Blue Bear Woman by Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau

Author:Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

DANIEL

AUGUST 2004

BACK ON THE ROAD, Daniel and I agree that I’ll drive till darkness falls. He’s tired and wants some sleep. The clock shows it’s barely six. We’ll be in Matagami early enough to have a hot meal tonight in the restaurant at the motel on the way into the city. I like to drive in silence, my gaze on the horizon where clouds cling to the crowns of pointed spruce trees. The landscape inhabits me like music. Softly, I hum the tune of my most recent meditation. Would I forget it otherwise?

We drive south. The sun casts its rays on my sleeping companion, who’s oblivious to their continued warmth. He snores. Tenderness washes over me seeing how trusting he is in sleep. His features are childlike despite the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his near-white beard. I’m grateful to him for being here with me. Grateful to life for having met him in our later years after several relationships both tumultuous and calm, and a number of children. He was working for Indigenous economic development programs. At a symposium in Quebec City attended by some three hundred people from different nations, I represented my community’s Indigenous centre. A man approached me to congratulate me on the outfit I’d chosen to wear and added, intimidated, “You know, I’d love to be as daring as you. I especially want to tell you how much I love your intense, brazen, and oh-so human poetry!”

He blushed, saddled with the grey wool suit in which he faded to nothing despite the blue of the tie that highlighted his eyes. I sensed he harboured a secret wound. It felt like I was face to face with a being fragile in both body and soul. Instead of clothing him, his suit disguised him as a civil servant.

The following year, on the first day of another Indigenous Friendship Centre meeting where Daniel sat next to me, he made a date for us to go out for pizza. To talk about literature. He’d pick me up in my hotel lobby. It was September, a hot, sunny day. After a quick shower, I slipped into a light dress. He showed up wearing jeans and a muscle shirt that accentuated the blue of his eyes. On the spur of the moment, I said, “You do have shoulders!” and felt his biceps to check their firmness. It was the first time lightning struck because of a sleeveless T-shirt!

Daniel sleeps on while the heat of my remembering has me melting like brie in the sun. Softly, I sing words by Reggiani, my favorite singer:

“Toi, qui ne seras jamais

Une grande personne

Ne me quitte jamais

Je t’aime…”

Which moves me even more. Daniel wakes just as I’m dabbing at my eyes with a tissue. He stretches and yawns, “Why’re you crying?” he asks.

“Because of you, you melt my heart!” I tell him.

“What did I do I exactly?”

“Nothing at all. Don’t you ever feel moved by me?”

He smiles. “I get a hard-on whenever you speak Cree.

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