Before I know it, I am halfway to Seattle, still no concern for a destination. Even more sudden, the Canadian border. I am shocked out of street-racer mode when I just happen to notice a sign that reads Peace Arch 1/2 mile. Shit, shit, shit! I slam on the brakes, but I am still going sixty when I hit the twenty-mile-per-hour zone, and I skid to a halt almost kissing the bumper of the last car on line.
A pretty blonde gives me the green light, and I pull up to her booth with a smile. "Hey, what’s up?" I say a little too loud.
She raises one eyebrow above the frame of her sunglasses. "Where are you headed?"
"I don’t know," I shrug.
She takes off her sunglasses. To get a better look at me? Or does she think her baby blues could possibly be intimidating? "You don’t know? How do you not know where you are going?"
A nervous giggle escapes with my explanation. "I needed to get away, so I just started driving. You know of anywhere? Where should I go?"
She ignores my questions and asks to see my travel documents.
"Huh," I say with appreciation for the likelihood I will be flipping a U-turn back into the states, "let me check and see if I have those." I reach down to retrieve my purse from the floorboard of the passenger side and unzip its black leather to a mess of papers, brochures, receipts, cosmetics, and the rest of the standard crap a girl carries around in her bag. I rifle through it all feverishly. Just believe. All you have to do is believe, and it will be there. But doubt is still stronger. My face grows hot, and a few beads of sweat start to form above my lip and in my eyebrows.
"Ma’am, if you do not have your travel documents, you cannot cross the Canadian border."
"I know, but I think I might have them. Just give me a second." Spastic, I look up at her with puppy-dog eyes and pout, "It’s a big purse."
"Ma’am, you need to be prepared when you reach the border. I am going to have to ask you to turn around through that way." She points at the shameful U-turn. "If you like, you can park in the US and look for your documents for as long as you like."
Then, a miracle; in the nick of time, my fingers graze the slick little booklet, and I pull my passport from the mess. "Here it is!" I yip and bounce in excitement.
"So, where are you from?" she asks, taking the passport from me with guarded suspicion.
"Salem, Oregon."
"That’s a pretty long drive, isn’t it?"
I shrug, "I didn’t notice."
"I’d say it’s a pretty long drive for someone who doesn’t know where they are going." She mutters this more than she says it to me. I frown at the thought that she will send me back, but she does not see it because she is too busy reading whatever the computer has to say about me. She spends a long time reading, and I wonder what it could possibly say in there: blood type, political affiliations, college transcript, protests attended, the MIP charge from when I got caught with cigarettes at twelve? It would be nice to know on what she is basing the cost-benefit analysis of letting me into her homeland. I imagine a giant database with every piece of conceivable intelligence encoded in it: my favorite color, what I ate for breakfast yesterday, bra size, maybe even sexual conquests. "So, what do you do for work back in Salem, Oregon?" she asks without taking her eyes off of the screen.
Might as well tell the truth, embarrassing as it should be, instead of being caught in a lie. So I tell her about my unemployment status, and she wants to know how I plan to support myself while in Canada. "Oh, that’s easy," I reply, reaching into my back pocket for a thick wad of twenty-dollar bills. "My girlfriend gave me some money." Well, it is sort of true anyway.
"How much do you have there?"
I flip through the bills. "Oh, about three hundred dollars."
"That isn’t very much," she says. "How long do you plan to stay?"
"Dunno," I shrug. "Until I run out of money?"
She stares at me a few moments, that tough, unamused border guard expression on her face, and then steps out of her booth. She peers into the passenger side of my car and then the backseat. "Is your luggage in the back?"
I shake my head no. "Told you, I left at the spur of the moment; I don’t have any luggage."
That does it. She points to a parking stall off on the left next to the main building. "I’m going to need you to pull up right there. Leave your keys in the ignition and your cell phone on the seat. An officer will meet you by your vehicle."
