Cargo of Orchids Read online

  Even though we’d obtained a legal separation, Vernal had insisted we celebrate our anniversary, “for old time’s sake.” Over drinks—tequila served in hollowed-out sections of cucumber with chili salt around the rim—we reminisced about our honeymoon. How innocent we had seemed back then, arriving in Mexico City in the midst of the Day of the Dead celebrations. I didn’t think it was a good omen when our welcoming drinks at the Hotel Geneva were brought to us in fragile skull-shaped pottery goblets, or when we walked through the streets at dusk and lampoons illustrated with skeletons, natural or clothed, going about the business of the living—getting married, making love, giving birth and dying—were being circulated. At midnight there were fireworks and prayers and a hymn of welcome to the angelitos, the children of the family who had died.

  That was then. Now Vernal couldn’t finish his meal—unusual for him—and he finally confessed that he’d been seeing a doctor. Vernal never got sick, except from drinking, and he had a home remedy for that affliction: a double single malt. I’d never known him to see a doctor.

  I took his hand and said, oh God, Vernal, I hope it’s nothing serious. He hung his head, bit his lower lip. Not that serious, he said, he’d only seen her half a dozen times in the past month and was already thinking of breaking it off. He’d really like to start seeing me again. I picked up my knife and brought it down hard on the back of his hand.

  When he started bleeding, I suggested taking him to emergency, mostly because I didn’t want to get charged and go to jail. It was, he protested, only a minor flesh wound, but he made a big production of wrapping his hand in the Hermés scarf he had given me for an anniversary present. He said he would now be able to show the world the scars of his marriage.

  Neither of us spoke. Like the knife, the unresolved issue of his infidelity had come between us. Then Vernal asked me if I had ever considered having sex with someone I didn’t know very well.

  “What kind of a question is that?” I asked. He glanced towards the door of the restaurant, then took my hand and pulled me to my feet. Outside, standing alone in the slanting rain, our bodies pressed up against the north wall of the building, I hugged him hard, as if I could squeeze his other lovers, as if I could squeeze the past, out of him. I kissed him. He kissed me back, brushing my eyes just as I was opening them to see the expression on his face.

  We kissed again and again, kissing as if to seal our fate, to finish a life together we hadn’t even begun. We kissed as if kissing could save us.

  ——

  I might not have gone back to visit Angel again, but the day after my anniversary dinner with Vernal, I met Carmen for lunch. She’d called saying she had a letter for me. “When Carmen first described you, I thought, already I want to make sin with this woman in my heart. Waiting for you to come back has become my way of getting through the days, and if you ever decide to return to this place, I will still be waiting. I have already made sin with you in my heart; it won’t be long before I am walking in your veins.”

  There was more. He said he had reserved the chapel for us. He wanted to be alone with me, he said.

  Four days later, I met Carmen at the bus depot. The Halloween social was being held on November 2, to coincide with the Latin holiday of El Día de los Muertos.

  Thurma had had her visits chopped (she’d been suspected of packing drugs and had refused a strip search)—I was glad, in a way, because without Thurma, Chandler would be unlikely to turn up at the social and I wouldn’t have to face my complex range of emotions about his situation. Bonnie wouldn’t be going to the Halloween social either, because Treat was still in the infirmary.

  I’d seen Bonnie once since Mugre’s attack; she was still planning on getting married. “Even if he’s on life-support and I have to unplug him to get him to the chapel, we’re going to go through with it.” Bonnie had chosen a dress in red satin, with suede high heels to match, but the bridal consultant had talked her into something more traditional. “Married in white, you have chosen all right. Married in red, you will wish yourself dead,” the consultant had cautioned.

  On the bus out to Agassiz, I told Carmen about stabbing Vernal. I said I didn’t know what men wanted.

  “We never try to kill each other any more, Gustavo and me,” Carmen said. “Those days are over for us. We fight sometimes … but it’s corazón. You never fight unless it’s for heart. Consuelo taught me that.”

