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QU66N Of THE
í
Frog Song
Whenever I see abandoned buildings, I think of our old house in the village, a rickety shack by the swamp where the frogs used to live. It's gone now. The council covered the whole area with rocks and gravel.
In my memory, the sun is setting and the frogs begin to sing. As the light shifts from yellow to orange to red, I walk down the path to the beach. The wind blows in from the channel, making the grass hiss and shiver around my legs. The tide is low and there's a strong rotting smell from the beach. Tree stumps that have been washed down the channel from the logged areas loom ahead—black, twisted silhouettes against the darkening sky.
The seiner coming down the channel is the Queen of the North, pale yellow with blue trim, Uncle Josh's boat. I wait on the beach. The water laps my ankles. The sound of the old diesel engine grows louder as the boat gets closer.
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Usually I can will myself to move, but sometimes j I'm frozen where I stand, waiting for the crew to come j ashore.
The only thing my cousin Ronny didn't own was a Barbie Doll speedboat. She had the swimming pool, she had the Barbie-Goes-to-Paris carrying case, but she didn't have the boat. There was one left in Northern Drugs, nestling | between the puzzles and the stuffed Garfields, but it cost ; sixty bucks and we were broke. I knew Ronny was going to | >
get it. She'd already saved twenty bucks out of her allowance. 1'
Anyway, she always got everything she wanted because she I was an only child and both her parents worked at the alu- I minum smelter. Mom knew how much I wanted it, but she I said it was a toss-up between school supplies and paying bills, 1 or wasting our money on something I'd get sick of in a 1 few weeks. 1
We had a small Christmas tree. I got socks and underwear and forced a cry of surprise when I opened the package. I Uncle Josh came in just as Mom was carving the turkey. He 1 pushed a big box in my direction.
"Go on," Mom said, smiling. "It's for you."
Uncle Josh looked like a young Elvis. He had the soulful brown eyes and the thick black hair. He dressed his long, thin body in clothes with expensive labels—no Sears or Kmart for 'h-him. He smiled at me with his perfect pouty lips and bleached *'
white teeth.
"Here you go, sweetheart," Uncle Josh said.
I didn't want it. Whatever it was, I didn't want it. He put it down in front of me. Mom must have wrapped it. She was
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never any good at wrapping presents. You'd think with two kids and a million Christmases behind her she'd know how to wrap a present.
"Come on, open it," Mom said.
I unwrapped it slowly, my skin crawling. Yes, it was the Barbie Doll speedboat.
My mouth smiled. We all had dinner and I pulled the wishbone with my little sister, Alice. I got the bigger piece and made a wish. Uncle Josh kissed me. Alice sulked. Uncle Josh never got her anything, and later that afternoon she screamed about it. I put the boat in my closet and didn't touch it for days.
Until Ronny came over to play. She was showing off her new set of Barbie-in-the-Ice-Capades clothes. Then I pulled out the speedboat and the look on her face was almost worth it.
My sister hated me for weeks. When I was off at soccer practice, Alice took the boat and threw it in the river. To this day, Alice doesn't know how grateful I was.
There's a dream I have sometimes. Ronny comes to visit. We go down the hallway to my room. She goes in first. I point to the closet and she eagerly opens the door. She thinks I've been lying, that I don't really have a boat. She wants proof.
When she turns to me, she looks horrified, pale and shocked. I laugh, triumphant. I reach in and stop, seeing Uncle Josh's head, arms, and legs squashed inside, severed from the rest of his body. My clothes are soaked dark red with his blood.
"Well, what do you know," I say. "Wishes do come true."
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Me and five chug buddies are in the Tamitik arena, in the girls' locker room under the bleachers. The hockey game is in the third period and the score is tied. The yells and shouting of the fans drown out the girl's swearing. There are four of us against her. It doesn't take long before she's on the floor trying to crawl away. I want to say I'm not part of it, but that's my foot hooking her ankle and tripping her while Ronny takes her down with a blow to the temple. She grunts. Her head makes a hollow sound when it bounces off the sink. The lights make us all look green. A cheer explodes from inside the arena. Our team has scored. The girl's now curled up under the sink and I punch her and kick her and smash her face into the floor.
My cuz Ronny had great connections. She could get hold of almost any drug you wanted. This was during her biker chick phase, when she wore tight leather skirts, teeny weeny tops, and many silver bracelets, rings, and studs. Her parents started coming down really hard on her then. I went over to her house to get high. It was okay to do it there, as long as we sprayed the living room with Lysol and opened the windows before her parents came home.
We toked up and decided to go back to my house to get some munchies. Ronny tagged along when I went up to my bedroom to get the bottle of Visine. There was an envelope on my dresser. Even before I opened it I knew it would be money. I knew who it was from.
I pulled the bills out. Ronny squealed.
"Holy sheep shit, how much is there?"
