Monkey Beach (22 page)

“She’s on my side,” Frank said.

We split up. Three guys went one way and I followed Frank and his friend Pooch down the path that led to the graveyard. We dumped our books behind a waist-high snow fort. Frank and Pooch started making snowballs. Not knowing what else to do, I copied them. When we had a big pile, they crouched behind the wall and waited.

The attack came a few minutes later. Two guys came straight at us, yelling and hooting, while the other snuck around the back and rained snowballs at us from the trees. I chucked a few polite snowballs in their general direction until I got hit in the chest so hard the wind went out of me. Then I started belting them, and to my surprise, none of the guys got mad at me when I hit them—in my experience, if you hit too hard the game stopped and everyone glared at you and called you a mean poor sport. The attack ended, and Frank and Pooch charged after them. We attacked their fort, then they attacked our fort again, and it went on until the sun set.

By some unspoken rule, I’d never played with boys before. When I was friends with my cousin Erica, we’d agreed that they were icky and stupid. We’d even made a pact that if we ever kissed one, we’d cut our lips off. These days, I heard Erica whispering about this boy or that on the bus, and her friends would all agree that so-and-so was cute. I couldn’t understand it and didn’t want to.

The day after the snowball fight in the graveyard, I was a part of Frank’s gang and, as such, untouchable. At recess, while the other girls stayed in the undercover areas, out of the snow and wind, I went off and had a smoke with the guys. Frank brought out the pack. He handed it around and everyone took one. He lit his with a practised ease that the other boys tried to mimic. I had never been so grateful to Tab in my entire life. If she hadn’t shown me how to smoke before she left, I would have looked wussy. When Frank threw me the matchbook, I made a decent go of it. I didn’t even cough. Frank was impressed, and I was officially cool.

In PE class that afternoon, we had dodge ball. Those of us in Frank’s gang formed our own circle. We agreed that you got out only if you were hit in the head. The game was fast, hard and dirty. After one of the guys got a bleeding nose, the teacher broke us up and made us join the other circles, and I was put in with all girls. I won every time because none of the girls would even breathe my way. Apparently, it was all right to want to date a boy, but not to go out and play with one, let alone join a guy gang. Intensely bored, I looked wistfully over at Frank and Pooch, who were hurling balls at the ceiling. In the change room, I got a lot of looks. But when I stared back, the girls turned away. A part of me still wanted to be like them; but somehow it didn’t matter.

Contacting the dead, lesson two. You are in a large mall near closing time. It’s Christmas Eve. You turn away for just a moment, look back and your toddler is
gone. Even through the noise, even through the confusion of bodies bumping and swearing as you push through the crowd, even as you yell your child’s name, you are listening for that one voice to call for you.

Names have power. This is the fundamental principle of magic everywhere. Call out the name of a supernatural being, and you will have its instant and undivided attention in the same way that your lost toddler will have yours the second it calls your name.

Passing Clio Bay, and the squall has just ended. I can see the next one coming, the sleek curtain of rain angled by the wind. Clio Bay has an appropriately picturesque mountain in the background, with the kind of peak kids draw when they think of mountains, sharp and pointed. The bay itself is small but deep. I forget which family used to live here—Ma-ma-oo told me on one of our fishing trips.

The coming squall is near
Ga-bas’wa
, the mountain in the middle, which divides the channel in half: the English name is Hawkesbury Island. Going north around
Ga-bas’wa
will take you right to Hartley Bay and the ocean. But going south is faster even though the channel twists and turns, because I’m aiming for the inside passage, a stretch of water sheltered by islands from the extreme surf and chancy weather of the open Pacific Ocean. To get there, I’ll be traveling down the Verney Passage. I’m going by Ursula Channel so I’ll pass Monkey Beach first, then the ghost town of Butedale, then Bella Bella and finally Namu.

I wonder where Mom and Dad are now. They probably didn’t sleep much either. Dad hates boats. He gets seasick. I hope he remembered to get Gravol. He likes his boats big, ferry-sized, heavy and steady. Boats are second nature to Mom, who spent a summer as a cook on her cousin’s seiner. It toughened her up, she said, made her realize what she wanted out of life, decide what was important, and gave her enough money to rent a nice apartment when she went to beauty school. She was thrilled when Jimmy decided to go fishing. “It’s just what he needs,” she’d said as we waved goodbye to him barely three weeks ago.

Jimmy phoned us when he and Josh stopped over in Bella Bella before going on to their fishing point in Area 8. I wasn’t there when he called, but Mom said he was sore and tired and didn’t want to talk long. As she gushed about how mature he sounded, I felt an intense surge of relief. If he was chatting to her about his aches and pains, he could hardly be planning anything stupid.

Jimmy was in awe of Frank and his buddies, but the awe didn’t transfer to me. I avoided breakfast with him because it always ended with him lecturing me on the evils of smoking. I would be stirring my cereal, trying to pry my eyes open, and he would sit across from me, yapping about how black my lungs were getting and how I was going to die of cancer. One day, I flicked a spoonful of Cheerios at him. He sat with a deer-in-headlights expression and a Cheerio stuck to his cheek
while the milk dripped down to his chin. I hocked another spoonful to see what he would do.

