Orphan Love

by Nadia Bozak

  Slava O’Right’s hairy old wrists I twisted and wrapped up tight with his belt. His hands were swollen and coloured yellow. Face and chest were yellow too. He mumbled something drunken, and I was close enough to smell his breath and the tongue in there was as yellow as his teeth always were, and I knew when he opened his eyes that the whites would be that colour too—bender-yellow. Had seen it before, like when I was a small kid back in Black Dew Seat and Bellyache and his buddies were always taking turns having skin like faded bruises, like sour corn. All the while I was strapping up Slava O’Right and trying not to breathe him in, his kid had its eyes on me. So my back, I kept it to the crib and then when Slava was tied to the headboard just as tight as his belt allowed, I stood there smoking one of the cigarettes from a pack I found on the crumpled-up bed. There was light coming through the window now, and the day looked like it would be a nice one. That light was what finally woke him up, and it was only when he opened his eyes that I remembered how much I’d come to hate him.

  “Bozak,” Slava barely said. “You’re a boy now.”

  Me, I said nothing to that. Pulled out the gun and I pointed it at his heart.

  “She left me,” he whispered. The paste in his mouth hurt his words. “She left, but she didn’t take the kid.”

  Silence, because I could think of nothing to say.

  “Nice gun,” he said. “Guess that makes you all grown up.”

  Slava was lying there, arms up over his head, and he was trying to remember how he got to be there, and also from where and when I’d come.

  “Give me a drink. Just a sip of something.”

  Over by the window the kid started squirming a bit, making a low sound.

  There was a quarter bottle of Turkey on the table by his bed.

  “Open wide,” I said, grabbing the bottle with my free hand. Holding it high, I poured it over Slava’s stubbled face. His tongue and lips went crazy trying to get under the stream of it. When the bottle was through, I tossed it onto the bed. Slava was wet now, head and hair and chest. Bedclothes too.

  “Thanks,” he said. “How’s about a fag?”

  With one hand I lit a smoke from the pack I’d found, and I put it between his lips. The smoke drifted up into his crusted eyes.

  He puffed, ashes falling on his boozy chin.

  “What the fuck happened to your fingernails?” The cigarette wagging about as he talked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You hear anything about Bellyache of late?”

  “Dead,” Slava said. “That gut-rot finally got him. Buried him in town, then some kids burned down the trailer.”

  “When?”

  “A month ago.”

  “Good. I’m glad he’s out of his goddamn misery.”

  Slava started coughing pretty hard, and the smoke fell from his mouth and rolled down his chest and it started burning his flesh so he started cursing and flailing, trying to get it off. It got lost in the sheets and then he forgot about it, and so did I.

  “So what the fuck do you want here, Bozak? Why don’t you just go? Just take whatever shit you want and then fuck off. What’re you thinking? Showing up out of the fucking blue like this, scaring a little baby? You have no manners or nothing—just a goddamn bastard of a Bozak.”

  Slava was hissing now. He was mad at being tied up, but didn’t want to say it.

  Grabbed the gun by the barrel, and I wound up and hit Slava O’Right pretty hard in the mouth.

  That made him worse, I guess, with the cursing and all, and in the crib the kid’s low sort of animal sounds got louder. Slava spat at me some of the blood from his mouth. So a face-full of foul O’Right blood I got, and Slava, he grinned and the red of the blood against the yellow of his teeth looked like bled-in, pissed-on snow.

  And then when I hit him again, one of his lips burst open and he was spitting blood all over, but I moved back enough I only caught a spray.

  The kid was really crying now, and it sounded almost like how a baby should.

  Slava was choking. His beaten mouth, wet, bleeding meat, and standing over him like I had a cock for him to suck, I looked down and I found in his puffed face those green marble eyes, those eyes like mine, like Vlad must have had and given us both.

  “Say you’re sorry, Slava. Say it and I’ll go.”

  Slava shook his head no. “You’re here in my house doing this—you should say sorry. You.”

  Blood on the pillow under his head. Blood on the sheets of the bed that were just now starting to smoulder from the cigarette that got lost in there, in all that muddle of blankets and butts and booze.

