Colours in Her Hands, page 3
She’d met Mina’s brother, Bruno, but hadn’t liked how abruptly he asked what she was doing with Mina. She said she wasn’t doing anything, she was bringing her thread. He quirked his mouth and said, Yeah, how much does that cost? Nothing, she said stiffly. Later he apologized, saying he had to be careful. People had gotten Mina to sign contracts and her signature was binding. It wasn’t always easy to untangle her messes. He was a nice-looking man — nice enough that the gap between his top teeth was cute — but he could have learned a few manners. Iris told him that she was a couturière and she knew textiles. The thread Mina was buying for herself was crap. Her embroidery was stunning and she should have better material to work with. He said Mina had always stitched at something or other. He didn’t think it mattered to her what she used. Their mother had taught her to keep her busy.
Bruno thought Mina was just keeping busy? Couldn’t he see how creative she was? Wasn’t it just like family, she thought, to not be able to see what a person could do? Especially when it didn’t fit into their expectations. Her parents and siblings were the same. They’d gotten educations so they could get nice, clean desk jobs. They couldn’t believe that Iris wanted to sew clothes like her grandmother. They understood nothing about the work she did — the designing, the cutting, tailoring techniques, sourcing the right fabrics, and marketing. And starting her own business? Taking out loans and the risk? They thought she was crazy. That was because they had no idea how much she charged for a jacket with hand-tailored buttonholes. Or how much her ladies in Outremont and Westmount were willing to pay for home visits for fittings.
She knocked the snow off her boots, waiting for Mina to answer the intercom. As she walked down the hallway, she heard the rattle of the chain. Mina had told her she wanted a deadbolt too, but stupid Bruno said no.
She’d already returned to the sofa and was picking up a pair of fat knitting needles — real knitting needles. For the last while she’d been knitting a length of garter stitch in fiery pink and orange yarn. This, which was knitting, she called knitting too. When Iris had asked what it was going to be, Mina flicked her a look that didn’t need words to convey that a thing didn’t have to be anything.
The TV blared the sonorous notes of soap opera doom. Iris un- buttoned her coat and sat in the armchair. She was only allowed in during a soap opera if she didn’t speak until a commercial.
When men in white jumpsuits deployed a high-alert to clean up a juice spill, she set her flat paper package on the sofa. “I brought you some new thread.”
Mina glanced but that was all. Now was when she knit. She would look in the bag when it was next time to embroider.
“Are you working tomorrow?”
Two days a week Mina sorted paper at a recycling plant. She blinked, as if the days might have shifted since she’d last thought of them. “Yeah,” she said finally.
“What do you do again?” Iris asked because Mina liked to explain.
“White paper here.” She patted an invisible table. “Other paper here.”
“What’s the other paper?”
“Red. Yellow. B-b-blue. Orange. Green.”
Once Iris had said coloured paper but Mina hadn’t liked her simplifying a complex procedure that required judgment and precision.
The soap opera started again, the camera zooming on an anguished face.
Iris would wait for the next commercial before leaving. She’d left the pieces for the cape a client had commissioned stabbed with pins on the cutting table. The pieces still needed to be traced with chalk and cut. Yesterday she’d found Norwegian pewter buttons that would be perfect. One good thing about her ladies: cost was never a hindrance.
* * *
Gabriela sat waiting for the salesclerk to bring boots in her size. Near the shoe racks two teenagers were trying to decide on gym shoes. He was skinny but his feet were enormous and she was teasing him in that rough way that Gabriela knew was clumsy flirting.
