Walking down 20th in Saskatoon, well beyond the hipster hangouts, I pass a rumply dark green and brown clump of chums clustered around an old crusty bicycle by the dollar store. They’re planning something for later. Sounds vague. Sounds noncommittal. Sounds like more of the same. One of them is to the side of the circle, shaking out his hair like he’s applied dry shampoo. The bright pink of my coat catches his eye. He makes a pivot on his heel and decides to walk beside me.
“Hello there.” He smiles at me. I do the usual woman once over when I’m approached by a strange man: he’s about forty pounds lighter than me, there are people across the street, he’s alone, his hands are empty. My purse is on the other side. Okay.
“Why hello. I love the sun today. Just gorgeous.” I offer.
This perks him up. He straightens as he walks: punchy dandy.
“You going to church? Cuz I’ll go to church with you.”
This surprises me. I chuckle.
“Well, I might have just taken you up on that offer except that it’s Saturday and I usually go to church on Sunday.”
He scuttles up closer to me.
“You gotta speak up. I don’t hear so well. My ear drums got punctured.”
“How did that happen, if I may ask?” I turn to him, truly surprised, speaking louder. We make eye contact. His eyes look round and warm brown and kind of frightened. Nothing hard around the edges. Though two of his teeth are busted. That must catch on the lip I would think.
“I saw my Dad clean his ears when I was a little boy and I thought I would do the same with mine. But I used a pencil.”
He talks briefly about his time in the hospital healing his ears, where he’s lived in Saskatchewan and now he’s in Saskatoon. He’s biding his time until we come to an intersection.
“Stop.” he says.
“This is an important spot.”
I obey. We stand there for a moment in silence.
“This is where my Father died.” He says. “Right here. Except more to the left.”
“…heart attack, or…”
“He was hit by a drunk driver. I mean, he was drunk too. But. He flew in the air eighty feet. I don’t even know how far eighty feet is.”
“Far enough to devastate” I say.
We stand there for a second.
“I”m sorry you’ve lost your father. Were you quite young?” I keep walking.
“Twenty six.”
I want to tell him that I lost my Dad too but I don’t think sharing my story is going to do anything for him or begin to bridge the huge economic and cultural gulf between us. He wants time for himself and his story only and I can give it to him. That I can give. He wants to be seen. He wants to be heard. Yeah. I can do that.
“So, I’m thinking should I smoke crack this afternoon or should I go to the anti-marijuana demonstration?”
“Those are quite the extreme options you got there. Is there something in the middle?”
“You wanna go?”
“Nah. Thanks. I don’t smoke, but I think legalization is a good thing.”
He hangs back and stands in the middle of the residential street we’re crossing.
“How about you pay me twenty bucks and I won’t get run over by a car today?”
“How about you go to the demonstration instead? it sounds far less painful.”
He laughs and catches up with me.
“You know I was just kidding you, right? I was just pulling your leg? I wasn’t serious about wanting anything.”
“I figured.”
“So, we going to church or what?”
“If you got a church that’s open at 1pm on a Saturday…”
“Nah.”
I decide to turn down a residential street towards the river. If I’m gonna have company, it might as well be scenic. But this turns him off.
“Okay, well, I gotta get going now.”
I stop and smile at him, meaning it.
“Hey, okay. Nice to meet you. I hope your day goes well.”
“You too, lady.”
I continue on down a residential street that is surprisingly poor. Lots of yards have junk in them, old battered cars out front, a horror show empty playground, broken fences. Where the hell am I? Way up on the alphabet, Avenue H from A. I see some homes ahead though that have been fixed up, gentrified. That confirms I’m heading towards the river. Okay. So the streets curve a little, I see, to make room for Victoria Park. Got it now.
Pretty town. Now I’m back to the Paris of the Prairies. White men on park benches reading books, white women in yoga pants, walking little shivering long haired chihuahuas. Back to my demographic, me and my cooling London Fog and my pink raincoat. I look back down the street I came from where the story was far more interesting…I close my eyes and see a clean eared father flying through the air eighty feet. I hope for a split second it was exhilarating.
Probably not. Probably killed by the impact and he flew through the air already dead or in great pain or God let’s hope knocked out at least.
As I walk along the river bank I am now completely alone and it’s gorgeous out: big dark bare trees, old heritage buildings to my left, the river is twinkling in the sun. I am here to catch my play opening. Saw it last night. And finally now I can have the conversation that I can have with nobody. I rant my notes to the tiny stripedy chipmunks and the sparrows, my notes that most obviously went completely ignored from the first production. But I have to let it go. Big things to me are small things to others. The show is selling well and people are enjoying it and there is a lot to love. I’m grateful for that. Time to move on to the next project.
