Yasmeen discovered the pleasures of having the radio on all day, its reassuring presence. It happened by accident, the day after they returned from camp. She was dusting and tossing around ideas for the first day of school, and though all the talk was in Inuktitut and she couldn’t make out a word, she recognized its soothing effect on her. It was the timbre of the voice, a particular vibration that struck a chord in her and gave her the sensation of being in the close company of a friend. It was like sharing an intimate space. There were no motormouth traffic girls, no manic sports reporters racing though hockey scores. This radio was so low-key that sometimes there was no talking at all, the dead air just hanging there for however long it went on, until a stammer or a spluttering cough broke the silence.
Something curious caught her ear, the way the announcer took a long time to exhale after he inhaled, like he was holding onto a thought that he didn’t ever want to let go. It sounded like the voice of someone who enjoyed letting the velvet cigarette smoke linger in his lungs before releasing it. She was almost certain it was Joanasi’s.
Just as she was deciding that yes, it was probably him announcing Friday’s upcoming Bingo Night, one of those lemmings Elliot had mentioned on the plane darted past her, right in her own house. She chased it into the kitchen, following the patter of feet. It had a tapered snout and a short tail like the one Frank had shown in his slides, and was barely the size of a human hand. Her mind went into the dizzying logistics of how to corner it. She wasn’t sure what she would do after she did. One thing at a time, she thought. She grabbed the broom and swung it haphazardly. The pesky thing scurried past her into the living room.
Yasmeen held the broom the way her father’s favourite movie star, Errol Flynn, held his dueling sword. She advanced on the rodent, part of her recognizing how ridiculous she looked, but she didn’t know how else to rout it out and she couldn’t let it run around indefinitely.
Her ears perked up when she heard that Mick Jagger was up next. She didn’t catch what song, but it wasn’t so important. What was important was this, now. Figuring out a strategy. She tried to imagine what Joanasi, a radio personality but probably also a hunter, would do in her place, facing the same shifty creature. Would he skewer it between the eyes? Behead it with the full length of the broomstick? For sure, afterwards, he’d have the wherewithal to do what was necessary—sweep it along the floor to the front door and then outside, but not like it was nothing. He’d have respect for it. He’d leave it like a gift in a special place where a bigger animal would go looking for food. He wouldn’t feel the least bit guilty about it, knowing he was doing what was necessary to keep the cycle of life going.
This could all be a load of crap, though. A romantic notion fed by The Nature of Things. She shook her head.
“Come out, you little shit.” Her body stiffened, waiting for the lemming to resurface. She waited and waited. There was no sign of him anywhere. She thought of how bats could squeeze through holes the size of a quarter, settling permanently in a building’s insulation. Did lemmings have the same expertise? She wasn’t keen on the idea of her intruder becoming a permanent resident in her pipes or walls, skittering up and down and around. Keeping her awake nights.
A lemming year, Elliot had said.
She waited it out while the afternoon light softened, casting a pinky glow on the walls. She breathed the way a yoga instructor once taught her to do, deeply, from her diaphragm. It put her solidly in the moment, allowing her to focus on the battleground, which wasn’t a battleground at all but a benign arrangement of furniture and belongings. In her tranquil state she spotted him on the other side of the room, beady eyes gleaming beneath a sock that had strayed from her laundry basket. They were looking straight at her.
She wondered what he was communicating in the language of his gaze. Perhaps that he was only a lemming, with no ulterior motives except the primary one, survival. It seemed like that’s what he was telling her. That he wasn’t a dangerous polar bear that would maul her with a swipe of his paw. That he wasn’t planning to rear up on hindquarters, or bare his teeth at her. No, he was defenseless. He had nothing on her. Nothing compared to her warm house, her drawer full of sharpened knives. She could wolf him down in two bites if she really wanted to.
The more she thought about it, the more she relaxed. She felt waves of guilt, first for wielding the broom like a weapon; second for all the times she and Morgan had strapped firecrackers to the backs of toads for no reason at all except to revel in the confetti of their exploded body parts.
The lemming’s eyes were still trained on her. Give me the heave ho, they were saying, but please spare my life. For a fraction of a second she thought of wrapping him in shiny paper like a fancy Christmas gift, sticking on a bow and presenting him to Elliot, the lemming expert. One of the bumper crop, she could write in curlicue calligraphy inside the card. Funny as it was, it was stupid and cruel. She would never do it. This lemming had the right, like everything and everyone, to live his ephemeral life and die of natural causes, out on the land among his own.
Yasmeen tiptoed over, careful not to scare him. Cautiously she lifted the sock off. He looked up at her almost apologetically when she told him to go on now, take a powder, disappear. He blinked. He blinked again. “Go have a life or something,” she repeated. Lightly tapping him with the back of the broom she shooed him along the rug. When she got to the door she opened it wide and watched him scurry toward the incoming light.