Five months earlier: May
The girl who used to be Trisha sits on a folding chair in a large, well-lit room. Community Room, she heard someone call it as she and her mother came through the front door of the Town of Westervale Fire Hall.
“We’re gathering in the Community Room,” the voice said. It was the voice of an older woman. Soft, friendly, but also matter of fact. The tone was of someone who had work to do, someone who was trying to stay detached during a time of emotions.
It rained hard during the funeral mass. There were large windows on both sides of the church, and the girl who used to be Trisha could hear the hard pelting of the drops against the glass. But by the time they’d got to the Fire Hall, the clouds had broken and the sun was out.
The windows are small in the Community Room, high above the heads of the people in the room. You cannot see out the windows except for the white blue of the sky. But the light of day comes through in abundance.
The girl has her head down. Her mother has tried to talk her out of coming here. To her mother, Becky’s suicide is like an infection the girl who used to be Trisha is in danger of contracting. Also, although her mother would never say so, and although she has never shown anything but respect and affection for Morganne, the girl knows her mother is afraid to be around Mi’kmaw people.
Becky was white, and her immediate family is white. And the town of Westervale is a town mostly full of white people. But it is a small town. And the Mi’kmaw community of Running Brook is only a few kilometres away and has almost twice as many people as Westervale. Becky lived with a mixed family that the girl can tell her mom thinks of as Mi’kmaq. Becky had Mi’kmaw cousins and friends. A big part of the congregation of the Westervale Catholic Church is Mi’kmaq. There were Mi’kmaw language banners on the wall. Maybe half of the people who attended the funeral were Mi’kmaw people.
The girl who used to be Trisha has no reason to think her mom does not like Mi’kmaw people. It’s simple fear of the unknown. And her fear is generational, as the girl sees it. She grew up in a time when Mi’kmaw people and white people did not mix. She has never been well acquainted with anyone but white people her whole life. She isn’t really racist or prejudiced, but she still calls Running Brook The Reserve, which is actually what most Mi’kmaw people call it. But you are not supposed to call it that anymore if you are white. And she doesn’t call Mi’kmaw people Mi’kmaq or Indigenous, like you are supposed to now. She says Natives, which is the old right thing to say instead of the I word.
The girl has not left the house since being released from the hospital. Except to go to the bathroom, she’s barely left her room. She knows this for all the concern her mother has for her, about her physical state. About the possibility of suicide. For all the protectiveness her mother feels. For all the danger her mother thinks she might be inviting by leaving the house—physical assault from the people who are attacking her online, physical or emotional collapse—her mother will also feel a certain hopefulness in having her leave the house. She cannot stay inside forever, and going to her friend’s funeral seems in some way a sign that she might be recovering.
The girl has her hand wrapped in white gauze that is held in place by white surgical tape. The self-inflicted bite mark has turned her whole hand dark purple, and the brown and purple edge of the bruise has blossomed past the crease of her wrist. She cleaned the wound herself. Disinfected it with hydrogen peroxide in the bathroom. Her mother was outside the locked bathroom door attempting to convince her to see a doctor over the injury.
“Trisha. Trisha,” her mother called through the door. And by the third or fourth call, the girl inside the bathroom knew she was through with that name. The internet was full of shitty people using that name to hate on her. “That’s not my name!” she yelled at the door. She knew even as she was yelling how crazy it must have sounded. So crazy it actually slowed her mother down. Stopped her in her tracks for a time. For minutes there was silence as the girl inverted the bottle of peroxide onto a cotton makeup pad, then dabbed the pad over the deep, blood-seeping holes she’d bitten into her own flesh.
“What?” her mother shouted at last, in confusion and disbelief.
“Leave me alone!” the girl shouted. “I’m not going to the hospital! I’m looking after this myself!”
“Please, Tri—” her mother stopped herself. She was a fast learner. “If you won’t go to the hospital, please. At least… Open the door! I’m worried sick out here.”
The girl who used to be Trisha paused. The sour smell of peroxide filled the inside of her sinuses. She looked up at herself in the bathroom mirror: bruises, abrasions. The sunken, expressionless look of her face did not seem the face of a sixteen-year-old. It was the haggard face of someone twice her age. Shit. Her mother wanted the door open because she was afraid that the girl was in here killing herself.
She set down the peroxide bottle, threw the pad she’d been smearing over the bloody teeth marks into the toilet, where it oozed oily peroxide and pink diluted blood into the toilet water.
