And Then She Fell, page 24
He looks around the room quickly and the others smirk back at him knowingly. All my intentions to try to fly under the radar for this dinner disperse like smoke.
“Her name was Emma. Emma Blake,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “And her murder—all these women’s murders—are part of a massive, ongoing conspiracy. One designed to take Native land.”
Scott, down the table, laughs a little, saying, “You can’t honestly tell me the monster who murdered that little girl did it because he wanted land. It’s not like he was given a deed afterward.”
Immediately Steve’s hand is on my thigh, squeezing it slightly. I don’t acknowledge it.
“I’m not telling you that at all. I’m telling you the stories this country has told about who Native women are, what you can expect from us, and what we deserve, have had a direct impact on how Canadians treat us. There’s a straight line from how the Catholic Church justified the murders and rapes of Indigenous people when countries like Canada were being settled, to the way courts and columnists justify the murders and rapes of Indigenous people today.”
“Sure, if you consider the systemic issues, there’s a lot to be desired. But is that really ‘genocide’? That’s such a loaded word. It means something to people,” Lou, to my left, responds. “When you say ‘genocide,’ I think Holocaust. I think Rwanda. I don’t think about individual murders done over a period of decades by completely different people.”
As I’m about to respond, Mason, who’s seated diagonal to me, interrupts.
“That’s exactly why I refer back to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on this. They used the term ‘cultural genocide,’ which I think is much more understandable and applicable.” He’s not talking to me. He’s not even looking at me. He’s talking to the white people at the table, who are clearly relieved he’s added a modifier to the term, as if that drastically changes the conversation.
“Great point, John. I completely agree,” Scott says, his eagerness to have an Indigenous person to agree with so clear it borders on desperate. He’s saying more, going into vague detail about the United Nations Genocide Convention, but I can’t focus on his words. I can only focus on Mason. Why did Scott call him “John”? Matoaka’s voice echoes in my head: Don’t let him be your John. How did Mason know about that? The only person I told was Aunt Rachel.
She must have told him. Even she’s not safe.
Before I can reflect on what that means, as if on cue, Sheila leans over to me and says, softly, “Is there something wrong with the soup? You’ve barely touched it.”
My attention shifts directly to her and her creaseless consternation. Has she been watching me this whole time?
“I’m not really hungry,” I say mildly. And it’s true, I’m not hungry, I haven’t been hungry in what feels like days. When was the last time I even ate? I can’t remember.
“You’re breastfeeding, though, aren’t you? Lots of good vitamins and minerals for Dawn in there. I actually had both of you in mind when I planned the menu.”
What does she mean by that? Why would she plan her menu around me and Dawn? That makes no sense. I’m only one person out of probably twenty seated at this table. I pause and look down at the soup. It still looks like blood to me. It even smells like blood, faintly. Why would Sheila be so insistent upon me eating this blood soup unless there was something she wanted me and Dawn to ingest in it?
Poison.
Certainty filters through each part of me as I sit very still, trying my best to keep my face as blank as her husband’s morality. This must be what Steve and Lou were talking about earlier. If it’s not poison in there, it’s some sort of drug meant to make me look and act crazy. LSD. Ecstasy. I need to be smarter about what I say and do. I know how easy it is to take an Indigenous woman’s righteous anger and make it look like insanity. Like turning a kaleidoscope. One minute you’re tolerated, the next you’re gone. I can’t make it easy for them. I won’t.
“Thank you, Sheila. How thoughtful. I’m saving my appetite for the main course.”
“Why don’t I go get the main course now?” She grabs the bone china bowl from in front of me and starts to get up. “Hopefully the conversation’s changed to something less . . . contentious by the time I get back.”
Contentious. Not the word I would have used to describe Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks being murdered or going missing at over five times the rate of non-Indigenous folks, but sure. Contentious. I look down at my lap and try to ignore what’s being said around me, let it turn to a cicada-like buzz, but Steve’s hot words are in my ear: “Be nice, Al. Please.”
