The Shore Girl (10 page)

“Nice to meet you, Freckle Owl.”

Rebee's wolf was the last to be done. She'd made swirls of colour, pink for the ears. When she finished her final glittery bit, she picked up the blue felt marker and painstakingly printed “REBEE” in thick, perfectly formed letters.

“You did it wrong, Rebee,” Vanessa yelled.

“You got to choose an Indian name,” Peter piped up.

“Too bad you used a felt marker, dear,” Susan's mother wrinkled her nose at the matted hair.

“Do you want to try again dear?” Vanessa's mother said, getting all the children's attention.

The table went quiet. I could feel myself shrinking, smaller and smaller, until I was a tiny dust speck floating over the place where Rebee sat.
Again, Belinda, do it again.
Do it again until you get it right.

“I want to be Rebee.” Rebee didn't take her eyes off the paper.

Vanessa's mother glared over to the window where my empty shell leaned. She thought the teacher should take charge. She didn't know the teacher had left that place, had become a floating speck in her farmhouse kitchen. A little girl tied to a chair with her mother's pantyhose.

Susan's mother leaned down to offer Rebee another paper. Rebee's cheeks went fiery red as she spread her fingers over the glitter, pressing her wolf to the table.

“There's lots more wolves,” Susan's mother soothed. “I could help you make another one.”

“I don't want to do it again,” Rebee said, not letting go. I was floating on top of her, willing her to stay strong.

Susan's mother backed away. The children whispered and pointed. Feather Brain shouted, “Rebee's dumb,” and everyone laughed.

“I only want to be Rebee,” a voice so small you could hardly hear.

Vanessa leaned over and pulled at the paper under Rebee's fingers. Rebee pressed harder. The paper tore in two. There was a collective gasp. “Oh dear,” Susan's mother said. Vanessa's mother flapped her arms.

I'd had enough. I jumped back in my skin and reached for the tape, marching towards her. On the way, I kicked the back of Vanessa's chair and told her to stand up and go sit on the mat. I told the others to go too, including the mothers, and that they'd better be quiet, that I wanted it so quiet in that room I could hear my heart beat.

Rebee slumped in her little chair and I sat down beside her. I turned the wolf halves upside down, lining them up carefully and joining the tears with tape. Rebee looked up at me, then slowly flipped her paper over. It had lost some of its glitter, but unless you looked closely, you could hardly tell that the wolf had been broken. I tied the wool through the holes with double knots, slipped the string over her head, and draped her name over her heart where everyone could see. Then we stood and held hands tightly as we marched to the mat.

* * *

I woke full and warm all over.
4
:
17
AM
. I pushed Delta's blanket away and closed my eyes, clinging to Uncle Walter before he evaporated. There, there he was. I'd found him — his soft whiskered cheeks, his drooping eye wandering every which way. I was never sure where to look as he described the northern skies, dancing with the colours of the ocean, like music. He talked about the Beaufort Sea. Of squeezed ships, crushed by polar ice, those who set sail in search of the Northwest passage and never returned. My uncle was painting the barn a ruddy red, mending our fence. I was let out of my bedroom to be his helper. Twelve years old, all limbs and longing. He told of summits shaped like cathedrals, glaciers like rivers, and walls of sculpted stone.

We had the whole summer, my uncle and me, days passing like minutes. He never stopped talking. He knew how trapped I was, how unhappy, so he gave me every story he had. A Rapunzel he called me, without her long hair. After our chores, we sat on the veranda and swatted at mosquitoes in the leftover shimmer of the sun, heat pressing down like an iron. The world came to my door with his booming laugh, like a tumbling waterfall, coating my parched lips and the dust in my throat. Even my mother cracked a smile once or twice and shed real tears when he left without warning on the twenty-fourth of August. He'd forgotten his silver eagle on a chain. I found it on the bathtub rim, hidden behind the Ajax bottle.

“Belinda, let's you and me make some light.”

