Heroine

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ A little girl’s voice.

  ‘In the men’s. Don’t do that or you’ll get a slap.’

  ‘You’ll get swallowed.’

  I put my finger on mine, too, thinking of the last guy I’d seen in that godforsaken mining town. He was a visiting creative writing professor. We were in his back seat, parked behind the Sudbury arena. Really going to it, when suddenly he said (as I tried to pull him down on top of me):

  ‘Stop. I feel like I’m going to drown.’ And HE PULLED BACK. Should have known from the start. He’d kiss me with his tousled golden head. Then I’d put my arms around him. And suddenly he’d do this prissy gay-blade sidestep to avoid my lips. Made my stomach so tense it hurt. That’s why in the washroom I said: ‘Oh, Mama, why’d you put this hole in me.’ Thank God nobody heard.

  No. Cut the pessimism. In the words of a male writer I know, pessimism just leads to a lot of images going nowhere. He was sitting in Harvey’s on The Main. The place was full of writers because the general insecurity of the economic situation was creating sympathy among progressive intellectuals for the unemployed quarter of the population. He’d come to watch the twelve-year-old street girls. Probably wondering where his daughter was. Out loud he said: ‘When I’m fifty-five I’ll have a boring office job or be sitting in some dive.’

  ‘Who’s pessimistic?’ I asked grinning, only too glad to point out to a former leader of the revolutionary organization that he was in contradiction. In the Harvey’s mirror I was wearing a red sweater. Beside us was the reflection of an older woman, her front teeth missing. She was combing her hair. Her white laminated boots came over the knees of her bulging jeans, the crotch of which was vaguely pee-stained. On the sidewalk the rain fell in big drops. A kid with a few pimples was trying to solicit. His jeans were perfect over his tight hips. Every time a driver slowed down he ran toward it. When the driver shook his head, the kid showed greater and greater panic.

  ‘That kid better watch out or he’s going to get picked up by the cops,’ said the writer as if he knew. He added, looking tiredly at me: ‘I meant cut the pessimism in your writing. Pessimism is the failure of past illusions. Even feminists agree on the necessity of writing forward to a positive solution. Obviously in real life it’s more complicated. The right-wing leaders of the world are death-stalkers. Pour nous il n’y aura pas des lendemains qui chantent. We have to climb off our dreams and enjoy the little things of life.’

  He’s right, my love. I’m glad for what we had. Before you put your hands on my face nobody ever touched me like that. I used to sit close to Her on the veranda. It was very hot. The mosquitoes buzzed around my neck. The air was so intense with heat it became a screen. Reflecting the bleeding hearts growing by the sidewalk bigger and bigger.

  I said: ‘Mom, I’m scared.’

  She answered (without even looking): ‘Then get down on your knees and pray to the Lord.’

  After your kiss on the linoleum and one thing led to another, I noticed how your fingers curled like a child’s against my cheek. In perfect satisfaction. I’d never known harmony like that. It was peace in a foreign place. The warm air blowing through the curtains on St-Denis brought me to my senses. Coward that I am I almost said: ‘Here comes spring with its rapier.’

  In the telescope, the grey woman stands by the fish shop. She has been rubbing her two dimes over the herring pail. Now she puts her muddy galoshes on each side of the pail and gathers her skirts above her spattered legs.

  ‘Get rid of that female impersonator,’ shouts the shopkeeper. His name is Nikki. From the fish shop to the Waikiki Tourist Rooms is only a few blocks. Two up The Main, a block west on avenue des Pins, and two along Sewell Street, which curves gently. Walking in the wind along the construction fence this morning I noticed the QUÉBEC INDÉPENDANT graffiti had been painted over by STARVING DOGS EAT SHIT. In the light, Sewell Street leading up to my cozy home looked like an excerpt from a Swedish movie. The one where the clocks have no faces. Wild Strawberries.

  Oh, froth, your warm faucet’s spurting warmly over my, uh, small point. Maybe ‘strawberry’ is the word I’m looking for. Damn. A Dr. Schweitzer is on the radio talking about the lack of fresh organs for transplants. On account of the new seatbelt legislation, which has resulted in fewer fatal accidents. Shhh. Focus on something else. Yes. Mon beau bébé. Was that you I saw standing in the park the other day? With your knee bent holding the soccer ball between your legs? Like those businessmen squeezing their briefcases on the train? Your beautiful bronzed skin gleaming above and below your short shorts, which could scarcely contain your ponderous member. Some girls passed wearing bright red lipstick and halter tops. One of them stopped to stare at the goods. I could hear her say: ‘To hell with women’s liberation. What I want is a nice piece. Something to hold on to, you know what I mean?’ They all laughed.

