Birdie Read online

  She notices that Freda keeps coming up and was talking more and more today, but she doesn’t feel like listening. Maybe, she thought, it was because of the Frugal Gourmet. This morning he made “Pine Nut Pastry.” The last time she had pastry was at her uncle’s wake. Even though Lola had plenty of pastry around, Bernice has not been able to eat it since she got to Gibsons. Or, since the wake for that matter. Food could take you back, she thinks.

  Food no longer seems to be a problem for her. In fact, in her sleepingwake state, she has no desire for food. What she craves is alone, like a dry drunk craves a drink. The appetite she has is for the shift, and until that is met, she is pretty certain she will not need any more food. And, while she still cannot seem to eat anything, she is sleeping better.

  acimowin*

  This is a good story; it makes all the young girls laugh.

  There was a speck of dust that was always

  getting in everyone’s way.

  Then one day, the dust, she flew

  into the wrong man’s eye.

  “Ayuh,” he said to that dust.

  “You are always bodderin’ me and now I will send you

  Away.”

  And with one wave, he turned

  That dust into an Owl.

  Next day, that owl, she comes back and

  She flies right to his face

  And pecks his eye out.

  That’s why the girls always catches

  the boys’ eyes.

  * Story.

  3

  BERNICE TRAVELS LIGHTLY

  awasispihk: before. the time before

  pawatamowin

  She is walking to the Pimatisewin with Auntie Val and Skinny Freda. In the dream, it’s in sad shape. Indian summer only and the leaves are gone and the branches reach out in need. There are some old people who came from all over, standing, kneeling, sitting and praying around the tree. As she approaches, she notices a little woman stirring a pot over afire near the base of Pimatisewin. The woman shakes her head and her kerchief falls off to reveal the wizened old face of her employer Lola. Lola whispers to the women that there is no more food for the tree. She tells them that the old tree is a Kohkom* tree and continues to stir her pot.

  * Grandmother.

  WHEN BERNICE SURFACES, the air feels different, and the smell in the restaurant below is sweet and almost cloying. As she hasn’t seen Lola today, she assumes her employer is having a dessert special and that she wants to pay attention to the food. It is not that Lola is a bad cook – she is a great cook – but in truth she is an average baker. She had relied on Bernice for her good baking sense. Bernice somewhat petulantly wonders how the baked goods are faring without her to cook them, but thinks better of it and goes back to sleep.

  She wakes at 4:00 and can tell that neither Lola nor Skinny Freda is there. She deliberates whether she should turn on the TV at 5:00, but decides that she had better not. If she moves too much, she knows, people will start to ignore her. Freda would be especially vigilant in her disregard – her inattention in a crisis is legendary.

  When her dinner was not delivered, she knew that there was something going on in the restaurant. Hearing laughter outside and the screams of unbridled exuberance, Bernice wonders if it is a holiday. It is hard to tell, because the Frugal Gourmet does not do themes and is in perpetual reruns, but the sky looked bright and was losing that tint, like a frosted amber, that it got when the air was cold.

  Back home, spring was richer and more generous than on the coast. You could feel the crack of a different ice under your foot and know that there was no more snow coming. A certain rabbit made a quick appearance and you knew that it would not get cold again.

  You could also tell when it was spring because you got your first near-glimpse of Freda’s boobs, she thinks, biting her lips to keep from smiling. While it was certainly true that spring heralded higher heels, shorter skirts and deeper necklines for her cousin, it was not nice to reflect upon it in that way. Or to think that a glimpse of Freda’s ass was perhaps a little more frequent than a spring groundhog, but just about as accurate.

