Best Canadian Stories 2020

Daughter of Cups Kristyn Dunnion

“You know what to do,” he says. “Pretty girl like you.”

It’s like a baby eel in her hand, skin as smooth but hot, dry. Ohio lets go and it bounces against his beer belly. She laughs.

Don takes hold of her wrist. “Like this,” he says, pressing. His Live to Ride belt buckle jingles when her hand pumps. He breathes louder through his nose, a high-pitched whinny on the exhale. Ohio wants to give him a Kleenex but she doesn’t have one. She stares at the tattoos covering his forearms and biceps and peeking out the sleeves of his black T-shirt. Don’s face is tan and wrinkled, his stubble silver. His eyes crinkle shut.

Ohio closes hers, too. The curl and crush of waves smacking the sandy shore lulls her. Now she is Melanie Williams—blonde, popular, stacked—and Don is Kevin Moody, the cutest boy at school.

After, Don drives off and leaves her sitting at the end of the Lake Erie pier. She squints across to Sandusky. She can swim, but how far? She can dive, sink to the weedy muck and disintegrate surrounded by treasure and ballast from long-ago shipwrecks, succumb to the naiads, handmaids to the lake queen, as per campfire lore when she was a kid. Or she can walk back to town, north on the main road. Ohio hoists herself up and walks. She can keep going to the highway and hitch the hell out of here, or she can turn left at the only stoplight. She stands in the heart of town, eying the fingernail sliver of moon in the still-bright summer sky.

Eeny meany miney moe.

Friday night. The bank clock says eight-thirty. A car drives by and Darryl Hicks chucks a crushed beer can out the window.

Ohio turns left, toward home.

At the convenience store she scours magazines until Mr. Cooper yells, “Gotta be eighteen!” She buys Fun Dip. There’s a crisp twenty-dollar bill in her pocket, but she doesn’t break it, not for candy. Across the street the Bingo is packed—cars zigzag on the grass and sidewalk. She jumps on the gas station hose to ring the service bell, so Tommy Knight will have to get off his lazy ass. She keeps walking. The closer she gets, the stronger it smells: dirty chicken grease blowing from the KFC. The Colonel’s secret spice is her homing device. She sits on the KFC stoop. Stares at the empty road, eats Fun Dip. Dips the candy stick into the grape powder and licks. Dips and licks.

Her mom yells out the upstairs apartment window, “Ohio, where you been?”

“Nowhere!”

The window slams shut.

Ohio waits for something to fall from the sky.

Don had said, “What kind of name is that, anyway?”

He’d gotten it wrong, twice.

“That’s me,” she’d said, pointing over the lake.

“Erie?”

“Ohio.”

“Wiyot—I knew a girl called that,” he said.

“Not Wiyot. Ohio. Like the state.”

“Some kind of Indian name?”

“That’s where my mom had me.”

“Oh,” he’d said. “Used to work the car plant over in Sandusky. Good union job. ‘Til I got jumped in with the boys.”

Full truth: she was named Ohio because that’s where her mom met the man and fell in love and that’s where her mom got knocked up and where she gave birth, on the side of the road, right where the man left her. Her mom says they’re never going back. Says she hid her baby girl up in her sweater and brought her across Lake Erie in a bartered boat. Swears a monster, the fabled queen of the lake, emerged from the depths, demanding a toll. No word of a lie. In exchange for safe passage, her mother sheared the matted ropes of her hair with a knife, dropped them overboard with her maidenhead, sacrificing her womanly powers. The waters quieted, and she paddled all the way back to her hometown. Been here ever since.

“Whatcha doin’?”

It’s Mary Louise, who lives in a run-down bungalow on the other side of the KFC. She pushes her glasses up her nose. A piece of tape holds the broken arm in place. Mary Louise’s mom cuts her hair using a mixing bowl as guide, which makes her look like a medieval clown. Mary Louise is twelve, two grades behind Ohio. Her parents regularly kick her out so they can party all night.

“Oh-hi-Oh,” she says, “Can I have some?”

