Barbara complains, “It’s always a production with her. If I got upset every time she found herself screwed up in the middle of something, I’d have died from worrying by now.”
She’s racing around the house, cordless phone wedged between her shoulder and ear, getting ready for work. Etta blew the light bulbs, and Barbara calls it a production. I could fly around the damn dining room and she’d still find a way of not believing it happened. We nearly collide in the hallway. Both of us keep going without as much as a nod. From the other side of the bathroom door, I still hear her muffled voice. “Hush hush hush … crazy hush hush hush Starla …” Should have peed in an empty mug in my bedroom. I pick up a three-year-old National Geographic from the magazine rack beside the toilet and speed-read an entire article on how the Great Lakes are toxic and shrinking waters. Barbara is by the front door now, probably jamming her feet into her comfortable work shoes.
My urine is dark in the toilet bowl. I press my hands into my distended stomach. What did I eat besides one of Barbara’s almond cookies yesterday? I step onto the scale Barbara keeps hidden under the laundry bin. 101 pounds. I’m smaller.
Ricky lost weight too. According to his journal, lots of weight.
I’m scared of my body. I bet I’m a size four now.
Wait a second, the Bill Blass silk chiffon bustier dress in my closet is a size four. I spring the Bill Blass from the line of hanging dresses and lay it gently on the bed.
That’s what I call a get-up, says Etta. Put it on, we’ll stroll along the pier.
“I was hoping you would notice,” I say.
We walk together for several blocks. It’s unlike walking with the living. She’s more static and cold electricity beside me, but she is walking. One graceful foot in front of the other. We sashay as far as Queen’s Circle before I feel alone again. Etta, I call to her. Why did I choose my Vivienne Westwood shoes? Walking in stilettos over busted-up asphalt is a sore march—left, ouch, right, ouch. At least leg pain is something. Are you still with me, Etta? I ask and ask again as I stomp forward. We’re supposed to be walking together.
When I was a kid, I thought Queen’s Circle was it. Our very own traffic roundabout. May as well have been Columbus Circle in New York City. A scene out of Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?” Jodi Foster should have won an Oscar for that film. For the love of sin, she was fourteen years old. What a babe she grew up to be.
This is not Manhattan, and our Queen’s Circle is dust and scrags of Dutch clover. More grass grows between cracks in the sidewalk than in Circle Park. The trees are thirsty.
Outside the Crystal Mart, a woman wearing a pink terrycloth bathrobe fans herself with a set of scratch-and-win tickets. I wait for her to look at me like I’m a movie star in my dress. She pays me no mind. Maybe I’m a ghost now too?
Our post office flies a clean Canadian flag, always. Every local picks up their mail. Post doesn’t come door-to-door. The house beside the post office is for sale. The house beside that is boarded up—I’d like to say boarded up for the winter, but it is summer. At least the boards are painted the same army green as the vinyl siding. That’s more than I can say for the rest of the clapboard patch jobs along the way.
A tiny cement plaster building is our Sears, and it’s closed on a Thursday afternoon. Not actually a Sears, but the place where items ordered from the Sears catalogue are sent for pickup. Barbara’s washer and dryer came through here. That was a proud day, I remember. No more village laundromat for us.
A little boy whistles at me from across an empty parking lot. His littler sister punches him. I think of all the ways I know to say “girl.” Ragazza. Puella. Niña. Fille. Menina. Mädchen. Neska. This is my new thing now. I translate “girl” when I’m upset. Am I upset? What have I got to be upset about? Just a little paranormal possession is all. Translating “girl” is better than spelling the names of phobias. I’ll call it progress. Etta, where are you? Please!
A tar snake in the middle of the intersection grabs my stiletto. I could recover, but instead I allow myself to fall, receiving the summer-hot asphalt with indifference. A man pops his head out of the nearby Auction House to ask if I’m okay. My bustier dress bloopers down past my nipples as I pick myself off the ground. Two-handed, I emphatically correct my outfit fail. I’m so inappropriate. The man looks away, retreats.
