The Evolution of Alice (2 page)

The little girl looked past the swing set, which was a giant crawling spider; past the big old tree, which was a spooky giant, and the tire swing hanging from it, which was a lasso the giant would use to catch her; past the field, which, during the day, was one of the safest places the little girl knew, where she played hide-and-seek with her sisters and nobody could ever find her because the tall grass was higher than she was; and there, at the distant tree line, she saw a bright orange light flickering behind the trees as though the sun had gotten stuck on its journey below the horizon. She was sure this was the place for her to go, where the darkness would disappear, and with it the monsters. And she thought it would be safe to walk there, too, because in the field she was the best hider, and even the darkness and its playthings wouldn’t be able to find her.

The little girl made her way behind the house, past the swing set and the big old tree with its hanging swing, and disappeared into the field’s long wispy grass. She felt safer there, even though it did seem darker because the night sky was partially hidden behind the bowing blades of grass. There was a great distance between the house and the tree line, and with the girl’s little feet and little legs and little steps, the distance felt even greater. But she kept walking. Every once in a while she heard rustling behind her and was sure the monsters were after her, but she was equally sure they could not find her. She pushed blade after blade away from her as she walked farther and farther, and blade after blade whipped against her skin as she got closer and closer. Finally, the little girl emerged from the field of grass and stood before the tree line.

She was happy to be greeted by warmth and light. The tiny ball of orange the little girl had seen from the driveway was revealed to be a large fire, the flames dancing to a symphony of cracks and pops, and dressed in warm colours—reds and oranges and yellows. The sharp beats coming from the fire was the sweetest rhythm she’d heard. She walked into the trees. The farther in she got, the brighter the light became, and soon the monsters were a distant memory. They did not dare follow her. And perhaps they could not. Perhaps they were lost somewhere in the field along with the disappointed darkness, still looking for her in the deep grass. The only hint of the darkness was now the trees’ shadows as she walked closer to the fire. And when she stepped into a clearing the darkness was gone entirely.

As though drawn by the warmth and the light and the comforting sounds, the crackling and popping, like a lullaby, the girl kept walking toward the fire until her toes began to burn. She just might have walked right into the fire, too, if a man hadn’t come running from the other side of the blaze to stop her.

“Hey there!” the man said.

The little girl stopped. The man ran up to her, picked her up, and brought her away to a safe distance. When the man put her down, she looked him over carefully. He was familiar to her; the dirty blue jeans and soiled white T-shirt, the thick legs and thick arms, the broad shoulders, the square jaw, the clear blue eyes, and the bright yellow hair. The man seemed to glow in the fire’s light, as though he was a part of it. The little girl smiled at him.

“Hi!” she said.

The man laughed.

“Hi there, little one,” he said.

He crouched down in front of the little girl. He reached over and touched her on the nose with a quick poke. He even made a sound like a doorbell. The little girl laughed.

“You know,” the man said, “you’re not supposed to be here.”

The little girl’s face quickly turned into a frown. Her lower lip stuck out and her arms crunched against her sides. Her mother would have been familiar with this position. She was about to cry.

“Buh my nigh ligh’s broked,” the little girl said with a shaky voice.

The man gathered the little girl into his arms, picked her up, and shushed her gently. She placed her head against his chest along with one tiny palm and disappeared in his embrace.

“Now listen,” the man said, “I made this fire just for you, you know that?”

“Yup,” the little girl said, gasping for breath as she forced back tears.

“It’s just, well, you’ve come far too early,” the man said.

The little girl could hold back tears no longer. And if the light hadn’t scared away the darkness, her sobs certainly did.

“I need my nigh ligh,” she said.

“Okay, okay,” the man said, and gently patted her back. He did this until her breath evened out, until the tears stopped coming.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I will build this fire so big and so bright you will be able to see it all the way from your house. Would you like that?”

“Yup,” the little girl said.

“Okay,” the man said.