Ohio gives her the last bit of powder. Mary Louise jams her finger in the corners of the packet and sucks back and forth until it’s gone. Her mouth and finger are purple. Ohio wipes her face hard on her sleeve.

Motorcycles.

The girls lean forward at the first faraway rumble. Reverberating bass fattens with grinding gears that choke and pop, that spit like gunfire. Sky begins to shake. Like a funnel cloud ripping from the west, gathering strength, flattening an unrepentant path in its wake, the hogs’ engines detonate a primal roar in Ohio’s cranium: her mouth waters, belly pools to nausea. A red sun hangs low in the sky; its light explodes off chrome, blinding. Motorcycles fill the road, two across. Ohio shields her eyes with sugar-stained fingers. Her molars vibrate, her braids dance. Ribs rattle, thighs too. The girlfriends sit tight behind the men, long hair slapping vests as they zoom past. There’s darkness in the leather. Boots clamp silver stirrups.

Ohio can’t breathe; her mouth is full of metal, her nose of gasoline.

Mary Louise claps like a headcase. “Two, four, six, nine—thirteen!”

Don, the last biker, rides alone. As he passes, Don winks and pops a wheelie.

Ohio sits taller on the stoop. A secret flush dapples her skin, heats the bill in her back pocket. Earlier that afternoon, Don had thrust forward with a gurgled shout, releasing himself in long arcs on the sand. One gush had landed wet on her leg and dried like snot. He’d zipped himself, smaller and softer, back into his jeans. That’s a good girl.

Mary Louise looks at Ohio, mouth open.

An engine backfires somewhere down the road.

“You know him?”

Ohio shrugs. Why didn’t he stop, put her on the back? Take her away from this place?

Later, Mary Louise says, “Why don’t they ride their own bikes?”

“Who?”

Ohio is shrinking. Pieces of her dull life fall back into place now that Don and the bikes have vanished.

“The girls.”

“Those things are really heavy, Dork.”

“I guess.”

If Ohio’s mom had had her own motorcycle, maybe she wouldn’t have been such a mess when the man dumped her ass. Might have fixed him good, stone-pillar punishment. Wouldn’t have severed her own Goddess head and dumped it in the lake, defeated. When she was a kid, Ohio had a green two-wheeler she pedalled everywhere—banana seat and tall, rusted handles with streamers like seaweed. That was joy, the kind of freedom she’d never have traded.

“Even my dad can’t fix his,” says Mary Louise, hopping from one foot to the other. “It’s been in pieces all over the garage since I was born.”

Ohio climbs on top of the KFC garbage can. Says, “Your dad’s a dick. No offense.”

“It’s getting dark,” says Mary Louise. “I’m going home.”

“Move it, Ohio.”

Saturday morning.

Ohio sprawls on the bed. Her mom pulls the faded seahorse-print sheets out from under her, spilling Ohio this way and that as she yanks them off the mattress. Her mom’s stubby ponytail shivers with every tug. Her hair is greasy and there are dandruff flecks near the roots. She stuffs the sheets into a basket of dirty clothes.

Ohio flattens face down, arms and legs a starfish. “I never get to do anything,” she says into the mattress.

“You get to do the laundry any minute.”

“No!” Ohio curls like a sea urchin and transports herself to Atlantis. She’s a mossy-haired beast with venom-tipped fangs.

Her mom sits on the edge of the bed, and her weight sags the mattress. Ohio rolls into her, unbidden. Her mom wears stretch pants, a too-tight Club Med T-shirt, and the pink-sparkle flip-flops Ohio gave her for Christmas. The waistband at the back of her pants is frayed. Ohio can see the large mole a couple inches above her crack through the thin, grey fabric.

“Ohio.”

Ohio grunts.

“I’m doing the groceries.”

“You’re changing, right?” says Ohio.

“What’s your problem?”

Ohio chokes on the memory of her mom wearing these same pants while bending into other people’s trash for empties, to get the deposit.

Waste not. Want not.

