The Bear: A Novel Read online

  “Stick?”

  I push again and the purring stops and there is a snort. And I hear a quiet voice. “Ow.”

  “Stick?” I say again and I push the bush to the side and it is Stick lying in the dirt and I start to cry because I am so happy to see his little squishy face. He is the dirtiest baby I have ever seen but a little part of yellow is sticking out and I see the ducks on his pj top and no bottoms just his dirty dingle. I think he is dead because he doesn’t move and he is bubbled and puffy and red and doesn’t look like he did when he was alive. But then I hear another snort and he tries to open his eye up a little. I drop my spear and grab him and get his little body in my arms and it is floppy. I give him the biggest hug ever and I cry and cry. I never know how much I miss him all the times.

  “Nana?”

  I think he says my name but his English is more bad which means I am the only person on the whole entire earth that can understand him. It is up to me to save him because no one else can and he knows. I put his little arms around me and hold him close to my body. I look at him and he doesn’t see back and his eyelids look like a ham that Momma brings on picnics and cuts into slices with a knife. He is gucky and gross and I will love him anyway. I grab his arm and spin him over and he flops on his back and I check for blood.

  “No blood,” I say.

  Normally he would say there was because he wants a Band-Aid but this time he doesn’t say anything. He just lets out a little moan and a snore-purr and I think it sounds like he is breathing harder than normally. I will save him. I will bring him to Momma and Daddy at the moon.

  I try and get him to stand up but he is so floppy. He is standing less than Gwen and I miss her and wish I could sniff. I get him on his feet and try to get him to hold the spear to walk. His feet are all bubbled and they are big so he can’t really step. Sometimes he would like to have bigger feet but they look like they hurt and are not comfortable slippers. I feel sad for his bigger feet like that. I will save him and the sun reaches in and tells me to try to just get to the moon and it will help in my bones and pushing my back. I try to carry him like Momma by grabbing under his arms and putting his legs on my waist. I can walk a few steps but I fall and drop him. He doesn’t cry or say he will tell Momma. He just flops on the ground. I get down and look at him and his face looks like someone put a pig mask over the top but I can still see my brother. I am his person in the world and I feel my muscles have enough sun so they get warm and strong and I am like a battery and my robot can go.

  “Stick?”

  He turns his head a little.

  “We are going to the moon, okay?”

  I see his eyes inside the pig eyes move just a little and I know that means he wants to go because he wants to see Momma and Daddy and will try as much as he can. I have to leave my spear behind and even though the black dog no longer purrs he wants to make me strong and he boils inside my body and bursts into a roar. I drag Stick by the foot to a rock and I push him up on it and he is almost sitting. I keep him there with one hand and turn so my back is facing him for a piggyback.

  “Grab my shoulders,” I say and I wiggle my hips between his legs.

  He doesn’t grab but his body flops forward against mine and I feel his hot cheek is between my shoulders. I grab back for a floppy arm and pull it forward over my neck and hook it like he is strangling me and normally he is not allowed but this one time he is. I get my fists under his knees and stand until I can get my hands together. I try to stand up straighter, but Stick starts to flop back. I lean over so he is lying on me and my back like a mattress but my legs are straight. I take one step and it is hard to pick up a foot and make it go forward. I close my eyes and I ask the black dog to help and I lock my knees like a robot. I start to walk.

  My eyes are pointing at the ground. I have to remember to face where the moon goes. It is hard because I can barely peek up to see trees but then I see a flat part under my feet. It is a path. I glance up and see the path goes over to the trees so this must be how people get to the moon. I am glad because I can stare at the ground and keep a foot going forward and the other foot and know that I am going the right way because I can see the path. And it is hard because bushes are thwacking at me and pushing my legs. I see that they have scratched in blood to my legs and at the sides. I would like to stop and see the blood but I don’t think I’ll have enough batteries to get Stick on my back and I can’t really stop moving my feet or I will fall so I step step step.

