The Sudden Weight of Snow (31 page)

“Sure,” I said, and sat down on the curb between grocery store and parking lot.

Pastor John followed my lead, bent his long legs until they brought him to the curb. He cleared his throat. “Sylvia,” he started, then stopped. “Your mother, all of us, really, are trying hard to understand what you’re going through. None of us want to pressure you into anything, but as a minister it sincerely saddens me when one of my congregation leaves. I feel partly responsible, especially for a young woman like yourself, and for what this is doing to your family.”

“Um-hm.” I nodded and pushed my foot through the slush gathered at the curb, watched it part around my boot. Pastor John had no idea what was going on with his own family and he knew even less about Vera and me. I noticed that he was wearing shoes with odd rubber sole protectors on them and wondered if the moisture had seeped over the line between protector and shoe.

“I’d like to help you, Sylvia, to talk about the decisions you’ve made and the choices that I think Christ wants to give you the strength to make, but I can’t do that unless I believe you are in a place where you can really hear what He has to say.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued, “I’ve told your mother that she needs to get you back into her home if you’re going to work this through, but she seems oddly reluctant to allow Social Services to intervene.”

“Oddly reluctant?” I said. “Maybe she knows that social workers are going to be about as understanding as you’ve been. You don’t really want to help either of us, do you? If I stay away from home, you can simply point at me and keep Vera off council.” I started to get up, a bit off balance because I was still holding the posters, pins, and tape against my chest with two hands. “Thanks, but I don’t think I need your kind of concern.” I was standing boot-deep in slush, my feet beginning to ache from the cold.

Pastor John didn’t respond, simply looked for a dry place to put his hands to hoist himself up from the curb. When he was standing, he said, “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, Sylvia. I’ll be praying for you. May you go in Christ.”

“Goodbye,” I said in return and turned, walked away.

Posters for Raise the Roof were put up in cafés up and down the valley – Cherryville, Salmon Arm, Kamloops, Kelowna – and people that Krista described as nutbars showed up from everywhere. Some brought instruments and formed bands on the spot with names like Nellie May’s Backyard Blues Busters and the Salmon River Jug and Squirm Band. Tables were pushed back against the walls, a space by the wood stove was cleared for jamming, and kids and dogs ran an obstacle course around furniture and through legs.

In the shed, I smoked a joint with Gabe and Krista until we fell back on the bed laughing at our lack of ability to control basic motor functions or transfer simple thoughts from mind to mouth. Gabe told us that Thomas had some magic mushrooms.

“Oh, my God,” Krista answered. “If I’d known there’d be shrooms, I would’ve brought a change of clothes. I always piss my pants when I do shrooms.”

“Hey, since when have you done mushrooms?” I asked.

“Since a few weeks ago, with Mike and them.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was such a big deal. Besides, we can do them now together.” Krista seemed herself again, as though the awkwardness between us, her tears in the church, getting caught for shoplifting all had no bearing on the night ahead.

When we made our way to the cookshack, we found Thomas in the kitchen, leaning on the counter with a beer in
his hand and a woman pressed against his thigh. Gabe pushed me forward, whispering in my ear, “You ask him. I’m not charming enough to get his attention now.” I stood so close behind the woman that I could smell her scent – jasmine. Thomas was looking at his beer bottle while he drank from it. When the liquid slid down his throat, he raised his eyes and saw me there.

“Harper, hi,” he reached around the woman. “Just a minute,” he said to her as he pulled me between them, placed his arm on my shoulder and pinned me momentarily between the woman and his thigh. She moved away.

“Hey, can I talk to you?” I asked. He nodded and turned me around so he could guide me out of the kitchen, his hands on my shoulders. I saw the woman roll her eyes and shake her head. I smiled at her. We pushed through the room, winding our way through bodies, bumping up against them. I felt Thomas’s chest against my back whenever we stopped. He brought me to the pantry, drew back the curtain, and we went in. This was not a neutral space. I moved out from under Thomas’s hands, hoping that Gabe and Krista were close behind.

“What is it, Harper?” he asked.

“Uh, Gabe said you had some, um, mushrooms that we could do together. Gabe and Krista – have you met Krista? – and I were wondering if we could get some shrooms off you. I mean, if that’s okay. Gabe said, um –”

Thomas threw back his head and laughed. “Drugs. You want drugs.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck.

“Yeah, I mean, if that’s okay.” I backed up and reached for the curtain separating us from the rest of the party. When I did,
I hit the deep freeze and remembered being against it with Gabe. I felt the curtain being pulled out of my hand as it was moved aside. Krista and Gabe came into the pantry, blinking as their eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

“Oh, good,” said Thomas, his voice suddenly jovial. “You must be Krista. I remember you from that first night you girls came out here.” Gabe slid in to stand beside me. “So, Harper tells me you’re interested in indulging,” Thomas continued in a mock English accent, and paused. “Gabe, you think it’s a good idea for these young ladies?”

“It’s up to them, really.”

“All right, then. How many grams does everyone want then? A couple grams each?”

Gabe’s arm moved around my waist, drew me to him. “Maybe just one for Harp, hey, sweets?” he asked me.

“Sure. I mean, no. I’ll do however many you do.”

Thomas took our hands, opened our palms, and placed dried mushrooms in them.

“Just like this?” Krista asked. “I’m used to having them in chocolate.”

“Well, well,” said Thomas.

“We can brew them in tea,” Gabe offered. “That might be better for Harper.”

