Bozuk Read online

  I called out. “Daddy?” Then again, “Daddy, you boneless trouser snake.” I heard my mother say such things when she was drunk. “You bastard. How am I supposed to get through this night all by myself?” My father was the one who’d carried me back to bed after I got lost sleepwalking. He was the one who’d held my hair back when I threw up and gave me little sips of ginger ale afterward. Where the Sam Hill was he now?

  I fell asleep crying and woke up shivering at the first light, my eyelids stuck together by grief. The sun loomed big and orange over the treetops, climbing into blue sky. I figured I was due north of my house because the sunrise was to the left of me. Maybe I could get home on my own. Maybe I couldn’t. My mother might not notice I was gone until she got hungry and called out for a chip steak or a cup of instant coffee. Coon was an asshole. He’d broken his word and he could burn in hell. If I died in the forest, he’d be damned. My father had told me about the damned, his face contorted by memory. They are hot all the time and there is no water down there.

  I was parched.

  I kept on being thirsty for quite some time. I guess Coon felt sorry for me. He came and got me just when I was deciding to take a chance and follow the sun home. It turned out he was there all the time circling the bluff. I could see where he had trampled the grass when he helped me down. I don’t know if he slept at all.

  “Why in hell did you do that? My mother must be going crazy wondering where I am. And what about yours?” He had me by the wrist and he was pulling me through the brambles again. My legs were really shredded now. They looked worse than the time I got impetigo after breaking out in hives from eating too many strawberries in old man Pritchard’s garden.

  Halfway down the hill we stopped and picked some huckleberries. I imagined my mother making lemonade. When I closed my eyes, I saw dew forming on the glass pitcher. She would leave out the pitcher, a cold glass from the fridge and a plate of gingersnap cookies, just in case I was hungry after going out to see the sun rise from the top of the hill. That’s what I would tell her. I wasn’t going to tell a living soul about Coon. Coon was nobody’s damn business.

  After Coon left me about a hundred yards from our house, I slipped through a hole in the fence. My private gate was hidden in brambles, but that didn’t matter. I was already scratched to bits. The day was new, with dew still on the lawn, and our neighbours’ vehicles enjoying the last moments of shady sleep in their carports.

  I crept into the kitchen through the sliding door on the deck, which I’d left open the night before. There was no lemonade and no cookies. I grabbed a few slices from the open package of Hollywood Bread and stuffed them in my mouth.

  Stella was in the living room, asleep in the Easyboy. First, I turned off the TV, then I covered her with the mohair blanket Daddy had given her to keep warm at his soccer games. Stella looked pretty when she slept. It was as if a big eraser had wiped all the sadness off her face. She had pink skin like the inside of a seashell. There was this feeling like a fist, part mad, part sad, in my throat when I looked at her. I wanted her the way she was before, but I didn’t know how I was going to pull that off, short of a miracle.

  I got into bed and had myself a big think before I fell asleep that morning. I had found a friend, but he had boundaries. I would have my own. If his house was out of bounds, so was mine. If Coon wasn’t going to let himself be trapped, then neither was I. I liked mystery stories. Before I moved on to adult books, I read all of the Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton mysteries. I even read the Hardy Boys, even though it was more fun reading about girls. Coon was my private mystery.

  We kept meeting on the high rock near the rapids and other places. He came and went. To keep my bearings, I got myself a five-finger discount compass at the corner store.

  It started when Mr. Jang refused to put candy bars on Stella’s charge account.

  “She doesn’t cook,” I yelled at him. “What am I supposed to eat?”

  Mr. Jung picked up a handful of snow peas and shoved them in my face.

  “Eat, gong,” he shouted back.

  “But it’s all your fault.” Mr. Jung was a junk food pusher. He got me going on free candy when I was a little kid and now he was acting all high and mighty.

  “I know about people like you.” The cops had been to our school with stories about evil men who gave you your first funny cigarette. Truth is, he also got me going on Classics comics, which kick-started my addiction to serious books.

