At Yellow Lake

by Jane Mcloughlin

  The trip up north took most of the day. The solid maple and ash trees of southern Minnesota gave way to pine trees and skinny silver birches. The soil went from dark brown to sandy red. The sky was cloudless, but the blue in Wisconsin seemed duller and washed out, like faded denim. Businesses changed from seedcorn dealerships to gun shops. Bright Day-Glo signs shouted out, Guns-Bait-Ammo. The roads got bumpier too, and all along the gravel shoulder there were dead animals – deer mostly, all ages and sizes, but also smaller animals, like racoons and foxes. We couldn’t have travelled far, 300 miles or so, but Welmer seemed a lifetime away from Minnesota, and in another country altogether, not just another state.

  It was almost dark when we got to the ‘community’. The trailer park was on the outskirts of town, next to a hiking trail that had once been the railroad tracks. But, as hard as it was to admit, the North Pines Community wasn’t such a bad place. The grass in the lots was, well, greener, than most of the brown, patchy lawns we’d passed by. The roads and sidewalks were smooth and shiny under the street lights. The trailers actually looked like the ‘homes’ they were meant to be. Some of them had shutters and gables, others had solid cedar decks. Ours was the only trailer that looked like an old-fashioned mobile home, but even ours was clean and kept up.

  Inside was just as nice – once the old lady with the wobbly butt had taken down her knick-knacks, we realised – no crappy panelling, no chintz. The walls were clean, the tiles were real. The bathroom looked brand new.

  ‘Jeez, it’s just like a hotel,’ Jesse whooped as he lumbered into the kitchen. To celebrate he chucked an empty beer can onto the black marble counter and Mom whisked it away before he could even reach into the cooler for another one.

  ‘Watch it,’ she said. ‘This is our home now. We’re gonna keep it clean.’

  And so we did, at least for the first few days. Mom was like a kid on vacation, skipping around the place, up at the crack of dawn polishing the sink, sweeping the kitchen floor, marvelling at how easily the dirt came off the terracotta tiles.

  Then, one morning, somebody turned up – a guy, of course.

  ‘Hey!’ A big booming voice vibrated deep in his chest. He rattled the front door, his smile gleaming through the screen. That made a change for Mom – decent teeth.

  He had a decent car, too – a metallic, blue Beemer that looked brand new. And he was young, for Mom, anyway. His hair was tied back in a tight ponytail and he had a scraggly beard, like a biker’s.

  Mom rushed through from the bedroom to meet him, eyes wide, mouth open. Was this a good surprise or a bad surprise? Either way, the man let out a huge whoop and picked her up in his arms like she was a tiny child. He swung her around, bashing her legs on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Careful now,’ she squeaked. ‘Those units are new.’

  He put her down and pinched her on the butt. Then he came into the living room where I was watching TV. He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m Kyle,’ he said, baring his teeth. ‘You must be the little girl.’

  ‘Etta,’ I said. ‘My name’s Etta.’

  ‘You be nice now,’ Mom said, before he grabbed her by the waist and gave her another twirl.

  It wasn’t long before Kyle turned into a ‘regular’. That’s what Mom called her boyfriends after she’d been going out with them for a couple weeks.

  ‘Regulars. ̓ Jeez. What did that sound like?

  PETER

  It was dawn, and he’d have to leave for the train station in a few minutes. He looked around his room for anything left behind. The door of the oak wardrobe was open and the empty hangers hung from the rail like dried shoulder bones. The floral wallpaper was covered with fraying, faded posters of bands he used to like – Blink 182, Funeral for a Friend, My Chemical Romance. The faces staring out at him looked pathetic now, all that made-up anger and poser alienation.

  He did a final check of his carry-on luggage – passport, boarding pass, his dad’s credit card, map. He looked into his holdall one more time before closing it. Carefully slipping his hand into the inner pocket, he felt the velvet cloth which held the lock of his mother’s hair, remembering the day he’d cut it from her head.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ he’d whined. He’d tried to look at Mum, really see her, gaze right into her eyes, but the room in the hospice had been too bright. It was unnatural, all that light. It made everything too clear.