I spread the fifties out on the dresser. Two hundred and fifty dollars. I could get some flashy clothes or nice earrings with that money, if I could bring myself to touch it. Anything I bought would remind me of him.
"You want to have a party?" I said to Ronny.
"Are you serious?" she said, going bug-eyed.
I gave her the money and said make it happen. She asked who it came from, but she didn't really care. She was already making phone calls.
That weekend we had a house party in town. The house belonged to one of Ronny's biker buddies and was filled with people I knew by sight from school. As the night wore on, they came up and told me what a generous person I was. Yeah, that's me, I thought, Saint Karaoke of Good Times.
I took Ronny aside when she was drunk enough. "Ronny, I got to tell you something."
"What?" she said, blinking too fast, like she had something in her eye.
"You know where I got the money?"
She shook her head, lost her balance, Wearily put her hand on my shoulder, and barfed out the window.
As I listened to her heave out her guts, I decided I didn't want to tell her after all. What was the point? She had a big mouth, and anything I told her I might as well stand on a street corner and shout to the world. What I really wanted was to have a good time and forget about the money, and after
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beating everyone hands down at tequila shots that's exactly what I did.
"Moooo." I copy the two aliens on Sesame Street mooing to a telephone. Me and Uncle Josh are watching television together. He smells faintly of the halibut he cooked for dinner. Uncle Josh undoes his pants. "Moo." I keep my eyes on the TV and say nothing as he moves toward me. I'm not a baby like Alice, who runs to Mommy about everything. When it's over he'll have treats for me. It's like when the dentist gives me extra suckers for not crying, not even when it really hurts.
I could have got my scorpion tattoo at The Body Hole, where my friends went. A perfectly groomed beautician would sit me in a black-leather dentist's chair and the tattoo artist would show me the tiny diagram on tracing paper. We'd choose the exact spot on my neck where the scorpion would go, just below the hairline where the my hair comes to a point. Techno, maybe some funky remix of Abba, would blare through the speakers as he whirred the tattoo needle's motor.
But Ronny had done her own tattoo, casually standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a short needle and permanent blue ink from a pen. She simply poked the needle in and out, added the ink, and that was that. No fuss, no muss.
So I asked her to do it for me. After all, I thought, if she could brand six marks of Satan on her own breast, she could certainly do my scorpion.
Ronny led me into the kitchen and cleared off a chair. I
twisted my hair up into a bun and held it in place. She showed me the needle, then dropped it into a pot of boiling water. She was wearing a crop top and I could see her navel ring, glowing bright gold in the slanting light of the setting sun. She was prone to lifting her shirt in front of complete strangers and telling them she'd pierced herself.
Ronny emptied the water into the sink and lifted the needle in gloved hands. I bent my head and looked down at the floor as she traced the drawing on my skin.
The needle was hot. It hurt more than I expected, a deep ache, a throbbing. I breathed through my mouth. I fought not to cry. I concentrated fiercely on not crying in front of her, and when she finished I lay very still.
"See?" Ronny said. "Nothing to it, you big baby."
When I opened my eyes and raised my head, she held one small mirror to my face and another behind me so I could see her work. I frowned at my reflection. The scorpion looked like a smear.
"It'll look better when the swelling goes down," she said, handing me the two mirrors.
As Ronny went to start the kettle for tea, she looked out the window over the sink. "Star light, star bright, first
star-
I glanced out the window. "That's Venus." "Like you'd know the difference." I didn't want to argue. The skin on the back of my neck ached like it was sunburned.
I am singing Janis Joplin songs, my arms wrapped around the karaoke machine. I fend people off with a stolen switchblade.
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No one can get near until some kid from school has the bright idea of giving me drinks until I pass out.
Someone else videotapes me so my one night as a rock star is recorded forever. She tries to send it to America's Funniest Home Videos, but they reject it as unsuitable for family viewing. I remember nothing else about that night after I got my first hit of acid. My real name is Adelaine, but the next day a girl from school sees me coming and yells, "Hey, look, it's Karaoke!"
The morning after my sixteenth birthday I woke up looking down into Jimmy Hill's face. We were squashed together in the backseat of a car and I thought, God, I didn't.
I crawled around and found my shirt and then spent the next half hour vomiting beside the car. I vaguely remembered the night before, leaving the party with Jimmy. I remembered being afraid of bears.
Jimmy stayed passed out in the backseat, naked except for his socks. We were somewhere up in the mountains, just off a logging road. The sky was misty and gray. As I stood up and stretched, the car headlights went out.
Dead battery. That's just fucking perfect, I thought.
I checked the trunk and found an emergency kit. I got out one of those blankets that look like a large sheet of aluminum and wrapped it around myself. I searched the car until I found my jeans. I threw Jimmy's shirt over him. His jeans were hanging off the car's antenna. When I took them down, the antenna wouldn't straighten up.
