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Chapter One

SHE COMES
HOME A MOTH

EVERYONE ON OUR STREET HAD KIDS. It was that kind of street: Hemlock Street, a dusty little L-shaped road with a fence at one end. I wouldn't call the place where our street stopped a dead end, though, because that's where it all started: the old dump road, the power line, the veins in a leaf-like network of trails that led to our places. The places we built forts, tobogganed in green garbage bags, and learned how to ride after our dads took the blocks off our pedals.

    My mom tells the story of how she met your mom, awake in the night, pacing in front of the living room window, a small, crying bundle in her arms. That bundle was me. There was only one other light on the block, in the house right across the street. Inside the light stood a woman, holding a baby. She shrugged, a you-too, huh? kind of movement with her shoulders, and waved at my mother.

    They didn't get a chance to meet for a couple more days — your mom worked in the evenings and mine in the day — but they would be together late at night, in their windows, with the road and the dark between them, in separate circles of light.

    One Friday night your mom knocked on our door. "Could you take her?" She meant you. "Pierre and I, we need to go away for a couple of hours. Can you watch my baby? Her name is Valerie."

    So I only remember a time when there was you. You can remember details, whole conversations and dates; I cannot. I remember colours, our hands stained with cranberries. You hadlong brown hair. We both had a pair of red pants.

    We were always together. Your dad called us cheese and crackers. We never kissed.

    I liked how you hardly said anything when there were adults around, but how when we were alone your soft voice spilled out plans: now how 'bout we play this? We usually fundamentally disagreed on what we were or should be playing, but never considered other partners.

    I remember when your grandmother came to visit from France; her voice was bigger than she was, and your father was the interpreter. She shook her head and laughed at my mother. "How come everyday you send this one out looking like a butterfly, and she comes home a moth?"

    You always kept your knees clean.

    My mom let us use her bike one day. We were going to the store, and her bike had a basket in front. It was way too big for me, but I pedalled with much concentration, my tongue pressed between my lips. You sat on the seat, legs dangling, your summer, brown thumbs in my belt loops.

    We had to go down the big hill next to the meadow where boys smoked cigarettes sometimes, and your grip on my waist tightened. "You're driving too faaaast. Slow dooown." Your voice was bumpy from the gravel and potholes on the road.

    Unfamiliar with the physics of a three-speed, I slammed on what turned out to be the front brakes, and that's when the tragedy happened. The road rash would heal, the hole in the knee of my cords could be mended, but your hair? Now we were in trouble. One of your braids had gotten caught in the spokes of the front wheel as we went over the handlebars, and been chopped off. We immediately aborted the mission and went straight back to your place.

    We called out soon as we came through the front door, our faces grim and tear-streaked. Your father came flying naked out of the shower, and did the preliminary medical inspections with no clothes on at all. Only when he realized there were no broken bones or stitches needed did he disappear back into the bathroom, returning with bandaids and iodine, a damp towel around his waist.

    He shook his head sadly at your lopsided braid: "Just wait till your Maman gets home." Hair was a female domain; it was she that we would have to answer to for this, and we knew it. "How did you let this happen?" He was looking at me when he asked.

    I slunk home, and told the story to my mother. The only thing more horrifying to me than what had happened to your hair was the sight of my very first naked man, hairy and dark and smelling of aftershave.

    My mom had a logical explanation for this.

    "Well, you know how the Salezes are different from us? Like how Grace lets you guys colour on the walls in Val's room, but I would kill you both if you did that here? Well, that's why Pierre had no clothes on. They're French."

    This made perfect sense to me at the time.

    I don't remember the day you left, I just remember you being gone. I think it was the first time I ever missed someone. Everyone else I loved never went anywhere. And France was such a far away place, farther even than Vancouver, too far away to phone, too far away to hope you would ever come back.

    Twenty years later I saw your name on an ad. You had a video camera and were looking for gigs. It couldn't be you, but I called anyway.

    "Is your name Valerie Salez?"

    "Did you used to live in the Yukon?"

    "Was your father French? Did your mother talk a lot?"

    We were only blocks away. I went to your place that same night. We said the same thing to each other at exactly the same time right before you hugged me.

    "You haven't changed a bit."