Ohio says, “I hate this town.”

Her mom sighs and her shoulders droop.

“It’s not the worst place in the world.”

She heaves off the bed and the mattress plumps back up. Sets the laundry basket on an old skateboard they found at the beach and rolls the towering pile to the door. Ohio is supposed to push it all the way through town like that.

“No wonder I don’t have a boyfriend,” says Ohio.

“Oh, you think you want a man,” says her mother. “Divide your money and multiply your sorrow. I was a bit older than you when I started working summers at the factory.”

“Right.”

“I was bored, so I quit.”

“I get it.”

“Had some adventure. Met your smooth-talking snake of a father. Haven’t been bored since.”

“You’re the one who liked him,” says Ohio.

“Loved.” She hands over some quarters and the box of detergent. “I’m on afternoons. Be home late.”

Ohio kicks open the door and lets it slam behind her. Mary Louise is curled in the stairwell. “Morning, Oh-hi-oh!” Her hair sprongs in all directions and she’s got the same shirt on as yesterday, only dirtier.

“You can’t go downtown like that,” says Ohio, and goes back inside to grab a clean shirt from her dresser. She tosses it to Mary Louise and slams the door again.

“Put yours in the basket.”

“Okay.”

Ohio hauls the basket down the steps. Mary Louise gets the skateboard. They push the laundry up to the stoplight. It’s hard work, even with both of them. South one block to the Coin-o-Matic. Penny Middleton’s sister is inside with two dirty kids. One of them doesn’t even have pants on, just a filthy T-shirt and bare bum, tiny bobbing penis. Penny Middleton’s sister’s big belly pushes out from her T-shirt and joggers. The hard knot of her bellybutton stares: kid number three! Ohio picks the farthest away washer and loads it, measures out soap. Mary Louise jams in the quarters. The machine shudders. Water spits onto the clothes and the girls can’t help it, they thrust their hands inside to cup the rush, let it soak their thirsty skin. When the machine is filled, Ohio slams the lid. It’s hot, so they sit outside on the plastic chairs.

Kevin Moody walks by with his peach-fuzz moustache and his blond hair parted down the middle, a perfect flip on each side. His tight jeans are ripped at one knee and bunched at his puffy white sneakers.

Ohio tosses her braids and wishes they were blonde. She puckers up, as if readying for a kiss. She read all about how to get your lips noticed in Teen Beat Magazine. Kevin Moody stands in front of her, obviously noticing her lips.

He says, “Is that your sister?”

Ohio turns. Mary Louise has one finger up her nose.

“What is she, retarded?”

“Fart off,” says Mary Louise. She flicks a goober at him.

“You girls are the ugliest chicks in town, you know that?” Kevin shakes his head and keeps walking.

“After your mama,” shouts Mary Louise.

Ohio slugs Mary Louise on the arm, hard. “No one picks their nose in front of Kevin Moody.”

“Who cares,” says Mary Louise. “He’s a burnout.”

Saturday night, TV is broken. Melanie Wilson, also going into grade nine, is having a party, but Ohio isn’t invited. Lying on the linoleum, she fingers the Great Lakes on the most worn page of their atlas. Voices like tiny cracked bells whisper: join us. There’s an X pencilled north of Put-In-Bay, where her mother saw the beast. A zigzag line traces their journey along the chain of cormorant- and gull-infested islands—Rattlesnake, Sugar, the Sisters—where they stopped to rest. It took days. The crap motor conked out and her mom had to row. “This is how you got here,” she says, showing her biceps. And, “You’re lucky to grow up in Canada. We got health care.” Another X on Pelee Island, where a local took pity and drove them to the ferry dock. Ohio was just a newborn, but sometimes memories surge: the slosh of waves against a rusty bow, the thud and creak of oars in the outriggers, the smell of fish and gasoline, and the fearsome sound of her mother by turns swearing, weeping, beseeching the gods, all the way across the lake. “All for you,” her mother likes to say.

