HIGH TIDE MARK & OTHER STORIES

BY S. M. TAYLOR

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High Tide Mark and other stories

By S. M. Taylor

Taylor’dtofit Productions Vancouver BC Copyright 2009 by Sharon M Taylor All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means -- graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, recording or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Cover photo by Sharon Taylor. Cover design by Sharon Taylor

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Table of Contents

High Tide Mark p. 4

You Gotta Dance p. 12

The Call of Blood p. 19

Dedicated to my mother and my husband, who supported me even when horrified.

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High Tide Mark

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High Tide Mark

If there had ever been a time when she needed it to work,

it was now.

If there had ever been a time when she needed belief to be

enough, it was now.

She glanced back over her shoulder as she hurried down

the path. If there had ever been a time, she prayed, Lord,

let it be now.

She had crouched under the bushes since early that

morning, waiting for the explosive silence to stop. The

mother had shoved a piece of bread in her hand before

whispering in her ear, “Go outside and play, sweetheart.” It

had solidified into a sweaty mush that coated her fingers,

sticking them together. She had sat staring at them,

peeling them apart, then letting the viscous mess glue

them into a solid mass again over and over. The bottle of

water dropped at her feet remained on the doorstep,

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witness to the shaking of the mother, the unwillingness of

the child.

If there had ever been a time …

She had peed under the bushes, pulling torn panties aside

to let a stream of dark gold water pass between her feet. It

had hit the dry ground and splashed on grubby sneakers.

She could remember when the sneakers were brave and

white, squeaking new out of the shop, and she had danced

down the street while the mother had laughed and run

after her, turning the dance into a joyous race to the bus

stop, missing the bus by moments, and dancing to their

own music as they waited for another one.

The smell, sharp and acrid, had surrounded her, driving

her from the safety of the bushes as the sun rose. The

house squatted on the top of the hill, heavy with

anticipation, like a mother straining to deliver something

monstrous.

There was no longer any sound, not since the soft keening

had stopped. She could not have said how long ago.

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She had backed out of the bushes slowly, as if every

movement hurt. Like any hunted thing, she moved, then

froze, moved, then froze. There was only the beating of

her heart drumming softly in her ears, only the cry of a

seagull in the distance, and the mocking chuckle of a raven

when she moved a little too far, too fast.

Now the pebbles on the path slipped under her feet as she

circled around the cliff, a small girl with tear-streaked

cheeks and white-bread-goo smeared across her jaw like

snot.

If there had ever been a time …

She stared out over the small rocky bay, mesmerized by

the kelp waving under the swell of the murmuring ocean,

the bladderwrack drifting over top with its claw-like sacs,

slimy and satisfying underfoot. She made her way to the

arbutus tree with the wide low branch that ran the length

of her body out from the main tree, and hid herself in the

leaves, picking off pieces of the ruddy, papery bark,

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holding her breath while she peeled off the longest piece

she could without breaking it, all the while praying “If

there was ever a time, Lord. If there was ever a time.”

When she had said it one hundred times without breaking

the long strip of bark, she laid her hot face on the smooth

green flesh beneath to cool it. She closed her eyes and felt

her mother’s skin under her hand – smelled the spicy

sweetness of her soap, the silk of powder, the oiliness of

lipstick. For a moment, she fell asleep, cradled in the arms

of the look-out tree.

The raven called, a long gurgle of mockery.

She startled awake, nearly tumbling from her perch into

the waves below.

There was no sound from the cottage on the hill. When

she shaded her eyes and stared into the sun, now

overhead, she could see a lone gull hovering over the roof,

as if stalking a frightened creature, waiting for it to dash

out in a hopeless bid for freedom, only to lose all in one

swift crunch.

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She shuddered and looked back out over the bay.

There. There they were. Three small black spots, bobbing

like corks in the water, upright, dozing with their heads in

the bright sun, their bodies in the frigid water.