  Angel kissed me when we arrived; I felt his moustache, smelling of the red-hot cinnamon hearts he sucked—to hide the scent of the dark tobacco on his breath—scouring my upper lip. He kissed me for so long I started getting self-conscious. A kiss and embrace are permitted at the beginning and at the end of the visiting period. I pulled away from him. I felt his eyes, like the guns in the guard towers, holding me in their sights.

  “You worry too much. No one’s looking at us. On Tranquilandia, we have another saying: Don’t worry, at least not until they start shooting. And even then, you shouldn’t worry. Don’t start worrying until they hit you, because then they might catch you.”

  Angel asked me to walk with him in the rain. My coat was not waterproof (Vernal says I am the only person born and raised on the West Coast who has never owned proper rain gear), and I felt my dress sticking to me. I felt, too, Angel’s hand warming my waist, moving up until it brushed over my breast, and then down again to rest on my belly. All of him washed over me, like the mystery of wind.

  But I sensed a distance in him that day, as we walked up to a doe and her two fawns, browsing on the thick grasses next to the perimeter fence. The three bolted for the woods when the patrol truck slowed as it passed. Angel said if any wild animal ever came this close to civilization in his country, it would be shot dead on the spot, or taken to a zoo, where it would be tortured over the years.

  “We had one polar bear in La Ciudad, in the zoo. He was very peaceful and shy until someone threw a stone at him and drew blood. Then he would rear on his hind legs and roar; he’d attack the flies that tried to land on him.”

  The black bear at the zoo, though mangy and bad-tempered, was never a target for the stone-throwing boys, he said. Angel believed people liked to provoke the polar bear because of the colour of his fur.

  “People like to see blood,” he said. “Lots of it.”

  The Day of the Dead looked like any other day in prison, with the exception of the food. Every table held plates of sugar cookies shaped like skulls, with the names of inmates who had died in prison during the past year inscribed on the foreheads. Bowls of candy skulls and chocolate leg bones and fingers and ribs, and the traditional “bread of the dead” (decorated with shin-bones made of flour and eggs), were spread out on each table on a carpet of yellow flowers: marigolds, daisies, carnations, black-eyed Susans.

  Angel took off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders. I asked where everyone had gone: Gustavo was in the kitchen and Mugre had been put in segregation, Angel said.

  “My brother needs a woman in his life,” Angel said, “to keep him in line. It’s been a long time since Mugre’s been interested in anyone but himself.” He paused and tried to pull his jacket around me and button it up. “He’s always said you might as well take a razor to your … cojones … as let a woman in your heart. That’s his philosophy.”

  “That’s going a bit too far,” I said.

  Angel took my hand. “My brother believes ‘far’ is the only place worth going.” He raised my fingers to his lips.

  I pulled my hand away on the pretence of adjusting my dress. “You always smell so clean,” he said. He put his hand on my knee. “I like that.”

  Immanuel Kant says the hands are the only visible part of the brain. I sat staring at Angel’s hands as if they might provide a clue as to what he was thinking, not knowing how to tell him what I desperately wanted to do, looking out through the open gymnasium doors, past the guard towers to the mountains.

  Then I put my hand on his hand. I could feel the heat coming from his skin too, mixed w
ith the smell of my own excitement.

  Carmen, sitting across from me, raised one eyebrow and nodded, and I didn’t need any more encouragement. I got up, quickly, from the table, and pulled Angel to his feet. I flicked my eyes in the direction of the chapel.

  It was everything Angel had promised in his letter: the Day of the Dead committee had jimmied the folding doors and made up a bed for us on a weight-room mat—two green blankets and a pillow, upon which had been placed a yellow rose. I turned the statue of the Blessed Virgin away from us to face the wall, and began to unbutton Angel’s shirt. He didn’t stop me until I got to the hollow place in his chest. It looked as if his heart had been excavated.

  He took my hand, curled it into a fist and placed it in the little hollow. “My mother used to say it would fill up with the tears she would shed for me during her lifetime,” he whispered.

  My mouth felt dry. Then (the smell of him!) he was beside me, kissing me all over my face and head, sniffing my hair along the part line.

