Liar (8 page)
Authors: Joanna Gosse
~ ~
Sam left a week after his grandmother’s funeral and life on the island went back to its normal, quiet pace. China was so busy carving she hardly had time to miss Sam. She was proud that she was now able to add to their income by selling a few of her latest driftwood carvings at the local hotel. The owner had allowed her to display a couple on the walls of the diningroom and they had both sold and now she had a commission for two more. Money had been tight ever since they had arrived on the island. When they were in Toronto Sam had thrown money around as though he had an endless supply at his fingertips. He tended to be exceedingly vague about his salary and China vowed that as soon as he returned they would have a heart to heart about money and budgeting and the future. Although Sam had made several trips from the island since their arrival in June, China had remained like a prisoner in a strange place. What had happened to Sam’s promise that they’d travel together? What had happened to the promise that while Sam was away, China could visit with Sarah, or Jane and Tina, or her parents in Newfoundland? She’d been so busy honeymooning and exploring the island and enjoying new experiences and worrying over Thunder Ceremonies, that she hadn’t been able to stop and think for very long. Every now and then an uneasy feeling would creep into her belly, but before she had a chance to question its origin, something would distract her. The days flew by and before she knew it, she’d been on Grimshaw Island for five months. Christmas was coming and no plans had been made. Worry and questions were making a knot in her belly.
Sam returned several days before Christmas and as soon as the sexual preliminaries had been taken care of, China screwed up her courage and faced her new husband with her concerns. Her stomach churned and she was disappointed that even though she’d reached the grand age of forty-six, she still had difficulty approaching money matters with confidence. She could deal with her own confidently, but the men in her life had always brought in much bigger salaries, and so far she’d never found a man who would easily share the secrets of their financial successes or disasters.
“Sam,” said China bravely. “You haven’t mentioned what holidays you’ll be having over Christmas. I don’t think we can afford to go to Newfoundland, but I thought maybe we could go and stay with Jane and Tina for a few days.”
“Pop is in a pretty bad way since Granny died so I thought we’d spend Christmas here,” said Sam from behind his newspaper.
“Oh,” said China. “Well, in that case, do you think that on your next trip we could afford another ticket for me so that I can visit Jane and Tina? I really miss them.”
“Sure,” replied Sam. “There’s usually a seat sale sometime in February.”
“Great. Okay. Ummmm, sweetie?” questioned China carefully. “I think we need to talk about finances and plans for the next year.”
“Don’t you worry about that China. I know things have been a bit difficult, but it’s getting better all the time. By this time next year, we’ll have our own house and we’ll be able to bring Jane and Tina with us to Newfoundland for Christmas. I’m going over to the Band Council for a while.”
Sam kissed China and left her with the feeling that she had just been patted on the head and told to be a good girl and Daddy would make everything all better.
~ ~
China was brushing her teeth and saw something she did not appreciate.
“Sam,” hollered China. “Come here. Come here now!”
“What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Oh, you kinky thing.”
“I’ll put a kink in it, all right. What’s that mess?” demanded China, pointing to the toilet.
“What mess?”
“So, now you’re blind as well as filthy. Sam, don’t you ever check the toilet to see if you’ve left anything behind?”
“Isn’t that being just a bit anally retentive?” grinned Sam.
“Obviously, you are not. I cleaned that toilet yesterday and now it needs cleaning again.”
“Have you got PMS?”
“Get to work,” said China angrily, shoving the toilet brush at Sam. She stomped out of the bathroom raging at the piggishness of men. She didn’t feel superior. She knew Sam would seek revenge for her insistence that he clean up his own mess. She didn’t have to wait long.
China turned off the lights and climbed into bed where Sam was feigning sleep. She lifted the duvet to climb into bed and was met with a most unpleasant odour.
“Oh for God’s sake, Sam.”
She jumped out of bed, grabbed her perfume bottle and sprayed in Sam’s direction.
“Take that, you disgusting creature!”
Sam threw off the bed clothes to reveal the erection he’d manufactured while waiting for her to finish her bedtime ablutions.
