Blasted (19 page)

“Dennis?” She looked at me with a bit of surprise. “He's good, good…”

“Good.” A pause. “And it's okay? The single mom thing, I mean?”

“Oh, yeah.” She took a swig. “Well…” She leaned across the table and whispered. “Sometimes, Ruby, I just wanna… You know?”

“Yeah,” I murmured. What? Then I saw her hand was raised like she'd strike something.

“It's true. I just look at him and I think, I try so hard with you and you're
punching
me? He punches me sometimes, you know.”

“He's seven. I punched things when I was seven.”

“Things. Not your mother.”

“Well, actually, I…”

“The thing is,” she stared out the window again, “work is such a bitch that by the time I get home I just don't have any energy. I feel guilty about that, you know?”

“Sure.”

“I was such a baby when I decided to go into nursing. I like people, I want to help them get better, I need a solid income for the kid – gee, I think I'll be a nurse!”

“You want to get out of it?”

She hesitated. “I… listen, don't freak out, but last year I started these therapy sessions.”

“Therapy!” She glared at me. “Okay, therapy, that's great,” I said more quietly.

“Well, it's been a ride. With my, you know…”

“Yeah.” An image of her mother, shapeless brown polyester, the wardrobe. “Yeah,” I repeated lamely.

“But it's been really good.” Her voice was light, like a girl's. “And I've been thinking… well, maybe I'd like to get into that. Not psychiatric nursing; they're all nuts. But actually get trained as a therapist, or, I don't know. Something like that.”

“Well, you're the genius.”

“What I've realized,” she leaned back, “is, well – I always thought I'm too fucked up. I'll never get it, the things other people get. Because of my family. But this group work… I can see it now. Everyone's fucked up, it's not just me. And it's a matter of holding your own feelings. Being a big enough person to actually hold your own feelings. And when you can do that, it actually lets you really see other people, too.”

“You know I have no idea what you're talking about,” I said.

She looked directly into my eyes. “Oh, come on. You do. You knew my mother. My sisters. You're one of the only people who did.”

The kitchen, red panties on her sister. “I mean, I don't get that
holding
stuff.” I filled my glass and knocked half of it back. “Sounds like they got you.”

“What?”

“Jargon, that stuff.”

Her eyes flashed. “Fuck, it's not jargon! It's…”

“That's more like it.”

“Stop yanking my chain, Ruby.” She wanted to smoke so bad I could practically see the cigarette in her hand.

“You know,” I said, leaning back in my booth, “as far as I'm concerned, we don't get over that stuff. Our parents, whatever. It's just… who we are.”

“It's not about getting over it,” she said. “It's about holding it.”

“Here we go again.”

She held my gaze. “Let's talk about something else.”

She was being so reasonable. Rage hardened, brightened in my gut. “So do you actually tell them? The group? About it? How your mother whored your sisters?”

“Shut up, Ruby.”

“How do you hold that feeling?”

She didn't drop her eyes, but her body went still. “What feeling would that be?”

“Wondering when your turn would come around. I mean, you were ten. I mean…”

“I'm leaving.”

“Of course you are.” The brilliance in my gut gathered and grew. Of course she'd leave, everyone always did. Juanita stood, picked up her purse. Her hands were shaking, her face was turned away from me. I'd hurt her, me; she wasn't armoured. The pulsing in my gut suddenly drained out of me. What had I been saying? God, why? “Look, don't leave.” It was too late, I couldn't help it. “I'm sorry, okay?”

“Yeah. You sound really fucking sorry.” She was digging in her purse, throwing a bunch of crumpled bills on the table. She left. I let her go. My flare-up of compassion followed the rage, leaking out like the fluid from a suppurating wound. I sat there for a while, wondering what the hell had just happened. And frightening myself with how little I cared.

CHAPTER 12

Shanawdithit used to talk to the dead. When she was living with the white family, there were times she would be seized by what they called a “melancholy mood.” She'd go off into the woods for hours and hours, and when she came back she'd be singing and laughing; she said she'd been talking to her mother and sister.
Don't be so foolish, they're dead,
I imagine they told her,
you can't talk to them. They're gone
. Howley's book put her answer like this:
A yes. They here, me see them and talk to them.

What foolishness, to think she could talk to the dead.

That night, back at the house, I went to the window and looked out at the stars and felt like the loneliest thing in this vast, cold universe. And then, drunkenly, I lay down on the floor, arms and legs spread like the rays of a star, closed my eyes, and wished.
Shanawdithit, Shanawdithit, Shanawdithit, come!

Shanawdithit spent her last years of life being nursemaid to white children. She liked children, they said. She'd had to leave two of her own behind when they captured her, and she never stopped mourning them.

“Where are they?” I whispered. “Where did
you
go when you died?”

She was disowned by her tribe for living with the whites; that was the law. “I belong to no one,” I whispered to the dark. “They are all dead, or dying. I am nobody, nowhere.” Her spirit danced, lifting up from vanished green terraces, from bulldozers and monuments of stone. She was dancing. And then she was gone.

I pulled each of my limbs from my starfish wishing, one after the other, and rolled into a ball on my side.

I woke in the night, huddled in a heap on the floor, facing the bed.

Heart hammering in my chest, I didn't know what had awakened me. Cold. I was cold. The light in the hall was still on, it bled around the door into the darkness of my room. I could make out the legs of my little iron bedstead, and the shadows. And there, under the bed, something gleamed. Like two, round, not quite human eyes. I blinked, my heart pounding, and slowly, the eyes blinked too, then blinked out. The shadows shifted, changed shape – gathering into a form – I couldn't tell what.