  ‘It’s my hair or it’s toenail clippings. Your choice.’

  She’d handed him a pair of nail scissors, and lowered her head so that he could reach. A tiny patch of hair had managed to cling to her head during the chemotherapy storm that had yanked all the other clumps out by their roots. He cut a wispy lock that, nestled in his palm, looked like a baby’s. With bony, translucent fingers, his mother wrapped it in a tissue.

  ‘Take this to the lake.’

  He couldn’t answer. If he said anything, it would be like admitting that she was going to die.

  ‘You heard me, didn’t you?’

  He nodded. She motioned for him to get closer, to sit on the bed and rest his head on her fragile shoulders. For a moment, they sat that way, Mum touching his spiky hair with her fingertips, Peter looking out of the window at the cars in the car park, willing himself not to cry.

  ‘I don’t want to die here,’ she said, sighing. A simple statement, as if it were no big deal. ‘I thought I’d have enough time to go back.’

  Outside the window, a florist’s van pulled up, blocking Peter’s view. He looked at the floor, counting out the brown and beige tiles, one to ten, one to ten, over and over, saying the numbers in his head, trying to block out what his mother was saying about dying, about funerals, about what he should wear.

  ‘Petey? Honey?’

  She must have been waiting for him to answer, but he had nothing to say. He was empty, pathetic – a useless, crap son.

  ‘You’ll do that for me, won’t you? When this is over?’

  She picked up the tissue packet and handed it to him. She smiled, like she always did. A joke for the two of them.

  ‘You’ll take me to Yellow Lake and bury me in the sand?’

  The wolfed-down breakfast was a mistake. His Weetabix and milk tasted like damp sawdust. Just thinking about what he was going to do made his mouth dry up and his stomach turn. He was always sick when he was nervous. He’d have to stay near a toilet.

  He rinsed his bowl, pouring the last of the milk down the sink, and took his passport out again. How carefully would they check it? He looked about ten years old in the picture, his eyes peeking out from a stupid, too-long fringe. But he was taller now, nearly the height of his father. Surely he could pass for sixteen. And anyway, the airline people wouldn’t be worrying about his age, would they? Wouldn’t they be too busy searching him for dodgy chemicals or devices concealed inside his trainers? He’d be whisked through security, just another white English kid. It would be simple. He would fly to America, do what he had to do, then get back before anybody even had time to raise the alarm.

  After Mum died, his father had only taken a week off work – business as usual. His father didn’t use that expression. Even he wasn’t cold enough to use language like that, but that was the impression he gave the world. Just get on with it – that was his motto. Just get on with it, as if nothing had happened.

  Then, one night, Dad announced that he was going to Italy, on his own. He’d be gone a week, spending a few days each in Mum’s favourite places – the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Venice, Milan. It would give him a chance to heal, he said, a chance to see the world he and Mum had shared with new eyes – alone.

  Bollocks, Peter thought. A nice holiday away from me, more like, catching a few rays, spending Mum’s life insurance money on five-star hotels and pool-side cocktails.

  It didn’t take long for Peter to realise that his father was doing him a favour. This was his big chance – with Dad out of the way, he’d be able to fly to America, all by himself. For weeks he’d been too excited to sleep,
planning his mission, working things out in his head. He could stay with his uncle in Minneapolis, make up some story, string him along. From there, it’d be easy to get to Yellow Lake. They had trains in America, didn’t they? They had buses?

  And now, despite his pounding heart and heaving stomach, he was ready. He closed the front door, slipped through the side gate, ducked behind a hedge as he passed the neighbours’ house. Epsom Road was empty this early in the morning, silent except for the hum of a milk float a few streets away. He should have felt lonely, but he wasn’t alone. Mum was travelling with him – a tiny part of her, anyway, just the way she had wanted.

  JONAH

  Night came. The forest floor was teeming with life. Jonah turned over on the ground, imagining fist-sized spiders, hard-shelled beetles with pincers as big as his fingers. He thought about the spirits watching over him, but even that didn’t calm him down – the crunching, rustling sounds filled his mind with terror. He sat up on the beach towel he’d brought to sleep on. He wrapped himself in a thin cotton sheet, but it was no use against the onslaught of insects that were bombarding his face, flying into his nose, hovering around his ears like drones.

