Pepsi had come along just to meet guys, dressed up in her flashiest bracelets and most conservatively ripped jeans. Aunt Erma enlisted her too, when she found out that none of her other volunteers had showed up. Pepsi was disgusted.
Cola got out of working at the booth because she was one of the jingle dancers. Aunt Erma had made her outfit, a form-fitting red dress with silver jingles that flashed and twinkled as she walked. Cola wore a bobbed wig to cover her pink mowhawk. Pepsi bugged her about it, but Cola airily waved good-bye and said, “Have fun.”
I hadn’t made fry bread in a long time. The first three batches were already mixed. I just added water and kneaded them into shapes roughly the size of a large doughnut, then threw them in the electric frying pan. The oil spattered and crackled and steamed because I’d turned the heat up too high. Pepsi wasn’t much better. She burned her first batch and then had to leave so she could watch Cola dance.
“Be right back,” she said. She gave me a thumbs-up sign and disappeared into the crowd.
The heat from the frying pan and the sun was fierce. I wished I’d thought to bring an umbrella. One of the organizers gave me her baseball cap. Someone else brought me a glass of water. I wondered how much longer Pepsi was going to be. My arms were starting to hurt.
I flattened six more pieces of bread into shape and threw them in the pan, beyond caring anymore that none of them were symmetrical. I could feel the sun sizzling my forearms, my hands, my neck, my legs. A headache throbbed at the base of my skull.
The people came in swarms, buzzing groups of tourists, conventioneers on a break, families, and assorted browsers. Six women wearing HI! MY NAME IS tags stopped and bought all the fry bread I had. Another hoard came and a line started at my end of the table.
“Last batch!” I shouted to the cashiers. They waved at me.
“What are you making?” someone asked.
I looked up. A middle-aged red-headed man in a business suit stared at me. At the beginning, when we were still feeling spunky, Pepsi and I had had fun with that question. We said, Oh, this is fish-head bread. Or fried beer foam. But bullshitting took energy.
“Fry bread,” I said. “This is my last batch.”
“Is it good?”
“I don’t think you’ll find out,” I said. “It’s all gone.”
The man looked at my tray. “There seems to be more than enough. Do I buy it from you?”
“No, the cashier, but you’re out of luck, it’s all sold.” I pointed to the line of people.
“Do you do this for a living?” the man said.
“Volunteer work. Raising money for the Helping Hands,” I said.
“Are you Indian then?”
A hundred stupid answers came to my head but like I said, bullshit is work. “Haisla. And you?”
He blinked. “Is that a tribe?”
“Excuse me,” I said, taking the fry bread out of the pan and passing it down to the cashier.
The man slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Make another batch.”
“I’m tired,” I said.
He put down another twenty.
“You don’t understand. I’ve been doing this since this morning. You could put a million bucks on the table and I wouldn’t change my mind.”
He put five twenty-dollar bills on the table.
It was all for the Helping Hands, I figured, and he wasn’t going to budge. I emptied the flour bag into the bowl. I measured out a handful of baking powder, a few fingers of salt, a thumb of lard. Sweat dribbled over my face, down the tip of my nose, and into the mix as I kneaded the dough until it was very soft but hard to shape. For a hundred bucks I made sure the pieces of fry bread were roughly the same shape.
“You have strong hands,” the man said.
“I’m selling fry bread.”
“Of course.”
I could feel him watching me, was suddenly aware of how far my shirt dipped and how short my cutoffs were. In the heat, they were necessary. I was sweating too much to wear anything more.
“My name is Arnold,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you, Arnold,” I said. “Scuse me if I don’t shake hands. You with the convention?”
“No. I’m here on vacation.”
He had teeth so perfect I wondered if they were dentures. No, probably caps. I bet he took exquisite care of his teeth.
We said nothing more until I’d fried the last piece of bread. I handed him the plate and bowed. I expected him to leave then, but he bowed back and said, “Thank you.”
“No,” I said. “Thank you. The money’s going to a good cause. It’ll—”
“How should I eat these?” he interrupted me.
With your mouth, asshole. “Put some syrup on them, or jam, or honey. Anything you want.”