She had known they would be there.

If there had ever been a time …

She stood slowly, holding onto the trunk of the tree, small

feet firmly planted on the sturdy branch, and lifted her

face to the sky.

“If there has ever been a time, Lord, when this has to work,

this is it. I am praying. I am asking. I call upon the power

of the ocean. I call upon the power of the wind. I call

upon the salt in my blood. I call upon the breath in my

lungs. This time, God, dear God, please. This time…”

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She stood high, high on her toes, sneakers grinding into

the flaky bark, gripping the smooth surface below the balls

of her feet. She shut her eyes, and took her hand off the

trunk, balancing lightly now, all confidence and grace.

She opened her eyes for a moment and stared out at the

sparkling water, sunlight turning the ocean into broken

glass reflection. Small playful waves kicked against the

cliff, washing over dirty gray barnacles and plum-purple

mussels. She could smell the rich rot of seaweed left

drying on the shore, taste the salt daubed on her lips by

the breeze. She could hear a boat horn far in the distance,

a lonely call to adventure. She could hear not one now, but

a hundred, a thousand birds calling her, urging her on.

When the mother and the father strolled down to find their

little wanderer a few hours later, arms wrapped around

each other, him with a lazy satisfied smile, she with a

bruise on white skin imperfectly covered under the weight

of his embrace, they found the small broken body of the

child at the bottom of the cliff, where the tide had left it.

Long hair floated with the kelp bed; arms and legs spread

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wide as if she merely slept on the breast of the ocean. One

soiled sneaker had washed up a few feet away.

And out in the bay, four seals bobbed like corks in the

water, with the sun warming their heads, and the sea

cooling their feet.

If there had ever been a time, oh Lord. If there had ever

been a time…

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You Gotta Dance

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You Gotta Dance

“Sometimes, Jaydene,” my mama would say, “You just

gotta dance.”

And we would take the cheque that my daddy had sent –

too little to pay the bills, too late to keep us out of the

pawnshop – and we’d dress up in the prettiest things left

in the closet. Then we’d go to a fancy restaurant and order

whatever we wanted from the menu. I’d have snails and

salad and steak or ribs. I liked the raw sugar with the

dancing man on the package – I’d hear the music in my

head as he swayed through the sugar plantation.

And my mama would dress like a princess in white and

pearls, with stockings so fine they would whisper against

her skin. And she would spray Chanel #5 into the air and

we would walk through it on our way out the door. “Just a

touch now, Jaydene. You want to leave them guessing.”

We would dance through the streets no matter what the

weather, huddled in thin woolen coats, laughing at the

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snow which kissed our face or the wind which slapped it,

or twirling in the summer breeze, long shawls floating

behind us. We would shop like fiends – decorating castles

in Spain with intricate Turkish rugs and bright Chinese

paper lanterns, with Korean chests whose many drawers

could hold secrets enough to satisfy the most determined

heart. Sometimes, when the season was right, she would

buy us each a tiny bouquet of fragrant flowers, and we

would bury our noses in the lavender-scented promise of

better days ahead.

When we arrived at the restaurant she had chosen from the

weekly food reviews in the local community paper, she

would ask the waiter his name (always a he, always a man

her age or a little younger), and enter immediately into a

life-long relationship, finding out more about his family

life and ambitions than the waiter himself probably knew.

By the time we were seated, he (they) was always her slave,

eager to serve her in any way.

She would consider her courses with an intensity that drew

them like heat on a cold day. She would debate the merits

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of halibut steamed in rice paper, or medallions of lamb in

raspberry coulis. She would ask advice, talk to the

sommelier, then with a pretty flutter, leave the choice to

the waiter, who always brought a feast worth remembering

in leaner days when hunger seemed to slick the insides of

our bellies.