She and Bruno were already adults with a few scars and disappointments when they met. Even so, everything had felt new. So much fun they’d had in those first years, walking and cycling around Montreal, trips to different cities to watch dance performances, taking Mina on outings, visits with her parents in Toronto. Bruno had come with her to Guanajuato for her abuela’s ninetieth birthday celebration, danced with her mamá and tías, gone for a daredevil ride in the hills with her cousins. They’d made love on a rooftop under a starry indigo sky. She thought she’d found the man she would love and grow old with. And though it was true, he’d always said he didn’t want children, she hadn’t believed that a man who was so responsible and family-oriented, who cared for his sister as he did, wouldn’t eventually want the fulfillment and joy of a child. Having a child wouldn’t be the same as overseeing Mina’s affairs. A child would grow with them. A child would complete them, would continue who they were. A child would bring so much into their lives. But he didn’t see, didn’t want to keep discussing it, and it didn’t seem to matter to him what she wanted. Time was passing and her ovaries were ageing and her hormones must be off-kilter after years of being on the pill. Even if she could still conceive, at this point she would be a geriatric pregnancy — a sobering label — at risk for miscarriage, diabetes, and high blood pressure. With every month the chance of getting pregnant decreased and the risks increased. How much longer could she keep waiting for Bruno? And what if he never agreed? She could live with not having a child. But if she faced a future where they had never even tried? She didn’t know if she would be able to forgive him for having so deliberately closed that door.
“Madame?” A hesitant voice.
Her expression must have startled the salesclerk and she forced a smile.
* * *
The lights were bright, the aisles broad. Lots of room to walk slowly. Mina could feel her fingers sizzling, ready to jump. She’d taken off her mitts and stuffed them in her shoulder bag. Her coat had big, deep pockets.
The thing she was going to buy was facecloths. That was what she would say if anyone asked. Facecloths were in the bathroom aisle, she knew exactly where. That was why facecloths were a good thing to say. If she stayed away from where they were, then she was still looking. Nobody could tell you not to be in the store if you were looking.
The times she got caught, they always asked what she was doing in the store. Now she had a what. Facecloths. That was what she would say.
She didn’t walk down the Christmas aisle because there was nothing she wanted there. Red and silver ribbons, shiny balls to hang on trees, pretend green branches, candy canes she wasn’t allowed to eat. Stupid things.
When she was little, Christmas was special because Daddy sang “White Christmas” like Elvis and Mama made Christmas tree cookies with green icing and silver balls. But with Daddy and Mama gone . . . She squeezed her eyes shut to make the tears stop. Not now in the store.
In a minute she was okay and turned into another aisle. Screws and big rolls of tape and electrical cords. Maybe a roll of tape?
A man in a green apron walked up to her, not even pretending to be nice. Not polite. “What are you looking for?”
“F-f-facecloths.”
“Two aisles left. That way.” He pointed — as if she didn’t know where left was!
“D’okay,” she said but still took her time, waiting for him to go wherever he was going. He had a job to do. She had all day.
Swaying from step to step, walking slowly, she saw . . . what? That. But no stopping! Not yet. She walked to the end of the aisle, turned, and walked back. She didn’t know what it was but she could tell right away when a thing was hers, and if it was hers, she could take it. She’d tried explaining to Bruno but stupid Bruno didn’t understand. He shouted about stealing. She knew what stealing was. It was taking something that wasn’t yours. But when a thing said I’m yours, then it was.
She didn’t know what this thing was or what to do with it, but whup! Her fingers fast-fast into her pocket, and once in her pocket, it was definitely hers. She would keep saying that even if she was caught and they called Bruno and he made his big bad wolf head. Too bad! Tit for tat.
Today was a good day. No one would catch her today, she could tell. A package of noodles you only had to pour hot water on. A tiny flashlight. A striped toque. A few erasers. She snickered a little. Grinned. Didn’t leave the store yet because it gave her an excited, tickly feeling to keep walking up and down the aisles, looking for facecloths.
* * *
Bruno stood staring at his reflection in the train window. Ghost forehead, the squarish black frames of his glasses, the holes of his eyes, the straight line of his mouth. Would the skeletal mirroring work as a stage effect or would the dancer have to stand too close to the glass? He backed up a step to see, backed up again, and bumped into a woman. “Sorry.”
