“We’ve been at this for a while, but you’re welcome to catch up,” Hanna says, motioning for me to sit down in the nearby corduroy reclining chair. I am surprised she even wants me to touch anything. I am covered head to toe in sand. When I sit my butt down, I sink into the soft comfort of its cushion. I feel weary and weak.
Bahadur looks at me with a forced smile, stressing each word to ensure I understand the torture they have just endured. “Hanna has shown me each and every one of these albums.” Blink. Blink.
“We got a bit sidetracked. Bahadur here was helping me sort out the last of our canned preserves. So many jars shattered in the floods. Next thing I know, I’m cracking open the spines of these old things, showing pictures of Beck during his hockey days.”
Bahadur and I share a glance. The album she holds has a soggy bottom, but the photos in the upper half remain intact, albeit discoloured. Hanna turns another creaky page of the album and uses her crooked fingers to pry open the adhesive sleeve. With one of her fingernails, she manages to lift up the corner of one photo, peel it off and hand it to me.
“Can you believe how handsome he was?” Hanna says wistfully. She leans her head on the tops of her knobby knuckles. In the photo, Beck wears full hockey gear, the blade of his stick extended in a staged slapshot. He has that awkward teen smile, where the grin is present but the lips do not want to betray the line of braces underneath. Even then, you can see a longing in his eyes. “When he was a toddler, I can’t tell you how many times people would stop me, wondering why on earth I would dye my child’s hair. I’d try to explain that that was in fact his natural colour. He was blessed with the reddest of hair. It faded a bit to more of a strawberry blond when he became a teen. It broke my heart when he enlisted and had to get that darned puppy cut.” She sits for a moment, looking to the right, as if imagining what could have happened had Beck remained in town, then looking to the left at the trajectory of what happened following that life-changing haircut, wincing a bit.
“You, young lady,” Hanna says, grabbing Bahadur’s knee with what is meant to be a loving and firm gesture. “I hope you never forget who you are.” And with that, the old woman uses her cane to get up from the couch and heads to the kitchen to continue inspection of the canned goods.
Bahadur throws me a look so horrified I think their eyes are going to fall out of their sockets.
At the kitchen table, with all of us eating a modest dinner of pickled beets, Ritz crackers and jam, we hear a vehicle approaching the farmhouse. The sound of wheels over pea gravel. The sight of headlights through the front curtains. Peter tells me and Bahadur to hide in the attic. Quick as lightning, Beck pulls a seemingly magical ladder from the ceiling over the hallway and tells us to ascend. Before he lifts the ladder into place, he looks at me and puts his fingers to his lips.
Bahadur and I crouch in complete darkness. We both feel with our hands, as silently as possible, for a place to hide. My toe jams on a heavy box and I stifle a scream. I paw around until I can get behind the box. I crouch down further and make myself as small as possible.
From downstairs, we hear the screen door open and close. We hear Hanna’s cane poke the ground before her towards the front of the farmhouse, then silence. A few muffled sentences.
The screen door slams open, and we can hear Beck shouting orders. Beck suddenly pulls down the attic ladder and calls out to us.
“Kay! Bahadur! Come down! Quick!”
We carefully inch our way down the ladder, cautious of the scene below. It’s Liv. It’s fucking Liv! It’s her. She wears a leather jacket like the Boots. Her hair is in a tight ponytail. She looks at me and smiles, but when she sees Bahadur her jaw and lips begin to tremble, her eyes pooling and wet.
“She made it here. She’s safe.”
Bahadur stops in their tracks. Liv takes their hand and guides them to the kitchen table. Huddled on a chair is someone wrapped in a blanket, wilted and weak. Bahadur almost loses their balance. I grab them at the elbows, but they propel themselves forward into an embrace.
“Firuzeh?! Is that you?” Bahadur lifts the blanket to confirm. Her head is shaven. Her face is swollen and bruised. Her breathing laboured. But it’s her. She attempts to stand at the sight of Bahadur, then collapses.
“Firuzeh! Fuck! Firuuuuuzeeeeeh!” Bahadur manages to brace her fall and sits her back down. All of us watch with our hands over our mouths as Bahadur weeps, gently rocking her in a pained embrace. “Look at you . . . Firuzeh . . . oh . . . what have they done to you? Oh no! I’m so sorry!”
Beck shakes his head out of its stupor and leaves the kitchen, returning with a first aid kit and a bottle of water.
Liv touches the surface of Firuzeh’s neck, checking her temperature. “Once we got to the country roads, we were able to move her out of the trunk of the car. By then she was looking pretty weary. She’s been having a hard time keeping any water down.”
Beck and Liv work together to get Firuzeh to drink, even a little. She takes in small sips, although most of it dribbles down her cut chin. I hold Firuzeh’s torso upright, while Bahadur gently wipes her bloody body using an old shirt dipped into bottled water, which Hanna has warmed up over the stove. I notice that Firuzeh’s fingernails are missing, but I say nothing.
“We’re going to clean you all up, okay?” Bahadur says between sobs. Peter leaves to cry in the living room in private.
Once Firuzeh is clean, Beck carries her to the cottage and sets her up on a bed. Bahadur sits beside the bed to watch for any progress.
“Did you want me to move your bed next to hers so you can rest?” I ask them.
“No. I won’t rest. I can’t rest. Not until I know she’s okay.”
From my bed, I spy Bahadur’s silhouette over Firuzeh’s sleeping body until they become a shadow in the darkness. In the middle of the night, I hear the cottage door creak open. It’s Hanna. Bahadur and I startle at her arrival.
“It’s just me.”
She shuffles and pokes her cane on the floor until she is beside Bahadur. She sits on the bed beside Firuzeh and shakes her head. “What a poor and awful sight.”
Bahadur remains still.
“I’m guessing you knew her? Were you close to her?” Bahadur cries quietly into their elbow. “Shhhhhh. Shhhhhh,” Hanna says lovingly. “You need to rest.” Hanna begins a rhythmic stroke down Bahadur’s back. “Whatever she’s gone through, it’s going to take a while for her to heal from. You need to rest so that when she wakes up, she sees a familiar face. You understand?” Bahadur nods wearily and succumbs to the stroke of Hanna’s hands. Once Bahadur is snoring softly, Hanna quietly makes her way out of the cottage and back to the farmhouse under the light of a half moon.
7
In my sleep, I dream about meeting your mother, holding my pillow and willing the dream to last forever. Perhaps if we work together we can both imagine the pieces of her well enough that we can conjure up her whole self.
We emerged onto street level outside King subway station to yet another political demonstration. We waited to catch a streetcar to head west towards Parkdale, but the throngs of protesters had the vehicle stalled at Victoria Street. Hundreds of people stood in three distinct columns, the rainwater from the night before splashing at everyone’s feet. The centre column’s folks held eight-foot-long posts with red dresses flapping like flags at the ends. The outside column’s folks held smoke grenades, each one emitting a different-coloured cloud. They passed in intentional silence. My eyes widened at the arresting image. You threw up your arms in frustration. “I guess we have to walk all the way to Dufferin Street.”