  I laughed also. Because, Sepia, even feminists have their needs. What was it again that Marie said this afternoon? Oh yeah, she said (first taking a cigarette between her tapered fingers): ‘We have to transcend being women of our generation. Because having both square dancing and rock ’n’ roll on Saturday nights confused our identities. Not to mention, then came feminism. On dirait que certaines n’en ont pas fait la synthèse. (The huge brown eye rolled quite far in my direction.) Maybe younger women have it easier.’

  I said nothing. Watching Marie smoke, I wanted to ask for one, too. Then she’d have had to come in here and bend over the tub. Close up her skin has a special sheen, the pores so fine you can hardly see them. The way she looks pale or dark depending on the fashion is amazing. Or maybe she’s just pale now due to overworking. Using herself up without thinking about her health. First off in the morning, three cups of strong coffee and cigarettes to work up a buzz. Then she just keeps going on nervous energy, standing very straight and forgetting she’s hungry until she falls into bed at night. I’m the type who saves herself too much.

  No, I think that trendy pale effect has to be makeup. Either it’s plastered on now or it was back in ’77 when her skin looked darker. If I could just remember what colour she was under the tan line of the mauve panties that time we were lying side by side on her bed. When she put her mouth on my, uh, widow’s peak saying: ‘Just a little taste. Mmm, salty. Now you reciprocate.’ Embarrassed though I was, I said NO. After which she smoked a joint thoughtfully, then ushered me to the door.

  Puis entre nous il y eut un froid. Making me feel weird the next time I saw her. ’Twas Janis’s birthday and thirty below. I went out to the steam bath anyway, because Tuesday is the only day for women. In the twenties, the wives of Jewish shopkeepers went on Tuesdays, later the newer Mediterranean arrivals. Now on Tuesdays it’s the feminists who come. The floor has those turn-of-the-century black-and-white tiles just like my little bathroom here at the Waikiki Tourist Rooms. We take showers then sit in the steam room flicking each other with cedar branches. I was flicking a white-skinned Virgo from France. Her back got quite red when I hit it. Anyway, looking up from my task I spied Marie. Lying stark naked beside a beautiful woman on a narrow couch only wide enough for one. ‘Bonjour,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. Later, in the shower, the soap kept slipping from my grasp. Because I knew they were watching the water fall over my skinny shoulders and slightly crooked back. ‘Relax,’ I whispered. Fais pas ton anglaise.

  To calm down I sat in a darkened corner until the Russian masseuse could take me. She was slow, having gained weight and become red in the face. So on the narrow couches between the mirrors and the lockers, women began massaging one another. This was my chance. As soon as Marie, with her frank, thick calves and full but not pendulous breasts, the profile of a beautiful brunette, stopped talking to that auburn woman whose reflection I could see in the mirror, I’d walk over and offer my services.

  Malheureusement, les choses se gâtaient. For suddenly the huge masseuse with her red face was there screaming at the women bending tenderly over their friends: ‘You haff no right. You h
aff no right. I’m the masseuse. You give me twelve dollars or you haff to leave.’ Of course we ignored her. ’Til came the softly whispered rumour that this was the night the cops were going to raid the homo establishments. We left in a hurry, half-dressed. Outside our hair froze immediately. Later, we learned it was Mrs. Simka, the owner’s wife, who started the story.

  She was a smart woman.

  From the mountaintop, the Black tourist turns his telescope. The grey woman sloshes through a yellow puddle and climbs some outside stairs. Her sister died there. ’Twas the Novocaine before Christmas. She was allergic but failed to tell the welfare dentist. Farther down, the tracks of an iron-runnered sled reflected in a low green window. On the radio Edith Piaf is singing ‘Je ne regrette rien.’ So beautiful, so sad. She was a free woman. Singing her pain to make a story out of the chaos.

