Birdie (18 page)

It wasn’t until she overheard one of the drunken Whippets refer to someone, her, as “Lisping Buffalo” that she became herself again. After a while, Lola became drunken, belligerent and argumentative. Bernice watched in awe as she tore up and through several friends, acquaintances and strangers.

At one point, Lola began to discuss the efficacy of hygiene and bathing and Bernice was forced to confront another truth: she was being made fun of. She looked down at her raw hands, soft and scarred over from the fire and re-scarred with cuts from the knives at Lola’s Little Slice of Heaven, muscled with the vigour with which she pounded Lola’s buns and breads.
Farther down at her pale brown legs – revealed and naked in a dirty and torn corduroy miniskirt. Her thin sausage legs encased in too-tight ripped hose. And saw herself as Lola saw her. Ugly. Fat. Dirty. Used. In the summers at home, a fundamentalist minister brought a circus tent to the reserve and preached to the erring population. Screaming “Jesus loves the Red Ones!” to save their souls, he would bellow over the cheap loudspeaker, his incantation echoing for miles. Bouncing off of the water. Lost in the rush of the wind in the trees. Rejected by the stones and arching over hills. And the converts and his invited guests would nod and hum with the intonation just for them, just for the Red Ones. The tent billowed with his conviction and the ground vibrated with the confident resonance of his certitude.

In that moment, the one where she saw her most hated self, it dawned on Bernice that if Jesus does love the Red Ones, he most assuredly would love her. And since he didn’t, there must not be a Jesus, either. So Jesus did not weep and Jesus did not save.

She realized she would have to save herself.

She began by throwing her drink at the Whippets, and when this did not have the visual effect she anticipated, she turned the table over, spilling their drinks and purses. The Whippets began writhing, as Whippets do, in their joy at their emotional affrontedness. Their glee in their righteous indignation. Their religious fervour at her saving.

Lola tried to drunkenly hug her, called her honey. And. Something else. Birdgirl. In Cree.

Because Lola spoke to her in kindness she did not punch her.

“Atone.” “Vengeance is mine.” Bernice whispered in a stunned Lola’s leathery ear. She was out of the bar – exit
accompli
before she realized her purse was still under her chair in the barroom. For a brief moment she pondered the vow of poverty but, wobbling on her spiked heels, decided a cab would be in order this evening.

A bit melodramatically she stormed up to the table and grabbed her bag – a nice one, too, she’d lifted it from the WalMart in Grande Prairie – and turned to leave.

“Bernice …” Lola looked almost contrite, “I don’t think you should go home alone.”

“I’m not going home.”

“Can I come with you?” Of course, she wanted away from the Whippets.

“Nope.”

After that she looked for a cab but ended up teetering on those spikes all the way across town.

She wandered to two other bar/restaurants and looked in the glass doors but did not enter. Whatever she was looking for was not in those places. She walked the blurry blocks home – staying near the water as long as she could and doubling her trip. She sat and stared for the longest time; rose to leave only when she felt light again. She realized, too late, that she had lost her shoes and was instantly bereft. Something passed over, like a cloud, like a storm warning, and she felt heavier and changed.

Lola was waiting in the kitchen when she let herself in the back door. “You okay, honey?”

She had opened her mouth to speak and found that her
tongue could no longer form syllables, the English language became foreign, and although she never could do so with any fluency before, she spoke in her own tongue. Her words, mostly foreign visitors on her tongueterrain, bubbled up like water from a spring.

This time Lola didn’t understand. In fact, she looked quite frightened. Bernice let herself be pulled up the stairs and into her suite. The room smelled of old socks and something tomato-ey. Her pile of laundry in the corner near the window almost reached the second pane of glass. It was a temple of sorts; a monument to vanity. She got undressed and put on her baker’s uniform: white pants (44), white T-shirt (grey at the neck and armpits) and her nurse’s shoes.

“Just lie down, sweetie, you don’t need to work today.” Lola comforted her, made her sip tea and sat on the floor beside her while she slept.

When she awoke, when she remembered to wake, she realized that she has soiled herself. The stench was comforting and the warmth soothing. The next time she woke up she was dry and didn’t notice the smell anymore, although a stain remained.