And she would talk. My mama could talk the hoot out of

an owl, as my granddad used to say. She would tell stories

of her days on the road, stories of singing in small clubs

and bars where her voice played a smoky counterpoint to

the card games and the fistfights, a soulful score to the

wasted lives holding up the bar. She had loved it – the

sleaze and the dirt, the sad dreary round of agents who

always wanted something for their trouble and the other

performers who simply wanted her out of the way. She

saw the world always as a grand adventure to be faced and

vanquished.

And I would stare fixedly at the table as the waiter filled

the already overflowing bowl with creamers and sugar

packets, gave us extra servings of bread and butter, and

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pretended he did not see the empty plastic-filled bag over

my chair back grow full and fat with pilfering.

The dance home from dinner was always a longer one,

filled with the fear that one day she would simply slip

from my grasp and be swallowed up by the crowd on the

street, by the endless stream of cars. She would drift from

window to Walk sign, seeing only her memories of long

ago. I would hold tight, tight, to her hand, talking to her in

a steady unending chant, like a string holding a kite to the

earth.

I was 15 the last time we went dancing, went to a

restaurant with a little money I had scrimped out of the

household budget. “Come on, Mama, let’s go dance.” And

I took her frail hand in mine, and sprayed the last whisper

of Chanel #5 in the air, and helped her on with her

stockings, making sure the holes were hidden in the sole of

her shoe. And I asked her which restaurant she wanted to

go to, and she pointed and smiled.

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I begged my neighbour for a ride, promised him a favour in

return, and led my mother all in white and pearls out the

door. I choose her dinner and the wine. My purse was

only big enough to hold a debit card and a $10 bill.

And the only sound in the restaurant was the low murmur

of conversations we could not hear, of silverware on china,

of violins playing a never-ending chorus of Pachelbel’s

greatest hit.

“I hate this song. Remember that, Jaydene.”

And I promised to remember.

I can’t remember what she ordered, but I remember most

of it was left on the plate. My fingers itched then for my

plastic-lined bag. The waiter offered to put it in a doggie

bag. I smiled and said, “We don’t have a dog.”

She asked if we could walk home, and I looked at the $10

bill and sighed. I let the string out on the kite and

followed her home.

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She slipped the line a week later, dancing to the sky

without a backward glance.

When my daddy came to take me to his house, I was

dressed all in white, with pearls, and stocking so fine they

would whisper on my skin. In my plastic-lined bag was an

empty bottle of 15 year old perfume, bought on the day of

my birth.

In my head was only a smoky blues song, asking why

things happened the way they do.

But when I walked out the door and down the steps of my

home for the last time, I danced.

I danced, Mama. ‘Cause sometimes, you just gotta dance.

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The Call of Blood

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The Call of Blood

He couldn’t remember the first house he had lived in, or the third,

but the second remained as clear in his mind as a paper cut.

He had loved the house: the smell of old wood which has

settled into itself, the burning dust of the heat registers on

which he used to sit in the morning to warm his feet. He

loved the lambent light of weak sunshine through leaves,

loved the rustle of the trees as they rid themselves of

protective covering for the winter. He loved the walls that

sloped to the floor, the wood beneath his feet

(putonyourslippersoryou’llgetsliversinyourfeet). He loved

to slide his fingernails into the wood of the banister,

gouging channels in the wood grain.

He used to lie on his stomach at the top of the stairs, still

as a mouse, watching the family watching TV. He was not

interested in the moving pictures on the screen - the

screams of war, the self-gratification of the entertainment

world reporting on the entertainment world, the dizzying,

stupefying movement of the Wheel or the canned laughter

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and canned plot of this week’s top sitcom. No, he was only

interested in watching his people.

He knew they weren’t really his, knew he had been brought

to this house with his small suitcase clutched in his hand.

