Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  Whatever the hell that holds. What if I really did come from Firestick? My mother could still be alive.

  The bus jolts to a stop. Red light. Dandelion yellow sign. Yvonne’s Caribbean.

  Chapter Forty One

  DOUG’S AT THE table by the window, studying the menu. Seeing me, he smiles and gets up. “Want this seat?”

  I do because it’s the one with its back to the wall and a view of the door but I shake my head, look around. “Good thing you got here early. Been waiting long?”

  “I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get into the city this time of day.”

  “How long does it usually take?”

  “Just under an hour.”

  “That’s not so bad, eh?”

  “Worth it to me.”

  The waiter comes up. He looks worried. “You need more time?”

  “I know what I want.” I look at Doug.

  “Me too.”

  He bustles off with the order. Doug’s eyes follow him.

  “He’s Yvonne—the owner’s—sister’s son-in-law. And he always looks worried. She says he takes his responsibilities very seriously and that’s a good thing. She’s not too big on the Rasta men.” I tip my chin at a table of handsome ebullient men with bulky red, yellow and green striped caps.

  “You live around here?”

  “112th and 66th.”

  “You didn’t sound like a fan of the city, the other week.”

  “You mean when you asked if I liked living here and I said no? I surprised myself. But it’s true, the noise bothers me more and more.”

  The waiter returns with glasses and a platter of dip we didn’t order. I look across the crowded room. Yvonne, standing by the cash register nods once. I mouth, “Thank you.”

  “You come here often?”

  “Used to.” I reach for a sweet potato chip, scoop up some dip.

  Doug follows suit.

  “Yum,” I say. “This is new.”

  “I love plantain.”

  We both take more.

  “And lime and cayenne.”

  “And cloves?”

  “Mace too, maybe.”

  Yvonne’s watching us. I raise my thumb. Doug nods vigorously.

  “So what keeps you in the city, other than places like this which are thin on the ground out where I live?”

  “I like working at Dreamcatcher.”

  “Me too, but you don’t have to live here to do that.”

  “I guess if I was going to live in the country it would be on the ranch where I grew up.”

  “Over near Drayton Valley?”

  “It’s too far to drive in for work. I don’t know how I’d make a living there.”

  “There are always ways. Especially if you don’t have a mortgage. I make harnesses.”

  “For horses? Sorry, stupid question.”

  The waiter arrives with our plates.

  “Thank you.” Doug smiles and picks up his fork.

  “How did you get into that? Making harnesses.”

  “I’d been going up north, on and off, working in the camps, but then something happened. I realized the girls needed me. We’d broken up, Tanya and me. I’m not their biological father but I’ve known them since they were one and three. It was more important to me to be in their lives than pretty much anything else. So”—he shrugs—“I used to make belts, sandals. Hippie stuff, you know. Back in the day. Not much of a market for that in Alberta but horses ... There was a lot of money coming into Stony Plain. Last boom, people bought acreages. What’s an acreage without a couple of horses?

  “I found an old guy over by Conjuring Lake. Gabriel Lambert. Worked with him whenever I could. He’d been making tack his whole life. He was happy to have someone to pass it on to. The knowledge he’d built up. It was a good time, the time I spent with Gabriel. We could go for hours without saying a word. It turned out he was Métis too but I didn’t find that out for a couple of years.”

  He looks down at his plate which he hasn’t touched yet. “You’re going to have to do some talking. I was wondering how it went, with the brothers who ...”

  “Aren’t? I wasn’t quite so mad by the time I talked to them. I’d worked out why it bothered me so much.”

  “If we are disturbed ...” Doug says softly.

  “The fault lies in us.” I finish. “I’ve always hated that bit of the Big Book. I mean I don’t believe it about all sorts of stuff. But ...” I shrug.

  “It’s saved my ass a few times,” he says.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “So why did it bother you so much, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I watch him collect a forkful of rice and goat curry and fried plantain, his brown hair swinging forward, half hiding his face. Silver threads the dun brown. His moustache too is shot with silver. “It’s all about trust, I suppose. The short version is: a) since my mother died I’ve discovered there are a lot of things that aren’t the way they appeared to be, and b) I get mad at not being able to trust my father because there’s a whole lot of stuff I need to know which I should know but I don’t because I can’t remember ...” Doug’s brow wrinkles. “Never mind. It’s too complicated.”

  He finishes chewing his mouthful, puts down his fork. “But I would like to know.”

  I look around. The people at the table next to Doug are in raucous conversation but the couple at my right elbow are barely talking at all.

  “Somewhere less crowded. Perhaps we could get coffee afterwards.”

  “Fine idea. But you’re still going to have to talk a bit.” He picks up his fork. “How’s the bread-making going? This curry is excellent, by the way.”

  “So is the jerk chicken. Actually everything I’ve eaten here has been good. As to the bread, I’ve hit a bit of a plateau. I’d like to experiment with techniques that bring out the flavour of whole grains but there’s not much point without better quality flour.”

