Exhale
By
Dan de Souza
Christmas 2020
In Wolford, the Protestants are buried north of the highway and the Catholics lie on the South. Their gravestones face each other across a frozen trans Canada highway, staring bitterness and hatred towards each other long after their bones are ice. Amira Ahmed imagines her family on the centre line of that highway as she makes her way past those graves, from home to school and back again. She and her brother and her parents, perfectly placed on a narrow white strip, defining the fault lines of the northern town.
It’s not like the highway divides everything in Wolford. Hockey divides it; you’re either a Wolford Wolves fan or you're a Marystown LumberKings fan. Geography divides it too. You're a “townie” or you're a “woods kid” Her parents usually know which way the wind is blowing when it comes to these divisions. Her father makes sure the store is stocked with merchandise from both hockey teams. Makes sure to smile and talk to everyone who comes in. Makes sure there is a crucifix on the wall and his Koran below the counter.
Bishop St. Louis is a woods kid, riding the bus to Wolford High School and he is beautiful. If you can use that word to describe a sixteen year old boy with long hair sticking out from under his Stihl baseball cap. “There’s probably an argument around that too”, Amira thinks. And who calls a boy Bishop? That was the question Mrs. Sharpston asked on the first day of grade 11 English. “Who names a boy Bishop in rural Ontario?” she said, staring at him sitting right beside Amira. She could feel the heat of his embarrassment through his plaid shirt. Could swear the heat was travelling through the plaid, across the desk, up her arm, her scar serving as a dam, stopping its advance at her throat.
Amira couldn’t look up that day. Neither could Bishop. And that posture carried on for the semester. Bishop, looking at his shoes whenever Amira managed to furtively glance his way and she turning away anytime there might be a chance of Bishop looking at her.
When she could get a good look at him, usually across the hall where his locker faced hers, she would pretend like she needed something in the bottom of her locker and then, hunched over, one knee on the ground, the other near her chest, she would turn her head, just so, so she could see him, side-on as he looked for something in his. She sometimes felt that they were in some sort of tableau, with the rest of Wolford moving around them as they were frozen in that pose.
When news of the pandemic hit and the school shut down, Amira walked home, Bishop went on the bus, and they lived together in her imagination, while the world stopped for a while. “It would be nice to be frozen in place beside him”, Amira thought, walking along the highway on that last day. “If we were frozen”, she dreamed “then I couldn’t say something stupid and he could just be there and the world could just keep going by.” She would not have to worry about where to eat lunch or if her jeans were the right ones or if her mother found the make up in her drawer. She could just stay there, with him, turned sideways, so he could only see her good side.
When school was called back the third week of December, Amira’s dream thawed. She climbed the hill behind the store, passed the dead Catholics and Protestants, her anxiety rising with every soggy boot step. With the school fence in sight and the Marystown bus spraying slush onto the sidewalk in front of her, the sweat gathered under her jacket. When she reached her locker, Bishop was at his. He is staring into the top shelf, while Amira dials her combination and then kneels on one knee, assuming the pose of the past, side on to Bishop. Her jeans stained from the slush on the ground.
They reach Sharpston’s door at the same time. He stops and let’s her go in first, nodding slightly; she can feel the wet stain on the knee of her jeans, the sweat stains under her arms. Wonders if he sees them. She adjusts her mask, hoping her eyes are calm and shining, thankful that she will not have to turn side-on to him today, the mask doing for the scar what make up never could do.
In Sharpston’s class the divide between those who had computers to learn on and those who didn’t, fell along the same lines as those who had this year’s styles and those who dressed out of the thrift shop. Amira, like Bishop, had no device and had to use the google chromebooks provided by the school. Bishop sits meters apart from her, allowing her an even better side glance of him; his dirty boots, worn jeans and forearms built thick from work. Mrs. Sharpston, permanently seated at her desk behind a plexiglass window, can no longer stalk her classroom as she had done only a few weeks ago.
Amira fiddles with her chromebook, trying to keep up with the lesson.
“Amira, is there a problem?”
“Oh, no Miss. I mean, yes Miss. I can’t get on the Internet Miss.” Her eyes move from her screen to Sharpston, who is leaning into her plexiglass window.
“Refresh your browser Amira and then click on the icon in the lower right corner.”
“Yes Miss.” Amira, having already done precisely that, hangs her head over the keyboard, the sweat is now trickling down her back.
“Did you do it Amira?”
“Yes Miss. I mean, no Miss.” Before Amira can look up, Sharpston’s arm comes across the keyboard and her fingers begin to move over the mouse pad.
“She doesn’t like that Miss.” Bishop is standing by his desk. “She doesn’t like that,” he points, as he repeats. His glance moves from his desk to Ms. Sharpston.
“I just need to get her on the Internet Bishop. Thank you. Please sit down.”
“I know Miss,” Bishop says, taking his seat. “She’s nervous Miss. She doesn’t like anyone near her.”
Amira is still. Her ears pound as the blood rushes to her face. She cannot raise her eyes to look at anyone but she can see Bishop sitting to her left. She knows her face is blotchy and under her mask, her scar must be deepening red. She can feel, she thinks she can feel, Bishop glancing at her from across the room but she doesn’t dare look up.
Instead, she fiddles with the Internet connection and presses the mouse pad rapidly and furiously. When the “ping” of messenger sounds, Amira jumps back from the keyboard, like it has given her a shock.
“It’s OK.” the cursor blinking behind his message. Amira tucks her lower lip under her front teeth, beneath her mask. “It’s OK.” She places her fingers over the keyboard, the cursor demanding she reply. “Thanks” she writes and glances over towards him but he is looking straight ahead at his screen, chin resting in palm.
The walk home at this time of year is dark. Amira trudges along, towards the divided cemetery, heading towards the tramped down path in the snow that leads to the store and home. In this December light, everything is grey and dark. The Marystown bus plows by, sounding like a wounded beast. “Bishop is on that bus.”
The wind from the lake whips snow up onto the road, polishing the headstones of both the Catholics and the Protestants. She walks past them in the dark, her head down. The solstice has dropped the sun in the lake, “never to be seen again”, she thinks.
“Saturn and Jupiter are going to kiss.” Amira jumps into the road at his voice, snow avalanching down her boot. “On this solstice, Saturn and Juptier will come within a degree of each other, even though they are hundreds of millions of miles apart, they will look like they are kissing.” Bishop is sitting in a snowbank, his back to the dead Protestants, looking across the highway above the heads of the still dead Catholics, towards Lake Superior. Amira can see his white teeth, smiling in the dark. “Sit down, I’ll show you.”
Amira steps over the snow bank, off the trans Canada and sits down in the snow with Bishop. She feels their arms touch as the snow under her caves a little and levers her toward him. He points with a mitt that has the fingers cut out, “see, over the lake, you will be able to see them get really close. Just over there. It only happens every couple of decades.” Amira follows his finger out to the horizon. Bishop turns toward her, “it’s like they are kissing even though they are hundreds of millions of miles apart.”
Much later, she lies in bed listening to the wind creaking the house. She thinks about planets kissing and remembers the mist from their exhale, traveling out across Superior into space.