  I step forever the longest time and I try to think how far until I get to the moon. Then I know the moon isn’t up yet. I will go as far as I can until I am at the edge and need to wait for the moon and that is when I can have my muscles get less sore. I watch my one foot come to the place that I can see it with my eyes and it disappears. My other foot comes into my eyes and each time it’s like there is a new cut but I can’t feel it. My blood has run out from the cuts and now it’s just batteries in my body. Instead of bones all the batteries are what make my leg look like a shape under the bubbles and the red and the blood. More steps and the bushes go away thank goodness. I see the needles are under my feet and they don’t prickle this time. I don’t feel them. All I can feel is the hot Stick on my back and his head is turned to the side so his cheek is still squished on my back and he is purring again. I take a harder step and he snorts a little and then goes back to purring so I know the black dog wants me to do this so I’ll keep going and won’t make him mad. I feel sad that he can tell me what to do like that but not sad because he just wants to help me with Stick and so I step step step.

  There are more needles and the path is softer but still enough to see my feet on it. I take a step and something is close to my toe. I look and it is an ear and I see Gwen! She is lying on the ground and she is soaked and looks so sad but she can curl her black thread at me and I know she is okay. I don’t know how she knows to go to the moon but she must have gotten here to be in the path to find me. I stop my feet and I put an arm out to grab her and Stick snorts. I feel him roll to the side. My foot slips and I have to hang onto his legs to balance and we wobble except we don’t quite fall and the black dog checks my battery and says I better go because not that much. Now I am standing right over Gwen and I look down at her and no sniffs from here but I miss her. I want to squeeze her but right now I am doing a job. There is no extra hands for her.

  “I love you, Gwen,” I say and I step.

  I step again and my toes come forward and Gwen is gone from my eyes and I am walking away.

  I keep walking through trees and there are some plants and I think they are the kind that have the dangle berries. I look to the side but there are no dangle berries on these ones so I feel sad but my foot still steps. There is more dirt and a rock. I have to step over that and so hard but I do. And I see the lid of the cookies and my heart leaps because I think I want a cookie very much but then the tin is not there and I know they are gone and so oh well. I keep going and it’s a little bit downhill and my feet slip forward but I can stand up more and that is better because my back was about to drop through to the ground. I take a breath and I have to take one last step down the hill and I can see pebbles and that makes it harder to balance. Before I walk on the pebbles I am straight because of the hill I hear something soft like a brushing and I make my eyes look up while they still can and it is water! I can see a lake and I am so thirsty and this is where the moon will make a trail to follow when it comes. I look to the side and I know it is the right place because there is a canoe that has fallen partway into the water and is sitting beside sticks. It is a little bit sunk but I know it is from the last person that came to find the moon and they left the canoe because they could walk the path along the water. I stop the steps and my legs bend without my meaning to and my knees go crunch into the pebbles. Stick is still purring and I try to roll him off my back and he flops and bangs his head but he doesn’t cry. I look at him and his puffy face doesn’t move. I feel scared that now he is dead again.

  �
��Stick.” I get right up next to his ear and whisper to him. “We did it. The moon is coming.”

  I watch his eyes and I don’t see them move under the lids and I take one of his hands and mine are bubbled. I can’t feel his skin but then I feel a little and his thumb moves and it squeezes on mine.

  I get down to the lake and stick my face in and take a big drink and I am very glad about that. My throat hurts to drink it but my tongue keeps asking for more and then I get some in my hands. I try to pour it into Stick’s mouth. I miss and it goes on his face but I see his tongue waggle around like it is the only part of him to like water. I get some more and watch his happy tongue and I do it again but then his tongue must have enough because it stops waggling. His bum and legs look so sore and there is dirt. I take off my pj top and it is not red but more like purple but I put it over him like a blanket. All we have to do is wait long enough for the moon. Stick feels hot but he is shaking a little and so I don’t know if he is hot or cold but he doesn’t need to make his worms speak English for me to know that he wants me close. Because I am his big sister. I lie behind him and curl my knees around and I put my arm over him and my hand on his chest and I give him a little squeeze.

