Crossings (25 page)

I REMEMBER something else. One morning we went out to pick oysters in the cove beneath the cabin. The tide was out, and the miraculous orchard of shells lay exposed all along the shore, it seemed a special harvest, meant for us alone. The sky was white, although it would be a royal blue day. And hot. But now it was almost cold, and bloodless. Luminous, like the first morning of the world. A snake moved among the shells and I stooped and picked it up in my fingers. It seemed as if nothing could be alien to me now, I was so fitted into my skin.

But the snake turned and bit me. Its serrated, hard-ridged gums caught my flesh and wouldn't let go. Blood streamed from my hand onto the oyster shells. I tried to shake the snake off, but still it clung. It was terrified of me. Then it dropped back into the strange miniature prehistoric forest. ‘But I've never been afraid of snakes,' I say to Mik. It seemed an omen.

One night, Mik said to me, ‘I'll teach you how to play poker.'

It was just growing dusk. The sun was making the sea red and oily. I was tired of always being beaten at chess. Mik filled the kerosene lamp and lit it, setting it on the oil cloth. It seemed very easy, poker.

‘Yah. It's easy,' Mik said.

When we'd played a few hands, he said, ‘Let's make it interesting.'

‘Okay.'

‘Let's play strip poker,' Mik said.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting there, stark staring naked.

‘Here,' I said. ‘I've still got the ring. I'll bet the ring, okay?'

‘No,' said Mik. ‘You leave the ring on. You can bet a curl.'

I was proud of my hair and Mik knew it. But I was furious too, and so I said, ‘You're on!' Mik was stone-faced, but I could feel him smirking.

But when I lost again and he came toward me with the scissors he said, ‘No. Stand up. On the chair.'

It took me a moment to get it. Then, cold with rage, I stood on the chair.

He snipped the curl away and wrapped it in a piece of toilet paper. He laid it on top of my jeans and T-shirt, my panties, my brassiere, my runners. I picked up the deck. ‘My deal.'

‘You never give in, do you?' And he called me a name. Not ‘tough guy' … Something like that though. I don't remember. I won't think of it. It will come to me if I don't think of it. Like the others. Like remembering why I could breathe under water and why petals are maroon. I've built myself a trap with this book. I thought it was going to be simple. But the book makes me remember. I'll remember the name Mik called me. And it won't be what I thought. It will be more terrible. It lurks there like Raskolnikov's detective and I come to it, afraid, and wanting to know. The book, I mean. Or do I mean the name.

I wouldn't give in, and the pile of toilet paper envelopes grew. Mik played solemnly, not smiling.

Which of us threw the ring? It seems to have been me. But I don't remember.

It was very cold now, and I was purple with goose bumps. But I played on until, gradually, I won them all back, the little curls in their packages.

Edna says to me, last week, ‘I don't see what's so hard. If you want to tell the truth, just tell it.'

‘Oh, you think it's easy, getting past all the lies? All the lies you make up to live with yourself? You think that's easy?'

Edna says, ‘Well, of course, I'm not a writer. I suppose you have to make it “artistic.'” She is in a shitty mood, and I am so furious with her that I decide not to see her again until it is done, the book.

I won them all back. Mik built a fire in the stove and when it was roaring up through the mica windows, I stalked over, opened the door, and threw them in, all the packages.

The toilet paper flares up, easily, as paper does, without any further brilliance. I stand there, staring stupidly down at the open door.

Mik begins to laugh.

‘You switched them?'

He throws back his head and roars.

‘You switched them! You cheated!'

‘I let you win, too,' he says, holding up the other packages, the ones with the curls inside.

‘You let me win?'

‘You can't beat me,' says Mik. And starts to put the curls away in his wallet.

‘You let me win?' It is terrible. It is absolute. I could kill him.

He laughs at me. I know I look a fool, shivering in the dawn, unable to stop my teeth chattering.