  The two of them could not be less similar. There is, Bernice knows, a strength in each of them. There is also an unforgiving nature that each of them possesses that is completely unlike the makeup of Val or her mom. However, if there was one thing that all four women shared, it was their absolute reliance on only themselves. Having seen all of their fathers and husbands walk out the door (with booze or a brunette in hand), each woman understood most completely the nature of women’s interconnectedness. Being reliant upon only women also had meant that the particulars of problem solving were addressed in ways known to women and using women’s methods. So, while Freda might be from the school of dirty lickins’ field of thought, all four of the women had always maintained graceful coherence for the sake of the family and the community. A grotty one, but still a coherence. There was some sort of over-responsibility that weighed on each one of them, as if carrying the load that the men had dropped cost them posture and emotional affluence that could not yet be counted.

  Bernice wonders how far back, how many generations ago, it was that women took on children, family, home and provisioning. In her community, the men went away. Some to the cities. To work. Or not. Some to prison. Rightfully or not. Some just went away and you wouldn’t hear a word about them for years.

  Bernice sometimes thinks this was for the best. When her dad left, she did not think (at the time) that it was for the best. She feels a pain in her throat whenever she thinks about her dad. It is nothing like the pain in her chest that she gets when she thinks about her mother. It is like the difference between a penny dropped in a puddle and a riptide.

  “Put that down, girl, you know that after five o’clock it’s mix, not pop,” her uncle Louis had barked at her.

  She’d jumped a little and all of the adults, some of them louder than others, laughed as Bernice put the Coke bottle down. If she drank a glass of it, it would mean that someone might have to leave the house later in the evening to pick up another bottle. She knew it would be all right to make a smart remark and then pour herself a glass. As long as she made them laugh she would be forgiven. She didn’t want the Coke that badly though.

  Her uncle had snorted at her meanly, “Lose some weight.”

  She had walked out of the room to her mother’s voice. “Really, Lou, one glass isn’t going to be missed,” her mom said.

  “That kid’s too sensitive,” she heard her uncle mutter.

  She was sorry to have left her room. She looked at the pile of library books on her floor (the carpet was the kind that is supposed to feel like grass when it’s green) and felt better. Back then, Saturday was just about her favourite day of all. She would spend about four hours in the town library, about three and a half hours too many by Miss Robbins’ watch. Miss Robbins, Bernice imagined, was at least seventy years old. She was almost certain that Miss Robbins, Clara Robbins, was a smoker. She had arthritic fingers and knew every title on the shelves of the Grande Prairie public library. The skin on her fingers, spotted, yellow and papery thin, would tap past books at an alarming rate as she tried to select what Bernice could read. She also remembered the old woman, wearing orange lipstick that was an orange not found in nature, as being mistrustful.

  “Bernice Meetoos, I think that book is too old for you. Judy Blume is not for ten-year-olds,” she said slyly one time, not at all in a librarian voice, but in what Bernice thought was an in-sin-u-ating voice. She was not quite sure what that meant, but she thought it had something to do with putting sin into someone else. She had read it in the New Yorker (which caused Miss Robbins to smack her lips against her teeth louder than ever before). She had presumed this was because Miss Robbins was prone to put sin into whatever motives a ten-year-old girl might have.

  Bernice’s momma had a standing policy that Bernice could read whatever she wanted. Well, she could at least bring home whatever she wanted. Bernice assumed this was because h
er mom was the best judge, after Bernice of course, of what Bernice should have been reading. Bernice reminded Miss Robbins of this for the sixteen thousandth time.

  Miss Clara Robbins clucked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and said, “I’d certainly like to meet this mother of yours.”

  To Bernice it sounded like she didn’t believe that Bernice had a mother.

  She stuck out her tongue at Miss Robbins as she swung her wide librarian bottom around and, while fascinated by the girth of the bottom, continued her search for the perfect book.

  The perfect book, to Bernice, would depict a clean house with flowers in every available container. There would be no cigarette burns in gaudy-coloured carpet, no empty bottles or glasses half-drunk or spilled on the floor on weekends, and no visits without invitations from her parents’ friends. No one would bother her in her room under the stairs, and she wouldn’t be woken up by thundering feet up the steps (a fight) or the thudding down the stairs (someone falling down). There would be happy shiny people who always hugged and smiled. They would never put each other down or make fun of one another to make other people laugh.