Her waking time passed slower than her sleeping time, but eventually they blended together for she got no rest. One night she awoke, screaming, with Lola hugging her and patting her, begging her to do something. She couldn’t make it out because she no longer speaks that language. She was going under.

“
Hey-ya-hey ay yay yah hah
,” crescendo decrescendo.

She had sunk.

She thinks now about her mother, her soft touch and hurt eyes. Misses her. And something else. The lodge. Where she had gotten her name. Where
Kohkom
had taken them all. Which her mom stopped going to and her father never started going to. The last safe place. She wants to go back, wants that life again, that life before booze, when her uncles, shirtless, had been drummers and shirtless was okay, when she felt the Creator, that the women surrounding her on their side of the lodge were equal, when they all understood themselves to be safe. The first and last safe place.

Her breastbone falls on the place that hurts, her breathing is ragged and pained, and she feels what used to be there. What is supposed to be there. What is no longer there. And. Wants it back. She begins to understand and see that what is piled between her and the last safe place is a succession of bad decisions, only a very few of them hers. She has been in this bed. Since. Then.

Skinny Freda’s heels keep click click clicking on the floor of Bernice’s room. Bernice can hear her walk across and back the small apartment, her skinny Indian legs tapping a staccato on the faded linoleum. Once in a while, Skinny Freda pauses at the bed as she passes in front of it. Bernice can smell the angst in the room and knows that Freda is considering the situation. Freda is smart. Freda is always considering the situation. Maybe it comes from being the daughter and granddaughter of hunters, or from being a bit of a barroom brawler, but Freda always has a Plan B. Always knows where the exits
are. Bernice tries to see the room as she imagines her cousin sees it. She has been – has been what, passed out? Paralyzed? Asleep? Under? She doesn’t know. For a long time.

What Bernice also does not know is that Skinny Freda is very close to calling an ambulance. Bernice tries really hard to make herself invisible. And a hospital visit – well – that just wouldn’t have been good for anyone. She thought, a fleeting thought, that it might have passed through Freda’s head that she would get into trouble (from the family, for not shunning her cousin, for endorsing her behaviour, for continuing to love her?) not only for visiting Bernice but also for not reporting her whereabouts. And, as Skinny Freda had proven before, while loyal, she is not blindly so.

She winces when her cousin’s clipped, Cree-inflected voice breaks the peace in the room. “Bernice, Bernice, you gotta get up offa your back and join us here in the land,” she pauses for effect, “the land of the free. You can’t just sit there, lay there with that silly grin on your face. And your pyjamas, come on now.”

She scrapes dried food off a pillow.

“Bernice, I am gonna have to call a doctor, you have to eat something. Shit or whatever.”

While she seems to be so peaceful, there is something in her body, some laxness or illness that has entered the room, and it has scared the bejeezus out of Freda. Bernice doesn’t know what Freda sees, only what she feels. And what she feels is: obligation. To the past. To the
Pimatisewin.
To make one thing right.

Maybe she is bluffing, maybe she is not, Bernice thinks. But
calling a doctor, getting any kind of attention, doesn’t really pull any fear out of her anymore. As far as she was concerned the worst has happened. If people found her, she would just stay inside of herself.

Freda seats herself at the little desk Bernice pulled from the garbage for a table. She had moved it to the window so she could look out at the street below. “You see Bernice, no matter what happened back home, you gotta deal with the here and now.
YOU
got a new life, some friends, a good job.”

Freda taps the tobacco into the filter as she lights another cigarette, her old one still burning in an ashtray on the floor. She is not used to being gentle and Bernice knows that the kindness must cost her something. She closes her eyes but imagines Freda inhaling deeply. The smell is too strong in the small space, but still she wants to join Skinny Freda.

She almost flinches and realizes that her cousin was speaking to her from the head of the bed.

“Remember when you and I were kids and we used to take off to Grande Prairie? We used to do our hair for hours and get all dressed up. Do you remember Bernice? Do you?”

Freda stares at Bernice’s face and looks for something familiar, something that looks like Bernice.

