Monkey Beach (8 page)

“Mother,” Aunt Trudy said.

“If you get bored, I have a Pac-Man game.” I offered it to Ma-ma-oo. “You can use it if you want.”

“Lisa,” Mom said in a warning tone.

“If someone’s speaking, you have to listen,” Ma-ma-oo said. “You have to show them respect, even if—”

“Yes, be a good girl, Lisa,” Aunt Trudy interrupted. “Be a fucking little lady. See what that gets you.”

Mom asked me to get her a coffee, and when I came back no one at our table wanted to talk.

Dad and Jimmy arrived as dinner was winding down. Jimmy barreled towards Mom, wrapping his arms around her waist. He held up the medal he was now wearing around his neck and she kissed the top of his head, telling him how proud she was.

When Dad came in, he waved at Mom, then at me, but he stopped short when he saw Ma-ma-oo and Aunt Trudy sitting side by side. He advanced slowly while Jimmy was excitedly telling Mom how he kicked butt, but Mom was only pretending to listen, was nervously sneaking looks back and forth at Ma-ma-oo and Aunt Trudy.

“Come on, Jimmy-boy,” Dad said. “Let’s put that medal with the rest. We’re going to have to build a trophy case soon.”

“Aw, Dad,” Jimmy said.

“Let’s go.”

“See ya later, Ma-ma-oo!”

Ma-ma-oo watched them leave, hands locked around her cup. They stopped to talk to Josh, who laughed at something Jimmy said.

“You be careful, Trudy. Josh isn’t right.”

Trudy gave an exaggerated sigh. “You think he’s not good enough for me? Or is it the other way around?”

Ma-ma-oo’s lips thinned to a tight line.

Mick came back to the table as there was a bustle of activity at the head table. He pulled up a chair and wedged himself between Ma-ma-oo and Aunt Trudy, loudly announcing that he wanted to be between the two most beautiful women in the whole of Kitamaat Village.

Jimmy and Dad came back moments before Rick, the master of ceremonies, opened the floor to anyone who wanted to speak. Marty Gable stood up and there was a subdued sigh from the crowd. Marty the Mouth—the man who had never heard the saying “Silence is golden”—began with his birth and worked his way up to his retirement from commercial fishing. Everyone
around me was looking glazed. I couldn’t figure out why Ma-ma-oo and Aunt Trudy didn’t get along.

Mick came over to our house for coffee. The grown-ups sat around the kitchen table. I listened to them from the front porch while I waited for Aunt Trudy to bring Tab over. Trudy, Mick and Mick’s friend Josh were going out to the bars and I could hear Mick trying to talk Dad into going along. Aunt Trudy’s green car pulled into our driveway. She waved at me as Tab stepped out. It occurred to me then that if Dad didn’t talk much to Ma-ma-oo, Aunt Trudy didn’t talk to her at all. I wondered if it was for the same reason.

“Why doesn’t your mom talk to Ma-ma-oo?” I asked Tab when we were reading comics in my bedroom.

Tab sighed. “Don’t you pay attention?”

“I pay attention,” I said, getting indignant.

“No, you don’t. Ba-ba-oo was an asshole. He beat Gran. Instead of sending him away, she sent Mick and Mom to residential school.”

“And?”

“God, you can be so dense,” she said.

If Mick and Dad hadn’t been brothers, I wonder if they would have ever spoken to each other. Dad had been to school to become an accountant, but he quit the firm he was with after they passed him up for promotion four times. He spent a few years working at home, but the money wasn’t good and he hated the tax-time crunch. He tried working for the village council, but the politics made him crabby and tired. Working at the
potlines in Alcan was steady—he got to leave his job at the end of the day and didn’t have to think about it again until the next shift and, he told me once, he made more money. Uncle Mick, on the other hand, hated straight work. After he drifted out of A.I.M., he fished on Josh’s seiner, did some logging, beachcombing, trapping, fire fighting, tree planting—whatever paid his rent. He rarely used his apartment because he liked camping better. Dad didn’t like to be anywhere you couldn’t get cable.