  They would take family vacations to Disneyland, go for walks as a family, and sit down for meals and ask each other questions they had always wanted to know the answers to. There would be another daughter who was a little chubby, popular and smart. The other daughter, who was, coincidentally, the same age as Bernice, would wear store-bought clothes, have her hair cut in parlours (Bernice loved that word; she also loved “turgid,” “nomenclature” and “conglomerate”), and would not have to take out books from the library because she would have her own library. She might let close friends borrow her books, but certainly would never let strangers, and definitely never lend her favourites. She could read books to her heart’s content, never having to stop for macramé lessons, visits from relatives, or to wonder what was going on above her head when someone crashed or fell down the stairs.

  She never found the perfect book and contented herself with stories about families that sounded perfect.

  The sound of raucous (she thought it came from “ruckus”) laughter raced through the living room to the storage room (and now her bedroom) under the stairs. She tapped the door quietly with her toe (which she could do from the bed, having perfected this move years ago) to close it, not wanting to be noticed. She thought better of it and opened it again and slammed it a little, just enough so they’d be aware that she had closed the door. She could see the last of the winter daylight coming under it, just a crack and a reminder that the perfect families did not have to slam doors to tell people to go home.

  Then came the sound of female blurry laughter that followed the slamming of her door.

  “You made yer point, kiddo,” her mom’s friend Terry yelled in after her. Bernice’s mom thought Terry was her friend, but Bernice knew a secret. Terry really liked her dad. One night when she got up to get a glass of water she saw Terry rubbing up against her dad in the kitchen. She noticed that her dad’s breathing was funny. From this, she took it that her dad did not seem to mind it so much. She sat down on a chair stubbornly and waited until they saw her. Terry smiled and rushed over. “What’s the matter, sweetie? Did you have a bad dream?” She bent over Bernice and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  Bernice felt woozy from the smell of smoke and wine on Terry’s breath. She looked at her dad and said deliberately to Terry, “Your shirt’s undone.”

  She got up and went to her room, leaving Terry to jerkily arrange herself to her father’s laughter.

  “Little brat,” she heard her say to her dad through the door, which she had her ear pressed to.

  “She’s a smart little ‘breed, that one,” she heard him say proudly, and though she listened until, exhausted, she fell asleep, she couldn’t hear any sounds from the kitchen.

  She bristled at the word “‘breed” (it would be years before she understood all the implications of being called a “Halfbreed”). Or, maybe it was because she didn’t want to associate it with the “most intimate of acts.” Bernice had started reading a Harlequin Romance early in the summer, and that’s what they called it. Her uncle Larry had forgone any notion of intimacy and called it “boning.” She didn’t like that word, either. It reminded her of de-boning and chickens. The image of fat and flesh grinding together and apart made her feel queasy. She had a really weak stomach and she had to be careful what she thought about or she would make herself throw up. It had gotten her out of school a few times until her momma got wise to her.

  She didn’t go to school so much, anyways. Sometimes her mother had one of her headaches and Bernice would walk around quietly until she got up. It was usually 11:00 or 12:00 by then and she would just read in bed until someone discovered her. Other times she would plead sickness and no one seemed too concerned. Bernice had missed more days than anyone else at school and she had still done fairly well on her report card. A few times she had actually been sick and her mother had comforted her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible by giving her a glass of ginger ale with the bubbles stirred out or tea with a lot of milk in it. One time, though, when she complained of a stomach ache, her mom put a little piece of soap up her bum. She thought long and hard about her ailments and excuses after that.

  The front door opened, inviting the freezing air into the house, and she could feel it even in her room. The house got quiet soon after, and with the exception of her mother’s burdened steps across the floor (a sound she knew was a part of the post-party cleanup) there was no other sound in the house. She felt herself relax a bit and did the deep breathing that her doctor told her to do when she thought she felt her asthma coming on. There was still too much smoke in the air and the deep breathing made her feel dizzier. Still, she liked the house better this way, with just her and her mother there alone. Freda was still out at Kohkom’s, she spent most of her time there now, and would not be home until Monday.