  The kid was really crying now and Slava started screaming for it to shut the fuck up, and then he screamed at me to get out and get away from his baby. “You little twat, you cunt, you man-fucking dyke, Bozak.”

  So then I grabbed the kid out of its crib and I shook it around a bit like Bellyache would, but that made the pair of them get crying even worse. Did what seemed natural and that was to poke the nub of Henry’s gun deep into that kid’s chapped-up mouth.

  So they both shut up then. We all did. Seeing his kid with a gun stuck in its mouth did something to Slava O’Right. And it also did something to me. Cradling that baby in my arms, it was suckling away at that gun like I’d given it a soother, a thumb, the tit of its long-lost mom. There was between us this sudden shudder of calm.

  On the bed Slava was crying like men cry. Dry and gasping, the worse crying on earth. “Don’t kill the kid. Not her kid. If I got the kid still, she’ll come back. Just don’t do anything to that kid, Bozak.”

  “Then say you’re sorry for me, and for Pickles too.”

  And Slava blubbered a bit more and the sheets were burning by then. Smoke was rising around Slava like he was floating on a misty lake.

  “Take the truck instead, but just don’t hurt the kid.”

  “You’re hopelessly hopeless, Slava O’Right. Just say you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry.”

  “For what, Slava O’Right? What’re you sorry for? Say it to me and say it to your baby too.”

  Slava’s crying was getting wetter. Becoming even less like a man’s.

  “Sorry for running down that Indian.”

  “What Indian?”

  “Pickles. Pickles the Indian.”

  “How do you know about that then?”

  “They found him there, buried by the road.”

  “OK. And what else are you sorry for?”

  “Sorry for fucking you too.”

  “Why Slava? Why?”

  “You, Bozak. Fucking you. You’re my sister.”

  “Half-sister, Slava. I’m only your goddamn half-sister. And if you ever get out of this here trailer alive, I know you won’t ever forget that I became 100 percent Bozak the minute Bellyache stole me back from Vlad. And whether it was any better to get bullied by that miserable man or by seven horny half-brothers, I can’t say now. But at least Bellyache tried to save me, and he left the private parts of me alone.”

  So that was it and that was all. Played it rough and Slava said to me what I came all that way to hear. And so I did what he wanted me to, and I didn’t kill the kid. But that meant not leaving the kid with its dad, for that trailer was a death trap. Instead, I did what Bellyache Bozak did not too long after I was born, and I said to Slava O’Right like Bellyache had probably said to Vlad, “I’m taking your goddamn kid with me, for this here’s the last baby Bozak.”

  And the kid’s dad said, “It ain’t a real Bozak.”

  “The shit me and this kid were born into is way thicker between the two of us than any kind of blood you say is inside the two of you. So fuck you.”

  Spit, just once, on the red and white and burning bed, and I left the taste of hate to burn up with those greasy old blankets.

  And then we went. Got the keys to Slava O’Right’s
supply truck and also I untied his hands from the bed, gun kept jammed in the kid’s mouth so Slava would keep his distance and also keep his head. But I just had to let Slava O’Right’s hands go free. The boozy bed was getting ready to burst into fire, and when it did he’d have some kind of choice in whether he lived or died, and if he died I’d have no blood under the nails to worry about. That was that. Left Slava O’Right blubbering in his bed and I backed out of the room and out of the trailer, and then outside and down the stoop I broke into a run, though it was an awkward one, what with holding onto both a baby and a gun. The truck was there, grill still all bashed in, back full of booze and smokes, and I got me and the kid into the cab and I strapped us into the driver’s seat. The kid on my lap, its body limp and cold, so I took off my jacket and wrapped it up tight and I gave it a rub too. And then I started the engine and went tearing down the flattened bush that was Slava O’Right’s driveway, and as I went, I glanced back over the shoulder and then into the rearview mirror and I saw my blood-splattered face and my hacked hair, and also I saw smoke filling Slava O’Right’s bedroom window. Left him to burn. Better off the kid’s left an orphan than become another goddamn O’Right.

