Just Pretending

by Lisa Bird-Wilson

  A tiny brown frog jumps across the stream. It would ordinarily be perfectly camouflaged by the rotting leaves, but now its little hind legs have missed the bank and splashed into the water. I reach across and scoop it into my hand, where I feel its frantic struggle. Cupping my other hand over it, I slowly open my palms. The frog jumps, and I clamp my hand down again. Soon it tires and lies quiet. I open my hands to see its moist brown sides heaving; its delicate feet tickle my hand. Then it jumps unexpectedly into the bushes and is gone.

  “Ayekis,” I say to my friends.

  “What?” asks the boy.

  “That’s Ayekis the frog. My kok…gramma told me a story about him. Lots of times.”

  “What’s the story?” asks the girl eagerly.

  “She told me you’re not supposed to tell the stories in the summer. Stories are for the winter. I can’t remember why.”

  “Please tell us,” she begs. Her freckles, dashed across her nose, are dotted with sunlight, reminding me of how some piebald horses look.

  “Well, I’ll just tell you a bit,” I say, feeling guilty. No one has to know, I think. I dip my hand into the running water of the stream and feel its coolness. I try to remember the Ayekis story my Kokum has told me forever, wishing I had listened more carefully.

  “Once, Ayekis the frog lived on the banks of a river,” I start. “He had short, stubby legs at that time. And he had a beautiful voice. He sang songs every night and Wesakechak would hear him singing. Wesakechak would send tasty flies to Ayekis as a way to thank him for his singing.”

  “Who?” the girl interrupts.

  “Shhh!” the boy says, smacking her in the arm.

  “Wesakechak is someone who lives across the river,” I say. “He’s kind of – magic.” That’s lame, but I don’t really know how to describe Wesakechak to someone who’s never heard of him.

  “Then what?”

  “Then one day, Ayekis decides he wants to meet Wesakechak. But he can’t get across the river because he can’t swim. Did I tell you he had short legs back then?” Two red heads nod.

  “Anyway, so Ayekis asks a bird, I can’t remember what kind, to help him. He tells the bird he wants to send a present to Wesakechak. He makes a package and he fills it full of kinikenik.” Before they can ask, I say, “Kinikenik is a kind of Indian tobacco.”

  As I’m talking, we all watch the trickling stream. Down here in the shade, it’s like a different world. Suddenly, another little frog hops on the bank close to us. The boy reaches out and places his hand over it. He scoops it up and holds it cupped in his two hands. Once the little frog calms down and we’ve all had a look, the girl asks, “Can I hold it?”

  Reluctantly, the boy holds out his hands, offering the frog, “You better not let it go.”

  The girl sits perfectly still with the frog and whispers, “Ayekis” They both look at me.

  “Okay, so Ayekis makes up this package of kinikenik, but he leaves a little extra space in the package. Just before the bird comes to pick it up, Ayekis crawls inside and pulls the flap shut. The bird comes and picks up the package and is surprised how heavy it is. As the bird flies over the water, Ayekis starts to slip. Just before they reach the other side of the river Ayekis falls out of the package. He’s falling and falling toward the water. No, wait. He’s falling toward the rocks at the edge of the water. That’s it.” I have the feeling I’m not telling this completely right.

  “Wesakechak sees that his friend’s going to be killed if he hits the rocks, so he sends some magic out, and at the last minute Ayekis gets snagged in a tree branch at the edge of the river, which saves him from hitting the rocks. He’s hanging there upside down by his feet. He squirms and wiggles but he can’t get his feet free. He hangs there for such a long time that his legs start to stretch. They get longer and longer until he’s almost touching the water. Finally, the branch lets go and Ayekis slips into the water without getting hurt.

  “After that day, Ayekis’s legs were stretched really long, which made him feel embarrassed and shy. So he hid from everyone and hardly ever came out of the water. That’s why frogs are the way they are today.”