An hour later, after my car’s every nook and cranny has been violated by a team of border guards, I am back on the highway. There is something terribly freeing about the highway that stretches north from the border. Perhaps it is as simple as having left the confines of the nation that owns me, though more likely it has something to do with my new experience of the world. Just as every cloud has a silver lining, having my car searched—though nerve racking—served as an important catharsis. The last of the paranoia drains away and makes room for the indomitable part of me to take over. All thoughts of Rose and her recent revelations are gone, pushed out of sight and out of mind.
The outskirts of Vancouver engulf the landscape. I slow down to take it all in. The buildings are tall, the population density formidable for the suburbs. Provincial Route 99 becomes Oak Street. Traffic is thick and aggressive. I follow the signs to downtown, bumper-to-bumper the entire way. Bikes weave in and out between cars, and pedestrians cross the streets in hordes. The nostalgia of low-tech, flickering billboards makes me smile. I cruise around for a while before pulling into a parking garage off of Robson. I am not much of a shopper, but here on a street world famous for its array of name brand shops and quirky boutiques, well, why not do some shopping while I am here? Maybe because my debit card is linked to an empty account, and with only three hundred dollars to my name, I cannot buy much. But I could always shoplift . . . My heart races and my palms start to sweat at the mere thought of it. The last time I did such a thing I was sixteen and scared straight when I almost got caught shoving permanent markers up my sleeve. But now, what do I really have to lose?
The late-afternoon sun shines through the buildings, mirrored by some, swallowed by others. I head into its welcoming bay breeze with a bounce in my step and a determination in my being that demands gratification. I will push the limits and do stupid shit because I can. I will do stupid shit because of this intimacy with my own worthlessness and self-importance, because I know that everything and nothing matters, because the world has fallen down around me, and in turn, I want to show it the way to hell.
A busy shop on the corner makes for an easy target. I make my stealthy exit, a pair of jeans and silk camisole under my arm, in front of a gaggle of plastic girls loaded to the hilt with bag after bag of retail therapy. They giggle and stop to find the source of the alarm while I make off with my spoils in a quiet, invisible hurry.
Propelled by the thrill of rebellion, I walk aimlessly until hunger rumbles in my belly and I slip into a ramen cafe and order a few pieces of Inari and a bowl of Udon noodles from a window seat by the door. It is not my original intention to skip out on the bill, but when the waitress leaves the floor, something pulls me out the exit, the unpaid bill on the table.
Concepts of space and time become meaningless as I wander countless city streets for hours on end, in a daze and yet hyper aware, towards a very specific purpose that is nonetheless still an intangible mystery. Or maybe I just stroll down the block for a few minutes until restaurants and retail shops give way to the sea wall, and sometime after that, there is a very small body of water that glows with neon green brilliance too bright to be real. Ducks splash and dive for insects in the neon water. They look normal—brown and white and black and green, nothing special—and I do not know if what I am seeing is the result of this new enlightened state or a fluke of nature.
I follow the dirt path along the water, and it leads to a viewing deck on the edge of a much larger and normal steely-blue lagoon. There are no walls or rails around the deck, so I sit cross-legged at the edge. Without the burden of thou
ght, tranquil breath flows free, and all there is right now is this seat from which to stare at the world that moves with a thousand unseen energies even as it stays perfectly still. A swan parades by, proud, haughty. What does he mean to say? Why is he here, right here, right now? Beside him, there is a rock jutting out from the water, and on top of that rock, a turtle basks in the last of the afternoon sun. The contrast almost startles me—the stark difference between the camouflaged turtle, safely hidden in its environment, and the pageantry of the swan. My vision flickers, and for a split second, it all appears in the negative, like the film that held our cherished photographs before the days of digital. The high-rises of the city stretch out above the greenery, and as I look out at the skyline hoping to get my bearings just a little, it happens again, the panorama as a negative.