“Take this, you wanton perfectionist. You’re so sexy when you’re disgusted.”
“In your dreams!”
“I thought you didn’t want to be ravished in the middle of the night.”
“Okay, okay,” acquiesced China wearily. “But don’t take too long. I’m tired.”
“You are such a turn on. Would you mind wiggling a little?”
China laughed, gave up, gave in, gave it up, put out, put it in, and finally, fell asleep, tucked contentedly into Sam’s snoring body.
“Men,” she mumbled. “You gotta love em. They’re impossible to like.”
“Love you too,” mumbled Sam, rolling over.
~ ~
China seriously considered hormone therapy after a week of emotional turmoil. She wondered if estrogen pills would turn her whole world around and make life rosy again, or at least pale pink. She read more and more about men-a-pause and seemed to have all the symptoms. Depression, high as a kite, hot flashes, rage, insomnia, migraines, the works. She couldn’t reconcile her feelings with anything approaching sanity. The past was haunting her as though it were present, she was sensitive to the point of idiocy, and she felt like she was wearing her nerves on her sleeve.
She described her symptoms to Sam and didn’t quite get the needed response.
“Sam, I feel like I want to punch your face in, or kill you,
or throw you down on the floor and fuck your brains out.”
“One out of three ain’t bad,” said Sam cheerfully.
China called the clinic for an appointment. Maybe a doctor could help.
“Is this for an annual checkup?” asked the receptionist.
“No,” replied China. “I’m having terrible mood swings and it’s probably men-a-pause but I think I’m going crazy and I’d just like to have that confirmed.”
"Are you married?”
“Yes,” said China, wondering what that had to do with the price of tea.
“Well, that’s probably why you’re feeling out of sorts. How about 3pm tomorrow?”
China agreed and hung up. Maybe the wacky receptionist was right. Maybe she should consider sending Sam to the doctor. How come women always had to take the pills? What if estrogen was really a tranquillizer prescribed by the male medical establishment to sedate women so they wouldn’t kill their husbands? She thought of slipping the estrogen pills into the warrior's cereal. Maybe they would make Sam more sensitive. Maybe men-a-pause, was just a woman's coming of wisdom wherein she finally realizes that she really can live without sex.
Can we?
China wondered.
What if all her foolishness really was men-a-pause and not wisdom and she left the warrior and then found that she was just as crazy living by herself! No, she’d try the pill first, even if it was a tranquillizer. If the pill didn't work, if she didn't suddenly become reasonable with no outrageous mood swings and horrible headaches, then she’d know it was all the warrior's fault and base any future decisions on the fact that Sam was a man and there was no known substitute.
Her worst fears had come to pass. Instead of the male race changing to keep up with the changes women had gone through, they had developed rampant neuroses. Men had become pathological couch potatoes and channel surfers. The end was in sight. It was a race to see who would win which was really pathetic because there would be nothing left to win. Either men would blow up the whole world with warring and channel surfing, or women would stockpile sperm, kill all the male babies, and fuck androids.
China left the medical clinic with a prescription for estrogen and some rather disconcerting information that did nothing to cheer her up. She called Jane to tell her the news.
“Well, beauty, it seems that my uterus has let me down, literally. The damn thing is falling out. I’ll need a hysterectomy.”
“When?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometime soon. It’s not urgent. I asked the doctor just how far the silly thing could fall. She said that when she was in Africa, she saw some poor women with their uteri hanging down to the knees, waving in the breeze, if you please. I don’t know what their husbands do about that. I don’t want to know.”
“That’s disgusting!” said Jane.
“Mine is still in my body, thank God. Sam doesn’t give it a chance to fall far before his penis pushes it back in.”
“Oh, gross,” squealed Jane. “Too much information mom.”
“I’m just warning you about the ridiculous things that can happen to women. There are serious design flaws in the female anatomy.”
“What does it feel like?” asked Jane curiously.
“It doesn’t feel like much of anything. I didn’t know the problem was the uterus. I’ve just been feeling crampy a lot lately but I thought it was just ye olde men-a-pause happening. The bladder has fallen too so they’ll yank that up at the same time.”
