Anatomy of a Girl Gang (9781551525303) (21 page)

I sat down on the bed. My body felt like it was made of concrete. I closed my eyes and listened to the noises of maximum security. Someone was singing, someone was hollering for the
guard, someone was talking, someone was laughing, someone was praying.

I made the bed, fluffed up my paper-thin pillow, and lay down. I stared at the grey blanket with
ALOUETTE
stamped across it and thought about my dad. It was kind of funny, because this was the closest we had been in ten years, him being just down the road at Fraser Regional, but neither of us could visit the other because we were both locked up. Then I realized that he would get out before I did. Hell, maybe he would even come visit me.

Yo, new kid on the block! someone yelled.

Hey, new chick! What's your name?

There were whispers and shouts of excitement up and down the row.

Hey, girlee! We're talkin to you!

I rolled over and put the pillow over my head. I imagined I was back at home, cuddling with Z. I imagined her arms around me, telling me everything was gonna be alright. That everything would be alright, forever and ever and ever.

SLY GIRL

I felt pretty guilty about not goin to visit Mac yet. But Maple Ridge is just so far away, and I've been real busy tryin to get set up down here again. I'm tryin to find a place to live and someone decent to work for and all that. But when I heard about Z, I knew I had to go see Mac, tell her in person. Besides, I was the only one left to tell her.

Z had been strange the last time I seen her. I never knew she was into heroin, but I sold her what she asked for, a hundy bag, and told her how to cook it up.

Just take a teensy, tiny little bit, okay? I said. If you do all of this at once, it'll kill ya.

Okay. Perfect. Thanks, Sly. Oh, here, take this. She shoved a bank card into my hand. Savings.
6969
.

What's this for?

Just in case. Then she gave me a hug and told me she loved me and ran off down the alley.

If I had known, I never would've given it to her, I swear to God, I wouldn't have. But how could I have known? She told me she was bored. Said she needed a new hobby. Next day, she's found dead underneath her painting at the sugar factory, the needle still stickin out of her arm.

Soon as I heard, I went to the Carnegie. They let me call Mac's jail, helped me get the number and everythin, so I could find out the visiting hours. Today I left Thug with my friend Blue and hopped on the bus to Maple Ridge.

Just now I'm tryin to figure out the words to tell her. Just
how the hell are you sposed to tell someone that the person they love the most in the world is dead? This might be the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

MAC

Soon as I saw Sly Girl walk in, I knew something was wrong. I felt it in the hollow of my stomach, like a rotten fruit. She scraped the chair back from the table and sat down as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Hi.

What's wrong?

Um, Z …

What?

She's gone.

Gone where?

She OD'd last night. I'm so sorry, Mac.

The room fell away and I couldn't see. I turned away from Sly Girl and coughed and gagged a little bit and thought I might puke. I tried to make myself breathe. I faced Sly Girl again, and she was cringing, tears leaked out of her destroyed eye. OD'd on what?

H, she whispered.

Z doesn't do heroin. There must be a mistake. It was someone else who just looked like her. Hope fluttered inside my chest. My lady wouldn't touch that shit. I knew it had to be a mistake.

Sly Girl swallowed. It was her.

Do you know who sold it to her?

She nodded, gazed at her ragged fingernails.

Who?

Me.

Fuck, Sly Girl!
Why?
My heart crumbled inside my chest.
Was it rat poison? A hot shot? What?

No! It was fine! It was good! She just did too much is all. I told her, Mac, I swear I did. I said just do a tiny little bit, a fingernail amount. I told her if she did the whole bag she would die.

I stared at Sly Girl, waiting for her to burst out laughing, to tell me this was a sick joke, that I was on
Candid Camera
or some shit, but she could hardly look at me and sat fidgeting in her chair. She was back full time on the pipe, that was obvious. I wished she was lying to me, but I knew she wasn't.

