Free Blasted by Kate Story Page B

of meeting with the tribe and seeing a woman with “light sandy hair, and features strongly similar to the French.” God knows who she was, but I clung to the hope that somehow that woman proved they’d take whites to live with them. Once I stole my mother’s lipstick and mixed it with dirt and cooking oil, covering myself in red paste.
    I devoured the fragments about her .
    Shanawdithit had two children. She missed them.
    Once she was shot at by a Mi’kmaq hunter named Noel Boss; in my mind he looked just like Eddy.
    In the white households where she lived after being taken, she didn’t seem to consider herself a servant; she’d do household tasks more to be helpful than out of any sense of duty, and was often “saucy” with the mistress of the house.
    She was very modest, and tolerated no unwanted attentions from men.
    When she was first taken, the women had quite a job washing off the red ochre.
    My parents gave me that book the year before they died, though of course none of us knew it at the time. Afterwards this became part of the thick, heavy mat of emotions around the book, this sadness, wishing for small things, like that they’d written something on the fly-leaf. Shanawdithit – the whites re-named her Nancy – believed you could talk to the dead. Death and sleep were pretty much the same to her. All gone widdun , she said when the desperate mood came over her. She’d go off into the woods for days, come back saying she’d been talking to her family. Nance go widdun too, no more come Nance, run away, no more come.
    It grew dark, night fell. When I was sure it was after restaurant closing time, I got up, drank a can of beer I found in my derelict fridge, put my pilfered uniform and shoes in a plastic bag and drove my bike to the restaurant. When I walked in the door, all the reasons I had hated working there swept over me. I could feel every shift, every miserable customer, every nasty power-tripping mind game Jim had ever played.
    â€œWell. Well, well, well, look who’s here.” The Slug came out from behind the bar, wiping his hands on his dirty apron. He was trying to sound menacing. I put my helmet on the bar and took a few steps forward. “Hi,” I said. “I brought back the uniform.”
    The Slug kept his eyes on me, calling out, “Hey, Jim! Ruby’s here. She says she’s brought back the uniform .”
    Jim bustled out of the back room, his face all-over frowns. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do!” he snapped.
    â€œLook, I’m sorry I left like I did…”
    â€œAnd don’t think you can come crawling back. You’re fired!”
    â€œJim, I think that’s a moot point…”
    â€œI could have you up on charges! Breach of contract!”
    I raised my voice. “Listen, moron, just take your goddamn uniform, give me my clothes and I’ll be leaving.” I tossed the bag with the uniform in it at The Slug, but he made no move to catch it. It hit his stomach and fell to the floor.
    â€œLet’s not get violent here, Ruby,” said Jim.
    â€œViolent?!” I shouted, then controlled myself. “Do you still have my clothes? Just let me have them.”
    â€œI threw them in the trash,” said The Slug.
    I fixed him with a glare. “You have the social skills of Javex, you pasty, corrosive, poisonous little worm.” Trembling, I turned to go.
    â€œYou still owe me money. You owe me for those walk-outs.” I turned around, very slowly, at Jim’s voice.
    â€œDon’t push it.”
    â€œPush it? I’ll have you in court so fast your head will spin.”
    â€œTry it,” I said. Jim started laughing. “Don’t you still owe me for a couple of shifts?”
    Jim just kept laughing. The Slug walked to the door and opened it, gesturing for me to leave. I turned, and I think I meant to go. But suddenly I had one of the bar stools