I wasn’t going to be like my mother, painting landscapes in the basement at night, hiding wet canvases behind the washing machine. My father knows. I know he knows. And some days I wonder why he hasn’t reported her. One call and they’d come to take her away, her and her tornadoes of rage, but then he’d have to cook his own dinner. She is a good cook, less good at painting landscapes. I could draw better evergreens in my mashed potatoes by grade five, just being honest. When my mom saw the butterknife-etched trees, she threw my plate at the wall, cried and went to her room. Brown gravy was splashed up to the ceiling, dripping down and around chunks of potato. It’s still her best work. There was texture, gestural lines, an element of surprise. Sitting at the table, I found shapes in the mess, a dolphin, a palm tree, then my dad came home and cleaned it up.
The next day, after school, I was called to a sit-downer in the living room. My mother trembled and twitched from the effort it took not to scream. ”Keep drawing, Dave. Keep drawing and you’ll be sent up north where there’s bears, mosquitoes, black flies, no beds, no washrooms, no medical treatment. You get a cut, it gets infected, and your whole arm will have to be sawed off by the time they let you come home,” she said. Beside her, my father nodded like he was listening to a rap song.
I said to her, “Greg’s parents don’t mind the Camp. Sounds pretty good to me — six months planting trees, then six months off, no work at all, and all expenses paid.” I liked Greg’s parents. They wrote plays and performed them in the garage. Didn’t bother them one bit that hardly anyone showed up.
“I told you that he shouldn’t be hanging around there,” my mother said to my father. “Now he thinks it’s normal to loaf around half the year, then guilt your neighbours into buying tickets for the very nonsense that keeps them from making enough money to feed their kids protein-loaded food and take them to vacation theme parks. I’ve seen how they live. All expenses paid? Ha!”
“You’re right,” said my father. “I agree. He can’t go over to Greg’s.”
I never had much respect for the two of them, but that day I said calmly and clearly, “You guys are the absolute worst.”
“Oh yeah,” said my mom, with a cartoon-big eye roll. “We’re the worst. We’re the worst because we are here every single day taking care of you.”
That’s the moment I decided to take care of myself. Well, as much as possible. Still had some unavoidables given that I was ten years old. Got a job through Greg. He worked illegally at the grocery store stocking shelves and helped me fill out the application form. We had to pretend to be fourteen for four years by fake lowering our voices when other people were around. I don’t think we were really fooling anyone but they needed us to work and we needed the cash. I bought a bike, never asked for a drive again, and ate unsellable food that my manager let me take home — banged up cans, bruised fruit, day-old expired dairy products. Finally, I was in grade twelve and could formally declare Artist/Lifestyle Status to the government, adding my name to the list of people that would go to the Camp in June after graduation. Greg bailed on me. He checked off the box for Business/Financial Services Status, which is funny because that’s my dad’s category. I warned him that he’s making a mistake, that his acting will get better with more practice, that he never even tried photography or drums, but yes his dancing and singing are definitely terrible. He said we could still be friends, which is true, but that didn’t help me out very much in the short-term.
There was a gym assembly for the newly declared artists, about fifty of us, and we lined up to get our workwear, backpacks, one-person tents and small shovels. The teachers acted like they were passing out exams with a failing grade and we were all hopeless dumb-dumbs. “It’s so fucking crazy,” said Angelo in the hallway, a circle formed around him. “We’re doing everyone a favour by planting trees, literally saving the fucking world from climate change, and they’re treating us like criminals. Then we make art that they can enjoy, that they personally benefit from, and not even a ‘Thank you.’ We’re goddamn heroes. There should be a parade. Don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait to get out of here.” I agreed with him. Angelo is very good at guitar, his band sold out every show at the undeclared/underage performance centre, and he has a stage presence you just can’t teach.
Privately I said to him, “Probably going to be a lot of hot girls at the camp.”
Angelo winced and shook his head at me. “I’m gay.”
