Monkey Beach (24 page)

In much the same way that Spanish is similar to French, Haisla is similar to the languages spoken by the people in Bella Bella and the people in River’s Inlet. If you know one language, the other is fairly easy to pick up because the grammar and sounds and vocabulary are comparable. Haisla, however, is as different from English as English is from Arabic or Irish.

The name Haisla first appeared in print in 1848 as Hyshallain. It has alternately been spelled Haishilla in 1884, Qaila in 1890 and Ha-isla in the early 1900s. Xa’isla is actually a word for the village or the people of the village who lived at the mouth of the Kitimat River. Originally, there were also two other Haisla groups; the Nalibila, those living upriver; and the Gilda’lidox, those living in the Kildala Arm, which is a few minutes ahead of me. Some time before the first white settlement, the three branches began to winter together at the village of the Xa’isla.

We stayed in this village at the bottom of the Kitimat River until about 1893, when the Methodist missionary George Raley established a rival village on an old settlement site in present-day Kitamaat Village. Converts moved there when they became Christianized. By the early 1900s, most of the Haisla had moved to Kitamaat Mission, as the village was called.

Ma-ma-oo told me that my mother’s grandmother would not move to the mission. She lived in the different summer and winter camps until she died. When I tried to ask Mom why her grandmother didn’t move, Mom told me not to listen to any of Ma-ma-oo’s stories.

Despite, or because of, Mom’s disapproval, I would sit with her on the couch and flip through her box of unsorted photos. I liked the ancient, crispy yellow pictures of Mimayus in her sweetheart necklines and Rita Hayworth hairdos and with her easygoing smile that reminded me of Mick’s. I found a photo of Mom standing between Mick and Dad, who were both wearing basketball uniforms. Mom was perfectly groomed, of course, and looking very ladylike. I said I must have been adopted. Ma-ma-oo laughed and said that when Mom was a little girl, she was always doing things like tying two cookie sheets to her shoes and attempting to ski because she’d seen one of her movie star idols in a magazine, elegantly poised on the slopes of Switzerland. Mom flew down the hill, hit a bump and crashed into a bush. She broke her leg and earned the nickname “Crash.”

“Did Dad have a nickname?” I asked.

Ma-ma-oo frowned thoughtfully. “Some people, they called him Mick’s Shadow because he does everything Mick does. But,” she grimaced, “I never did like that name. Albert, he loved the heels of bread. I baked twelve loaves one day. They were on the table to cool. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, all the loaves had no ends! He cut them off and hid down the beach and ate them.”

He was hard to get mad at, she explained, because he would do things like ruin her favourite pinking shears cutting wildflowers and branches to fill the living room because it was her birthday and he wanted her to wake up to something special.

“Do you know what we called Mick? ‘Monster.’ Oh,
he was a terror. He’d jump out at you from closets, grab your feet from under the bed or sneak up behind you and tickle you. He loved to scare people, especially his sisters. Poor Albert was either being scared by Mick, or Trudy and Kate were putting makeup on him or practising new hairstyles. He had lovely hair.”

“Why is Aunt Trudy mad at you now?” I said.

Her smile became sad. “We had a fight a long time ago. Very angry fight.”

“About what?”

She touched my hair. “Old-people things. You’ll learn about them, but not now.”

“How come?”

“Look!” she said, pointing to the TV. “I think they’re going to fight!”

I knew she was changing the subject, but decided to let it go.

Alexis and Crystal circled each other. We stopped and waited, but they just poked fun at each other and Alexis left, reappearing after the commercial in a sparkling white dress, trying to seduce some woman’s husband at a cocktail party.

“Na’,”
Ma-ma-oo said. “He’ll never make you happy.”

“Ma-ma-oo, it’s just TV.”

“Yes, yes. I know,” she said, absorbed in Alexis’s unsubtle flirting.

There were only two channels, but there were rumours that we were going to get a satellite dish in the village. Dad said it wasn’t likely, because it was so expensive. Ma-ma-oo’s TV was on its last legs—everyone looked green and the top of the picture
leaned to the left, so Alexis’s and Crystal’s big hair looked very windblown. Meanwhile, Ma-ma-oo liked it when they got into mud fights. Now Alexis waltzed with a man she was trying to seduce. The man played it cool, but when he thought she wasn’t looking, he’d give her big cow eyes.

