I suddenly realize that Mink is seated at the kitchen table. I can’t see her body but my mind’s eye understands her to be there. She tells me to calm the fuck down. I can’t hear her voice—she’s communicating intuitively. She is mad at me. I sit down. She tells me I’ve got to stop doing this. I object. She says I’m projecting, that I’m sick. I object. I pound a fist on the table. She says I’m manipulating her. I don’t know what she’s talking about. She says that I’m making my shit about her. Fine, I admit. I lay my forehead on the laminate tabletop. She says I’m violent. Fine, I admit. I give up.

  She says giving up is violent too.

  Hospitals are amplifiers. I’m in a waiting room in one of those waiting room chairs—with the curved metal armrests that are too high and the thin cushioned backrests that are too low—and I can hear every individual thing happening in this whole building as though it’s happening inside my ear canal. I’ve ripped scabs off all my cuticles trying to drown out the drip / pour / slosh of water. The flush of toilets. Groan of pipes. Urine sliding into a catheter bag. I’ve ripped scabs off my cuticles trying to drown out the grind / squeak / creak / of stretchers rolling down hallways. Slapping tennis shoes on linoleum. The hum / buzz / beep of elevators. The hum / buzz / beep of medical machines. The buzzing vibrations in my brain. A doctor taps their pen against a clipboard, sighs. The nurse at the front desk types quick, methodical. Through it all I hear the gentle pops of needles entering veins. I tear up the skin at my cuticles.

  Mink’s visiting hours are restricted because she’s under twenty four hour police surveillance. She’s allowed fifteen minute supervised visits. A cop escorts you to and from her room, leers over your shoulder while you talk to her. I have the intake form on a clipboard in my lap in the lobby outside her room. Mink’s dad is two seats down from me. I’ve never met him but I know it’s her dad. He smells like her house. Stale smoke and beer. He is doing a crossword in a puzzle book like it’s the eighties and he doesn’t look at me or anyone else. He occasionally coughs like his lungs are full of water or taps his fingers against the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. His sounds are close enough to me to draw me out of the hypnotizing liquid sound of skin separating / squish of organs / snip / slice / slosh about and stitch back up. Hundreds of voices fade in and out of each other asking for water / scalpel / morphine / pillow / prescription / patience / answer / relief. I tear the skin at my cuticles—he taps fingers against his cigarette pack—I’m back for just a second and then, through it all a piercing scream. Not fear or pain or sorrow but rage. A scream I’ve heard before. The kind of scream that occupies your body.

  Past the windowed double doors at the end of the lobby I see a cop exit a room, back first, dragging behind him a small shrieking child in an oversized sweater, flailing and kicking. Mink’s dad mutters and rises, puts his pen and puzzle book in his back pocket, clears his throat—like plunging a clogged drain—and passes through the double door. He assists the cop, grabbing the child’s other arm, and the two of them drag Lola—red-faced and shrieking, writhing—through the double doors and down the hall to the elevator. The doors are left wide open, the cop is gone, and I know which room is Mink’s. I drop the clipboard.

  10

  forgiveness is an open casket

  The day Mink flooded Abbott College I was alone. It had been three weeks since I’d seen or spoken to her, since I’d called 911. It was afternoon. Badger messaged me

  marble steps outside the college

  And then

  Mink is here

  And then

  hurry

  In the bright of day the windows of Abbott College hide behind stone columns, pocket-thin strips of dark glass reflecting slivers of pale sky. The marble steps ought to have been visible as I ran across the quad but hundreds of students were crowded at the exits of the building, blocking the steps from view. The fire alarm was ringing and over that I could faintly hear shouting. Where is Badger? I pushed through the crowd, toward the voice that I knew to be Mink’s.

  Mink stood at the top of the marble steps. The crowd was tight, a half-moon around her platform and I emerged at the centre, directly across from her. I scanned the crowd frantically. Where is Badger? A long canvas sheet was draped over the steps with huge letters in red paint reading

  YOUR STUDENT EXPERIENCE IS COLONIAL VIOLENCE

  In panic-tripping, pitch-shaking shouts and screams, Mink was delivering a sermon.

  read slowly. she is shouting. screaming. she is hoarse:

  don’t let them wrap learning

  over your eyes like

  sick blankets

  a million corpses

  to be students at

  this university is an

  act of colonization

  did you read that in screams? i think you did not.

  start from the top and go slowly. she is screaming:

  it is not enough to say we

  reject it

  not enough when

  they fix our

  lives our livelihoods our

  ability to live to their

  violence it is

  violence to live

  then

  —Mink pulls a folded knife from her pocket—or was it in her

  hand the whole time—I don’t know, I can remember it both

  ways—she rolls up her sleeve—her eyes on my eyes and then the

  eyes beside mine on my eyes and then her eyes and Mink drags

  up her sleeve and—

  quickly. she is whispering. we strain to hear:

