Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  “Hope dies hard, doesn’t it?”

  “Kids quit hoping. Think they did, anyway. They come in here, start opening up.” Jay shakes her head.

  “Sometimes it’s good.”

  “Sometimes. Meagan and her Dad.”

  “He got sober when she was little, right?”

  “She still had to go out, give the old alkie genes a test drive. But at least she had something. Some love. Some order, you know?”

  I nod.

  “Me too. Mum liked to party but she couldn’t afford it, waitress wage, kid to raise. On her own. I always knew she loved me. She had her men friends, back before religion got her, but I knew I came first. And Christ, if one of them had ever laid a finger on me, she’d have ripped his face off. Ash, her mother, useless slag. Too drunk to notice what the fucking boyfriend’s doing. When she found out, who do you think got kicked out of the house?”

  It floods through me, a giant wave carrying us all, the lost, the stolen, the unwanted, little match figures bobbing about, the whole sorry mess swept ...

  “We all have choices,” says a voice from the doorway.

  “She’s got a lot stacked up against her, don’t you think?” Jay asks, standing up.

  I turn my chair so I’m facing Laura.

  “Excuses. I heard them all. Racism this, racism that. Big excuse to stay home and get drunk. White man lied so I get high, beat my kids. If it wasn’t for everything holding them back, the things they’d do. Well, I never experienced any racism.”

  “Time for a room check,” Jay says. “I’ll do it.”

  “And what makes them weak? They’re waiting for someone to save them. The government. Somebody.”

  A couple of women at my old job used to go on like this. It’s weird hearing it from Laura.

  “If I spent my time feeling sorry for myself, I’d still be there.”

  “Where?”

  “The reserve I grew up on. You’ve got to take responsibility for yourself. That one tonight.”

  “Ash?”

  “She chose to pick up. She knew the consequences. Nobody forced that joint between her lips.”

  “So what do you think keeps someone sober? Willpower?”

  “What else?”

  I shake my head but there’s no point in arguing. “Where was the reserve?”

  “In Saskatchewan, way up north.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Useless. Anytime anybody got any money, whole reserve would get drunk. Grandparents, parents, little kids. Everybody. Party until it was gone. My own father molested me. I told my aunties. You know what they did? Slapped my face, told me not to talk dirty.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  She shrugs. “I got out of there. No high school on the reserve. Had to go south. First day at the new school I walked into the counsellor’s office, told her what happened. She was sympathetic.” Laura snorts. “She didn’t slap me, anyway. I worked hard, graduated from high school. All the girls I grew up with, they were having babies. I knew I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t healthy enough to have children of my own. Not yet. I went to college.”

  “What did you study?”

  “Social work. Focus on Aboriginal child and family welfare. Thing was, I kept thinking, how would I counsel clients when I knew I let my own father get away with molesting me? So I called up my parents and my aunties, told them what I was going to do, then I walked into the local RCMP detachment, laid a complaint against my father. Asked them to arrest him.”

  “Wow. What happened?”

  Laura does the filling her cheeks with air thing.

  “Nothing. They couldn’t get anyone to testify. One aunt, she’d walked in when he was doing it, eh, but she wouldn’t say a word to the police.”

  “Jesus.”

  Laura shrugs. “I did my part, eh? I’d be able to look my clients in the eye.”

  “That’s a pretty amazing story.”

  “I did what I had to do. I have a good life.”

  Her brown eyes look straight into mine.

  “You’re not ashamed.” The words pop out as the thought hits me.

  “What do I have to be ashamed about?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I want to say it’s not as easy as that but, looking at Laura, I think perhaps it is. Perhaps the rest of us are just making excuses.

  “Hello?” Querulous, older woman’s voice. “Can I get my meds?”

  Dishing out Deborah’s pills I realize nobody interrupted us the whole time it took Laura to tell me her story, which has to be a record. Jay’s still out on the floor somewhere. Was that my job, to keep Laura from stirring up the clients?

