It will all go back to carbon one day, back to gemstones and crystals and star stuff. She has a vantage point for the moment. An “I.”
Pinhole aperture, like an old-fashioned camera. All she can do is try to bear witness. Writer, write thyself …
It must have been the pill they gave her that made the bus ride into something that slipped time and space, because that bus is still lumbering, big-eyed and heaving, over the ruts of the road … Dolly is there still, in her kerchief, forehead vibrating against the glass, staring out at the gaping sky, her belly a grave …
Mary Rose has a picture of Alexander’s grave. She knows where his physical remains are, she could go there. Everything is somewhere. She could go to Winnipeg, to the hospital, and find the smokestack. She could place her hands against the warm bricks. My sister. And she could say her name: Mary Rose.
She can go to Kingston and look up at the windows of the General Hospital—two of them were hers. She can say a prayer for her bone donor. And she can say a prayer for herself: the child of ten, immobilized on the operating table. And the girl of fourteen, standing next to her mother in the surgeon’s office. They’ve come back.
You cut me to the bone, Dr. Sorokin. Laid bare my humerus, riddled with history; tamped in cadaver bone, and I grew. Thank you. Four years later, you cut through the scar, raked the fallen leaves, drained strange fluid and returned it to the earth. Cut my hip, harvested the hill of bone; transplanted it to the valley of my arm and filled in the shadows. Bless your hands.
Pray for the baby who stands pounding the glass. Pray for the mother lying on the couch. Pray for the young woman immobilized at the kitchen table, I would rather you’d been born dead. Pray for her, and all others who have been whipped from the door so they will know they are loved.
Pray for the children in the sunroom at night, where the table is set for supper beneath the big black windows, and the brave damaged toys care for one another. They are there, still. Like the big blue city bus that rolls and dips and labours on. Pray for the young woman in the kerchief at the back, her belly big and lifeless, you’ll have more babies …
The marks on a body are the marks on a map. They tell you where you have been, and how to get home again so that you can stop going round inside yourself. Look down at the map. Look up at the sky. Where is the sun? Now walk. Make a new pathway, walk out of the forest.
She can go back to Germany, land of horror and sweetness, where a Mädchen in white waits, a person of two and a half. Together they can look down at the stone, flush against the grass.
Ask me whatever you want, I will answer.
Your arm hurts because it is broken.
No, he does not need to breathe down there.
No, you did not do this.
That is what remains of his body, his soul has left it.
His body has returned to the earth to make more grass and food and air and rain.
That is where all the flowers have gone.
But you will always have one in your name.
Maggie is drawing hieroglyphs in Mary Rose’s datebook, which she has looted from her bag. Mary Rose tips the contents onto the kitchen floor and sits cross-legged next to the child.
“Purse,” says Maggie.
“Bag,” says Mary Rose. “That is a lesbian word for ‘purse.’ ”
Hil says, “I’m a lesbian and I have a purse.”
Mary Rose looks up. “Did you feel that just now?”
“What?”
“Happy.”
Re: Some things really do get batter
Dear Dad,
Sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better.
Love,
Mary Rose
End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you. Without whom …
Beatrice Ahad
Katherine Ashenburg
Bill Bolton Women’s Hockey League
Tracy Bohan
Susan Burns
Sarah Chalfant
Trudy Chernin
Anne Collins
Trish Convery
Louise Dennys
Jerry Doiron
Margaret Anne Fitzpatrick-Hanly
Margaret Gaffney
Ken Girotti
Mary Giuliano
Robert Gordon
Janet Hanna
Kendra Hawke
Kate Icely
Honora Johannesen
Arland O’Hara
Alanna Palmer
Alisa Palmer
Marven Palmer
Pam Plant
Maria Popoff
Lisa Robertson
John Robinson
Wendy Katherine
Sharon Klein
Sarka Kalusova
Eleanor Koldofsky
Melanie Lane
Amanda Lewis
Mary Paula Lizewski
Isabel MacDonald-Palmer
John-Hugh MacDonald
Lora MacDonald-Palmer
Malcolm MacDonald
Mary MacDonald
Jackie Maxwell
Nancy McKinnon
Clare Meridew
Gordon Meslin
Rowda Mohamud
Deirdre Molina
Montana
Cassandra Nicolaou
Harriet Sachs
Matthew Sibiga
Olivia Smith-Lizewski
Stormy
Lillian Szpak
Sister Walsh
Maureen White
Andrew Wylie
PERMISSIONS
Bensahel, H., Y. Desgrippes, P. Jehanno, G.F. Pennecot. “Solitary bone cyst: controversies and treatment.” Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics B 7, no. 4 (October 1998): 257–261. Used by permission of the publisher.
“The Hut-Sut Song.” Music and lyrics by Leo V. Killion, Ted McMichael and Jack Owens. © 1939, 1941 (renewed) Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music and The Songwriters Guild of America.
Lyrics from Won’t You Be My Neighbor? by Fred M. Rogers, © McFeely Rogers Foundation; used with permission.
Unicameral Bone Cyst. Boston Children’s Hospital.
http://www.childrenshospital.org/health-topics/conditions/unicameral-bone-cyst. Used with permission.
Bone Cyst. NHS Direct Wales. http://www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk/encyclopaedia/b/article/bonecyst/. Reproduced by kind permission of the Department of Health, © 2014.
Mehlman CT. Unicameral Bone Cyst. Medscape Reference. Updated May 10, 2013. Available at: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1257331-overview. Used with permission.
Fleisher, Gary R. and Stephen Ludwig. Textbook of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, 6th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010. Used by permission of the publisher.
Skeletal Radiology by INTERNAL SKELETAL SOCIETY. Reproduced with permission of SPRINGER-VERLAG in the format Book via Copyright Clearance Center.
Degner, Dr. Daniel A. Bone Cysts in Dogs. Vet Surgery Central Inc. http://www.vetsurgerycentral.com/oncology_bone_cyst.htm. Used by permission of the author.
ANN-MARIE MACDONALD is a bestselling, award-winning novelist, playwright, actor and broadcaster. Her works include Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Fall On Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies. She lives in Toronto with her wife and their two children.