Monkey Beach (33 page)

On a typical morning, Jimmy and Dad would sit up front and talk basketball, and I’d try to sleep in the backseat but would end up listening to the radio. Dad was lucky enough to get on the morning shift, so Jimmy’s swimming practice fit right in with his work schedule. At the pool, he would stay for a while and watch Jimmy do laps and exercises. I hated the smell of chlorine, the moist heat of the change rooms and the eerie way sound echoed off the ceilings and walls. The whole place made me claustrophobic. But Jimmy’s long brown arms would lift and fall as smooth and fast as a waterwheel. When Jimmy went to meets, my ears would ring with Dad’s shouts for hours. But on those early mornings, he would sit with his coffee between his hands, not moving at all, just watching Jimmy. Sometimes I would sit beside him. Most times, I would wait in the car for him to drive me to school. He would be quiet afterward, as if he’d just got out of church.

He never talked about it. I think he was afraid to jinx it. Jimmy in the Olympics. He grinned sideways when anyone mentioned it.

On the second day of grade eight at lunchtime, I saw Frank for the first time since we’d talked on the bottom steps. He didn’t look at me. He was hanging around with a group of older boys and none of them would deign to look me. I told myself it didn’t matter.

Erica was completely unsympathetic. “I can’t believe you were friends with him. He’s a psycho hosebag.”

It was hard not to feel dumb for having liked him. I kept walking and pretended not to see him either.

Soapberries don’t grow around Kitimat. If you want them, you have to trade for them. They look like cranberries, but can be squashed and whipped into a foam—Indian ice cream,
uh’s
in Haisla—which is mildly sweet but with a bitter, bitter aftertaste that takes some getting used to. Ma-ma-oo added a banana to hers to take some of the bitterness away, but the taste still made my eyes water. She’d brought back from Vancouver a case of soapberries that she’d traded for her oolichan grease, but otherwise she refused to talk about her trip. She had new medication, but as far as she was concerned, it had been a waste of time, she was healed.

I wasn’t a big fan of
uh’s
. But Ma-ma-oo had whipped up a big bowl the night she came back, and I hated to insult her when she was already grouchy. She spooned a generous helping of
uh’s
into my bowl. The texture was slippery and oily. I shoveled them down to be done as quickly as possible. I’d never actually finished a whole bowl before.

“Good, hey?” she said, pleased with the way I’d demolished her dish.

I nodded. She picked up my bowl, but instead of putting it in the sink, added some more
uh’s
. I kept smiling. I had no idea how I was going to finish it. Ma-ma-oo practically licked her bowl clean. She waited for me to finish, sipping her tea. I hoped she would go to the bathroom, so I could pour it down the sink, but she sat and looked mildly into the distance. I made my way through the second bowl. I ate slower. Ma-ma-oo
patted my hand. “We have enough for the whole winter,” she said.

“Oh, good,” I said.

By the end of the week, I had become used to the taste. I didn’t even notice the bitterness any more. It was like whipped cream, but not as nauseatingly sweet as the canned stuff Mom bought.

“What was Ba-ba-oo like?” I asked, sitting beside Ma-ma-oo on the couch.

She shrugged. “Sherman was a good man.”

“When did you fall in love with him?”

She brushed the hair from my face. “He was thirteen, maybe fourteen. Your age.”

“You don’t remember?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Mom phoned and said it was time to come home. As I walked in the front door, she was in the hallway, smiling. She sat me down at the kitchen table where Dad was waiting. In cautious, practised calm, they told me I had an appointment at the hospital. Everything I told the shrink, they assured me, would be in complete confidence.

Mom picked me up after school, and we went to the hospital and waited in a bare, green room. Ms. Jenkins came out and shook Mom’s hand, then introduced herself to me. She looked more frazzled than I did, although I suppose I got that impression mostly from her hair, which frizzed free of the two gold barrettes on either side of her head. What I tried not to focus on was the thing that was beside her, whispering in her ear. It had no flesh, just tight, thin skin over bones. Its fingers sank into her arms, its legs wrapped around
her waist as it clung to her like a baby. When Ms. Jenkins shook my hand, I caught a bit of what it was saying to her. “… screws her? Do you think he thinks of you? When he puts his hand on your thigh, does he imagine hers? Is he—”

“Mom?” I said.

“It’s okay, Lisa,” Mom said. “You don’t have to be nervous. Go on.”

“Please,” Ms. Jenkins said, closing the door behind her as she gestured for me to sit. “Call me Doris.”

I lowered myself slowly into a chair, and Ms. Jenkins sat across from me, so close that I could see the thing’s tongue sliding over her neck. I answered her questions quickly, wanting the hour to be over, wanting to stick my fingers in my ears and not listen to its whisperings.

