Free So Long Been Dreaming by Nalo Hopkinson Page A

cheek. I am allergic to hairy animals. This is how I know she is for real.
    And how girls can say No Thanks from the safety of their mermaids’ tails or selkie skins. Dust sifts through the air. A desire for the parts of other women. Skin brown even in the womb, eyes grey until they ripen into Caribbean brown. An appetite for other women. I pull her up piece by piece from the muck and memory. Assemble her into the ex-lover who gave the clothes to the Salvation Army, swept up the mouse turds, cleaned out the closet, who left with my heart in the trunk. Of her car. She comes to life in the prairies, in the murky river that drowns prize begonias.
    Toot sweet Matricia. I stretch my lips and blow.

Larissa Lai was born in La Jolla, California, grew up in Newfoundland, and lived and worked in Vancouver. Her first novel, When Fox Is a Thousand (Press Gang, 1995), was shortlisted for the Chapters/ Books in Canada First Novel Award. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and is working on a PhD at the University of Calgary. Her second novel, Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen Publishers, 2002) was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award, the Tiptree Award, and the W. O. Mitchell Award. In 2003, TVO’s Imprint named her one the Top Ten Writers to Watch Under 40. Arsenal Pulp Press will release a new edition of When Fox Is A Thousand in 2004.

    Rachel
Larissa Lai
    When the policeman says I’m cold, my father tells him about the figure skating accident. “She was a beautiful skater. She could execute a perfect quadruple lutz by the time she was thirteen. But the previous skater had really worked over the ice. It was perilously uneven before Rachel ever set foot on it. Or should I say blade.”
    “In short, I fell,” I tell him. I eye the officer nervously. My father doesn’t trust policemen and neither do I.
    “And you hit your head,” the policeman says, evenly. I can’t tell whether or not he is being sarcastic. His speech is steady and uninflected.
    “Yes, officer,” I say. “On the ice. It knocked me out cold.”
    “She was an extraordinarily emotive child before that,” my father says. “Her mother is Chinese, and very circumspect. And I’m a man of science myself. I don’t know where her passion came from. Or where it went. But doctors say this happens sometimes.”
    “I don’t know where it went myself,” I say, somewhat earnestly. “But it’s gone. That’s for sure.”
    I don’t want to take the test, but my father and I had agreed beforehand that I should. That I would. And that I should volunteer before the policeman asked, so there would be no question of coercion. I hadn’t expected to feel nervous. There is nothing to be nervous about. My father is here. I know who I am. There is no question of failing.
    I sit down opposite the policeman at the long table and let him shine his nasty light into my eye. I can feel him scrutinizing me. There is something about him that stirs me in a way I can’t describe. It’s not exactly pleasant.
    “You’re given a calf skin wallet for your birthday,” he says. The test has begun.
    “I’d return it,” I say. Since 2017 it’s been illegal to slaughter any living thing on Earth. “Also, I’d report the person who gave it to me.”

    My childhood memories are extraordinarily vivid. I remember my mother giving me an empty egg box one day when I was playing in the sand. I filled the box with sand and packed it down tight. When I turned it over there were two neat rows of six identical little houses with round tops. I imagined that if I were really small, I could stroll the alleyways between them.
    I remember piano lessons. I was never very good at music, but it was something my mother valued a great deal, so I made the effort. Recitals made me terribly nervous. When I had to get up to play, I’d be shaking so badly I could barely hit the keys. I played at a tremendous speed with no attention at all to feeling or