Kohkum's Medicine
A Cree girl's night on the streets of Northeastern Ontario.
Cars slid and stopped and started again at the traffic lights on 3rd and Pine. Their headlights washed the buildings in yellow light as they rattled through the downtown corridor.
I was hooking for Edgar on 3rd Ave - "Whore Alley" they called it - it was almost Christmas and every lamp post had a neon of holly or a candy cane wired onto it.
The night was slow and for two hours I had nothing to do except smoke and watch the cars. Their tires churned up a mix of slush and grit that clung and froze heavy from bumpers and wheel wells. Streets, buildings, sidewalks - all were sunken and ugly and steaming in the snow like a dogs hot vomit.
Like the billboard said: Bienvenue. Wachay. Welcome to Timmins.
My phone chirped and I saw it was Edgar. He had a John for me. Be here in five minutes in a one-ton Dodge flat-bed. I asked him what flat-bed meant. He told me I was a pretty dumb fucking Indian, said to just look pretty and listen for the diesel engine.
He always talked like that – like he wasn't one of us – but he was. We all knew he came here from Moose Factory when he was a kid and then never left. Like all of us. Except I was from Attawapiskat. Most of the girls were from there or Moosonee. Hillary was from Kash. I looked again at the stark brick and mortar around me, then at the traffic lights wobbling against the wind. It started to snow. Maybe we were all dumb fucking Indians.
A truck burped a plume of coal at the end of the block and then growled its way toward me. The passenger-side wheels parted the piled up snow and rolled onto the edge of the frozen sidewalk at my feet. I opened the door and got in as the tires rolled and spun. The lurching of the truck slammed the door on my bag. I swore and pushed until I could jerk it clear and then pulled it shut again. The man just laughed.
Fucking prick, I thought.
He was ugly. They all were. When he spoke he sounded exactly as I knew he would - like snorting and barking and crushed gravel under tires. The typical, fat, old kind who'd spent their whole life in the mines; their whole paycheck on beer and girls like me.
He smelled like ass, but his truck smelled worse. It was a bear's den, perfumed with garbage and a potpourri of cigarette butts floating in the sour dregs of a Tim Horton's triple, triple.
We were heading to the old Waferboard road, a few miles out of town by the log yard. The asshole was too cheap for a hotel – I wouldn't even be able to wash his smell off of me.
I hated calls like these. You never knew what might happen. Usually nothing, but after you were beat and dropped once, the memory was always clawing around at the bottom of things. My first job ended like that. It was the first time it wasn't just favours for people I already knew – a real stranger. Edgar picked me up that time. He even smoothed my hair as I cried into his chest; didn't mind the tears or my bloody nose smearing into his shirt. He was alright sometimes.
I swore off strangers then, no matter the money. That didn't last long, but I did learn a few tricks from the older girls.
Old. Ha.
I was nineteen back then. Back when thirty was an age I never thought I’d see.
“Keep your nails long and carry bear-spray.” That's what they said.
I never had to use it, was just something that cluttered my purse. Made me feel safe. Like I had some control. The other girls and I used to joke that it was my medicine.
Medicine. Fuck. I was thinking about my mom again, her final gift. I saw her face in the reflection of the windshield as the passing lights of Canadian Tire flared through the glass. She was smiling like the day I left the rez for school at Northern. Full of sadness, full of hope. There were her tears, wetting the crows-feet at the corners of her eyes. I remembered her joke that I'd probably meet a handsome white boy and come home an apple.
Humour to wash away our fears – that was her way.
I still had it - the dreamcatcher she gave me. It hung everywhere I had ever lived. Every night I prayed she couldn't see the things it witnessed from wherever death had taken her.
“Medicine from Kohkum.” She'd whispered, gently placing it in my palm, the warmth of her hands wrapping mine.
She was so much like her. Like Kohkum – my grandmother. In my earliest memories their lives were just a continuation of one warm glow. One heartbeat pulsing in two bodies. There was a time when all I knew was the slow drumming of the hearts within their breasts. Flashes of love. Comfort. The hands of two Cree mothers.
Three generations of the same heartbeat – the same Indian skin.
The vision left as gently as it came, the lights of the parking lot faded and I saw myself in the reflection again. My mothers tears were still in my eyes. I swallowed hard and blinked them away until I was alone with the man in the diesel truck.
Why was I thinking of them? It always made it harder. Harder to hide myself.
Eventually, we rolled to a stop and the man lit a cigarette and waited for the traffic to pass. To our left, snow, plowed eight feet high lay in piles at the edges of the Waferboard road. On our right was the dimly lit parking lot of the Wakenagun Youth Healing Lodge.
Wakenagun was a place that took in kids like me, or, like I used to be. They gave them a home, tried to turn them away from drugs, away from the streets. I shook my head as I thought of all the new girls around town. All of them from up north – all with the same story. It didn't seem like it was working, but what did I know. It wasn't there when I was a kid.