  I laid my head back on the pillow as Angel picked apart the rose. I shut my eyes; he placed the creamy petals on my eyelids. He pressed his nose in my armpit, edging one finger under the elastic of my bra. My arm was going to sleep; I shook the petals away and shifted my position.

  Angel put his arms around me, settling his body alongside mine. “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known,” he said to me.

  I leaned over and kissed him, for a long time. It didn’t matter that on the other side of the folding doors, a few feet from the door of the chapel, there was a world of men and women eating and laughing. We were alone with one another, and nothing could intrude upon this new world of the flesh we were both, at the same time, discovering.

  He took my hand and guided it. Erotic texts from ancient India claim there is a definite relationship between the size of an erect penis and the destiny of its owner. The possessors of thin penises would be very lucky; those with long ones were fated to be poor; those with short ones could become rulers of the land; and males with thick penises were doomed always to be unhappy.

  For now, I would try to make Angel happy. When I looked up at his face, across the nut brown expanse of his body, he smiled back, that slow smile. “I’m going to die,” he said.

  Then he pulled me up, so I lay next to him, and reached inside my panties. I nuzzled up to his hand the way a horse’s soft mouth does when you offer it a lump of sugar. I arched my back, spreading my legs wider as he moved down over my body and began licking me, slowly, teasingly, moving in small circles with his lips and tongue, his kisses falling on me, gentle as the scent of rain.

  I didn’t want to come, not yet. I sat up and pulled him down on top of me.

  “I don’t have any protection,” he said.

  There are some exquisite moments from which we are not meant to be protected. I slid him inside me, achingly. I had never had anything so hard inside me. I held my breath as he kept pushing into me; we were both breathing and then not breathing, and I brought his hand up to my mouth to cover it, suppress any sound, and then I began sucking his fingers, one at a time, then two at a time, then three. His fingers tasted of salt, and of my own juices.

  He pushed into me, harder still, as if by trying he could disappear up inside me and escape forever into the orchid darkness of my womb. When he came, his whole body stiffened, as if it hurt him to come so hard. We lay that way, me underneath and he still inside me, until he moved down on me and began licking me again, making me come with his tongue, his lips and his fingertips. I cried when I came and doubled up, curling into myself. He began kissing me, from my toes up along my legs and the insides of my thighs, over my belly and breasts, up my neck and onto my face and in my hair.

  Afterwards, as I lay on a bed of bruised petals, licking the drops of sweat that had rolled down his chest and collected in the hollow above his heart, he said coming inside me was like coming on velvet rails.

  chapter eight

  Tension between the Tranquilandians and the Posse had escalated even further after the Halloween social, and Angel and Gustavo had also been moved to segregation. Four and a half months passed before I was to see Angel again, on Good Friday, the day Bonnie and Treat were finally to marry.

  The Friday before Good Friday, Bonnie was called with bad news. She wept from the time she handed Little Shit Shit over to Thurma at the bus depot and we boarded the bus in Vancouver to the moment we pulled into Agassiz, blowing her nose, over and over again, into a sodden hand-kerchief.

  A light snow had begun falling. I called the only taxi company, and when the cab arrived, the driver said he didn’t know if we would make it as far as the prison, “the way she was coming down.”

  He asked if we minded if he smoked, then lit one anyway. He had an opinion on everything from Native land claims to capital punishment. He believed all men in prison were queer. He said all he’d ever wanted was a warm girl in his bed every night, and all he’d ever been was disappointed.

  He rubbed the blue shadow of his beard. He said he wanted a girl with pride and femininity too. The last girl he’d taken a shine to admired women older than herself.

  “That shows great intelligence,” he said, “admiring a woman older than yourself.” He accelerated as we passed a sign saying Slow Children Playing.

  “She liked my beard; she thought it looked masculine,” he said. “She was a real intelligent girl.”

  He swerved, trying to hit a reserve dog slinking across the road. “Now you take Sean Connery. He’s masculine. James Coburn. John Wayne. They wouldn’t do the dishes either.”

  Bonnie let out a sob from the back seat.

  “I say something?” the driver asked.

