In the distance, a faint streak of lightning flickered. A strong wind blew the flame sideways, flattening it out before it shot upright again. Eerie shadows floated across their faces.
“There’s some mountains closer to the other coast,” Paulussie continued. “They call that place Tuurngait. It means ‘spirits.’”
“Oh, I think I read about that,” interrupted Sam.
Yasmeen glowered at her.
“Probably in National Geographic. If memory serves me right, the good spirits heal sickness and help the hunters have a good hunt.” She looked to Paulussie for confirmation, but he was still wedged in a past memory. She paused a moment and carried on. “I heard they use special rituals to fight against the evil spirits and that the evil spirits can sometimes even possess humans.” She glanced around the circle, pleased with her contribution.
Paulussie waved impatiently for the bottle. “It was around there my best friend killed his first bear. They were rare at that time. He was only twelve.” The rain was hopping down in splotches.
“What about us, we don’t get any?” Jacqueline grumbled. She switched to her sultry voice and stuck out her chest. “C’mon, boys. Pass.”
“It’s going to pour any minute,” said Elliot. “Maybe it’s time to move this inside.”
Iris stood up and brushed the dirt off her jeans. “Good idea.”
The children tagged each other and ran for the tent, yelping and bounding like wolverines, their cries piercing the darkness. The others scrambled around gathering up the blankets and dishes, trying to beat the sky before it opened up, but it was already too late. Rain was washing through Yasmeen’s hair and eyelashes, draining down her collar and neck. She buried her head under an arm and made a run for it, drenched pant legs clinging to her skin.
In the girls’ tent, Sam and Iris rolled out their sleeping bags while Yasmeen towelled off, fingering the water out of her ears. Through the mouth of the tent she saw that Paulussie hadn’t moved at all. He was still outside in the veiling downpour, a solitary serene figure by the doused campfire, knees hugged into his chest. The weather seemed inconsequential to him, a minor inconvenience, just part of the routine. He sat perfectly still in the hammering rain, the empty bottle lying beside him.
Yasmeen lowered the tent flap. She peeled off her damp clothes and zipped herself into bed. It was so lushly dark she couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or closed. When her pupils adjusted she noticed Jacqueline wasn’t in her sleeping bag. She wondered whether she was off doing it in the boys’ tent with Tommy, the way she imagined it was in the old days when they humped each other in the igloo regardless of who was around.
She thought of the day they passed Tommy in the truck just after their arrival, the little stirring in her he had caused unwittingly, even before she saw his face. She recalled his tanned arm dangling casually over the side of the pickup, fingers curled around a half-smoked cigarette. Her knees weakened just thinking about it.
Hands had always been a thing with her. She felt they said something about the person they belonged to. That day in the truck—she’d noticed Tommy’s weren’t the fair, manicured hands of some of the men she had dated back home. They were the sort that built things out of nothing and were nicked and scarred and rough to the touch. They were the hands in her erotic dreams she never spoke of, not even to Morgan, her best friend, who, now that she was in graduate school doing her master’s in women’s studies, would have accused Yasmeen of having a retrograde gene.
Yasmeen had a soft spot for big, square work hands, gritty, earth-smelling hands, hands that could shove a woman without intending to. She wondered what Tommy’s felt like on Jacqueline’s body, whether they were rough or gentle and how they teased or terrified her. She imagined his hot intimate breath, his fingers twirling her hair. She thought of them stroking her thighs as her bosom swelled.
When Yasmeen opened her eyes it was morning. The air in the enclosed tent was cold and scaly, and rain was streaming down the canvas walls. Jacqueline was still missing.
She glanced over at Iris, snoring lightly, tortoise shell glasses folded by her head. Even asleep, her short, dull hair remained neatly parted and combed to the side. She had a bland, potato-coloured face with raisin lips that tapered to a point and barely moved when she spoke, and a furry birthmark by her ear in the shape of a leaf. There was a profound sadness about her, the sadness of a woman midway through life and alone, with no idea how she got there. Yasmeen pictured her with a cup of Red Rose tea and lemon, knitting Christmas scarves for a multitude of nieces and nephews who never sent out thank-you cards.