“Jesus, mom, getting old sucks!”
“Yes, dear. Well put.”
Jan. 5/97
It’s not fair! I’ve put up with the workings of my uterus for years and now I have to go through an operation? It wants to die before I do. Betrayed by my own body. Probably no more than what I deserve for falling in love and acting like a teenager instead of a staid old grandmother. Maybe if I had remained celibate none of this would have happened. Maybe it’s all Sam’s fault. Maybe it’s all God’s fault for designing the female body in such a faulty fashion. There’s no way God could be a woman. Considering the state of the world and the state of my body, God has to be a man.
~ ~
China answered the phone to hear the tinkling tones of the President of the Grimshaw Literary Society. China had joined the local group out of loneliness. She’d been much amused by the odd collection of school teachers, local artists and hippies, and a couple of very young girls, who were more interested in starting a theatre group than reading books. The enthusiasm of the two young ladies, had caught on and the group was trying to write a play. They had received funding to bring in a Halifax playwright for a weekend workshop, who had stressed the importance of daily journal writing. China, the two painters, and the young hippies, admitted to having kept a journal for years. Not to be outdone, the President of the Society, the harridan administrator of the Town Council, had started her own journal and was deeply impressed with the importance of the daily descriptions of her banal life. Her latest mission was to conquer the still reluctant stragglers who had not yet cracked the spine of sinfully secret, intimate verbiage.
“China, I want each of the members who keep journals to give a talk on the importance of journaling.”
China grimaced at the horrible screech of yet another lovely noun biting the dust just because a few struggling, wannabe writers felt squeamish about confiding their inner thoughts in a daily journal. They acted as though keeping a journal was a fearful thing to do. Call it journaling and suddenly one was aggressively burning more calories and writing a bestseller. China questioned whether one should spell it with one or two l's and she didn’t give a good goddamn.
She didn’t feel like informing the Grimshaw Literary Society that her journals were sometimes filled with so much pain she had to wait for time to soften the pages before she could re-read them. Her journal was her place of discovery and understanding, without which she'd never learn. It was the truth as she perceived it at the time. This truth was sometimes false and so the ledger of time and words balanced out every few pages.
She also wrote down her joys, her desires, so that on a bad day she could re-read the good days and remind herself that whatever was wrong would get better with time. Her journal kept her from forgetting who she was, what she felt, what she needed, what she had lost. She didn't want to dwell on pain and so she wrote it out, exorcized it, and forged ahead. Occasionally, she felt brave and journeyed back into forgotten pages, astonishing herself with clear evidence of her naivety, her stupidity. It reminded her that if she gave up her needs to love the wrong man, then misery would follow. If she didn't forget, she wouldn't repeat. She believed that remembering pain gave her future protection, and remembering joy helped her forgive. How could she continue living unless she forgave herself and others. The past was her armour for the future.
She walked to the beach to gather shells, sketch and write in her journal. She resolutely refused to do any journaling. The Grimshaw Literary Society had just lost their new member due to indiscriminate slaughtering of the English language.
China sat on the sand, somewhere between the sky and the sea, took out her sketchbook and a piece of charcoal from her backpack, and sketched an interesting piece of driftwood that had the look of a trumpeting elephant. When she grew tired of that, she wrote in her journal, uninterrupted by anything other than the occasional scream of an eagle, music to her ears.
Feb. 6/97
The morning air is deliciously cool, sweet and clean. Like drinking the best of crisp, white wine. The weather is unbelievably warm today. The fog bank sits on the horizon, politely waiting for the wind to make up its mind. I watch for eagles. If it’s low tide they’ll be down on the beach feeding. My heart lifts each time I see an eagle soaring or standing sentinel high up in the tallest tree. Sometimes I see a heron, long and elegant.
I thought I saw the beach rocks move. I looked closer and there were hundreds of little sandpipers, grey and white, dancing together. The sea rushed in and they ran for the dry sand. Then something disturbed them and they lifted in unison, white wings flashing, turning and changing direction swiftly, a chorus line of wings. A scene from Out of Africa. Out of Grimshaw.