They shared a fishing net, which meant that Dad had bought it and paid for gas for the boat while Mick did most of the actual net-checking. Mick took me out sometimes, when I behaved and managed to stay out of trouble for a few days at a time. Mom bought me a life jacket and said that if she caught me even once without it, she’d tan my butt from here to kingdom come.

Our net was a five-minute ride from the docks. One end of the net was attached to the shore, and the other to a buoy, a few hundred feet out. The net was held up by a series of corks, which was how you could tell if you’d been skunked or not. If a section of the corks was underwater, it meant that the net was holding up some weight. It could fool you, though, and just be driftwood. We would pull up beside the net, and Mick would cut the engine. With one cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he would reach down and, beginning from the buoy end, pull the net up section by section, pulling out weeds and gunk as he went. The weight of the net and Mick together would make the speedboat tilt so the bilge shifted and gurgled
under our feet. At first I was afraid, convinced we were going to tip over, but after a few times, I trusted Mick to know if we were in danger. Sometimes, the fish would still be alive, and Mick let me club them on the head. I wanted to prove I wasn’t a wussy girl. He’d shake his head and grin, telling me not to turn them into mush.

That summer, the ocean was clouded with jellyfish—small, translucent ones with an oily rainbow sheen. They got stuck in the net, and when we were pulling it up, they stung my hands. Mick kept smoking and pulling. I swallowed my tears, and that night my hands burned. I smeared them with Noxema. I swore to myself that if Mick didn’t say anything, neither would I.

He baby-sat us five more times that summer. If it was hot, we’d make a trip to the corner store and get double-scooped ice cream and candy. Mom protested, but he said it was his job as an uncle to get us hypered up before he sent us home. If it was raining, he’d drive us around to the mall or the library. Once, he took us to Mount Layton Hot Springs and stayed in the hot tub while me and Jimmy tired ourselves out in the big pool.

The last time he was supposed to baby-sit us that summer, Mom dropped us off but stopped outside his door, listening to the sounds of breaking glass and swearing. Neighbours cautiously stood in the hallway, staring at Mick’s door. The walls vibrated as things were thrown around inside. Jimmy’s eyes went wide and he held my hand. Mom looked down at us. “Go wait in the car.”

I took Jimmy back, put his seat belt on him and told him to stay put. I ran back to Mick’s apartment. The door was open. Mick was in the living room, pulling apart his eight-track tapes. Mom watched him, hugging herself. Finally, she reached out and tried to stop him. She said something I couldn’t hear.

“He’s dead!” Mick yelled at her. “Don’t you get it? D-E-A-D.”

She took a step back. He crumpled and sat with a heavy thud, the pile of broken eight-tracks crunching under him.

She went over to the phone. As she talked in a low voice, Mick’s head rolled listlessly, as if he couldn’t keep it still. Mom turned around and I ducked out of sight before she could spot me.

Wow, I thought. He’s really drunk.

I went back and waited in the car. Jimmy asked if we were still going swimming. He looked so hopeful when he said this, I said maybe.

Mick’s drinking buddy, Josh, walked up the apartment building steps. As he headed inside, I slouched in my seat so he wouldn’t see me. The times that he came to pick up Mick at our house, he would stagger over, wanting to talk about their glory days on the basketball team when they were teenagers. If he cornered you, he’d go on and on about how hard he’d trained, how good he’d been and what a great team he’d made with Mick. Mom came out of the building a few minutes after Josh went in, frowning, but no longer looking lost.

“Uncle Mick’s not feeling too good,” she said as she clambered into the car.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

She slammed her seat belt in and gave the ignition a yank. “The world has come to an end,” she said very dryly. “Elvis is dead.”

“Who’s Elvis?” Jimmy said.

Mick took off for almost a month and we later learned he’d driven to Graceland. Not knowing this at the time, Dad phoned and phoned, and when Mick didn’t answer, Dad banged on his door, yelling at him to let them in. Mom phoned Mick’s friends, his ex-girlfriends, his fishing buddies, all the family. By the time he came back, he’d lost his job and his apartment. My parents put him on the missing person’s list and had to call the police department to tell them he was okay. When Mick said that if they pushed the panic button every time he took off, they’d be grey-haired by the time they were forty. Dad picked up his brother’s eight-track machine and threw it against the TV.

