Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. Lauren B. Davis
him the fork.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“No. Eat some of the chicken.”
I cut off a piece of chicken and ate it. “Um, um. I sure am a good cook. Yessir. That’s one thing you’re gonna miss.”
He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up.
“What’re you talking about?”
“I going home John. I’m leaving you.” I felt it then. Knew my heart had just broken.
“You ain’t going nowhere.” The colour rushed back into his face, his eyes dark and cloudy.
“Yes I am. And, John McBride, you’re going to let me walk out that door and drive back to where you found me. You know why?” I walked back over to the counter and stood near the poison. “Because if you don’t, you will never eat another meal in this house without wondering. You will never get another good night’s sleep.”
“Bitch!” he said, in a rush of air like he’d been punched. He made a move toward me.
I stood my ground, drew myself up and out, became full of myself and my own spirits.
“You will never hit me again and live.” I spoke very slowly, softly. “Is this what you want to be doing when you go to meet your maker, John?”
He heard me. I watched my husband’s face crumple. He slumped down on the chair and put his head in his hands.
“Don’t leave me. I’m begging you. Don’t go.”
I walked into the bedroom and picked up the bag I’d packed that afternoon. I carried it back into the kitchen. I picked up the keys to the truck from where he’d left them on the hook beside the door.
“You take care now,” I said. “I’ll have Jimmy drop the truck back later.” I closed the door behind me, and started walking, but I could still hear him crying. I stopped by the shed and put down a tobacco tie and some corn and seed for the rats, saying thank you. I didn’t see them, but I knew they were around.
Walking to the truck was like wading through hip deep mud, but I made it.I drove down the road back to the rez and felt like I was dragging my heart all the way, tied to the back of the bumper like an old tin can.
BARBARA’S MOTHER’S RUG
When I was thirteen, I went to a party at Barbara’s house. Which was a pretty big deal for me. I wasn’t a weirdo or anything, not in any specific way. Medium height, medium weight, medium face, medium bright, but I just couldn’t seem to fit. I wasn’t part of the group. Any group. Not that I hadn’t tried enough of them.
I was the kid who ended up shuffling around hanging on the edge of things. Often on the receiving end of some stupid prank. Cayenne pepper up the nose (Come on, just smell this!), tent caterpillars down the blouse, or demands I do something outrageous to prove my worthiness. Eat worms or cover my shoes in dog shit. Good for a laugh but not on the ‘A’ list as far as party invitations went.
Barbara lived a couple of streets over from me in the subdivision that had replaced the farmer’s fields of a few years before. Barbara’s group were new-neighbourhood kids who hadn’t yet discovered my reputation for being a fifth wheel.
Barbara’s parents were out for the evening and the house was filled with maybe ten or twelve teenagers. The house was awash in the too bright light specific to suburban houses of the 1960s. White walls with prints of wide-eyed children, pale blue shag carpeting, a sterility of taste. There was a crocheted dog covering the extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, orange and brown flowered wall-paper in the kitchen, glass topped coffee tables with chrome legs and Lazy-Boy chairs with TV trays in front of them in the ‘rec’ room.
We were listening to records and smoking cigarettes. I was feeling faintly nauseous. Cigarettes always made me feel like that and it took years of near puking to get me successfully addicted.
I didn’t know this group well, and I didn’t think I’d be hanging out with them for long. They seemed immature. A polished facade of maturity was my first line of defence if I sensed I’d soon be on my way out of any particular group.
Steve was a slimy little bastard. But there was a sort of salty, crusty, dick-in-your-face sex vibe coming from him. He was the kid who’d pinch your boob, or stretch out his open palm, one finger sticking up, on the seat of your chair as you sat down. Then smirk knowingly at his buddies when you shot up, shrieking. He talked, quite loudly, about getting a ‘woody’. He was slightly feral, ferrety, weasely, and seemed always to be in total, swaggering control. He wore net T-shirts to show off what he considered impressive pecs. He seemed completely oblivious to what seemed obvious to me. He was born to end up in a checkerboard suit selling used pintos.
Lee-Anne, on the flip side, the pack leader of the girls, had her own brand of charisma. She was tough, a tomboy, and reckless. She came from a wealthy family who lived in a big old lake front house with acres of garden all around. None of the prissy-clean rich girl ways for Lee-Anne though. Tight corduroy pants, running shoes, sweatshirts and stringy hair were her style. She was strong and athletic and swore like a stevedore, even though she went to St. Etienne Catholic School, where the nuns, she told everybody, were afraid of her. I learned a lot of great cussing from Lee-Anne.
It was Steve who suggested the vodka. Barbara balked at first, but Lee-Anne, not to be outdone in daring-do by Weasel Boy, took the suggestion to heart and basically bullied Barbara into acquiescence. This raiding of the parent’s liquor cache was a new thing for me and behind what I hoped was a steel cool exterior, sat a bowl of lime green Jell-O. With the music of The Rolling Stones playing on the family hi-fi, out came the 40oz., springwater-clear bottle of vodka. Blue plastic glasses were proffered to each of us, with the same inferred threats no doubt later used by Jim Jones handing out glasses of spiked Kool-Aid. Not all of us fell sway to the dark influence, but I, in spite of the vague cigarette nausea, managed a healthy searing gulp.
The circle of glasses was quickly empty and I was wondering how I was going to get out of doing this again. I didn’t think my stomach was going to handle another shot. Relief came when somebody asked if there was any beer. The refrigerator, kept especially for this purpose in the basement, was checked. Sure enough, it was full of Labatt’s 50. Bottles were handed out. I took one, saying I liked beer better than vodka, more flavour. Right. Actually, I figured I could just nurse the bottle and nobody would be the wiser. The boys began passing the bottle of Vodka back and forth, then offered it to one of the girls who had declined beer. She took a tiny lady-like swallow and passed it back to Steve.
“You call that a drink?” Steve challenged. “Typical fucking girls. Girls just can’t drink like men.”
“Yeah, man,” said one of the Weasel Boy’s pals. “Girls shouldn’t even drink. Only sluts drink.” This brought a round of solid agreement from the male chorus.
Lee-Anne, slouched in the bean bag char, couldn’t let it pass.
“Go to Hell,” she countered. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a slut if you found one. And since when do you consider yourself a man, Steve?” Laughter from the girls.
“You think you can drink?” said Steve, standing in front of Lee-Anne’s chair, drawn up to his full height of 5’4”.
“I can drink as much as you, asshole.”
“Prove it.”
Lee-Anne stood up slowly; she was at least two inches taller than Steve. She folded her arms across her chest.
“No problem. Go ahead. Drink up.”
Had this been the Wild West of the late 1800s, no tenser stand off could be imagined. The gunslingers squared off. The barroom went dead quiet. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. We mere townsfolk stepped back to give ‘em room.
“Ladies first,” said the Testosterone Kid.
“Tell you what, you do your best, and I’ll