Armand Garnet Ruffo

She Asked Me

Here we go again, the road, endless, redundant roundabout,
Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa. and now here in Northern
Ontario, no, that’s not true, Southern B.C. 1 arrived...when? That’s
what happens when you’re homeless like my grandmother said all
those years ago when I used to visit her on Spadina Street where
she’d sought shelter, taken temporary refuge. A stranger in her
native land, she once wrote in a poem, and I agreed and brought
her more tea wanting to tell her that for us it’s called history, the
way things are, not choice, certainly not, maybe accident (Is it?).
But I didn’t have to explain. She already knew what I was about to
say and was nodding her head. I’'m sure she could read my thoughts
because she asked me not to smoke, which I took as a sign.

Into a dream I awake, and the telephone gathers up space and
time in its constant ring. I can already hear a woman’s voice before
I even pick it up. She is asking me when I’m coming home, our
conversation suspended in a breath, a pattern of coloured light.
Home? I answer not a little amazed she would flash such a word
through me. You mean like home and Anishnawbe land, 1 almost
say, but don’t because she is weeping like the child she lost to the
street, to an executive position in some bank, though to her it is all
the same, the damage done. Her mourning song enters and fills me
with the last ring of sorrow for all we’ve done, from the infinitesi-
mal act of stomping out a tobacco butt to the infinite of stomping
out a jife, all that which has turned her sons and daughters into
strangers.

And again 1 awake to find myself packing to leave yet again.
The room a scatter of suitcases and boxes. All I can do is sit for a
moment and stare out to the sky and consider this journey. Yester-
day (or was it the day before?) I flew through a haze of smog and
landed in San Francisco and found I could barely breathe. Today
the Okanagan sky is clear, the wind fresh as can be expected. To-
morrow is where my grandmother sits in a room staring at a wall,
where my mother lies in a hospital also staring hopelessly. The end
of their journey somewhere just beyond their wait. Earlier in the
week, in New Mexico, I journeyed to a sacred place and said a
prayer and a whirlwind appeared like an answer. Grandmother,
Mother, that prayer was for you, for all of us lost to this century,
this land turned highway.

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