  I didn’t answer. Bonnie buried her face in her hands. The snow had turned to freezing rain, and a fierce wind tugged at the car, nearly pulling us off the road. Our driver kept his eyes on the road the rest of the way, then let us off in the parking lot, as close as he could get to the front gate.

  Bonnie’s throat was raw from crying. I explained to Roll-Over, when he finally buzzed us in, that we had come to pick up Treat’s effects. Roll-Over told us to sign the book while he called the Admissions and Discharges officer.

  “Got two for Discharge, sir. No paperwork on it.”

  He paused and looked at us. “One of you … relative to the body?”

  I nodded towards Bonnie. “They were going to get married. He’s … he was the father of her child.”

  Roll-Over half turned his back on us as he spoke into the phone. “No relation. That’s right—that’s what I’ve got too.” He looked back at Bonnie. “Computer says here he’s got no next of kin. I can’t let you in. I’m sorry, ma’am. Them’s the rules. I don’t make ’em. I don’t break ’em either. That’s why I only work here; I don’t live here.”

  I could picture us standing this way forever. I asked Roll-Over if he could do us one favour and call Mr. Saygrover, who might be able to straighten out the problem. To my surprise, I watched Roll-Over look at the phone, as if he were about to do something he’d never before attempted to do on his own: make a decision. He picked the phone up, dialled, then, after a brief conversation, shook his head and looked at us.

  “If you say so, Jack. Will do. Right away, sir. Yes, sir. I’m aware of that now, sir.”

  Roll-Over went through my purse, taking apart my fountain pen and getting ink all over his hands before putting it back together again. I was allowed to take a tube of liquid foundation, but not the tampon I’d always kept, just in case, in a pink plastic holder in a zippered pocket of my purse. Roll-Over handed me a key so I could leave the tampon in a locker. “Safety measure,” he said. “Inmate could suicide himself by choking on one.”

  I passed through the metal detector and then waited while Bonnie went into the room marked No Entry Staff Only. Surely they weren’t accusing Treat of making any more trouble? When Bonnie reappeared, the matron popped her head out of her office and handed me a Kotex maxi-pad, to replace the contrab
and tampon, I guessed. No inmate, evidently, would try suiciding himself with a sanitary napkin.

  The snow fell harder as we walked between buildings. Mr. Saygrover saw Bonnie and waved us through the glass doors into his office, where a notice read, “Tomorrow has been cancelled due to lack of interest.” A leaning tower of files stamped Classified was stacked on his gunmetal desk.

  “Feeling bad just isn’t good enough for some people—they got to make everyone else feel bad too.” He indicated the files. “They send me all this from the warden’s office … all these complaints. This one’s toast is too hard. That one’s toilet paper’s not soft enough. This one’s mattress has teeth marks on it. I tell you.”

  Mr. Saygrover shuffled through his paperwork until he found what he was looking for: release forms in triplicate for Bonnie to sign.

  Bonnie began crying again, and Mr. Saygrover looked embarrassed. He patted her on the back, offered her a fresh piece of Kleenex. He looked at me, helplessly.

  I said I was going to get a cup of coffee from the machine.

  “Get one for me too. Extra sugar and whitener, if you don’t mind.” Mr. Saygrover reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. “Here you go. It’s on me.”

  When I returned with the coffee, Bonnie had gone to the washroom. Mr. Saygrover told me no one “higher up” had given permission for the body to be released, so Treat would be laid to rest in the prison cemetery. “That way, we can keep an eye on him.” He winked at me.

  I asked if it would be possible to arrange to have his body flown back to his last address, which was Bella Bella.

  Mr. Saygrover shook his head. “Too late now. You got to plan ahead.”

  Mr. Saygrover sniffed his coffee, then asked if I wanted to see the autopsy report. I nodded, and he handed me a file marked Confidential. He hadn’t started out as a visitor’s and correspondence officer, he told me—years ago he’d taken a St. John’s Ambulance course at the YMCA, which had qualified him to work on the daily sick line. He’d wired more jaws, sewn more torn anuses, he said, than you could shake a stick at. But never, in all his years at the infirmary, had he seen anything as sick as this.