Dad didn’t talk to his brother for two weeks. If Mick came over, Dad would go into his bedroom. He hung up if Mick tried to call. But the more he ignored Mick, the more cheerful his brother became. He was staying with Josh, but visited our house almost every night, trying to make Dad say something even though Dad was ignoring him.

Mick came by with an offering of freshly killed deer. As he held the carcass in his arms, covered in a blue tarp, Dad stood in the doorway, not letting him in.

“I’ll just leave it here then,” Mick said.

His footsteps clunked down the stairs. Before he got to his truck, Dad yelled out, “Do you expect me to carry this in myself?”

Late one afternoon, Erica and I were playing hopscotch in front of the rec centre. Erica was cheating, but I had to let her, or she’d go home and I’d have no one to play with but dumb old Jimmy. It was getting cold. The streetlight flickered on early, then spasmed and flashed like a strobe light, yellow against the blue sky. Erica was almost finished, balancing on one foot as she bent over to pick up her rock. As she straightened, I saw her freeze, then she was running, her shoes clicking fast against the pavement. I turned just as someone pushed me down.

I put my hands out and managed to scrape only my palms. Three boys about my age circled me on their bikes, laughing. One of them was Frank, who kept trying to run me over. I had to roll fast to keep out of his way. He was bigger than anybody in grade two, and if he decided he didn’t like you, you were in trouble. His hair flopped all over his face and his shirt flapped as he drove his bike towards me.

“If you touch me again, I’m telling my mom!” I shouted.

“Mommy!” Frank said, making another run at me.

“Waaa!” the other guys said, pretending to cry. “Waaaa! She wants her mommy.”

“Go on and cry!” Frank said. “Wussy baby.”

“Wus-sy ba-by, wus-sy ba-by!” the other two sang.

“I’m not!” I said. “You take that back or I’ll … I’ll—”

“Moooommy! Mommy!” Frank said, kicking my arm as he rode by. “Come on, wussy baby, cry.”

I stood up, blood leaking through my shirt. My lips trembled, and I felt the first hot tears sliding down my
face. Frank pointed at me and laughed. The others joined in. He was going to tell everybody at school that I was a wussy baby, and that was what they were going to call me forever. Last week, he’d chased Erica around, and when he and his friends caught her, they pulled her dress up. She was wearing pink panties but they told everyone she was wearing diapers. They still called her Pissy-missy.

Rage scorched my face. I balled my fists up, held them in front of me and rammed into Frank. His bike tipped over and he yelped. I landed on top of him. I sank my teeth into the closest part of him, which happened to be his butt. He howled and tried to punch me off, but I dug my teeth in harder, until I could taste his blood through his shorts. I wrapped my arms around his leg and held on with all my might.

He was really screeching now, scrambling to get out from under the bike and away from me. As he dragged me with him, my legs scraped against the chain and the pedal. His friends had jumped off their bikes by now and were kicking any part of me they could get to, sometimes hitting Frank.

Frank punched me in the face. It hurt so bad that my eyes swam in their sockets. I fell back, pulling him with me. We rolled together on the ground, and I made my hands into claws and raked his arms.

Someone was shouting at us to stop fighting, and I saw Erica’s brother J.J. above us as he kicked Frank’s friends, who hopped on their bikes and rode away. Frank rolled away from me and sprinted after them. I thought of chasing him, but I was too slow so I stomped on his bike. The spokes bent and the chain flew off.
J.J. watched me, grinning. When I got tired and paused, he said, “You done?”

“Oh my God,” Mom said when J.J. carried me into our house. I cried so hard that I couldn’t tell her what had happened.

J.J. said, “If you think she looks bad, you should see the other kids.”

Mom gave him a dark dirty look and took me from him, lowering me slowly to the ground and giving me a gentle hug.

While she was cleaning my cuts, Mick dropped by. He drove us to Emergency. Frank and his mother were already in the waiting room. She pursed her lips and stood. Mom tucked me behind her and glared.