July 2006

 

WARM light filters past the frayed, orange curtains and illuminates a streak of dancing dust. Old toys, clothes, microwave food boxes and Wal-Mart bags scatter on the floor. Didi and I spend the afternoon in Katie’s two-bedroom

apartment on Keele Street, returning from an afternoon Canada Day celebration at Downsview Park. I’ve known Katie for seven years. Katie’s living room smells of cigarettes and home. We sit around the crowded coffee table. A box of pizza and a half-emptied two-litre bottle of Coke rest on the glass surface. I sink into the dusty cushions of the brown couch with Katie by my side. Didi leans back in a chair across me. Laurie, Katie’s mother, sits on another chair. Laurie’s mother sits beside her. We’ve known Laurie’s mother as Nana, always. She prefers “Nana” over “Grandma”.

           Softness resonates from Nana’s blue eyes to her tobacco stained smile. Nana grew up with a family of touring

country musicians in rural Canada. Since Nana was three,

her parents snuck her into bars, where they performed to

cheering crowds. Sometimes, people travelled from surrounding towns to hear her family sing and play.

           “There was no border control back then,” Nana tells me. Once, in the United States, she sang with a stern-looking

man, his face chewed with scars and pockmarks. She feared to even look at him. That’s what Nana remembers of

Johnny Cash.

           Nana’s hair falls in soft slate-coloured waves onto

her rounded shoulders. Nana lowers her head. Her dark

rimmed glasses slide to the tip of her nose.

           “Katie was a quite a fighter back when she was a little

girl.” Nana speaks through her smoke-rusted voice. She

irons out a fold on her faded t-shirt with her pudgy, spotted

hands. “Did you tell ‘em what ya did when you were in

daycare?” she says to Katie, nodding towards me and Didi. 

           Katie raises a brow. “No…what’d I do?”

           “Oh, Jesus.” Nana’s face creases into a smile. She places a hand on her cheek and the other on her chest. Nana chuckles. “She was quite a trouble maker,” she says turning to me.