I sat in the front seat. I had just slept with Jimmy Hill.
Christ, he was practically a Boy Scout. I saw his picture in the local newspaper all the time, with these medals for swimming. Other than that, I never really noticed him. We went to different parties.
About midmorning, the sun broke through the mist and streamed to the ground in fingers of light, just like in the movies when God is talking to someone. The sun hit my face and I closed my eyes.
I heard the seat shift and turned. Jimmy smiled at me and I knew why I'd slept with him. He leaned forward and we kissed. His lips were soft and the kiss was gentle. He put his hand on the back of my neck. "You're beautiful."
I thought it was just a line, the polite thing to say after a one-night stand, so I didn't answer.
"Did you get any?" Jimmy said.
"What?" I said.
"Blueberries." He grinned. "Don't you remember?" I stared at him.
His grin faded. "Do you remember anything?" I shrugged.
"Well. We left the party, I dunno, around two, I guess. You said you wanted blueberries. We came out here—" He cleared his throat.
"Then we fucked, passed out, and now we're stranded." I finished the sentence. The sun was getting uncomfortable. I took off the emergency blanket. I had no idea what to say next. "Battery's dead."
He swore and leaned over me to try the ignition.
I got out of his way by stepping out of the car. Hastily he
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put his shirt on, not looking up at me. He had a nice chest, buff and tan. He blushed and I wondered if he had done this before.
"You cool with this?" I said. He immediately became macho. "Yeah." I felt really shitty then. God, I thought, he's going to be a bragger.
I went and sat on the hood. It was hot. I was thirsty and had a killer headache. Jimmy got out and sat beside me. "You know where we are?" Jimmy said. "Not a fucking clue."
He looked at me and we both started laughing.
"You were navigating last night," he said, nudging me.
"You always listen to pissed women?"
"Yeah," he said, looking sheepish. "Well. You hungry?"
I shook my head. "Thirsty."
Jimmy hopped off the car and came back with a warm Coke from under the driver's seat. We drank it in silence.
"You in any rush to get back?" he asked.
We started laughing again and then went hunting for blueberries. Jimmy found a patch not far from the car and we picked the bushes clean. I'd forgotten how tart wild blueberries are. They're smaller than store-bought berries, but their flavor is much more intense.
"My sister's the wilderness freak," Jimmy said. "She'd be able to get us out of this. Or at least she'd know where we are."
We were perched on a log. "You gotta promise me something."
"What?"
"If I pop off before you, you aren't going to eat me."
"What?"
"I'm serious," I said. "And I'm not eating any bugs."
"If you don't try them, you'll never know what you're missing." Jimmy looked at the road. "You want to pick a direction?'
The thought of trekking down the dusty logging road in the wrong direction held no appeal to me. I must have made a face because Jimmy said, "Me neither."
After the sun set, Jimmy made a fire in front of the car. We put the aluminum blanket under us and lay down. Jimmy pointed at the sky. "That's the Big Dipper."
"Ursa Major," I said. "Mother of all bears. There's Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia ..." I stopped.
"I didn't know you liked astronomy."
"It's pretty herdy."
He kissed me. "Only if you think it is." He put his arm around me and I put my head on his chest and listened to his heart. It was a nice way to fall asleep.
Jimmy shook me awake. "Car's coming." He pulled me to my feet. "It's my sister."
"Mmm." Blurrily I focused on the road. I could hear birds and, in the distance, the rumble of an engine.
"My sister could find me in hell," he said.
When they dropped me off at home, my mom went ballistic. "Where the hell were you?"
"Out." I stopped at the door. I hadn't expected her to be there when I came in.
Her chest was heaving. I thought she'd start yelling, but she said very calmly, "You've been gone for two days."
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You noticed? I didn't say it. I felt ill and I didn't want a j fight. "Sorry. Should've called." j I pushed past her, kicked off my shoes, and went upstairs. j Still wearing my smelly jeans and shirt I lay down on the j bed. Mom followed me to my room and shook my shoulder. j "Tell me where you've been." 1 "At Ronny's." j "Don't lie to me. What is wrong with you?" 1 God. Just get lost. I wondered what she'd do if I came out and said what we both knew. Probably have a heart attack. Or call me a liar.
"You figure it out," I said. "I'm going to sleep." I expected her to give me a lecture or something, but she just left.
Sometimes, when friends were over, she'd point to Alice and say, "This is my good kid." Then she'd point to me and say, "This is my rotten kid, nothing but trouble. She steals, she lies, she sleeps around. She's just no damn good." > Alice knocked oh my door later. \ "Fuck off," I said.
"You've got a phone call." \ "Take a message. I'm sleeping."
Alice opened the door and poked her head in. "You want me to tell Jimmy anything else?"
