Birdie (10 page)

“It’s that damn cousin of hers.” She throws her hand in, in what looks like disgust but which is not.

“How long is she staying, Lola?” Whippet Two asks not-so-innocently, stoking the fire. Whippet Two has not done anything innocently since she was a pre-teenager.

Lola busies herself getting beers for everyone from the cooler. “As long as she needs to, I suppose.” She clearly enunciates every word.

“That aunt of hers came with enough luggage to move in,” Whippet Two snipes.

None of the Whippets understands the softness of Lola’s heart and the feelings of kindness that she has for Bernice. Lola has thought about that and tries to convince herself that she thinks of The Kid the same way she thinks of those homeless people around the corner. With embarrassment that she has while they do not. Not that she thinks Bernice would even want any of her stuff. No, that desire is quite below The Kid. Nope, the stuff that Lola has that she is aware and embarrassed of in front of Bernice is right in this room. Friends, conversation, peace of mind. She feels tenderness for the girl because she suspects no one has been tender to her before.

On those nights when Bernice teetered awkwardly on heels down the stairs, and to godknowswhere, Lola could not sleep until she came home. And egads, when she came home.
Bruised. Bloodied. Empty. Those scars on her arms and hands lookin’ like they want to jump out from underneath the skin. They look like burns, and Lola wonders what and when. It just broke her heart.

She is a reminder to Lola that she herself used to be with rough men, too. That she used to have those same black eyes, same torn lips and same bloodied teeth.
But only with one man,
she reminds herself. Yep, this was a completely different kettle of fish. It is almost like The Kid is
going out to get beat up.
And that is impossible.

When the Whippets leave, she treats herself to the last of the cold cuts, cheeses and assorted pickled vegetables. She no longer goes to a great deal of trouble on poker nights. When they first started the Whippet Club, the Wednesday night poker club, the Whippets would exercise their culinary one-upmanship and prepare feasts of dainties, finger foods and banquet offerings. As time went by, the feasts became less lavish, and now they all order deli trays from Sal’s Sausage Emporium.

They have also developed a conversational shorthand, in the way that old friends do together. It wasn’t until their twelfth year that they got tipsy and renamed body parts and functions. Twelve years to come up with “hoo ha” and “dry heave.”

Nope, she does not love the Whippets. She sees their cruelty and deplores the mirror image in herself. And the way she looks when she sees her reflection in how Bernice looks at her. Looked at her. It moves her. A different woman. A different Lola. Quiet kindness and soft intelligence meets harsh observations and boiling wit. She is a patchwork quilt made up of
who she would have been. If her life had turned out differently.

Lola has never had any children herself and cannot imagine what motherly feelings are like. Still, The Kid touches on a place that she had forgotten existed.

She lights a smoke, still picking her teeth with the toothpick, and stares at the streetlights outside of the bakery.

The Kid is dying,
she thinks, and rejects the notion almost as quickly as she thought it. If she is dying, Bernice was doing it before she got to Gibsons. Until her aunt got there, she and Freda had noticed there was still a spark in The Kid. A look in her eyes some days, a look in her eyes that reminded Lola of something familiar and too painful to call up. But she recognized and knows it, and sees it in that mirror.

And no matter what that look betrays, Lola also sees something in her that reflects in both of their mirrors. Survivor.

When Lola first moved to Gibsons from Biggs, California (“Just two hours off route 99!” went the jingle), she didn’t have this, this coating on her. Of harshness, of weatheredness, of having felt. But that was two near-husbands, six jobs and countless lovers ago. She felt old at eighteen. But she was still kind.

In her youth, she had been a stunner. Petite and athletic, without all of the Whippetishness that yo-yo dieting, a pack of Carltons a day and the fevered California sun can have on a person. She felt more. She gambled more. She was on the run, she always told the Whippets, but in truth she was not being chased but was chasing. Something. Anything out of the Biggs, California ordinary. And when you are attractive and chasing in Vancouver, eventually you get caught yourself.