The tent pitched from side to side. She was suddenly aware of a kerfuffle outside, a scuffle of feet, a spate of voices. The surging wind carried their sounds erratically on its back, levels fluctuating.
“Knock knock, anyone home?” Elliot’s head appeared under the open tent flap. He ducked inside, rain-soaked. “Holy crap, it’s brutal out there. We might have to build an ark.”
Iris bolted upright, fully clothed from the night before. “What’s going on?” She breathed on her glasses and wiped them with a corner of her shirt before putting them on.
“Looks like the storm’s getting worse,” Yasmeen said.
Elliot shrugged off his coat and shook the water from his hair. Some of the spray landed on Yasmeen. “So? Can I enter your humble abode?”
She waved him in with forced enthusiasm.
He sat at the foot of Yasmeen’s sleeping bag, unconcerned with his lack of boundaries. “I’m guessing we’re stuck here ’til things let up.”
Aware of the voices, Sam began shifting around in her sleeping bag. She rolled over, dishevelled, and fingered the gunk from her eyes. Her pyjamas, an oversized plaid shirt, was pretty much what she wore every day regardless of the occasion. “Man, oh man,” she croaked. She sat up and slouched forward, adjusting her bra cups. “So what’s on the menu this morning?” She licked her fingers and smoothed down her slept-in hair. No matter what she did to tweak her appearance, she always had the look of a medieval barmaid.
“There’s still the leftover fish from yesterday.” Elliot winked.
“Oh, yum. Didn’t we bring any eggs?”
•
There were no eggs and the fish was long gone but they had the makings of a decent breakfast, a loaf of white bread, peanut butter, a dozen plastic packets of store-bought jam and a communal thermos of tea. The whole gang was crowded into the girls’ tent. Paulussie’s boys were horsing around, punching each other, knocking things over. Jacqueline was there too, looking perfectly refreshed, like she’d just had the sleep of her life. Yasmeen peered at Tommy and decided that yes, they had probably done it last night. Paulussie reviewed the game plan to sit tight. They weren’t going anywhere, not with the weather so vile.
After breakfast, Yasmeen and Iris loaded the dirty plates and cups from the previous night into the bucket they had used for the fish, and dashed outside to rinse them. Yasmeen was desperate to pee. With the rain so unforgiving she didn’t care that there wasn’t a tree or scrim of tall grass to hide behind. Squatting a few feet from the tent she released her muscles and let out a swift jet of ammonia-smelling urine. It steamed on contact with the muddy ground. She dabbed herself with a clump of moss and dropped it over her piddle. She couldn’t remember a time she had emptied so completely.
Elliot and Sam were amusing the children with rock- paper-scissors when she returned. After a while, Tommy and Paulussie got bored and left. Yasmeen lay on top of her sleeping bag, staring up at the sloped ceiling, watching the rain slither down. It was a spacious tent, well built, functional. It served its occupants well: no one was getting dripped on, no one appeared to be adversely affected by the inclement weather. She made up a song about the day, trying to make everything rhyme with rain. When she tired of that she invented finger games to play. She felt a twinge of arthritis in her joints, or maybe
not, maybe it was just a hyper-awareness of the complexity of her hands, their push against inertia. Things she had never noticed before. She wove a braid in her hair, wound it up into a bun and shook it loose again. She had no interest in what time it was. Unlike Jacqueline and Sam who needed outside stimulation, constantly running between the two tents, Yasmeen enjoyed the simplicity of doing nothing.
Elliot tried to be the life of the party. He rattled off some random facts about himself, like how dark chocolate made him sneeze and how because his body lacked certain trace minerals he had to add twenty drops of a special liquid to his morning glass of water in order not to get dehydrated. Information that drew zero empathy from his audience. He launched into a series of knock-knock jokes but by then no one was paying attention anymore.
