Long May You Run

Morgan Zeina

Mae and I used to run between the long stretches of crops. Our toes hit on the paths of dirt warmed by the June sun. When we spotted the perfect amount of red on a strawberry, accompanied by a dark green top, it was plucked. Crutching behind the tall stems of the tomatoes growing, we would devour the fruit, hoping grandma couldn’t spot us from the house. T

he phone rings in the darkness of my room. I reach my hand out from the blanket and search the nightstand for it.

Putting the phone to my ear I say “Hello?” First silence, and then gentle sobs broke.

“Jane?” It was Mae. I began to sit up and turned on the bedside lamp.

“You need to come home. Something happened with Grandma.”

I didn’t want to think it was possible, but giving her age, I should’ve known it was coming.

My first encounter with death was just after my sixth birthday. It was late spring and my parents brought Mae and I to visit Grandma. While they sat inside and talked over coffee, Mae and I ventured outback. Her property was surrounded by Douglas Fir’s, so old to the land that the tops were impossible to see from the ground. Our rainboots squished in the mud, but we continued and laughed at the sounds our shoes made. We headed for the garden, hoping to see how much the carrots had grown since we last saw them. But there it was. Sprawled out with its mouth open enough to see its small white teeth, it’s brown eyes wide open, chest sunken in. The brown body of a rabbit stretched across the carrot stems. First, we screamed as we ran back to the house, and then once we caught our breath and told everyone, we cried. While Dad went to take care of it, Grandma rubbed out backs as we cried at the kitchen table.

When we started to calm down she offered, “Things will be alright. It happens every day. To people, to animals.” She headed to her wall and took down a wooden decoration. A wheel of four colours.

“You see, these four colours? They represent many things. Each one of them is the stages of life. These four colours, white, yellow, red, and black, well they represent birth, youth, adulthood, and death. Eventually, we will be just like the rabbit and make it to the end of the circle.” Though she knew we understood, Grandma could always sense when things were wrong.

“How would you girls like some bannock?”

The drive up north was close to six hours. In this treacherous winter, it could be close to eight. When I told Grandma I was moving to the city, she smiled and reached her arms out to hug me.

She whispered, “As long as this isn’t goodbye.”

As I got older, and our visits less frequent, I could feel the slow deterioration of her body. Each hug is more fragile than the last. Her once dark skin became slightly paler, and her hair was entirely white like the snow I was currently driving through.

Grandma's was situated on the outskirts of town. Down a dirt road, and surrounded by deep woods, it was nearly impossible to find unless you knew what you were looking for.

I pulled into the long drive, darkened by the branches of trees intertwining themselves with each other. Ahead, flashes of red and blue beckoned me to speed up. Four cop cars scattered themselves along the front of the house. Police walked along the property, some with clipboards and faces of concern, and others spoke into walkie talkies. I found somewhere to park the car, and got out. is she?”

Passing an officer I say, “I’m sorry, what is going on here? This is my grandma’s, where

Before I could get an answer, Mae came running out from the house. “Jane, come in, hurry up.”

Mae and I were always told as kids to stay where we could be seen and to never go past the tree line alone. Past the trees that looked like they held hands, keeping us from what was behind, was the blind river.

We were lucky enough one summer to have our parents take us on a trip to the city. We explored the museums, the big mall, and took a boat across the lake to an island where we went on rides. I remember feeling so small while I was there. And by the time we got back home I realized it was the first time I noticed the sign of Blind River. The one that states the town population.

“Dad,” I asked, “Why is it called Blind River?” Like many of the questions I ever asked, they were met with answers of unknowingness.

But he surprised me and said “Biniwaabikong. It means, ‘at the fallen rock.’”

“What rock fell Dad?”

He and my mom laughed, “It’s just that unlike most rivers, the blind river here, you can’t really see the mouth of it. And because of its smooth sloping rock face along the river, is what fell. It didn’t really fall, but back in the olden days, it’s what the voyagers described it as. And they built the town at the mouth of the river.”

Mae pulled me inside, where nothing had changed. Grandma still had nowegian wood in every room, and everything smells of incense. Mom sat at in the living room, her stare fixated out the wall length windows that gave view of the backyard. She was wrapped in a grey quilt, her black hair, now populated in hints of silver, was thrown up with no intention of being neat. Though she was silent, her stance seemed the loudest in the room. I joined her on the couch with Mae following.

“Mom, are you okay?”

I got no response, and only a nudge from Mae in the side of my thigh.

“You’d think after so many years of telling you girls to not go past the trees, it would’ve been embedded in her memory.”

The three of us watched out the window as officers scattered themselves along the property, coming in and out of the tree line.

“Jane, look!” Mae pointed to a brown rabbit eating grass by the trees.

“Do you think I can catch it?” She asked. “I don’t know Mae, just leave it alone.”

Before I noticed, Mae was off to catch the rabbit, and her pink raincoat got lost in the tangles of the trees.

“Mae no, come back,” I called out. I waited a moment for an answer, and looked up to Grandma’s house to see if anyone was watching. What was beyond the trees was unknown to both of us, but it was better that I hurried to find her, than to waste time getting mom or dad.

"Jane, you’re home,” Dad had just come in from talking with an officer. His hair was now entirely grey, and his clothes were noticeably wrinkled. He was tired in a way I’d never seen.

“Is everything okay Dad?” I hoped that maybe he would at least be more willing to talk than mom. He gestured for me to follow him back outside to the front porch.

“You guys are really freaking me out, where is Grandma?” I zipped up my coat, blocking my chest from the cold of the winter winds, and pulled my toque on my head.

