A staticky announcement came on, in French, then English, then in halting Inuktitut. She opened her eyes again, straining to make out the pilot’s message—the weather forecast, she assumed. She was right. Something about damp with flurries. The rest, except for happy holidays, was garbled. This far from Saqijuvik, the Inuktitut registered as something alien to her ears.
It was a smooth landing. Scattered applause filled the cabin. The aircraft droned along the runway, gradually decelerating until it lurched to a halt. Every light extinguished and a dark stillness saturated the plane. Moments later something beeped and everything switched on again.
“I guess this is it,” said Elliot, reaching into the overhead compartment for their carry-ons. “Someone meeting you?”
“Mother, probably.” She strapped on her knapsack and followed him down the aisle, waving goodbye to Sam and Iris, who were still gathering their belongings.
Inside the cavernous terminal, passengers wheeled squeaky baggage carts toward the rotating carousel to wait for their luggage while welcoming locals gathered on the other side of the gate, friends and relatives and weary children clutching balloons and teddy bears.
Detouring to the restroom to freshen up, her eyes fell on a tired-looking artificial tree with half its lights burnt out. She couldn’t get over how much she was missing Joanasi. At the mirror she searched for a tube of lip-gloss and ran it around her lips. By the time she emerged from the restroom, parka and snow pants draped over her arm, the crowd had thinned out.
Tarek greeted her with a cellophane-wrapped cone of flowers. He hugged her tight. “So, how ya doing, big sister?” he said, mussing up her hair. “You haven’t changed that much. Well, maybe a little skinnier.”
“Haven’t they been feeding you?” said her mother, pointedly. She held Yasmeen at arm’s length, looking her over. “And how come you smell so fishy?”
Yasmeen shrugged. She sniffed the hood of her parka but all she could smell was Joanasi’s hair.
They trooped through the parking lot, her mother arguing with Tarek over where they had left the car. Yasmeen rubbed the spot on her cheek where her mother most certainly had left a bright ring of lipstick. She sprawled out in the back seat with her knapsack as Tarek backed out and shifted into drive, gunning it to the front gate and out onto the highway, ignoring their mother’s advice to slow down and watch where he was going. Yasmeen closed her eyes. She had almost forgotten what it was like to live in her family. As for the city, she knew there would be an adjustment, anticipated it, but she didn’t expect it to feel so foreign, so garish, so loud and claustrophobic. So unfamiliar. What was familiar now was riding out toward the horizon and never hitting a tree or house, seeing all of space and time and every star in the sky without a single obstruction.
Tarek made a sharp turn and joined the parade of cars, grey with salt, getting onto the Jacques Cartier Bridge. The radio kept veering off the station into static, but neither he nor their mother made any effort to adjust it until she cried out, “My ears, you guys, don’t you hear that?”
“Okay, okay,” said Tarek, “don’t be so touchy.” Her mother ordered him to get cracking, Rose was waiting for them at their favourite barbecue joint, the place her father had always taken them for Sunday lunch. Yasmeen wished they could go straight home, but she knew her mother had the evening planned out and she didn’t want to spoil it for her. Tarek turned into the entrance and drove around looking for a parking spot while their mother warned him not to hit anybody.
Rose waved at them from an out-of-the-way booth already set with menus and four glasses of ice water. She jumped up and embraced Yasmeen. There were tears in her eyes. “So glad you’re home,” she said.
“Me too,” Yasmeen replied automatically. Children with greasy faces charged past them with crayons and half-eaten chicken legs, almost bowling them over. Yasmeen thought of dinnertime at Joanasi’s place, how much more natural their chaos seemed, the joyful cacophony of belching and farting, everyone just shoving the food into their mouths. When the waitress came, her mother ordered their usual, the same meal for everyone. Yasmeen picked at her soggy slaw and cardboard fries, but left half of it in her plate.
