When Bernice was in her early teens and Valene was thirty they shared space while Bernice went to that Christly place. Valene noticed, in the beginning, when she could notice, that it became harder and harder to coax her niece out of her shell. Stories had to be pulled from her. Family didn’t appear in stories except as bit characters. She often wondered if this was because Maggie had gone off again – no stopping in town to see her sister and daughter as she tried to make herself disappear, bit by bit. Even so, and every so often, the villains sounded vaguely familiar. Because she had been fighting her dual nature for most of her life, Valene assumed the worst – the worst being the worst thing she could imagine (having intimately experienced mental illness).
When she was just past the age where you can go braless (although, by Freda’s math, there is no such age), she took Bernice to bingo and a movie and was surprised when Bernice would not leave the truck for two hours. Coaxing, chiding and threatening did not move the girl. Only when Valene promised her movie popcorn and a chocolate bar did her niece leave the vehicle. After that, and it was kind of a blur for Valene as she entered the “bad days,” she seemed to remember her daughterniece leaving. The room, the house, her space, her mind – there was a period when all Valene saw was Bernice walking away. (That she, herself, had left her niece alone in an apartment resulting in her going to foster care is not something that Valene can think about. Then. It was too little. Now. It is too much.)
She remembers the last time she saw Bernice walking away. Val had been to the San to visit her, right after the spring ceremonies. Birdie was wrapped in bandages and stared at her blankly. She didn’t utter a word until she had turned around to go back to her room.
“Pimatisewin,” she whispered.
The look in her eyes was not what bothered Valene. After four years of living in Edmonton (under Edmonton, about Edmonton?), her niece had taken on a look that shook Valene: Bernice had the wariness and walk of a street person. Assured and confident with a whisper of scary. She wonders when that happened – was she wary before she ran to Edmonton? Was she cautious before that, with that white couple? Had she developed that look, most bothersome, when Valene was supposed to be on watch? When those Christly nuns tried to own her? Or, was it sometime earlier, at Loon, Bernice fighting for survival – as generations of Meetoos women had – from uncles? Valene feels like she is excavating a pain dig, watching a car crash in reverse.
Valene stares at Bernice hardsoftly. She is not resting. She is not in peace. But. She has most certainly left the building. The thought shakes her, but she has comfort in the fact that her daughterniece has not stirred, not moaned, not tensed any muscle in days. She hears Lola and Freda bickering from downstairs. It’s just sugar and flour for pete’s sake, what on earth could they find to argue about every day?
Looking at her watch and turning on the TV, she takes her leave from her Bernice and says a prayer to Creator for her. Remembering, she grabs the list of medicines, shakes her head and wanders downstairs to see how those skinny cronies are doing.
LOLA
Lola catches herself staring at Freddy again. Stops. Looks at what she is doing. She has been invoicing the Ramada for all of the fresh-baked goods they provided last week. Their regular baking company is on strike and Freda, Lola and Val have made a killing – and almost killed each other – preparing huge batches day and night for a convention in town.
Say whatcha want about their men, but their women are the hardest workers I’ve seen, she thinks, not even aware of who the they really is. When she talks about we and they, it is almost always in terms of men and women, and that the women who now live above her business most probably see her as “them” would never occur to her.
Valene comes down and puts the kettle on, asking if anyone else wants tea? All three do. Lola puts down her billing, Freda stops doing dishes and Val sets out cups for them as the water starts to boil. Lola has come to love this. Well, not love, you can’t love anything when The Kid is up there … doing whatever she is doing. But, she likes to sit with these two women (one her younger browner reflection and the other an inverted funhouse version of herself) and take them in. She has never seen so many Indians up close before and she is mostly surprised that they are pretty much like her. Well, they don’t talk much and they think a lot more, and they tend to communicate through some sort of shorthand that she can’t quite figure out. Otherwise? Just like her, she thinks.
“Anybody want a b-b-b-brownie?” she stutters, afraid of giving offence.