She paused another instant at the ragged sight of herself in the mirror, then leaned over and clicked the bathroom door unlocked. The girl picked up a fresh makeup pad, soaked it with peroxide, and kept dabbing her bitten hand. Her mother rushed through the unlocked door with the urgency of a firefighter. She came to the girl’s side and put an arm around her as she peered over her daughter’s shoulder at the wounded hand. The mother pressed the side of her upper body against her daughter and squeezed with a force the daughter knew would not last long and therefore tolerated without complaint. The mother breathed in big breaths, big, slow, deep breaths through her nose. The daughter could feel the mother’s tension relax a little with each exhalation. And every time she felt her mother’s tension drop, the daughter felt a small improvement in herself. The daughter kept fussing with the brown plastic bottle of peroxide, kept dabbing a cotton makeup pad at her bite wound, but she closed her eyes in relief at her mother’s touch. She let her body loosen and be drawn close.
It was only with her mother’s actual physical support that the girl who used to be Trisha was able to get through Becky’s funeral. They entered the Westervale Catholic Church with their arms around each other. The girl knew she must have been an alarming sight. There were visible bruises from the assault. She knew that most people associated the way the bite mark on her hand was bandaged with cutting. And she could feel beneath her the wobbly weakness of her legs. Though a lot of the shakiness in her legs would be masked by her loose-fitting pants, her mom was practically carrying her.
The day before, the girl heard her mother on the phone, discussing with someone whose business it was not, the possibility of wheeling the girl to the funeral in a wheelchair.
“A wheelchair!” the girl called from her bedroom. “Fuck that! I’m not letting a single fucking hater see me in a fucking wheelchair.”
But she was so fragile as she walked, hanging off her mother’s side like a heavy parcel, that she’d probably have made less of a spectacle in a wheelchair.
“Bring it on, haters,” the girl says now as she and her mother make their way into the Community Room.
“What?” her mother says.
Folding chairs make a loosely defined circle around the perimeter of the room. In the midst of the circle, people begin to gather, one by one and in clusters.
As she and her mother make their way across the floor to a pair of folding chairs against the outer wall, she catches sight of Morganne’s mom across the room on the far side, near a counter that leads back to a kitchen area, where a lot of older-looking ladies are busy with food preparation.
She’d guessed that Morganne would probably not be at the funeral. She had not heard from her in days, since her mom had taken her phone. It is not hard to spot Morganne’s mom. She is the tallest person in the room. As the towering, broad-shouldered woman moves in her direction, it takes the girl a moment to notice that Morganne’s dad is at the mother’s side. She rarely sees the two of them standing side by side like that, close enough to invite comparison. But it is remarkable how much bigger the mom is than the dad. She looms a whole head above him and her shoulders and hips are broader than her husband’s. Morganne’s mom wears a sleeveless black dress that goes straight down at the sides.
Even though it reaches to just above the knees, you can see her powerful thigh muscles working beneath the dress’s material. The father wears what must be one of his lawyer suits. Dark charcoal. His thin body is lost in its outlines. His face looks drawn, as though he has not been eating. The mother moves ahead of the father when she reaches the girl. The girl has a sudden realization in the dark, determined eyes of the mother, in her strong, square jawline, in the grey-tinged fullness of the hair she’s pulled back into a fist-sized bun. This is what Morganne will look like when she gets older. If she gets through this. If they all get through this. If what’s left of them gets through this.
Before either of them can speak, they both reach out, lean into each other, and embrace. Both of them sob loudly and without pretence of self-control for what feels to the girl like a long time. Her sore cheek presses hard into Morganne’s mother’s hard rib cage, above her breasts at the centre of her chest. Her clothing smells like Morganne’s clothing. Her skin smells like Morganne’s skin.
She had so wanted to act mature in this moment, but the girl who used to be Trisha is crying like a baby. And like a small child, she says: “I want Morganne. I need to see Morganne.”
“Morganne is going to be okay,” Morganne’s mom says. “Morganne is a strong person. And she is going to get through this.”
“I need to see her,” the girl who used to be Trisha says.
“Morganne cannot do this right now,” the mother says. “Morganne needs to focus on her own healing.”
“Please tell me Morganne is going to be okay,” the girl says. She knows how stupid the request is. And Morganne’s mother has already said. But she makes the request anyway. And then she makes it again. “Please tell me Morganne is going to be okay.”
“Morganne is going to get through this,” Morganne’s mother says. “Morganne is going to be okay. You are both going to get through this.”
When they end their embrace, the girl feels stronger than she has in days, as though seeing Morganne’s mom has recharged her batteries. She stands up tall and feels her body balance itself over her legs.
Morganne’s dad reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. His eyes fill with tears and he winces hard with emotion, keeping his hand in place where she can feel its strength.
“Morganne wants you to have this,” Morganne’s mom says. She reaches into her purse and takes out the little sketchbook. The girl knows without looking which sketchbook it is. It is the small one. The one with the hard, pebbly cover. The one in which she’s seen Morganne sketching a hundred times. It is the one the girl loves most.
She cannot respond in words. But she looks deep into Morganne’s mother’s face. And it is so much like Morganne’s face, and she is so happy to have the sketchbook. All she can do is nod at Morganne’s parents and blink away her tears and lean back into the embrace of her own mother’s arms as her mother guides her body weight backwards until she is settled onto a folding chair.