At home her mother cornered her in the bathroom wanting to catch up, but Yasmeen said the flight took everything out of her, maybe tomorrow. Her mother brought a set of fresh towels to her room and chirped, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,” the way she used to when Yasmeen was a child.
“You too,” she called back through the closed door.
The tree outside her window dragged its spiky branches along the pane like nails on a chalkboard. Yasmeen climbed into bed and closed her eyes. Lying there by herself she felt lonely and cold and alone. She slid her fingers underneath her nightshirt and imagined they were Joanasi’s. She thought of their last night together. After her bath, after he towelled every part of her dry, hair, face, breasts, thighs, he’d carried her into bed and tried to make love to her even though she was on her period. How adamant he was when she pushed him away, slightly disgusted by the idea. “I want to love all of you, every single part,” he insisted. “Mamartuuaq.” Then he went down and swallowed her menstrual blood as though it were the most natural thing to do. Afterwards he propped her head against his chest and asked her to tell him the worst thing she had ever done in her life. She thought it over, though it was hard to think clearly after what she’d just experienced. He raked his hands through her hair.
“Tell me,” he pleaded. “I won’t judge you.” He turned her around until she was looking straight at him.
“I don’t know, you might change your mind about me if I tell you,” she said. He touched the small depression at the base of her throat and promised that he never would, he loved her too much for that. She covered her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the expression on his face. He wrestled her hand away. She put it back and said, “I’ve never told anyone this. It’s sort of, well, cruel.”
“Come on,” he said, “Tell me.”
“Okay, okay, just give me a minute.” She told him it happened while she was doing a grade eight science project for bonus marks, training two hamsters to salivate to the sound of a bell the way Pavlov did, though she didn’t mention Pavlov because would Joanasi even know him?
“That’s not so bad,” he said when she was done. “You didn’t kill anybody.” Then she told him the other part, about how on the final day of the experiment when she went to check on the hamsters, she found one twitching in the corner, its pale BB eyes staring across the cage to where the other one was lying in a pool of blood, its entire head chewed away. She paused and waited for Joanasi’s reaction. When she didn’t get one she said, “Don’t you see, it was all my fault, Joanasi. I was responsible. I thought I could teach them to do what I wanted but they went crazy instead.”
•
Morgan put the latest Talking Heads album on. She placed a cone of incense on the underside of a jam jar lid, lit it, and rummaged through her purse for her stash. The day Morgan left for grad school her parents announced they were turning her bedroom into a den, but somehow they never got around to it and whenever she came home for the holidays, it was hers again, everything pretty much how she had left it.
Yasmeen was already into the wine when Morgan joined her, barefoot, on the bed. She rolled them a joint, jabbering on about her thesis, something about the role of women in mythology and an amazing professor she had met named Trish. “You’ve cut your hair short,” remarked Yasmeen.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going for the asymmetrical look. Trish likes it, what about you?” Yasmeen thought it made her look slightly masculine but she didn’t say so. She wondered if she’d also grown the hair under her arms, which would have been a big deal for Morgan. The two of them were always trying to look hot and hot girls took care not to have hairy pits. Hot girls shaved their legs and bikini lines and had clean, tweezed brows.
&n
bsp; Morgan ran the joint through her mouth so it would burn more slowly. She lit it and took a long haul before passing it to Yasmeen. Her voice went croaky as she tried to exhale and talk at the same time. She was saying what an ass her ex-boyfriend had been and how she and Trish were tired of men who couldn’t communicate properly. “Hey, remember the time I gave you Bear for your birthday?”
“My mother wanted to throttle you,” said Yasmeen. She was already feeling a buzz.
“Nope, she was too polite for that.”
“You’re right,” said Yasmeen. “She wanted to hire a hit man.” They both laughed.
“Gawd, it was just a book.”
“Not just any book. A book about a woman who fucks a bear.”
“I guess Samiyah the prude found it a little shocking.”
“Just a tad.”