I'm so sorry, Mac. I wish I could've stopped her. I just … I didn't know, you know? I thought she just wanted to try it.

I took a deep breath. It's okay. It's not your fault.

She bit her bottom lip. Thank you, she whispered.

I held my head in my hands while my heart crumbled inside my chest. I had done this. I had done all of this damage.

I miss you, Mac. Everybody misses you.

I nodded. Now I knew she was lying. I closed my eyes and saw the quick and brutal flashes of how my night would unfold. The torn blue bed sheet. The improvised noose. First came the waves of doubt and then the final resolve. I had lost my love. I had nothing left worth sticking around for. And after twenty-five years on the inside, there would be nothing left for me to go back to.

I should get goin … I gotta work, Sly Girl said, snapping me out of my trance. I just wanted to let you know … I wanted you to hear it from me.

Yeah. Thanks.

I'll come visit you again soon though, she said, picking at her face.

Sure.

I promise.

I wanted to hug her or squeeze her hand or something, but there was no physical contact allowed. I wanted to tell her something to remember me by, to remember the Black Roses and all we had done and all that we were, but all I could think of to say was goodbye. And be good.

She bit her lip. You too. She looked for the guards out of the corner of her eye, then whispered, Black Roses forever.

Forever.

She stood up, and so did I. Be careful out there, Sly. The world is not your friend.

She nodded. Then a guard came and led me away.

SLY GIRL

For a short time, I had a family. For a short time, I had a place to call home. And I knew what it was to be loved. Now I can look back at that time in my life and say I was happy then, yeaah, I really was.

But now, my family has all gone to the Creator. And my home once again is the streets of the Downtown Eastside. But do you think these streets love you? These streets don't give a fuck about you. You could walk these streets for a million days and a million nights, and they wouldn't even know your name. These streets don't love anybody.

I got my dog still. I'm hangin in there. I do what the Black Roses taught me: walk softly, carry a big gun, hold my head up high.

EPILOGUE

SLY GIRL

I forgot about it for a while—guess it got lost inside some pocket—but a couple weeks after Mac strung herself up, I found Z's bank card and checked her savings account. There was $3,723.98 in there. I guess it was all the money she had saved from babysittin, birthdays, Christmas, whatevers. There it was. No one else was gonna do much with it, I figured, so I went to the teller and withdrew it all.

I think Z would've wanted me to have it. She was always generous like that. Givin out smokes, cookies—whatevers she had, she would give you without thinkin twice about it. She didn't care. She just wanted everyone around her to be happy. And you know, for the most part, we were.

Anyways, it was enough money for me to put down first and last on my own little room at the Stella Hotel. I had to pay an extra $500 for Thug to be able to stay, but I don't mind. He's worth it. Can you believe it? I have my very own room. It even has a hot plate and a mini-fridge! I make soup and ravioli and spaghetti from a can. Sure do miss Z's cookin somethin fierce, but I get by, I'm gettin by. Some days are harder than others. Some days I miss them all so much, and my heart hurts so much just to think on them that I don't even want to be in the world no more. Sometimes I get so sad and tired that I want to lie down in the middle of a busy intersection until I'm crushed right down into the blackness and disappear completely. But then I'll look at my dog and he'll kinda smile at me, and I know I won't ever leave him. I can't. I know my girls wouldn't want
me to either. So I just keep goin. Keep on keepin on, like the song says. Yeaah. It's okay.

The carpet in my room is dusty-rose, it's stained and burnt and ass-dirty, but I don't care—it's
my
carpet. God, I wish the girls could see my room. Mercy would probably get some art and pretty fabrics and stuff to help me decorate, make it all sparkly and beautiful, but she's not around to help me, so it just stays the way it is for now. Maybe I'll buy one of the paintings that crippled guy on the corner does. He's pretty good, actually. Mac would've liked his stuff. She was into art. All kinds. She told me once when we were drunk that she had always wanted to study art history. That she was thinkin to maybe apply to UBC once we got our condo sorted out. That girl, she could've done anythin, eh. She could've been anythin. But then, somehow, so many things went wrong so fast. And I didn't know how to make them right again. Now they never will be. They never, never will be.

