I’m headed to the library in an hour or so. I thought, since I’ll be in your neighbourhood, maybe you’d like to go to the Robo Mart for ice cream before your shift?”
“I might,” says Tamara. She sounds sleepy. Is eleven a.m. too early to call a stripper? I do the math. Last call is at two a.m., so she must get off work at least four hours earlier than I do, and I’m already awake. I hardly sleep more than a few hours a night anymore. Exhaustion may be the reason I so breezily dialled Tamara’s number to ask her out on something as wholesome as an ice cream date. Anyway, I had to call sometime. It’s definitely my move. “Will you buy me a soft serve with sprinkles?” she asks. “Will you hold my hand?”
“I could do that. Well—”
“Well?”
“Well, if, say, the graduating class of ’86 happens to be having a reunion in the Robo parking lot, then I’d rather those assholes didn’t see us. Or, like, if there is a big rig truck fuelling up, and it’s covered in Trucking for Jesus stickers, then maybe not.” This is my attempt at humour—though I’m not actually joking.
“If I worried about what assholes think, I’d never leave my house.” Tamara doesn’t find me funny. “Never mind. Scratch what I just said. No public affection in front of assholes. That’s reasonable. And Star, I’ll meet you at the library. I got to return a couple VHS tapes. You ever watch that American Masters series? I’m totally addicted. I have overdues on Lillian Gish and James Baldwin.”
My cheek accidentally mashes into the number buttons. The phone beeps in our ears. I almost blurt out, “I studied him in my Race and Sexuality course,” but I stop myself. Embarrassing. She’s so perfect she watches James Baldwin documentaries when she’s not working as a stripper, and meanwhile I’m a U of T dropout who can barely operate a telephone.
I do my makeup on the bus. I need to buy myself time alone at the library before Tamara arrives. The driver addresses me in the rear view mirror. “You got lipstick on your teeth. I can see it from here,” she says. She’s right. I tilt my pressed-powder compact to see an eggplant-coloured smear across my incisors. Today the bus driver’s wearing a Rush Power Windows tour T-shirt. “You’re the gal who works nights at The Point, aren’t you?”
My first thought: She knows I’m queer and on my way to meet a girl. What did I do to give myself away? Lesbo written on my forehead.
“My friend Bobby lives there. Bobby says I ought to come talk to you.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t usually tell people this, but Bobby, she was saying how things are getting better between her and her old man since you helped them out. So, I was wondering if maybe you could help me out too.” She slides her aviator sunglasses down her nose, winks at me with a swollen black eye, tilts her head to show an inch-long laceration held together by two bits of blue tape. She pushes her shades up again. I roll my eyes up so I don’t start to cry. Crystal Beach bitches don’t need my pity.
But I have nothing else to give her, nothing real, nothing I can control. And yet I find myself asking her name in a low soothing voice, moving up to the seat directly behind her. She says it again, twice—“I don’t usually tell people this”—before spilling. Her story unfolds between bus stops. By the time I reach the library I’ve told her which nights I work at The Point and a description of the cabin so she can easily find me. There has to be something I can do for her. She needs me—needs something. What the hell am I thinking?
At the library, my fingers drift across public records. I’m distracted. Barbara is working. I hear her babbling near the literature section, then by the periodicals—getting closer. She patters up to me, her navy blue pumps squeaking. I hate her shoes. I think about saying something callous and true about how U of T’s library was ten times bigger than this two-bit book room.
“I’ve hardly seen you for days, Star.” What she means is we’ve been avoiding each other since we fought over my paycheque. Barbara wraps me in an awkward hug that I reciprocate after a second or two. “What a nice surprise you came to visit me.”
Talk. To. Your. Mother. Normal. Right? I coach myself: Leaving yesterday’s quarrels in yesterday is what it means to be family. Today is a new day. “Ma, I need to find a boat. Can you help me track down the SS Canadiana?”
“The Crystal Beach boat? Did those ‘float the boat’ guys ask you for money too? Why they want to get the boat running again is beyond me. Sure, it’s our history. What part of our history hasn’t gone to shit? Oops, I’m not supposed to say ‘shit’ at work. But out of all the lost causes to take up. How about these guys raise money for daycare or something? You know how many single moms live around here? Do you know that boat ran on coal? Coal! Even if they managed to restore it, who’s going to pay to ride that thing? I told those guys, I said—”
“Ma!” I interrupt. “Will you just listen?” Barbara’s body language shifts from stiff annoyance to bowed empathy as I explain my mission to help Rose build a memorial gazebo in Ricky’s honour using salvaged wood from the park. “We don’t need the boat to sail again, we just need the wood.” I leave out any mention of an angel—Rose, Hal, Bobby, and I agreed to keep that strange little phenomenon a secret.