Val and Freda, who have never been called or considered themselves “brownies” in their lives, hide smiles. Then grins. And then, Freda breaks: “Fuck it. You old racist,” she says, squeezing Lola’s hand and laughing so hard that the table quivers. When Valene gives in to her own laughter, the table is bumping along with her big belly in a happy thump thump thump. Lola doesn’t understand and is just so relieved not to have been the asshole at the table, and quite affected by Freda’s touch, that she laughs along.
“Yes or no, brownies?”
“Yes, yes, Lola, please,” Valene says, gasping.
She walks to the backroom. Odd ducks, she thinks, laughing her quack-like laugh.
She thinks to herself that she should take those two out some night; maybe let Margo sit with The Kid. All of ‘em dressed in finery, just some broads leaving their trouble behind for a few hours.
Lola goes to a karaoke bar around the corner from the bakery once a month. With her pint-sized skintight clothes and her heartfelt delivery of Patsy Cline songs she has become something of a celebrity, in that nasty way that notoriety and contemptuous familiarity are sometimes celebrated. She always writes her name on twenty slips and when her name is called there are hoots and hollers from regulars and irregulars alike. Maybe it is her sheer blouse, perhaps it is her thigh-high skirt or her follow-me-and-fuck-me heels, but the overdressed and overly rambunctious woman is enjoying a sort of anti-popularity each time she goes there.
That a craggy old baker should be singing Patsy Cline in Gibsons, British Columbia, did not strike her as one bit odd. That she was there when one Mr. Pat John, television star, took the stage did not even give her pause. He looked bigger than she remembered. He was travelling with a unibrowed white friend and a seemingly ever-present blonde, accepting congratulations and apparent admiration for a career mostly forgotten. Lola knew something about Jesse that she did not know about herself: he was an oddity at the bar, something to break up the space between finishing one drink and ordering another. On this particular night she was sitting half on and off some no-account’s lap, earning free Harvey Wallbangers, when in walked Mr. Television Indian himself.
His obliging and obligatory blonde seemed uninterested in his stories. The less attention she paid, the larger his gestures became. He wanted to occupy all the space in the tiny lounge and it seemed he was uncomfortable in his skin. He had one hanger-on – Lola thinks that the guy probably used to be part of an entourage and that he looked a little embarrassed to be part of this nearly-anonymous-and-not-wanting-to-be threesome.
For a while she was oblivious because the no-account cheapskate sitting under her felt a score coming on and started to buy her drinks in earnest. She squirmed on no-account’s lap to keep him involved and then slurexcused herself to go to the washroom. On the way she met the blonde’s eyes, who rolled them – whether at being Jesse’s date, at the sight of a drunken oldish woman in a too-short spandex skirt and high-heeled red cowboy boots, or at their shared occupation that evening, Lola was unsure.
When she walked out of the bathroom she ran into entourage man. “Hey, is that the Beachcombers guy?” she half shouted over someone’s version of “Riders On the Storm.”
Obviously uncomfortable, Entourage Guy sidestepped her and his reply was muffled as he turned to take a request slip to the DJ booth. She followed him to the booth. “I didn’t hear ya,” she half yelled at him. “Is that him or not?” She passed the DJ her slip.
“Yeah, that’s him. Sti
ck around, he’s going to sing in a minute.” He walked away, suave in a cheap suit. Something about him yelled out hungry, but the starving can never see beyond their own craving.
She and the DJ looked at each other smugly. When he read her slip he said, “Hey, someone’s already singing this one, you’ll have to pick another one.”
“What? Nobody ever sings that one!” Lola said indignantly, coveting what she considers her song. She scribbled:
Anything by Reba McIntyre.
For effect, she adds:
ANYTHING!
Behind her, the opening chords to her song began. When she turned she saw that Pat John was about to sing the song she had selected. Angrily, she grabbed Pat John’s slip and put it in her pocket. It wasn’t until the next morning that she found it, crumpled and nearly illegible.
“What the hell?” she said, reading it.