It’s really lovely to be back in Saskatoon. I haven’t been here since I played in The Full Monty eight years ago. Fun show. And I had little Nora with me. She was only five. I would walk through this very park to get to work. Ah yes, here’s the gazebo. Here’s where I’d often see pelicans…
I get to hang out a bit with Johnna Wright this trip. She is the lit manager and a director for Persephone (and the AD is her husband, Del) She’s a no nonsense smartgirl with a great eye and a keen intelligence that comes across in her work. I have always really liked her as a person. She’s genuine. She’s loyal. We finally get to work together this summer. She just cast me in Bard on the Beach. I’ll be in Alls Well that Ends Well. I really look forward to it and I’m very honoured to be asked. It features largely a South Asian cast. I’ll work so hard she will hopefully never need to rant her notes to innocent park dwelling creatures.
I sit on the park bench to observe a huge white and beige jack rabbit hop by. My goodness! He’s so large he’s almost intimidating! What a beauty. I look out at the water and enjoy the fact that my fitbit is giving off firecrackers because I’ve walked 10,000 steps. I think about my Uncle Ed. He’s miraculously still with us! Oh, I should phone Amberlyn (my cousin, his daughter) I do. She’s not home. Of course she’s not, she has four boys. Then I call Cuca, Nora’s 95 year old auntie on her Dad’s side. I love Cuca, she’s ferocious. I ask her how she’s doing and she cackles, “Ah me, I feel like I’m young! Listen, I can go downstairs, eat my dinner, see my friends, what is there to complain about?” She talks to me very loudly and asks questions without waiting for the answers and then asks me to come visit Toronto and to say hello to my little Misha and Mikey and love you bye-bye.
I get up and continue to walk back to the apartment, this time I phone my mother-in-law. I get all my overdue calls done. She picks up. I really love Judy. Like Cuca she always looks on the positive side of things and approaches the inevitable aches and pain of the aging process with good humour and honesty and quickly skips to a brighter subject. We talk for a while about family and church and health. She asks about my Uncle. She would call herself just slightly left of centre on most things. I like her politics. She’s a smart woman, a retired nurse. It’s in her bones to approach life with the art of sensible compassion. She’s coming to visit this winter. Good.
And good thing I am starting to head back. The sun is setting quickly and the glass in the half constructed high-rise beside me is pink in the waning light. My driver from the airport warned me to only walk in my neighbourhood during the day because at night I may become a target of rage. My driver explained that the indigenous drop in centre was just up the street. “I mean, they have a right to be angry, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no use in you being a target.”
Okay. I have taken that advice, I’m heading home. But interestingly, statistically, I’m much much more likely to be assaulted by a member of my own family.
I cross the streets, looking very carefully, I stick to the lit side of the road, I avoid the darkness of the park, I avoid two men hanging out in the parking lot behind the farmer’s market. This is all habit. This is all instinct, being a woman. Nothing new. I have been followed home several times before. I have been assaulted numerous times by strangers and people I know. And when I say that I mean physically grabbing my private parts without my permission or worse. It has always been men and only one woman, and they’ve all been white. It’s hard not to relive a bit of it all every time I am on the alert. I guess it’s the mind’s way of protecting itself. Before I enter my apartment I make sure nobody is looking to see where I live. I enter quickly and double check the lock on the door. I pull the blinds so nobody can see me. Then I conclude my safety ritual by remembering the men who have loved and protected me: my Uncle Ed, Morris, Zio Ross, that cop, my brother, my step Dad, my husband, “the guys” who come in May to work on our place! …good men in my life. So good.
I head to the stove and heat up some soup. I am really haunted by that flying Dad and that boy’s punctured ears. How did his ears really get punctured? Was it the Dad? If you puncture one ear why would you go ahead and puncture the other? Something isn’t right about that story, that’s for sure. Being a writer I want to tie it all in, his life and mine. I want to find parallels and discover a resolve. I want to see the light in the darkness. But there is none that I can see. Other than he was heard. I guess that’s important. And I’m left with the discomfort of an unresolved story. And that’s important too.
I walk around the living room of my airbnb and notice a framed limited edition print to the left of the TV. I pull it off the wall to see if it’s real or appropriated. It’s real. It’s by Bill Helin, an indigenous artist from Parksville BC. The painting is called, “The Raven Stealing the Sun.” I put it back on the wall; I handle it respectfully.
The sun is down now, the streets are dark and bare outside my very new apartment. Off in the distance, out from the dangerous side of town, perhaps the empty creepy park, I hear a woman squeal suddenly with laughter. A young man calls her back to him. She is cajoled, happily. Perhaps the park isn’t creepy at all. Maybe it’s delicious, swinging on those swings. Hidden by the dark sweeping arms of the evening trees. Two lovers are out there snuggling into the silence of their own private story.