  Chapter Forty Nine

  THERE BUT FOR the grace of God, there but for the grace of God, there but for the grace ... The words click through, relentless as the boxcars passing in front of me, and there she is on East Hastings in the rain, drunk me, strung-out, liver-quitting yellow, skinned bones and bloat blearing at some passer-by who’s not meeting her eyes. Sound of feet on wet sidewalk. Because suddenly she’s sitting, back to the building, legs splayed out. One minute standing, next she’s down and laughing but the laugh twists to a cough that’s like a dog shaking a rag. Moss with a stick. The kill. That’s what Dad called it, that shake. I’m crying on the wet sidewalk, bawling for stern sweet Dad and a black and white dog, my life shit in my mouth. Shit. I’m spitting, spitting it up. Feet making a big circle around me now. Clack clack clack. Gotta get the shit out, retching, yellow, bitter, nothing left, still retching.

  ‘Hey Meggie, you okay?’ Longest legs you ever saw, tight black miniskirt, plastic for the rain. Pink shaggy sweater. ‘Meggie, you okay?’ Six foot two Dora. Big hand reaching down. Carmine nails. ‘You want up?’

  ‘I’m done, Dora. I’m done.’

  ‘C’mon then, hon.’

  Crying. ‘I’m done.’

  Dora looking in my face, eyelashes curling like a giraffe’s. Big brown eyes. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I’m done.’

  ‘Detox?’

  I nod.

  Honk behind me. Red lights on the caboose disappearing round the bend. I ease across the tracks, heading home. The car passes on the first straight stretch of road. ‘The day you decided to change your life,’ some counsellor said. I was supposed to be taking ownership of my power. To make Positive Choices. Only it wasn’t like that. I tried to describe it to her. She got the patient look so I quit. In all my life it’s the one thing I know for absolute sure is true. It was like an island rose up out of the ocean in front of me. I crawled up on the beach, sat and let the sun dry me out. One day I was a hopeless alcoholic druggie hell-bent on destroying myself. Next I was sober. Never had to pick up again. Which many would call the grace of God. Creator. Whatever. I don’t trust the words. Fuck up a good thing, words.

  Mum looking at Dad and me across the turquoise Formica table. ‘Come on then, say something.’

  Dad and I looked at each other, opened our mouths, ‘What?’ Same question, exact same tone. We started laughing, Mum too.

  ‘What’ll I do with you? As much talk in you as a couple of potatoes.’ Dad winked at me.

  Looks like a happy memory to me. Jay’s voice in my head. Three of us around the table, square little house, wind ripping into the aspens. Mum and Dad and me, playing happy family. No. Yes. Fuck. The dark rangeland slips past me.

  Drunk, I’d creep up to lighted windows, press my face to the glass. Let me in, let me in. But there I was, sitting around the table, laughing. That was me.

  Except it wasn’t my real family. My real family were probably drunk fucking assholes and I had the scars to prove there wasn’t any happy family only maybe that was my foster family I was running away from and before them was my real mother who had to give me up for adoption because the dumb ass Catholic church made her. Maybe she really wanted me.

  Or maybe she was another crack whore who popped me out and got on with her habit, whatever it was back then before crack.

 
; So there were these two perfectly decent human beings who took me in when I showed up out of nowhere with nothing to say for myself. They welcomed me as if I was a gift from God and I ate their food and took what I could and six years later I spat in their faces and went dancing down my own little path to destruction.

  That’s the story, anyway. But, even if I did show up at the edge of the field, even if that’s all true, none of it was the way it looked. Did I know? Did I know somewhere inside I was being lied to? Cold tendrils wrap around me.

  Something catches my eye off to my left. An odd cloud. Lights. Wrong direction for Upgrader Alley. Wrong colour. Greenish. It pulses brighter. A curtain of colour sways across the sky. Pale yellow green, gold edge. For a moment the whole northern sky shimmers green then the light shrinks back to a little cloud pulsing just above the horizon.

  A sign, Mum would have said. Everything was a sign to her. God managing her life. Every detail. Nothing happened by accident.

  Fingers of light stretch out, pull back. How would it be to have God talking to you all the time? Like being a bean in a pod, soft pod-ness wrapped around you? No rattling about in empty space. No circumstance banging you around. Safe. Airless.

