The Bear: A Novel (9 page)

“Moose,” says Stick.

The horse blinks and chews some more.

“It’s a horsie.”

“No.”

I feel fed up having to talk to babies. “A moose has big antlers on its head like a coatrack.”

“Moose.”

I think of our book of animals and we read it with Daddy and there are girl mooses and they maybe look like that with no antlers but Stick is too much of a baby to be right. “Horse.”

“Moose,” he whispers and I should give him a smack but I don’t care. I just don’t want to only play with him and it would be good if Jessica was here. But we keep watching the horse and it eats some grass and then turns and walks off the other way and we can’t see it anymore. I feel like when we went to the zoo except no McDonald’s. I am so hungry.

Also there
is more windy and I feel a little colder on my legs. It is going to be nighttime and we need to get to our safe place. I pull on Stick’s arm so he will stand up and come because I think no more water on my legs it’s too cold so we walk over to the trees part. It is darker because the trees are spread out like a roof all over the top. Our safe place can be at the cottage because we have two beds. Or Toronto and we need to find it. We walk in there for a little bit and the feet don’t hurt until a pine needle decides to prick them ouch. Mostly they don’t prick only a few mean ones. Stick gets them too because he says “Owey” and stops and makes me look at his foot.

“Gotta splinter.”

He is scared of splinters because he got one and Momma and I had to go to the summer friends’ house to have them help us hold him down so Momma could take it out with pointers. Stick said “No, don’t touch” but Momma said yes because the splinter could get sick and die in his foot and then the dead body would make him sick. Finally she got it out with the pointers and showed us in a lamp and I looked and it was a small piece of the dock. So the splinter body was on the dock at first and so watch out when you walk there. Maybe wear shoes so no bodies go in your feet. And so Stick thinks there are bodies around the needles and I try to look at his foot and he holds it up but he falls. He almost cries but I tell him he is okay and I don’t know but no blood. Because I am the big sister and I say he is okay he is okay and doesn’t cry. When he is sitting on the ground I can look at where he got the splinter before. But he won’t keep his foot still and pulls it back and he doesn’t want me to look or pull his feet away all the time. I say to him to stay still but he is making the sad noise of his inside dog. I feel bad. I put the inside dog there. I made it stay.

“Do you want Gwen?” I ask.

He nods. It is very Stick to talk with his head instead of his mouth.

“Here,” I say and hand him Gwen.

“Glen.” He cuddles her and I think maybe it was a mistake because he will get used to her and love her so much that he thinks he loves her more than me. So I grab his foot to keep him from going away.

Stick is scared when I grab his foot because it makes him think splinter.

“Hug Gwen and sniff and don’t look,” I tell him.

He cuddles her to his face and closes his eyes. “Okey.”

I take his foot and I look at the same spot and see that there is no splinter so it is okay and no blood or body at all.

“You’re fine, Stick. Don’t worry,” I say.

He nods and sniffs Gwen again. “Glen.”

“You are brave,” I say because that’s what Momma would say.

He does another sniff.

“Can I have her back now?” I stick out my hand.

He sticks out a fat arm and gives her. I feel really glad and sniff and she stinks a little like Stick but not too bad.

“Good dog,” I say to him. “Good, good dog.”

“Woof!” He keeps his bum on the ground but puts his arms up in the air and shuffles his feet around in the needles. His face looks pleased and I think he knows that he is older and growing up from not a baby. He can be brave with splinters now.

But then splinters are whatever because I am so hungry and Momma has not come like she said. I look from there and close by I can see a bunch of dangle berries. They are hiding under leaves so sneaky. I couldn’t see them from walking but down here on the needles I can see where they are. I keep on my hands and knees so they don’t run and sneak up. Grrrr I growl at them because my stomach does too and when lions are going to eat deers they don’t roar so then I think be quiet and sneak. The dangle berries don’t see me and I put one paw in front of the other and sneak up and then pounce. I get the plant under my paw and reach down and pick off a berry with my teeth. And then I stop and the dangle berry is in my mouth and I worry that it is red and might be the spicy kind of red. I take it out of my mouth with my fingers and look and sniff. It has a red stem in one end and a skinny brown stem on the other side and it is red but not like a cherry more like an apple except really small like a blueberry but it isn’t any of these. I stick my tooth in and a little juice comes out and I lick and it is spicy like the gum my momma chews not like hot but I like bubble gum better. I bite and it is a little bit like a mint spicy and not bad and I have another. And there is a plant beside so I pluck those and stick them in my mouth. I find another plant and then I hear breathing behind me.

“Hey, want some.” Stick has words in his head and they come out more when he is hungry.