In the atlas, Ohio finger-trails a shoal of minnows against the current, leaves Lake Erie, enters Lake Ontario, floats down the adjoining canal. Watersogged, she beaches on the Manhattan shore. With her eyes closed, she can be anyone. A runaway in New York City. A waitress. A drug lord boss baby. Madonna sings Papa Don’t Preach on the kitchen radio and Ohio gets up to prance in the kitchen. She’s all slippery legs and dark eyes; an empty belly, hands open, begging.

At the back of the freezer, hidden behind the fish sticks, is a small bottle of vodka. Ohio takes a swig. It burns her throat. The heat fades to a warm glow. She gulps again. She puts on her mom’s make-up using the kitchen mirror: coral lips, sea-foam lids, tangled green lashes. Ohio’s thick hair is natty, coiled with life, like her mom’s used to be. She has her mother’s eyes—stony black, damning—but her skin is darker, more like the man’s.

Ohio undoes her buttoned shirt and ties it above her waist. She’s as flat as the Erie pier, but it looks good with tight shorts. Especially when she puts on her mom’s cork-heeled sandals. She peels the forbidden leather vest off the final hanger at the back of her mom’s closet. It smells like mildew and stale tobacco, like something wild and not quite dead in a ditch. Its weight is armor across her shoulders. It gapes under the arms, in the chest, where her mom’s notorious rack stretched it out, once upon a time, that summer she ran with the gang.

“You look like a hooker.”

“Thanks.”

Mary Louise turns down the music and sits on a stool at the kitchen counter. “You left the door open. I could hear the radio outside.”

“So?”

“So, you’re lucky it’s only me who came up.”

“Am I ever.”

Ohio pouts and blots her lips with toilet paper. Pieces of it cling to the lipstick. She swaggers to the freezer, pulls again from the bottle.

Mary Louise pushes her glasses up her nose. “Alcoholic,” she says, blinking.

“As if.”

“You’re gonna do this all night? Boring.”

Ohio says, “You’re right. Let’s go downtown.”

It takes longer walking in the shoes. As she goes uphill, Ohio’s feet slide backwards with each step. She tries to buy smokes at the convenience store. Mr. Cooper says, “Nice try, Ohio. Mom working tonight?”

Mary Louise steals Pop Rocks and they sit in the parking lot, letting the tiny pink crumbs explode in their mouths: stinging sugar pings. Bingo is rammed, cars everywhere, motorized wheelchairs parked in a crooked line down the block.

“Look.” Mary Louise points to the gas station. It’s Don filling his Harley. She waves wildly until he nods back.

“Come on,” she says, trotting over.

Ohio follows, nearly wiping out on the curb.

“Ladies,” he says, staring at Ohio.

Ohio cringes, tugs the vest. Should she button it or leave it loose to show her bellyskin? Her mom wore it over a studded bra the summer she was seventeen, waitressing the biker bar in Ohio. That and a pair of cut-offs showing the smiles of her ass. Says they queened her, over in America. Says she made great tips, mostly. Then she met the man.

Don’s eyes peel away the make-up, the shorts, the slutty shoes. They linger on the leather, on a silver pin above her right nipple—entwined adders, tongues flicking one another.

He says, “Where’d you get that?”

“Yard sale,” she lies.

“You’re flagging colours, Sweetheart.”

Don opens her vest, fiddles with the pin and removes the backing, pulls it free from the leather. He reattaches the backing and tucks the pin into the tiny vest pocket with a fat finger. “Gang stuff. Never wear what you don’t know,” he says.

“My dad has a motorcycle but it’s broke,” says Mary Louise. She points to Don’s large belt buckle. “R-ride to live—”

“Live to ride,” he finishes. “Know what that means?”

She shakes her head, no.

“Means there’s nothing better on this earth. Wanna?”