  I felt better about going deep into the bushes when I knew I could find my way home. Coon knew every stone and tree in the woods but he wasn’t going to be at my beck and call. That was clear. He liked surprises.

  That day, I slept until Stella asked me to make her a chip steak sandwich for dinner. I didn’t know that would be my new pattern. For the rest of the summer I slept during the afternoons and stayed out all night. If Stella noticed, she didn’t say anything to me. Not one word.

  I ran into Coon at my secret blackberry patch at sunrise one August morning. I wasn’t surprised to see him there. He knew where to find all the free food. My patch was special because it grew around rocks and it wasn’t hard to access the tops of the canes. We’d had lots of sun and rain that summer and the blackberries at my patch were big and tender, not dusty like road berries. Coon’s mouth was stained a dark purple. His old syrup can was full when I got there. I told him I was making pie, which was a lie. I just wanted him to think I had to take my berries home, so I wouldn’t have to share them with him. I felt bad when he actually helped me fill my bucket.

  “You want to go swimming again, Coon?”

  We took our berries to the Gorge and hid them in some salal while we splashed in the shallow water at the beach near the rapids. I wanted to ride the current right through the narrows, but Coon wouldn’t go with me. So what if we drowned? Who would miss us? Maybe Coon had plans for his life, but I didn’t have anything pressing going on in mine.

  I thought one of three things would happen. One, I would have the thrill of my life riding through the rapids. Two, I would get sucked under and meet up with my father. Three, I’d get a closer look at where he went and come back and tell Stella about it. How could I lose?

  He started dog-paddling toward the Tillicum Bridge and I followed him. When his head was wet he looked like a sea mammal. Hard to tell if it was Coon or a seal that came bobbing up for air every minute or two. The water was warm and salty. It held me up. I turned on my back and watched a family of seagulls attacking an eagle. It looked as though that eagle had taken a baby seagull from its nest. What a lucky baby to have so many mothers rescuing it.

  What would Stella do if somebody or something came and took me away? Would she phone up some of the neighbours and go fighting for me like that? In the end, the seagulls won and the eagle dropped whatever it had in its mouth and went back to its nest in a tall cedar tree.

  This was the first time we’d been naked in daylight. When we lay on the hot rock drying ourselves, I tried not to look at Coon, but I saw a few things. For instance, he didn’t have hair down there like I expected. Now I know that girls develop faster than boys, but I didn’t then. I had a bit of moss on my privates and some under my arms too. He had a brown mark on his stomach.

  “That’s where a fairy kissed you.”

  We watched dark clouds gather overhead and ate all the berries we picked. First we ate mine and then we ate his. Coon pointed out a hummingbird that stopped still on a branch and opened its mouth to swallow the first drops of rain.

  “Do you live in a house?” I asked him straight out. “Do you have a mother and father?”

  He didn’t say a word. We put our clothes back on and walked back to the bluff where he left me the night I was almost scared to death. I didn’t ask where we were going. I just followed. Instead of climbing up to the top of the rock, he showed me an opening hidden by bushes in the side of the cliff. It was the way into a cave.

  All my life I had imagined caves, each of them different. I lay on my bed a
nd made up stories to go with the cracks in the walls that I discovered in my rambles. Some of them were filled with treasure, the kind of thing I would expect to find in shipwrecks – gold bullion and fabulous jewels set in gold so dazzling I would need sunglasses. Some of them were filled with families sitting around big stewpots cooking over a fire. Others were abandoned mountain hotels with beds covered in goatskins carved in the rock. I also spent a lot of imaginary time with a family of bears hibernating in a cave near an abandoned orchard.

  I found them when I noticed claw marks on the old apple trees.

  Coon’s cave was different from all the others. It was a real home with furniture and cupboards with dishes. He had blankets and towels and a braided rag rug on the dirt floor, which he tidied with a broom made of cedar boughs. I couldn’t see so well at first, so he struck a match and lit a big stub of a candle. In the middle of the room I saw a circle of stones filled with ashes. There was a pile of wood neatly stacked against the wall. I bet our neighbours would be interested in knowing where their missing firewood went. He had a whole mess of it, and lots of broken branches for kindling.