Morgan played with the fringe of her bedspread. “So what’s all this with Joanasi?”
Yasmeen toked and handed back the joint. “Wasn’t it you who said the rules of life don’t apply when you’re elsewhere?”
“Nope, that was you, I believe. I said real living involves some genuine risk, but you still have to have a backup plan.”
“Well, I like my philosophy better.”
“I suppose these new rules mean fucking your brains out? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for casual fornication. What is he, some kind of Inuit fuck machine or something?”
Yasmeen took the joint from her. “It’s not really like that. Not exactly.” She inhaled and held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could before exhaling. She stared at her feet, remembering the hunting trip with Adamie and afterwards in the igloo when he massaged each of her toes, how it had opened her up to the idea of being with an Inuk.
“Well, what then?” said Morgan. She poured herself more of the red wine and held the glass to her cheek, peering closely at Yasmeen.
“Don’t look at me that way.”
“What way?” She took a thoughtful sip. “Holy shit, your letter, it’s true. You weren’t exaggerating.”
It wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for. Yasmeen knew she could explain everything if Morgan would just listen. She could tell her how sex with Joanasi wasn’t just sex, it left her feeling full, unlike the guys Morgan always talked about who missed the mark each time, getting her to the brink and then spoiling it with some off-putting grunt like I’m coming, come with me babe while they touched her in exactly the wrong place, taking her right out of the mood. Morgan would be jealous if she knew how it worked so naturally with Joanasi, how just the heat of his fingers made her wet. She wanted to tell Morgan everything, her desire to become his wife, his seamstress, the mother of a whole slew of his children. She wanted it all out in the open, how she would spend the rest of her life gutting and cleaning the animals he killed for their food, how she would cook and sew and tend to the house and not need anything of the outside world ever again. All of this was bubbling up inside of her but she remained silent, the dope and the fear of Morgan’s reaction having constricted her throat.
Morgan stubbed out the joint. She had a weird look in her eye when Yasmeen complained that the dope was making her feel shitty. A song called “Burning Down the House” was playing. Morgan rolled off the bed to examine a blackhead in the mirror like it was the most critical thing that needed doing while Yasmeen lay there almost puking, pretty sure she could hear Morgan saying loud and clear Have you lost your mind? and You said you’d wait on this. After a while she realized that Morgan wasn’t talking to her at all, she was actually on the phone with someone else, screaming over the music.
•
First thing on her agenda was the tattoo she wanted to get, Joanasi’s initials just above her shoulder blade, a Christmas present along with the new Mötley Crüe album she had promised him. She didn’t warn him ahead about the tattoo; the whole idea was for him to find it on her during a hot night of love and then just burst with total desire for her. She had it done in the seedier part of town, blinking with sex shops and peep shows and decrepit rooming houses crusted with the residue of their heyday. It hurt, but she survived. Afterwards she ducked into Sam the Record Man. She had zero interest in visiting the flashy department stores with their jumbled clothes racks, their bouffant-haired saleswomen waving smelly perfume swatches, their basement bins of holiday kitsch, yards of tinsel, metallic wreaths and garlands, jumbo candy canes and aerosol cans of fake snow.
Tender from the tattoo, she hurried home to wrap gifts and slice her mother’s desserts into dainty squares to lay out on platters lined with lace doilies. She and her sister dusted and vacuumed and tidied up while their brother sat with his feet up and a bowl of chips in his lap and criticized what they were doing. They scrubbed the toilets and polished the silverware. Just before the stores closed, her mother handed her a fifty-dollar bill for soft drinks and a large sack of ice for the freezer. She threw Yasmeen the car keys and said, “Get it washed and filled up with gas while you’re at it.” It was exhausting. She dropped into bed and fell into a deep sleep and when she woke again it was Christmas Day.
