Birdie (15 page)

Snap. Snap. Snap (neurons flashed and hissed and sent the message to her arm from her brain). Heart attack. Uncle has had a heart attack.

There was no relief, only revulsion, at the realization that this excitement had overwhelmed him. She wanted him to look up at her and plead with teary eyes for help, forgiveness, silence. But he is only gasping when a particularly horrible screamwheeze was leaving his lungs. “Save me, Birdie.”

BirdBernice pays particular attention. She has never seen this, never remembered this before. She is rapt under her comforter.

Snap. Snap. Snap (old matches on an old matchbook striking ineffectually). “Creator, give me a sign,” she had prayed. The uncle stared at her. They lit. She threw the matches, picked up her stuff (in the picture, Jesse is looking at her with foreboding, heavy-lidded) and walked slowly to the door.

“Save yourself,” she said.

She is not sure how long she stood there, watching. She struggled with the poster tube, pictures and her makeshift luggage. Put on her coat and walked outside. Birdshe wills her to turn around, to see what she forgot. She does, slowly. The match must have taken immediately as the curtains were already on fire by the window where he fell down. She walked away. She must have stood there for some time, for when she looked down she saw that her hands were blistered. Could feel her feet burning. Wonders absently how long she stood there. Walked. To the hill and the old tree. It had no life in it.

She remembers.

SHE WRITES HER OWN STORY

omekinawew
: one who shares food

There is noise below her, and she is afraid she will wake while in the air. She looks down and sees a raven, an eagle and an old mangy crow eating KFC.

AUNTIE VAL

V
ALENE STARTS CRYING AND CANNOT STOP
; only sleep calms her. When she wakes up, the frozen face and clenched hands of her niece behind her in the night, the papers are gone and Bernice lies, dressed and groomed, and seemingly asleep in her freshly made bed.

There is something written on one single paper on the table and it seems to be in Val’s own handwriting:

And. She isn’t sure, but she thinks one of her cigarettes is missing.

Bernice lies in the bed. In wait? In the quiet. Every so often, Val tells her a story, sings her a song or holds her hand as she prays. Birdie’s hands are soft from the lard and butter and they feel remarkably strong for a womangirl who has been wasting in her bed for weeks. She has held these hands since Bernice was an infant, staring at her, puckered and red-faced, her tiny cleft palate gleaming like the inside of an oyster shell. She was always a big kid. She was a big baby. She and Maggie used to open their eyes wide at each other over little Birdie’s big head. Part in wonder that such a big child had come from such a tiny
woman. Part in complicit acceptance of some unspoken and silent deal they made never to talk about those hard months before the birth. Births.

*
Sticky spruce gum.

†
Beaver meat.

‡
Medicine water or medicine tea.

She realizes that underneath all of that flesh, all of that Bernice, all of that protective armour, Bernice exists as a tiny replica of Maggie. Val finds this disconcerting as the
kee kuh wee sis
to her littlebig girl. Bernice no longer looks like her.

Valene Meetoos has always been the big woman in the room. In her twenties and thirties she came into that. Raised by a good woman and a good man, she came to expect greatness from herself and was quite seldom let down. When she turned forty and discovered she had “the goddamned diabetes” she became more aware of her diet. She also began to look around and see the potential for the sickness around her. Always close to Bernice and her other nieces and nephews, she began to notice that the girls were hiding. With some it was in the wide open – big heels, makeup and tight pants – but with Bernice it was different. Maybe she noticed more because Bernice looked just like her, but larger, but Bernice was hiding more in books and food than Val was comfortable with. In her tiny little hutch, like a big caged rabbit, Bernice would stock all manner of food and literature.

That place was a firetrap anyhow,
Valene thinks.

When her brother died, and later still when her sister left, Valene mourned as if they were saints because that was the only way she was going to be able to forgive herself when her time came. She would mourn Bernice the same way if something should happen. “Something should happen” would be starvation or dehydration, she imagines.

When Bernice was little, when Bernice was young, she could write and tell such stories. You could not shut her up. When Val would visit, she would sit on the tiny bed under the stairs and listen to her niece, really her daughter from another mother, tell stories of princesses, crazy dogs and travels that were full and rich in their detail. Val would bring all of her new boyfriends to meet her fantastic niece as soon as she thought they might be around for more than a month. Unfailingly, the newly ex-boyfriends would end up as badmen or monsters in the next instalment of Bernice’s tales.