  Her mom poked her head under the stairs, without knocking. “You want some Coke now, my girl?”

  She followed her mom to the kitchen, remarkably clean again, and filled up a glass. They sat at the table, it was one of their rituals, and she watched as her momma rolled smokes. Sometimes at night she would wake up to the tap tap tapping of her mom as she made sure the tobacco fell all the way to the filter. Her mom would sit up, sometimes for hours, just smoking and staring at the kitchen wall. Her silence scared Bernice, who was dependent upon other people’s noise to fill her own quiet.

  Even through the smoke and beer fumes, her mom smelled of freshly baked bread and onions. It was a comforting smell, one of home, and it filled the room on days like today when her mom baked and froze bread, buns and bannock for the family.

  “What are you doing, all holed up in there?” She pointed with her lips to Bernice’s room and waited for her girl’s response.

  “Reading a new book.”

  “Already? Gosh, where are you gonna put all of those words, Birdie?”

  Her mom looked at her then, serious and thoughtful. Bernice, used to shrinking from attention, looked away. “You know, you’re gonna be the first one of us to go to school. I never have to worry about you, and I always know that no matter what happens, Bernice will be all right.

  “You look so much like your auntie, you are so lucky you got the looks and the brains,” her mom told her. “Good thing you didn’t get her …” Maggie Meetoos paused. “… full nature.” She laughed.

  Bernice started and covered her mouth with her hand involuntarily. She didn’t know that her mom thought she was pretty. She had always thought of Freda as the pretty one, the one who got attention. She also wondered what Auntie Val’s full nature was. Something in her ears let her know that it was not necessarily a good thing.

  “You know your auntie used to be a bookworm too?” her mom asked her.

  Two secrets. Two things she did not know. It came to Bernice that her mom was drunk. Maggie kept secrets like some women kept canned goods: s
ealed and in the dark until they were needed. When her mom was drunk, Bernice tried to balance her fear with her fascination. And while it always scared her, her stomach knotting instantly and her back tense, it was a lot like sitting in the lodge: people were quite hard to make out but you couldn’t wait for what you heard next. The problem was, though, that as her mom relaxed, Bernice got more and more tense. On those rare occasions, less rare as Bernice grew up, when her mother drank to excess, Bernice would hide in the basement and read under a shoulder-high lamp near the dryer. She turned the dryer on to generate heat and to block out the noise of the adults upstairs. White noise drowning out the brown noise.

  “When you were a little girl, iskwesis,” her mother said, “your Auntie Valene hugged you to herself and told me that you were her daughter.”

  Maggie shifted awkwardly in her chair, as if the booze made her uncomfortable in her skin. “I’d never seen anyone so in love with another person that was not their birthchild.”

  To Bernice’s amazement, her mom’s eyes had filled up.

  “She is your kee kuh wee sis, your little mother.”

  Three secrets. Three. She had another mom.

  “When Val went …” – Maggie searched her daughter’s face to see what the smart girl knew – “… away – away from here – she never called or nothing. Just left, mad at us and crazy at the world. When she came back, she wasn’t the same anymore.”

  Noticing the worry on her daughter’s face, she said, “She loves you just as much, Birdie, she’s just lost the piece of her that knows how to show it.”

  Showing it is precisely the thing that Bernice struggles with as she remembers that moment. Inside her, she swells with memories and prickles with bodily reminders of her life. Before. Here. Her body and her emotions are inseparable now, her Sealy mattress a vessel within which one thing becomes indiscernible from another. Lying there, filled with a mix of emotions and feelings: hurt, pain, longing, love and remorse – Bernice’s body reveals none of this in its calm. To Freda and Lola, whom she can feel the worry on like a hangover, she is failing, but she knows better. This is a gathering.