“Habibti!” her aunts cried in unison, making a big scene of hugging and kissing her. They arrived, as always, newly coiffed and streaked and accessorized in 18-karat gold, each with a Hermès scarf draped across her bosom. They brought hummus and desserts bandaged in tinfoil—sweets glazed with honey or powdered in flour and stuffed with dates, ghoraibee, maamoul, pistachio baklawa. They wanted to hear all about the snow (“That much? How on earth did you survive?”), polar bears (“God forbid, did you ever run into one?”) and raw meat (“Ya’Allah!).
“It’s a little like our kibbeh nayee,” Yasmeen explained, trying to reassure them.
Meanwhile her brother played the wandering waiter the way her father used to, pouring each of the uncles a stealthy shot of Arak, their traditional spirit of aniseed and grapes.
“Sahha!” said Uncle Ramzi as Tarek dropped an ice cube into his glass with a pair of silver tongs.
“Ya’Allah, salute,” echoed Uncle Boutros. The silver-haired men stood by the Christmas tree talking business as they savoured their drinks.
“How does it feel to be back among the living again?” said Uncle Ramzi, wearing the same plaid sweater he always wore, a little too tight across the stomach.
“Okay, I guess.”
“You guess? You should be ecstatic, my dear.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
He wanted to know how a tribe of “piss-poor people with grade school education” had the smarts to “finagle such a sweet land deal” from the government. “I don’t know much about that place, but I’ve seen a few of them downtown begging for money, real sad cases. They’re always three sheets to the wind, and if it weren’t for the fact that all they’re gonna do is go buy themselves another bottle, I’d be glad to help ’em out, you know?”
“It’s not their fault, Ramzi,” said Yasmeen’s mother. “It’s their constitution. They lack that whatchamacallit … the enzyme that breaks down the alcohol.”
“All I know,” he scoffed, “is that our parents worked hard when they came here from the old country. They didn’t just sit on their precious behinds waiting for a government handout.”
Yasmeen gritted her teeth and made a beeline for the tea wagon her mother used as a serving table. She passed out the cocktail napkins and circulated with a mezze dish of pickled turnips and spinach-filled fatayer.
The aunts shouted for her from her mother’s kitchen, the place where they always congregated to exchange the latest family gossip. Yasmeen recalled how happy she was when she was first allowed into their circle. She understood early on that the women held all the real power in their family; that the kitchen was the place where all the machinations and manipulations were conceived to trick the men into believing they made all the important decisions. But Yasmeen felt disconnected from all this now. She felt more of a k
inship with the ladies in her sewing circle.
The aunts with the Hermès scarves, Jameela and Dunya, were already tying on aprons, congratulating her mother on her new acquisition, a mahogany dining table with elaborate, Louis Quatorze-style legs that she had bought with some of the life insurance money.
“Mabrouk,” they nodded, with envious approval. They praised her ultra-modern refrigerator with its door that made crushed ice, her smart row of cooking pots arranged in descending order of size. They watched in awe as her new, electric garburator digested a sinkful of cucumber and potato peelings.
“The cream needs whipping,” Samiyah told Yasmeen. She put the carton and the electric beater in Yasmeen’s hands. Yasmeen installed herself at the end of the counter, away from the women. She focused her eyes on the frothy peaks accumulating under the spinning blades. They reminded her of Joanasi’s snow-draped village. She dipped her finger for a taste, wondering what he was up to, certain the talk in Pasha’s kitchen was not about expensive furniture and appliances. She longed to be there.
Samiyah instructed her to invite everyone to the table. Uncle Boutros unbuttoned his suit jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, at the head where her father once sat. He poured everyone a glass of wine while Samiyah loaded up the plates with turkey and stuffing, butternut squash and fresh cranberry. He snapped open his linen serviette and stuffed the tip into the collar of his shirt like a bib. “Ahalan wasahalan and Merry Christmas,” he said with his glass raised. “I’d also like to thank God for bringing Yasmeen home to us safe and sound.” He winked across the table at her. “Welcome back to civilization, kiddo.”
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