The air is as stale above the heap of goose
down as it is below. This heat would
suffocate most but Juarez finds comfort in it.
She looks for the alarm clock to check how long her nap lasted. It is ten o’clock at night. She slept for an hour. Before making an attempt to get up, her palm
searches against the length of her body until it finds the arc between the
mattress and her pelvic bone.
It is here
she recounts her afternoon, her fingers confirming the vivid clash between boy
and girl. She thinks about the nights
they shared together so many moons ago, about the first time they laid eyes on
each other.
***
It was Canada Day in small town Sarnia. Red and white banners spilled from every
ledge, Canadian flags plastered to every window. A parade was taking place on Christina Street
and herds of working class families lined the sidewalks to watch the beaming kids
march like mini patriots toward Canatara Park.
It was there that the real festivities would begin. Food from around the world was prepared to
carnival perfection behind long plastic tables, shaded under white ten by ten
canopies and served by the ethnic minorities of a town that never seemed to
change in population.
Juarez was always
first in line for the spring rolls on Canada Day as she was every Saturday at
the farmer’s market. It was an addiction
she could not control; she was hooked on the crunch of the deep fried pastry
that wrapped around the sweet tangy juices of pork and vegetables inside. That year she would have to be late; the
chain on her twelve-speed kept coming off the gears and she had to brake every
few blocks to remount it.
“Not again,” she muttered to herself as she looked for a
place to wipe the oil that was building in layers on her fingertips. Sweat was dripping down her forehead, her
long espresso hair falling in her face and sticking to the beads as they formed
in the July humidity. Even the shade of
the willow tree could not cut the water from the air as it hung in solemn
empathy for those who passed underneath; it too was exhausted just by standing
around.
From the concrete steps of a neighbouring house, a teenage boy
with thick chestnut hair braided down to his shoulder blades watched Juarez
fiddle with her chain and laughed as she grew more irritated, her vision
blurred by wet strands and frustration.
He plucked away at the six strings of his Yamaha, filling the scene with
his soundtrack. Trying to manoeuvre the
backs of her hands while her fingers stuck straight out like a zombie, she
brushed her hair off her face and kicked the bicycle.
“Fuck you, bike.” She
argued. “You are making me late for spring rolls and I am not happy.”
He watched her fight with the machine for endless minutes,
humming as he played, and thinking of ways to put words to the gong show on the
sidewalk. He observed her kneel down behind
the beat up bicycle to replace the chain; her white t shirt was three sizes too
big, the front tucked into her denim shorts that frayed above the pockets as
they peeked out like pale blue tongues licking her legs. A rectangular black purse of fringe and deer
hide was strung across her body like a beauty queen’s sash and scraped against
the sidewalk with every yank of the chain.
On closer inspection he could make out a button attached to her sac that
looked like a medicine wheel; all four colours of the directions represented in
equal portions, white pointed north.
From his vantage, he would swear she was native, except that he had
never seen her before and he knew everyone in town with Indian blood. Whatever her heritage, he was not about to
let her leave without an introduction; this girl was too entertaining,
especially in her oblivion.
“Need some help?” He called out.
Startled by the strange voice, Juarez jerked her sweaty head
up and knocked it with a loud bang on the handle bars that hovered over her.
“Ouch, dammit!” She cussed.
He hung his face, hiding his laughter as she strained to find
a better place for her oily hands than on the bike or her body. Red boiled in her cheeks as her hair once
again swung about her in unpredictable patterns, sticking to anything that
seeped with the perspiration of her labours.
At once, she patted her forehead to soothe the goose egg that grew
immediately from the collision and reached toward the falling two-wheeler as it
crashed onto the concrete, the built-up oil from her previous efforts smeared
every place her frenzied palms connected.
He snorted so loud she could make out his direction and
stood to see who was so amused by her less than ideal predicament. He mirrored her as she stood, guitar at his
side on the concrete steps. She was not
native, he concluded, but earthy, of the earth somehow; as if she sprouted up
like a vine and unfurled long leaf-like limbs, her skin adorned with delicate
petals; a cherry blossom tree, perhaps, with the un-grace of a newborn horse.
Juarez took a deep breath and let out a big sigh. It was not the first time she starred in a
Keystone Cops episode; this was her style.
She was a bona fide klutz with the scars to prove it. She froze and smiled at the young man holding
her favourite instrument, black streaks across her forehead; her white t shirt
destroyed with oily fingerprints, legs smeared with dirt and grease.