‘You never give in. I had to let you win.' And, ‘I knew you'd play till hell froze over, not to mention your ass.' And he laughs again. Mean laughter. He throws my clothes at me, like a guard at Auschwitz.

I get into them. I am crying with sheer rage. I get into the panties and the brassiere, awkwardly, dressing in front of him defiantly, not turning away. I wish I could strike him dead. The denim is hard and raspy against my legs. Even the runners hurt going on. I open the cabin door and go out and stand beside the ravine. The birds are beginning to chitter. I am so ugly. My breath steams out of me. After a while, he comes out too, and stands a little ways off, watching.

I take off the ring and hold it out to him. He takes it and with a great curving arc of his arm, throws it into the ravine.

I thought it was I who had done it. Thrown the ring away. But it was Mik. I can see his arm now, curving against the pink-ridged clouds, dark, like some primeval weapon, in a long unhesitating sweep. Yes. Mik threw the ring. I had thought it was me. It was me.

And we fly back to Campbell River, our week not up. Not saying goodbye to them. Leaving everything neat and clean, the way we found it. But not leaving them even a note.

It is a hot muggy day, the sea as dull and slick as mercury. It curves under the plane in a grey oily meniscus. The sky is hot and leaden from forest fires on Vancouver Island. Campbell River is full of people. The RCMP is conscripting people to cut fire breaks. Mik takes me to a shop and buys me a pair of brief white shorts and a nylon blouse with rickshaws all over it.

‘I can't wear these on the street. I look like a chippy.'

‘Well?'

We go into a beer parlour and Mik sees someone he knows. A buddy from the camp. We sit with him and drink beer. It is noisy and crowded and everyone seems drunk with beer or fire excitement. A woman comes up to our table and pulls out a chair for herself. Neither man pays any attention to her. She just sits down, uninvited. She is old. Forty, anyway. And thin. Her face is ravaged and made up in a ghastly way. Rouge spots stare out from her cheeks. Her hair has a funny orange look, as if it has been burnt. Her legs and arms are covered with sores. She smokes all the time.

Mik and the buddy go on talking. The woman leans over to me and says, ‘He beats me. He beats me up. He only loves me on Welfare day.'

I draw away. I can't help it. Whatever it is on her arms, I don't want to catch it. I look at Mik but he doesn't look at me.

‘I do everything he wants and he beats me up,' she says.

She begins to cry, her face crumpling, and black stuff coming down from her eyes. In the corners are thick yellow sleep deposits. Her dress is pink.

‘I don't know what to do,' she says, over and over. ‘I don't know what to do.'

I look to Mik again, trying to signal, but he won't see me.

Men pass the table and look at my legs in their shorts and grin at me.

Horrible. The pink dress was horrible. Rhinestones. Cute.

She puts her hand on mine and she says, ‘Men. They're just animals. That's all they think of.'

I get up and say, ‘Excuse me,' and try to find the washroom.

I stay in here a long time, combing my hair and washing my hands over and over, where she has touched me. Washing my arms. I take a paper towel and even wipe my legs. An Indian woman is sitting on the bench in front of the mirror. Fat and ugly with very red lipstick. She is spraying her hair with something in a can. Her hair is back-combed and teased into a monstrous pile on her head. The spray gets into my lungs and I cough. She gives me a cold look, she hates me. She smiles at me, and the red is on her teeth, and her teeth are brown and rotten.

She has pock marks on her face and she is trying to cover them with something hard and pink in a pale blue box.

‘You want a hassle?'

‘I'm sorry? I beg your pardon?' Perhaps I was staring. I look away from her, to myself in the mirror. My face without makeup. My long brown hair, gold from the sun.

‘You want a hassle, I'm the one to give it to you.' Her hands are on her hips, and she is glaring at me.

‘No, I'm sorry,' and I go back out to the beer parlour.

