Mix Hart - Queen of the Godforsaken

CONTENTS

We move in the sweaty heat of July, our St. Bernard Marx and I beside Dad in the cab of the U-Haul. My mom, Victoria, and George, our cat, follow begrudgingly in our Datsun extended cab pickup. The view from my window is like a trip to another planet. We leave behind shaggy, monstrous trees and moss-covered ground. As we cross through the Okanagan, the trees turn from cedar and fir to ponderosa pine. We drive on through the intimidating, towering peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Then everything changes as mountains melt into foothills and eventually dissolve completely. The few stunted trees gradually thin out and finally vanish. All that surrounds the truck for miles and miles is tall grass and land as flat as the ocean.

The windshield is plastered with oozing, yellow grasshopper corpses. My nose is dry inside. I miss the humidity already. Dad stops to pee freely at the roadside. I hold it in. There is nothing to hide behind in this desolate land, not even sagebrush. He climbs back into the truck, grabs my bottle of Diet Coke, and takes a giant swig... backwash. Somehow the road trip has burned his face; the contrast makes the colour of his hair look almost florescent orangey-blond. He hands the bottle back to me; now I have nothing to drink for the rest of the trip. I should have forced Victoria to switch vehicles in Calgary. I bet shes sweating buckets in the truck; shes wearing jeans.

My feet rest on the giant fur rug that is Marx. Hes gone into some sort of depression down there. He hasnt moved since Drumheller. With my feet on his back, my knees are practically level with my boobs.

Its dusk when we finally arrive. The road to the farmhouse is dust tracks: soft, powdery, parallel trails that lead to a solitary vertical projection. It looks different than I remember, greyer, more depressing.

Dad stops the U-Haul. The engine cuts out. He walks his lanky body to the back, opens the rear door, and pulls down the ramp. Hes insane. Two days on the road and no time to even take a pee first. Mom sits in the truck, her hands frozen to the steering wheel. Her golden-brown curls hang straight and dull, shocked by the prairie air. I open my door and coax Marx to follow me out. He whines, trembles, and refuses to move. I leave the passenger door open and walk past Victoria as she steps her skinny ass onto prairie soil for the first time.

The house stands tall, shabby, and silent. The porch door is open. I slip past my stunned family and walk, unnoticed, into the dark house. The air is heavy and malodorous, like opening a tomb. My instinct is to climb the wooden staircase towards the window at the landing. I recognize the railing, golden oak, like our banister back home. The stairs are covered in black topsoil. I stop in front of the window. I cant move. I cant even breathe. For miles and miles there is nothing but long grey grass. Blackflies buzz annoyingly all around my head, followed by mosquitoes. Theyve found life in a dead house. The contrast is too great. What have we done? I ask the wind as it bangs against the window.

Victoria, leave the cat alone and get over here and help your mother, says my father angrily. Where is she? Lydia! Get out here, right now. I wipe my face with my sleeves and walk down the gritty stairs towards the door.

Dad pushes past me to Moms still body. Her eyes are closed. She looks dead.

What happened? Mary Jane? he yells.

His hysteria is comical. I laughc into my hand. I highly doubt its serious. Her collapse came first, after the tears over the gouge on the piano leg, followed by the back pain. The comas new to me.

What happened to Mom? Victoria says, appearing bruised and battered. The claw marks on her face from George are still bleeding slightly and her perfect golden French braids have started to unravel.

Shes behind the piano. She wont move. Wheres George? I ask.

I locked him in the bathroom, Victoria says.

Dad gently leads Mom past the stack of plastic-covered furniture to the back porch to sit on a bright orange chair left by a previous renter. Its probably covered in lice, bedbugs, or something else disgusting, Mom says, her mascara smudged under both eyes. Alexander, dont leave me here.

Come on, girls. Help me set up the beds, Dad says.

Victoria, Dad, and I haul in four mattresses without incident and then the four bed frames. Mom and Dads steel bars slide together and pinch my hand as we carry them in to their temporary placement in the living room. The first tears sting and then evaporate. Dad will lose it if I start to cry too.

Lydia, get the broom, sweep the living room and dining room. We need one room clean for tonight, Dad says.

Wheres the broom?

His eyes tell me he hasnt got a clue. Its in the back of the Datsun, Mom shouts from the back porch.

The hardwood is caked in topsoil. Sweeping does little. It only gets rid of the top layer. There are years of layers I cannot access. The furniture pile takes up most of the room anyway. It waits, stacked like Lego in covered plastic, until the floor is deemed clean enough. The floor needs a sandblaster.

Mom recovers enough to hobble past the living room entrance and out the front door just as the yard light surges on.

Lydia, get out there and help your mother, Dad shouts.

Im sweeping. Why cant you do it? What are you doing up there anyway are you in the can? I yell.

Now, Lydia! he shouts in a tone that makes me think he might stomp downstairs and beat me with my own broom. The sweet, concerned Alex is only reserved for Mom.

The warm night air is foreign. It smells of hope sweet clover, dry grass, and spicy sage. I can hardly see Mom but I hear her sniffles. Shes standing deep in the back of the hollow van, unearthing sheets and pillowcases from a fridge-sized cardboard box.

Can you hear them, Mom?

No. What?

The crickets. They sound amazing. Theyre singing loudly tonight. Come on out of the truck. You can hear them better.

Not now. Cant you see Im busy? She thrusts a pile of sheets into my arms. I inhale their familiar clean scent. She tips the box over. Do you see anything in there? she says.

I shake my head. No. Its empty.

This just tops off the day. The fucking pillows have vanished, she says.

Dad and Marx are the first ones up. The image in the credenza mirror is unsettling. My face is a garden of freckles and whiteheads in full boom; my usually wavy hair is wheat stalk straight. How did that happen? I left Vancouver pale and zit free. I leave Mom and Victoria asleep on their mattresses and follow my father behind the house. He looks past the corral and garish silver trailer. Some renter hauled the ugly trailer onto the land to use as a makeshift barn. Its an assault to the eye, ruining what would otherwise be a pastoral view. Dad scans the land, our land, his hands inside his cut-offs and his face streaked with dirt from arranging furniture last night. He looks relaxed, contemplative, for the first time in months. I know, as tragic as it is for me, that he has come home.

The prairie is in his blood. His grandparents were German, living in Russia on the Black Sea. It was called Bessarabia back then. Bessarabia sounds so exotic. Just before the Russian revolution they immigrated to Canada. They bought a huge section of prairie on the South Saskatchewan River, our farm. Dad returned to the farm every summer of his boyhood. He knows everything about the land, his precious piece of prairie. He knows about the people and animals that came before us and he knows even more. Hes dug deeper, beneath the topsoil to the fossils of ancient forests.