“I think I might,” she gestured at her bike and face, shrugged
her shoulders and wiped her hands on a once-white over sized tee. “I’m Juarez.”
“Clark.” He said, and
pointed to the chaos. “It looks like you
pretty much accomplished the complete opposite of your goal, here. I don’t think I have ever seen that happen to
someone with so much…familiarity…before.”
He picked up her bike, reaffixed the chain and bent the gear back to its
original shape, preventing any future chain-link disasters. Palms up, she shrugged her shoulders for a
second time; the right side of her lips curled along with her eyebrows.
“As a matter-of-fact,” she stated, "This was nothing."
Clark
shook his head in disbelief. He looked
at his filthy hands and back at Juarez who then offered her t shirt. He
accepted, wiping the oil clean. Neither of
them could wipe the smiles from their faces if they wanted to and they stood
there with toothy grins anticipating what the other was going to say next.
“Nice guitar you got there, Clark.” Juarez chimed in, “you any good?”
“I would like to think so, but I can’t believe everything my parents say. You know how that goes.”
“Right,” Juarez said, but she only knew it as a
spectator. Praise was not something the
fifteen year old girl was accustomed to, unless of course, it had to do with
her appearance. “You should play
something for me,” She says, “I’ll let you know, you know, if you are actually
as good as your mom says.”
“Are you offering to judge me?” He teased.
“Yes. That is what I
am offering you.” Juarez agreed in her
usual sarcasm. “But I will only offer
once. Keep in mind I have a keen ear and
my parents did sing at the Sky Dome for a Beaver Jamboree, so I have extremely
high standards.”
Clark gripped the top of his braid and ran his hand down to
the paint brush-like tip while he thought it over.
“It’s almost a deal.”
He said. “But first, I want to
know why you are headed down my street when clearly, the parade is the other
way.”
“Right, so I was skipping the parade so I could be first in
line for the spring rolls at Canatara.” Juarez was enjoying his subtle
flirting. There was something about him
that made her feel calm and secure; like she had been there before. But there was this other component, this
missing piece to her puzzle: he made it
okay for her to speak, a rare occurrence which only existed with close friends
and, of course, her greasy bicycle. “Tell
you what, Clark; if you have any talent whatsoever, I will invite you to join
me for lunch.”
“And if I suck?” he
asked.
“You better not suck.”
“Oh, a tough guy,” he laughed, and with that he planted
himself on the curb and started to play.
Delicate tones drifted and danced from his instrument as he
picked and plucked and tapped; they were sounds from another dimension that
trapped his audience of one and held her hypnotized six inches above the earth.
Juarez sat next to him, mesmerized by the unsuspecting beauty that formed from
his fingers. She closed her eyes; for
once she could breathe so deeply her whole body seemed to float above the
grass.
Then Clark began to sing. He sang about watching life unfold from his
front stoop, from the outside looking in, as a stranger to the world around him.
Juarez absorbed the vibrations. They
gently peeled back layers of a protective shell she had unknowingly encased
around her lonely heart. Tears streamed out of her like glass ribbons,
releasing some long ago hurt that she never even knew existed. She stayed there without her armour, and he
sang directly into her exposed core.
When the song ended, there was nothing left but the bond of silence.
“You…did not suck at all.”
She laughed as she wiped her face, correcting her eye liner and
sniffling. “Clark would you like to join me for spring rolls in the park?”
“I would love to Juarez, but under one condition.” He said.
“What’s that?”
Clark looked at Juarez with the same seriousness her
teachers gave her when her grades dropped the year before. “Will you please
change your shirt? You look like you got
in a fight with a mechanic. I can’t be
seen with you like this. I’ll give you one of mine.” He took her in the house and handed her an over sized white tee. “I only wore it
this morning,” he reassured her. While
she cleaned up, he unlocked his bike and waited for her outside.
“Ta dah!” She sang,
presenting herself in his gift, wafts of his morning cologne distracting her
focus.
He waited for her to climb on to her twelve-speed and decided
not to tell her that she missed a small smear of black below her eye. Clark wanted to remember this moment in all
its perfection and peculiarity for as long as he could. Instead, he clapped his
hands for her and the sound echoed down the street.
***
Juarez breaks her hands free from reminiscing and checks the
time. It is still only ten pm. She launches herself into the first step to
her beauty ritual; a cleansing shower with Fleetwood Mac blaring in the
background. Maybe it was the heat that
had her mind on Clark, maybe it was a part of their natural rhythm. It
could have been a lot of things, but nothing to waste another minute on. Juarez was not about to go too far back in
time for fear of never returning.
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