  He got up, dropping the sheet, shaking the imaginary bugs off his clothes. He had to get out of here – now, before he went crazy, before he was eaten alive.

  The cabin – that was the place to go. There’d be beds inside, with warm, soft blankets on them. There’d be screens on the window to keep out the mosquitoes and gnats. There’d be water too. Didn’t he need that? Didn’t everybody need fresh water to live?

  He stepped through the trees, tiptoed along the narrow path that cut through the woods. He stopped when he got to the cabin’s front door. He looked around, as if somebody were watching. What he was about to do was wrong – he knew that – not just a seriously uncool thing to do, but an actual crime. Breaking and entering.

  Never mind, he thought. Just do it.

  Forcing the cabin’s lock didn’t take much effort. A few strong nudges with his hip and shoulder and the door flew open and bashed against the wall. He took a lighter from the pocket of his jeans and fired it up. Inside the door there was a list of instructions on how to turn everything on – electricity, water pump, gas for the furnace in winter.

  So much for being at one with the forest, he thought.

  He walked through the cabin, feeling his way along the walls, through the doorways, until he found a bedroom. He tumbled into a bed – warm and soft, just like he’d imagined – and pulled up the covers.

  He woke up at sunrise, and opened the curtains beside the bed. Through the window, he could see sunlight dancing on the lake below, making the tips of the waves sparkle like dazzling yellow jewels.

  His stomach did a flip, but he knew it wasn’t hunger – it was more like disgust. What was he doing, anyway, hiding out in a place like this? He was Ojibwe, one of the original people, the Anishinaabe. He shouldn’t need beds, he shouldn’t need bathrooms – he shouldn’t need anything more than his hands, a knife, the forest’s bounty.

  He got up and made the bed, smoothing out any sign that he’d been there. In the bathroom he washed his face with the last spits of water that were still in the tap. He looked in the mirror, pulled back his hair – long enough now to tie it back if he wanted.

  That sick feeling came back while he wiped the sink with a lacy pink hand towel – still the white man, he thought, worried about keeping things clean. He’d wanted to turn his back on everything that kept him from his true path and he’d failed miserably at the first minor hitch. He might as well go straight back to Minneapolis and start the summer job his mother had lined up for him at Walmart.

  In the kitchen he found the instructions for turning on the water, and filled up an empty milk jug. He looked at the phone that was hanging on the pine-panelled wall. He picked it up, heard a dial tone. Maybe he should call his mother. What was she thinking, now that he was gone? Did she miss him? He’d left a note, explaining what he intended to do – find a place where he could be true to his heritage, live the Ojibwe way – but even when he was writing it, he imagined her reaction. Coming home from work, climbing the stairs to their apartment, heaving the grocery bags onto the kitchen table, shouting his name. He taped the note to the fridge, knowing that she’d look there. She probably laughed when she read it, just like she laughed when she talked to her friends about him on the phone.

  ‘Oh, yeah, he’s going through this Indian phase.’ Pause. Listen. ‘Ha ha ha. I suppose it could be worse – neo-Nazis or country music. Ha ha ha.’

  Jonah put the phone down. If she was worried, well, that was OK by him. How did she dare call it a phase? Maybe she’d turned her back on her own heritage, maybe she was ashamed of what she was, but that didn’t give her the right to mock him. How did she dare, when the Ojibwe blood that flowed through his veins came from her?

  His hands shaking with anger, he took the water jug and went outside. He locked the cabin door and strode back up to the woods. The sky had clouded over. It was starting to rain, but Jonah didn’t care. He heard his mother’s voice in his head, ‘You? An Indian? Give me a break!’

  Bits of the wigwam were still on the ground where he’d left them – the rope, the twigs, the birch bark. All he had to do was put them together. He picked up a slender branch, ran his fingers along the smooth surface. He bent it, holding each end tightly in his hands. He felt the spirits of the forest – watching this time, seeing what he was up to. He heard the voice – ‘Hiding in a cabin because you got scared of some bugs’ – only this time she whispered.

