Heroine

  She climbs the shelter’s outside stairs. She opens the door. The walls are peach. Going in here always reminds her of a dream about sex. Don’t be silly. It must be the colour. The subject of the staff meeting is: How to keep them (the clients) from returning to their battering men? The door almost hits the cop’s wife, who is kneeling in her flowered bathrobe scrubbing the floor. He gave her a slap and threw her from his car onto the dusty road. So her story goes, with emphasis on the dust. Now she’s driving the clients crazy, always on hands and knees, scrubbing after them. From the kitchen, a woman in a tight T-shirt (whose husband tried to prostitute her) beckons with hungry eyes.

  The heroine just pretends she doesn’t see. She knows her attitude needs some work. But occasionally, there’s such an emptiness in her she can’t handle speaking to a battered woman. They’re so depressing. She slams the office door behind her and leans, panting, against the wall.

  GREAT. In a shaft of light, Violette’s brown head is bent over spread-out cards, telling fortunes. Céline’s beautiful ruined face, in profile, watches tensely. Beside them, H, with her wild auburn curls, is pasting a fence of blue eggshells around a poem she’s written. The heroine moves closer. Violette spreads her cards deftly in the small space bounded by typewriter, pot of crocuses, ashtray, coffee cup. Back in St-Adolphe they call her la sorcière. Because once, while reading her brother’s cards, she knew his wife had driven off the road into a deep stream before the cops came with the news. ‘I’m next,’ says the heroine. In the corner of her eye, W’s legs with glistening fair hairs and mauve sneaker boots are disappearing up a ladder on the balcony to fix the roof.

  Violette shuffles. The heroine leans forward, nursing a coffee. Vaguely aware she shouldn’t do this, now she’s a free woman. What? A blue-eyed king and a blue-eyed queen. Violette shakes her head and says: ‘It’s your ex and some fair-skinned woman. Your own dark-eyed queen of clubs stands painfully at a distance.’

  ‘Maudite masochiste,’ cries H suddenly swirling on her chair. Under her sky-blue eyes, her freckles are outrageous.

  ‘You’re crazy. When I found my guy with a woman, I just grabbed her by the sweater. And I told her: ‘Si ça continue, je te tue.’’ She’s laughing her head off, her small waist shaking in its tight band and a handmade cigarette between her finger tips. Then they notice W standing there, looking put off. She’s a dyke, so none of this melancholic heterosexual shit for her.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘we’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Relaxe un peu,’ says H. ‘We were waiting for you. If we’d started without you, you wouldn’t be happy either.’

  W smiles a little. (At the shelter they’re proud of how well they deal with any bad vibes between them.) She’s just pissed off because there’s a new client and no one’s looking after her.

  The heroine jumps up (the client’s hers) and leaves the office. Through a partly opened door she sees a woman sitting on the cheap chenille bedspread folding neat piles of little clothes. Beside her two adorable curly-headed little boys play on the floor. Damn, she’s smoking pot. One of those. Well, the heroine won’t deal with that tout de suite, shaky as she is from Violette’s cards. In a few minutes she’ll have her sense of toughness back again. The woman looks up. My God she’s beautiful with her brown skin, long brown hair, and solid yet not heavy body. What origin? Irish with a touch of Native?

  ‘Hello,’ says the woman, her voice husky, as if bold yet nervous at the same time. ‘The name is Polly. Like a smoke?’

  The silver cigarette box proffered is full of fat, beautifully rolled joints.

  On St-Denis, the tourist stops. There’s a blizzard. Snow swirling like ice angels between the steeples. Depositing its lode in long stains on the bar and restaurant windows that line the sloping sidewalk.

  Oh God, look at my fingers. They’re so waterlogged, I really must get dried and start the novel. The heroine and her friends moving toward the future. Just now that Dr. Schweitzer was on the radio again. Saying Miss Beauchamp’s speech turned round and round in clauses dependent on what could have been but wasn’t, due to her getting stuck between some inner vision (the desire for a lover’s touch and what it represented, which maybe wasn’t a lover’s touch at all) and the outer world. So that time and space were in a knot. Soon I’ll reach my arm out and turn him off. He hates women.