Don sets his helmet on Mary Louise’s head and carefully tightens the strap. Ohio is stabbed by a jealous fork, seeing the way Don tucks strands of flyaway hair into the helmet. He lifts and settles Mary Louise in front. Last time he gave her a ride, Don helped Ohio onto the wide leather seat, but today she scrambles up on her own. She wears the girlfriend helmet. The motorcycle leans to one side when Don kicks the stand away and the muffler burns Ohio above her ankle. She clenches her mom’s shoes at an angle so she won’t get burned again.

Don revs the engine. Mary Louise squeals. Ohio is pancaked on his back just like the biker girls. Don smells like gasoline, sweat, and cigarettes. He says something Ohio can’t hear, not with the helmet on, not with the hot motor running between her legs, vibrating everything.

They hit the street with a lurch. Wind rushes Ohio’s face. Aphids swarm her open mouth like tiny fish. They turn south at the stoplight and she’s sure she’ll fall, but she doesn’t. They cruise past the Coin-o-Matic, they’re coming up to the Legion, the only bar, where a bunch of kids are smoking out front. Don opens her up, gets the lead out, and they speed the rest of the way to the pier.

Take that, Ohio thinks, squeezing tightly.

At the lake, Don turns off the motor and kicks the stand. He lifts Mary Louise and sets her down, takes the helmet off her head. Her lunatic grin is contagious.

“Live to ride, ride to live,” she chants.

Don doesn’t offer to help Ohio, so she slides off the leather seat, puts her weight onto one wobbly shoe, and lifts her other leg over the back of the bike. She sets it, trembling, onto the ground. She removes the helmet and shakes her braids. Don and Ohio walk across the sand and sit on a large, flat rock. Mary Louise twirls around, sugar high, leaps to the water’s edge. She skips flat stones, throws driftwood spears at waves, draws in the sand with a stick.

The red glow of the setting sun lights up one side of the lake like a fairy tale. The rest of the sky begins to darken. Ohio wonders what a real girlfriend would say. Don lights a home-rolled cigarette. He inhales, holds it in, slowly exhales. Stinky blue smoke hangs in the air. He passes it, and she copies him. It pinches her throat worse than the vodka. Makes her choke. Is she smoking pot?

“Why’d you dress like that?”

“Dunno.” Ohio looks down at the skin folds bunching on her stomach. She sits up and they disappear.

“How old are you, sixteen? Seventeen?”

Ohio takes another puff so she doesn’t have to lie, or worse, tell the truth. She’ll be fifteen next spring. Her mouth is dry. She reaches under the vest and unties her shirt, smoothing the fabric. She does up the buttons. After Don flicks the dead butt away, he puts his oil-stained hand on Ohio’s thigh. He has a silver serpent ring and hairy knuckles. Ohio’s heart beats so fast she might barf. Thoughts stutter in her mind: Will I ever get boobs? Did I say that out loud? Did I already think that?

“Get your friend,” he says, pointing to the crest of a large wave.

Ohio hops off the rock. She runs, leaps. Her body feels strong; her arms slice through time and space, windmilling the warm air. She laughs. Slaps bare feet on wet sand, then into the cold lake. Water rushes her toes, freezes her ankles and higher up her calves, splashes her thighs. Shadows twist and reach from inside the curled wave. Somewhere in that murk a clam-crowned princess is living a life meant for Ohio, magic and free. Hair tangled and billowing with tide, skin pale and tantalizing as a trout belly, arms undulating hypnotically. Ohio dreams her almost every night: that tinkling ghost wail and the beckoning fingertips. Mary Louise flops closer and clasps Ohio’s hand. They jump whitecaps, leaning their bodies to take the hit. Ohio knows there are no cowards underwater, only the softened, gnawed-upon bones of sailors, fishermen, and rum runners, cradled in ritual piles in the lake’s darkest, coldest crook.

Under the surface all men want.

Under the surface all men love.

Don slides one hand around Ohio, the other around Mary Louise. An old man with two dripping girls shivering on a rock. “Let’s show her what we did the other night.” Don works the hand that had been on Ohio’s leg inside her wet shorts, into the crotch.

That’s not what we did, thinks Ohio.

Don’s fingers push her goose-fleshed thighs apart. They press and flick a lightning rush of heat.

