DELANI VALIN
In Métis legends, there is a creature known as the Rugaru. The name is a Michif word derived from the French loup-garou, meaning werewolf.
Sandra got on the bus, inserting her magnetic monthly pass in the fare box and then pulling it out. She thanked the driver without looking up.
She liked to sit near the back, so that if someone elderly or with a disability got on, she wouldn’t need to draw attention to herself by getting up and grabbing all of her bags to give up her seat. It was also easier to be inconspicuous while exiting the bus if she chose a seat near the back door.
Sandra made herself small in her seat, piling her purse and her backpack into her lap. A large man took the seat beside her. He grunted as he sat and dangled one leg into the aisle to give Sandra more room. She appreciated this. She wondered whether the man was trying to be inconspicuous, too.
The bus pulled away from the curb and began its jerky journey to the Downtown Eastside. It was a trip Sandra had made many times, but she still recognized a slight flutter in the left of her ribcage. She planted her feet firmly and visualized rooting herself into the ground, like her therapist had taught her to do. Grounding, it’s called.
She heard a noisy, looping beat from someone’s headphones, and this reminded her of her son, whom she hoped was currently sitting in class.
She chewed her fingernails as the bus crossed over the bridge from Burnaby. The buildings here were increasingly old, crumbling and deteriorating. Makeshift curtains made from sheets and blankets hung in the windows. On the sidewalks, she saw more than one person push a shopping cart full of bags and bottles. The bus was pulling close to Main Street. Sandra pulled the yellow cord and the “stop requested” sign lit up in the front of the bus.
“Excuse me,” Sandra muttered to the man beside her. She shifted slightly to show him that she intended to get off.
He stood in the aisle and she squeezed by him to wait near the door. She could feel the eyes of the other passengers, but she refused to meet them. It was easier to keep her head down, easier to be inconspicuous that way.
An old Chinese woman and a university student waited beside Sandra. She led them off the bus, and they both rushed passed her once on the sidewalk.
Sandra hesitated. She could have gotten off a few stops later, but she needed this walk to collect herself. She always needed this walk, this time beforehand.
Like most legends that are orally passed down, stories featuring the Rugaru vary widely. While some accounts have the Rugaru resembling Wendigos from Ojibwe and Saulteaux stories, others give the Rugaru characteristics more in common with the werewolves of contemporary pop culture. Generally, the Rugaru is described as having large hairy ears, sharp teeth, and cold black eyes. But even this is disputed, as the Rugaru can take on many different forms.
It didn’t frighten Sandra to walk down East Hastings Street. In fact, she felt strangely at home here, surrounded by people who avoided eye contact as much as she did. Maybe this was because she had spent a lot of time here in her youth. The street was familiar to her. No, she wasn’t scared of the street and its reputation or inhabitants or history. What made Sandra’s stomach tighten was her not knowing how her mother would receive her. It had been nearly a month since her last visit, and it had ended badly.
So she focused on the pavement, counting the discarded cigarette butts as she walked.
“Hi ma’am,” a man called out to her. He was on crutches, and had only one leg. He wore an old blue windbreaker and a pair of torn jeans, knotted below his absent knee.
“Hello,” Sandra said, nodding.
“Do you have any change?” he asked her.
Sandra didn’t. But she had known she would be asked, and so she brought along packs of cookies as consolation.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just have this.” And she handed him a packet.
“Thanks,” the man told her.
The main difference between the Rugaru and the werewolf, however, is that unlike with werewolves, a person does not need to sustain a bite from one to transform. In the case of the Rugaru, one simply needs to see one. This is enough to become one.
Sandra spotted her mother sitting on the same blanket she’d sat on for years. It was an old store-bought quilt with fiddleheads and stripes. The batting inside was clumped to the corners of the blanket, leaving the middle thin and vulnerable to tearing. Sandra’s mother was looking at her hands, examining her tanned, wrinkled skin. Sandra often found her mother in this position; it was as if she were reading her fortune over and over.
“Hi, Ma!” Sandra said, standing at the edge of her quilt.
Her mother looked up and blinked.
“It’s me,” Sandra continued. “I just came to bring you some food, and some little shampoo bottles – that soap that you like.”
“I know,” her mother said. “But I told you not to come back.”
Sandra brushed this off and knelt down beside her mother. She pulled her mom into a one-armed hug, which her mother did not return.
“I just wanted to give you some things,” Sandra told her. “It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not safe here,” her mother insisted.
“If anything, Ma, it’s not safe for you. You’re an old lady now. Old ladies don’t belong in the street!”
Sandra’s mother waved a hand at her dismissively.