  I’ve pulled over. Turn off the engine. Sit by the side of the gravel road, dark fields around me. I could make it a sign. The day my life changed. Again. I see Ash’s pretty blank face. Feel the naked hopelessness. There’s what you want with all your heart and there’s you in the way, fucking it up. It’s like a great claw rakes through your life, dragging you back, but it’s you.

  ‘Sinful you,’ Mum would say. ‘Satan. Don’t let Satan in.’

  Sasquatch Satan, big old feet, long hard claws.

  Weird, sitting here, watching the lights, thinking about Satan. Everything balanced on this moment. All I can do is watch.

  What am I talking about? What everything?

  It won’t go away, the odd hush, the extra stillness. I reach for the key, drop my hand. Guess I want to sit here in the cold.

  Chapter Fifty

  “WHERE ARE HEATHER and Doug?”

  “Showing new clients to their rooms. Going through their stuff.”

  “I’d like to learn that.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find them in the bedroom wing.”

  She’s off with a swing of shining hair. I try the cheek-filling, air-blowing thing.

  “Hello?” The tentative voice belongs to a reedy young man with sallow skin, large dark eyes, a cap of thick black hair. “I’m Roy Whitemud.” He reaches over to point to his name on the new client list. S. Status. As he draws his hand back I see a series of pale scars across his wrist, like the rungs on a ladder.

  “If you could sign in ...”—which he does with the same hand. They’re not new, the scars.

  “Do you have any valuables or medications to check in? Cell phones, cash, car keys?” He shakes his head. He reminds me of a newborn faun, wide-eyed, stiff-legged. “How about aftershave?” He shakes his head. His eyes go down to the plastic grocery bag at his feet. “Um. Do you need toiletries? Toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo.”

  He looks away, nods his head.

  I rummage in the closet where we keep the bags of toiletries, a box for the men, one for the women, then pull out the tub of clothes.

  “Will these do?” He looks down at the ziplock bag, then at the two pairs of socks and the white t-shirt. He opens his mouth. I say, “We’ve got too many. If you can use them ...”

  Over his shoulder I see Doug strolling and Laura marching up the corridor.

  “Hey Roy,” Doug says.

  Roy turns. Relief spreads across his face. “Doug, right?”

  “You got it. And this is Laura.”

  The three of them head back down the corridor.

  “Did you see the scars?” Heather asks, forking meatloaf into her mouth.

  “Right handed. Right wrist,” Doug says. “Just letting out the pain.” He dips his fork in the mashed potato then sets it down again. “He bangs his head too.”

  “They say it helps them feel in control,” Heather says. “Self-mutilation. I don’t understand it myself. I’d rather thump the arsehole that did it.” Her accent slants the word. Arse.

  “Sexual abuse?” I ask.

  “Nine times out of ten,” Doug says.

  Laura rolls her eyes. She’s eaten the meat off her plate and the cauliflower. “Doug,” she says, “you’ve worked here a long time?”

  He shakes his head. “For three years a while ago. I’ve only been back”—he looks at me—“three weeks?”

  “About that,” I say. A smile tugs at his lips. Heather’s sitting back in her chair, watching. Amethyst earrings under silver hair, the dove grey sweater. Her lipstick red but not hard red. Laura’s wearing lipstick too. Just a shade pinker than natural. I haven’t done the make-up thing since I quit my job job.

  Doug’s standing up. “Done?” he asks, reaching for my plate.

  “Thanks.”

  Laura hops up too. “Show me where they go.”

  When the gate has clicked shut behind them Heather looks at me, eyebrows raised a couple of millimetres.

  “Mm,” I say. “‘Good luck with that,’ as Jay would say.”

  “Jay would say a whole lot more but not in a certain person’s hearing. There’s something going down. I’ve worked in offices my whole life. I know when management’s up to something.”

  Out in the parking lot, two minutes after midnight, the sky is so thick with stars the Milky Way looks like a sash trailing across the sky. A burnt orange subcompact peels out of the parking lot. Laura’s, followed by Heather’s Honda Civic. I wait for Doug’s jeep but instead hear a car door open and close then soft footsteps across the blacktop.