  we let them

  tear new veins into old earth

  pry it open

  turn it inside out

  poison the soil

  poison the water

  it is violence

  it is murder

  they profit from murder

  and we let them

  then

  —Mink, eyes on my eyes, digs the knife into her forearm, just

  above the back of her left wrist, and pulls hard and fast and

  red and thick to her elbow from which falls a long, coiled sheet

  of skin—she is screaming she is—screaming—

  —it is the only sound I have ever heard—

  —it is inside my body—

  —it is my body—my vibration—ripping—Mink is

  —wrist trembling, passes the blade into blood-soaked—her other

  hand—rips, again, sheet of flesh from her right arm falls—like

  coiled wood shavings—we are still—we have never moved/have

  never heard/the womb is warm/the cocoon does not unwrap slowly

  but breaks off in little pieces/falling scabs—

  —screams waver like blood pulses—a heart draining until—

  finally we are/moving/the crowd moves—we grab her/the

  crowd moves to grab her—I reach for—she moves to—knife

  drops—body limp at my touch but—

  in blankets she flings herself over us screaming:

  power

  has to come from somewhere

  it comes from the ground

  and from

  our hands

  we are bound to their machines

  we hide behind the university

  we trade our hands for cash

  and pretend not to know that we are guilty

  —under blankets of her bleeding we hold her to the ground—first

  shaking from her screaming and then the ground is ripping, the

  whole earth creaking, like the scratch of her screaming, echo

  erupting, now dim in our ears but still screams she is screaming

  hoarse and disintegrating:

  suffocate

  drown

  remorse is nothing

  nothing is passive is violence is

  murder is

  —her body pinned beneath me and blankets of bleeding—I nestle

  wet eyes in the back of her blood soaking—ground shakes again

  and with a guttural rumbling the door of the college bursts open

  with gushing brown sewage—flows like the river—shit, piss and

  runoff—our bodies digested, debris and brown steaming—

  —I’m trying to lift her—we’re slipping in shit and the weight of the

  crowd hanging over our bodies while—

  Mink’s hoarse white voice is a flame’s angry whisper

  at water poured over its kindling—

  Mink’s eyes are closed. Her face is expressionless, marked with dozens of long scratches and scabs. She is flat on her back with just a thin pillow under her head. Her left arm is amputated just past the elbow, the stub wrapped in bright white bandages. Her right arm is wrapped from wrist to elbow, her remaining hand covered in a thick white glove and wrist strapped to a raised bar of the bedframe. There is a long strap across her chest, over both arms, secured beneath the bed. Bright flowers, carnations and daisies, crowd the bedside table in foggy-glass gift shop vases. Underneath the vases, stacks of newspaper. The room smells like rubbing alcohol and rot.

  I stand at the foot of her bed for a long time. I can’t tell if she is sleeping or just has her eyes closed. I don’t want to wake her if she is sleeping. Maybe that is just an excuse. Maybe I don’t want her to see me. Maybe I don’t want to see her. I turn to walk away but with the first step she mutters softly, “Don’t go.”

  I turn back to the bed. Her eyes are still closed—this irritates me.

  “It feels nice to have you here, you know, thank you.”

  I do not move. A rabbit tricks its predators by the power of stillness. Maybe I can stand here motionless until she dies and she’ll never see me and we’ll never need to have this conversation. Mink’s breath is raspy. She looks weightless in the scary way.

  “Why didn’t you come before?”

  A scab on her lip cracks with her speaking.

  “It’s ok if you were scared.”

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  “Are you going to take care of me again?”

  “There are nurses to take care of you now.”

  Mink opens her eyes heavily, bloodshot and shallow. “Right, ok.” Then, scanning over my trembling figure. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  Outside trees shake and bow. The window is closed but the curtains are blowing. I chew hard on the inside of my cheek.

  “It’s been in the news lots. Heron’s brought me all the papers. Do you want to see?”

  Mink motions with her eyes to the bedside table. She cannot move her arms.

  “I’ve seen them already.”

  “Even if you’re mad, seems like it made a pretty big impact.” Mink closes her eyes again, a little smile. Dark roots are clawing at the window. They are dark not like a dark object, but dark like the absence of light, dark like outer space.

  “I’m not mad.” I am choking. I turn again to leave.

  “Wait, Fox, please. I don’t want to be alone. It’s so bright.”

  I turn back to her. Fluorescent light rakes over her scars. Small panic in her face. My feet feel wet. Below us the river is seeping up through the hospital floor.

  “You want me to just stand here while you congratulate yourself?”

  Small grimace. Silence. Wet river foliage scurries like rodents out from the water and over my legs and torso, up the sides of Mink’s bed. Leaving little tracks of mud where they tread.

  I feel the rolling in the head and gut that precedes vomit. I feel cold mist, tears on my cheeks, the rattling of bombs in my bones.

  “Well then, what is it you accomplished, exactly? What have you seen in the news about Manitoba Hydro or corporatized education or Chemawawin? Nothing, right? Because I’ve seen nothing. All they care about is you. They don’t care about the integrity of research or Lynx’s mum or the forest or the river, Mink, they mostly don’t even care that you’re a student. You’ve just given them a bullshit sensational story about a sick-in-the head millennial that lost their shit.” I’m shouting. “It does nothing and goes nowhere. You were a flashy headline for a few weeks and now you’re already nothing.”