I scrambled down the hallway and grabbed the receiver. I took a couple of deep breaths so it wouldn't sound like I'd \ rushed to the phone. "Hi."
"Hi," Jimmy said. "We just replaced the battery on the car. , You want to go for a ride?"
"Aren't you grounded?"
He laughed. "So?" i
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I thought he just wanted to get lucky again, and then I thought, What the hell, at least this time I'll remember it. "Pick me up in five minutes."
I'm getting my ass kicked by two sisters. They're really good. They hit solidly and back off quickly. I don't even see them coming anymore. I get mad enough to kick out. By sheer luck, the kick connects. One of the sisters shrieks and goes down. She's on the ground, her leg at an odd angle. The other one loses it and swings. The bouncer steps in and the crowd around us boos.
"My cousins'll be at a biker party. You want to go?"
Jimmy looked at me like he wasn't sure if I was serious.
"I'll be good," I said, crossing my heart then holding up my fingers in a scout salute.
"What fun would that be?" he said, revving the car's engine.
I gave him directions. The car roared away from our house, skidding a bit. Jimmy didn't say anything. I found it unnerving. He looked over at me, smiled, then turned back to face the road. I was used to yappy guys, but this was nice. I leaned my head back into the seat. The leather creaked.
Ronny's newest party house didn't look too bad, which could have meant it was going to be dead in there. It's hard to get down and dirty when you're worried you'll stain the carpet. You couldn't hear anything thing until someone opened the door and the music throbbed out. They did a good job with the soundproofing. We went up the steps just as my cousin Frank came out with some bar buddies.
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Jimmy stopped when he saw Frank and I guess I could see why. Frank is on the large side, six-foot-four and scarred up from his days as a hard-core Bruce Lee fan, when he felt compelled to fight Evil in street bars. He looked down at Jimmy.
"Hey, Jimbo," Frank said. "Heard you quit the swim team."
"You betcha," Jimmy said.
"Fucking right!" Frank body-slammed him. He tended to be more enthusiastic than most people could handle, but Jimmy looked okay with it. "More time to party," he said. Now they were going to gossip forever so I went inside.
The place was half-empty. I recognized some people and nodded. They nodded back. The music was too loud for conversation.
"You want a drink?" Frank yelled, touching my arm. I jumped. He quickly took his hand back. "Where's Jimmy?"
"Ronny gave him a hoot and now he's hacking up his lungs out back." Frank took off his jacket, closed his eyes, and shuffled back and forth. All he knew was the reservation two-step and I wasn't in the mood. I moved toward the porch but Frank grabbed my hand. "You two doing the wild thing?"
"He's all yours," I said.
"Fuck you," Frank called after me.
Jimmy was leaning against the railing, his back toward me, his hands jammed into his pockets. I watched him. His hair was dark and shiny, brushing his shoulders. I liked the way he moved, easily, like he was in no hurry to get anywhere. His eyes were light brown with gold flecks. I knew that in a
I moment he would turn and smile at me and it would be like
stepping into sunlight.
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| In my dream Jimmy's casting a fishing rod. I'm afraid of get-
ting hooked, so I sit at the bow of the skiff. The ocean is 1 mildly choppy, the sky is hard blue, the air is cool. Jimmy
1 reaches over to kiss me, but now he is soaking wet. His hands
and lips are cold, his eyes are sunken and dull. Something moves in his mouth. It isn't his tongue. When I pull away, a crab drops from his Hps and Jimmy laughs. "Miss me?" I feel a scream in my throat but nothing comes out. "What's the matter?" Jimmy tilts his head. Water runs off his hair and drips into the boat. "Crab got your tongue?"
This one's outside Hanky Panky's. The woman is so totally bigger than me it isn't funny. Still, she doesn't like getting hurt. She's afraid of the pain but can't back down because she started it. She's grabbing my hair, yanking it hard. I pull hers. We get stuck there, bent over, trying to kick each other, neither one of us willing to let go. My friends are laughing their heads off. I'm pissed at that but I'm too sloshed to let go. In the morning my scalp will throb and be so tender I won't be able to comb my hair. At that moment, a bouncer comes over and splits us apart. The woman tries to kick me < but kicks him instead and he knocks her down. My friends
grab my arm and steer me to the bus stop.
:
Jimmy and I lay down together on a sleeping bag in a field of fireweed. The forest fire the year before had razed the
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place arid the weeds had only sprouted back up about a month earlier. With the spring sun and just the right sprinkling of rain, they were as tall as sunflowers, as dark pink as prize roses, swaying around us in the night breeze.
Jimmy popped open a bottle of Baby Duck. "May I?" he said, reaching down to untie my sneaker.
"You may," I said.
He carefully lifted the sneaker and poured in some Baby Duck. Thenhe raisedit to my lips and I drank. We lay down, flattening fireweed and knocking over the bottle. Jimmy nibbled my ear. I drew circles in the bend of his arm. Headlights came up fast, then disappeared down the highway. We watched the fireweed shimmer and wave in the wind.