Moose intestine
Oolichan grease
Chokecherry pits
Lola can hear those low murmurs coming from the storefront and she wonders if she should tell the story to Freda and Val. The Kid seemed to like that guy, though, and in a surge of gentleness for them she finds that she doesn’t want to tell them anything that reminds them of The Kid in a better state and decides not to bring them anything that costs them. And, they were having a nice time this morning, even if she didn’t know what was so funny. Lost in that thought, she burns her thumb on the brownies, cursing as she digs them out and plates them, heading to the storefront.
FREDA
Freda wipes the countertop in the restaurant with vinegar and water. The old bird has started making noises that she is too old to run the place herself and Freda is getting antsy in the attic apartment. So, they walk by each other all day, eat supper together and then pay Bernice and Valene a visit.
It was Lola who had pointed out that Bernice wore a different shirt each day. At first. She makes a mental note to ask Val if she is changing her. Bernice has lost so much weight that Freda and Lola went out and bought her some new tops, thinking that Bernice might want something that fit comfortably. Sometimes when Freda passes those clothes sitting on the tiny dresser, she harrumphs in Bernice’s general direction. Impatient with their tidiness, angry with their newness.
Now. They sit there. Washed but unused. Freda is scared to figure out when the shirt became the same shirt. When the San pants became the only pants. The tops are colourful and vivid, clothes Bernice would never choose herself. They are the types of shirts that a girl of eighteen should wear. Well, not Bernice or Auntie Val (who would not make her wear the new clothes), but certainly Lola and Freda at eighteen.
When Freda was girlish, she fancied herself a snappy dresser. Having seen the girls in Vancouver on the way to Gibsons, she knows she was not. It never bothered her before. Dressing provocatively on a budget had always garnered a certain type of attention, and Freda liked it. She saw Lola looking admiringly at a woman dressed in loose and well-cut clothes when they snuck off to the city to get supplies for the bakery one day. Lola caught her staring at the woman and Freda knew in that awkward moment that she had been dressing for a different kind of life, her whole life. Her prom dress (well, she didn’t actually graduate, but she did go to the prom with Winston Nighttraveller) was a pink confection. Maggie had started sewing it but became upset one night when she had to remove the gathers from the slippery fabric one too many times. Eventually, they took the dress to a seamstress in Grande Prairie who finished it two hours before the graduation ceremony. Freda remembers the dress. And sometimes, when she allows herself, she recalls Winston’s hand on the small of her back, shaking at their proximity. That was then. Before she met her first husband, Louis. Five years after she graduated from girl to woman. Louis used to like it when she dressed in heels and miniskirts. For five years she bent her back out of shape and wondered if her ass was hanging out every time she walked down the street. At first, he would whistle slowly and a lovely light came into his pale-blue eyes when he saw her walking towards him. Later, that lovely light metastasized into a fierce gleam as griefanger replaced tenderness.
Then came a year of sack dresses and stretchy pants as Louis regrouped and she hoped for the glimmer of that light and a smile not so tight again.
She still has the last note she sent to him, and then took back after he had read it and fallen asleep over too many beers at the kitchen table.
Louis,
Where have you gone? Who replaced you with this sad angry guy? I think you forget that she was my daughter, too. Do you remember, at the beginning when you told me you would never hurt me? Not loving me is hurting me too. Not looking at me and telling me I’m special is lying, too.
Where have you gone?
I am leaving.
Freddy
p.s. I want my money back.
When Freda buys lottery tickets, goes to bingo or plays poker she puts that note on the table and taps it four times before making any decision. Maybe she will win back that money that he took from her underwear drawer when he left. That money was their daughter’s. Money saved for a trip to Disneyland that she would never take. Money saved for a school she would never go to. Crinkled bills in a baggie, stashed away. Disease doesn’t care what plans you have, she thought later, you can have bags of money and your own ideas about what is going to happen. Doesn’t matter. Sickness has its own baggies that it leaves behind. A stash of rage. A freezer-size bag of unrelenting hurt, one of tears and a garbage bag of plans.