Although he couldn’t remember it, he knew there had been

another house - one full of light, full of noise. He thought

there had been nothing between then and here, but he was

not sure, and was afraid to ask, to have his uncertainty

betrayed. His people did not pretend that he belonged - he

slept in a guest bedroom, he used guest towels. But he

also had ‘his’ cup and ‘his’ chair at the table, and did ‘his’

chores after school and after every meal. He felt he

belonged in most of the important ways, but there was

always the lingering fear that it would all disappear, that

he would disappear, that another little boy would come to

sleep in the guest bedroom, brush his teeth in the guest

bathroom, use ‘his’ cup, sit in ‘his’ chair.

So he did what he could to keep that from happening. He

was preternaturally good (“reallynotroubleatall”), quiet and

polite to everyone in the house. He did his chores willingly

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and well, never complained about going to bed or cleaning

up after the family dog. He could tell no one about school:

how he was chased to and from the large brick building

every day by the same tormenting group of boys, how they

threw rocks at him and once pushed him so that he fell

and skinned his knee. Before he left the house each day to

walk to three blocks to his school, he would shake so hard

he could barely put on his boots, hate so hard his heart

seemed to turn over in his body, clench his fists until the

skin of his palms broke beneath the nails. His silence grew

until it seemed to fill his whole body, pushing the part of

him he recognized by name into a corner of his own mind.

Then, and only then, could he leave the house, holding

himself separate from the outside world.

And he bled. Every day, he woke before the household,

before the dog was up snuffling at the back door, before

the people were stretching and peeing and grumbling and

crushing coffee beans in the morning litany. Every day he

would wake with the last glimmer of starlight and move

about the house with a safety pin hidden in his hand. First

the front door: inside in the morning, on the doorstep

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when coming home from school. A deep breath, hold it,

push the pin straight into the ball of the thumb. If the pin

enters on an angle, there is not enough blood to well and

drip from the wound, and it must drip from a height of no

less than three inches from the floor.

Then through the house to the back door, chanting, “From

door to door, this is my place,” softly, under the breath.

One drop of blood on the floor below the hinges. Blood

cannot be shed outside the back door everyday - only

sometimes after school when he is encouraged to play

outside, so an additional line is added to the chant on cold

or wet days when “outside play” is prohibited or unlikely,

“Outside and in, this is my place”. Then across the house

to the living room, to the small tile-surrounded fireplace, a

drop of blood in the centre of the grate, where the logs in

the evening will consume it. The chant begins, “In fire.”

and then as quickly as possible, while holding the breath, a

silent dash across the house back to the kitchen, “and

water,” a second drop in the drain of the porcelain sink,

“this is my place.”

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The ritual varied after that, depending on whether it was a

school day (blood in the boots - “In speed and in strength,

this is my place”), or a weekend (blood on the stairs - “Both

up and down, this is my place”). But everyday there must

be blood, one drop in each place, never more, and from the

same finger as much as possible. If he did not get a whole

drop of blood, or if he forgot to say the words, or if he

breathed during his race across the house from fire to

water, then the whole weary business would have to be

done again - in spite of painful fingers, in spite of the

danger of the people waking up and finding him.

It was not enough, as he had known in his heart it would

not be. Perhaps if he had been better behaved, perhaps if

he had used more blood, he would have been allowed to

stay. But there was the teacher who noticed the sore

punctured fingers, there was the doctor who declared the

thumb infected, there was the housecleaner who noticed

the blood on the front door step; then there were the

questions which had no answer, the sorrow and fear, the

clothes packed in the small suitcase, the tearful goodbyes

from the people, the hugs which he could not return, and

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the long walk back to the car, with the woman from the

Ministry, who could not help but ask, in a frustrated, tired

voice, “Why, Jeremy? Why would you hurt yourself like

that?” He could only just hear her voice from the cold

place held within; he could not understand her words.

He knew, though; even if it had not worked as he had

hoped, he knew that the house and he were tied by blood.

From door to door, this is my place.

From outside to in, this is my place.

From fire to water, this is my place.

In strength and in speed, this is my place.

Both up and down, this is my place.

Blood calls to blood: the house would call him home.

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