I’ve been trained since I was a girl to know “be nice” is colonial code for “shut up.” But I’m not sure why he wants me to shut up. If anything, I’d think he’d want me to keep going, the better to institutionalize me with.
Then he continues: “And for god’s sake, eat something.” He wants to pressure me into eating the poison or drugs or whatever.
I don’t respond. Still, I can feel eyes on me, other eyes, so I look up and Mason, or “John,” as he calls himself, is staring straight at me.
You know what they want you to do. His lips are shut tight but I know the words are coming from him, from his mind. Just do it.
Why should I? I think back.
Survival of the fittest, baby. Do what they say and you’ll survive. You and your sweet little girl.
I hold his gaze, thinking back to the times when I was a teenager and told myself I’d do anything for a chance to be his, an ornament on his bedside table, a notch in his belt. Even yesterday, in the grocery store, I was desperate to feel the light of his attention shine exclusively on me. I wanted to swallow it all, every drop, like a bottle of water in the thick, swampy southern Ontario humidity. Now, as he smirks at me from across this shiny cherrywood table, I feel dirty, like I’ve been rolling in mud and shit. His words a reminder of my role here. I’m supposed to cut chunks from my back and let them watch while they casually sip their drinks. I’m not supposed to object.
“Here you are. Don’t tell anyone, but I picked the best cut for you,” Sheila says.
The plate slides before me and there, in the middle of the china, is a brown face that appears to have been sliced directly from a woman’s skull, the eyelids clenched tight despite being severed from whatever muscles would have kept them closed. This is what Scott meant before. This is why he was smiling knowingly at each white person at this table. But it’s not like that’s part of some massive, ongoing conspiracy to murder or disappear Native women. I look around, my consciousness immediately trying to pop out of the confines of my body like a piece of bread from a toaster, and I watch as each plate slides in front of each of the other guests, each of whom enthusiastically picks up their assigned fork and steak knife and cuts into the still-bloody brown flesh, one guest commenting on how fresh it is, another asking where on earth Sheila managed to get such quality meat in this day and age, and Sheila smiling as she looks directly at me, saying oh she just happens to know the right butcher, her eyes now moving past me to my husband, who’s commenting on how he’s never eaten anything quite so tender, that this is positively melting in his mouth, the blood staining his teeth and tongue inside a dark wine, as though he’s eaten something innocent, like blackberries, and then Sheila’s asking me why I haven’t tried any yet, and then Steve’s asking why I haven’t tried any yet, and then everyone’s eyes are on me, and the fork and knife are in my hands as I stare down at the face on my plate, which looks remarkably like my own, and when I glance up everyone else’s faces are gone—not the ones on their plates, though those are quickly being consumed, too, but the ones on their own heads, which are now bare and smooth as stones, and I think briefly of corn husk dolls, how vain the original was to have lost her face, and how vain all of us in this room have been and continue to be, then I think of what will happen to me if I eat human flesh like the rest of them, the absolute monsters, the cannibals, and I whisper to a faceless Steve that I can’t do it, please don’t make me do it, my voice cracking despite me, and then he’s cutting the face on my plate with his own fork and knife, asking me why I have to do this, why I have to make him treat me like a child, and I wonder if anyone else can hear him speaking without a mouth, and then he’s stabbing the fork into the left cheek on my plate, and pushing the fork toward my closed mouth, telling me to make room for the helicopter, and everyone is laughing, and I’m thinking of the dream and how this is just another version, my humiliation and fear are the true main course of this evening, and I can’t fight the fear away anymore, so I cry, keeping my mouth shut as he knocks the bloody flesh against my lips once, twice, three times, and I beg him to stop, but he’s only used this as an opening and now the chunk of cheek is inside my mouth and Steve’s hands are on me, one under my chin clamping my jaw closed and the other pinching my nostrils shut, forcing me to finally chew, and it tastes like copper and gristle, not tender at all, and as Steve’s tickling my throat to force me to swallow, in the corner of my eyes I see something grow, something I instinctively know I don’t want to see, but also know I have to see, and my body is shaking uncontrollably as I look at Lou, who has abandoned all pretense of politeness and is licking his plate clean. I watch as the tongue protrudes from what looks like nothing, transfixed on what must be happening beneath.