  He took a deep breath, shook his shoulders and arms to loosen his muscles. He heard the birds, the breeze, the swoosh of distant waves. He picked up another branch, bent it, placed it on the ground. And another one, and another one.

  When he was finished, he stood up, smiling. The saplings stayed bent. His mother’s voice had shut up.

  Chapter Three

  ETTA

  The good, safe feeling we took with us to Welmer lasted about a month. So did the heat. I spent most of my time watching daytime TV, praying the clanking air conditioner wouldn’t conk out. Sometimes I’d walk around Welmer. Ah, Welmer – a drugstore, two taverns and a Hardware Hank.

  There were other things, too. Gangs of high school boys practised football on the school athletics field beside the trailer park. Whenever I went outside, even if it was to put some wet laundry on the clothesline, they’d watch me. They wouldn’t shout or whistle, but I could feel them staring. What was it, the way I looked? Average height, average weight, average bra size – nothing out of the ordinary, just a fourteen-year-old girl with dust-coloured hair.

  Mom got a job as a housekeeper at the Northern Pines Hotel and Suites, on the outskirts of town, towards the lakes that were dotted around the county. It was a decent place, even if the pay was lousy. She was good at her job, especially on days when her back wasn’t playing up, so her hourly pay, with tips, was enough to keep us going, as long as neither of us got sick. Some weekends we drove to Duluth, spent her money on clothes and shoes, had lunch on the way, or a picnic on the lake.

  Lake Superior was like an ocean – no sign of land on the other side, just an endless expanse of steely-grey blue. The first time we saw it, Mom pulled the van into a roadside picnic area. Before we could even unpack our lunch, she hopped out of the van and raced down to the shore. She seemed so happy and excited I thought she was going to do cartwheels across the scrubby sand. But by the time I got the picnic things together and clambered out to join her, she was slumped down on the water’s edge with her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

  ‘What is it? Mom? What’s the matter?’

  She carried on like that, crying and shaking her head, so I left her alone. The beach was deserted. It was a cloudy day, and the wind felt cold, even though it was summer. The sky seemed bigger here than in Welmer. And the lake? It made me feel tiny. I knew I wasn’t alone, because I could hear Mom sniffling and snuffling
a few yards away, but I could’ve been the only person on a planet covered entirely with water.

  I never found out what Mom was crying about. I’ve got some ideas now, but at the time I thought maybe she’d been to the same park before, maybe with the Duchess when she was little. Or else maybe she felt frightened, like me, of so much water and space. After a few minutes, I heard the hiss of her lighter and smelled the smoke from her cigarette. We got into the van after she stubbed out her butt, and went shopping like nothing had happened.

  At the Northern Pine Lodge and Suites she got to use their pool and spa, and some days she’d sneak me in the back way. We’d have a sauna, and then a quick dip in the pool. It was nice, then, like being on vacation, just the two of us.

  She was different when there were no men around, when it was just her and me. She was calmer, her face looked softer, prettier without all the make-up. She was smarter, too – lots smarter. One afternoon in the sauna, stretching herself out on the hot wooden bench, she closed her eyes and sighed.

  ‘You know what, Et? I think I might go back to college.’

  ‘College?’

  ‘Yeah. College. Why do you sound so shocked?’ she laughed. ‘I finished a whole semester before I had Jesse.’

  Before she could say any more, a man with a hairy beer belly came in, poured some water on the coals, slapped his sweaty butt down on the bench across from me. Mom didn’t move. She acted like she didn’t even realise he was there, but she changed. You couldn’t tell, unless you knew what to look for. The way her lip pouted out. The way her voice got sharper.

  ‘English Lit, that was my major. Shakespeare. Jane Austen. I was a real bookworm in my day. There was nothing I liked more than reading.’ She smiled at me, glancing at the fat guy like a wise-ass kid. ‘Except partying, I guess, and pissing off my parents.’ She thought that was really funny, at least she pretended she did. ‘And getting myself knocked up all the time.’