nayahcikewiyiniw: a person who bears things on her/his back pawatamowin* In her dream, she's not in the lean-to in front of Pimatisewin, but in Gastown in Vancouver. She is flying in her nightie, through the cobbled streets, amazed by the smells of spices and food. She opens the door to a kitchen cuisine store. As the red door opens she sees the figure of a portly denim-clad white man with his back to her. When he turns to face her, the Frugal Gourmet holds out his hand and, taking her claw, pulls her to the window of the little shop. He points outside to Pimatisewin and says to her in Cree, "She needs some tiramisu."
* Dream.
I Life. Shorthand. Tree of Life.
BERNICE OWNS TWO PAIRS OF SHOES. She thinks you can tell a lot about someone by the shoes she wears. She owns a pair of sneakers for work and a pair of five-inch heels she found at a Sally Ann. Both serve a purpose. Neither, she thinks, tells you anything about her except how she spends her time. You can tell a lot about most people by their shoes, she thinks.
How she spends her time is more and more often a mystery to her. Hours seem to slip away without her noticing. Once in a while, Bernice will find herself sitting so still and quiet that she might be asleep. She is not, though. While she is not entirely sure what she is doing, she is quite sure of what she is not doing. And. Sleeping. Is not on the list.
When she first started to feel that something was happening, it was her body that informed her, and not her mind. Sometimes, she would become aware that her legs were cramping. From sitting in one place or position for too long. Or. Maybe. From the control it took not to be where she was. She couldn’t tell. The odd time, it happened when someone was around. During those moments she was not aware of what she was doing but was almost always aware of “coming back.” When she did. Back when she did come back. Inevitably, someone without patience or kindness would be snapping their fingers at her, pushing at her with their foot, or, on one occasion, yelling at her. (“Hey you fucking dummy, I am talking to you!”)
Sometimes, she would sit (she presumes motionless) for so long in the cold or wind that her scars felt papery with the cold air and her eyes were dry.
Back when she did come back, she would sit in the park, watching the fishing boats come in and the wind whip up the water. Moving and immobile at the same time, she had been content to just sit, watch and stare herself into her time. She would not try this at home. Would never have done so in Edmonton. But Gibsons is just safe. Enough.
Many people, she thinks, might have found this ... this vacancy of her self - confusing or terrifying. Bernice didn’t. That vacancy she felt was somehow absorbing; it sopped up everything around her, making her lighter. Lying in her bed, now, she thinks of that period as the time when she learned to leave. It became part of her, a continuum of change, growing in her until she could fully move and bend. Memories. Bad thoughts. Time. It felt like a rock skipping on water, so much so that she strangely is not shocked when she sinks. She has been strange for so long that she cannot even attempt to understand what normal might feel like. For her, coming back into her self after her time felt precisely normal. She may have felt this, but when she found cuts on her feet or bruises on her hands after one of these spells, or when she remembers the one time she came back with blood in and on her mouth and no cut, she did wonder where she had been.