At least they were trying, I thought.
Their logo was a dreamcatcher. Like mine. Like Kohkum's.
Another flash of warmth. I saw her old hands, brown and knotted, working beads into the webbing; her frail figure walking out beyond the rez, bending low in search of just the right feathers. A grouse. A raven. My throat felt thick.
A snort from the man brought me back again. His face, bulbous and terrible in the passing lights of transport trucks. He tossed his head towards the sign and Kohkum's dreamcatcher.
“Now, there's a waste of taxes. Freeloading fucks.”
Shame washed over my face with a hot sensation. Then disgust. With the man. With myself. I wanted to kill him. Wanted to kill myself. Instead, I just burned in silence as we turned away from the lodge and onto the brown snow of the road.
The man killed his headlights soon after, left us idling our way by the orange glow of the running lights. Seconds passed like minutes until we reached the far side of an old road grader, parked there after the last snowstorm. He pulled his truck in close and eased it into park.
“Okay, sweetheart.” he growled, flicking his butt out of the cracked window. His hand rolled it up as he turned to face me. My eyes dropped to the floor. I couldn't look at him.
“Aww c'mon, don’t do that now. Let's see what you've got for me, baby.” His breathing had grown heavy, it whistled through his nose in ragged sounds as he hurriedly untucked his shirt and reached for my face.
No. No, no, no. He leaned in close until I could smell the rank odour coming from his mouth. Coarse fingers scraped against my chin, squeezing my jaw. He forced my face away from the window.
No... He couldn't. Not like this. I wasn't ready... I hadn't hid myself away. I was there, right there, at the surface.
Tears welled as my head was turned against my will. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt them flow down my cheeks.
I saw them again. My mother. Kohkum.
Why? Why were they hovering so close tonight? They looked so sad. So ashamed. They didn't know what it was like, they couldn't know!
They had no right!
“You have no right!” my scream was hysterical in my ears.
I ripped my face from the man’s hand, slapping it away.
“Fucking bitch!” He hit me and reached again, tearing my shirt. The veins in his head bulged as I tried to fight him off.
My medicine. I dropped my arm below the seat as he threw himself onto me, fumbling for the can of bear spray in my bag. I felt the cold metal against one of my knuckles, dug again and had it in my grip.
His full weight was crushing, I could barely breathe. One elbow was caving my chest, the other hand gripping me by the hair. He shifted himself and I heard the wind go out of me.
My free hand was still in the purse, clutching the can. I had to do it now.
I screamed again as he lifted his weight to find a better grip, screamed and raised the can to his face; slid my thumb up the bottle to release the safety, felt for the trigger and found… nothing. It was gone.
A heavy palm crashed into my temple.
I am back on the sidewalk, hopping the piled up snow into the passenger seat. The tires break loose, the door swings. Crack.
I hear it this time, hear it break.
Then the smell of wet, cigarette ash and a cold sensation over my hip. I am back in the truck with the man fumbling at his belt. The coffee cup of butts has spilled down his side and over my leg. I try to sit up.
Crack.
In the dark now, floating. Something above me. The disembodied head of a man, descending, snarling. Closer, closer. It touches me and grows bigger.
Crack.
Another flash of light, then the darkness again. The same head, but now I'm falling, falling away. The head is faster.
Crack.
The sound is farther away and no light comes with it. The head is monstrous now, bigger than my body and its mouth open. It will swallow me. Devour me. The stench of rot and decay is smothering.
I fall faster now. Still, the head gets closer.
I open my mouth to scream.
Crack.
The falling stops. I'm laying upon a web, rolling across tight weaves of yellow-brown. Hooped branches of alder surround me, held under tension by delicate threads of sinew. Feathers and coloured beads dance to my movement. Kohkum’s medicine.
Above me, the face of the man bunches up. Its eyes are confused now, but the lips are wet with spittle and it descends, hungry. My leg falls through a gap in the weaves. I see my chance, crawl through and fall again.
I watch as the head presses into the threads, contorting. It is caught. The beads shake angrily, the face roars, but the medicine is strong. Too strong.
I know I am safe now. He cannot follow. Not here.
Slowly, slowly the falling ends. All is warm. I hear drumming, softly. My mother’s face is above me, then Kohkum's, then my own. I see myself from above, a little black-haired girl, curled and asleep and untouched. Safe.
All this time. After everything. Tears wet my cheeks.
My bed is a pair of hands. They are soft and brown and strong. Mine, my mother’s, Kohkum's. Others. Back and back and back. Cree hands. Generations of hands.
Thousands of heartbeats, drumming.
The same Indian skin.
I hope you enjoyed the story. These stories - both the true and the fiction - are all drawn from experiences in my life. If you want to help support their creation, please leave a comment, a one time tip, or become a free or paid subscriber. Cheers.