ugly wound.

  “And he got married to Coon’s mum in Heaven.” My coup de grâce.

  I sat down in the grass where she’d collapsed in a bloody, sweaty heap and started crying too. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the neighbours were getting up to start a new day. First. their curtains moved and then, when they got braver and more curious, I saw their faces in the windows. Some of them even came outside in their pajamas to get a better look.

  Somehow I got Stella into the house. She was a dead weight. I wondered if my dad ever felt that way. I could imagine him saying, “Stella is a heavy woman.” Whenever I heard that song “Sixteen Tons,” I thought of her. I thought of my dad dragging her around the dance floor the way that Jesus freak from the halfway house carries his big heavy cross through town on Good Friday, the way Fred schlepped Ginger.

  “I’m sorry, Stella,” I gasped between sobs. “I don’t know what got into me. Maybe I need more sleep.”

  “We both miss your dad,” Stella sniffed, her eyes red from crying, while she lined up those green coke glasses she likes on the wicker tray. She sure could move quickly when she wanted to. I watched her pour what my dad used to call “a big hook of gin,” then two ice cubes and a splash of tonic in each glass. With her “mother’s tea” poured in advance, she was all set for The Edge of Night.

  Stella had her cry and that was that. She went back to her juniper berries of forgetfulness and turned on the TV set. The moment was past. Alone again, I decided I had to fix things once and for all. If one bottle tree wasn’t enough spiritual power to protect my family, then I was going to have a whole yard full of bottle trees. I went right down to Safeway and got myself a shopping cart. Coon and I were in the bottle business.

  We hunted by night, catting around with hungry strays in alleys, vacant lots and garbage cans. “Seek and ye shall find,” the Bible says, and I can witness to the wealth of bottles of every shape and colour in the backyards of this world. It didn’t take long to load the grocery cart, and as soon as it was full we took it back to our yard and hung the bottles on the trees – all of them – the fruit trees, the evergreens and the maples. Sometimes we mixed up the colours and sometimes we went for just one. We decorated the peach tree with yellow and orange glass. It looked so pretty when the sun shone through those bottles.

  Even after Coon, I kept taking care of my song trees. Sometimes a bottle smashed to the ground. Sometimes the colour faded and the bottle didn’t capture the light any more. I had acquired a taste for collecting. Finding them had become some kind of compulsion. I am never so happy as when I am wheeling my rusty cart through the empty streets at 3 a.m., keeping my eyes open for that special glass that calls out to me in the moonlight.

  The problem is, I found so many bottles I had to find a place to keep them. My big number one and number two rules have always been: DO NOT USE HOUSE BOTTLES and DO NOT TAKE FOUND BOTTLES INTO THE HOUSE. As far as I was concerned, our home was like those crime scenes with yellow tape around them. It was contaminated by sadness and inhabited by the spirits that took my mother away from me. There was not one liquor bottle on any of my trees.

  Because of my daddy’s genes, I turned out to be a very tall girl and, by virtue of my experience in taking care of Stella, I had what horse people call “soft hands.” Masseuses and hairdressers require strength, but also what I call kindness in the hands. For some souls, we are the only ones who touch them. My first job was a private request from an old man whose house I cleaned, thanks to an ad posted on the board down at Jung’s grocery store. One thing led to another and I eventually started giving my client a hand release for an extra five bucks.

  If someone were to ask me whether I preferred housecleaning or personal services, I would be hard pressed to give an answer. There is a lot of pride in all of my work. I like to see a clean house that smells fresh and has vacuum lines in the carpet. I hate to see people walk over a fresh carpet. There is also a lot of satisfaction in giving satisfaction. I’ve been told there is nothing more beautiful than the smile on the face of a woman who has just given birth, but I’d be willing to bet her old grandmother in the rest home looks just as happy when she gets her personal care.

  Both of my jobs are low overhead. I just have to get to work and I have two good legs and a bicycle for that. Sometimes I take the bus, but only when it’s raining hard. That’s one of the good things about living in Victoria.
There is no place that is too far away. My clients must have their own cleaning gear and all I take for the extra touch is a bottle of Astroglide lubricant and surgical gloves.