From out of her smock dress pocket comes a tiny flip notepad. She writes “SS Canadiana” across the top. “No mother should have to bury her child. If you died, I’d build you a whole grotto. How’d he die?” she asks me, then, “No, don’t tell me. Drunk driving? Awful, too awful. Cancer? Teenagers can get cancer too, you know. I read this article—”
“Let’s just find the boat, Ma.”
She clutches her hand to her chest and lets out a sigh, then races off to the phone desk.
With Barbara occupied, I hastily search and fail to find Zinn, Etta or any other Zinn in the public records. Jane Does, however, are numerous. I whoosh, like I’ve left my body for a moment, seeing the lengthy list of Does. How can there be so many unknown deceased women in a town so small? I stamp my feet, ground into the present time and place, then proceed in narrowing my search to Does who died between 1925 and 1945, Etta’s era, as far as I can tell. As I read, the whap whap whap of the date stamp hitting library cards at the checkout counter sounds freakishly close, while my own movements are mute as I scroll through the newspaper index. I rap my knuckles on the desk. Silence. I can’t hear myself. Again, I rap with both hands. Silence. Then I read, “Deadly Fall from Cyclone Roller Coaster” and the Ink Spots begin to play in a remote reach of my mind. Can she follow me anywhere?
Are you here, Etta?
So it seems I am. Seems I got no choice.
Tell me how you died. I’d rather hear it from you than read about it.
Or we both look away. I got a gift for forgetting. I’ll teach you. She tries to steer me away, but I root down again, firm. Her ghostly hand gives up.
I’ve already read the headline, Etta. I can’t un-read it.
Well, the headline says it all, don’t it? I went for a ride and I never got off. Etta’s laugh is an echoey studio laugh track from I Love Lucy. How did I die? Ask me how I lived, why don’t you?
She is hurting. Her discomfort is deadweight in my body. A lump in my throat. My tongue starts to swell. Before now, I’ve only felt two sensations with her: fear and desire. The heft of her hurt is almost enough for me to stop reading. You said we’re partners. Bonded together. I have to know.
Between blurry lines of tiny-font microfiche is a composite drawing. Etta’s mouth is overdrawn and cartoonish—like the sailors in my ugly painted stunt on the wall. They could have sketched a better likeness. This makes you look like a clown. She doesn’t answer. There are quite a few articles about Etta, a.k.a., the Erie County Jane Doe.
August 17, 1941: “A witness says the young woman reportedly stood up to adjust her stockings while the ride was in progress and was thrown from the train after the first drop. She fell to her death after being hit seconds later by the same train she had been riding. A failed lap bar is deemed to be the cause …”
August 22, 1941: “The body of a woman remains unidentified days after her death after falling from the Crystal Beach Cyclone Coaster. The woman is believed to be between nineteen and twenty-four years of age, although she may be as young as seventeen. Her hair and eyes are dark in colour and she was approximately five feet two inches tall. An Erie County Fair pin-back button was found in her purse, along with a Fred Koch Brewery brand wire bottle opener, and a matchbook from Shea’s Buffalo. Jewellery found on the body included a pearl and rhinestone necklace and matching earrings that are believed to have been purchased at AM&As in Buffalo …”
September 28, 1941: “No one has come forward to identify the body of the Erie County Jane Doe. The medical examiner shall furnish the Niagara Regional Police with copies of fingerprints and other identifying effects for ongoing inquiry. Jane Doe is scheduled to be buried in an unmarked grave in Ridgeway Memorial Cemetery by the end of the month. May God rest her soul …”
I don’t believe it. She was left unnamed. Like a nobody. Like a nothing. Adjusting your stockings? What really happened? Tell me.
Static fills my skull, like multiple distorted Ettas speaking all at once. It grows from a whisper to a squall in the time it takes to cup my hands over my ears. Shadow images of wooden track and steel unfurl before me. The jangle and bang of chain dogs lifting a roller coaster car. Thick sugared air. Sick. Dizzy. Dizzy. Sick. Something grabs my thigh. Rough hand. Bitter grip. My cunt grows warm. My bladder gives up a little of my morning’s coffee. Fuck. Sick. For a breath, I see myself like a tableau, still and quiet in the library. Nothing is touching me. There’s no reason to be afraid. Breathe. Be here, I tell myself. But my next breath catches, and everything is incomprehensible again. Somewhere amongst the bedlam I hear a single scream ring out. High and clear. Operatic. The kind of scream that brings down the red curtains.
To my left, Barbara is waving her hands in the air. To my right, I think I see Tamara drop a handful of books to run toward me. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling close in. The olive green-carpeted floor warps as I collide into it.