  “Do you know the constellations?”

  “A few. My father taught me.”

  “I know the Pueblo Indian names and some of the Cree.”

  “Does everybody pick out the same constellations or do different cultures pick out different patterns?”

  “I don’t know. Good question.”

  “I suppose it’s the stories that count.”

  “It’s what we do, eh? Us humans.” He says it softly, the silent dome of the sky above us. “We need our stories. To help us with the unknowable. And the unbearable.”

  “Our myths?”

  “Mm. The big collective ones but also our personal ones.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that moment of getting sober.”

  “You were on last night, weren’t you?”

  “When Ash picked up. Yes.” We’ve wandered out to the edge of the parking lot, away from the lights. The stars are even brighter. “That moment when someone’s really ready. No one can make it happen. Though rehabs try, I suppose.”

  “It’s probably what keeps me going to meetings.”

  “The resurrections?”

  “I suppose we are all born again.”

  “And again and again in some cases.”

  “I never went back out. Did you?”

  “No. I knew in my gut I wouldn’t get a second chance. Um. Doug, I’m sorry I got so weird the other night.”

  He’s shaking his head. It’s too dark to see his expression. “Don’t apologize,” he says, “I like real people.”

  Chapter Fifty One

  A DINGHY SCUDDING across waves, I skim the surface of sleep. Used to watch the Sunfish in Burrard’s Inlet. Looked like happiness, wind ballooning your sail, you leaning, counterweight to the wind. You, whoever you were, the sail, the board, the water, the invisible wind. Me, hung-over, shaking for the next. Drunk me. She’s with me today, along for the ride. Maybe she’s the one who needs to go to the farm right this instant. No bread to bring. I should bring something. Besides an apology.

  Bring tobacco.

  Right. Like Dad’s some Native elder. I grab a couple of clean t-shirts, head on out. Take a different route out of town. At the lights on Jasper and 124th a trolley bus has come unhooked from the overhead wire
. Driver’s out, heaving the bar back up. I turn the radio on. Turn it back off. Look around. There’s a cigar shop right across the road. Lights are on. Man opens up the door, flips the sign. Who in hell buys cigars at 7:30 in the morning?

  The shop smells brown and rich, the owner a Turk perhaps, luxuriant walrus moustache, velvet black eyes.

  “Good morning. What can I get for you?”

  It smells of ships and harbours. Brine. Tar. The package on the seat next to me.

  I drive with nothing in my mind but I’m full of feeling. When I crest the rise and the mountains spread out in front of me, tears spill down my cheeks.

  When I pull into the yard, sun is glittering off a dusting of fresh snow. I sit looking out at the house, old machinery shed rusting away behind the shelter belt, t-shirts and boxers snapping on the line beside the trailer. Everything’s got that extra edge. If I look the right way I’ll see something I’ve never seen before. What I loved about acid. I climb out of the car. Overhead the sky is that limitless, inscrutable blue that makes you half want some old bearded God to point his finger, tell you what to do, because you could get lost, gazing into that blue. I drop my eyes to the line of mountains. They stroll across the sky, clouds bubbling up from behind them. Mountains are all here. There’s nowhere but here. This. This. This. They insist, mountains.

  “Are you coming in?”

  He’s in the doorway, head cocked to one side, squinting. The sun still low in the east.

  “Dad. I’m sorry about the other night. On the phone. I should not have spoken to you like that.”

  He nods. “I was about to go for my walk. Want to come?”

  His old brown boots are on but not laced. He’s wearing the thick beige cardigan Mum knitted him.

  “Yes.”

  I follow him inside. He lets himself down on the chair in the hallway and reaches for his laces. He’s stiffer than I’ve ever seen him, his warped fingers fumbling the bows but I know he’d hate for me to offer.

  “Ready?” he asks at last. He dons a jacket I haven’t seen in years and an equally ancient sheepskin cap with earflaps that reappeared this fall. He picks up his cane.