When Bernice was in her early teens and Valene was thirty they shared space while Bernice went to that Christly place. Valene noticed, in the beginning, when she could notice, that it became harder and harder to coax her niece out of her shell. Stories had to be pulled from her. Family didn’t appear in stories except as bit characters. She often wondered if this was because Maggie had gone off again – no stopping in town to see her sister and daughter as she tried to make herself disappear, bit by bit. Even so, and every so often, the villains sounded vaguely familiar. Because she had been fighting her dual nature for most of her life, Valene assumed the worst – the worst being the worst thing she could imagine (having intimately experienced mental illness).

When she was just past the age where you can go braless (although, by Freda’s math, there is no such age), she took Bernice to bingo and a movie and was surprised when Bernice would not leave the truck for two hours. Coaxing, chiding and threatening did not move the girl. Only when Valene promised her movie popcorn and a chocolate bar did
her niece leave the vehicle. After that, and it was kind of a blur for Valene as she entered the “bad days,” she seemed to remember her daughterniece leaving. The room, the house, her space, her mind – there was a period when all Valene saw was Bernice walking away. (That she, herself, had left her niece alone in an apartment resulting in her going to foster care is not something that Valene can think about. Then. It was too little. Now. It is too much.)

She remembers the last time she saw Bernice walking away. Val had been to the San to visit her, right after the spring ceremonies. Birdie was wrapped in bandages and stared at her blankly. She didn’t utter a word until she had turned around to go back to her room.

“Pimatisewin,”
she whispered.

The look in her eyes was not what bothered Valene. After four years of living in Edmonton (under Edmonton, about Edmonton?), her niece had taken on a look that shook Valene: Bernice had the wariness and walk of a street person. Assured and confident with a whisper of scary. She wonders when that happened – was she wary before she ran to Edmonton? Was she cautious before that, with that white couple? Had she developed that look, most bothersome, when Valene was supposed to be on watch? When those Christly nuns tried to own her? Or, was it sometime earlier, at Loon, Bernice fighting for survival – as generations of Meetoos women had – from uncles? Valene feels like she is excavating a pain dig, watching a car crash in reverse.

Valene stares at Bernice hardsoftly. She is not resting. She is not in peace. But. She has most certainly left the building.
The thought shakes her, but she has comfort in the fact that her daughterniece has not stirred, not moaned, not tensed any muscle in days. She hears Lola and Freda bickering from downstairs.
It’s just sugar and flour for pete’s sake, what on earth could they find to argue about every day?

Looking at her watch and turning on the TV, she takes her leave from her Bernice and says a prayer to Creator for her. Remembering, she grabs the list of medicines, shakes her head and wanders downstairs to see how those skinny cronies are doing.

LOLA

Lola catches herself staring at Freddy again. Stops. Looks at what she is doing. She has been invoicing the Ramada for all of the fresh-baked goods they provided last week. Their regular baking company is on strike and Freda, Lola and Val have made a killing – and almost killed each other – preparing huge batches day and night for a convention in town.

Say whatcha want about their men, but their women are the hardest workers I’ve seen,
she thinks, not even aware of who the they really is. When she talks about we and they, it is almost always in terms of men and women, and that the women who now live above her business most probably see her as “them” would never occur to her.

Valene comes down and puts the kettle on, asking if anyone else wants tea? All three do. Lola puts down her billing, Freda stops doing dishes and Val sets out cups for them as the water
starts to boil. Lola has come to love this. Well, not love, you can’t love anything when The Kid is up there … doing whatever she is doing. But, she likes to sit with these two women (one her younger browner reflection and the other an inverted funhouse version of herself) and take them in. She has never seen so many Indians up close before and she is mostly surprised that they are pretty much like her. Well, they don’t talk much and they think a lot more, and they tend to communicate through some sort of shorthand that she can’t quite figure out. Otherwise? Just like her, she thinks.

“Anybody want a b-b-b-brownie?” she stutters, afraid of giving offence.

Val and Freda, who have never been called or considered themselves “brownies” in their lives, hide smiles. Then grins. And then, Freda breaks: “Fuck it. You old racist,” she says, squeezing Lola’s hand and laughing so hard that the table quivers. When Valene gives in to her own laughter, the table is bumping along with her big belly in a happy thump thump thump. Lola doesn’t understand and is just so relieved not to have been the asshole at the table, and quite affected by Freda’s touch, that she laughs along.

