Become the Light, the Balmy Breeze by god must be atheist

Vivian brought in the grocery bags. Greg was hunched over the drafting table, busy with a technical design.

"Mommy, mommy," their three-year-old Jemma ran to her, "I got a crayon!"

"Good for you, my darling. Are you going to draw something with it?"

"Yes, Mommy! I draw a big..." she wanted to say dragon, but she had only seen pictures of it, she forgot the word that associated with the picture. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she was about to cry.

"A big, huge dragon, my darling?" said Vivian. "Yes, yes, yes, Mommy," and she turned around two or three times, "a big dragon. Can you help me, Mommy?"

"When is dinner?" shouted Greg from the other room, as Vivian was putting groceries in the cupboards and the fridge.

"In about an hour," said Vivian loudly enough so that Greg could hear her.

"C'me 'ere," he said.

She put down the bag of sugar on the table, and walked to the living room.

"Do you think... you could make Jemma draw pictures? While we... go to the bedroom?"

"Sure, darling," she said. "Just let me put on the casserole." He turned back to his drawing, without a smile even.

They came downstairs a half hour later. The moment they stepped to the level ground of the living room floor, the ding-dong bell of the microwave oven went off, telling the world the casserole was ready.

After dinner Greg burped a few times, picked his teeth, and Vivian watched in her daily horror as he stood up to reach in the cupboard to take out the bottle of rye whisky.

She knew the routine. He'd start to drink, then talk about how he could have got a commission with the navy (from which he had been dishonorably discharged, but Vivian was not going to remind him... not that it would matter in his latter stages of daily drunken excitement and then stupor), and he could have become a captain even, or a destroyer, or better, a space ship (Vivian was made to oblige him with a laughter at this point) and he wouldn't need to live in this hellhole, dahlink, yoo undrshtand me, gorchos, you whoring yourshelf? I saw you in the shtore, you were talking to the manager, behind my back (she worked at that store and she and Mr. Wickersham probably talked about the following week's rotational work schedule), you goddamned whore, no, you're worse, you shteal my money when I shleep, and at this point the three-year-old appeared at the top of the stairs, looking puzzled.

"Go back to your room, at once," shouted Vivian, and Greg came to the bottom of the stairs, and screamed, "You goddamned little whore, you teach me a lesson on how you must obey your mother, or else!!" and he started to climb the stairs. Vivian screamed, "No!!!" and she ran after him, but he brushed her off with a kick, she doubled over. He reached the top of the stairs, Vivian got up, and ran up by taking three steps at a time. Greg said, "you little dahlink of mother, fuck you!" and he kicked his wife in the face so she fell backward down the stairs, and threw their daugher after her, hitting her smack in the abdomen, but Viv was unaware of that by now, since she had just passed out.

Greg churtled, spit on the floor, murmured something goddamned this or that under his breath, staggered to the marital bed and crashed for the night.

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The little girl was in a coma for seventeen days. The family, Vivian's parents and her, decided to keep her, and not take her off life support. The hospital's head surgeon was supportive of this, but the neurologist was not. Mother, Viv's mother, said, "we don't kill babies in this family," and that was that.

The little girl came to, and at first she had no speech recognition; this later came back. She was not able to walk again and she was confined to using a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Greg was tried in criminal court. He was charged with attempted manslaughter, as well as failing to provide for a minor, as well as physical assault causing bodily harm.

He got three years in jail but got out for good behavior in two. He had to serve four thousand hours community work, and he had to attend anger therapy, as well as alcohol cessation therapy.

By the time the little girl was old enough to go to school, she had developed childhood depression, because she could not pay with her friends... She had no friends. Her only social outlet was Viv and Viv's parents. This impoverished the child's sociability, as well as her enjoyment of life. Looking ahead, puberty and sexual maturity would have left her equally bereft, and most likely veru angry. The husband started to give threatening phone calls to Vivian. There was a restraining order, which was promptly ignored by Greg. He went to court twice, the third time he was sentenced to three months.

Vivian kept on working at the grocery store. She had broken two ribs, and fractured several other bones during the incident. She could never walk her so inimitable lilting walk, which was refreshing, attractive, sexy, and yet elegant at the same time. No. Instead, she limped.

When the third courtship had gone sour, with dates from the Internet, she realized that she was forty years old, living at home with her parents, with a deadbeat ex, and a daughter that was bitter, angry, and verbally abusive.

She took out her savings, all five thousand and some odd dollars. She bought an electric wheelchair for her daughter, and she went downtown to the train station.

"How far does this much money take me?" The clerk behind the wicket counted the bills. "You can go to Kapuskasing in the North, Newbury in the West, or to Bequaquiloque in Quebec."

Viv thought for a second. Newbury was a nice, protestant town, where she had no future. She did not speak French, so Quebec was out. "One way to Kapuskasing, please."

Five hours before the train would roll! She wandered around the shops in the nearby mall, and bought a book, titled "Medicine Head and Medicine Talk'' by chief Running Bear. She found the title intriguing; she was Canadian, of course, and not too strangely totally foreign to the culture of the Aboriginals. She thought this would be a fun read.

On the train. She took out the book. Read. She read through all the way to the last word in the last paragraph in the last chapter. She closed the book, and the concierge, standing beside her seat, said, "Kapuskasing, ma'm."

She got off the train. Looked up the nearest roadside inn, a truck stop, really. She rented a room for the night. Before settling in, even before taking out the toothbrush, she walked to the office, paid for three days and three nights. She went back to her room. There was an old man sitting on the edge of her bed. There was so much peace and calm emanating from the old man that Vivian did not get scared; she did not call security; she did not walk out. She accepted his presence at once, and in fact, she felt she had been expecting him to be there.

He turned his eyes at her, and offered her a slug from his pipe. She inhaled the smoke deeply. She talked to the man then; and he talked to her. They talked all night. Next morning, when she got up from her sleep, she had no idea when she'd gone to bed. Got up, got dressed, had a cup of coffee.

She went downstairs, and asked some of the truckers if they would take her as far north as possible. One man said he could take her to Hearst on his way to Thunder Bay. She said yes.

To the heck with the two prepaid nights at the truckstop. They got into the cabin and drove north, as fast as the engine was capable of handling. She got off in the little town, shook the hand of the trucker. Then she turned around and walked into the bush.

The boys and girls who played on the streets in her path, looked at her. She appeared downtrodden, in poor clothes, limping, smoking a cigarette, and occasionally spitting through broken teeth. But in her eyes an eternal flame was burning.

Some of the kids would swear later on, that they saw a halo around her, sort of an aura, and a raven flapping over her head. Other kids called these kids stupid. Some still other kids said they never saw anyone, let alone a limping woman who spat through her broken teeth.

She never returned from the forest.

She stayed in the forest for now she was the nightly breeze that brushed the fresh snow off the bushes; she was the warmth on the rock where snakes bathed in the sunshine; she was the twitch on the end of the tails of the lynxes that stretched out on tree limbs with a full belly; she was the satisfaction in the bellies of the deer, grazing; she was softness in the depression of the old leaves under the paws of bears; she was the reflection of the aurora borealis in the ponds.

She had become the Gitchi of the forest.