  I look at their intent faces and am just about to say, The end, when I hear, “That’s a real sweet story, chief brown streak. Tell us another,” and Kyle jumps over the side of the shelter, landing hard in the dirt. The girl tries to hide behind her brother. “What’re you doing here, telling your little gay stories with your new girl friends?” Kyle turns to look at the red-haired kids. “Lemme see the frog,” he demands. The girl simply holds out her cupped hands. Roughly, Kyle takes the animal.

  The frog hops in Kyle’s hands as he tries to get a look at it. When he cracks them open, the little frog tries to jump through the narrow opening. Kyle clamps his hands together and barely catches the animal by its hind feet. He closes one fist around the frog’s legs and lets it dangle upside down from his hand.

  “Quit it,” I say.

  “What’s the matter, little baby? Are you scared I’ll hurt your stupid frog?”

  “If it’s stupid, then you must be a retard.” I don’t care if he beats me to a pulp. I yell, “Put it down, you’re scaring it with your ugly face.”

  Kyle, still dangling the frog in one hand, fumbles in his jacket pocket with the other. “Oh? You wanna see me scare it?” He pulls out a wooden match.

  “Quit it,” I say.

  Kyle flicks his thumbnail over the match head and it flares to life. He holds it up in front of the frog. The frog squirms.

  The girl starts to cry and I can’t help but stare. She makes snivelly noises and cries in a way that doesn’t make you feel sorry for her at all, like crying should. Instead, it sort of makes you want to do something really mean like give her a lighter-burn pinch. I can tell Kyle’s thinking the same thing by the way he looks at her and smiles, shark-like.

  The frog is frantic as Kyle pokes the flame at its writhing body. I lunge at Kyle and shove him hard. Kyle’s solid, but he’s taken by surprise, and while he’s distracted, the flame from the match touches his fingertips.

  “Shit!” He drops the match, shaking his hand. He yells something at me, but I don’t understand it. Then Kyle turns to the red-haired girl. She starts to back away but he reaches out and grabs her by the arm.

  She doesn’t even try to snatch her arm away like most people would. She just starts to twist and squirm, rotating her arm around in his hand, leaving red marks on her flesh where his hand is rubbing her skin. She makes feeble attempts to pry his fingers off her arm as if she doesn’t really expect to get away, as if she is just going through the motions – as if she believes she should take her punishment, whatever it is.

  Kyle holds on to her arm because he wants her to stay, to see what he’ll do next, because it’s for her that he does it. Because she has it coming. He drops her arm and with the frog still clutched in his hand, he jumps awkwardly onto the ledge that forms the partial wall of the cooking shelter. He looks down at us and then, all at once, he raises his hand with the frog high above his head.

  He brings his arm down with all his force, his body bending at the waist, as he flings the little brown frog onto the cement floor of the cooking shelter.

  The girl’s face collapses and turns a dangerous shade of red, shiny with mucous and wet. The boy stands frozen, his lips hanging open. Then he grabs his sister’s hand and runs. I listen to the sound of their sneakers on the gravel and the girl’s fading wail until all we are left with is the soft sound of the shuddering trees.

  Kyle, still standing on the ledge, seems stunned, as if the sudden quiet has broken a spell.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why’d you have to do that?”

  Kyle, quick to resume being Kyle, shrugs his shoulders with mock carelessness. “Why not?” he says, as he jumps down beside the mangled frog and walks away. I watch his retreating back long after he’s gone. Over my shoulder, the cool rolling stream mutters its secrets to no one in particular. The light through the trees begins to fade.


  delivery

  Ruth Ann looks out the bedroom window and registers the shifting light through the grey drizzle. She wonders if Ray will come home soon. She imagines him sitting in his car on the shoulder of the highway, just before the turn off to the rez, chain-smoking and watching their house. She knows it’s a test. He wants to see if she’ll try to escape.