  The kid was quiet, though the going was rough, and it had got nothing in his mouth to suck on, the gun shoved down between the seats so that I could use both my hands on the wheel. That baby, I thought, must be a boy, or at least I wanted it to be. And though we had all our lives before us, already it had given me more than I’d ever had before, and that was something to worry over and think about apart from me, myself, my own and only skin. And that was great and that was good because even with the likes of Dave Bashed-up-Boat on the horizon, LA’s a long drive when you’ve got nothing but yourself to think about.

  So me and that little old baby, we broke through the bush and we hit road, and when we pulled out onto the highway, we paused there long enough to find the sun in the sky, and then, together, in that direction, we went.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Central Park in Spring, 1969.

  Los Angeles, California. Summer, 1989.

  WHERE DO WE GO NOW? ALREADY CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE WE’VE BEEN. SOMETHING LIKE 3,000 miles, seven days, too many Motels 6, bottles of booze, and breast milk, and we cross the border between Arizona and California.

  Coming up to Los Angeles we take the freeway west, circle around the city, and though the roads are fast and full and almost floating, we do well to follow the signs and get the truck off the freeway and into Hollywood, and we can’t believe how good it feels to be west instead of east, south and not north, and on the edge of the ocean besides. Eyes, they squint. Blink at sunny metal and hot-topped streets, and there are flower bushes blooming along the sidewalks and palm trees too, and back in Black Dew Seat likely the lakes will still be frozen.

  Kim’s blueberry eyes are not sad when I say we’ll have to split, for the monument of the moment that is the rush and crush of where we are makes all sentiment evaporate, dry up, disappear. Before Kim gets out she kisses the baby, hugs me close. Give her half the money that’s left, and wish her good luck. Do not look back after driving off. Maybe we’ll see her again sometime, likely, though, we will not.

  The kid and me, alone again. Strangeness shed, disguise discarded somewhere back there on the road, I feel like myself now for maybe the first time since I can ever really remember. All we need now is a burger, a bath, a way to find that Mexican–Indian we’re after, the one still known to me as Dave Bashed-up-Boat. And when we find him, we’ll say it’s not just one Bozak that you’re getting back, but two. And that makes three of us, and we’re all getting something now other than revenge: getting over it, over shit, and that means, really and truly, finally and forever, getting away and being gone.

  Pull into Beef Baron, the first burger joint we eye. The truck is too wide for the drive-through lane, so I park and take the kid and walk right up to the take-out window, not liking the idea of going inside. Not yet. Not with the boots I have on. Filthy jeans and sweaty tee. The blood that’s shot through my eyes. No, I’d rather stay out in the sun and the open and the air. Carrying the kid on the hip, we order burgers and fries, Coke and milk, extra apple pies, hot and sweet and greasy.

  After devouring my meal, I help the kid with the patty and pickles and soft, warm fries. Eat one of the pies. The others I pack back into the paper bag. Bring them along for later. Sitting quiet. It’s hot in the truck, parked as we are in the full sun. Have a smoke. Fill out the last postcard, the one of Central Park that I followed all the way to New York and on to California. This one I’ll hand deliver. Save the stamp for something else. Then I take a breath. Grab the hunting knife from the glove compartment, and jump down from the cab. Walk slowly around the body of the truck. Plates are muddied, dusted, blackened, letters and numbers are botched out. The battered grill still grins. Can go on like this no more: out of road, out of gas, out of places to go, get to, get away from. Out of the past.

