From Broke City. Published by NeWest Press in 2019.

The house smelled the way it did when the Christmas tree was in the living room. When it was in the corner and still. Frozen with no decorations or lights. It was as if Christmastime had made a mistake and come to the house in the afternoon, in summer when it was hotter inside the house than it was outside. That summer morning, when the house was still cool, Christine’s mother had poured the pine-tree-smelling liquid into a silver bucket half-full of hot water. Christine had seen the bottle under the sink and now she could read the label: Pine-Sol.

Pine-Sol was gold and beautiful and when her mother had raised the bottle to screw the cap back on the sun shone through the glass and cast a golden beam of light from the window to the kitchen floor she was about to wash. This must be what heaven looks like, Christine thought. The smell of pine trees, gold shining on the green and grey tiles in the kitchen and the music playing. That song about golden silence was playing on the radio and Christine thought she might already be in heaven, but maybe no one had told her yet. It was as if pine trees were all around her: the smell of the trees at Elk Island Park on that day she had learned to swim and even her father had come along, and the pine tree in the backyard where she ran to bury the putty discs she had made. She had knelt under its branches then, and the ground was so cool. Christine remembered how it felt, how the needles poked through the thin cotton of her nightdress and stuck to the smooth skin on the tops of her feet and pricked her fingers as she dug in the earth. There was a pine tree in the neighbour’s yard too, only the fence separated the two trees. Remembering that moment, it was as if her whole life of seven years had become a life of a hundred years and she felt old and young, and alone and part of her family, as if she were looking at her mother washing the floors through a window. Of course, she thought, this must be what heaven is like. She saw that between the two big yellow words Pine-Sol was a tiny pine tree. Pine-Sol. Pine trees were all around her it seemed, but she wasn’t afraid and didn’t want to get away. The bottle of Pine-Sol. Heaven could be this simple thing, Christine thought, the scent of the water her mother used to wash floors.

Then the news came on the radio.

The small community of Shell Lake, Saskatchewan is in shock this morning …

Christine’s mother rushed to the radio and turned up the volume.

— What’s wrong Mom?

— SHHH!

… as RCMP investigate the deaths of nine people. The victims, all members of the same family, were discovered at their home this morning by a neighbour. RCMP are treating these deaths as homicides. Shell Lake is 50 miles west of Prince Albert. We will bring you more details about this tragedy as they become available.

Christine’s mother ran to the phone.

— What’s wrong, Mom?

— I’m phoning Gramma.

— Long distance? Christine was shocked. Her mother didn’t call long distance, especially during the day when she said it was so expensive. Christine’s mother dialed quickly, receiver to her ear, cigarette sticking up like an antenna. Christine watched their own phone number in the circle at the centre of the dial.

Her mother had written the numbers in blue ink and each one was a character. The fours were like sails on boats and the twos were like swans on the water. Her mother’s finger would pierce the small metal circle inside the bigger metal circle, go half-way round the dial and return. Again. Again.

— What’s wrong, Mom? Do you know those people, Mom? Who are those people, Mom? Does Gramma know them? Christine thought about what they’d said on the news: “… the victims, all members of the same family …”

— Is it Gramma?

— No. No, I don’t know who it is.

— I’m scared, Mom.

— There’s nothing to be scared about.

Christine didn’t believe her.

Her mother had washed all the floors in the house. The green and grey kitchen tiles, the shiny wood floors in the living room and the bedrooms and tiny white square tiles in the bathroom. Christine stood in the middle of the living room floor watching her mother crawl with her scrub rag from room to room. She had a burning cigarette between her lips. The wood felt sticky and hot on Christine’s bare feet. She stepped back and watched as her footprints disappeared on the floor’s surface. She could remember something like this from before. When? She remembered small diamond shapes on the side of a man’s socks and how his own footprints followed him from the living room to the kitchen. Was it a dream? Where was her mother in this dream? Christine thought she remembered being in the living room in the little pink house. Her mother had told her to stay there and be quiet. She was afraid to move. She couldn’t move. She heard her mother and this man in the kitchen talking, whispering. She didn’t move and didn’t speak until the man left. Don’t move. Don’t talk.

— Mom, if I showed you a picture of a pine tree would you know what I was talking about, what I mean?

Her mother stopped scrubbing the floor, and still on her hands and knees, turned her head toward her daughter. Christine saw a tiny bead of water trickle down the side of her mother’s face as her mouth tightened around her cigarette. She took a drag from it, held it between two wet fingers and flicked the ash into the metal ashtray beside her knee.

— Don’t talk nonsense.

— No, Mom, if there weren’t words, how would we talk to each other? Would we just draw each other pictures or something?

— I s’pose.

Her mother wiped the sweat from the side of her face with the inside of her wrist, bent to keep the burning end of the cigarette away from her hair.

— But, Mom, if there were no words how would we tell each other what the pictures would mean?

Her mother motioned with a flick of her head.

— Go, go find something to do, I want to get the house cleaned up. I hate coming back to a dirty house.

Her mother made her way to the bathroom, taking the bucket and the bottle of Pine-Sol with her. She set the bottle down beside the toilet and emptied the bucket in the bowl. The toilet gurgled and sputtered like it was flushing itself with no help from anyone else. Christine watched quietly and her mother set down the bucket, sprinkled Comet around the toilet bowl and scrubbed it with a rag made from one of Christine’s father’s old, worn-out work shirts. The shirt was green and black plaid. Christine remembered thinking that when her Dad had worn that shirt the pattern was like roads going over and under each other. Roads going to Saskatchewan and back to Edmonton were the only long highway roads she knew. Christine and her family had made that trip so many times … they would go again as soon as her father got home from work. He was taking time off and it was summer, his busiest house-building time Christine was told, so this must be a special trip.

Christine had left her mother be for a time and now quietly watched her from the bathroom door waiting as her mother squeezed out the rag over the toilet bowl. Christine thought it looked as if she was really trying to hurt something. Her mother stopped and looked up. Christine thought her head looked like an egg in an egg cup.

— Mom, see that picture of a pine tree? If I just showed you the picture would you know what I meant? Christine asked.

— No, I don’t know what you mean.

— If I didn’t say anything, if I just pointed to the pine tree on that bottle, would you know what I was talking about?

— I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about half the time. You think about things too much. It’s just a bottle of Pine-Sol.

Her mother poured some of the golden liquid into the bucket and the pinging sound and the smell made Christine taste metal. Intense pine, the half-filled bucket, the water. In that moment, she was lifted up and, with her eyes closed, she hovered over the pine tree in the backyard. She could see herself and her mother talking, having a conversation about … she knew there was something she wanted to share with her mother, something she had to ask her but couldn’t find the right words. Her mother started scrubbing again.

But hadn’t she already washed this floor?