“So have you been to the doctor lately?” Sandra asked.
Her mother squinted. “You ask so many questions.”
“Fine,” Sandra sighed. “I’ll just give this to you, then.”
She unzipped her backpack and produced a large ziplock bag filled with a toothbrush, clean underwear, socks, and bottles of shampoo, soap, and toothpaste.
“And here’s the one with the food,” Sandra said.
She pulled out another bag, this one filled with homemade cookies and bannock, packets of peanut butter and jam, and jars of baby food.
“What are those?” her mother asked.
“I got you custard, apple, banana, and pear flavours. I thought you might like them for dessert, and they’ll be easy on your teeth.”
This made her mother smile, a smile showing yellowed teeth and receding gums.
“That’s kind of you,” she said. “But I don’t eat. Give them to Mason instead.”
“Mason’s sixteen! He wouldn’t be caught dead with baby food!”
“Sixteen, already?” Her mother shook her head.
“Yeah,” Sandra said. “And what do you mean, you don’t eat? Everybody eats, Ma.”
“I got used to being empty, I think,” her mother said.
Sandra crossed her legs on her mother’s greying blanket.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” her mother warned. “You have to go.”
“I don’t get you,” Sandra told her. “You don’t let me help you find a place to live, and I can’t visit you here. You never want to come over – and you haven’t seen Mason in years. Do you hate us, Ma?”
“Of course not,” her mother said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
Sandra shook her head and looked around her. There were people trading money for clothing and other goods that Sandra knew were illegal. There were some younger people, not much older than Mason, who drank out of bottles tucked away in brown paper bags. There were people in wheelchairs, and elderly people like her mother. Every so often, an argument would break out, and there would be shouting. Then there were people who passed by, on their way to some other place. They seemed to exist on another plane, not seeing anyone, just staring straight ahead. Sandra supposed she must look like that, too, especially with how hard she tried not to be seen.
“God, you’re stubborn, Ma,” she said.
“Watch your language, miss.”
Sandra rolled her eyes at this. The fighting and the yelling from the people surrounding them was filled with expletives, but she knew better than to argue with her mother about this.
“Thank you for the bags,” her mother told her. “But I don’t want to get any more of them.”
“Don’t be silly,” Sandra said. “How else would you get any of this?”
“I’m warning you right now, Sandra: this is the last time you’ll find me here.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re both stubborn.” Her mother took Sandra’s face into her hands. “I don’t want to leave, but I also don’t want you to come back here. It’s too dangerous.”
“But nothing bad’s ever happened to me down here,” Sandra said. “Actually, sometimes I feel safer here.”
Her mother dropped her hands, and her face darkened.
“There are more dangerous things than being mugged,” she said.
“Like what?” Sandra asked.
But her mother shook her head.
“Don’t come back,” she said. “I won’t be here.”
Sandra sighed and zipped up her backpack. She stood and shouldered her pack, looking down at the small, frail woman sitting crossed-legged on the old quilt.
“I just wish you would let me help you.”
“I know,” her mother said. “But it’s not worth your safety. Remember the stories I used to tell you when you were little?”
“Sure.”
“Sometimes people tell stories to make the world easier to understand.”
“Yeah, like saying the sun is a god, or something,” Sandra said.
“Yes, and some stories are told to keep people safe,” her mother told her.
“Like the boogeyman?” Sandra asked. “To make kids go to bed on time?”
“Exactly. The boogeyman might not be how we describe it, but the purpose is to keep children safe in bed.”
Sandra pursed her lips.
“So what are you trying to say?” she asked.
“I’m saying that when we are grown up, we need to recognize the monsters from our stories and use the advice we were given as children.”
“But there are no monsters here, Ma,” Sandra said, gesturing around her. “These are people.”
“We are not monsters, Sandra. But we know the monsters. And if you come here, unprotected, you’re in danger. There’s a reason you feel comfortable here, and it’s not good.”
“But I’m a grown woman, with a job and a kid. And a home,” Sandra protested. “And I would give that to you, too, if you let me.”
“It could happen to you, like it happened to me. You’re lucky it hasn’t. You’ve survived too many encounters with the Rugaru, Sandra. It’s time to stay away now, before you see it and it’s too late.”
Sandra dusted off her knees. She bit her lips, trying to find an argument, but found none.
“I love you, Sandra,” her mother told her.
“You too,” Sandra said.
She said goodbye, and walked past the people greeting her with outstretched hands, looking for something Sandra no longer had to give. She made her way back to the bus stop, to the back of the bus where she couldn’t be seen. And back to her apartment with Mason, who would soon be getting home safe from school. She hoped.