She raised her eyebrows. The clean lines of her blue-black skin, the haughty disdain of her look. Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. A real smile too, her mouth, her eyes, her face. He smiled in return. The train slowed, the doors opened, and she walked off. A brief bloom of contact in a crowd of strangers. The memory of their shared smile was still on his lips when he got off at the next stop.
The Pointe was only four métro stops from the concrete, lights, and bustle of downtown, but he came up the escalator into a more modest world of brick and silence. Long before he reached the outdoor hockey rink, he heard the scrape and swirl of skates, the whack of the puck against boards, and from behind the new condos, the rumble of freight trains. Trees, twice as high as the flat-roofed houses, arched over alleys and backyard fences.
It was his night to cook but first he had to stop to see Mina. The social worker had called about a complaint that Mina was taking the plastic bags of flyers and grocery store specials from the entrance of her building. Weren’t the Publisacs there to take? he asked. Apparently she was taking all of them. Next question: had anyone seen her? Mina’s neighbour had seen her take more than one. More than one wasn’t all of them. No, but overnight they were all gone. So why blame Mina? Was that the same neighbour she was always fighting with? Last summer Mina had started calling swear words out the window when the neighbour walked past on the sidewalk. Mina thought that since she was hidden behind the curtain, no one knew it was her. When Bruno confronted her, she said the neighbour had slapped her purse on the window screen. The window was above shoulder level. Slapping a purse up that high definitely was no accident. But who had done which first? As Bruno had discovered, so-called normal people could behave very badly. Since the woman lived next to Mina, opportunities for the two of them to aggravate each other were endless.
There wasn’t a single Publisac left in the entrance of Mina’s building. Maybe the janitor had already cleared them away? Though usually they stayed in a messy pile all week. Bruno debated knocking on his door, but it was suppertime and he didn’t want to disturb him. The janitor had always been kind to Mina, who liked him too.
She didn’t answer the intercom the first time Bruno buzzed. He buzzed again.
And finally, “Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
“What?”
“Just let me in, okay?”
By the time he reached her door, she’d returned to her meal of Skinny Cuisine macaroni and cheese at the small table in the kitchen. Though she couldn’t see the TV from where she sat, she stared at the wall in its direction. She forked up noodles and ignored him. She didn’t like being interrupted while she was eating. She also knew unexpected visits could mean a scolding.
He looked around for the Publisacs, but if she’d taken them, she would have hidden them, and there was such a jumble of crowded furniture and heaped belongings in her apartment that they could have been anywhere. He decided to make his life easier and not ask about the Publisacs until the social worker had proof. “Guess what?” he said.
Another bite of noodles.
“We’re going to take you shopping for a dress.”
Even with her one slightly crossed eye, her look could skewer him. “W-w-with Gabriela?”
“You think I’m coming in the change room with you?”
She broke into a laugh, delight suffusing her face. Her moods could change so quickly.
“I thought you would like that.”
“Gabriela est ma belle-coeur!”
She’d never called any of his previous girlfriends her belle-coeur. Her beautiful heart. The French was grammatically incorrect and Mina didn’t usually mess up gender. Was it an accident or a deliberate play on belle-soeur or sister-in-law? He knew she would have liked him and Gabriela to be married.
“Not this coming Sunday. Next Sunday.”
“When?”
“At noon.”
With a flourish she reached for a pen and with deliberate if uneven letters printed the time on the calendar that was on the table in the kitchen. He watched to make sure she had the right Sunday, though she never made a mistake with dates. She slid off her chair to go mark the calendar on the wall by the sofa, maneuvering around the armchair and its end table on light feet. Returning to her meal, she snuffled happily.
“Life’s good now?”
“Yeah.”
“I can go?”
“Yeah.” And dismissing him properly, she added, “Bye.”
He threw a last look at the carved angel head over the sofa. Its benign gaze and glimmering, gold-leafed wings. He had so often told Mina that the angel was their mother watching over her that he’d half-started to believe it. He hoped that if she were watching, she would see that he was doing his best.