It takes conscious effort not to think about it, to resolve to just wait and see, watch what happens. When the time feels right, however long that is, I rise and continue along the path. It meanders about, splitting into tens of other trails that climb and traipse through the thousand acres of park. I hike through the daylight and into night.
The dark, dusty trail is lined on each side with evergreens that reach to the sky and block out most of the moonlight. I should be scared. The primal part of my brain should be abuzz with fear at what kind of wild animals may lurk among the trees and even more so at what kind of people. A park as large as this in a city as big as this one makes an ideal place for homeless people to sleep and criminals to congregate. My mind conjures up stories about Central Park after dark, and adrenaline should race through my veins; my heart should pound in my chest. It should, but it does not. Instead, I feel oddly at peace and even optimistic. There is a lioness in my chest, alert and on the prowl, ready for any excuse to spill blood; stalking kilometer after kilometer, she dares the woods to send something her way. Like the night Angela and I went to Silver Falls, there is no need to see. It all sounds crazy of course, but all the signs point to me being crazy after all.
All that talk about bi-polar, maybe it was not just a game after all. The woman I had thought to be my mother for so long had in fact given me fair warning. My mind wanders back to the ghost that has haunted me ever since.
You’re going to end up in a mental hospital someday.
I chuckle at the irony. Her wish just might come true after all.
Of course, she was just taking after her own mother like I am taking after mine. Grandma Velma may not have been aware of it at the time, but she ensured Rose’s destruction. She dug the hole of psychosis, and when the right events collided, she took advantage of her weakness and pushed Rose in. While Darla did not abuse me in such an extreme way, even when I was a little girl, I suspected that she resented me. The way she treated me, I wonder why she took me in to begin with. Clearly she regretted her decision, probably from the very beginning. I was not so cute when she had to get a babysitter so she could go out or when she had to give up designer jeans to buy my clothes. Knowing her the way I do, she probably overestimated the financial benefit from adoption assistance and underestimated how much work it is to raise a child. Having Rose move in must have been some misguided attempt to make both situations easier on herself. My undercover mother was a built-in nanny, and she brought her SSI check with her. In other words, Darla’s cost-benefit analysis was all sorts of fucked up. Of course, she would have no qualms about shopping high-end boutiques and travelling to distant locales while I went without a school lunch the last half of the month. It is all clear now; now I know why I always felt deep down that she hated me. My memory burns at the lip service she so often paid to her concern over Rose being a suitable caretaker while she half-assedly pretended her Louis Vuitton came used.
You’re going to end up in a mental hospital someday.
Too many thoughts. I shake them from my head and follow the trail as it turns to cement and climbs over the highway that races towards North Vancouver. The cars zip by underneath, a sea of lights all on their way somewhere important. I linger above them, their roar comforting by way of familiarity. I walk under the moonlight, and my path continues to blur even while it sharpens, a long dive into my drunken-high sobriety. My entire state of mind is a conundrum, really. I would realize this if I looked at it objectively, but in craziness is freedom—freedom to ignore the conundrum and follow the path through the woods to whatever lesson it has to teach or key it has to give.
Eventually the trees thin and give way to the other side of the seawall. Soon there are yachts and fancy harbor-side restaurants. People who will spend more on their dinner than most people would for a full month’s rent sit outside under the stars and outdoor heaters and pretend to sip their aged red wine. It must be nice to live so well. I wonder how many of them got there through questionable business practices and which ones currently nurse nasty little oxycontin habits.
I travel on down countless city blocks. Traffic has cleared and most of the bars are empty. It is hard to believe that such a beautiful city sleeps so early. The further I walk, the more and more panhandlers and street kids bumming cigarettes there are. Before long, hunger pangs get to me again, and I pull another successful dine and dash at a brew pub. I escape down a sidewalk that turns to cobblestone, and a steam clock tells me this is Gastown.