  When I nearly drove myself nuts looking for lost things in our junk heap of a house, Stella told me things had a way of finding the place where they were comfortable. They surfaced when they wanted to. A lot of stuff circled the world just waiting for the right wish. I knew Coon didn’t waste a lot of time hoping for life’s necessities to find their way to him. He hurried up the process by helping himself to sheets and towels and shirts from clotheslines and bits of furniture from garages, not to mention food from wherever it grew or was left by accident. His shelves, which looked as if they were made of old fence planking, were loaded down with cans and jars.

  I recognized some things from our yard: our watering can, the missing green-stained boards from our fence, my Disney bed sheets and a wicker chair, just for a start. I felt mirth rise from my groin and fill my nose like a full on sneeze.

  “You stole all this shit?” I said, all amazement and admiration. My crimes were petty compared to his. I thought of telling Coon how I got treats to peddle at school by complaining about products that didn’t live up to their advertising, but then I realized he might not be able to read, let alone write a letter that could convince a customer service person at a big company that he was some dissatisfied adult. That would be mean.

  “Can I stay?” Hell, it was already like home. Between what he took from us and people I knew, I was already familiar with half his stuff.

  ONION

  Güzel phoned to tell me that he must leave Istanbul in two days. He will be covering large political rallies in Cesme and Izmir. “Isn’t that where myrrh came from?” I asked, remembering this detail from my father’s Bible.

  “You could find out for yourself,” he said. “I’m going to book the 8 a.m. Pegasus flight. If you want to come, we can make plans over lunch.”

  The restaurant he suggested is in the Galatasaray fish market. I quickly showered and put on a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Yesterday, in spite of my conviction that I can dress however I please within reason, I’d felt uncomfortable when I walked through the waterfront district. Those fishermen have eyes like filleting knives. At home, we say it is the women who guard the rules and customs, passing on their folk wisdom and prejudices. In this country, it is the men who guard propriety. Why not? It is to their advantage. I wonder if this is the hard expression on the faces of Iman’s captors. Probably. No doubt they had cooked up their self-justifying alibi about her bad character before they started in with her.

  “You look better without makeup,” he says, as I slip into the chair he is holding for me at the sidewalk café. I am pleased even though I know I shouldn’t be. This is the face he would see if we were to wake up in the same hotel room tomorrow morning.

  “Is your invitation to Izmir serious?” I had been planning to take the bus to the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts so that I could make good the first part of my promise to follow Sweet Papa Lowdown and their entourage on the tour south along the coast and then east to Kars, where Pamuk set Snow.

  He tells me the Turkish buses are wonderful and cheap. I will have no trouble travelling inland after his work is finished. This way I could interrogate him and make unscheduled stops. I realize I am fooling myself. My secret agenda is not Ephesus or Sardis, the remains of Roman occupation. I am anticipating shared beds with Güzel in air-conditioned hotel rooms and perhaps using my rusty vaginal wrench to sharpen his pencil. He would use his powerful words to help Iman, and me too, of course.

  “Why don’t I rent a car?” I ask, imagining the opportunities that might present themselves.

  Güzel answers, but his reply is drowned out by the dozen or so cats howling in front of the fishmonger across the street. “They have come for their lunch,” he says, as the proprietor emerges with a large enamel bowl, which he empties piece by piece. More cats come running from alleys and shadows as he throws them the fish scraps.

  “He feeds the cats at the same time every day.” I have seen this phenomenon in every neighbourhood I have visited in Istanbul.

  “Do any of these animals have a home?” Cats and dogs appear to be public property. Güzel explains, there are no rats in Istanbul. Millions of feral cats take care of that. It is hard to tell if their constant howling is the riff of hunger, territorial tail wagging or foreplay. These are the sounds I will remember: doves cooing, or cuckooing – which I have been informed is the name for female genitals – caterwauling and the muezzins regular call to prayer.

