Beautiful Scars by Tom Wilson

Author:Tom Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2017-11-21T05:00:00+00:00

BUNNY WILSON AND DOCTOR GOD

Bunny Wilson was always there in my consciousness. Standing in her apron, thin grey hairs trying to escape the bun she had put them in that morning. Everything she did was always immediate and everything was often a disaster. She had jaw-dropping, quick-cutting opinions on neighbours, passers-by, the old, the young, the crippled and the blind. She was a Montreal tavern wisecracker and Catholic-guilt survivor, and her knee-jerk, sharp-tongued observations would leave all of us shaking our heads, hiding our faces and stifling laughter, floored in our disbelief that someone, anyone, her—Bunny—could mock the world so perfectly.

In this spirit, Bunny may have hinted at the fact that I had come from another planet, dropped out of the sky onto the small square of backyard, brown grass bordered by a paint-chipped, rotting white picket fence out behind 162 East 36th Street. She told me several times when I was just a preschooler that there were secrets about me that she would take to the grave, secrets that no one, including me, would ever hear.

And there were the turtles. Sometimes she’d buy a ceramic turtle, push it across the table towards me, and stare silently at me for a moment before telling me I came from “The Turtle Clan.”

“Okay,” I’d think. “What the hell does that mean?”

She changed character in these moments. Instead of being her usual high-strung, French-Canadian scalded-cat self, she would act embarrassed or humbled by what she was telling me. Her voice would drop into a lower, slower, more understanding tone, but when I would try to push for an explanation she’d spring out of her kitchen chair and dash over to the sink, putting an end to the topic with something like, “I’m not the person to answer your questions.”

“Well if she’s not, then who is?” I’d think to myself.

Mysterious gifts were always coming my way. Gifts that didn’t make any sense to me. Gifts that the other kids on the street were not getting, that’s for sure. No white kid on the East Mountain received Canada Post parcels with sage and sweet grass, beaded buckskin jackets, handmade lacrosse sticks and Indian rubber balls.

Later on down the road, when Bunny was in her early eighties and I was in my late thirties, and cancer had gotten inside her body, I would drive Bunny up to the old Henderson Hospital, where she met with doctors and prepared for a hysterectomy. The Henderson Hospital on Concession Street, one of the three hospitals where Bunny said I was born.

Doctors were like gods to Bunny. In fact, they were more like priests or shamans. Their words came directly through the clouds from the sky above, from the mouth of our Lord and Saviour. Bunny gave servant-like respect whenever she was in the presence of a doctor. It was at one of these meetings on the mount that Bunny had to answer a lengthy verbal questionnaire. The doctor was sitting on one side of the desk, Bunny on the

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