The Community Room is filling up with most of the same people from the church. Morganne’s volleyball team is here. They probably thought they’d see Morganne. They wear their team jackets. Their coach, a tall young woman with a long face and big teeth in her friendly smile, is with the girls, directing and guiding them. Coaching even through a teammate’s trauma. They sit in an uninterrupted line of blue, with yellow team logo on the left side of their chests. The girls all have long hair, and they all wear it today in the same style—a single braid down the back. The girl knows what the braids mean. They’ve been waiting together since before the funeral and to kill their nervousness, they started braiding each other’s hair.
Morganne’s cousin MacKenzie, a young woman of no more than twenty-five, and who the girl met before at Morganne’s house, goes to a spot near a corner of the room. She beckons an older woman, who looks like she could be MacKenzie’s mother, to stand at her side. The woman is holding a bowl-like shell, dark in colour and bigger than a curled fist. She leans forward, fanning a feather, and white-grey smoke drifts out into the room.
“What are they burning?” her own mother says, but she is speaking abstractly, as though she does not expect the girl to understand.
“They’re doing a smudge,” the girl says. “Cedar and sweetgrass and…I can’t remember the rest. Smell it.” She sees her mother look at her in confusion.
Morganne’s cousin has taken the shell in her cupped palms. The older woman waves her hands, washing her own face with the smudge, then says to the room: “There’s a smudge here for anyone who needs it.” People come forward. Old and young. They lean over the smoke and use both hands to wash their faces in it. Some of them turn to have the smoke feathered against their backs.
“I need that,” the girl says.
“What?” says her mother. The girl can hear fear in her mother’s voice, but she herself is used to smudging. She’s had Mi’kmaw kids in her class all through school, and she is used to having an elder come in, for various ceremonies and occasions. To burn a smudge and let whoever wants to bathe in the sweet smoke.
“I need that smudge.” She struggles to stand. Her mother takes her elbow and helps her up, but the girl can feel the reluctance and hesitation in her mother’s hands.
“Is that for…” the mother says. “Are you sure it’s okay for…you?”
“She said it was for whoever needs it. I need it.” Together they walk toward the smudge. When Morganne’s cousin sees her coming, she begins walking in her direction. She puts a hand on the older woman’s shoulder and they both step carefully in the direction of the girl who used to be Trisha. The older woman has the shell again, and a whitish grey cloud of smoke rises from the space between her palms. The girl closes her eyes, puts her face near the smoke, and repeats the actions she’s seen other people do. She puts her open hands into the smoke and draws the smoke around her face and head.
When she opens her eyes, she notices a familiar shape on the inside of MacKenzie’s wrist. She feels herself start, her gaze locking onto the inked outline. She looks up at MacKenzie through the white smoke, then back at the little tattoo on her arm.
It’s the butterfly. The one from the painting in Morganne’s bedroom. Asymmetrical wings. Whimsical, cartoonish antennae.
As her mother guides her back to their place near the wall, the room continues to fill with people and voices. The sounds rise to the cold ceiling of the Community Room and the girl feels them come down upon her.
The walls from the sides carry the reverberated voices back as well. She feels woozy, overpowered. She closes her eyes and imagines she hears singing, musical instruments, but when she opens her eyes again, she realizes it is just sorrowing people, talking, weeping.
The girl looks at her mother, whose face is flushed with emotion.
The sights in the room now begin to overwhelm her: Morganne’s mom. Her dad. The cousin MacKenzie. And the priest is here now from the church, the man who’d said the mass. And kids’ faces. Young people. People from her school. How many of them had seen the pictures of her and Becky and Morganne? How many of the people in this room had called her a hateful name on social media?
She squeezes her eyes shut and puts her head down between her knees. The echoing sound of voices has become deafening, nightmarish. She puts her hands over her ears to block the din.
Her mother is hovering over her. She can feel the grip of her mother’s arm tightening across her shoulders. Her mother’s mouth is near her ear. She can feel the lips moving against her hand, but all she can hear now is the clangorous reverberating of the room around her.
And then silence. The sounds of the room are switched off as though a mute button has been pushed.
And that’s when she hears it.
Becky’s voice.
A single syllable.
“Sam,” Becky says.
Sam nods. She opens her eyes. She sits up straight in the crowded community room. The sounds of voices are slowly drifting back.
Her mother still has an arm around her shoulders and is speaking soothingly into her ear.
“Are you okay? Honey? Are you okay?”
“Sam,” Sam says. Her mother looks at her with alarm and concern. “I’m Sam now,” says Sam.
“I think we should leave,” her mother says. “I think I should get you to a doctor.”
“No,” says Sam. “I’m good. I’m good now. I know who I am now. I know my name. I’m Sam.”