Paulussie’s kids sprawled out on the floor and prepared to play the mouth-pull game, each with a finger hooked between his opponent’s cheek and teeth. One shouted go, and they instantly began pulling and stretching each other’s mouths until their faces went purple. Iris cupped her hands over her ears, trying to deflect the noise. She reached into her bag and produced a packable yellow rain poncho, which she swiftly unfolded. In a flash her head was through, and she was pulling the oversized cape, with its sharp creases, down over her body. She lifted the flap of the tent and disappeared into the rain.
“Shut the heck up, you two, or I’ll beat you myself!” Elliot bellowed over the ruckus. He waved a deck of cards at Yasmeen. “How about a game of Crazy Eights?”
“I suppose,” she said. “But I’m bloody freezing.” The accrued dampness in the tent made her desperate to pee again. Unable to face the rain, she hopped into her sleeping bag, praying its warmth would lessen the need.
“We could also do what these people do to keep warm,” he offered.
“Very funny,” she said.
Jimmy was ear-down on the floor, his brother’s finger still jammed in his mouth. Silasie was laughing so hard the corded veins in his neck stood out. Jimmy, stamping his heels into the ground, begged his mercy.
“Cut it out, boys!” shouted Elliot. “I mean it! Come play cards with us.”
The boys shrugged and rolled off the floor, their shirts cockeyed, their bare brown stomachs exposed. Jimmy was rubbing his jaw trying to bring sensation back, laughing and whimpering at the same time. Silasie picked a booger out of his nose, rolled it into a ball and flung it at the tent wall. It made a “tick” when it hit. He mumbled something to his brother and the two of them ran outside, forgetting to put on their coats, or not bothering to. Like it was only rain.
When only the two of them were left, Elliot unzipped Yasmeen’s sleeping bag and climbed in beside her. He didn’t really ask, he just did it, and she didn’t say not to. Staring at the narrow bridge of his nose she noticed his lashes were long and dark, like a woman’s. When she mentioned it, casually, he said you wouldn’t know it but these eyes have gone through the mill. He explained how he’d had an operation when he was three to uncross them and how five years of wearing Coke-bottle lenses restored his vision to a perfect 20/20. Nothing gets past these babies anymore, if you get what I mean.
He drew a Kit Kat bar from his pocket, broke off half and offered it to her. Instead of saying no thanks she told him, “Just so you know, this doesn’t change anything.”
•
The first guy she ever slept with was Nathan, an English major who dreamed of moving to New York City and becoming a writer like his idol, Frank O’Hara. When they started dating, Nathan confessed that what he loved most was the honeymoon phase of a relationship, the exciting, erotic period of discovery. He loved the idea of love, loved falling in love, loved the idea of desire, craved it, lusted after it, he just plain loved women. Yasmeen loved that he had chosen her. He said, “Call me N from now on.” He passed the Li Po test with flying colours.
Her Middle Eastern heritage was what he loved best about her, said it was intriguing and exotic even though she herself didn’t think so. Yasmeen fell for his undiluted passion. She daydreamed about a future with him, the two of them living in a more meaningful realm than the average couple with a car and a credit card. She promised to take any old job just to support him, his career was what mattered. Before him, she never thought of giving up her life for a guy. But this was different. He was an artist. If they made a go of it, it wouldn’t be an ordinary life.
He was moody but charming. He didn’t make the big effort her mother expected of men, properly courting her with flowers, paying her half of the restaurant bill, but when he had pocket money he bought her second-hand books from The Word, his favourite shop, and incessantly repeated that he would buy her the moon if he could.
Being with him was like standing at the precipice. All she wanted to do was jump. She was never sure if he would catch her, but that was part of the excitement. The first time they went to bed he took it slow. After he came she lay with him contentedly, the bed sheets tangled between her legs. He had taken her to electrifying orgasm. In the morning he fluffed her pillow and brought her his folder of poems to read. “Tell me what you honestly think,” he said. She didn’t imagine they would disappoint her.