Drifting
I sit amongst the driftwood
keeping company
with dead, bleached bodies,
Each one has a story to tell
but they are silent,
They cannot compete
with the endless sigh and hiss
of the sea,
My fallen friends wait
for erosion and time
to carve their history into dust,
An endless supply of broken clams
lie strewn upon the beach
- an empty feast,
Whitecaps rush to claim my bones,
to bleach and break and grind me.
China walked long hours on the beaches, glided through tall, ancient trees laden with moss, heard the drumming of legends and myths pounding with the surf, a ghostly murmur, constantly reminding that the people were not who they used to be. The screams of proud battle had become the ravings and abuse of alcoholism. They gathered and drummed and sang sadly, without conviction. They drummed to bring back the pride they once had. Her heart wept for them. How could tradition return in a world full of alcohol, TV and computers?
If the white people had brought nothing but misery, they would have resisted, shunned them, or totally expired as a race, fighting to the last breath. However, white people brought good things, fascinating tools and curiosity had killed the aboriginal cat.
The white race was dying too. There were just more of them. They too had the hopeless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts; they also had the money, the power, and the politicians, and so, were perceived as being better. It wasn’t better, it just spoke louder.
China and Sam were analogues, a microcosm of what was wrong with the universe. He was half aboriginal, half white. He couldn't marry an aboriginal woman who would sink him with sameness. He married cherished white women who had the perceived power, the energy, the optimism of bred-in-the-bone belonging. He brought China home to his people. He brought his gifts of education and knowledge of how to do modern battle with the white kingdom, how to negotiate at the treaty table, and they rejected him. He wanted to help bring them forward into economic stability and they turned on him and didn't have the money to support him. He went back to the outside world to send money home to the wife who was left behind to live in the wilderness with a journal for company.
There she was, Susanna Moodie with a car, a ferry, airplanes, a VCR, a TV and a computer, for escape, but love kept her prisoner. Maybe it wasn't just love, maybe it was curiosity killing the green-eyed China cat. Maybe she believed she could save him and her and therefore, the world. Another misguided missionary. Had she been there before in another life? The dreams she had, the visions. Never before had she felt so sensitive to the land, the plight of the inhabitants, the aura of whispering doom. It fascinated her, frightened her. It felt too familiar. Had her mission failed before in another life? Was it doomed to fail again?
China scanned the beach carefully for driftwood suitable for carving. She saw an unbeachlike shape emerging from the sand and she went closer to investigate. She picked up a shoe and brushed the sand from it. It was a pristine, white running shoe, and it looked almost new. A woman’s shoe, maybe size seven. China’s heart thumped and she thought it looked like a shoe that a nurse might wear. It was probably debris from the crashed Medivac plane. She placed it gently back on the sand and said a prayer for the unknown owner of the shoe.
China walked on and soon managed to erase the gruesome discovery from her mind. The sky was much too blue to hold gruesome for long. She spied the perfect piece of driftwood for a sculpture of Sam. She ran her hands over the rough surface of the scarred wood. A bit of carving here, a bit of polishing there. She soon decided that she’d do a whole series of Sam sculptures, three to four feet in height. Sam #1 would be a cigar store Indian, wearing a three-piece suit, holding a bible in one hand, the other hand raised in a two-finger, peace brother, salute.
She tied a red ribbon around the log and hurried home to get the car and Edgar Jim to help. His name was Jim Edgar but everyone called him Edgar Jim. China knew better than to ask Sam to gather driftwood for her. He’d just say he was too busy and he’d do it tomorrow, the one day of the week that was not on Sam’s agenda. Edgar Jim, on the other hand, never questioned her occasional need for a particular piece of driftwood. He’d heft it in his massive arms and lay it gently on the floor of the carving shed and accept five dollars. The Grimshaws never carved driftwood. They considered it to be dead and forgotten. They chose a living tree, carefully, because it spoke to them. They measured, patted, walked around, smelled, talked to, broke off pieces of bark and chewed it, then called in family members for consultation and agreement. Prayers were said, the saw would scream, thanks would be given, and the carving would commence.