“Na’
, dummy!” Ma-ma-oo yelled at Alexis. “Don’t go with him! Are you blind? He’s after your money!”

Frank stared at me sometimes. When I caught him, he’d roll his eyes all the way back so only the whites showed, or he’d flip his eyelids up so they were red, or he’d do something equally silly and distracting. But the times he didn’t know I knew he was watching me, he had this mopey, strained look, like he really needed to pee but had to hold it.

I caught him again when we were hanging out at the rec centre. We were horsing around in the bleachers, waiting for the junior boys basketball practice to start. They were all on the team. Pooch was trying to bounce a basketball off my head. I whacked his arm and the basketball went flying. I smacked the back of his head.

“Ow!” he said indignantly.

“You goof,” I said.

“Now look what you did,” Pooch said, rubbing his neck. One of the little kids had grabbed the ball and was running across the gym with it. Pooch took off after him. Cheese lifted one cheek off the bleachers and blew a big, juicy fart.

“Earthquake!” Frank shouted.

Cheese followed it up with a reverberating burp. He turned around and smiled at us like he was waiting for compliments.

“Holy shit,” I said, scooting three seats back as pungent waves wafted up towards me and Frank.

“Like yours smell like roses,” Cheese said.

“Mine,” I informed him, “don’t smell like something crawled up my butt and died.”

“You’re fucking gross,” Cheese said.

I turned to Frank to back me up and caught him giving me one of those I-need-to-pee looks. It weirded me out enough that I couldn’t speak. Frank pretended to fall off his seat and grabbed his throat like he was choking. Cheese kicked Frank’s foot. Pooch came bounding back and stopped dead when he reached Cheese’s odour zone.

“You gotta start wearing deodorant,” Pooch said.

None of the guys liked to hang around my house, because Mom made them nervous. Pooch’s house was like Ma-ma-oo’s, old and drafty. Frank’s house was a party palace, so we usually ended up in Cheese’s house, which meant long sessions of listening to his guitar-playing. Cheese was a huge Van Halen fan and wanted to be the Native David Lee Roth, but he couldn’t sing a note, so he settled for the electric guitar. He’d bought the guitar at a garage sale, and then sent away for an Easy-Play Van Halen fingering book, and went at it nonstop, his brothers told me, rolling their eyes. On the last day of classes at the beginning of the Christmas break, Pooch, Frank and me sprawled across Cheese’s bed reading his
Mad
magazine collection.

“You’re killing me,” said Frank after one really long session, in which Cheese played along with every song on the album
Women and Children First
.

“Up yours,” Cheese said.

“You should play punk,” Pooch said helpfully. “You just have to be loud to play in a punk band.”

“Punk sucks,” Cheese said.

“So do you,” Frank said.

“You’re gonna be laughing out the other side of your mouth when I’m famous. I’m gonna have a big house, six cars, shitloads of money and marry a model. Not one of the dogs in the village.”

I snorted. “Models’ll be dying to marry you, Mr. America.”

Frank laughed. “Yeah, Cheese, you’d be lucky to screw a poodle.”

“At least I got plans.”

“I got plans. I’m getting the hell out of here,” Frank said.

“Wow,” Cheese said, practising one of his rock poses, legs apart, one hand on the neck of the guitar, the other hand pumped in the air. “That’s an impressive plan.”

“You must have spent years thinking that one up,” Pooch said.

“Yeah, about as much time as you and your ‘I’m gonna work in the potlines and buy a truck’ plan.”

“It’s gonna be a big truck,” Pooch said. “And you’re gonna be knocking around the village till you’re a hundred.”

“Excu-use me. A big truck.”

While they argued, I folded the back of the
Mad
magazine. Unfolded, it showed a guy getting his diploma. Folded, he was chugging a huge beer glass in a frat house.

As I was walking home, I realized that I hadn’t given the future much thought. It would be easy to go along
with Mom and Dad’s plans, since they were assuming I’d go off to university. Then again, I couldn’t see myself going in for another four years of school after I graduated. The only thing more painful than that would be getting all my teeth extracted without anaesthetic.

