Nomad’s Daughter

By Kim McDougall

First Published in Adventures of the Average Woman, 2007

It should be a nice view. The apartment building isolates us from the din of the city. The front walk is dusky, lit only by a small amber light and my eyes play drunken games with the shadows. The garden is unkempt: a tree, an overgrown bush and some scraggly grass. Sometimes I feel guilty about not keeping it up, but never for long. The rest of the street is hopelessly middle-class. Rows of old, distinguished maples, uniformly interrupted by black asphalt driveways. White cone-shaped cement blocks separate the lawns from the road. We display ourselves on stairs that are cold, even for September. From behind, Jack's fingers pinch my shoulder. We must have spent--God knows--thousands of hours on these steps, with this view, beers in hand. Like the white blocks we are silent sentinels, tokens of possession.

From somewhere a crying baby breaks the stillness. I've grown to like silence. My mother often said that she'd be still when she was dead and until then she'd talk all day and all night if she wanted. And she did. "You children will be the death of me! If Nanny knew the way you run wild..." or "I may be many things, but I'm no mind reader..." or "God knows, Henry, you've important things in your head..." She nattered on at my father eighteen hours a day, every now and then pausing expectantly--we were all expectant--waiting for my father's improbable comment. It was a relief when Mother began chattering again, her fingers busy with a rusted can opener. Silence wasn't right in our shabby camper kitchen. But it is tonight. Jack and I have a kind of unspoken pledge that I wouldn't dare break. Silence is a comfortable, acquired taste.

"Where did all the toads go?" I ask later when our vigil is done and we have retreated to our dark bed.

Jack doesn't answer. He's used to my meanderings. Once, we almost split up because I insisted on the possibility of a whole different spectrum that we have never experienced. Imagine trying to explain a color without any point of reference. Jack couldn't imagine it or, perhaps, he wouldn't imagine it. By now he knows better than to argue when I am whimsical. Instead, he closes his eyes to me and settles his pillow behind his head with an air of martyrdom.

And I feel a twinge of that long hidden resentment, that rebellion against the I-told-you-so's. My brother, Tom, started me on this reactionary track. With all the snobbery of an eight year old, I knew my brother was a fathead. "SHAZAM!" He exploded from the closet, carefully crushing my toes. "KA-BAM!" A feint at my nose with his fist.

Wailing was my only defense.

"Shut your gob, or mom'll hear!" After Band-aid surgery, and a cuffing or two my mother pushed us out the door to "go catch toads or something!"

"I told you so," grumbled Tom. "Tomfool, " I retaliated.

Summer vacations were hard on my mother, especially when my father was home writing The Book. On the road, while he did his research, we were easier to handle. Then, we had endless toads to catch and infinite miles of forest to tire out in. And toads were great. You always knew when they were going to pee on you; they fidgeted. You could even squeeze their little asses and make them go. After that they were your best friends. Tomfool never mastered this technique. Toads always peed on him. So he ripped their legs off and brought them home

Tom had more than a few run-ins with them. "Artsy-fartsy" they tagged him. (Where's Shazam now, Tomfool?) We were the artsy-fartsy kids. The wanderers, the gypsies, the vagabonds. "Where's your bag...lady?" jeered at my mother from behind melting snowmen, the sentinels of suburbia.

I suppose we were a little strange, taking off every few months to travel across the country.  With Father in the lead, we explored every small town the Canadian tundra had to offer. The more ghost-like the better. When the camper rusted shut one winter, we lived in shacks and tents that summer and, when it rained, the back of the old Buick. At night it was always cold, even in July. Tomfool and I curled up together like newborn kittens that don't yet use their claws.

Sometimes we settled long enough for Tom and I to get in a full semester of school, but more often before our report cards came in with the dreaded "inattentive in class" or "has trouble focusing her attention," I would come home to find Father packing the car. He was not restless. He did everything with a quiet deliberation. The sleeping bags always fit just so under the hinges of the trunk door, the suitcases braced between them. And when he drove through the endless miles of wheat fields, he had both hands on the steering wheel, at ten and two o'clock. Never one hand drooping out the window like the teenagers that hung out at the drive-ins.