After she left, she went back to wearing miniskirts and stilettos for a while. Soon, her back was aching again and her ass dropped. That was the goddamn shame of it – as soon as she was feeling good enough to wear her cheap and cheery outfits, the bottom fell out.
Still, she wanted to wear those clothes – sheer, high-cut, low-cut, backless, sleeveless (what was left?) – she had wanted to wear them for herself. Not Winston. Not for any white guy. And then. She met Wes Wiebe. Who could have known when Freda fell, really tumbled, it would be for a Phil? She met him at a bar in Edmonton during the rodeo. Black hair and blue eyes, wow, there was something about that combination that did her in every time.
And that time. Oh Lord, sometimes she still gets dizzy just thinking about him. And the way he walked towards her. Asked her to dance and took her hand and led her to the already wet dance floor. Among the beer ruins they slipped and slid together and apart. Two-stepped to country rock. Waltzed to two-steps. Fumbled their clothes off in his old pickup and moved together and apart on horse blankets and Robin’s Doughnuts coffee cups.
Four weekends in a row they met and left the bar as soon as they saw each other. Four Fridays and four Saturdays they had near-drunken expressions on their faces as they looked at each other in shock in the glow of the dashboard. Sometimes she remembers the point where he was breathless and teary, and she responded in the same way, as fear and joy dripped from her mouth in a babble of affection plus. In later years, she will wonder if the baggie of her diseased love was the same as his, or if he actually felt those things. Whether she remembered it in a way that made her feel less shameful in what she gave him. Or, rather, gave away.
She worked at a gas station then, and as she remembers it, work became effortless. The clients less hostile. The demands less demanding. She began to listen to the radio and really heard and understood what all the love songs were about. Humming and sighing, she made her way through the week to sit impatiently and so patiently on a barstool at a seedy country bar in the industrial area of Edmonton. Anticipation battled expectation for supremacy in her belly. And each time, until the last time, she was rewarded with the glimmer of recognition, hope and appreciation in Wes Wiebe’s eyes.
Until the last time. After a double shift, a whirlwind of get-ready and a shot of rye to calm her nerves, she sat im/patiently at “their” spot. She had arrived two hours later than usual and was giddy to see the frustration and wanting on her man’s face. Glancing under her weekend eyelashes at the door, her hopes rose and f
ell each time she saw a black cowboy hat. Finally, her fear got the best of her and she started drinking to calm her jangly nerves. She thought about calling him and remembered their playful exchange of the weekend before when she had asked for his telephone number.
Her eyes sting with the sheer shame of it, but she tells herself it’s the vinegar she is using to clean the countertops and tells Lola she is heading outside for a smoke.
Her cheeks still burning, she remembers: “I don’t have a phone,” he teased her, and then kissed the thought from her head. She blushes again thinking of what he wrote on the paper with the pen she had forced on him:
Six pack of Pilsner
Bag of Cheezies
She knows it is stupid, but she kept that note, too. Carries it with her every day. Of course, she now knows with certainty the moment when she unlocked the gate and let her stupidity out. The liquor lubricated her brain, quite opposite of the effect she was hoping for, and her synapses made connections she had talked herself out of. Before. When he was with her. As she got drunker, her folly played out in her head.
“I’m too busy for a girlfriend.”
“I only come to town on weekends.”
“Tell me where you work, so I’ll always know where to find you.”
“We’ve got a good thing here, why ruin it with commitment?”
“I would love to end up with a girl just like you.”
“Don’t you have other friends who you can hang out with?”
“Maybe you could meet me outside the bar?”
“They’re not really my friends; don’t pay any attention to them.”
And when they said goodbye, always: “Nice knowin’ ya.”
She didn’t know, really didn’t understand his cruelty, until the Canadian Club clarified it completely.
That roughness in his mouth extended to his hands and she recognized now that her bruised breasts and scraped thighs were something more than passion. Less than passionate.
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