I spot him again through the Auction House storefront window. He won’t make eye contact with me. Our Auction House is a shabby stucco castle. Weather-beaten red turrets represent a time when every local business appeared to be an extension of the amusement park. The windowsills are grimed with dead sand flies. Through the milky glass I ogle rows of English cups and saucers, pink and green Depression glass, brass candle sticks, Christmas nativities and a motley crew of Royal Doulton figurines. So much white ceramic. White ceramic peasant girl holding flowers. White ceramic Georgian lady reading a book. White ceramic elder carrying apples. White ceramic girl child in pajamas praying beside her bed. I tear up again. Fucked if I feel empathy for the ceramic child. Her ceramic prayers. She wants me to buy her, to rescue her from her dusty display shelf of sadness.
I push myself along to the next window. A showcase of knives and books. Whoever dressed this window is a genius. Boning knife. Boning knife. The Complete Works of William Blake. Carving knife. Cleaver. Ulysses. Gut hook. Gut hook. Gut hook. Gut hook. Gut hook. Anne of Green Gables. I have read Anne of Green Gables four times—three of those readings were from the one summer I had mono. The number of times I watched the CBC miniseries is uncountable. I could easily recite lines from both novel and film. “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it,” I say aloud. Is that so, Lucy Maud Montgomery, because I’m not sure you know what you’re saying. I never did get to see the ocean. Not Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Atlantic. Not Joy Kogawa’s Pacific.
Me, I’m headed for a dead lake.
Etta, I want to go back. I’m tired. The lake stink is making me nauseous.
She doesn’t answer. I touch my hair and chest and stomach and hips. My body is mine. I’m the boss of me. I turn back toward Queen’s Circle and her hand becomes palpable. A firm push at my back. A panicked tightening of my throat. I could fight her, but why resist? Deep down, I want her to push me.
The chain-link fence around the gutted Park now has a few breaks in it to choose from. The opening to the left is wider; less chance I’ll tear my dress. Lake Erie smells like a phosphorus bathtub, a toxic-algae spa in this heat. Plus the smell of ash and beer. Amateur taggers have spray-painted every vertical surface since the last time I was here. I count one, two, three expired bonfire rings, step over broken beer glass confetti, register the mandatory dumpster sofa. It seems this is the summer party spot for local teens. How long would I have to wait around before some young gun arrives and offers me hash? Bottle tokes in an abandoned lot are my birthright. So is unwanted pregnancy. So is diabetes. So is dropping out of school. So is depression. So is date rape. Fate rhymes with date rape.
I halt. Am I afraid of my hometown or of myself? Sure, I was afraid of men in Toronto. What woman isn’t? Still, I was brave enough to go to the bars by myself. Now I’m alone in an empty lot and I can’t stop catastrophizing. Am I manifesting danger? Maybe Barbara is right about me—I’m always making a production out of nothing. Am I nothing? Am I nothing? Oof, there’s the very same question that embittered one-night-stand asked me: Am I nothing?
What’s scarier, Etta or nothing? Mother of all fears.
You brought me here for a reason, Etta. I hope you got something to show me.
She doesn’t answer. The only sound is a cacophony of bird chirps—I guess they’re chimney swifts—as I walk closer to the water. Crystal Beach pier is roofed in concrete and corrugated steel—an echo chamber for birds, and chimney swifts are the worst birds in the history of avis. They look like flying cigars and have feather mites. I clap my hands and whistle as my eyes adjust to the pier’s dim canopy. They’re birds, not bears. Swifts don’t give a flying fuck that I’m alerting them to my presence. Dozens-strong, the flock twists and sweeps overhead. Together, they could pick me up and carry me to Buffalo. “Damn you and your helpless naked babies!” I shout. It’s good to shout at something. I stomp in my Vivienne Westwood shoes, and my clacking tread echoes above me, weirdly harmonizing with the stirred-up swifts.
