Low (29 page)

Adriana's stomach ached “Samantha didn't…” she began, but the look on Elspeth's face stopped her. “You know I can't tell you anything, Adriana,” she said regretfully. Adriana knew. She held out her hand to Elspeth. “Good bye,” Adriana said, squeezing Elsepth's fingers. “And thank you.” Elspeth nodded. “You'll do just fine,” she said quietly, and disappeared into the office.

Adriana, went out to wait at the bus stop. Jeff and Melvin were standing at the gates with a few other patients, who were having their final smoke of the evening last. It was dark but Adriana could see they were sharing a cigar between them, the glowing end leaving a trail like a fire fly behind it as Jeff waved it in the air. “And when Bartholomew told her he had no love to give her, she lost it. She turned over a table like this,”and he swept his arms forward as though shooing away an animal. “And then Marlene started ranting, and Samantha lost it again, and then they got into it.” Jeff tipped back his head as though contemplating the stars, and blew a column of smoke above his head. “They both gave each other shiners. I don't know who got the worst of it. Samantha was stronger, but after the first punch she just let Marlene beat her like an egg.”

Adriana stood beside them, not knowing what to say. She took the scarf she'd made for Jeff from her backpack and handed it to him silently. “Adriana!” he said, “ Wow isn't that perfect!” He seemed overcome, and unsure of what to do. “Thank you,” he said humbly, fingering the olive-coloured wool, fringed in blue and rust and lavender.

Adriana crossed the street to the bus stop. From there she could see Jeff drape one end of the scarf around his bandaged neck, passing the other end to Melvin, who wrapped in over his own shoulder. The two of them swayed like drunken men and pretended to dance the cancan, while Jeff held the cigar high in his right hand. Melvin's laughter, clear and bright, pealed into the night sky like a trumpet.

Epilogue

One Sunday morning, a couple weeks after Adriana and Jazz moved out to a basement apartment in the north end, Mr. Song called to invite them both to dim sum, to celebrate Adriana landing a job as a cashier, and his own retirement. When he and Beth drove in the laneway to pick them up the car made a noise like a passenger plane. The muffler had fallen off, but her father insisted they go to the restaurant all the way downtown anyway. When they pulled up in front of it, the three girls had their hands over their ears, Adriana bundling the ends of Samantha's scarf into ear muffs. She wore it every day in memory of her friend, hoping against hope that she wouldn't find an obit in the Herald or a news story about a murdered transgendered hitchhiker. Samantha had simply disappeared.

Adriana followed her father into the restaurant. Jazz and Beth brought up the rear, looking pale and gaunt, Beth with a runny nose from a cold she'd contracted at school. She was doing very well in her class, better than Mr. Song had hoped, even, but she seemed as prone to infection as a preschooler. Adriana worried that it was due to post traumatic stress's effect on the immune system. She'd told her father this and he'd mentioned her concern to his GP, who rolled his eyes and said Adriana better go to medical school before making diagnoses like that.

Adriana thought seriously about that. She wondered what her chances would be like of getting into med school, and figured if they knew about her mental illness, they'd be slim to none. Doctors were the very last people to admit to having a psychiatric illness, Jazz had told her. Apparently it was okay to be a crazy person working as a drug store cashier or on social assistance, but not a doctor or a nurse. She figured the only place her experience in the mental hospital would be seen as an asset and not a liability might be if she became a peer support worker, or maybe a writer.

Mr. Song was chattering away in Chinese to the waitress, a petite, middle-aged Asian woman with a pony tail, whose smile brought out the lines around her mouth and eyes. When she walked away with his order, his eyes followed the slapping of her sandals against her heels.

Beth and Jazz were playing “Rock paper scissors” below the table top. Beth giggled in a slightly off-kilter fashion, her eyes wide in her long face. Adriana gazed at the walls, with their giant paper fan decorations against a velvety dark pink wallpaper. The local CBC station was playing on the radio, and as the noon gun on Citadel Hill sounded, the hourly news came on. Out of a habitual obedience, she listened, catching the newsman's tone lighten as he announced, “Transgendered woman Samantha Johns placed third in the over sixty women's speed walking competition in Victoria, British Columbia.” He went on to say that she had been a speed walking champion earlier in her life as a man, and that her participation in the recent competition had been marked with controversy. Then a sound bite from Samantha herself, in her cheery, Julia Childs voice: “Oh I have been through many worse storms than this. Love and hurricanes and all that, you know? After many years I'm taking up walking again and I adore it.” Then with a characteristic Samantha dramatic flourish: “No one can stop me. They don't have to give me any prizes, but I will walk until the day I die.”

Adriana felt the corners of her mouth rise and lift, and her face begin to glow, from a warmth that came from deep in her stomach. She laughed out loud and clapped her hand over her mouth when the Chinese family the next table over turned and peered curiously at her. Jazz raised her eyebrows and Beth gazed at Adriana as though at some mysterious mountain peak, and Mr. Song, sitting back in his chair, beamed at them all. “Dim sum is a Cantonese tradition. From my part of China,” he said proudly, tapping at his chest. “And Chinese food,” he said to no one, and to everyone, “is the best in the world.”

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for the travel grant that got me to the Czech Republic for a one month residency at Milkwood International in 2011, where I worked on the first draft of this novel; the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia, which gave me a grant to cover the cost of the residency; Arts Nova Scotia, for a Creation grant in 2013 that funded me to finish
Low
in my new home of Antigonish; and the Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia, for reviewing my contract with Invisible Publishing.

Speaking of Invisible, I cannot thank them enough for agreeing to publish my second novel. To all the folks there, especially Robbie MacGregor, I say a thousand thank yous for all your hard work and support. And to my editor Michelle MacAleese, a special thanks for your pruning and shaping of my manuscript and many suggestions that have undeniably improved it.

I owe many thanks to a number of mental health organizations that have supported me and my work over the years. They include the Canadian Mental Health Association Halifax-Dartmouth Branch, the Empowerment Connection, and the Healthy Minds Cooperative. They are good folk and dear friends at all of those places, and I hope they will like this book.

A special thanks to Dr. Nancy Robertson at the Nova Scotia Early Psychosis Program, who, for a good chunk of my recent past, was my encourager in health, writing and life.

And to all my friends and family, who have shown me love and support throughout my life, in sickness and in health, I especially thank you. If not for you, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have a reason to.

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Text copyright © Anna Quon, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any method, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Quon, Anna L., 1968-, author

Low / Anna Quon.

Print ISBN 978-1-926743-32-5

EPUB ISBN 978-1-926743-44-8

I. Title.

PS8633.U65L69 2013 C813'.6 C2013-902943-5

Print Cover & Interior designed by Megan Fildes

Typeset in Laurentian and Slate by Megan Fildes

With thanks to type designer Rod McDonald

Ebook designed by Robbie MacGregor

Printed and bound in Canada

Invisible Publishing

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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

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