A man puts out his hand and strokes my thigh. ‘Hey, baby, what's the hurry? Hey, where are you going so fast? Hey, you guys smell hair burning?' They are all laughing at me, and I can't find the table in the smoke. The waiter comes up and says, ‘Let's have your ID.'

‘I'm with someone.'

‘Yeah yeah. Your ID. Your identification,' he explains.

‘Just a minute.' And I get out my wallet. But as I hand him my driver's license, I say, ‘I'm twenty-seven.'

He reads my driver's license. ‘Got anything else?'

I give him my university library card.

‘He's right over there,' I say, but Mik isn't looking my way.

The Indian woman pushes past us. ‘Thinks her cunt's too good for some people. Fucking cunt!' she yells back at me.

The waiter says, ‘Is this you?'

‘What?'

‘What's the address?'

‘Twenty-nine fifty-two, West Eighth.'

‘That's not what it says here.'

‘It's written in over the top, see? I used to live there, but I moved.'

‘Yeah.' And he hands me back the license and the card.

A man goes by and says, ‘Fourteen years.'

‘I'll have to ask you to leave,' the waiter says.

‘Why?'

‘You're not twenty-one.'

I laugh.

He takes my arm and starts to propel me toward the door. ‘My friend,' I say, ‘he's right over there. Ask him. I'm twenty-seven. Please.' And I pull away and half run back to Mik. The woman in the pink dress has her head on the table. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is drooling.

And we have to leave. Out on the sidewalk, in the bright hot glare, Mik looks as if he wants to kill me.

‘I told him I was twenty-seven.'

‘Dummy up,' Mik says and takes me across the road, his hand on my upper arm, the same grip as the waiter's. We register in a hotel and upstairs in the room, Mik says, ‘You think you'll never be like that?'

‘Like what?'

‘Like her.'

‘Who?'

‘Her. The old bag.'

I think about it. ‘No. Never.'

‘It could happen to you,' Mik says.

‘No. No, it couldn't.'

‘It could happen,' Mik says.

I sit there on the edge of the bed, a big double bed with a washable cover. Grey and blue. I shake my head. ‘No.'

‘Easy,' Mik says, and comes over to me, pushing against my chest, so that I fall flat on my back with my legs still dangling over the edge.

‘I want a shower.'

But he is undoing my shorts and pulling them off. And my panties.

He spreads my legs and comes into me, not even taking off my blouse, or his trousers, just unzipping himself. I am dry, and it is rough and mean and I hate him.

And after, I go into the shower and stand there a long time.

When I come out, he has taken off his clothes and is lying on the bed, almost asleep in the smoke-filled room. The late afternoon sun is coming in under the venetian blinds like a threat. He lies there naked, a thick fat oaf. His skin is too pink, and there are blemishes on his back. An old fat man lying on a hotel bed, his mouth open, his sex limp and disgusting. I go up to him and touch his shoulder and he brushes me away. ‘Fuck off,' he says.

I draw my tongue down the scar along his spine. Even my tongue is dry. ‘I said fuck
off.
'

I am still wet outside from the shower and I bend and let my hair tickle his face. ‘Aw, for christ sake.' I bend and kiss and lick him all over, taking it in my mouth till it rises in spite of himself.

He sits up abruptly. ‘Shit.' Then he gets up and slams me against the wall, so that my feet are dangling somewhere near the top of the baseboard. ‘I could break you in two,' he says, but whether it's a threat or a statement I can't tell.

I put my arms around his neck, now that we are face to face, and kiss him on the mouth.

‘Aw, christ,' he says and loves me. It is a kind of victory. Over what I'm not sure.

 

ONE OTHER THING about that island, the first island. In another version, number four? I wrote: ‘I look back and I think, How many times did I do that to him? How many times did I make it impossible for him to stay at a job, to become respectable?' But it was fire season. Mik was laid off because it was fire season. Sister Mary Joseph is right. It's a sin to blame yourself for everything.