Their mother had upended her own life to ensure that Mina was properly settled. After her husband’s sudden death, she realized that she too might not always be there. Several years after Bruno moved to Montreal to go to technical college, she sold the house with its large garden that she loved in order to bring Mina, who was now eighteen, to Montreal where there was a comprehensive network of social services. In the small town where they’d lived, the school hadn’t even had a special ed teacher. Mina had been kept at home, where their mother taught her letters and numbers, but not how to read. She didn’t think Mina could learn. Even as a boy, Bruno hadn’t believed that. He knew that sometimes, when Mina pretended not to understand, she was only being stubborn. She was crafty and she kept secrets. She had her own way of explaining the world.
In Montreal their mother moved into an apartment with Mina and got her enrolled in programs where she was taught how to manage a weekly allowance, take the subway, make a shopping list with picture cards, and work within a supervised group. When Mina turned twenty, their mother said it was time for her to live by herself. Mina had sulked and cried, but their mother insisted that Mina learn how to be independent. It was a carefully curated independence overseen by their mother and a social worker, but Mina wasn’t aware of that. Once she’d adjusted, she gloried in having her own apartment, a job, belonging to a social club that went to movies and bowling, having a best friend and often a boyfriend. She was happy.
Bruno wasn’t sure their mother was. She didn’t like being in the city where the air was foul and food bought in grocery stores didn’t taste of anything. She missed her house, her garden, and her fruit trees. She missed having Mina with her. He supposed she took comfort in believing she’d done the right thing — as it turned out she had when she was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. Now, at least, there would be no question of placement or how Mina would manage on her own. She could cook and do laundry. She had a job, friends, and hobbies. There was already a social worker assigned and Bruno would always watch out for her.
Their mother never asked him to become Mina’s legal guardian. She didn’t expect that of a man, and he didn’t know that a legal guardian was needed until Social Services called a family meeting. Two social workers, a supervisor, Mina, their mother, and himself. There’s no one else? the supervisor asked. Didn’t she already know? Bruno thought. There had been only minimal contact with his dad’s family in the Gaspé after he died, and that had slowly petered out. His mother’s relatives were far away in Austria. Himself, Mina, and their mother were their family. Soon it would be only himself and Mina. He was thirty-five years old, Mina twenty-seven.
He listened to the social workers’ incomprehensible legalese, not sure what the purpose of the meeting was. When he finally understood that Mina was going to be made a ward of the state, he said no. Their mother objected. She didn’t want to burden him. Mina wasn’t a burden, he said. She’s my sister.
Since then more than ten years had passed. Mina had slowly become more instead of less demanding. Arranging her life as she felt it should be wasn’t always easy.
He was late getting home, but not too late. Gabriela knew he often stopped to see Mina. He kicked the snow off his boots, unlocked the door, and was still in the entrance when he heard a cupboard door bang. He walked down the hallway to the kitchen where Gabriela stood at the counter, chopping.
“What are you doing? I’m cooking tonight.”
She swivelled her head to glare at the clock on the stove.
“It’s only ten after six. I had to see Mina. The social worker had a complaint from the neighbour.”
Gabriela set the knife on the cutting board and rinsed her hands at the sink.
“Supper will be ready at seven,” he said. “When we usually eat.”
“I’m hungry,” she muttered as she stepped past him.
He opened the refrigerator to get the salmon, snatched a baking sheet from the cupboard, then realized he should start the rice. No, he’d make basmati. It would be faster. Wild rice would be nicer, but it seemed Madame couldn’t wait.
* * *
Stabbing her needle into the cloth and pulling it through. Stabbing her needle into the cloth and pulling it through. Over and over, a movement graceful as a dance. The crimson and pink she’d started with were finished. Now she was making stems. Or fingers. Or maybe bones. She didn’t know what the shapes were. She didn’t need to. The colours told her what to do and where to go.