“Anything?” he said, staring deep into my eyes.
Oh, barf. “Whatever.”
I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand, reached down and unplugged the frying pan. I began to clean up, knowing that he was still standing there, watching.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Suzy,” I lied.
“Why’re you so pale?”
I didn’t answer. He blushed suddenly and cleared his throat. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
“Would you—” he blushed harder, “shake your hair out of that baseball cap?”
I shrugged, pulled the cap off, and let my hair loose. It hung limply down to my waist. My scalp felt like it was oozing enough oil to cause environmental damage.
“You should keep it down at all times,” he said.
“Good-bye, Arnold,” I said, picking up the money and starting toward the cashiers. He said something else but I kept on walking until I reached Pepsi.
I heard the buzz of an electric razor. Aunt Erma hated it when Pepsi shaved her head in the bedroom. She came out of her room, crossed the landing, and banged on the door. “In the bathroom!” she shouted. “You want to get hair all over the rug?”
The razor stopped. Pepsi ripped the door open and stomped down the hall. She kicked the bathroom door shut and the buzz started again.
I went into the kitchen and popped myself another Jolt. Sweat trickled down my pits, down my back, ran along my jaw and dripped off my chin.
“Karaoke?” Pepsi said. Then louder. “Hey! Are you deaf?”
“What?” I said.
“Get me my cell phone.”
“Why don’t you get it?”
“I’m on the can.”
“So?” Personally, I hate it when you’re talking on the phone with someone and then you hear the toilet flush.
Pepsi banged about in the bathroom and came out with her freshly coiffed Mohawk and her backpack slung over her shoulder. “What’s up your butt?” she said.
“Do you want me to leave? Is that it?”
“Do what you want. This place is like an oven,” Pepsi said. “Who can deal with this bullshit?” She slammed the front door behind her.
The apartment was quiet now, except for the chirpy weatherman on the TV promising another week of record highs. I moved out to the balcony. The headlights from the traffic cut into my eyes, bright and painful. Cola and Aunt Erma bumped around upstairs, then their bedroom doors squeaked shut and I was alone. I had a severe caffeine buzz. Shaky hands, fluttery heart, mild headache. It was still warm outside, heat rising from the concrete, stored up during the last four weeks of weather straight from hell. I could feel my eyes itching. This was the third night I was having trouble getting to sleep.
Tired and wired. I used to be able to party for days and days. You start to hallucinate badly after the fifth day without sleep. I don’t know why, but I used to see leprechauns. These waist-high men would come and sit beside me, smiling with their brown wrinkled faces, brown eyes, brown teeth. When I tried to shoo them away, they’d leap straight up into the air, ten or twelve feet, their green clothes and long red hair flapping around them.
A low, gray haze hung over Vancouver, fuzzing the street lights. Air-quality bulletins on the TV were warning the elderly and those with breathing problems to stay indoors. There were mostly semis on the roads this late. Their engines rumbled down the street, creating minor earthquakes. Pictures trembled on the wall. I took a sip of warm, flat Jolt, let it slide over my tongue, sweet and harsh. It had a metallic twang, which meant I’d drunk too much, my stomach wanted to heave.
I went back inside and started to pack.
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig
Jimmy and I lay in the graveyard, on one of my cousin’s graves. We should have been creeped out, but we were both tipsy.
“I’m never going to leave the village,” Jimmy said. His voice buzzed in my ears.
“Mmm.”
“Did you hear me?” Jimmy said.
“Mmm.”
“Don’t you care?” Jimmy said, sounding like I should.
“This is what we’ve got, and it’s not that bad.”
He closed his eyes. “No, it’s not bad.”
I poured myself some cereal. Mom turned the radio up. She glared at me as if it were my fault the Rice Crispies were loud. I opened my mouth and kept chewing.
The radio announcer had a thick Nisga’a accent. Most of the news was about the latest soccer tournament. I thought, that’s northern native broadcasting: sports or bingo.
“Who’s this?” I said to Mom. I’d been rummaging through the drawer, hunting for spare change.
“What?”