“Yes or no, brownies?”

“Yes, yes, Lola, please,” Valene says, gasping.

She walks to the backroom.
Odd ducks,
she thinks, laughing her quack-like laugh.

She thinks to herself that she should take those two out some night; maybe let Margo sit with The Kid. All of ‘em dressed in finery, just some broads leaving their trouble behind for a few hours.

Lola goes to a karaoke bar around the corner from the bakery once a month. With her pint-sized skintight clothes and her heartfelt delivery of Patsy Cline songs she has become something of a celebrity, in that nasty way that notoriety and contemptuous familiarity are sometimes celebrated. She always writes her name on twenty slips and when her name is called there are hoots and hollers from regulars and irregulars alike. Maybe it is her sheer blouse, perhaps it is her thigh-high skirt or her follow-me-and-fuck-me heels, but the overdressed and overly rambunctious woman is enjoying a sort of anti-popularity each time she goes there.

That a craggy old baker should be singing Patsy Cline in Gibsons, British Columbia, did not strike her as one bit odd. That she was there when one Mr. Pat John, television star, took the stage did not even give her pause. He looked bigger than she remembered. He was travelling with a unibrowed white friend and a seemingly ever-present blonde, accepting congratulations and apparent admiration for a career mostly forgotten. Lola knew something about Jesse that she did not know about herself: he was an oddity at the bar, something to break up the space between finishing one drink and ordering another. On this particular night she was sitting half on and off some no-account’s lap, earning free Harvey Wallbangers, when in walked Mr. Television Indian himself.

His obliging and obligatory blonde seemed uninterested in his stories. The less attention she paid, the larger his gestures became. He wanted to occupy all the space in the tiny lounge and it seemed he was uncomfortable in his skin. He had one hanger-on – Lola thinks that the guy probably used to be part
of an entourage and that he looked a little embarrassed to be part of this nearly-anonymous-and-not-wanting-to-be threesome.

For a while she was oblivious because the no-account cheapskate sitting under her felt a score coming on and started to buy her drinks in earnest. She squirmed on no-account’s lap to keep him involved and then slurexcused herself to go to the washroom. On the way she met the blonde’s eyes, who rolled them – whether at being Jesse’s date, at the sight of a drunken oldish woman in a too-short spandex skirt and high-heeled red cowboy boots, or at their shared occupation that evening, Lola was unsure.

When she walked out of the bathroom she ran into entourage man. “Hey, is that the
Beachcombers
guy?” she half shouted over someone’s version of “Riders On the Storm.”

Obviously uncomfortable, Entourage Guy sidestepped her and his reply was muffled as he turned to take a request slip to the DJ booth. She followed him to the booth. “I didn’t hear ya,” she half yelled at him. “Is that him or not?” She passed the DJ her slip.

“Yeah, that’s him. Stick around, he’s going to sing in a minute.” He walked away, suave in a cheap suit. Something about him yelled out hungry, but the starving can never see beyond their own craving.

She and the DJ looked at each other smugly. When he read her slip he said, “Hey, someone’s already singing this one, you’ll have to pick another one.”

“What? Nobody ever sings that one!” Lola said indignantly, coveting what she considers her song. She scribbled:

Behind her, the opening chords to her song began. When she turned she saw that Pat John was about to sing the song she had selected. Angrily, she grabbed Pat John’s slip and put it in her pocket. It wasn’t until the next morning that she found it, crumpled and nearly illegible.

“What the hell?” she said, reading it.

Lola can hear those low murmurs coming from the storefront and she wonders if she should tell the story to Freda and Val. The Kid seemed to like that guy, though, and in a surge of gentleness for them she finds that she doesn’t want to tell them anything that reminds them of The Kid in a better state and decides not to bring them anything that costs them. And, they were having a nice time this morning, even if she didn’t know what was so funny. Lost in that thought, she burns her thumb on the brownies, cursing as she digs them out and plates them, heading to the storefront.

FREDA

Freda wipes the countertop in the restaurant with vinegar and water. The old bird has started making noises that she is too old to run the place herself and Freda is getting antsy in the attic apartment. So, they walk by each other all day, eat supper together and then pay Bernice and Valene a visit.