  Her belly tightens and she rocks her hips in an effort to keep the contraction at bay. Ever since Ray pushed her down this morning, she’s felt the cramping with more and more urgency. When he pushed her, she had the feeling of witnessing the event from outside her body, from a distance, as if she were a spectator. She remembers flying across the bathroom in a backward spin, her arms spiralling to try to catch her balance. She was brought up short as her legs caught the edge of the bathtub and she fell in. Her lower back smashed against the back of the tub and her head struck hard against the wall. The impact moved through her body like a wave, through her belly, through the baby, and into the thin air of the room.

  The shock of the impact sharpened her senses and she searched her mind for the best move she could make. Her ears rang as she lay in the bathtub, perfectly still, except for placing her hands protectively over her belly. Experience told her not to show her pain, to put up the front that she wasn’t vulnerable. She looked up and met his eyes as he stood over her. He was breathing hard, waiting.

  “What are you doing?” she said, trying her best to keep her voice steady. She achieved a tone that seemed to imply this was a startling, singular event.

  His pupils were so dilated his irises were like black saucers, the surrounding whites tinged a sickly yellow. In the back of her mind, she registered the yellow, associated it with a character flaw rather than the ill health it likely represented.

  “You’re not going,” he said, then turned and walked out of the bathroom.

  She struggled to get out of the tub, to regain her feet, and followed him into the bedroom in time to see him take the car keys from her purse.

  “There.” He tucked the keys into the front pocket of his jeans. His voice was flat, his eyes daring. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Another contraction, stronger and sooner than the last one, jars her from her memory of the morning’s events. This is it, she thinks, active labour. She’s seen enough babies born to know the second baby comes a lot faster than the first. Her mother’s admonition to the women she midwifed: “You can’t wait with the second baby. As soon as those contractions are coming regularly, or your water breaks, you call for me.” She has no idea if Ray will be home in time to take her to the hospital.

  Ruth Ann decides to call Old Man, beg him to come and get her. To hell with Ray and his stupid games watching the house. Old Man isn’t afraid of Ray. In Ruth Ann’s mind, he isn’t afraid of anyone. She fumbles her cell phone out of her purse and picks out Old Man’s number. “Come,” she says just as a contraction builds to its crest. She clenches her jaw against it and says, through gritted teeth, “I need you.” She’s surprised by these words. She thought she was going to say “help” – I need help.

  Old Man doesn’t ask any questions. “Hang on,” he says, his voice taking on an edge, a you-can-count-on-me edge, purposely reassuring. The sort of macho thing she might ordinarily find irritating. “I’m coming to get you.”

  She breathes deeply in and out, focussed on riding the contraction to its end. She whimpers into the phone and hates herself for it.

  “Don’t panic,” he says before he hangs up.

  She drops the phone into her purse and thinks about Old Man, whom she’s known all her life – her oldest friend. Maybe her only friend. Old Man is only a nickname – he’s not old at all, same age as her. They went to boarding school together.

  Three months ago, Old Man returned to the community. He’d been away, in the city, trying to work. “Got tired of it,” he said when she asked why he came back. That was all, just tired of it. He didn’t elaborate.

  “What about you?” he asked then. “You doing okay?” And the tone of his voice combined with the look on his face told her he knew she wasn’t. But she couldn’t tell him how bad it was. Instead, she found ways – made excuses to see him, to be the same places he was. First, she volunteered to work the Tuesday bingo because his uncle ran the hall and she thought he might be there. When he didn’t show up the first two times, she decided to look in town.

  She parked to go to the grocery store further east on Main Street than was necessary. This was so she could walk past the café she knew he frequented. As she approached the café door, her chest tightened. She told herself she was going in just to use the washroom and grab a quick cup of coffee. She would pretend she wasn’t looking for him. The door jangled as she walked in and her face flushed. She was sure everyone was looking at her. She saw him at the counter and he smiled. “Howdy, stranger,” he said, and she sank into the seat beside him, faint with relief. That was how it started. He was someone to talk to like they were familiar friends and they quickly found their old connection, eventually getting bold enough to talk on the telephone in stolen moments. She knew it was risky. They both did. Old Man was the only person she trusted enough to tell about her plans to leave, her intention to go to her mother’s and have the baby without Ray.