They did. Imitative and derivative, his metaphors lacked wings. She thought of lying to protect his ego but decided instead to be forthright, thinking he would recognize just how much he needed her, how much his inspiration would be fuelled by her. It seemed like a good idea. She blurted it out. “O’Hara’s poems sound like he’s writing on the fly, like . . . like meditations in an emergency,” she said. “Yours sound, well, forced. You need to find your own voice.” Already she felt her calling—as his indispensable muse strumming her lyre over him. Feeding him his art. She settled into the role.
They continued having sex but nothing ever came close to the first time. He spent his days at the typewriter pecking at the keys and crumpling up paper. She took it as progress. The first time he couldn’t get it up, she reassured him that it was because he was too focused on his work, that if he loosened up things would pick up again. She said it didn’t matter anyway, it was only sex, their relationship was more solid than that. He mumbled and pushed her away.
The distance between them grew. Discouraged but determined, she stoked his ego, coming on to him voraciously, rocking her hips back and forth even though it felt like sandpaper between them. Once, he swelled momentarily but deflated before he could get any satisfaction. She told him she adored him but he turned away from her, toward the window, and complained that her rhythm was off.
Every night he had an excuse for going out. Whenever she asked if she should wait up he’d say, “Suit yourself, it’s your decision.” The dream of having something binding and sacred between them, marriage or otherwise, was pretty much over even before Mary showed up in their lives. Who knew where he found her—under what rock? One afternoon, Yasmeen let herself into his place and found the woman lying naked on their bed, his 35-mm camera perched on a tripod and aimed between her legs.
“It’s not what it looks like,” said Nathan.
It was like waking up from a catnap with a sudden jerk.
“I’m trying out ideas for the cover of my book.”
Mary rolled up and pulled the quilt around her shoulders. She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, glossy toenails like red Smarties. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in Yasmeen’s direction.
Yasmeen exercised enormous self-restraint, though some of her anger leaked out anyway. “You’re such a fucking cliché,” she said, rifling though her purse for his stupid key. Barely holding it together. The room smelled like cunt. She aimed for the woman but ended up cracking N’s expensive camera lens.
•
When Yasmeen woke, she was alone in the tent. The last thing she remembered was playing a hand of cards with Elliot. His fake Rolex was beside her on the floor. She wormed out of the sleeping bag and pulled on her boots.
The rain was cutting sideways, whipping the river into man-sized waves. Her boots made squelching noises as she dashed for the boys’ tent. When she arrived Jacqueline and the teachers were sitting passively on one side as Tommy and the boys rooted through the cooler, stuffing anything they could find into their mouths. The place was helter-skelter, things just dropped or left in a sticky gob wherever—plastic cups of half-drunk apple juice, empty jam packets, bread slices with half-moon bites taken out of them. Tommy had a jaw full of food and was laughing at nothing in particular. Paulussie was on his knees working to untangle the fishing net. A finger of ash hung from his cigarette.
“We should go out and turn over the boats,” he told Tommy. His waggling lips caused the ash to fall. He brushed it away with a quick swat. “Come here, my big man,” he called out to his eldest child.
Who knew what time it was or what was in store for them. Who knew how many millimetres of rain had fallen, or the numbers on the barometer, or the exact velocity of the wind outside. Who knew what Paulussie and Tommy knew about getting them out of there and back to safety.
Elliot made space for Yasmeen to sit. “Right about now my honey bucket seems like the height of luxury,” he whispered into her ear.
Ordinarily she would have agreed, but what was so great about her broken shower nozzle or the half-hearted water pressure in her taps? Plus it was Elliot saying it. She didn’t want to encourage him.
“I think we should start rationing,” he said. “Who knows how long we’ll be stuck out here in the M.O.N.”
“M.O.N?” she said.
“Middle of nowhere.”
His words made her smile. She wondered if her mother was channelling her thoughts through Elliot. “Could be we’re somehow related.”
He gave her a funny look, like what the hell was she trying to say?
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