  “Charity is holy law,” Güzel repeats. “All creatures included.”

  Apart from feline theatricals, I haven’t seen much drama in the streets, even during the electioneering that is following the Arab Spring in neighbouring countries. There is a sense of burdens stoically born. Even the Kurds carrying water and heavy loads of food, water bottles and mountainous trays of simit uphill, shrug at the summit. İnşallah; hopefully they carry nothing but hope in the dreams that visit their brief allowance of sleep.

  Although my guidebook warns me against personal assault, the only offence has been an occasional grope; and, coming from a youth culture, I choose to be flattered. I laugh at the tourists who wear their backpacks on the front like grotesque kangaroo baby carriers. They seem to be saying, Beware, Turks are thieves. These yabanc ı women look ridiculous.

  When I watch the evening news on my laptop, the American networks report pre-election violence. In the streets here, I have heard voices raised over the racket of car speakers playing rap slogans, but I have seen nothing that touches the animosity of American political discourse.

  Speaking of which, I wonder if any Turkish movie directors have noticed how much Ataturk looks like the American actor, Kevin Kline. It would be such a waste not to use him in a film. He’s amazing at accents. I wonder if Güzel could fix that? Is it magical thinking or is Güzel a general fixer, the plenipotentiary from heaven I imagine him to be.

  Last night, I sat in a café where I could watch the street party after the local team, Fenerbahçe, won the soccer semifinals. While I drank çay, I overheard a Swede and a Turk discussing the relative aging process of women in their countries, in English to my surprise. “Swedish women are beautiful,” the Swede asserted, “but it changes overnight. You go to bed with a plum and wake up with a prune.”

  “Turkish women get big asses,” the Turk contributed. “Like the Greeks.”

  I was dying to jump in and draw attention to their receding hairlines and slack stomachs, especially the Swede, but, in the name of Canadian diplomacy, I added another lump of sugar to my tea and sucked it up.

  Despite the inauspicious start to my evening, I walked up the hill the fish market where thousands of Fenerbahçe fans were carousing shoulder to shoulder, singing team songs and waving flags while street musicians playing drums and pipes wove among them. Lacking the ant skills of ’Stanbul citizens.

  I stalled in the gridlock of men. Not one jostled or cal
led me yabancı. In fact, one inebriated gentleman took my arm and led me to a chair in an outdoor café, where I was given a glass of oregano tea. Another offered me a Fenerbahçe flag. No one drew attention to my ass or my wrinkles. When I checked my laptop, I found a Huffington Post news report that there were street riots where I was peacefully drinking tea. Go figure.

  Random acts of kindness seem to be the social norm here. I have been offered countless cups of tea, helped with directions and witnessed animals fed by strangers. Beggars walk into shops and take alms collected in bowls. Sometimes the owners go straight to their cash registers and take out bozdurmak. These bozdurmak transactions are wordless. The first time I noticed this phenomenon I thought perhaps the shop owners were paying protection money, but Güzel reminded me of the Muslim rule, which is also a Jewish rule, mitzvahs are a cornerstone of community.

  There is a blind boy who spends most days sitting by a storefront in Kadıköy. From time to time, people bring him glasses of portakal suyu from the juice stand on the corner or guide him to a public toilet. The whole neighbourhood is family. Yesterday, Güzel told me not to respond to street people. Later, he encouraged me to give all my change to a Roma girl carrying a baby in rags. I am confused.

  “It is because you are a woman. You should give to women and children, not to men.”

  “I am having a hard time figuring you out,” I say.

  “I thought I was the interviewer.”

  “You are, but I need to know what you are thinking.”

  “So you would know how to answer.” He spreads his hands on the table.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Once again, because you are a woman, and you use female strategies.”

  “You are trying to annoy me.”

  “Yes.”