  Each wheel of the supply truck I stab, jab with the sharp six-inch blade of my hunting knife. Each puncture takes from me a groan. Smoke in the mouth all the while, acid in the eye. When I’m finished, I stand back and watch as the tires begin to lose their air, the truck its soul. Hear it too, like wind in trees. Climbing back into the cab, grab the kid. We leave behind booze bottles, mixed tapes, road map, ball caps, smoke packs, banana peels, Hustler magazine, Coke cans, Memphis-area phone book, and the rest. Holding the kid, I stand and watch the truck as it sputters out and dies, descending and bending down into its soft, loose wheels. Falling to its knees, I see not a truck, but a battered and beaten boat, downsized, capsized. A sinking ship, and after some minutes, a sunk one. And we go. Leave that Ontario truck in the parking lot. Baby on hip, boots on feet, one stuffed with Henry’s gun, the other with Pickles’s knife, apple pies in paper bag, we turn south, toward the city centre, and walk off and walk on.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to heap thanks upon my agent, Sam Hiyate. His faith, good spirits and outstanding patience allowed me to turn this book from raw to real. Leah Fairbank is my lucky star, I think. Her happy determination and keen insights gave me the guts to aim high and then higher; thank you for your care and energy. Anne Seiwerath contributed an essential layer to the evolution of this book, then fought hard to bring it to life, efforts for which I am grateful. Andre Caric contributed valuably, generously. My editor, Janie Yoon, is truly a tiger. A marvel to work with, her instincts are sharp, vision bright, brave, and focused. For all the faith you have had in me, I offer tremendous thanks to Janie and the kind people at Key Porter Books. Thanks to Brian Beaton for sharing with me Messy Divorce and other beautiful bits. Thanks to Brian also for overseeing the New York chapters and for the good fortune of his friendship. Many thanks to my friends and wonderfully supportive teachers at the University of Toronto, but especially to Aphrodite Gardner who gave me the confidence to balance both worlds. To the Roy Family: I am forever grateful for the kindness, care and boundless hospitality you have shown me and my family over the years. Thanks to Graeme Wilson for caring about this book and for sharing his incisive humour and shrewd insights. Matt Pollack: thanks for listening and suggestions. Long ago but not forgotten, Charles Picco was a source of support that meant a lot to me. Thank you to Michelle Lundy my amazing friend, always a mystery and an inspiration. She’s got some big balls and, best of all, a way with swear words that exceeds the poetic. Without the influence of her voice this book would be much diminished. For hereby sharing what it might mean to be a Bozak, thanks are extended to my father, brother, and Uncle Don. Heather Macfarlane, always there for me, you are so kind and strong and patient. Thanks to Sarah Mather and Lila Graeme for many years of support and friendship. But beyond thanks is my beloved mom, Dawn: your many quiet sacrifices gave me heart and so this dream, this book, a spine.

  Read on for a preview of the

  second book in Nadia Bozak’s

  Border
trilogy

  BAEZ

  Baez is going to die today. The smell is like expiring sky, or a wrung-neck rabbit left too long in the sun. And also like the smell of Old Blue when, lying there in the yellow desert, palms up and swollen, her breaths had taken longer and longer to come.

  That was two springs ago.

  When Baez found her, Old Blue was tramping on towards the high blue mountain, arms dangling and eyes down on her shoes. Baez barked just once. Old Blue turned, shading her eyes and squinting. My girl, my girl, Old Blue kept saying, as Baez came running up. Baez had licked the dust and salt from Old Blue’s face and Old Blue rubbed the sore part of Baez’s neck where once her collar had been buckled. Then they went on together, Baez running ahead, circling back, nipping Old Blue’s ankle bones. The day got too hot and Old Blue got too slow. At a narrow wash, Old Blue fell to the ground, rolling into the shadow of a skinny old mesquite. Her eyes closed. Her chest was slow to rise. Baez smelled that Old Blue was dying. Baez started to dig a hole.

  She pawed at the hard, tough desert, scattering the top crust back between her legs. The crumble of dirt rained down in a steady spray. Ants circled in, sucking her saliva drips before they dried. Pent-up heat escaped from the dug earth and the ants gave way to termites, a brown, nuttier smell. Behind her, Old Blue called girl, girl, girl. And then nothing for a long time.

  Now that dying smell comes from inside Baez. She licks it — ch-ch-ch — going deep, down in the roots of her grainy coat. She rolls onto her side to get at the ribs, bald and raw, throwing out her tongue and raking it back in. She might lick herself into a puddle of teeth, of bone, of tail, of fur. But at least the smell would be gone and, at last, so would she.

  She is all alone in her pen. Except there is a tree. The leaves, brittle, waterless lace, drip with greying shadow. There are no other trees on this rough, rocky hillside — some man or boy must have planted this one, chiding the desert. And yet it lives. There is a cactus too. It is thick and grey and grows on the other side of the high chain-link fencing that squares Baez in. An owl lives inside the cactus trunk. It disappeared into its hole just as the moon was falling slowly away.