“Do you think,” she asked me halfway through our first and last session, “that maybe these ghosts you dream about aren’t really ghosts, but are your attempt to deal with death?”

“No,” I said.

Her wide, blue eyes fixed on me. “Then you believe ghosts exist?”

“Yes,” I said.

It turned its bony head to study me. The room was still and warm. The air conditioning in the hospital wasn’t working very well. Sunlight glinted in Ms. Jenkins’s hair, the colour of the highlights fascinating—a tawny-gold, a light red, deep eggplant. “Are you sure?”

The thing unwrapped its arms from Ms. Jenkins and drifted across the room, hovering over me. It hummed like a high-tension wire.

“Yes,” my mouth moving by itself, my body not moving at all. I couldn’t take my eyes from it.

“Why?”

The thing bent its head, its lips near my ear. “For attention, I guess.”

“Good, this is good, Lisa.”

Its touch was like a breeze on wet skin. The air changed, became the way air is before a thunderstorm. While the thing was feeding, I kept seeing Mick’s body as Dad pulled it into the boat, Mick’s empty eye sockets in his lipless face, the fishing net embedded in his skin. Words came out of my mouth, ones the thing knew Ms. Jenkins wanted to hear, but I was drowning. I yanked myself away, and the thing fled back to Ms. Jenkins. My heart trip-hammered. I felt glued to the chair, heavy, lethargic.

“Lisa,” Ms. Jenkins said quietly, “I think this was a very good session. I’m sure that with a little work, you’ll be back to normal in no time. I’m glad we had this talk.”

My lips smiled. “Thank you. I feel a hundred times better.”

While Mom and Ms. Jenkins talked in the other room, I touched my face where the thing had touched me. It was numb, like I’d had a shot of Novocaine.

Snow stopped falling after midnight and I was doing English homework when the numbness wore off. Only me and a couple of yappy dogs were awake. I could hear them fighting over garbage cans in the street outside. I stood, went to the window and rubbed my temples where a headache was arching all the way back to my neck. A full moon poked out from behind
the clouds. The brighter stars shone in the blue-black sky. The ocean glistened like crumpled aluminum. I leaned my forehead against the window, and my breath steamed the glass. I knew it was wrong to want the thing to feed on me again, I knew it was bad. But without it, the night was long and empty and endless.

Heartbreak happens when less than 40 per cent of the heart is damaged. Blood pressure may be preserved, but the left ventricle cannot cope with all the blood returning to it and the lungs become congested. Medical treatment can usually correct the situation. If the muscle of the heart becomes too weak, blood forces its way through the wall into the pericardium or through the septum between the two ventricles. Both these forms of cardiac rupture are usually fatal very quickly, but occasionally can be repaired surgically.

If too much of the heart is damaged, there is usually not enough pumping power left to maintain the circulation. Shock sets in: the patient becomes pale, cold and sometimes blue, and is mentally confused. Death often follows within the next few hours.

The motor sputters. I snap back to attention and stop the boat. I’ve almost let the tank run dry. I shake it and hear dribbles swishing around the bottom. Stupid thing to do, I tell myself. I’m near Monkey Beach, but still too far to get there by paddling, especially against
the tide. I pour gas into the tank, crossing my fingers against any air bubbles.

With the first three yanks, nothing happens.

“Shit,” I say. “Shit, shit, shit.”

On the fourth yank, the motor grumbles, then it surges to life on the fifth and I start off slowly, waiting for a telltale sign that I’ve screwed up. Going slowly keeps me in the same spot. I gun the motor and crawl forward. In moments like this I wish I had a thirty-footer with two 115-horsepower engines ripping me through the water. A cover would be nice too. Then I wouldn’t have to stop and bail. The waves are less high, but the rain is still coming down in slightly less than biblical proportions.

Rounding the point, I check my watch. Almost time for lunch. Aunt Edith will be cooking something. She’ll put it in the fridge, ready to frown at me when I get back for wasting a good meal. I pull out some crackers and cram a handful into my mouth to settle my stomach.

On my side of the channel, coming up, is
Gee Quans
, which means “pushed-out point.” Lazy, shape-changing Weegit, the raven, was tired of paddling around the mountain on his way to Kitamaat and in a fit of energy, he tried to push the mountain down to create a shortcut. Halfway through, he took a break and never finished the job.
Na-ka-too
is on the opposite side of the channel. The two Haisla families who lived there used to play a game,
na-ka-too
, in which they would challenge each other to see who could bend a sapling the farthest. If I had more time, I would stop there. The beach still has sections of gravel ramps
among the rocks that were used as canoe launches, and are perfect for pushing a speedboat up when you land.