Once the sun hits my skin and I’m far enough from their nests, the swifts settle again. Lake Erie is so still that hundreds of brine flies have settled on the floating algae. The remainder of the pier ahead if me is cracked, with large slabs of the walkway collapsing into the water. Wire rope juts out from the gaps. I hear my silk chiffon dress tear as I squat to unbuckle my ankle straps. My pinkie toes are bleeding. Both big toes are swollen with fluid bubble blisters. Is this my self-harm? Impossible shoes? How long has it been since I told myself I hate myself? Autophobia. Mi sei mancato. I’ve missed you.
Etta, are you watching? I’m scrambling around barefoot for you. Do you see me?
I pause at a body-sized hole in the concrete to watch the still water below. An empty plastic Coke bottle and dead fish bob side by side. One of my shoes slips from my hand and drops in the lake. A sacrifice to Lemmy.
Or Lem for short. L-E-M—Lake Erie Monster. Tamara was right, our hometown is bizarre. Myths, monsters and meagreness. Home sweet home. I’m going in after my shoe. Damn if the dead lake is stealing my Vivienne Westwood.
My fifth-grade school speech about Lemmy won a regional public speaking competition. I bet Barbara kept the trophy in my Starla boxes. I try to remember words as I lower myself down the jagged, slippery pier. “Paranormal historians will tell you,” I recite the opening sentence aloud—I must have felt very grown up using the word “paranormal”—“Paranormal historians will tell you that the first people to report Lemmy to the authorities were the Dusseau brothers, two French settlers who, in eighteen … Eighteen-something something. The Dusseau brothers claimed to see a huge monster writhing and struggling near the shore. Afraid for their lives, the brothers fled and returned hours later to find scales the size of silver dollars washed up on the beach. One of the brothers claimed she had vicious sparkling eyes and a head that looked like a dog.” The dog-headed image stuck; tacky Lemmy collectables often look like a German Shepherd with a snake tale.
I tread the water until I reach the very edge of the pier. Another fire pit was burned at the very last concrete slap that’s half-sunk into the lake, leaving an oily black ring behind. The bonfire was extinguished by urination. Stinks more than the algae. It’s a cloudless sunny day. My dress floats around me like a black puddle. I’m a floating target. Lemmy’s going to come for me, for sure.
As teenagers, we used to say “a sacrifice for Lemmy” when we’d drunkenly toss our empty beer bottles into the lake. In the early ’80s, Lemmy allegedly sank a sailboat. Coast guard rescued five survivors. It was an American sailboat, so we kids made a joke out of it. We used to sing Lemmy Is Gonna Get You to the tune of Gloria Estefan’s “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You.”
A wealthy boater from South Bay posted a $100,000 reward to anyone who could capture the Lake Erie Monster, dead or alive. Money does strange things to folklore. Money turns folklore into “broke-lore.” “Broke-lore.” I should write that down. Suddenly, our beloved inside-joke of a monster was all over the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo news. People wanted photos of it. People wanted to claim they saw it on public record.
I push my head under the surface, but the water is too mucky to see the bottom. I hope Lemmy likes fashion. I hope this sacrifice appeases her. I push off from the pier, swimming deeper to where the algae clears away.
Cryptozoologists. That was another, grown-up fancy word I used in my award-winning speech. Cryptozoologists search for animals whose existence has not been proven. After that award was announced, cryptozoology hobbyists toured our shores. Monster hunters, not Lemmy, then became our local folklore. “Did you see the one in the funny diving suit? Right outta 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, eh?” Or “The guy with the Indiana Jones hat was at the Tim Hortons this morning. He showed everyone the scar on his leg. Claims the monster bit him, eh. Been tracking him for years.”
The pier is a good hundred metres behind me, though I’ve never been good at judging distances in water. I float on my back. My Bill Blass silk chiffon dress weighs me down. I feel a tug, then another.
Karla Moses’s aunt Candy told me that long before monster-hunting wannabes got carried away about the monster, her aunties said dragons lived in the lake and would travel the skies above their lands as shooting stars. I didn’t mention that in my speech. Despite being a dumb kid, I knew not to repeat what Candy told me. I read a little about Six Nation’s Pantheon at university. Folklore was a longer unit than the first contact unit in the Aboriginal Studies class. I’m an even dumber adult. Thanks again, university education.