  “I heard there’s a monk in Ontario who got hold of some viable seed of Red Fife. Just a handful. It’ll take a while for him to grow it out, build up seed stock. Assuming it’s the real thing.” Doug looks down at his plate then smiles at me. “You’ll get me talking again.”

  “Sorry.” I’m smiling back.

  He finishes off the curry and puts down his fork. “Where did you have in mind for coffee? Other than Timmies which won’t be any less crowded. Beverly must have come up in the world if there’s another coffee joint. But then look at this place. Even a couple of years ago Swiss Chalet was as cosmopolitan as you got in Edmonton.”

  “I’m drawing a blank,” I say, “on the cappuccino bar. Want to get coffee at my place?”

  I’d never do this on a first date but it’s easy, hanging out with Doug. “Fine,” he says. “Shall we go? Make some people happy?”

  I twist around. “That’s quite a queue.”

  Doug’s standing up, heading for the register. No baling twine in his pocket. Same jacket though, and jeans faded to that point of perfect softness two minutes shy of splitting.

  Yvonne wearing a blue and white tie-dye headkerchief and matching mumu. ‘My Yoruba mama look,’ she told me one time.

  “Thanks for the dip,” I say. “It was delicious.”

  She purses her lips and frowns. “Needs my grandmother’s pepper sauce. Next time I go back I’ll get the proper peppers, eh?” She finds our bill.

  “We’re splitting it,” I say.

  “Not if you’re making coffee,” Doug says, passing Yvonne a twenty, waiting for her to tell him the rest.

  “Seventeen dollars and twenty cents,” she says, her voice rich and brown as her skin, a guttural laugh in the bottom of it.

  “You don’t ask enough,” he says.

  She surveys him. “Is that so?” she says slowly.

  He grins. “For such an excellent meal.”

  He turns away. Yvonne catches my eye, nods her head once, majestically.

  I shake my head, smiling.

  Yvonne tucks her chin
in so several extra chins form, mock frowns at me. Bill and I used to come in here a lot.

  I shake my head at her again and follow Doug out.

  He left a five on the table. Good. I hate cheap tippers.

  Chapter Forty Two

  “THEY GAVE ME that.” I wave the bag of Alberta Crude at my one and only fridge magnet: I can sleep when I’m dead.

  Doug grins. “I confess I am an apostate in the Church of Timmies. Living in New Mexico, I got used to good weed, good tequila, good coffee. Good coffee’s what I missed the most when I moved back to Alberta. The weed and the tequila ...” He opens his hands, spreads solid square tipped fingers.

  Back in the living room, him in the armchair, me on the chesterfield, I ask, “So how and when did you get sober?”

  He shakes his head. “First you’re going to tell me this complicated story.”

  “How long ago did he tell you this? Or she?”

  “He. I stopped calling him Dad for about three minutes but what’s the point? He’s not reverting to being a woman.”

  “So it’s not really as simple as passing for convenience.”

  “No, but I’m not sure it’s any of the other versions I know about either. He’s clear that he didn’t feel like he was born into the wrong body. The way he says it, it’s more that he made a choice to pass and then it evolved. It wasn’t even his idea, exactly. The woman he was with misunderstood something he said. She said something like, ‘You wouldn’t,’ and he knew that he would.”

  “And that same day he bought men’s clothes, cut off his hair and never looked back? There must have been some idea, some wish before that moment.”

  “I would have thought so. But he was quite impulsive. Or she was. She left home kind of on the spur of the moment, went off to drive an ambulance, even though she knew her parents would disown her. But that’s another story.”

  “Which I’d also like to hear. But I’m trying to imagine. When he first told you, he said he was a woman, not a man. But later he said he was a woman or a man.”

  “He likes ‘or’ not ‘and’. Possibly because he thinks the world isn’t ready for ‘and’.”

  “When did he tell you?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “Wow. Then last week you found out the brothers weren’t what they seemed either. No wonder you were steamed.”

  My eyes sting. You think you want someone to understand but then it hurts.

  “Where did they meet? How did they meet, your father and the not-brothers?”

  “An ad at the GLBT centre.”

  “Here in town? On 101st?”

  I nod. “Don’t ask. Every story sprouts another one. You’ll be here all night.” I stop, embarrassed.

  “I want to go back to your story. If you don’t mind. The day your father told you, you were expecting him to tell you something else. Something you should know but don’t know because you can’t remember?”

  “Jesus, you’ve got a good memory.”

  He shrugs. “I’m interested.”

  “All right. You know I’m adopted?”

  “And that you don’t know anything about your birth family.”

  “How about that I don’t remember anything before the day I showed up at the farm which was when I was about ten years old?”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wow. So where does your memory start?”

  “At the edge of a field. A man driving an orange tractor. Who, it turns out, wasn’t exactly a man. But I thought he was. A man with gold hair. Freshly ploughed soil. Poplar trees. Yellow leaves.”

  “And you don’t remember anything at all before that?”

  I shake my head. I’m not going to cry.

  “What about your name? Did you know your name?”

  I shake my head again.

  “So ‘Meg’ ...”

  “Is a name Mum and Dad gave me. I must know. I know I must. But I can’t get to it.”

  “Do you mind me asking you questions?”