  Anyway, in the spring of ’79, the heroine and her friends were more like Miss Beauchamp’s wild side. I mean, when her knot would burst into hallucinations of incredible beauty (Schweitzer had to admit it). And she would start doing anything she pleased, with no regard whatever for social conventions. Another example of this was the girl with the green eyes. She had an air of total self-absorption: getting up each morning, stretching her big toe, then doing exactly what she felt like, without listening to authority of any kind, past or present. Once I met her early on Ste-Catherine Street, a white knit hat over her short golden curls, her mysterious smile and a way of walking well back (so the pelvis protrudes) on her flat-heeled shoes, indicating certain women never never never will be slaves. Naturally I presumed she was coming from the warm bed of some stunning woman (dark and full-breasted). And I found her so beautiful, so free. That’s why (my love) I was so surprised when I saw the two of you from my taxi one year later, walking along Esplanade-sur-le-parc like birds in paradise.

  Shhh, never mind that. I’m using another angle now. Besides, everybody gets what they need. Although You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Those also were my thoughts this afternoon watching Marie through my partly opened bathroom door in the Waikiki Tourist Rooms. On the sofa her back was slightly turned. I caught a glimpse of how her bra cut the flesh under the back of her white silk dress somewhat below her perfectly straight Clara Bow haircut. Showing that maybe her trick of wearing outer social expectations as a mask, the better to be her own (inner) woman, cost her something. But what I couldn’t get over most, back when lying in my little tub, was how we seem so different. When in the height of the feminist period, on that road to St-Antoine-sur-le-Richelieu for a giant women’s party, the harmony was perfect.

  ’Twas a beautiful June day and the quality of light was clear. Albeit (my love), walking down the outside stairs through dappled leaves, I felt your shadow standing over us. That was because you’d come to babysit little Marilù who was staying for a week. But for a moment I sensed ton truc nestling comfortably in your cut-off shorts. And your shirt open to your waist. The handsomest revolutionary male around. What saved me was knowing that as you watched us leave, you imagined Marie and I had something going on. Arm in arm, Marie and I stepped over the sidewalk and entered her Renault. In the light breeze we drove along. The sky was airy blue. We floated through the dusty quarter by pont Jacques-Cartier where that little boy was kidnapped by some pervert. Marie’s window was open. Going over the bridge I noticed her silken hair against her cheek. The same colour as my mother’s. She tossed it back, laughing perversely.

  We’re lost the minute we leave the city, miles from the farm where some women are throwing a huge party. She stops the car. I get out and cross a farmer’s lawn to ask directions. Due to lack of familiarity with the rural accent, I get it wrong. Already, the afternoon is waning. Back in the car, taking one more false turn and thinking we’re lost for the night, I wonder about the smell of cunt. Behind your full shadow stands in the summer sun. No, block that out. The car is going over an old road full of bellcast curve-roofed houses built in another century. A sign says some Patriotes lived here Ca. 1837, killed by the British. Despite a strange odour and the uncertainty in the air, I’m not worried. No, I’m not afraid, for we take another turn. And the pink mist rising off the river indicates we’ve found our way at last. We drive through a pair of huge black trees with rather funny leaves. I look again. Although it’s summer the trees are bare. The funny leaves are flocks of crows. Reminding me of the black maples under which a skinny little girl is walking back in Lively. In her white dress her body smiles with some thrilling mem
ory. Walking along she tries to put it in a story. But a woman watching from the veranda says: ‘Ask the Lord if you’re doing the right thing.’

  STOP. Where does this guilt come from? I move closer to Marie. Her pink lips are parting in an expectant smile. Instead of two black pillars, Marie sees women dancing laughing telling stories in a circle. Around the huge fire in the field are also little girls. At first I keep an English distance. That’s a joke. Yet even from behind I see that everyone is beautiful, albeit dark, blond, round, skinny, fifteen years or eighty. We all grow silent as one rich voice rises above another. Women telling their stories. I move closer.