China understood the importance of a name like Edgar Jim. When her mother was nine months pregnant, her stomach was so big she could place her tea cup quite comfortably on the mound that was China. Her own private, portable table. Of course her favourite cup was her great-grandmother's only living piece of china. One day baby gave a mighty kick and it flew off the belly table into oblivion. China was tired of repeating this story, so she alternated with "I was born in China.” Or "It's a nickname." Unfortunately none of these terse replies satisfied the listener and further questions followed. China thought she might change her name to Albania. Edgar Jim wouldn’t even blink.
~ ~
On February 12
th
, China was finally on her way to Toronto for ten days. She and Sam took the seaplane to Halifax where Sam was meeting with Larry to discuss future plans. Sam accompanied China in the taxi to Halifax airport and waited with her until her flight was called.
“Say hello to Jane and Tina for me,” said Sam, kissing China firmly.
“Should I say hello to Sarah too?” asked China playfully.
“Sure,” said Sam with a shrug. “Just make sure you don’t fall in love with one of her artsy fartsy friends.”
“After last night, I don’t think I’ll have the strength to even think about sex for a while.”
“Well, if you do, just think of me.”
“Promise,” said China giving Sam one last kiss. “Call me tonight?”
Sam nodded and waved as China walked towards the gate.
A few hours later China was getting a big hug from Sarah who drove her to Jane and Tina’s. They chattered like happy magpies and China was reminded that she hadn’t yet found a close friend on Grimshaw Island, and maybe never would, at least not one like Sarah.
“Can you come in for a while?” asked China as they pulled up in front of Jane’s apartment.
“No can do, sweetie,” said Sarah regretfully. “I’ve got to pick up my dear son at the hockey game and then feed the rest of the tribe. I’ll pick you up tomorrow and take you window shopping in Yorkville.”
“Oh my God,” squealed Sarah. “Shopping in Yorkville! Can we have lunch at Movenpick?”
“We’ll hit all the hot spots your little heart desires.”
“I don’t have much spending money,” warned China.
“Not to worry darling. I just sold a painting. We’re going to have fun while you’re here, even if it sends me to the poor house. Now beat it. Go hug your babies.”
Before China could get out of the elevator, Tina had jumped on her and hugged her so hard China had to beg for release.
“Hey, you monkey, not so rough!” protested China.
“Tina,” said Jane, “get down and help your grandma with the bags.”
Tina gave China another kiss, jumped down, grabbed the biggest bag and wrestled it to the apartment.
China laughed and hugged Jane.
“What have you been feeding her? She must have grown three inches since June. How are you my love?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I really missed you.”
“Me too. I’ve got to find a way to visit more often. I can’t believe it’s been eight months since the wedding.”
Jane had arranged to get a couple of days off from work so the next day they dropped Tina off at school and met Sarah for lunch at Movenpick. They spent a happy, giggling day ogling all the wonderful things none of them could afford to buy. China spent the rest of her ten day holiday dividing her time between Sarah and Jane and Tina. She revisited the art gallery where she used to work, museums, and her favourite restaurants. She went to movies with Jane and played hours with Tina, and fell happily to sleep each night, exhausted from the demands of her beautiful grand-daughter.
The time passed too quickly and before she knew it, China was giving Tina a tearful hug goodbye while she waited for her taxi.
“Why do you come to see me if you’re only going to leave again?” asked Tina turning her face away.
Oh God,
thought China,
she sure knows how to twist the knife in a grandmother’s heart.
“I’ll come to see you soon, sweetie,” said China blinking back her tears.
“Do you think you can make it for her birthday?” asked Jane trying her best not to cry and make matters worse.
Tina’s birthday was in May and China resolved to be back in Toronto for her sixth birthday if it meant she had to swim there.
“I’ll be here,” said China firmly.
She climbed into the taxi and gave a final wave and a brave smile to Jane and Tina. Then she dissolved into silent tears as the taxi took her away from the two people she loved best in the world.
~ ~