“That’s mature,” he snapped. He wiped his face with his napkin and glared at me. “That’s very mature.” When he rolled his eyes and looked disgusted, I grinned.

“I thought it was funny.”

“See me laughing?”

“Yeah, you’re a riot too.”

If Jimmy had no sense of humour, it didn’t seem to bother the girls in the preteen set. Gaggles of girls left notes in his locker, phoned our house after school then hung up when I answered, knocked on the door and stood there giggling, trying to peer over my shoulder to see if Jimmy was home. He could have had his choice of girlfriends, but he wasn’t interested. It would, he said solemnly, interfere with his practice schedule. His aloofness didn’t discourage any of them, and even seemed to add to his mystique. On his tenth birthday, so many girls gave him teddy bears and chocolate boxes that his dresser was covered in gifts.

I dreaded my birthday. Mom wanted to send invitations to all my cousins, which was actually my fault, because I’d been telling her that I was playing with Erica and her gang when in fact I was horsing around with Frank. I told her I was too old to have a birthday party.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, washing a plate and handing it to me. “You’re only turning twelve.”

“I don’t want a party.”

“Why?”

“Parties are for babies, Mom.”

She stopped washing dishes and stared at me with a wistful expression. “Sweetie, don’t try to grow up too fast. You’re only young once—”

“I just want a cake,” I said, trying to compromise.

In the past, I’d always wanted a birthday party on my birthday, but Mom thought it was disrespectful because it happened on Remembrance Day. When I was ten, I’d told her that if Ba-ba-oo had fought for freedom, why weren’t we free to have a party? Mom wasn’t impressed. This year, with the party safely moved to the weekend, I could honestly say that Erica had gone to Terrace, which she did every weekend to see an orthodontist.

All that was left to do was invite one or two friends. At recess, I brought out a bag of Mom’s homemade candy and handed it around. After everyone agreed it was pretty good, I decided it was now or never. “My mom wants to throw me this birthday party,” I said as casually as I could manage. “She’s gonna have candy and stuff. Any of you wanna come?”

Frank looked around at the guys and shrugged. “Sure.”

They came trooping up the steps five minutes early. They were quiet and most of them had combed their hair, which was unusual. Mom had forced me into a dress. Frank’s eyes went wide when he saw me. I invited them in, and we stood in the hallway in an awkward silence.

“Come in,” I said to them. “Take a load off.”

When I asked Mom if I could invite boys, she must have thought I meant one or two in addition to the girls, because when we came into the kitchen she goggled.
I remembered then that she hadn’t seen Frank since the time in Emergency. She had been planning to have some party games, but after seeing the guests, she went straight to the video, which was
The Terminator
. We all cheered Arnold, and Mom gave us hot dogs and cake, hurrying the party along nervously.

At the end of the movie, I opened presents. The guys mostly got me socks and stuff, but Pooch got me a Crazy Carpet. Mom and Dad got me a pink dress that I stared at and couldn’t quite picture wearing. Then Frank went to his jacket and came back with a small box. When I opened it, I gasped in delight.

It was the most beautiful slingshot I’d ever seen. I was close to tears as I pulled it out of its box. I wanted to give Frank a big hug, but I slugged his shoulder instead and said it was cool. Mom looked appalled as she handed out the grab bags, and we sat on the front steps and ate the candy. The guys laughed their heads off at the presents, which she’d chosen, expecting only girls to show up. Pooch got a Smurfette figurine, Frank got a mood ring, but best of all, Cheese got a candy necklace with little hearts saying things like “Wuv U 4ever.”

Dad brought home a kitten that night. Mom didn’t even bawl him out for not asking her. It was orange and mewly, with wide, frightened green eyes. I sat with it on the porch and scratched beneath its chin and behind its ears. I’d never named anything before. I didn’t want something cutesy, like Fluffy or Pumpkin. I decided to wait a few days and see what my kitten did.

This was also the time Mom started cutting hair to make a few extra bucks. Women would phone her and ask for trims and colourings, but mostly for perms.
They had to pay for the perm kit, and she charged ten bucks to do the work.

“How old were you when you went to beauty school?” I said when Mom mentioned it to one of her customers.

“Before you were born,” she said.

Dad helped her adapt the bathroom downstairs so that the sink was lower. They set up a swivel chair and put our old TV in front of it so the women could have something to watch while Mom put in their rollers. While the perms were setting, Mom and her customers would sip coffee and gossip. Their laughter and the smell of perm solution wafted through the house.

You can’t really hide things in the village. Everyone knew Dad had been going through some rough times since he quit working for the council and went on pogey. Mick’s death had hit him hard. Mom’s hair salon was helping to pay for Jimmy’s swimming lessons, but the swim meets were a strain. Most of the women who came to her knew this, and at first came more as a show of support than because they needed their hair done. I mean, when Aunt Edith asked for a perm, I knew the rumours of our pending financial doom must be flying through the village.