They stayed there for a moment, the little girl in the man’s arms, and the man gently rocking her back and forth, back and forth. He made sounds like the ocean from his lips, and she stared deep into the fire. Then, as the warmth showered over her, as the cracking and snapping serenaded her, as the light kept her safely removed from the darkness and its monsters, her eyelids grew heavy. She blinked once, twice, three times, and fell asleep.

The little girl woke up again in the night. She found herself tucked into an afghan on the couch in the living room, the one she always sat on when her mother let her watch her favourite television shows. She was afraid at first, as her eyes adjusted. She was worried it would be dark again, and she would have to run away from the ghouls and ghosts and goblins and fiends. But she found the darkness was shy, hiding from a steady glow coming in through the living room window. The little girl got up and walked to the edge of the couch. She crawled up onto the armrest, went on her tiptoes, and looked out the window. She smiled when she saw, past the swing set, past the big old tree and its hanging tire swing, across the field she played hide and seek in with her sisters, a bright orange light burning behind the tree line that coloured the sky like the dawn. She watched the light for a long time, her eyes wide with wonder. Eventually, she climbed back down from the armrest, walked back across the couch, and snuggled down underneath the afghan.

Matthew had just finished his first tour through the rez. It wasn’t anywhere he thought he’d ever be. He’d just found out he was part Cree, and that he had distant relatives, including a cousin, living there. All the same, he was fascinated by the experience. His parents hadn’t ever been there either, and the lot of them, in their Chevy Traverse, spent about an hour driving all around the area. Matthew had been assigned a Culture In a Box project for his grade-three class back in the city, and had been alerted to his Cree heritage by his parents, albeit a bit reluctantly. It turned out that he was far more interested in being Cree than he was in being Scottish.

After finding out he was Cree, he had asked his father, innocently, “Daddy, am I related to the homeless people?”

His father had chuckled and said, “Oh, I don’t think so, son.”

Matthew took notes throughout the excursion through the rez. As twilight hit and they were on their way back to the city, he read them.

“Houses here don’t have street addresses; they have broken cars. I bet people find their way around by looking for types of broken cars. There are nice things in ditches. I saw a tricycle and a car tire and a lawn chair. They all looked in pretty good condition. The front yards look fun. There are trampolines and toys and four-wheelers. I saw an old man with no shoes out front of his house carving a wooden boot. I think I’ll like being Cree.”

Matthew smiled at his notes. His teacher had said in his report card that he had exquisite handwriting.

A
LICE LIVED IN A CONVERTED TRAILER
about thirty feet off the highway, a few kilometres into the rez. If you visited her, you’d see a bunch of kids’ toys in the driveway. A toy car that her toddler, Grace, could push herself around in with her little feet, just like the Flintstones; a plastic basketball net about three feet high with a few balls lying around it, one of which couldn’t fit through the hoop and caused Grace fits; a rickety metal hockey net with mesh like a damaged spider web and a few floor hockey sticks resting on top of it; and a turtle-shaped sandbox full of beach sand from the nearby lake and digging toys and trucks and buckets. You’d see her home, that old trailer, and notice she didn’t have real curtains on the windows, but instead hung blankets—homemade blackout blinds, she’d say. On the kitchen window hung a majestic wolf, on her bedroom window a soaring eagle, and on the kids’ window a big smiling Dora. There were a few large buckets by the front door for gathering water from the lake. A few feet from the trailer you’d see a little green shed which housed more toys, some tools she never used, and a lawn mower that she did. A few feet still from there you’d see the outhouse, and there was nothing much to describe about that, and you wouldn’t want me to anyway.

If you went around back, you’d see a swing set that used to be red but was now pink from all the sun. The girls liked that it was pink. Some of the plastic had cracked on the seats, but the swings still went high, and the slide still sent the kids bouncing off along the ground. Near that, tied to a big overhanging branch on what she figured was the oldest tree on the whole rez, you’d find a tire swing. It was a big, old tire, worn bald, that was attached to that branch by strong yellow twine. If you went back there at most times of the day, you might see Alice on that swing, rocking back and forth, sometimes really high, always watching her girls play in the big open field that stretched way back until it fell off into the horizon. She used to tell me that back there, on the swing, was her favourite place to be because she could see forever, and no matter how far away her girls got, she always knew exactly where they were. And if she went really high, she said she felt closer to heaven. She told me being on that old tire swing was better than praying ever was.