  I could do that in the novel. Of course, in a story, you tell, not sing. Starting at the Sudbury bus station and moving forward. The music’s playing. I’m wearing a brown-and-white checked coat. A little hicky but good quality. She always taught me to put the best foot forward. In that early photo, even though Daddy’s still an ordinary miner, I look like a prince’s daughter. A hand-knit coat and matching beret over white dress and fluffy slip. He’s crouching there beside me. Looking so proud. I can’t help it. Even though the camera’s about to click I start jumping up and down in ecstasy shouting: ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ All the adults are laughing.

  Anyway, I’m standing in the Sudbury bus station. Unable to help smiling at how all the guys came sniffing round the minute they heard I was leaving town. For one last go. A man in moccasins was singing that the French language is dangerous. The bus smelled of sick. Excited as I was, I kept getting up to pee. After a while we went through reserve country. On the other side of the forest was a giant field of car wrecks. We passed a canal. And backyards with frozen sheets on clotheslines strung from sagging tin sheds. Then came the skyscrapers. It was snowing. The bus station smelled of coffee. ‘Come for lunch,’ said the nun sitting beside me. She was concerned about the city’s bad influences on young women. I imagined baked tomatoes with soda crackers. ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m a job hunter.’ Sort of joking. To tell you the truth I didn’t know where to look. Soon my feet were wet with slush. ‘How about a little drink first?’ I said to myself. I went through a bar-salon swinging door. Through the window rose the mansions on the mountainside. Topped by a brightly coloured cross.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked the bar-salon waitress.

  ‘That’s where they shit on us from.’

  On you, I thought. As for me I’m going straight to the top.

  Sorry, Sepia. That was in life before politics. Before that grey winter day, when I entered the Cracow Café. And looked around at the intense faces, the dark shirts, the wire-rimmed glasses. Behind me in the entrance a blond with dark circles under her eyes nervously dialled the phone. She looked so desperate and her knees kept sagging as if, unless she got an answer, she was going to sink down.

  I sat, smiling so hopeful that for some reason you slid out over the torn red plastic seat opposite and slid in the booth beside me. A moment of tension. Then two women sat down facing us. You said, blushing as befits a new man: ‘You’ve stumbled into one of our café discussions on Marxism.’ I smiled more, thinking of the last lover with his earphones and filthy sheets. All he ever wanted was to get stoned. What’s a lonely woman to do? Listening to your measured words spoken in a European accent, I thought: ‘At last, a man who knows how to talk.’

  You were saying: ‘The human race has but two choices, barbarism or Marxist revolution.’

  I laughed out loud, nearly hooting (you have to watch things like that with sophisticated people) and said: ‘It sounds like you’ve got religion, the way you’re talking.’ Your face got even redder. I noticed your green eyes were spotted, like a tiger’s, through your rimless glasses. Your voice said: ‘Marxism is the ultimate form of realism. Just another tactic for understanding systems.’ My father’s eyes were spotted, too. Only hungrier. Eyeing me with them after we went berry picking once, he said: ‘You’re too romantic; you’ll have to learn to be more realistic.’ I didn’t really know what he meant.

  Later, my love, taking pictures, when it seemed to me we saw it all the same, I began to think of you as an extra window on the world. Helping me figure out what real is. The green-eyed girl also came to F-group’s pre-recruitment briefings to speak on the relationship between dialectic thinking and women’s liberation. She said Marxism is the proper view of history, providing it accounts for the needs of women. I was too embarrassed to ask what that implied regarding love. After, she came to my room. In the park downstairs was a demonstration of Québécois and Irish comrades. Their slogans read: DOWN WITH IMPERIALLY IMPOSED CONSTITUTIONS. Except in French. She came in an old-school tunic (the better to mock her wealthy Argentinean background), smooth legs, pink cheeks, and flying cherub curls.

  Then we went to a Spanish café. Her eyes were as limpid as two pools. I was feeling odd because upstairs there’d been a funny tension between us. Although nobody made a move. Now she raised her small pink fingers in the air and said I wasn’t revolutionary material yet because. Flamenco music drowned out her words.

  I thought: ‘We’ll see about that.’