There was a slithering sound, feathers rustling. The eyes were gone, the slithering increased in volume, dragging across the floor. “Is it you?” I pushed myself away from the bed until I felt the doorjamb cold against my back. Shadows rose up into the air. I pulled the door open and electric light flooded the room. Under the bed, only dust.

I eyed the bed, the fall of harsh light across it, then clambered to my feet and made a flying leap onto the bedstead. It took a while for me to sleep again.

The next time my eyes opened, dawn was filtering through the window; my tongue felt like I had spent the night licking an old carpet. I sat up, my head weighing a hundred pounds, the room whirling from all I'd had to drink. I leaned over the edge of the bed. There was nothing there, nothing at all.

My first thought on waking, hours later, was that I should worry about Juanita, about what I'd said to her. I should call her.

Maybe tomorrow.

I went into the bathroom and there made the unpleasant discovery that my face had broken out; a blooming arc of encrusted crimson marked my cheek and jaw. And when I got into the shower a small, hard, painful lump on my shoulder blade turned out to be the beginnings of a boil. There were more lumps down my spine and across the back of my neck.

After washing I trudged down to the kitchen, aching for tea. I could see Grandpa out the back window, at work in the garden. The kettle dropped from my grasp as I tried to fill it, clattering in the sink. Grandpa came inside, filling the doorway, all white light and shadowy figure. I shielded my eyes. The bang of the door made me wince.

“It's awfully bright out this morning,” I croaked.

“This afternoon,” he corrected me. Then: “You've got eyes like two pissholes in the snow.”

I turned back to filling the kettle. “How come you get to say ‘piss' all you want, but if I say it I get a tongue-lashing?” I turned the tap on too full so water gushed over the kettle, my hands, and the front of my dressing gown. “Shit!” Grandpa made an exasperated noise through his teeth and came over to take the kettle from me, motioning for me to sit down; he filled it and put it on the stove.

“Had fun with Juanita last night?”

“We ended up getting into a racket.”

He grunted, coughed. Then he sat down at the table and leaned over it, hands folded. He met my eyes and cleared his throat. I sat there like a sack of potatoes. The kettle rattled a bit.

“Look,” he said. “Don't you have a job to get back to in Toronto?”

Oh, that's really rich. Grandpa's kicking me out. “Can this wait until I've got a cuppa into me?” We sat in silence until the kettle shrieked and I'd made my tea. I huddled on the kitchen chair and slurped at the hot liquid, and then I met his eyes. “Okay,” I said. “About this job of mine in Toronto.” I considered telling him the truth. “It can wait,” I said instead.

“What about your plane ticket?” he persisted. “You bought a return ticket, didn't you?”

“An open-ended ticket,” I lied. Actually, I guessed I had maybe a week left; I couldn't remember the exact date. I didn't want to remember, didn't want to think about going back to that empty apartment where no one needed me and… and I didn't want to think about it, that's all. “You really think you'd be okay on your own?”

“Of course I'll be okay,” he snapped.

“Well, you weren't acting very ‘okay' a few days ago. God knows if you'd have even eaten without me here.” My head started pounding. “You don't want me here. Is that it?”

“Don't be so foolish! This is your home.”

I started crying.

“Oh, for – ” He got up and paced around the table.

Tears seeped down my face and my nose started running, and I dug around in my pocket for a tissue and found one, all soggy from the soaker I'd given myself trying to fill the kettle. “Let's talk later, okay?” I quavered. Grandpa's hand reached over from behind me. He was offering his handkerchief. I took it without looking at him. Briefly, so briefly I almost didn't take it in, his big hand rested on my shoulder. Then he walked back out of the kitchen.

Later that day, I told Grandpa that I wanted us to go through Gramma's stuff together. Then I'd go back to Toronto. He took this in without a twitch; I couldn't tell if he wanted me to leave, or stay, or what.
This is your home
, he'd said, but what did that mean? I set myself the task of leaving out of sheer pride. I'd leave when the ticket Blue and Brendan had bought me told me to.

The next day the lumps on my spine had developed into an archipelago of small volcanic islands; the pimples had spread. I, who whatever other agonies I had suffered during adolescence, had always had clear skin.

I picked at the blemishes until my face looked like a war zone, and the lumps on my back – the ones within reach, anyway – puffed up, angry and purple-red. When I came down to the kitchen Grandpa said, “What happened to your face?”

“Nothing.”

After breakfast Grandpa and I pulled Gramma's clothes from the closet and under the bed and bagged them for the Salvation Army. It went surprisingly smoothly, no fights and little crankiness, which must be some sort of record with Grandpa and me. I wondered if he'd think to look under the mattress and discern that I'd filched the pictures, but he never did.

Once, after a bathroom break, I re-entered the bedroom to find him holding a dress up to himself, like he was hugging it. His eyes were bright.

“She wore this.” It was old, a pink gown with dim silver sequins and beads, in that flowy material that always made me think of ballerinas. “Do you want it?” I stepped into the room, reached out and caressed the fabric. It caught on the roughened skin of my fingers. The smell of mothballs filled my nostrils, an old musty scent and a hint of some perfume. There was no chance in hell it'd fit me; I was at least five inches taller than Gramma, and twice as skinny.

“Sure,” I said. “I'd love it.”

The closet looked empty when we'd done. I swept it out, and spaced Grandpa's suit, his trousers and shirts, along the rail, and there was nothing else I could do. Gramma's wedding dress, covered in clinging drycleaning plastic, hung at one end. Both of us, for no really good reason, felt unable to pack her wedding dress off to a thrift-shop.

After we'd done with the clothes, the two of us slumped exhausted in the kitchen. I was vacillating between a kettle for tea or a beer when Grandpa said, “Well. Guess we'd better sort through her papers.”