Inside, Alice kept a good house for what she had. The first room you’d be in is the kitchen, where there was a sink with a faucet that was just there to tease her, because water didn’t come out of it. She did the dishes in there, though, so it wasn’t all that useless. Her cupboards were half full of stuff she’d rather not have fed her girls, but on the money she was getting the cheaper stuff was all she could manage, and the cheap stuff was junk. In the fridge the most important things were the eggs and bacon, small indulgences she allowed herself. It was for a good cause, though, because every morning, no matter what, no matter how late she’d been up, she got up with her girls, sat them down, and cooked them up two strips of bacon each and two over-easy eggs. She’d sit there and watch them eat, and when they smiled she managed to smile and that made it a good morning.

The living room was just off the kitchen. There wasn’t much to it. She had an old television set and a few channels, most importantly PBS, where she could throw on morning cartoons for the girls, educational type shows, nothing like Sponge Bob or Power Rangers. Beside the television there was a stack of about 10 Dora VHSs, and they were good too, for learning Spanish and all that. She didn’t like the kids sitting in front of that old television too much, they were mostly outside anyway, but from time to time it was good to fire it up and let them get babysat by the thing so she could have some rest. She’d fall asleep on the hide-a-bed, and it happened often enough that the sound of Dora’s voice was like relaxation music to her. Dora counting to ten in Spanish was like counting sheep jumping over the moon.

Down the hallway you’d come to Alice’s room, where there was a twin mattress on the floor with a comforter draped over top of it, and a dresser by the back wall. She didn’t have a closet or anywhere to hang things up in because she didn’t wear dresses or blouses, never needed to. Next door, the kids’ room was done up as girly as possible. The two oldest girls, Kathy and Jayne, they slept on a queen mattress that had a princess comforter, and Grace had a Dora one, of course. Grace was the only person in the house who had an actual bed, a white captain’s bunk with a fancy headboard and everything. The other girls were okay with it. Everybody in the house doted on Grace. There was a Rubbermaid bin in the corner of the room filled with toys; Barbie and My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop and Dora were all in there. If she spent frivolously on anything, it’d be toys I guess, because she wanted her girls to have fun, to feel like girls. They shared one big dresser, and each girl had two drawers. They shared a bookshelf, too, and it was full of books she’d gotten in town at the library when they sold off their old stock. There were always good ones in there. In some ways it was Alice’s room, too, because often instead of sleeping in her own bed she’d crawl into one of the girls’ beds and cuddle right up to them.

And that was Alice’s house. The only other thing you need to know is something you might have already guessed. Alice, she loved her girls more than anything. For Alice, it didn’t really seem like there was too much else to love, so she just threw all her love at them. I’m a friend of hers, me. Name’s Gideon. The kids call me uncle on account of me being there so much, ever since they were born, and before that too, really. If you went to visit Alice, chances are I was there, too; standing beside Alice as she swung back and forth, both of us watching her beautiful girls, watching them forever in that big field; getting right into the sandbox with them, filling my shoes up with sand and not caring one bit; slam dunking the balls into the basket on their heads for fun, and easing air out of the big ball when Grace got frustrated, just so she could fit it through the rim; eating bacon and eggs with them at the breakfast table when I’d slept over with Alice, cuddling up to her in bed just like she’d cuddled up to her girls. Sometimes adults need a cuddle too, you know.

So, this story I’m going to tell you, it’s about Alice, and other things, too, but I’ll let you figure all the other stuff out. Stories mean different things to different people, so who’m I to tell you what you’re going to learn from me? You’ll learn what you’ll learn, and maybe you’ll learn nothing, and that’s okay too. But now that you can picture it, just for a second close your eyes and walk down the driveway. Kick away some of those toys if they’re in your way, come inside, and sit down at the kitchen table. That’s where it all starts.