He suggested this on the day before he disappeared. We were in the barn and he told me to go find my flashlight. When I got back he'd pried open the trapdoor on the floor with the metal crowbar. I followed him down the rickety ladder and stood in the dirt while he reached up, pulled the trapdoor down, and closed us in. The cellar smelled at first of decay, damp earth and fermenting crabapples. After we settled in, it smelled only of my uncle, sweet tobacco and warm leather.

“We're gonna make a light show, you and me.” His voice was a whispery echo. The cellar was cramped, and it was only a small light we shared. I'd never been down there and could see a few shelves looming like mountains in the night. My uncle reached into his pocket and pulled out a green roll. I held the flashlight while he unwrapped two Life Savers.

“Wintergreen. The only kind that works,” he said. “Now you just suck on that for a minute. Soften it up. Whenever you're ready, just flick off the light so our eyes can adjust.” We scrunched down in the tight, black wintergreen space. I flicked off the light. “You all right there, Bel? I'm right here beside you.” I could hear him breathing. He was right there beside me. I didn't think to feel fear.

“Ready, now. Okay, start chewing. Keep your mouth open so we can see the show.”

Our mouths shimmered and sparked. Dancing greens and blues. I expected to be shocked, some kind of jolt as my teeth sank through the layers, all crackle and flash. But light did not hurt. “Look at you, girl, you got your own Aurora Borealis inside your mouth. Atoms ripping apart and coming together again. The same thing that makes the sky glow. In case you never get north, this'll have to do.”

We finished igniting, swallowing the last tiny fragments of wintergreen. Then we scrambled up the ladder and into the glorious day.

I turned towards my uncle with breathless laughter. “Can we do it again?” I begged.

His wandering eye found mine for an instant and held. I felt so on fire, so a part of this world, I no longer recognized my body as my own. He pulled the green roll from his pocket, placed it in my damp palm. “Get yourself a little mirror. Find a dark place. Make your own light, any time you want.”

I could hear Delta rumbling around upstairs. The neighbour's truck started up with a roar. The Rottweiler barked and barked. Buttercup started her frantic racing. It was
5
:
54
. I tried to hang on, but Uncle Walter vanished, utterly, as though he might never have been.

* * *

I've missed school all week. Mrs. Bagot said that I had to get a doctor's note, that if I was not back tomorrow, she was going to dock pay. Delta slipped an envelope under my door. It was one of those all occasion cards, a Winter Lake summer shot of a girl in a rowboat.
Please get well, Belinda,
she printed in watery letters.

Elizabeth walks the snow-covered trails in the afternoons. I waited outside the dilapidated house and let her march ahead, far enough that she wouldn't turn back when she saw me. She didn't say anything when I came up beside her.

“I'm not running away,” I told her. “I want you to know that.”

I wanted her to know this, though I could not explain why exactly. I was not seeking approval, nor asking for permission. I needed her to know there were patterns to my life, a semblance of order. She was running from something — I was sure of that. I suppose I wanted her to think I was someone she could turn to.

The south wind was icy and I wrapped my hood tighter. Elizabeth's face was unprotected. I wished I had a scarf to give her.

“Do what you want,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.”

“The other day, when we were having our picnic, you said I was running from my mother.”

The houses had dropped away. We reached the ravine, the forgotten place, a hint of wild in the middle of this Winter Lake town. She turned at the fork to the smaller path, and we started our descent. I fell behind her as we slid down the slippery slope.

“Remember,” I yelled ahead. “You said some kind of mad justice was blowing me north. But that's not true.”

“Fine,” she said. “It's not true.” I'd caught up again. We were in the valley, heading north. Following a frozen creek bed, ducking under branches.
Black Bear area
, the old sign said. There was barely any snow down here. No sun, just shadow. Arctic explorers, Elizabeth and I.

“I'm going north to find my Uncle Walter.” Elizabeth didn't answer, didn't slow down. We passed under a ridge of rocks. Someone had painted
Fuck You Bitch
on its underbelly.

“He was a good teacher, my uncle.” We were being woven into the dark forest. There was not the faintest breath of wind down there, just a reverberating stillness. If we didn't keep moving we'd be swallowed whole.

“Well, you're the teacher now. Go teach.”