“She’s not the same as she was Jane. She got worse, we even hired extra help after we moved in. Everyday it was something. She couldn’t hold her spoon, she didn’t want to bathe, and then she stopped talking,” he turned away from me and watched for a moment as the cops continued to converse with one another.

“The one time we leave her on her own for just a few minutes, she goes.”

Grandma’s forest was large, and at that age it was easy to get lost. The branches were too close, and the way they touched made it impossible to see the sky. In the darkness of the day, I ran in the direction the wind and rain was blowing in. I kept calling out her name, so loud and for so long that my chest hurt. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. My cheeks felt tired, the way they do when you blow up too many balloons. I called out her name again, waiting to hear her little voice call back. But the moments passed, and I began to cry. I sat on the floor of the woods, and felt my legs being poked at by fallen pine needles. I had my head down as I wiped my tears, though they never felt like they’d stop. But the sound of a crunch up ahead made me look up. A small brown bunny, like the one Mae a had left to chase after, sat below a tree up ahead. It stared at me with its black eyes, and then turned away and ran away, so I hurried to follow it.

“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with her?” I tried my best not to be mad at my dad, but I felt like the time away from home made me a stranger to this place and the people here. Sometimes I could feel like who I was, had drifted out of my body, and the ghost of me was out there somewhere. I had spent the past four years surrounded by concrete, and buildings so tall that down some streets, it was impossible to see the sky. As the school year got busier, I also stopped going to meetings with Native Student Association.

“You’re busy with school Jane, it is what you should be focusing on. We have this covered, or at least we thought. It’s not easy here. We try our best to keep up with you, to make sure Mae is doing alright, but above all, I have to make sure your grandma is well. For not just you, your sister, or me, but your mom. She has barely eaten, and her sleep is worse. It took so long for us just to convince her to stay inside, and to let the cops find her.” My dad sat down on the porch steps, taking his toque off and rubbing his balding head.

I sat down and joined him, “I’m sure she feels helpless. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t find one of you. Especially in those woods.”

I hadn’t been chasing the bunny for long before I could see the river and reached the clearing. I could see Mae in her pink coat stuck in the mud. Her arms flailing, she was sinking along the bank of the river.

“Mae, stay still!” I ran as fast as I could to reach her, and could hear her crying over the light rushing of the water. The bank of the river was muddy, stepping into it my boots quickly sunk down. I pulled up one leg at a time to get to where Mae was. My arms were outstretched and ready to grab her small body and try my best to bring her back to solid ground. She tried her best to turn her body to me, but could only twist her torso. Her little face was covered in tears, and the ponytail that held up her brown hair was drenched from the rain.

When I finally made it close enough to grab her, I held tight onto her arm, “You have to get on my back.” I pulled my legs up to turn around so she could get on.

“I can’t move Jane, my feet are stuck.”

“Just take off your boots, hurry,” I said holding her.

I waited as she slipped out her one foot, and grabbed onto my back, and then bent my knees so she could hold on with both hands. When she got on, I hoisted her up, and felt exhausted as I carried us away from the bank. We almost reached it when we could hear our parents and Grandma calling our names. Mae called back to them, but I had no breath to do the same. I could see as they finally made it out from the darkness and to us just at the edge of the bank. My mom grabbed Mae off my back, and my dad pulled me up and put me back down where there was no mud. He went past me into the mud to grab Mae’s shoes out. As mom held Mae close to her chest, my Grandma looked at me barely worried. I made my way to her, scared that she would lecture me about what happened, but she hugged me and whispered in my ear,

“Tell Mae no more running after rabbits.”

We didn’t have much else to say to each other. So we sat and watched as the sun started to rise, and the cops continued to roam the property. I turned and looked through the glass front door and saw my mom hadn’t moved. Her head was still focused out the back windows, and Mae had fallen asleep next to her.

“Dad, you should go make some coffee for Mom.” He nodded and got up.

“Maybe you should come in Jane, it’s cold.”

“Yeah, in just a second,” I waited till he got inside, and left the porch. The cops really couldn’t do much. It was a difficult piece of property to get a good sense of. Even in the yard where the sun hits perfectly enough to get the crops to grow, and the flower beds to flourish, there was the feeling that the trees would swallow you whole. I made my way past the snow covered crops, and watched as the snow started to fall around me, and continued to the forest. I walked aimlessly through the woods, hoping that maybe my body would remember the way to the river. But the world was silent around me, and I tried my best to hear the crack of the ice or the whistle of the wind. I just kept going, trying my best to keep my mind cleared from all the thoughts that a person in this situation should have.

I kept my head down, watched my feet step in fresh snow, until the ground underneath it felt soft. I looked up and had made it to the river. The sky was a mix of grey and blue, and the sun tried its best to puncture through the clouds it was hidden behind. Certain parts of the river were topped by pieces of ice, but for the most part I watched as small ripples ran through the water.

Though I tried my best to keep it together this whole time, I finally felt my body break down. I knelt on the snowy bank, holding my shoulders as I sobbed. She was gone, there was no chance I’d ever have the chance to say goodbye to her. To hold my favourite person one more time, to kiss the top of her head, and hold her hand and admire the ring from my grandfather on her finger. I wished for another summer day in her kitchen, making strawberry jam and relish, while listening to her Beatles records. Everything about her began to plunge through my mind, and for a moment it almost felt like I could feel her arms hugging my back and wrapping around my chest. It felt so real I opened my eyes and turned around to see her. She looked blurry through my tears, so I wiped them dry, but she wasn’t there. I heard something move at the edge of the tree line and looked for what it was. I got myself up, my knees were soaked and felt frozen to the bone. There it was. A small brown bunny that rested near the base of a tree. It looked at me and didn’t blink its black eyes. My eyes started to fill up, but I wiped them and smiled.

“Goodbye Grandma.”