“You’re just a shell now, aren’t ya?” she chides her.

“There’s no one in there anymore, is there?” Bernice feels panic rise in her as she begins to sense the degree of Freda’s fear.

Her cousin’s words ring emptily in her ear. “You ain’t got nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all. All that stuff back there, well it’s still back there. You come out, Bernice. Freda’s
waiting. And that old lady, she needs you too. Come on Bernice. Come on.”

Bernice imagines Skinny Freda in tight white pants, scuffed toeless high heels and a tight black T-shirt. When Skinny Freda is anxious, she touches her face – just like their uncles. She pictures Freda rubbing her temple, absentmindedly scratching her nose. Flicking her ashes, she would pinch her cheeks, Bernice thinks, wondering if she has any colour in her face – what with being inside all of the time.

Freda might have been staring at her puzzle book – she has been marking her vigil with crossword puzzles. She does three a day, between the smoking and talking to Bernice. Bernice thinks that, by now, she probably has a pile as deep as her thumb. It has been weeks since Bernice lay down. Broke down. Went down.

When Bernice and Skinny Freda (she was always Skinny Freda) were kids they used to run to the Loon Lake post office every afternoon to see if anyone had sent them mail. They moved so much that the office was the only place they could be sure they would get mail. They clipped fan mail addresses out of the newspaper and
Tiger Beat
magazine and were sure that Scott Baio, Leif Garrett and Philip McKeon would answer their letters. They also wrote to Pat John care of the CBC. First, they tried writing to him care of Molly’s Reach, but the letter was returned. Later, they started sending letters to Pat John/
Beachcombers,
at the CBC. Every time they went to town, maybe once or twice a month, they would drop dozens of letters in the mail for their “Hollywood boyfriends” as
Kohkom
called them. They would write to all of the boys on TV. And
in the movies. Each time they sent a batch, Bernice would make sure Jesse got at least one letter from her, no matter who else she wrote to. She reassured him that she liked him best in her letters, told him that she had to write to others since he wasn’t writing back, but she understood because he was so busy filming and acting and all. And did he think he would come to Alberta sometime?

At first, no one wrote. After a while, though, pictures and newsletters trickled in. Willie Aames and Anson Williams sent pictures. Bernice let Skinny Freda have those. Jimmy McNichol sent a fan club address and a short photostatted note encouraging them to finish school, no matter what. Freda carried that one to school and showed everyone. Eventually, the prize: Jesse sent a signed picture to “Birdie and Freda.” Bernice was overjoyed – she had always loved the name Birdie. She and Skinny Freda shared that picture like a divorced couple share a kid. Bernice opted for weekends and Freda had him all week.

During a fight when they were fifteen, Freda drew a beard and black tooth on the picture. Bernice was so mad she would not speak to her for three weeks. They were never the same after that. Bernice remained nice, but there was something missing in their fun. Like the language they spoke had dialects and they each spoke a different one.

In fact, when she was a teenager, Bernice stopped talking again. After the Christly school and before the Ingelsons’, when she was in care. There was no reason to talk then. The group home was so full of sound and so many people spoke for Bernice that she let other voices fill the space. A different silence visited her when she went to the San. Freda never came to see
her. It’s not like she planned it or that it was expected that she would have visited, and she knows why her cousinsister made herself scarce then. And. When, to a certain degree, Bernice took leave of her body that day of the Christmas pageant Freda stopped seeing her. It was like Bernice’s spirit was sleeping, only to awaken on the rarest of occasions.

Bernice got fat, and then fatter and then fatter. She ate with an appetite that she had not earned. She ate like she was not going to eat again. Eventually, her pretty face gave in to the battle she was waging with her fork. Her eyes began to look tiny in her doughy brown face. Her cheeks lost their colour and her hair became lifeless. It was like she had put on the suit of an artist’s caricature of Bernice – blown up and expanded. As if the flame of Bernice had consumed her like shrubs eaten by a brush fire.

“Come on, Bernice, keep …” Freda wants to say “normal,” but Freda probably doesn’t really know what that is in this situation. “Going,” she announces to the cramped and notably smelly bedroom.