Absorbed in thoughts, I didn’t notice the girl until I bumped into her. She grinned at me, her arms crossed. I didn’t recognize her for a moment until she said, “Lisa? Jeez. I thought you were a guy.”

“Tab?”

“In the flesh.”

I gawked at her. The thrown-together look she’d usually sported had been replaced by biker-chick black and studs. She had silver earrings looped all the way up one ear and a single gold hoop in the other.

“I didn’t know you were coming up for Christmas. How long are you here?”

She shrugged. “As long as I want.”

She pulled her jacket open and showed me her tattoo. Not a homemade job, either. She had actually gone to a tattoo parlour in Vancouver. A snarling black tiger gripped her muscle on her upper arm, its claws drawing tattoo blood.

“My boyfriend has exactly the same one in the same place,” she said.

“You have a boyfriend?”

“You don’t?”

“Boy,” I said. “You must love him a lot.”

“Nope,” she said. “I just wanted him to pay for the tattoo.”

“You want to come over for dinner?”

“Sure.”

Mom was attempting to hold a gingerbread house wall up when we walked into the kitchen. The gingerbread house looked burnt and the roof was lopsided and she’d slathered it in red and green Smarties that bled all over the icing. Alexis swished her tail back and forth as she sat on one of the kitchen chairs and watched Mom’s progress with attentive bobs of her head.

“Come hold this,” she said, then did a double take when she saw Tab. “Oh! My goodness, how … grown-up you look, Tabitha. Merry Christmas! How long are you here?”

Tab shrugged.

I eagerly eyed the candies. “What do you want me to hold?”

“This stupid wall won’t stay up.”

“You need toothpicks,” Tab said, kicking off her boots. “That’s what I saw on TV. And you get some tall glasses and put the walls between them until they dry, then you put the roof on.”

“Now you tell me,” Mom said.

We managed to get the walls up, but Mom had made the roof too steep, so no matter how long we held the pieces in place, they slid off and eventually broke. The icing hardened that night to the consistency of steel and Dad chipped a molar when he tried to sneak one of her roof slabs. Mom planned on using the remaining gingerbread house as a cookie bowl until Alexis left a mouse in it.

“A comment on my baking?” Mom said to Alexis. She picked up a pair of tongs she’d set aside especially for the purpose of disposing of my cat’s victims. Then
she gingerly lifted the mouse by the tail and chucked it in a plastic bag.

“Her contribution to the Christmas spirit,” Dad said.

“Let’s put your stuff upstairs,” I said to Tab.

Tab hauled her duffel bag over her shoulder and followed me to my room. She opened my window and lit a cigarette.

“Put it out!” I hissed. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”

Mom came into my room to see if we were settling in all right. Tab dropped the cigarette out the window, but you could still smell it in the room. I thought Mom would throw a hairy, but she just asked if we needed more blankets.

“I’m fine,” Tab said.

“We should phone your mother and tell her where you are.”

“She knows.”

“Oh,” Mom said, closing the door as she left. “Well, you know where the towels are. Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” Tab took off her jacket. She stretched her arms over her head.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

She glanced at me warily. “Me too.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a book. “Do you want me to do your horoscope?”

“Cool.”

Later than night, Tab pinched my arm until I woke up. “Ow, quit it.”

“There’s someone in the room,” she whispered, eyes bugged out with fear.

I sat up, instantly awake. Please, I thought, don’t be the little man. Tab leaned over and I heard a metallic rasp, then saw the silver flash of a long knife. She turned her head, making a slow sweep of the room.

Alexis leaped on the bed with a mouse skull in her mouth. She dropped it in my lap. “Mrrr.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Tab said. She slipped the knife back in her bag. She pushed Alexis off the bed. “You fucking freaky little bitch, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Mrrr.”

“Same to you.” Tab started to laugh. She flopped back against the bed.

“Where’d you get the knife?”

“Christmas present. You’re lucky,” she said just as I was closing my eyes, so quietly I barely heard her. “Mom’s been hammered since Mick died. At least your parents just pretend it didn’t happen.”