“I can make the Northern Lights. With my mouth.” How foolish this sounded, like child's words. “I can imagine what your Uncle Walter taught you.” The anger this woman brought out in me. I bit it in. “In the barn cellar.”

“Figures,” Elizabeth answered from some point ahead. I wanted to take the words back. To make them more notable, less sick-sounding.

I'd fallen behind again. How far had we come? Miles from the warmth of her empty room. But she was plowing through the frosted underbrush, and we were not even on a recognizable path now, circling the trees like dogs. My toes jammed against the curved end of my boot, calves aching. If only we could sit on the milk-white stones.

“Did your uncle have a good time with you?” she twisted her head backward, still marching on.

What had I said? Something about the barn cellar.

“Probably sweet-talked the whole time. Sticky little sentences. You're my best girl, aren't you, Miss Bel?”

I had one good burst left in me. I ran, six steps, seven, hit her hard from behind, pushing her against cold bark and pinning her there. She folded her arms around the sleeping aspen, forehead pressed against the tree trunk's rippling skin. I dug my boots into the mushing decay and wrapped my arms around her so our bodies draped that tree.

“Your uncle, not mine,” I whispered, my mouth close to her ear. I could feel her jagged breath, the sting in her lungs. I held her pinned to the frozen tree, but I was afraid to let go, afraid of myself, those feelings.

“I don't have an uncle,” she said against the rough bark. She said it matter-of-factly, as though being held prisoner was expected, nothing more than she deserved.

I wanted to tell her of that summer. That there was goodness in this world and it sparked when you found it.

“He wasn't like that,” were the words I managed.

“And it's a perfect world, Belinda.”

Belinda. She said my name. We untangled from each other, from the sturdy trunk that had been shoring us up, and as she turned to me her sadness turned with her like a coat made of stone.

“Go, then. Go north. Stop wasting my time.” She shoved me backwards with the tips of her fingers, a push compared to my violence. Her forehead was red and swelling, three jagged scrapes, pinpricks of blood.

“I've hurt you,” I said.

“Go. You don't belong here.”

* * *

I am trying. Trying to do this right.

I phoned Mrs. Bagot this morning. “I'm not cut out for the classroom. You were right, Mrs. Bagot, I have too much to learn.” I think she's relieved to see me leave with no fight. Vanessa's mother caught me pacing the streets when I was supposed to be on my deathbed. I waved several times as she slowed down her van. I even blew a kiss. She and the other bannock mothers must be whispering madly, beating down Mrs. Bagot's door.

Delta was harder. I spent much of last night trying to write her a letter. Page after page of false starts. Left hand, right hand, I never could get my pen to work. So this morning I picked up a single red rose and one of those blank Winter Lake cards she likes, and I simply wrote, “Goodbye, Delta. I won't forget.” I placed the card and the rose on her kitchen table, along with my key. Then I waited for Buttercup to round her next corner, predictably, not like a chicken. I stopped her with my knees, scooped her up quickly and twisted her neck. I did this so quickly she couldn't have felt a thing. After she went still, I held her in my arms like a baby for the longest time. Then I filled her water dish and food bowl, gathered her little toys, mopped up her urine, and placed her lifeless body gently on the embroidered pillow I took from Delta's couch. I arranged all the toys around the pillow, then curled her into a ball to make her look as though she'd found peace and had chosen her moment to stop chasing her tail.

I know I'm not right in the head. I get confused about what's real. But there was a time when I was a little girl and my heart was pure. Elizabeth was pure once too, I'm sure of it. If she had the uncle with the wandering eye, her loveliness would light the entire sky.

Rebee's still could. She told me once, “Monsters aren't real, Miss Bel.” Ever since bannock day, I've thought about how fiercely she fought against the other wolves. “This is me,” her actions shouted. “I won't let you make me disappear.”

I stood in the hallway of the Messenger School, well to the side of the door so the children wouldn't see. This was my last stop, possibly my last chance to do one right thing.

“I'm here for Rebee Shore,” I announced when the substitute teacher answered my knock. She was very large. I wondered if those were her paper scraps in my top drawer, if she'd stopped weighing in and felt angry with herself for giving away her big clothes.