I don’t want to share. I want to eat everything because the hole in my tummy is so big I need to plug it. I push Stick back and eat another berry and then the breathing again and I look and he has big sad eyes like his inside dog and they make my stomach sag.

“Okay, one.” I pass him one.

He gobbles it up like it is a cookie and it isn’t and I wish we still had those and where is the tin? But I don’t care because I am picking the berries off and shoving them in my mouth and the hole is big so I need lots.

“More,” he says.

Huff.

“More, Nana.” His small paw wipes my back.

“Here.” I show him a plant and shrug. “Take some if you want it.”

He smiles this big smile like I just gave him a candy but I didn’t it’s healthy for my body and Momma would say that’s good so I should tell her when she comes to get us that it was good food I made for lunch and not junk. Stick puts his fat finger on the berry and pulls it down and it won’t come off. I try not to look because I need to eat many many berries and it doesn’t feel like there is another and his hand is there again and pulls and the berry falls off and rolls down into the dirt.

“Hey,” says Stick like the plant is playing a trick on him.

“Here.” I pick the berry off the ground and give it to him and then I keep plucking and eating some more and too many are getting spicy but at least it is good spice. Stick tries to get more with his useless fat hands but they don’t work. My momma said they didn’t work at all when he was a first-born baby but I remember him holding Arrowroot cookies so that was probably wrong. He didn’t have teeth but he smooshed the Arrowroot on his gums for so long that enough spit went in and it made the cookie mushy and so he kind of drank it but was kind of chewing it with his gums too but not teeth.

“Help,” he says.

I give him one more. “That’s all.”

“Please?”

“No. All done.”

“Okey,” he says and he sounds sad in his throat.

I feel sadder because I am so hungry but looking at him feels like there is a beanbag in my chest. Like we have to run around in the school at gym time and pick up for a relay and it flops over and is dirty on the other side from so many grubby hands. Huff.

I tell him to sit and I take a leaf and fold it around another leaf and that is his bowl. I tell him to sit and stay and put Gwen down to sit in his lap because she needs someone to hold her and I need both my hands so at least Stick is a good Gwen holder because he gives her back. I find the next plant and I scrape the berries into my hand and I pour half but maybe just less but I am bigger into Stick’s bowl and I shove the others into my mouth. I move over to pick more.

“Gums,” he says.

I pour more into his bowl. Minty gum that he sneaks from Momma’s purse and is not allowed and he swallows it and it’s the sort of thing that might make Daddy go away. Stick pushes the berries into his mouth and is breathing through his nose because his mouth is closed and busy chewing and he makes whuffle noises and that means it is really good and I am doing a good job. I go to the plant place again and get more and dump them in mouth and bowl and he keeps chewing and I give him more. He is chewing and then he takes one berry and I am about to tell him not to throw them because none should go on the ground they should go into my mouth. He doesn’t throw it but he pinches his between his thumb and fat finger and then holds it to Gwen’s mouth. She doesn’t eat it because she only has black string and no mouth but he doesn’t know because he makes a smacking sound for her to eat and asks her if it is yummy. Gwen looks happy and I can see her heart is chewing even if her mouth stays still.

I keep getting berries until I have to walk farther away and then I go back and forth and then a plant is closer to the wet grass and then there are no more plants with the dangle berries and they are gone. I walk back across the line that I plucked and I find a couple and I come back and sit down beside Stick and Gwen and I eat three and I give Stick three and we chew and they are gone. We are both not talking and picking in our mouths for anything left.

“Thank you, Nana.”

“Yeah.”

And I am not just watching I am like a babysitter and I’m too young and I didn’t listen to Momma. We sit beside each other and stare at the trees and I think of hot dogs and wonder if I can smell bacon except I can’t because we are alone.

The trees
that we are in make it dark but also the sky turns night. The sun is peeking through the trees at the side and it looks at us and we sit and we don’t know what to do and the sun just stays but then it starts to go away more. I watch it and I can see the bottom part is behind some trees. Stick plays with a rock like it is a ball and I can’t see the sun move but more of it goes until it is only half a sun. We sat on the dock at my cottage and watched it across the lake one day and it was after a storm. We had no lights and my momma had candles out and ready and she gave Stick and me flashlights so we don’t need to be scared and we took blankets to sit on the dock and watch the sun go to bed. When it was tucked in we went back up and the cottage was gray until it turned black. My momma said don’t be scared because it is the same earth just not as light.

I said I wanted to kiss Daddy good night and Momma said he isn’t at the cottage and that he is not coming up. I knew he would come on the weekend and Momma said no and Daddy is not in our family he is in Toronto. She put her hand on her mouth and said “Oh, sweetie.” I saw a little piece of sad drip from her heart up into her eyes but she didn’t show me her cry and I didn’t see it because she swallowed it back into her heart. Our house is in Toronto and we are four. At the cottage we were three.