"You're quiet tonight," Jimmy said. "What're you thinking?'
I almost told him then. I wanted to tell him. I wanted someone else to know and not have it locked inside me. I kept starting and then chickening out. What was the point? He'd probably pull away from me in horror, disgusted, revolted.
"I want to ask you something," Jimmy whispered. I closed my eyes, feeling my chest tighten. "You hungry? I've got a monster craving for chicken wings."
Bloody Vancouver
, When I got to Aunt Erma's the light in the hallway was going spastic, flickering like a strobe, little bright flashes then darkness so deep I had to feel my way along the wall. I
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stopped in front of the door, sweating, smelling myself through the thick layer of deodorant. I felt my stomach go queasy and wondered if I was going to throw up after all. I hadn't eaten and was still bleeding heavily.
Aunt Erma lived in east Van in a low-income government housing unit. Light showed under the door. I knocked. I could hear the familiar opening of Star Trek, the old version, with the trumpets blaring. I knocked again.
The door swung open and a girl with a purple mohawk and Cleopatra eyeliner thrust money at me.
"Shit," she said. She looked me up and down, pulling the money back. "Where's the pizza?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I think I have the wrong house."
"Pizza, pizza, pizza!" teenaged voices inside screamed. Someone was banging the floor in time to the chant.
"You with Cola?" she asked me.
I shook my head. "No. I'm here to see Erma Williamson. Is she in?"
"In? I guess. Mom?" she screamed. "Mom? It's for you!" A whoop rose up. "Erma and Marley sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes lust—" "Shut up, you social rejects!"
"—then comes humping, then comes a baby after all that bumping!"
"How many times did they boink last night!" a single voice yelled over the laughter.
"Ten!" the voices chorused enthusiastically. "Twenty! Thirty! Forty!"
"Hey! Who's buying the pizza, eh? No respect! I get no respect!"
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Aunt Erma came to the door. She didn't look much different from her pictures, except she wasn't wearing her cat-^ eye glasses.
She stared at me, puzzled. Then she spread open her arms.
"Adelaine, baby! I wasn't expecting you! Hey, come on in and say hi to your cousins. Pepsi! Cola! Look who came by for your birthday!"
She gave me a tight bear hug and I wanted to cry.
Two girls stood at the entrance to the living room, identical right down to their lip rings. They had different colored Mohawks though—one pink, one purple.
"Erica?" I said, peering. I vaguely remembered them as having pigtails and making fun of Mr. Rogers. "Heather?"
"It's Pepsi," the purple Mohawk said. "Not, n-o-t, Erica."
"Oh," I said.
"Cola," the pink-Mohawked girl said, turning around and ignoring me to watch TV.
"What'd you bring us?" Pepsi said matter-of-factly.
"Excuse the fruit of my loins," Aunt Erma said, leading me into the living room and sitting me between two guys who were glued to the TV. "They've temporarily lost their manners. I'm putting it down to hormones and hoping the birth control pills turn them back into normal human beings."
Aunt Erma introduced me to everyone in the room, but their names went in one ear and out the other. I was so relieved just to be there and out of the clinic I couldn't concentrate on much else.
"How is he, Bones?" the guy on my right said, exactly in synch with Captain Kirk on TV. Captain Kirk was standing
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over McCoy and a prone security guard with large purple circles all over his face.
"He's dead, Jim," the guy on my left said.
"I wanna watch something else," Pepsi said. "This sucks."
She was booed.
"Hey, it's my birthday. I can watch what I want."
"Siddown," Cola said. "You're out-voted."
"You guys have no taste at all. This is crap. I just can't believe you guys are watching this—this cultural pabulum. I—"
A pair of panties hit her in the face. The doorbell rang and the pink-haired girl held the pizza boxes over her head and yelled, "Dinner's ready!"
"Eat in the kitchen," Aunt Erma said. "All of youse. I ain't scraping your cheese out of my carpet."
Everyone left except me and Pepsi. She grabbed the remote control and flipped through a bunch of channels until we arrived at one where an announcer for the World Wrestling Federation screamed that the ref was blind.
"Now this," Pepsi said, "is entertainment."
By the time the party ended, I was snoring on the couch. Pepsi shook my shoulder. She and Cola were watching Bugs Bunny and Tweety.
"If we're bothering you," Cola said. "You can go crash in my room."
"Thanks," I said. I rolled off the couch, grabbed my backpack, and found the bathroom on the second floor. I made it just in time to throw up in the sink. The cramps didn't come back as badly as on the bus, but I took three Extra-Strength
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Tylenols anyway. My pad had soaked right through and leaked all over my underwear. I put on clean clothes and crashed in one of the beds. I wanted a black hole to open up and suck me out of the universe.