Delicious, Lou says, bringing his bloody, blank face up from the porcelain to stare at me. It’s unnerving, this faceless head splattered with red, slowly turning to the side, as if examining me, even without eyes. Lou’s body seems to be quivering under his skin, like what I see and understand to be Lou is not Lou at all, and there’s another Lou, a hidden Lou, hiding beneath. Wouldn’t you say so, Steven?
Nothing like fresh meat, Steve laughs. And then Lou starts to laugh, and Scott, and Mason-John, the harmony a deep, gruff, roiling growl of a noise. And then Sheila and the other women laugh, too, their giggles like tinkling bells at first, but slowly heightening, the pitch skyrocketing, until their voices are all one manic screech. I cover my ears, gagging at the taste of blood and gristle still coating my mouth, just in time to watch Lou start to . . . change. The sharp angles of his shoulders and the thin sturdiness of his limbs dampen as each part of his body begins to bloat. It doesn’t seem to be fat, but bone that’s pushing his body to become larger. His shirt and pants rip open from the pressure and the shreds fall from him, the separate pieces of his body somehow smoothing into one huge rectangular shape. A new set of features appears in the empty space of what used to be his face, and as I watch it grows, taking up the whole of what used to be his body. The chair lurches beneath him, then breaks into splinters of wood and cushion, and I see that he is only a head—a giant head, resting on the ground, what used to be his legs and feet now cheeks and chin, what used to be his arms now ears and temples. Wiry white-blond hair sprouts from every part of his face, while the blond hair on his head grows longer, thicker, more tangled. As he lets out a final grunt, two wings stab out from his cheeks, a grimace of a smile playing on his face as the others around the table start to quiver and transform in my peripheral vision, silk dresses and linen suit jackets falling to the floor around me.
He’s a Flying Head, I think, clenching my eyes shut, trying to figure out what else to do. Holy shit, he’s a Flying fucking Head. They’re all Flying Heads.
Now, Alice. Don’t you think you’re overreacting? Lou asks. Evolution is natural. You should embrace it. Aren’t you tired of being inferior? Don’t you want to stop surviving and start thriving?
Every muscle in my body is like dripping liquid, completely outside of my control, until one single word enters my mind: Dawn.
We can save her, Sheila says from my left. Just like we can save you. Or we can eat you both. Harvest your organs and grind your bones to make our bread. Your choice.
I try to pull my consciousness back into my body. I need to not think. They can hear everything I’m thinking. If I don’t figure something out, now, they’re going to eat me and Dawn.
Open your eyes, Lou demands.
“No,” I say. The air around me feels like it’s solidified into Jell-O.
Open your eyes, Sheila demands.
“No,” I repeat, tears sliding down my face.
Open your eyes or I’ll feed them Dawn, Steve says.
I snap my eyes open, grab my purse from beneath my seat, and run. The house doesn’t stretch itself out under my feet this time. I must have caught it off guard. Good.
I dart into the first room I see, slam the door shut, and turn the lock. I place my ear against the wood of the door. I can still hear the tones of Steve’s voice, but I can’t make out the words. He could be planning to call the cops right now. All he has to do is tell them I’m crazy and they can take me away. He could be planning to trap me here. Find a key, barrel in, carve my face from my skull to feed it to Lou. He could be planning to give Sheila our daughter. He could be doing anything. And I’m locked in here.
I turn around to see what room I’m actually in. What I have to work with. It’s some sort of library. There are shelves full of books on every wall climbing almost to the ceiling. The heavier books could work as weapons. My eyes gravitate toward a giant hardcover book whose cover reminds me of the sky, the words INFINITE JEST stamped across the spine, and I yank it from its place so hard I nearly drop it.