Etta, I call and call. I scan my body. Can I feel Etta on my chest? Can I feel Etta between my legs? Tugging at my limbs? Holding my back? I feel nothing. Curling into a cannonball, I sink. It takes a second or two before I open my eyes. I’ve lost my water-baby instincts. When I do look, everything is as soupy green as I expected. A septic Emerald City. Lake Erie is not that deep; it’s wide but not deep. I used to be able to touch bottom once. I swim downward. Junk is everywhere. Below me are slime-blanketed manmade objects I can’t identify. I’m pleased my dress is so flowing. Dark mermaid. Lemmy’s new wife. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Live downcast, die wrung, leave a pitiful corpse. Live outcast, die unsung, leave an invisible corpse. Live unchaste, wry tongue, receive a devil’s pitchfork. Give trash, buy dung, leave this world worse. Live vast, die strong, leave collected works. Can I see in the murky dark? Can I breathe water? Do I want to die? How many times am I going to feel like this?
I surface and am winded by chest pain. The water’s grown choppy. Seagulls keow. I tread frantically, gasping for air, then allow my head to sink again, mouth and nose below water level. I used to think I had no control over my life. Shit just kept happening. I could die drowning in Lake Erie, and it would be nothing but another accident. Now people believe in angels because I made them believe. Hal is convinced he’s part of some sort of miracle. Rose is spending her money—her dead son’s college fund at that. I can’t do this to them. I can’t spin these lies. Besides, I’ve ruined my Bill Blass dress. Now I need to find a new dress to wear to my future funeral, an even more fabulous dress.
“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” Damn you, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Damn and bless you, in turns. I swim toward shore again.
The sun begins to set as I reach the pier. Was I in the Bermuda Triangle? Twilight Zone? The day is gone. My arms and legs feel like stretched-out rubber as I flop myself half-way up a slab of slouching concrete. Plastic bottles and dead fish bob beside me, along with a mess of yellow planks. Yellow? I recognize that yellow. Gooseflesh rips up my torso.
Etta?
Who else, Dollface. Grab ahold of that, will ya?
Etta, I can’t do this!
You’re just tired. Having a living body will do that. Why’d you swim so far away? I’ve been waiting here, with our wood. She forces my hand, and I cut my thumb on a rusted spike as I yank up the first plank. It’s from the roller coaster. It wasn’t all burnt, you see. I ought to know, I’ve traced every inch of this disaster. Anything that didn’t burn or sink is floating right under this pier. I want it for my shrine. Here they come. Tell them to use it in my shrine.
I lift my head just enough to see a trample of feet running toward me. Someone calls my name. I gulp a mouthful of air and both ears pop. I hear my dress rip on exposed wire rope as I try to scramble up the broken pier. Zebra mussels crust the foundation columns; shells break under my fingers. A hazy voice says “stand back” and “give her some room.” I cough up metallic-tasting water.
When my eyes crack open again, I’m in the back seat of Rose’s station wagon. My head rests on Hal’s lap. In the front passenger seat, the woman with black mullet hair from The Point asks Rose if I’m on drugs.
“You did the right thing, coming to get me, Dolores,” says Rose. “Thank God you spotted her.” The motion of the car makes me feel like I’m still underwater. I roll my head to look down at Hal’s shoes. I retch, but nothing comes up.
Rose makes a shushing sound and slows the car to a halt. Hal pats my back. “Did you have another vision?” he asks me. “What did the Angel say?”
I sit up. The sun through the windshield is blinding. I tell them about the yellow wood washed under the pier. “The amusement park is sacred,” I say. “We have to save it.” I’m babbling. Rose reaches over the seat to check my forehead with the back of her hand.
Dolores laughs as this. She unrolls her passenger-side window and lights up a hand-rolled cigarette. She has a stick-and-poke tattoo of a tiny wolf on her wrist. Rose starts the car again.