View From a Kite (31 page)

“Now, you can fix it for me,” I clicked the scissors open and shut.

She was still frightened, she thought I'd gone completely crazy. I put down the scissors and wrapped my arms around her. I had to tell her something, even if I was crazy. How could I tell her I was glad he meant to kill me?

“Elizabeth, I thought he didn't love me enough to take me with them. I thought he left me behind because he didn't give a damn what happened to me.”

“Oh, Gwennie,” she said, and then we wept some more, just in case there was a dry spot on the floor we'd missed.

We sat together for awhile, sniffling and shaking and being too exhausted to get up. I was more tired than I have ever been in my life. More tired than when I was first consigned to a bed in the San, feverish and unable to lift up my head. I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve and tried to figure out what to do with all the strings of snot I'd produced. Elizabeth hauled a piece of fabric out of one of her bags, ripped it in two, handed me a good bit and said, “Blow your nose on this.” Then she honked into her piece.

“On quilt fabric?”

“Just look at it. Have you ever seen anything so ugly? Mandy Carmichael gave it to me ten years ago and every time I do a new quilt she looks to see if I've used it. I don't know how to tell her it's the bug-ugliest thing I've ever seen. I just tell her every time she asks that I'm saving it for something really special.”

It's the colour of old celery and seems to have orange ducks marching in formation across it, between rows of wedding cakes and what looks like World War Two tanks garlanded with strings of pink garlic. I mopped and blew, deeply and juicily.

We used up all of Mandy's ugly fabric and still needed more. We chose the second ugliest print to dry our faces and wipe up the floor.

“I've never liked this one, either,” said Elizabeth, waving a mottled puce and lavender print garnished with black and white lightning zigzags and green umbrellas, “but I won it at a church fair so I don't dare give it to George for a rag. Somebody's sure to notice, and then won't the talk start. Whoever donated this to the church was not a particularly good Christian, to my way of thinking.”

Nothing in this world or the next is certain. And nothing can be proven, absolutely. Just because the sun has come up every day of your life doesn't mean it will come up tomorrow. That's the future, and there are no guarantees as far as the future is concerned. Drop your shoe and it will fall to the ground—maybe. It always has before, but in the nanosecond after you let it go, gravity may cease, the shoe may not fall. You can never be sure. And you can't prove anything about the past. Paper records, pictures, people's memories, they can all be lost, they can burn up, disintegrate, get thrown out. Brain cells can die. Can I prove I was born? There are documents somewhere, people who were there, but that could all be lost, will eventually be lost. Here I am. All that proves is that here I am. You can't prove love. My birthday cards from him were all signed “love, Dad.” All gone now—and it was only words, what do they prove? Nothing. The only thing that matters is what you choose to believe. I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, even if it comes up behind a cloud and I can't see it. I believe that Mama's in some sort of peaceful place. Call it heaven. I still don't forgive him, but I do believe that he loved us.

“Denise,” I say, “we have to make a kite.”

“With what?” she asks, tossing another bundle of crumpled paper roses into a garbage bag.

“I'll find something,”

The chiringa is the love child of origami and kite making. All you need is a piece of paper, some scraps for the tail, scissors, a pin, and lots of string. A few folds, a snip here and there, a couple of pokes with the pin so you can attach the string bridle and tail, and there you have it. Five minutes, and you've got a crazy little pet of a kite that flips and flops all over the sky. Guaranteed to make you feel like a goofy little kid.

The crêpe-paper streamers we are peeling off the walls are perfect for the tail. I tear off a couple of strips about four feet long, in pink and lavender, and then look around for a sheet of paper. On the wall, thumbtacked in place, is the ubiquitous set of regulations:

1
. WASH YOUR HANDS

2
. DO NOT KISS YOUR VISITORS

3
. PUT ALL TISSUES IN THE COVERED CONTAINERS PROVIDED

4
. WALK, DON'T RUN

5
. SIT, DON'T STAND

6
. THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS

7
. SILENCE MUST BE OBSERVED DURING ALL REST PERIODS

and about a dozen more in the same hectoring tone.

I rip it down and begin folding and snipping. I steal a spool of heavy thread from the sewing basket Sister has left under the television table.

“And that is—what?” asks Denise, tossing another fistful of paper into the bag.

“A chiringa. Come on.”

I lift the chiringa up, support the tail, and head for the exit, bathrobe trailing, slippers slopping. The staff cloak room is to the left by the front door, and we borrow a couple of coats and pull some boots on over our slippers. The parking lot is two-thirds empty. It's too early for visiting hours and the staff has herded their cars up close to the doors, keeping the best parking spots for themselves, so I have a good long empty space to run. The pavement is sloppy with melting snow and the hollows are puddled. I splash through at a half-run, tossing the little kite up behind me. It skips over car aerials, almost loses a bit of tail in a puddle and then leaps up on a stray breeze.

“Let me!” says Denise and grabs the string out of my hands.

A paper airplane zips past my ear and I look up to see a dozen patients hanging out the windows, waving to us. Even a nurse or two.

“You shouldn't be out there,” one shouts from the Men's Ward, “you'll get your feet wet and catch a chill.”

“Too late,” yells Denise, running and hopping as the chiringa makes figure eights in the sky. The melt water is splashing into her borrowed boots and soaking her feet, but she doesn't care.

“I'm running out of line. Gwen! Get me some more,” she screeches as the chiringa struggles to escape her grip.

“Let it go,” I yell back at her.

“Let it go? No, no, I don't want to!”

“For luck, Denise, let go. Let it go, it will take your bad luck with it if you let it go. It's an old Chinese superstition—let it go free.”

She fights with the fluttering toy a moment, wanting to pull it back, but it's homesick, it wants heaven and it threatens to commit suicide in a puddle if she doesn't give it its freedom.

“We can build more kites,” I promise her, “as many as you want.”

She opens her hand then, and we watch the chiringa fly higher and higher and higher until there is nothing left but wide blue sky.

A NOTE ON THE
TYPE

ALDUS

This book was set in Aldus, a serif typeface design by Hermann Zapf in 1954. Originally designed to be a companion to the font Palatino, Aldus is less bold and therefore can be set at smaller sizes. As a complement to Palatino, Aldus has a small family (it does not include a bold since Palatino can be used in that instance). Its name comes from the famous Italian printer, Aldus Manutius.

PRINTHOUSE

Gwen's voice in this novel is set in Printhouse, a font designed in 1994 by Andy Cruz of House Industries. The company, founded in 1993 by Andy Cruz and Rich Roat, provides many distinctive and eccentric typefaces.

Maureen Hull was born and raised on Cape Breton Island, and now lives on Pictou Island in the Northumberland Strait. She studied at NSCAD, Dalhousie University, and the Pictou Fisheries School. She has worked at the costume department of Neptune Theatre and as a lobster fisher.

Maureen's fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her short story collection,
Righ
teous Living,
was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award, and she is the author of the popular children's book
Rainy Days
with Bear.