But when I think on Mac now, I like to think she'd be proud of me. For gettin straight, gettin my own place, meetin new people, all that.

The other people who live at the Stella Hotel are mostly junkies. But everyone's pretty nice. They all say hey to me and Thug when we go by in the hallway. My next-door neighbour is a crackhead named Henry who likes to do science experiments. He's always askin me to come over and check out his latest results. He showed me how to make a volcano with vinegar and baking soda and red food dye. Henry's real nice. Like when there's a line-up for our bathroom—cuz everyone on our
floor shares the same bathroom—and he's in front of me, he always lets me go ahead of him. Once, when I saw a cockroach in my room, I started screamin cuz it was so big and ugly, and Henry came right over and banged on my door and asked me, What the hell's the matter? So I told him and he said, Is that all? I thought you were dying in here. And then he scooped the roach up with an empty Zoodle-O's can and chucked the whole thing out the window. Henry says not to worry even a little bit about them roaches because even the cleanest, richest, tidiest mansions get cockroaches sometimes, and you can't do nothin to stop them. They can even survive nuclear war, he says.

Henry shares his smokes with me sometimes, if I'm runnin low. And I'll give him a couple of mine if he's out. I guess that means we're friends. But if I don't feel like talkin to anybody, I can lock my door and put the chain across and no one can come in. If I don't feel like leavin my room all day, I don't have to. I can just hang out in my pyjamas, drink tea, and look at magazines. Just like we would sometimes do at the gang house if it was a real piss-pouring day. I always wish Kayos was around to make Jiffy Pop and watch a movie with me on those nasty days. She'd crank the music and demo her new ninja moves for us, eh. God, I'd give anythin to see one of her tornado spinnin kicks right now. Ha ha.

The heater in my room is real old, probably from the 1900s, but it works, and it gets real nice and toasty-warm in my room when it's all cold and rainy outside. Thug likes to curl up beside the heater and just sleep for hours. It's his favourite spot.

My favourite part of my room is the balcony. Well, it's not
really a balcony, it's just the landing on the fire escape, and I have to crawl out my window to get onto it, but I use it like a balcony and go out there and sit on it and have smokes and whatevers. I like goin out there at night and just watchin all the lights of the city. And sometimes, when it's not too cloudy, I can see the stars; they're far away and they're faint, but they're there.

I even have a job. A real, legit job. The fat white worker lady at the Carnegie helped me get set up with this Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program. I had to go to a bunch of meetings with an employment counsellor so we could figure out what I should do. Not just what I
can
do or what I'm good at, but what I
actually
want to do. I love animals, all animals, but dogs especially. So now I'm a professional dog walker. My company, ha ha, that sounds funny but it's true, it's called Luckydog Dog Walking. I guess I'm the CEO, ha ha. I even printed up these little business cards on the computer at the Employment Centre, and the counsellor chick helped me design these cute posters that I stick up on bulletin boards around the rich neighbourhoods. You wouldn't believe how many people have dogs but don't have time to walk them. My phone is always ringin. Most of my clients are in Yaletown, some are in the West End, and a few are in Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy is actually where I like to be walkin dogs the most cuz then I can keep an eye on Kayos's little sister, Laura. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm always in Shaughnessy to walk this beautiful Irish Setter named Sedona. She's a real gorgeous dog, all friendly and lovin. Sedona's house is just a few blocks away from Kayos's,
so I make sure we always go past it at least twice. Sometimes Laura is out in the yard, playin with her dolls or drawin on the sidewalk with coloured chalk, kickin a soccer ball around with her mom or dad or whatevers. She's gettin real big now. She looks good. Healthy. Her hair is gettin long. It's bright red like Kayos's was. Spittin image.