  “No.”

  “When you were standing at the edge of the field, did you think, ‘That’s freshly ploughed soil’?”

  I shake my head. “The soil was just lumpy and brown. But I see your point. I knew the tractor was a tractor. I knew the trees were poplar trees. But I don’t think that adds up to me having come from a farm.”

  “So there you were at the edge of the field?”

  He’s not looking at me as if I’m a freak.

  I can see Dad, dusty, wiping his sleeve across his mouth, long stride across the tumbled earth. Black and white dog slinking along at his heels.

  “The man asked me if I was lost. I understood but I didn’t say anything. Then he asked me my name. I didn’t say anything then either. There wasn’t anything in my mind to say. I just stood there. He asked some more questions then he turned and started walking away. I followed him to a house with a red roof. A woman was standing in the doorway.

  “They gave me some water and a blanket. They asked me my name again and where I was from. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. They gave me food then the man left. He came back with a different man who spoke to me in Cree. Not that I recognized it back then. The next day Dad went to the RCMP.”

  “He didn’t call them that night?”

  “No. Mum didn’t want to call them at all. There were signs I’d been abused. Physically. Dad insisted.

  “The RCMP didn’t have any reports of missing children that fit my description. They put him in touch with a woman who worked in Child Welfare. He talked to her then we all three went to see her. I don’t really remember that visit. As soon as we got in the truck I kind of stepped outside myself, like I was riding alongside myself. Just watching. I didn’t feel anything. I was in that state a lot, especially at the beginning.”

  I stop. I know the word for that state. Doug probably does too.

  “Dad says the woman agreed I could stay with them while they went through the process of being approved for foster care.”

  “It sounds as if they knew right away they wanted ...”

  “To keep me. Yes. Mum always said I was an answer to her prayers. As soon as they could they applied to adopt me. The first night I slept on the chesterfield. Then they set up a cot for me in the corner of the living room. It’s a small house. There was just one bedroom. For obvious reasons they didn’t want me wandering in of a morning so, as soon as they could, they built a room upstairs with a door they could lock.”

  “They locked you in at night?”

  “No.”

  Doug’s eyes rest on my face.

  My cheeks burn. “That’s where they slept. They went to a lot of trouble to make room for me. I do know that. There wasn’t really even an attic. Dad cut a hole in the middle of the roof and put a sort of pop-up room there.”

  “Wow. He did it himself?”

  “With the help of a couple of neighbours. It was the usual low budget operation. I think he spent that first winter gathering materials. I know he took down an old chicken coop. It was Mum’s and my job to scrape the chicken shit off the old floor boards. We scrubbed them with bleach and let them dry for a few days in the sun and the wind. Even so, for years after that, on a hot August day, even with the windows open up there, you’d get a whiff of chicken shit.

  “Those days Mum always said, ‘I told you we should have put them bad side up. I’d have had them clean by now.’

  “Dad always said, ‘I told you we should have bought new boards.’”

  Doug smiles.

  “Sorry. You really are getting the long version.”

  “I like details. Don’t stop.”

  “Well, so they moved into the new room and Dad built me a bed of my own in their old room.”

  “Had they been approved for foster care by then?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I wonder if, back then, you had to have a room of your own for them to qualify?”

  “Maybe. I remember the day of
the home study. The social worker pulled up in the driveway in a big blue car that looked the way I thought a sailboat should look, as if it was leaning into the wind. Mum was fussing at Dad about the dust on his boots. My hair was pulled back so hard in a pony tail it made my eyes feel slanty. This social worker had yellow-brown eyes and pointy features. She asked me about my bed. It had a picture of sunflowers and mountains and a little white house with a red roof and another little red roof coming out of the top of it and a red door and a girl with dark hair looking out. ‘Why that looks just like your house,’ she said. I nodded. I could feel Mum’s eyes on the back of my neck even though she was in the next room. ‘Dad painted it for me,’ I said, which was about as many words as I ever managed at that point. ‘And is that little girl you?’

  “I nodded again. She asked me to show her my clothes which were in a dresser. Her eyes crawled all over everything. The house was always pretty clean but Mum had gone overboard. She hardly let Dad and me indoors for three days before. You could see the social worker approved.

  “We stood in the doorway together and waved as she drove away, red lights winking from the big silver fins.

  “‘Thank God that’s over,’ Dad said and Mum didn’t even complain about him taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “And that was it?”

  “A couple of times I had to go and see a man in an office who played with his pens. Framed things on the wall that weren’t pictures. Pale blue eyes watching me. A few times he wrote something down. I don’t remember saying anything to him.”

  “A psychiatrist?”

  “Probably. I think that might have been before the home study. I started going to school after Christmas.”

  “You’d been to school before?”

  “I must have. It didn’t freak me out.” I shift on the chesterfield. “I think. I think that’s enough about me.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No. I’m ... It’s me. I guess I’m surprised. I thought we’d be talking about Dad. You seemed to just take that in stride. Am I weird for being floored by it?”

  “Of course not. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around my father telling me that. I’d be in shock for a year. But the two stories together ... It was a hell of a risk.”