  A lesbian in an embroidered shirt is saying: ‘C’est vrai que symboliquement on n’existe pas.’ The flames carve out her handsome features. ‘La preuve c’est que la fillette de ma chum m’a appelée “Papa” pendant longtemps. On avait beau la corriger. La petite insistait.’ (Here some women laugh and some look angry.) She has the sweet smell of women who don’t eat meat. Behind our circle is the fertile odour of ripe hay. The rhythm of their voices hypnotizes, almost. All the soft skin and hair around me making me think of Easter as a kid. That’s when Georgina’s Sunday School girls would climb up the hill with painted eggs and hot chocolate. To watch the sun rise while we meditated on the true nature of Christ’s rising. We huddled together, our freezing cotton crotches squatted on the ground. While the sky behind McLaren’s barn grew increasingly scarlet. What I loved was how the blush faded into dark blue as the sun rose. And an early bird careened across the sky despite the cold. Then our thoughts turned to the chocolate in the Thermos. Of course, we had to wait until Georgina in her pink powder and boned corsets finished praying that our budding youth would hold the promise of the resurrection. Some of us already had our period. I was glad the Easter story was equally for girls.

  Marie and I drive back through the gate. A friend of hers is in the back seat. The crows are gone. The tree skeletons have melted into the beautiful night sky. In the distance shines the city. Around us the cement walls of the raised Métropolitaine. Marie holds my hand between us on the seat. At boulevard des Sources, the tense voice in the back says: ‘You can let me out here.’ She’d phoned and phoned her man. Now she ran off along the shoulder, hoping he had finally come home.

  The stars shine up above. We drive on. I look at Marie’s profile against the background of city lights shining through the rolled-down window. Thankful that we’d found another way to pose the question. We’re heading toward boulevard St-Laurent on la Métropolitaine: a crummy shopping centre, gas stations, lower down a ballpark and seminary. Something tells me not to, but I ask anyway. ‘Vivais-tu le divorce comme une force libératrice?’ Suddenly our harmony is shattered with unexpected anguish.

  ‘Liberating,’ she shouts. ‘Divorce is a simple question of survival. Car il a détruit mon rapport avec mon corps. Nights he snuggled up to me for heat only, never love.’ I smiled, feeling superior because sex was something I could ask you for (my love). If we were still together.

  ‘One month after he leaves,’ she adds, angrily steering the Renault between two high walls of an underpass, ‘he’s living with someone else.’

  My breath catches: ‘Had he, uh, been having an affair?’

  ‘That’s not the point, bon dieu. The point is, a man can replace one woman with another just like that.’ She takes both hands off the wheel and gives them a sliding clap together. ‘Dans ce sens ils sont profondément immoraux.’

  How silly of me. Of course, she’s right. Leaning over, I try to calm her down. Caressing her soft hair. My alabaster cheek against her olive one. At the flat on Esplanade, we kiss goodnight (brushing perhaps too quickly over the mouth). I step out of the car. The beam from Place Ville Marie shines over the park. With her watching my beautiful slim back with the slightly protruding hip I slip through the lattice of leaves and into the dark yard. Our lips had the taste of wine on them. ’Twas the summer of ’79.

  It’s later than I thought. So dark I can’t see the clouds bank through my small green window. But I can hear that crazy woman in the next room. Talking all the time while pacing the floor in front of her door. Body in the river police say the pimp under the cow mural un simple soldat lost Bourassa hot smell by the Cartier Bridge … She told the pharmacist she’s afraid of the night. Ever since those junkies came in and stole her things at the Park Avenue rooming house where she used to live. I don’t think it’s the night she fears, but something else. Like that Guatemalan woman I read about in the paper. She used to worry because her little girl had to inch her way along a kind of strap to get over a deep-gulched mountain torrent on the way to school. Every day the mother thought: ‘She’ll fall in. I’ll never see her again.’ Then one day it happens. The kid doesn’t return. Turns out she was abducted on the road near the gulch by several men. When her mother heard the news, her reaction was: ‘What a fool I was to fear the wrong thing.’

  Like me, all during the reconciliation. Thinking the competition for your affection was a beautiful swimmer from Vancouver you met somewhere. Then I spy you and the girl with green eyes walking like two lovebirds along Esplanade-sur-le-parc. And seeing the way she’s changed, I know it’s she who got the silver plate because she wanted it more than me. This doesn’t ease the pain. When I meet Marie and her friends the modernist writers a few minutes later at that gay bar with the little cupid holding grapes in front of a mirror, one of them says (after hugs, kisses, and all the little attentions you never get in English):

  ‘You’re so white. As if you’d seen a ghost.’