  My rest home services are discreet. All my clients have private rooms with doors that lock. The home clients are another story. Some of them have privacy issues. When I started my business, Stella was still living at home. I couldn’t take them home to her. There was no way I could keep up with her untidiness and I didn’t even try, even after I became a professional housecleaner. No question about it, I needed a place to store bottles and take care of private clients. One day when I was walking along Esquimalt Road I saw a sign for a storage locker.

  I rented a private room, a ten-by-ten foot locker. I had the only key. The locker opens on the street and is available twenty-four hours a day. My clients can access it any time they want. They just have to book an appointment and use discretion. First, I got some two-by-fours and made shelves for my treasures, which I laid down on their sides according to size and colour. The bottles make a pretty wall and they also provide insulation. When I had my shelves, I went to yard sales and found a high table and stepladder, a heater, a worn Turkish carpet and a floor lamp. I covered the table with a foamy and a quilt from home. Not only was I in business, I had a place of business. In no time at all, I had enough referred customers to pay for the locker.

  Before I had a business address, I charged five dollars for a hand release. Eventually I charged ten and nobody complained. Then I went up to twenty. That’s for the first hour, and I charge extra for socializing afterward. The funny thing is, I had been under the impression that using a storage locker for something other than storage was all my idea. It wasn’t too long before I realized I had rented myself a community. My nocturnal neighbours include a pair of hookers, a few street people who rent a locker for safe sleeping, and a headbanger band that practices at night. They are noisy, but so are my clients. Over the years we have shared the same rhythm, a few bottles of wine, and many cups of instant soup. From time to time I choose a bottle from my collection to take home to my trees, but mostly I leave them there because they hold onto the passionate exhalations of my customers.

  I’ve only had one client give me anxiety. She was an eighty-nine-year-old widow in need of regular loving touch. Mrs. Willoughby visited once a week, every Friday after she had her hair done. When I asked her why she came to me with her fresh coiffure, she told me her husband liked her to look nice. He didn’t want to see her in curlers or wearing face cream. Mrs. W. was one of the few people I saw in the daytime, and I made the exception because she was afraid to go out at night. Her hair appointment was at 10 a.m. and, at 11.50 on the dot, a taxi delivered her to my locker. She told me she had informed the driver that she was checking up on her dead husband’s possessions, which she had moved out of the house and into the locker on the other side of the band’s after he went to spirit because it made her sad to live with his suits and collection of brass instruments.

  “Brass?” I asked.

  “Well, yes,” she said. “He practiced in the garage.”

  Mrs. Willoughby chatted with her husband while I took her to bliss. I wondered if she had been one of those ladies who talk all the way through sex and drive their husbands crazy. I know about that because the husbands tell me personal things. So do wives. Mrs. W. cried out his name and, when she did, her voice was like a young girl’s. Her husband Wilbur lives in my bottles and I have a sacred obligation to him.

  On her ninetieth birthday, Mrs. Wil oughby made a special appointment. It was not on a Friday at 11.50 a.m. She came just before midnight on a Thursday.

  “Happy birthday,” I said. “Is your cabby waiting?”

  “I walked,” she told me. “It’s only three blocks. I didn’t want the driver to ask me why I was out so late and think I was dithering,” she laughed.

  “I suppose he would,” I said. “I have a special treat for you.” I had bought a bottle of sherry and two little marzipan tarts they sel for half price at Patisserie Daniel e after four o’clock. After helping her to sit up on the table, I poured the sherry in two of my mother’s crystal wedding glasses. Then I lit the candle on her cake and banged on the wal between my locker and the headbangers’ rehearsal space. The boys in the band played “Happy Birthday” and she blew out her candle and wished. Mrs. Wil oughby and I clinked glasses. “To life,” I said, and we drank.

  While I helped Mrs. Wil oughby, she told me about her wedding, which had been on her twenty-first birthday. She’d met her husband at church. They both sang in the choir. When they got married, the choir sang “Praise My Soul Oh King of Heaven.” Mrs. Wil oughby sang it for me, and her voice was steady and true.

  “When you sing,” I said, “you sound like a girl.”

  “I am a girl,” she assured me and closed her eyes.

  After telling me about her wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses, Mrs. Wil oughby described her wedding night. She had not been disappointed, she said. Wilbur was a very thoughtful husband. I remembered the story one of my customers told me about making her tongue-tied husband have his tongue surgical y cut so he could pleasure her oral y. I wondered if Wilbur Wil oughby did things like that.