Each time we left, I tried to miss my new found friends, but there were too many, and later, not enough. In the back seat of the car, Tomfool and I played Chinese checkers on a magnetic game board that was missing pieces. I pretended we were secret agents for the RCMP. I recited the multiplication tables. I became Shazam's sidekick.

Somewhere in northern British Columbia, in the late seventies, Tom announced that he was hitchhiking to Vancouver to get a job and finish school. Father only nodded and gave him whatever money was in his pocket. That was the last time I saw Shazam.

Until Yesterday. We met in a second-hand bookstore. I'd heard that he moved back to Toronto, the city where, as children, we began our grand tour. I don't think he graduated from university, though I didn't ask. He just didn't have the look of an alumnus.

He doesn't know what The Book was about either.

Jack is smoking in his introspective way. I hate that. It's the only thing worse than smoking after dinner. Besides, I know he's going to burn the house down one of these days.

"So, where did they go?"

"Who?"

"The toads. I never see them anymore." Not that I've been hunting, but I'd expect to see one now and then.

"It's the pollution," he says, putting out his cigarette. "Frogs and toads breathe through their skin. They can't handle it." I look at him to see if he's pulling my leg. "It's true." From the foot of the bed, wrapped in damp sheets, I watch him, feeling like a child at storytime. Where does he learn this stuff?

Later on I watch him sleep, noting every mark and smoothness on his skin. My finger traces the creases around his eyes. My skin against his, like two opposing magnets. I feel like a cat-burglar.

I'm stealing from you Jack. Your soul. Your dreams and nightmares. I am omnipotent while you sleep.

I can't sleep again. I have always been a night owl, at least since the fire. At night I can't escape the what-if syndrome. What if I close my eyes. What if I had done something. What if I had made a difference. It's a masochistic game I play. How many different ways can I blame myself for my father's death? I don't like the guilt so I rationalize it: He would have had no life anyway, after The Book was destroyed. As with gardening, my guilt is not long lasting, just recurring.

"Worms," says Jack, surprising me. Back in our bedroom, his eyes are wide open. He's been watching me. There is no honor among thieves. "Never much liked toads. Worms were more my thing. They always hid under those white rocks by the side of the road." He rolls over and sleeps. I am dismissed.

Eventually, I do fall asleep to the soft bang-bang rhythm from the headboard of the tenants upstairs.

Breakfast is still one of my least favourite times of the day. Jack is a morning person as long as he gets his coffee and cigarette. It's my turn to cook. French toast is the only thing I know how to make. Jack is reading me snippets from the newspaper, but I'm not listening. There is a seed in my brain, an idea conceived in the middle of the night that won't let go. At what time last night did this whim take me? I suspect that it has been with me since the day my father ran back into our burning house for The Book.

"I want to write a book," I say, testing the feel of it on my tongue.

"What about?" He says from behind the paper.

"Oh, I don't know. About people. About you and me."

"Since when did you become an artsy-fartsy?" In this minute I hate him. But then logic comes back to me and I stop the rift between us from spreading. After all, how could he know of my childhood trepidation? I give him the benefit of the doubt. What I mean is that we do have our moments.

"I might have to do some field research," I say.

"Uh-huh." He's not listening anymore.

"It might mean being away for a few months." No reply. "Maybe four or five..." I pick up the entertainment section but I don't see anything that I read. I'll travel, for research. I'll meet people.

Shazam, Tomfool. I am artsy-fartsy.

to Father. That's probably why I always thought The Book was about amphibians.

What is strange, is that I never really knew what The Book was about. All I knew is that it involved too much research and that it was always there ever since I could remember. "One day, when you're a big girl I'll explain it to you, " said my father. Real enough promises to satisfy an uninquisitive little girl.

Besides, I resented The Book. The kids on the block made fun of it. Especially the big kids.