She was caught by Stanley Manklow. A completely beautiful specimen of a man. She hadn’t learned to read tarot cards or mean eyes yet. And both would have told her more than she wanted to know about Stan Manklow. Oh, he had been good at first. Flowers, little notes and secret caressing touches when she wasn’t expecting them. The thought of those days still left her a bit breathless. Or maybe it’s the Carltons. But he had a way. “The touch,” her mom called it. Yep, he had the touch with women, generally. More particularly, he could drive Lola completely crazy with desire.

It wasn’t the last time she would learn the lesson about gifts in bright shiny packages.

How she had loved him. And oh, how he loved. It started out innocently enough. After they had been married for a few weeks, he was a little rough in his lovemaking. By the second month he was pushing and prodding in a way that was foreign to her. Not one to play the dutiful wife, she began to fight back.

It wasn’t until years later that she knew he was hitting her for that. He wanted a submissive woman in the bedroom, didn’t really care who was boss outside of it, and he was going to make her one, dammit.

After her fourth trip to the emergency ward, her dad and her brother drove up to Vancouver just to beat the living hell out of Stan so he would know what brutality felt like. She kept his stuff so he would come back, but he never did. Later, she heard from one of the Whippets that he had become a born-again Christian or something.

“Figgers,” she mutters. And it really does. It figures that he had to turn to God to get that demon out of him. It figures
that he would think that all was forgiven. That the bruises, which he never had but enjoyed raising, had healed. And the ironic thing was that after he left her, for a time she became the subservient woman that he was looking to create.

Two relationships later, and the physical violence started again. She wondered, wonders, if there is something about her that inspires this. Invites this. She didn’t have her dad to beat the hell out of him the next time. The next time, she did it herself. And found herself pleased at the power she possessed. This next time she left, both Vancouver and the Vancouver man (the quintessential Vancouver man and city councillor, as it turned out). Whenever he runs for re-election, and he always runs and he always wins, she scribbles “Woman Hater” on his posters over his doughy family photo.

She hears the heavy clumping of Val’s moccasin-clad feet and then the tick tick tickiness of Skinny Freda’s heels above her.

Probably scratching the hell outta my hardwoods with those damn boots of hers,
she thinks, unkindly. But still, something in her has warmed to the Indian version of herself, if only because she is so close to The Kid. She thinks about inviting Freda down for coffee, and of course the aunt, but the room is too full tonight, what with her ghosts and all.

That skinny one keeps looking at her. Big smile that doesn’t flower in her eyes, pulled lips around square teeth. When she isn’t looking, Lola sees a little collapse in her, like the air popped out when no one was looking. And if she ever ate, Lola had yet to see it. One day when she reached for the coffeepot – that thing had never worked as hard as when Freda showed
up at the bakery (tiny skirt, big sweater and tottering on heels like a girl going to her first dance) – Lola spotted a rash of scars from her wrist to the last visible space below her elbow. Sensing the old woman’s eyes on her, Freda quickly adjusted her sleeve and made a joke about drinking one cup and paying three. From then on, Lola could never get a look because the girl wore that great big blue sweater over everything – even in the heat of the morning when the ovens made the kitchen fiercely warm.

Until the Big One got there, Lola thought the chatter and small talk was going to drive her mad.
That woman could talk the ear off a goat,
she thinks. She, herself a nervous talker, realizes she has nothing on Bernice’s tiny cousin.

That is one thing that strikes her as strange about Freda. She is, to anyone’s read, almost waiflike. But, Lola thinks she fills each room she comes into, what with her stream-of-consciousness nattering, fidgeting and constant alertness. It’s something else, though, she thinks. She is bigger than her body. The thought is both lovely and uncomfortable to Lola.

Watching her enter the kitchen, head to the carafe and take an ever-present cup of coffee with her, Lola’s eyes trail Freda as she makes her way up to Bernice’s apartment. There is no noise from up there, all three of the women seem to be sharing the space with silence. However, Lola could swear that the upstairs is filled with communication that sometimes slips down the stairwell, pauses at the kitchen and lands around her.

No,
she tells herself. Such things are impossible.

But, she makes a promise to herself and to The Kid that she will find out what is going on in there. All in good time.

AUNTIE VAL

Today Val nodded at Bernice and she thinks she caught her niece about to nod back. Val is not one to fool with, and even though she feels Go Away! Go Away! Go Away! emanating from Bernice, she takes no offence. Valene catches it all and files it away with other things dear to her.