  “You need to shut up,” Mink says. Thick blades of grass push through the floor and then the ceiling. The ground shudders beneath me and the walls creak.

  I feel fists striking my sternum, hunger in my gut, grass between my toes, and the buzzing vibrations in my skull.

  “No, you shut up. You have such a fucking saviour complex. It’s pathetic. You’re everything we hate—another white hypocrite pretending you give a shit about Indigenous rights when you can’t see past your own hands. Taking over Lynx’s story and loss and making it about you and your shit. Well, congratulations, you’re a martyr no one asked for and no one outside the collective even knows what you’re a martyr for.”

  With a crack, the dark roots puncture the window and rush into the room. I am crowded closer to her bed by the grass and roots, ankle deep in river and the dance of foliage rats. Mink’s bed curtains spin around her like gymnast’s ribbons, framing her solemn face in frantic spirals of pale yellow.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mink says, voice hushed and furious. “You don’t know because Lynx didn’t trust you and they were right not to because every fucking word you’re saying in here is compromising their safety.” My heart drops to my stomach and I grind my teeth against my cheek. “You’re always a mess. Deny, deny, repress until you explode. Don’t you dare talk to me about being a martyr as though you didn’t love me best when you got to play my saviour.” My teeth puncture my cheek and my mouth fills with blood.

  I can smell the smoke of burning fields, the salt of the cold ocean, the steam off melting flesh, yeast off pan bread, gunpowder and dust, my blood, your blood, sap and honey, cedar and mud. My mother taught me that silence is a tool, that my anger isn’t honest because it’s only one piece of the truth, that I honour the truth by silencing my anger, that I honour the world by honouring the truth, that I owe the world the truth and so I owe the world my silence and I owe it silence all the time because anger is all that I’ve got.

  “I wasn’t a martyr to you.”

  Mink shrugs, “You tried to be.” Against the sickly hospital linens, her skin is glowing—a dollop of blood on her cheek is a dew sprinkled rose in her teeth. I’m dizzy and exhausted. She meets my eyes.

  “Are you going to die?” The words are heavy and wet as I splatter fat mouthfuls of blood on the blanket over her feet.

  She shrugs again. The rose at her cheek cracks, a petal slowly falling to her chin. I am sweating brown river water. Muck and wet foliage push through the skin at my forehead and armpits, dripping down my face and arms. I can’t hold up my weight anymore and drop cross-legged to the wet floor at the foot of Mink’s bed where she can’t see me because she’s strapped down. “The collective is a mess.” Tears run down my face and my voice has softened. “We’ve only met once without you and you’re so sick that no one can be mad at you but me and everyone thinks I’m the asshole for being mad at all.”

  “I don’t think you’re an asshole,” Mink says.

  “Well, I think you’re an asshole.” I put my face in my hands and sob. Mouthfuls of blood pour down my chin and into my lap. “I don’t know what to do,” I murmur into my bloody palms, “I don’t know what to do.” Roots, grass, muck, and river flood the room, up over my head so that I’m sitting at the bottom of a lake with my torso hunched over, holding my fluid face.

  A hand grabs the back of my shirt and drags me to my feet. Mink is asleep, her face limp and expressionless. The window is intact and closed; the floor is dry. The cop pulls me out of the room and into the hall.

  11

  how to finish what you’ve started

  What’s the longest you’ve ever held your breath?

  I don’t know, maybe, like, a minute and a half?

  I can hold mine for four minutes. Wanna see?

  No, that’s impossible. I don’t want to see.

  Mink rolls, dewy grass squishes, sky like dark water surrounds her as though she is half submerged. She brushes her hand against mine. Soft. Everything is soft here. My brain sloshes gentle as a cradle in my skull. I move to sit up. Mink sucks air hard between her teeth, her breath screeches like a door hinge. She puffs out her cheeks and stares at me lopsided. Laughing eyes. I poke her side and she deflates. Laughing mouth. Round. Soft. Her chest concaves. Warm breath in my palms.

  You never let me have any fun.

  Liar. Tell the star story, again?

  Ok. She smiles. Perfect. Sits up. We face each other. Our knees bent, legs entwined. She clears her throat for effect. She tells this story with her hands.

  It starts with instability. You are the centre. She places a hand on each of my bare thighs. A cloud of dust in empty dark begins to swirl. Her fingers fold and open against me. Warm. Eager. Her fingers dip lower. Dust swirls faster and faster in perfect dark. Dust grows tighter and tighter. Her fingers trace over my labia. Trembling. Density increases with each turn. Is heavier. Is deeper. Dancing between my lips, delicate. Friction builds heat, is hotter, hotter. Hotter than spilling blood. She pushes inside me. Hotter than forest fires. She pushes deeper. The core of the earth. I lean my head at her throat. Spins deeper and hotter and tighter and tighter until. She whispers. Perfect. Her throat hums against me.

  Perfect, it halts. Mass hovers like a glass overfull clinging liquid. Brimming. Complete and perfect and brimming and then. Her fingers so quickly. Eternity folds. She’s drumming my skin. The mass spills over. Strumming my strings. Grinds together. Vibrations crescendo. Collapses inward and explodes.

 

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