When I woke, I discovered I should have put on a diaper. It looked like something had been hideously murdered on the mattress.
"God," I said just as Pepsi walked in. I snatched up the blanket and tried to cover the mess.
"Man," Pepsi said. "Who are you? Carrie?"
"Freaky," Cola said, coming in behind her. "You okay?"
I nodded. I wished I'd never been born.
Pepsi hit my hand when I touched the sheets. "You're not the only one with killer periods." She pushed me out of the bedroom. In the bathroom she started water going in the tub for me, poured some Mr. Bubble in, and left without saying anything. I stripped off my blood-soaked underwear and hid them in the bottom of the garbage. There would be no saving them. I lay back. The bubbles popped and gradually the water became cool. I was smelly and gross. I scrubbed hard but the smell wouldn't go away.
"You still alive in there?" Pepsi said, opening the door.
1 jumped up and whisked the shower curtain shut. "Jesus, don't you knock?"
"Well, excuuuse me. I brought you a bathrobe. Good thing you finally crawled out of bed. Mom told us to make you eat something before we left. We got Ichiban, Kraft, or hot dogs. You want anything else, you gotta make it yourself. What do you want?"
"Privacy."
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| "We got Ichiban, Kraft, or hot dogs. What do you want? "
"The noodles," I said, more to get her out than because I was hungry.
She left and I tried to lock the door. It wouldn't lock so I i scrubbed myself off quickly. I stopped when I saw the bath-
water. It was dark pink with blood.
I crashed on the couch and woke when I heard sirens. I hobbled to the front window in time to see an ambulance pull into the parking lot. The attendants wheeled a man bound to a stretcher across the lot. He was screaming about the eyes in the walls that were watching him, waiting for him to fall asleep so they could come peel his skin from his body.
Aunt Erma, the twins, and I drove to the powwow at the Trout Lake community center in East Vancouver. I was still bleeding a little and felt pretty lousy, but Aunt Erma was doing fundraising for the Helping Hands Society and had asked me to work her bannock booth. I wanted to help her out.
Pepsi had come along just to meet guys, dressed up in her flashiest bracelets and most conservatively ripped jeans. Aunt Erma enlisted her too, when she found out that none of her other volunteers had showed up. Pepsi was disgusted, i Cola got out of working at the booth because she was one
of the jingle dancers. Aunt Erma had made her outfit, a form-fitting red dress with silver jingles that flashed and twinkled as she walked. Cola wore a bobbed wig to cover her pink mowhawk. Pepsi bugged her about it, but Cola airily waved good-bye and said, "Have fun."
I hadn't made fry bread in a long time. The first three batches were already mixed. I just added water and kneaded
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them into shapes roughly the size of a large doughnut, then threw them in the electric frying pan. The oil spattered and crackled and steamed because I'd turned the heat up too high. Pepsi wasn't much better. She burned her first batch and then had to leave so she could watch Cola dance.
"Be right back," she said. She gave me a thumbs-up sign and disappeared into the crowd.
The heat from the frying pan and the sun was fierce. I wished I'd thought to bring an umbrella. One of the organizers gave me her baseball cap. Someone else brought me a glass of water. I wondered how much longer Pepsi was going to be. My arms were starting to hurt.
I flattened six more pieces of bread into shape and threw them in the pan, beyond caring anymore that none of them were symmetrical. I could feel the sun sizzling my forearms, my hands, my neck, my legs. A headache throbbed at the base of my skull.
The people came in swarms, buzzing groups of tourists, conventioneers on a break, families, and assorted browsers. Six women wearing Hi! My NAME IS tags stopped and bought all the fry bread I had. Another hoard came and a line started at my end of the table.
"Last batch!" I shouted to the cashiers. They waved at me.
"What are you making?" someone asked.
1 looked up. A middle-aged red-headed man in a business suit stared at me. At the beginning, when we were still feeling spunky, Pepsi and I had had fun with that question. We said, Oh, this is fish-head bread. Or fried beer foam. But bull-sWtting took energy.
"Fry bread," I said. "This is my last batch."
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"Is it good?"
"I don't think you'll find out," I said. "It's all gone."
The man looked at my tray. "There seems to be more than enough. Do I buy it from you?"
"No, the cashier, but you're out of luck, it's all sold." I pointed to the line of people.
"Do you do this for a living?" the man said.
"Volunteer work. Raising money for the Helping Hands," I said.
"Are you Indian then?"
A hundred stupid answers came to my head but like I said, bullshit is work. "Haisla. And you?" He blinked. "Is that a tribe?"
"Excuse me," I said, taking the fry bread out of the pan and passing it down to the cashier.
The man slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. "Make another batch."
"I'm tired," I said.
He put down another twenty.