Bernice, to Val’s eye, looks to be sleeping, but she knows better. She knows that needing to dream this much meant that Bernice was communicating with spirits. Val welcomes those spirits by smudging every day and by leaving food out for them with each meal. That little moniaskwew
monia
downstairs has not said a word about it – every shared meal portioned equally four times, and Valene taking the first one out the door. She knows from this that Bernice’s boss is either kind or lacking curiosity.

She also knows that she will never again let anyone make Bernice do anything she doesn’t want to do. So, since she seems to want to sleep, Auntie Val lets her sleep. Freda and Lola have long since stopped objecting to this – maybe skinny people’s organs are so close to the skin that their feelings are desensitized, she thinks – and they let her sleep now, too. While Bernice sleeps, her auntie slathers bear grease on her scars, as though she can heal the years-old damage. Bernice does not respond but she does not shift an inch (which she will do if Freda is making too much noise or rambling on too long), so Valene takes this to mean her niece is comfortable with the application of the medicine.

Bernice also seems to like that little weird cook on the TV,
so Auntie Val puts that on three times a day. Thank heavens for the CBC and Canadian content, she thinks. No matter what her state before the show – moaning, thrashing, snoring or peacefully resting – when that man comes on Bernice is rapt (as rapt as you can be with your eyes closed) with attention. Years later, she will remember an added detail that had escaped her; Valene could feel impatience in the room after the show ended. She would also construct that she heard shuffling upstairs after she went to the kitchen, but in her heart she knows that is not true. What she does know for sure is that she leaves as soon as the show is on and that when she returns later there is a feeling of accomplishment or business in the room.

Sure, it took time to get the schedule down, but they seem to have made a peaceful place. Not like the first day when they yelled at each other, mouths closed and eyes flashing (two open and two closed). Maybe it was the shock of seeing Bernice skinny, with flesh hanging on her, that scared her enough to yell. Maybe she wanted to yell until Bernice opened her eyes. Whatever the reason, they did not yell now. They don’t speak and they don’t quietspeak. Sometimes, though, she can feel an electric buzz of awareness, of live voice or spirit and maybe of needing to communicate from her niece. When she feels that, she pulls her chair closer and hums to her, singing old songs, pow wow 69ers and some show tune that she can’t get out of her head. Other times, when she feels that buzz, she will just hug Bernice or pat her hand.

It feels insignificant in the scope of things, with her there, peeing on the sly (no one knows when she goes), eating a
handful of this and a handful of that. Still, she can’t really measure the value of being able, having to touch someone, let alone what it is like to need to be touched with love.

Mostly, Valene thinks that Bernice is tired. She believes her niece doesn’t want to have to talk, to answer, to be a part of some time when she needs to think. Val imagines she is afraid that if she opens her mouth she will let out those little parts, like atoms or some parts of her that are forming the new her. Like, if she thought that if she mixed them up by talking or paying attention, or even by moving too fast, that new her would be stuck where it is Now. Valene won’t let that happen. In her mind, she likens it to being knocked up – you have to lay off the booze and smokes until the baby is ready to come out. Only this time it was talking and joking Birdie has to avoid. She wants everyone to let her just be – and be quiet until the time is right. She is not ready yet.

Freda and Lola disappear for hours, clatter around in their heels and have periods that feel remarkably like silence around each other. Val knows herself well enough to know that she will not let up. She sits near Bernice and hums the old songs, does beading on the bed beside her, cleans her up and has full conversations with her.

“You know, my girl,” she says to her one afternoon, “you didn’t have to disappear when I went … away. Could’a …” But even the extraordinarily resourceful woman doesn’t have the words to describe where she had gone or why. “I heard about you, you know. Looked out for you when you lived … in Edmonton. On your own.” Valene can’t bring herself to mention that she, herself, went mad with worry when Bernice’s
visits stopped. She struggles to tell her niece about the nights she wandered in and out of the bars downtown, asked about Bernice at shelters and walked the paths of the ravine. That she felt relief when she heard she went to Loon and even when she went to the San. Both were preferable to … what she could never talk about.