“No, it’s okay,” I insisted and lifted the dry bits to my nose. They didn’t smell like much. While the other three watched, I shook them into my mouth, chewed. A mouldy, bitter taste hit the back of my throat and I gagged a little as I swallowed. Gabe and Krista laughed and gulped theirs down, then we made our way back into the room. Thomas was behind me.
He caught my hand for a moment, brushed his fingers against my palm. I drew it away slowly and followed Gabe’s dark head through the crowd.

I had a bottle of beer as though it was a way to anchor myself to the room, smoked part of a joint to ease my passage into the effect of the mushrooms. I held Krista’s hand, wanting her beside me when the drug hit. Gabe moved like water through the cookshack, one moment beside me, breath on my ear, hand on the small of my back, the next on the other side of the crowd or out of sight completely. Krista and I circled the room slowly, trying to find a place to sit down together. We made a nest out of jackets, coats, and scarves on top of one of the tables and sat there, waiting to get lighter.

When it happened, I felt air rise inside me like carbonation until it pricked my cheeks and filled my mouth. I held it as long I could, looking straight ahead.

“Aha!” Krista whispered. “It’s hit you, hasn’t it?” and began to giggle.

I avoided looking at her for as long as possible but faces and bodies began to merge, waver, and when they did I needed to look at something familiar to regain my bearings. When I turned toward Krista and saw her shining eyes and crazy hair like banners announcing her face, I burst out laughing.

“What?” Krista asked, joining me.

“Nothing! I just feel so fucking good!”

“I know! Isn’t it great?!”

“Are we yelling?!”

We collapsed back on the table. Krista’s head hit the window sill but this just made her laugh harder. I had my legs
folded under me and I threw my head back, my spine arching like a bridge. When I tried to move, the laughter lodged me there. I imagined vocal cords straining against skin. I rolled myself over, onto Krista, so I could breathe again, then sputtered and laughed even louder. No one seemed to notice. The impromptu bands played on, people danced, children ran, babies wailed, and the sounds of the dogs that had been shooed outside came in through the open door.

The cookshack became a kaleidoscope of sound, colour, and movement. Gabe was with me, then he wasn’t. Krista was beside me, or I forgot that she was at the farm at all. Every once in a while, I was caught up in the music and tried dancing but I felt self-conscious, my body foreign, unwieldy as it moved around me. I saw faces and mouths moving, and tried to listen, even feign conversation but I couldn’t speak much, except to Gabe and Krista. We would gather in corners or along walls and attempt to relay conversations as we had heard them, but other people’s words never formed the same thing in our mouths. This, in itself, was funny enough to have us laughing so hard we would fall to the floor, bend in on each other, get stuck in an inebriated version of Twister.

At some point, I saw the curtain door into the pantry pulled back, a corridor of people stretching beyond me. When I went toward them, I could feel cold air and searched for its source. The night was visible through the open door and I pushed my way through the pantry, gasped at air when I got outside. People were leaning up against the cookshack smoking cigarettes and joints. With the smell of cedar and the sensation of heat radiating from somewhere, I realized that someone had
started up the sauna. The sauna! I wanted to find Krista and show her the bathhouse and sauna, show her where I showered, practically outside, even in the dead of winter. As I moved back toward the pantry, I heard someone yell, “Close the door, it’s freezing in here!” and watched as it slammed in front of my face. I tried to turn the handle but it was stuck, locked from the inside. People yelped in the bathhouse and each time the sauna door was opened, I could hear wood cracking in the stove.

I went looking for Krista and Gabe. I wanted to see him again, to feel his hands on me. I couldn’t remember how long I had been looking or where. I watched my feet, making sure that I was still on the ground, but then I would walk into things and remind myself to look up. I would never find them if I wasn’t looking up. I stopped on the porch, more than once, for a smoke. A smoke to clear my head, bring me down, to help me remember where to look.

I was crying when Thomas found me and brought me back to the sauna. There were moments of blindness – the shirt being pulled over my head, the first dark of the sauna. When the air struck my skin, Thomas’s hands tried to rub the cold away, then led me into the heat. My mind seemed unable to follow basic mental processes but my body took a fierce hold of every sensation and experienced it acutely. “It’s okay,” I told myself, feeling air on every part of my stripped body. “Everyone is naked in here. It’s a sauna. It’s okay.” I sat between Thomas’s legs on the top bench, sobbing unevenly while he rubbed my back, the skin and muscle stiffening, folding, yielding. I could feel him growing hard. The stove opened and
closed to accommodate more wood; water was thrown on the rocks, creating a sputtering vapour. By the time the steam rose to the top bench, the wet heat pawed at me, the press and lick of flames. The sides of my throat seemed to be straining to meet each other, block out my breath. Muscles gripped bones and everything began to ache. I gasped and clutched at my neck, trying to find air. The heat pressed against me like walls.

Shh
was the sound of Thomas’s voice as he led me out of the sauna.
Shh
was the sound of the water over my head and in my ears. Who was in there with me? Later I would remember Thomas and Gabe both being there, but decided they couldn’t have been.
Shh
was the sound I made when I saw Gabe’s face on the other side of the steam, thought I saw him, clothed and standing outside the shower, like he had on the night he washed me and cut my hair. If he wasn’t there, whose hands were washing me, who was holding me up? I heard the sounds of muffled yells, of words caught. My own throat wouldn’t open. When I tried to force words up, out of it, when I tried to say something to Gabe, they lodged there.
Shh
was the only sound I heard as someone held me back, the feeling of lost words and water, skin and heat becoming one in that cramped place.
Shh
was the sound of someone dressing me, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders and holding me until the shaking stopped. It was the sound of someone rubbing my jaw to ease the clattering.
Shh
. It was Thomas’s hand on my face again, the sky above us clear and pricked with stars.