“Uh,” she says.

Someone is walking a dog down the beach, so far away the dog is a leaping smudge on the horizon, the person a short stick.

“Don’t worry, they can’t see us,” he says.

Ohio feels good, like something might happen next.

Don’s other hand is busy with Mary Louise. Mary Louise leans forward. “Bor-ring.”

Don says, “We do other things, too.” Don pulls his hand from Ohio’s shorts. His left hand resurfaces and rests on Mary Louise’s leg.

“Like what?” says Mary Louise.

Don smiles at Mary Louise until she tilts her head and really sees him, until she starts smiling, too.

Ohio’s tingling crotch spot is forgotten. Tossed over the gunwales with fish guts, net trash. Upstaged by a twelve-year-old with a crappy haircut. Ohio rubs off her lipstick with the collar of her shirt, smearing the cotton pink. “I’ll show her.”

Don turns back to Ohio. Her skinny legs swing from the knee, feet wet with grit. She wriggles her toes.

“Look at you,” he says.

Ohio tugs on the buckle of his thick belt. When she stands she feels woozy, so she leans against the rock. She rubs him the way he showed her. Mary Louise quietly slides down and runs back to the water. Don frowns. They watch Mary Louise jump into foamy waves that purr onto the hard-packed sand.

“She okay out there?” he says.

“Of course. This is our lake.” Ohio squeezes until Don faces her again.

“Careful,” he says.

This time Ohio keeps her eyes open. Three stubbled chins bob in time with her hand. She can see right up Don’s wide nostrils, see the grey hairs inside. His breath comes in hot blasts. White fluid shoots into her fist, drips from her fingers.

“Taste it,” he says.

It is sea salty, the runny part of an undercooked egg, and when she swallows, the acid trails her throat.

“Like it?” he says.

Ohio falters, smiles.

“That’s a good girl.”

Don gives himself an extra shake and zips up. He lights a smoke and leans on the rock. A mosquito bites Ohio’s temple. She swats, scratches, and a drop from her hand gets in her eye, stinging. She rubs it, making it worse. Don says something about a club meeting, says he’ll see her around soon, he hopes. He leaves a crisp twenty-dollar bill on the rock beside her, “For a little treat, for you girls,” and walks toward his bike.

Ohio’s eye burns and waters. She slips the bill into her pocket.

The further Don gets on the darkening beach, the less Ohio sees. His head is a blur. His clothes blend with the night. A few more strides and he disappears.

Mary Louise jogs up from the water’s edge. “Now you see him, now you don’t. Like his thing.” She cracks up.

Ohio says, “That’s not funny.” But it is, and she laughs, too.

Mary Louise yanks Ohio’s arm. “His Thing,” she shouts.

Ohio stumbles, tugs Mary Louise back, spinning her in the sand.

They shriek, “Thing Thing Thing!”

They spin like fireflies, whipping each other in circles until they collapse in a gritty pile, panting, hysterical.

Don’s engine turns over once, twice; it roars. His headlight clefts the beach and lights up a circle of churning water.

“Look!” says Mary Louise, pointing.

“What? Where?”

Ohio hears it first: a tidal suck, the shrieking gale, the whizz and pop of meteorites. The hissing of a thousand jagged voices. Finally, Ohio sees her in the bike’s spotlight—the legendary lake mother, bare-breasted with weedy swirls of hair. Suckling fish cloak her in open-mouthed kisses, flit at the swell of her barnacle-spackled hips. She dives. Dorsal fin splashes. A shimmering ripple—an iridescent web binding her legs, slick captives in silver scales. Here, the levy queen: she who exacts a toll for safe crossing. She who lures the friendless and the forsaken.

“Take him,” says Ohio.

Ohio could feed him limb by limb to the surf; Mary Louise would help. Together, they can do anything. But Don’s headlamp is already cutting an arc, lighting the pier, pointing toward the road. The dark settles. Just the motor whining quieter and the red brake light growing smaller, smaller.