  “I love you, Stick.”

  And he doesn’t answer but I know he hears me in his ears because I feel his heart go thump. I feel thump thump of Stick’s heart and I hang on.

  25.

  “Anna? Alex? Are you the Whyte kids?”

  My name. I put my head up and there is a man in the lake and he has a paddle in his hand and is sitting in the middle of a canoe. He is jumping out and bang on the canoe and his paddle throws onto the dirt and he makes a gaspy noise. He has a mustache and I don’t like it. Like a dead caterpillar crawled up on his lip so I put my head back down. But then I lift my head again and I think he must be a stranger so I hang onto floppy Stick extra tight. I should answer because manners and I don’t know. The stranger’s eyes are wide and I see that his mouth is like an O and he is rushing out of the canoe and his breath is almost huffy and I think he is mad and then I see he is crying from his eyes and his face is wet and he is trying to talk.

  “Oh, my God. It’s the kids.”

  The man rushes to us and I feel scared but I can’t run. The stranger would have a smile not cry so I just watch. He kneels beside us and he puts a hand on both of our knees and he lets out a gasp and then stands up so I think he will leave. He yells so loud in his hands over the water.

  “We need an evac now.”

  And I think it’s weird that his knees are hairy like his lips. He has a walkie-talkie in his hand he is yelling and crying and I don’t know why and really big boots. He doesn’t look like a policeman or even one who isn’t a policeman and I close my eyes because I’m tired so I just hang onto Stick. The man lifts my head and he puts water in my mouth and I open my eyes again. There is no white van. I see he has put his shirt over Stick. There is a piece of chocolate in my mouth so maybe puppies next. I want to run but if this is the stranger’s candy I guess I will have to eat it and I will get dead.

  “Anna?” he says and he smiles a nice smile. “My name is John.”

  Even though the mustache and his hands are strong I put my head back and stop the worry worms because the chocolate is there in my mouth and all melty.

  I hear more people and there are all sorts of bossy and yelling and I keep my eyes shut so no one bosses me. I feel my body lift up and I jerk my head and look up. And then I bend my arm and she is not there. No brown fur and I need a sniff but she is gone.

  “Gwen?”

  “Who’s Gwen?” a woman says. There are very many people and they all stop and look at me. I feel like I am the chocolate chip in the cookie.

  “The bear,” I say.

  “Oh, Jesus.” The woman puts her hand on her mouth. “She must have seen the whole thing.”

  “Not Jesus,” I say. “My lost teddy, Gwen.”

  Part III

  Pembroke Hospital

  and Toronto, 1991

  26.

  I don’t want to open my eyes and there is Jessica’s hamster in my mouth. The hamster is called Fluffy and she came to kindergarten with Jessica last year. The first day she just sat in a corner and didn’t move and I think she was really dead but I didn’t say because it would make Jessica sad and make her cry because she didn’t want a hamster she wanted a dog but she was only allowed a hamster instead. Fluffy was white with a bit of black in some places but when we first met I didn’t know about the black because mostly it was underneath. There was a tiny body but she looked bigger because her hair stands up and sticks right out from her body like at the science center when I went and the man in the white coat picked me and I stood at the front. Everyone watched and my hand went on a big silver ball and that made my hair go on end but I didn’t know. Everyone was laughing and I was too because my tummy was not happy and I wasn’t sure if I’d barf and then the man in the white coat held up a mirror so I could see my hair all stuck straight up on my head. Like Fluffy.