And then the heroin district. I can tell by the smell of piss on the walls. A wrinkled young woman lies in a vestibule, wrapped in a ratty old sleeping bag, a faraway look on her face. Visions cloud my mind as I pass her: An evil stepfather and nowhere else to go, she has survived much longer than most. Her yellowed eyes look right at me; they pierce my soul, and a thousand painful memories assault me. If for nothing else, I drove all the way to Canada for this moment. In her stare, in the flood of relentless memories that she shares against both our wills, she does me two favors for which my soul is forever indebted: She restores my sense of empathy, and she teaches me how to harness another’s pain. The first has been missing so long, I barely recognize it anymore. The second will prove an invaluable tool.
I continue on, following the scent of stale urine. The streets are quiet, and there are few people out. Those who are live on the seedier side of life: a prostitute struts, an old man lurks in a doorway muttering to himself, another stands in front of a store, its metal gates long since locked for the night, and asks me if I would like to make any money. Then, a scrawny young man offers to sell me some shit. I tell the first to fuck off and assure myself I am too fucked up sober to consider what the second is selling. Then, just steps after turning down his wares, my body flushes with a fabulous fever, and this manic state is magnified into something even greater than serenity. I struggle to put my finger on it, to arrive at the perfect word. It is something like being in love but also something like being in lust; it is something like being high but also something like being in a trance; it is something like the throes of orgasm and something like the thrill of the chase. My thoughts are cloudy like I have chased a couple of Percocet with a bottle of champagne, and I am horny like a pussycat in heat for the very first time. It is a strange thing that is going on inside of me, that is for sure, so I leave this part of town before I can absorb too many of its dragons. I exit through the Chinatown arch and turn to admire the welcome lanterns in my retreat.
When I turn back around, I come face-to-face with a very bad man. He eyes me like a starved, broke-dick dog eyes a bloody steak. His voice is gruff as is his demand: "Give me your fucking purse, bitch. And if you scream, I’ll fucking kill you."
All that gangster shit with Julia and Angela and Daemon and that fucking crackhead from Las Vegas that hid in the porn shop bathroom over seventeen dollars, it all had a fucking purpose. Rage bubbles at the surface and puffs up my chest. How dare this guy mess with my vibe? How dare he think to make me his victim? A euphoric fury tumbles out of me, ecstasy at the opportunity to play the tough girl. It just feels right. Instead of cowering, instead of backing down in fear like he expects, I walk into him, force him to take a step back. N
o one can make me play defense right now, let alone this would be mugger. "What the fuck did you say to me?" My voice, too deep for my size, booms from my diaphragm.
His pupils flicker with surprise and doubt and shock and whatever other emotions that assault a would-be mugger when things go wrong. He does not repeat his request. Instead, he eyes me in silent suspicion.
He is small, an inch or so shorter than myself, so I push—a push to the chest forceful enough to say that I mean business. He stumbles back a few steps before he catches himself. "What the fuck did you say to me?" I repeat, stomping towards him. "What the fuck did you say?"
He tries to muster his will, tries to pick his balls up off the ground, and with faded confidence attempts his demand over again. "Give me your . . ."
Without warning, I pull my fist back and throw all of my body weight into his Adam’s apple. It does not feel like much of anything, as if my hand is swathed in bubble wrap, and I would not think I had even made contact if he were not laid out in the street, agasp for air, right before my very eyes. A swift kick to the face leaves him spitting out his teeth, though it does not feel like much of anything to me.
Some blocks west, the realization hits that my bed for the night, my car, is parked in some random garage somewhere, and I have no idea where that is relative to here. Ah, fuck it all anyways; I am not even tired, and my urges have grown stronger with each stride in my skin-tight jeans. A quick crotch check assures me that not only is my vagina wet, but the juices have soaked clear through my pants. My nipples tingle, and I weigh my options which are few considering all potential booty calls are seven hours away. Then I come across the bar that could be my salvation. A giant, plastic moose bust hangs from the roof, and a crowd of smokers lines the sidewalk underneath it. I order a Kokanee that will go to waste and take a slow stroll around the place in search of prey.
Jane. Page 31