  Right in the middle of her description of her first climax, Grace Wil oughby cal ed out her husband’s name with so much force I nearly fel back from the table. In the near dark, I could hear my bottles sucking in Wilbur. The headbangers heard it too. They stopped playing. Then, al there was left to hear was my own heart.

  “Mrs. Wil oughby,” I said at last. “Grace?” But Grace had gone to Glory Land and stayed there.

  I sat in the dark, wondering what I was going to do with my adorable widow. It wouldn’t look good if she was found in my locker. That was sure to happen sooner or later. Everything gets found out in the end. I learned that the summer of Coon. The storage lockers are cold, but they are not mortuaries.

  Luckily, Mrs. Wil oughby had her house keys and a Care Card with her address on it in her purse. She’d been carrying twenty-seven dol ars and forty-two cents in cash. I didn’t take the cash for her last visit, but I did finish her package of Werther’s toffee while I was deciding how to lose Grace. By the time the last candy melted in my mouth, I had made my decision.

  The guys in the band were surprised to see me. I begged, and, I have to admit, I cried; and they agreed to help. There were six of them; just enough to provide Mrs. Wil oughby’s earthly remains with a nice escort home. The trombonist who carried her fireman-style up her front stairs, much the same way that Wilbur had carried her to bed al those years ago, said she was as light as a feather.

  THE CESME HAMAM

  “I think of them as onions,” I say to Hannah, the younger and more overtly serious of the Sweet Papa Lowdown daughters. Hannah thinks I am too critical of the Muslim women who wear layers of clothing in this obscenely hot weather while the men and young children enjoy the relative freedom of summer clothing. “Maybe they are nearer to God, like the onion-shaped domes in their mosques. They sure do smell like onions.”

  Hannah frowns. I am reading her mind. She is clearly not happy with my flippant criticism. How can I come to this country and pass judgment? How dare I intrude with my own definition of freedom? Haven’t Muslim women expressed their happiness with the anonymity of a uniform?

  “You don’t see any of them smiling, do you, Hannah? They are miserably hot, and their eyes are dead.”

  “How can you tell whether they are smiling or not when their mouths are covered?” She pulls out of her slumped “think” posture, looking me full in the face.

  “Eyes laugh too. I’ll buy you lunch if you can make one of the girls smile.” I assign her a girl because teenagers are tribal. Her sister Naomi laughs. Naomi knows I have challenged Hannah to stand up straight, a posture she folds up with her self-esteem.

  “Will you buy mine as well?” she asks. Naomi could charm a mouse out of a cheese cupboard.

  We are walking down the main st
reet of Cesme, drinking water and avoiding the leading questions that will drag us into uncomfortable situations with shop owners. “Are you Canadian?” “Can I show you some beautiful Turkish carpets?” “Would you like a cup of çay?” The dark interiors of their places of business unsettle the girls, who have heard my cautionary stories of Istanbul. I feel protective of them because, if I were normal instead of the adult child of older parents, one of them an alcoholic, I might have gone out and grabbed a real life for myself and had teenaged daughters of my own.

  Even as a mature woman I still have the power and the fear of my own sexuality, men leering from cars, and men whistling when I walk past their workplaces.

  “I’ve talked to Muslim girls at home and they say they like being covered. Those girls are free to be themselves. They don’t have to put up with men staring at them the way we do. I don’t know why you have to feel sorry for them.” Naomi, who is wearing a low-cut tank top and shorts, agrees with her sister.

  “It isn’t a hundred degrees in the shade at home,” I say.

  “The hajib is protection,” Hannah retorts.

  “Did it protect Iman al-Obeidi from being raped and beaten?” I ask.

  We have arrived at a Muslim “coat store.” Dozens of the ugly shapes sulk on racks in the cavernous shop while a half dozen are buttoned on street dummies as still and stiff as the headscarf girls who hang themselves.

  “Let’s try some on,” Naomi suggests. First we buy scarves and tie them around our heads. Then we put on the death-coats, buttoning them up to the neck. We are a glum of uninspired shoppers, but the shop girl tolerates us. Business is business.