"You don't understand. I've been doing this since this morning. You could put a million bucks on the table and I wouldn't change my mind."
He put five twenty-dollar bills on the table.
It was all for the Helping Hands, I figured, and he wasn't going to budge. I emptied the flour bag into the bowl. I measured out a handful of baking powder, a few fingers of salt, a thumb of lard. Sweat dribbled over my face, down the tip of my nose, and into the mix as I kneaded the dough until it was very soft but hard to shape. For a hundred bucks I made sure the pieces of fry bread were roughly the same shape.
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Queen   of   the North
"You have strong hands," the man said. "I'm selling fry bread." "Of course."
I could feel him watching me, was suddenly aware of how far my shirt dipped and how short my cutoffs were. In the heat, they were necessary. I was sweating too much to wear anything more.
"My name is Arnold," he said.
"Pleased to meet you, Arnold," I said. "Scuse me if I don't shake hands. You with the convention?" "No. I'm here on vacation."
He had teeth so perfect I wondered if they were dentures. No, probably caps. I bet he took exquisite care of his teeth.
We said nothing more until I'd fried the last piece of bread. I handed him the plate and bowed. I expected him to leave then, but he bowed back and said, "Thank you."
"No," I said. "Thank you. The money's going to a good cause. It'll—"
"How should I eat these?" he interrupted me.
With your mouth, asshole. "Put some syrup on them, or jam, or honey. Anything you want."
"Anything?" he said, staring deep into my eyes.
Oh, barf. "Whatever."
I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand, reached down and unplugged the frying pan. I began to clean up, knowing that he was still standing there, watching.
"What's your name?" he said.
"Suzy,"Ilied.
"Why're you so pale?"
I didn't answer. He blushed suddenly and cleared his throat. "Would you do me a favor?" "Depends."
"Would you—" he blushed harder, "shake your hair out of that baseball cap?"
I shrugged, pulled the cap off, and let my hair loose. It hung limply down to my waist. My scalp felt like it was oozing enough oil to cause environmental damage.
"You should keep it down at all times," he said.
"Good-bye, Arnold," I said, picking up the money and starting toward the cashiers. He said something else but I kept on walking until I reached Pepsi.
I heard the buzz of an electric razor. Aunt Erma hated it when Pepsi shaved her head in the bedroom. She came out of her room, crossed the landing, and banged on the door. "In the bathroom!" she shouted. "You want to get hair all over the rug?"
The razor stopped. Pepsi ripped the door open and stomped down the hall. She kicked the bathroom door shut and the buzz started again.
I went into the kitchen and popped myself another Jolt. Sweat trickled down my pits, down my back, ran along my jaw and dripped off my chin.
"Karaoke?" Pepsi said. Then louder. "Hey! Are you deaf?"
"What?" I said.
"Get me my cell phone."
"Why don't you get it?"
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"I'm on the can." f
"So?" Personally, I hate it when you're talking on the j phone with someone and then you hear the toilet flush. j
Pepsi banged about in the bathroom and came out with her freshly coiffed Mohawk and her backpack slung over her shoulder. "What's up your butt?" she said.
"Do you want me to leave? Is that it?"
"Do what you want. This place is like an oven," Pepsi said. "Who can deal with this bullshit?" She slammed the front door behind her.
The apartment was quiet now, except for the chirpy weatherman on the TV promising another week of record highs. I moved out to the balcony. The headlights from the traffic cut into my eyes, bright and painful. Cola and Aunt Erma bumped around upstairs, then their bedroom doors squeaked shut and I was alone. I had a severe caffeine buzz. Shaky hands, fluttery heart, mild headache. It was still warm outside, heat rising from the concrete, stored up during the last four weeks of weather straight from hell. I could feel my eyes itching. This was the third night I was having trouble getting to sleep.
Tired and wired. I used to be able to party for days and days. You start to hallucinate badly after the fifth day without sleep. I don't know why, but I used to see leprechauns. These waist-high men would come and sit beside me, smiling with their brown wrinkled faces, brown eyes, brown teeth. When I tried to shoo them away, they'd leap straight up into the air, ten or twelve feet, their green clothes and long red • hair flapping around them.
A low, gray haze hung over Vancouver, fuzzing the street
Queen   of   the North
i
I lights. Air-quality bulletins on the TV were warning the
j elderly and those with breathing problems to stay indoors.
There were mostly semis on the roads this late. Their engines rumbled down the street, creating minor earthquakes. Pictures trembled on the wall. I took a sip of warm, flat Jolt, let it slide over my tongue, sweet and harsh. It had a metallic twang, which meant I'd drunk too much, my stomach wanted to heave.
I went back inside and started to pack.
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig
Jimmy and I lay in the graveyard, on one of my cousin's graves. We should have been creeped out, but we were both tipsy.
"I'm never going to leave the village," Jimmy said. His voice buzzed in my ears. "Mmm."