At that exact moment, the handle to the door starts shaking violently behind me.
Aaaaalice. Lou’s voice. Come out and play.
He jiggles the knob more frantically.
You told Steve you’d be a good girl. Do you think this is being a good girl? That’s Sheila.
I slide down the bookshelf wall to the floor, the book in my hands in front of me like a shield, and start to cry in earnest—deep, quaking sobs.
“Please let me leave. I won’t tell anyone what happened. I promise.”
“Al, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” asks Steve, his voice full of concern. I can actually hear it this time. Has he gotten his lips back? Is he a Flying Head now, too? They all want me either dead or in an institution. Maybe both. And maybe I deserve it.
But Dawn doesn’t. The voice sounds like Matoaka’s and the Shape’s mixed together. Whoever it is, they’re right. Dawn doesn’t deserve this. She’s just a baby. She shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. She shouldn’t have to be in danger because she’s my child. I need to get out of here. I need to get her and protect her. I pull out my phone, open my Uber app, and punch in my destination: home. Or what I used to think of as home, anyway, before I came to understand it was never meant to be mine. There’s a black car two minutes away.
“Please let me in. I just want to talk,” Steve says, the doorknob rattle slowing down.
“I don’t want to talk,” I choke out. “I want to go.”
“Fine.”
The doorknob stops rattling completely. There’s what sounds like some quick footsteps moving away. I count breaths as I focus on the lack of sound in the hallway. I count to ten, twenty, thirty, then drop my book-weapon and crawl across the floor. I lower my face to the carpet and try to look beneath the door into the hallway. I can’t see anything. It’s too dark. Did they turn out the light? Are they really gone? Or do they want me to let my guard down so they can lure me into another trap?
Bang bang bang bang bang!
A sound like a battering ram being slammed against the door. I scream.
“Get! The fuck! Out here!” shouts Steve, slamming into the door between words. “You open this fucking door before I break it down myself!”
Off with her head! Off with her head! chants Sheila, laughing maniacally. Lou joins in, then Mason-John and the others. Off with her head! Off with her head! What’s out there right now? How many of them have turned into Flying Heads already? The wood of the door sounds like it’s cracking. Steve has to be a Flying Head now, too. How else could he have that sort of power? I need to get out of here and to the Uber. To Dawn. I need to protect her.
There’s a window on the other wall, between two shelves. I run over, yank it open, and look down at the drop. It’s a little high, but not too bad. I take off my heels and sit on the ledge. I don’t even think. I kick the screen over and over until it rips free of the frame, then pick up my purse and throw my body through, legs first.
Sharp pain in my right ankle. I suck in and hold my breath as the pain throbs up my right leg. The ankle might be twisted. It’s not painful enough to be broken.
Nya:wen, I think, sure that this time my ancestors are watching out for me.
I’m in the backyard on a patch of velvety grass. I try to brace myself against the side of the house as I get up. Once I’m standing, I check my phone. The Uber is down the street. I hear a crash inside the house, followed by roars of anger. They’re in the room. I can’t wait.
I open the gate to the front yard and run out, barefoot on the still-hot asphalt, then wave at the black car approaching.
It screeches to a stop.
“Alice?” the driver asks as I slide into the back seat.
“That’s me,” I say brightly.
I’m closing the car door behind me just as the heavy oak door of Lou’s house opens, orange light spilling out into the night.
Doesn’t matter where you go, he says. We’re going to eat you. And your daughter. Your disobedience has given us no choice.
The car’s pulling away when a huge dark shape bounces onto the porch, silhouetted for a moment before launching into the air, its hair blowing wildly in the wind. Flying Heads use their hair to fly more than their wings, I remember Dad saying.
There’s a loud guttural growl that sounds like a dinosaur or elk. I lean down in the back seat and cover my ears.