It was the first thing she’d said to me since I’d come back. I’d heard that she’d cried to practically everyone in the village, saying I’d gone to Vancouver to become a hooker.
I held up a picture of a priest with his hand on a little boy’s shoulder. The boy looked happy.
“Oh, that,” Mom said. “I forgot I had it. He was Uncle Josh’s teacher.”
I turned it over. Dear Joshua, it read. How are you? I miss you terribly. Please write. Your friend in Christ, Archibald.
“Looks like he taught him more than just prayers.”
“What are you talking about? Your Uncle Josh was a bright student. They were fond of each other.”
“I bet,” I said, vaguely remembering that famous priest who got eleven years in jail. He’d molested twenty-three boys while they were in residential school.
Uncle Josh was home from fishing for only two more days. As he was opening my bedroom door, I said, “Father Archibald?”
He stopped. I couldn’t see his face because of the way the light was shining through the door. He stayed there a long time.
“I’ve said my prayers,” I said.
He backed away and closed the door.
In the kitchen the next morning he wouldn’t look at me. I felt light and giddy, not believing it could end so easily. Before I ate breakfast I closed my eyes and said grace out loud. I had hardly begun when I heard Uncle Josh’s chair scrape the floor as he pushed it back.
I opened my eyes. Mom was staring at me. From her expression I knew that she knew. I thought she’d say something then, but we ate breakfast in silence.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” she said.
She handed me my lunch bag and went up to her bedroom.
I use a recent picture of Uncle Josh that I raided from Mom’s album. I paste his face onto the body of Father Archibald and my face onto the boy. The montage looks real enough. Uncle Josh is smiling down at a younger version of me.
My period is vicious this month. I’ve got clots the size and texture of liver. I put one of them in a Ziploc bag. I put the picture and the bag in a hatbox. I tie it up with a bright red ribbon. I place it on the kitchen table and go upstairs to get a jacket. I think nothing of leaving it there because there’s no one else at home. The note inside the box reads, “It was yours so I killed it.”
“Yowtz!” Jimmy called out as he opened the front door. He came to my house while I was upstairs getting my jacket. He was going to surprise me and take me to the hot springs. I stopped at the top of the landing. Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen table with the present that I’d meant for Uncle Josh, looking at the note. Without seeing me, he closed the box, neatly folded the note, and walked out the door.
He wouldn’t take my calls. After two days, I went over to Jimmy’s house, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my temples. Michelle answered the door.
“Karaoke!” she said, smiling. Then she frowned. “He’s not here. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He got the job,” Michelle said.
My relief was so strong I almost passed out. “A job.”
“I know. I couldn’t believe it either. It’s hard to believe he’s going fishing, he’s so spoiled. I think he’ll last a week. Thanks for putting in a good word, anyways.” She kept talking, kept saying things about the boat.
My tongue stuck in my mouth. My feet felt like two slabs of stone. “So he’s on Queen of the North?”
“Of course, silly,” Michelle said. “We know you pulled strings. How else could Jimmy get on with your uncle?”
The lunchtime buzzer rings as I smash this girl’s face. Her front teeth crack. She screams, holding her mouth as blood spurts from her split lips. The other two twist my arms back and hold me still while the fourth one starts smacking my face, girl hits, movie hits. I aim a kick at her crotch. The kids around us cheer enthusiastically. She rams into me and I go down as someone else boots me in the kidneys.
I hide in the bushes near the docks and wait all night. Near sunrise, the crew starts to make their way to the boat. Uncle Josh arrives first, throwing his gear onto the deck, then dragging it inside the cabin. I see Jimmy carrying two heavy bags. As he walks down the gangplank, his footsteps make hollow thumping noises that echo off the mountains. The docks creak, seagulls circle overhead in the soft morning light, and the smell of the beach at low tide is carried on the breeze that ruffles the water. When the seiner’s engines start, Jimmy passes his bags to Uncle Josh, then unties the rope and casts off. Uncle Josh holds out his hand, Jimmy takes it and is pulled on board. The boat chugs out of the bay and rounds the point. I come out of the bushes and stand on the dock, watching the Queen of the North disappear.
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