  I laugh and say: ‘I’m okay. Just looking for another way to pose the question (my lips closing over the long-stemmed glass edge of Martini Rossi). So I can create a heroine who’s not a loser for my novel.’

  ‘And what does that mean, not a loser?’ asks Alain. He’s a film critic.

  ‘Somebody who’s not afraid. Parce qu’elle sait que celle qui perd, gagne,’ I answer bravely.

  ‘Not afraid?’ asks Alain. ‘Isn’t that a bit silly, considering the age we live in?’

  ‘I guess I should say someone who can trace where the fear comes from. So it doesn’t end up getting sprayed over everything.’ On this subject, the heroine tries to be as lucid as possible in everything she does. Example, walking out of the shelter office to look after the new client. And half an hour later walking back, forcing herself to sound cool while announcing to the staff:

  ‘Eh, les girls, you aren’t going to believe this. But this woman says her old man’s Mafia. And he might cause us trouble if we keep her.’

  Somebody says: ‘How titillating, I never thought the Mafia was real.’ And they all laugh at the thought of some adventure in this energy-sucking job (a lot of them are artists). Then W says they maybe should, just the same, as a measure of prudence for the sake of the other clients, collectively assess the situation. Therefore, in the yellow kitchen after dinner we gather round the table. Nelly from Nova Scotia contributes a new fact:

  ‘Girls, guess what, I answered the phone about five minutes ago. And the guy says (here she screws up her freckled face to look like a pug-nosed bouncer):

  ‘’Uh, I hear yah got Polly. Me ’n a coupla guys’ll be over later to show you broads what’s what.’’

  They all look at Polly. Grinning a little less than they were before. Especially the heroine, who’s on night shift. The corners of Polly’s lips turn up sardonically. She says: ‘That pet shop he runs is just a front. What do I care who knows? He put us in that trailer out in the country with no money for gas. Just enough food to keep me and the kids going for a week. But sometimes he’d get so carried away with that broad he’s got living in our home in Dollard, it’s got beautiful light-green wall-to-wall broadloom, he’d forget to come. The kids were starving. That’s how come he caught me peddling uppers and downers. The bastard. He’ll use it on me if he can. If he doesn’t kill me first. I know too much.’ Her look around the table implies that now they know too much, too. Someone’s lip twi
tches. Polly’s brown gaze doesn’t miss it. ‘You’re also scared,’ she says, smiling with satisfaction. ‘I can see it.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ says W quickly. ‘What d’ya mean, the pet shop’s just a front?’ ‘Dope,’ says Polly. ‘They ship it in from Morocco by the ton. Actually, I met him on a beach there. Agadir. I don’t even know if the oldest is his. I might have been pregnant already.’

  Later, the heroine strolls into the living room. Thinking (because joking always helps): ‘This is the city.’ Eleven p.m. Outside, between the crack in the gold brocade curtains somebody donated, rises the full moon. Looking cold despite the weather. The clients are tucked away safe in their beds. The trick is not to panic. The heroine sits on the sofa. Leafing through the dusty feminist pamphlets spilling off the second-hand end tables. The clients hardly ever read them. Except for the cop’s wife, none of them cleans up either. They’re too depressed. She doesn’t blame them. Fear has a way of paralyzing everything. To stay calm, she’ll focus on something nice.

  Oh, Agadir. (Why not? On that trip to Morocco, my love. Just before we head north to Algiers, we lie in its sun and warmth. Above us they’ve hardly rebuilt the village after that terrible earthquake. You scarcely see any Moroccans. But down a ways is a colony of American hippies. They leave dirty toilet paper and Tampax in the bushes. One morning I find one of them doing a weird ritual on the beach. He has a little penis-shaped black ebony statue. About eight inches. Up close I see it is a woman. ‘Black Rosa,’ he says, looking up at me. Before caressing her and sticking her in a fucking motion into the sand.)