We made a fort with all the pillows in the middle of the floor by the couch and Momma put two chairs on the other side and blankets were over the top for the roof. We all cuddled inside. Momma said it needed a name and I said it was Fort Anna and Momma said it had to be a better name for all of us. Momma said we should call it Fort Whyte because it had nearly our whole family. It got dark and Momma sings and Stick is asleep and snores in like three seconds because he always falls asleep really fast. I listened to Momma’s song and I was awake and she stopped singing and I wasn’t scared. I woke up in the morning and gave Gwen a sniff and it was my bed around me. I could see the swirly part of the knots of the wood that is on the wall in my cottage. The light beside my bed was on. Stick was breathing in the bed beside mine that is his bed and he was on his tummy with his bum up in the air.

Fort Whyte stayed up. My momma came out of her room and soon Daddy’s room and she rubbed her eyes and her hair is mussy in the back with a black bendy that bunches up from her pillow. She had Daddy’s boxer underpants on because there is a place for a penis even though Daddy doesn’t use it. Momma only wears man’s underpants when she misses Daddy and maybe his T-shirt too. She looked at me and smiled and told me to come here with only her hand. We crawled into Fort Whyte and we got under the sleeping bag because it was still cold. She put her arms around me and it was the warmest place to be. I said I love the fort and she said that she knows and that it can stay.

Stick and I sit. The sun has just a little tip that I can still see and I know that soon it will go gray and it is black after that. I stand up and look around and Stick looks at me.

“Don’t leave, Nana.”

“I’m not. I’m looking.”

Stick stands up and stands right behind me. I feel hot on my face because there is no fort and no sleeping bag and not even a tent and I don’t want to be in trees. My bones are made of rock on the inside and I need to make a lot of muscle just to pick up one foot. I take a few steps and am looking around and Stick’s nose is breathing right behind me and it’s a little bit chilly. I turn and look at him and even no pants. But he is fat and his bones don’t rattle like mine because he is more fatter. The only thing I see that is like our fort is a tree that tipped over. The bottom sticks up like a hand spread out and the tree lies on the ground except for a little fort that is not a castle but it would be if it had a tall tower and gold and is right where the tree stuck into the ground before it tipped. I tell Stick to come and we walk over and I can see that there is a little part that has a roof that could be over us a little bit.

“There, Stick.” I point. “That’s bed.”

“Bed?”

“Like a fort.”

“Fort?” He sounds excited and looks around for our couch and there is no couch.

“Not Momma’s fort. Our fort.”

Stick looks at the dark spot under the tree. “Momma’s fort.”

“Not a castle because no tower.”

“Momma?”

“Momma’s not here.”

His lip sticks out and I can tell he feels scared and I don’t really like the fort so much because it will never be as good as Momma’s.

I get on my hands and knees and crawl under the tree. There are pine needles all on the ground and those are the bottom of the bed and that is dry. The tree is higher up at the start and then gets lower down when the tree goes to the ground so I can put my head and shoulders at the higher part and it slips down to just past my feet if I curl my knees a little bit. I turn on my back and look up and the tree looks like flaky skin but a spicier smell that I like not gum. I turn over to look the other way and it is open and I can see trees and they are darker gray now.

I wish our fort was more like a castle and maybe sides like the blanket made so you could see out between the chairs and that was the door. I leave Gwen inside because she is very tired and wants to sleep and I crawl back out and see Stick’s dingle is peeing on the ground and I walk around the end of the tree. There are branches on the ground from the tree and two have broken off but they still have the needles on. I pull these up and balance them on the tree and it is hard and I can only get one because it hogs the space and I can’t get the other one up without knocking everyone off so I just do one. I go back around and look in and it is see-through in the back like the air is sticking through the needles but the blanket had little holes too and it is okay. Stick squats down with his hands on his knees and his dingle pointing out and it is darker gray now and he looks in but he maybe can’t see me. Everything around us is more grayer and grayer and soon we won’t see so much and I feel shaky like cold and nervous in my belly.

Stick is waiting. “Bedtime?”

“I don’t know.”

He moves his head to the side like he doesn’t understand because he doesn’t and I don’t too.

“Come inside, Stick,” I say.

“Nana?”

“Yes.” I pick Gwen up to snuggle.

Stick just does a few loud nose breaths and doesn’t say.

“Go to sleep, Sticky.”

“Bedtime?”

My knee goes in Stick’s pee and I think huff and I lie on my side and it feels better with something at the back of the fort. I close my eyes and put my hands out and make a wish for a blanket and a flashlight and maybe I am asking so I will also need Momma and a cookie that I eat not decorate and Daddy too. I open my eyes and no. Just Stick. We are two.