  The telescope cuts out a circle. Whitening fast, for after midnight ’tis November. At one edge of the lens, a string of car wrecks. On the other side a low green window where light won’t shine until next spring. That’s okay. I’m lying in the bath, feeling fine. As long as I can be alone. An artist needs solitude to create. If that Dr. Schweitzer comes on the radio, I’ll turn him off. Yesterday he said modern women, despite their freedom, have a great difficulty of personal synthesis. Suffering as we do from terrible restlessness. Due to overly developed expectations in life and love. The pimp. What does he know? It’s either happiness (where for a moment the world is your oyster and the possibilities so phenomenal you can’t stand it) or unhappiness. The rest of the time it’s floating along in the middle enjoying the little consolations. The bath, the warmth, the television in the corner of the room. One thing about the Waikiki Tourist Rooms is they supply everything. A person doesn’t have to worry. She can focus on her work.

  What inhibited me was Marie’s visit. Earlier, I’d been sinking into a jazz afternoon at the Blue Café. Very moving. The spoons strung high against long-stemmed glasses. Se-i-i-i-i. Above the winter clatter of dishes the waitress’s voice singing in treble broke so you could feel the pain. The café has a blue floor. Over the strains of jazz, snippets of conversation. C-cocaine. My eye fell on the straight back of a woman, clearly a dancer by the way she kept bending over in ballet stretches. The skin was a particular olive, so different I’m attracted. On the other side of her a younger version of Jagger, smiling vaguely, aware of his charm on women. I got up to go, concentrating on how to put the whole symphony down on paper. With the heroine a free spirit (although you can taste the fragility of her chances, for self, for love) radiating from the middle of the story. Out in the grey air I walked like a careful drunk, looking neither right nor left so as not to confuse my creative radar. Except what to my dismay do I see in front of the Waikiki Tourist Rooms but Marie? She’s standing on the steps. They have artificial turf carpeting. Bright green under the old wooden door with its turquoise paint chipped off. I didn’t know what to do. On one hand no one ever comes. On the other, I wanted to be alone.

  I had to admit, in that black wool coat, forties style, she was looking really good. I think she got it from an aunt. I open the door. We descend the inside stairs, a little slanting, down to my semi-basement room. True, this place smells slightly greasy. True, there’s the odour of garbage, faintly. From behind a door, you can hear the voice of that former steno who can’t stop talking. Back when she had a job it got so she could hear everything. Earphones on or off, she couldn’t help listening. She had to stop eating in restaurants because she could hear every conversati
on at every single table. Political situation prostituting fascist referendum wife of Frank’s girl’s legs mufflers getting expensive four-to-one the Expos under conditions for selling stocks on St James’s the church over the bridge at skis in the oracle ha ha that’s what you get for being a nose-and-throat man. Now everything that goes in her ears comes out her mouth. Shrugging it off, I stick my keys in my lock and open my door. Marie looks in. Then she says, fixing me with her sad brown eyes that have kohl around them and dark circles under them:

  ‘Dis-moi pas que c’est ici que tu restes.’

  Sepia, that’s the tyranny of intimacy. My mother made the same mistake. Always waiting on the veranda after dances at the crossroads back in Lively. Her moon was in Cancer. Once She was stricken, She smelled of soaked Kotex. At night the dogs spread the black napkins over the snow. Anyway, following the love in the parked car, we kids hurried home beetling down the dirt road. The girls in the front seat, the boys in the back. I knew at that speed we’d never make the corner. The wind wobbled on my cheeks. The cows mooed lazily in the cool green grass by the river. Roll me over in the clover. ‘All I got was a rip in my skirt. Honest, Mom.’ But from the veranda She looked at me sadly with brown eyes that were growing a white haze over the pupils. I felt so terrible I couldn’t make Her happy, I started planning my departure. When, at dinner, I said, ‘Montréal,’ the whole family winced. Then Lucie McVitty, the old maid across the street who watched me coming home at night through her lace curtains, gave me the address of a niece in Westmount. As she handed me the piece of paper torn off Boyd’s General Store calendar with the cute little red-cheeked girl biting on an apple, she whispered:

  ‘Watch out, white iris stems fade quickly when uprooted.’ Then she shut the door.

  Coming up to the city, it was winter. I straightened and smiled to myself. Two hookers were standing on the corner under magnificent Japanese umbrellas outside the bus depot. At least I thought they were hookers. Looking so interesting with their tight jeans and shiny hair falling over their fur collars. But that was in life before politics. When the wild streak in me failed to see the true degree of sexual exploitation involved when a woman sells her body. One of them was doing a tiny little two-step in order to keep warm. Left foot down twice. Then the right.