  But it wasn’t until a little while after Fluffy moved into our class that I got to hold her and have a talk. When I did hold her she was lighter than I could believe and had little pink toes and I saw claws but they didn’t hurt even though they were a little scratchy. I gave her a piece of carrot and she went chew chew chew but really fast and holding the carrot her hands almost looked like hands. I was surprised that her body was so small inside the fur and I put my cheek on her and it felt tickly but also so so soft and I tried to give her a kiss. I had to sink my lips really far into Fluffy’s fur to find her body so she would know it was a kiss and then some fur got in my mouth and blech I breathed it in too much. The teacher told me to stop scaring the hamster. I had to put her back and hang my tongue out of my mouth and Jessica helped me pick off the fluffies from Fluffy and they were nice and soft out of my mouth but not in.

  And it feels like there are all these fluffies in my mouth except not her little body or hands that look like hands and I’m glad about that. I try to open my eyes and someone has stuck glue in my eyelashes to make them shut. Maybe I am supposed to sleep and I am naughty and wouldn’t and so that is the punishment gluing eyes except I know it isn’t. I get my one eye to open just a little crack and it looks white. My stomach goes whoop doop and I remember the forest and the trees and the lake but the white isn’t there. I look through the crack again and there is no blue or green or brown and there is no windy or rain pouring on my head and I think that is good and close my eye crack.

  I hear eeeeeee and I think uh-oh bugs and maybe mosquitoes but they don’t sound the same. The buzzy fly keeps buzzing and I am being bent at the waist and I think that is weird because it’s like my head is lifting to the sky with my body too but I am not pushing it there. I would like to smack the fly but my arm has no blood left inside or maybe the bone is gone so now I just have a floppy arm that dangles like Stick’s dingle or like an elastic that is wider and might be on newspaper that you can collect to make a ball that bounces like a real ball if you do it for years and years. The buzzy fly stops so I think phew I don’t have to worry about smacking it with no swatter or my hand or if I had a shoe but I left them somewhere and I don’t know where. There is no buzzy fly and my body is sitting up.

  “Anna?”

  I open my eye crack to look. It is very white all over and I think maybe the moon. A lady that is a stranger is talking in a singsong to try and sound like Momma but she is older and not the same sniff. My eye crack shuts.

  “Drink.”

  There is something on my lips and they are wet and I think oh no Fluffy will drown but a little piece of water slides into my mouth and Fluffy is not there it is only like the fur that got left behind and Jessica forgot some or it stuck to her fingers and got back inside. A bit more pieces of water and the fluffs get pushed down and they don’t taste as much anymore and that is a little bit better.

  “Good girl.”

  The lady is in my eye crack and she s
miles. “How are you feeling?”

  I don’t know.

  “You need to eat something.”

  The lady turns away and her sniff goes with her and then it comes back again like a cookie that is not chocolate or a blah Arrowroot but has white powdery things on top. I don’t really think this is my favorite cookie but okay. She is holding something and she pulls a table that goes across my body and there is a bowl that has a little metal hat. I didn’t know that a bowl could have a hat and this one does and is that because it gets cold sometimes or why? I want to know and I open my mouth and Fluffy is gone but a big frog has jumped in. That’s what Momma says it is and this frog has claws not just toes and he has scratched my throat because he wanted to get out or he was stuck behind Fluffy and there was a lineup.

  “It’s okay.” The lady puts a sugar hand on me and her lips are so red. “You don’t need to talk.”

  And I don’t but that doesn’t say why a bowl has a hat but she takes the hat off and sitting there is ice.

  “You are in the hospital.”

  It is not the moon but it is very white. “Hospital” is a hard word to say because I tried a long time ago when Grandma was sick and it came out like “hospickle” and everyone laughed and that was before I got rid of my brain worms that are gone now. There is orange ice that looks like that juice that is called Tang that we are allowed sometimes only in summer as a treat. Except it is in an ice cube from the freezer and maybe more like a Popsicle?

  “You were very, very thirsty. That’s why your throat hurts.”

  So she doesn’t know about the frog and I don’t tell her because there is a good time for secrets and I don’t want people to take Fluffy or the frog and they might because they don’t say you just come to school one day and Fluffy is gone and there is no cage and no morning soft snuggle with no kiss.