"Did you hear me?" Jimmy said. "Mmm."
"Don't you care?" Jimmy said, sounding like I should. "This is what we've got, and it's not that bad." He closed his eyes. "No, it's not bad."
I poured myself some cereal. Mom turned the radio up. She glared at me as if it were my fault the Rice Crispies were loud. I opened my mouth and kept chewing.
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Traplines
Queen   of   the North
The radio announcer had a thick Nisga'a accent. Most of the news was about the latest soccer tournament. I thought, that's northern native broadcasting: sports or bingo.
"Who's this?" I said to Mom. I'd been rummaging through the drawer, hunting for spare change.
"What?"
It was the first thing she'd said to me since I'd come back. I'd heard that she'd cried to practically everyone in the village, saying I'd gone to Vancouver to become a hooker.
I held up a picture of a priest with his hand on a little boy's shoulder. The boy looked happy.
"Oh, that," Mom said. "I forgot I had it. He was Uncle Josh's teacher."
I turned it over. Dear Joshua, it read. How are you? I miss you terribly. Please write. Your friend in Christ, Archibald.
"Looks like he taught him more than just prayers."
"What are you talking about? Your Uncle Josh was a bright student. They were fond of each other."
"I bet," I said, vaguely remembering that famous priest who got eleven years in jail. He'd molested twenty-three boys while they were in residential school.
Uncle Josh was home from fishing for only two more days. As he was opening my bedroom door, I said, "Father Archibald?"
He stopped. I couldn't see his face because of the way the light was shining through the door. He stayed there a long time.
"I've said my prayers," I said.
He backed away and closed the door.
In the kitchen the next morning he wouldn't look at me.
I felt light and giddy, not believing it could end so easily. Before I ate breakfast I closed my eyes and said grace out loud. I had hardly begun when I heard Uncle Josh's chair scrape the floor as he pushed it back.
I opened my eyes. Mom was staring at me. From her expression I knew that she knew. I thought she'd say something then, but we ate breakfast in silence.
"Don't forget your lunch," she said.
She handed me my lunch bag and went up to her bedroom.
I use a recent picture of Uncle Josh that I raided from Mom's album. I paste his face onto the body of Father Archibald and my face onto the boy. The montage looks real enough. Uncle Josh is smiling down at a younger version of me.
My period is vicious this month. I've got clots the size and texture of liver. I put one of them in a Ziploc bag. I put the picture and the bag in a hatbox. I tie it up with a bright red ribbon. I place it on the kitchen table and go upstairs to get a jacket. I think nothing of leaving it there because there's no one else at home. The note inside the box reads, "It was yours so I killed it."
"Yowtz!" Jimmy called out as he opened the front door. He came to my house while I was upstairs getting my jacket. He was going to surprise me and take me to the hot springs. I stopped at the top of the landing. Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen table with the present that I'd meant for Uncle Josh, looking at the note. Without seeing me, he closed the box, neatly folded the note, and walked out the door.
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Trapllnes
He wouldn't take my calls. After two days, I went over to Jimmy's house, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my temples. Michelle answered the door.
"Karaoke!" she said, smiling. Then she frowned. "He's not here. Didn't he tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"He got the job," Michelle said.
My relief was so strong I almost passed out. "A job."
"I know. I couldn't believe it either. It's hard to believe he's going fishing, he's so spoiled. I think he'll last a week. Thanks for putting in a good word, anyways." She kept talking, kept saying things about the boat.
My tongue stuck in my mouth. My feet felt like two slabs of stone. "So he's on Queen of the North}"
"Of course, silly," Michelle said. "We know you pulled strings. How else could Jimmy get on with your uncle?"
The lunchtime buzzer rings as I smash this girl's face. Her front teeth crack. She screams, holding her mouth as blood spurts from her split lips. The other two twist my arms back and hold me still while the fourth one starts smacking my face, girl hits, movie hits. I aim a kick at her crotch. The kids around us cheer enthusiastically. She rams into me and I go down as someone else boots me in the kidneys.
I hide in the bushes near the docks and wait all night. Near sunrise, the crew starts to make their way to the boat. Uncle Josh arrives first, throwing his gear onto the deck, then drag-
Queen   of   the   Nor t h
ging it inside the cabin. I see Jimmy carrying two heavy bags. | As he walks down the gangplank, his footsteps make hollow
I thumping noises that echo off the mountains. The docks
I creak, seagulls circle overhead in the soft morning light, and
the smell of the beach at low tide is carried on the breeze that ruffles the water. When the seiner's engines start, Jimmy passes his bags to Uncle Josh, then unties the rope and casts off. Uncle Josh holds out his hand, Jimmy takes it and is pulled on board. The boat chugs out of the bay and rounds the point. I come out of the bushes and stand on the dock, watching the Queen of the North disappear.
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