  She leans on the bed to get through the next contraction. As it builds, she thinks about Ray, watching her, watching the house, and again has a thought she’s had often – a semi ramming his parked car from behind, leaving him in a twisted metal wreck on the highway. The police at the door to tell her the bad news. Fatal. He’s gone. She imagines their words. Or maybe a bar fight gone too far. He’s such a prick when he drinks, this isn’t hard to imagine – him picking a fight with the wrong person and getting beaten, maybe by a group of men, beaten to the ground and kicked again and again in the stomach, the ribs, the head. Maybe a call from the hospital to tell her he’s in a coma. On life support. Dead. These sorts of things happen. Would solve everything, in some ways. But each time she has wished something like this, she regrets it when he shows her another side – a shift that suggests he might come around – the times when he gets better for a while. Full of a hundred promises, bargains – earnest in his resolve, he seems, to her, sincere. And so, once again, she allows herself to be tugged forward by hope until it all comes crashing down anew, as it did this morning.

  When the pain subsides, she caresses her belly as she walks across the bedroom, opens the closet and takes out an old gym bag. She sets it on the bed and begins to pack, opening and closing her dresser drawers. She fills the bag with socks and underwear, leaving little room for the rest of her clothes. Then she returns most of the socks and underwear to the drawers and starts again.

  She leans her forearms on the dresser as another contraction builds to its peak, a pair of socks gripped in both hands like a prayer. At the end of the contraction, she hastily puts a few more items into the bag and closes it, stroking her belly, wishing for her labour to slow down – for a clear-headed moment.

  As the next strong contraction spikes and then passes, she feels an urgent need to pee. She closes the bathroom door, willing herself to stay alert to sounds of Ray entering the house. The door might as well be wide open for all the privacy or protection it gives, the useless lock long ago smashed by one strong kick with a heavy workboot. It’s remained broken – a reminder that he won’t be denied.

  As she stands from the toilet, a thump deep inside her body is the only warning before her water bursts in a cascade down her legs. Her legs begin to shake as she grabs the towels from the towel bar and sinks to her knees on the floor. She tries to soak up the clear fluid pouring from her body.

  Her chest tightens with renewed fear. After the last pregnancy, she read books about prolapsed cords and breaking water. She consulted endlessly with her mother, read as much as she could, paid special attention to those things that might go wrong. The last time, the first time, her baby had made it to full term. When he was born, he had
a smooth, round face accented by a tiny mouth that looked as though it was waiting for a kiss. Silky black hair cupped a round skull that fit in her palm like a baseball, and he had long-lashed eyes that never opened. It was Ray’s fault the baby was born still and lifeless. Her overdue placenta had been knocked from the wall of her uterus. Her baby had drowned.

  She stays on her hands and knees on the bathroom floor, afraid that any downward pressure of the baby’s head on the cord might cut off its oxygen. She’s convinced that, again, her baby is dying, right this moment, inside of her. She can’t think of what to do next. She leans her head against the edge of the tub while waves of contractions pound her body.

  When she feels the baby shift downward in the birth canal, she fights a surge of panic, certain the baby is dying. She rolls onto her back, half of her on the towels, the other half on the cold tile floor. Immediately, another contraction rocks her body and she closes her eyes and wills herself through it. She’s afraid to move because each time she does, the movement triggers another contraction. She gingerly stuffs another towel underneath her hips and takes quick, shallow breaths in an effort to stay focussed.

  She panics as another contraction rises. “Nooo,” she begs, out loud. She rides the crest of pain to its peak and eases down the other side. More contractions follow quickly and tears spring to her eyes as she finally gives in, bearing down to let sound escape from her throat like hot steam. Her work is purposeful and she listens intently to her body as it guides her.