I really thought I was being progressive and open when I said, “Huh, maybe I am too,” but it didn’t go over well at all. He made a sour expression like I ripped a huge rank fart, and then walked away. I needed to make new friends, realised that I’d relied way too much on Greg my whole life, but it turns out I’m not very likeable. Somehow, based on this one thing I said to Angelo, word spread that I was homophobic, which I’m not, so no one sat next to me on the bus ride up north despite the weeks of orientation alerts encouraging us to support each other during this transitional time.
We were picked up from the school parking lot in the sick-early morning. It was still dark with a springtime green chill in the air, which is different from the purpley cool that creeps into the fall and becomes white cold in winter. I would have loved to share that artistic observation with a fellow declared artist but eye contact simply wasn’t happening. A few parents came to wave us off, not too many. Obviously mine stayed at home. At another sit-downer in the family room, my father said, “We still love you, but we don’t want to encourage you,” and my mother cried into her hands. They wanted me to say something, but I had become an actor playing their son and forgot my lines. I looked around for hidden cameras, for a director watching from another room that could stop the scene and let us try again from the beginning, whenever that was.
The camp bus smelled like plastic-wrapped mushed-bread cheap-cheese sandwiches and bleach. Our camp leader, Lena, stood up at the front and read off the camp rules, which we knew from the alerts and declaration paperwork. “No singing, no drawing, no dancing, no making of instruments and playing them, no acting, no accents, no joke-telling, no clowning, no sculpting, no storytelling, no making something from nothing in a non-purposeful way as determined by the discretion of camp leaders. There will be no use of digital devices. No physical fighting or violence. No refusal of work. Got it?”
“Got it,” we said.
“Good. The rules came into effect the second you stepped onto this bus. Fail to comply and you will be sent back, taken into custody and face federal charges which could result in jail time. Any questions?”
There were no questions. We could tell that she wasn’t asking in a friendly Caregiver/Emotions-Focused Status way. Lena was obviously Leadership/Admin Status, and a question would threaten her self-assurance on delivering comprehensive information with clarity. I actually had a question about how camp leaders would know if we were making art in our minds, but then I thought maybe non-artists don’t know that’s possible, maybe they have another way to pass a twelve hour drive with no digital devices.
Every three hours, the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road and Lena yelled out, “Bathroom break.” We wandered into the forest and hid from each other to do whatever we needed to do in the trees. Definitely some non-bathroom things happening out there based on the noises that I heard. Back on the bus, Lena handed out cheese sandwiches, a bottle of water and a different snack pouch depending on the time of day. The driver was a very large man who stacked two sandwiches together to make a super sandwich and chomped it down. He drove with the same confidence and moved us quickly over winding and rolling roads. The forest on both sides was thick and tall until we got closer to camp and the world dried up.
Either I missed something, or the government is not telling people the truth about how bad things are up here. Artists have made work about it, for example Greg’s parents did a play called “Dying Plan-et,” but I thought they were exaggerating, being dramatic. Standing at the gates of Camp, which is nothing more than a city block of construction site trailer offices, the brown dusty land is endless. Cracked boulders jut out from the ground like broken bones through skin. The setting sun glowed orange and evil, a hovering jack-o’-lantern in the heavy pink haze. No trees, bushes, flowers or grass in sight.
A pack of senior citizens were waiting at the gates and Lena announced that newcomers pair up with old-timers for our first stint. I wasn’t listening, too distracted by the landscape, and ended up with the oldest woman I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not the tallest guy, but I’m a giant compared to Aggy. She’s a dried-out apple core, wrinkled tan skin and crooked posture, sweet-smelling in a bad way. I was annoyed that she’d double my work, couldn’t imagine she’d be able to carry the gear and plant enough to hit our required quotas, but she smiled at me and held my hand as we walked into Camp, which was the nicest anyone has been to me in a long time.
Aggy guided me to my campsite, a square of dry dirt next to her already set-up tent, and whispered that she’d come get me in the morning. I wondered if Aggy would make it through the six months or if I’d be without a partner pretty soon. There’s a good chance she’s pre-Status. The Career System only started two generations ago. I don’t have any grandparents left, but I remember stories about the Career System Shift and how hard it was to suddenly pick a category at eighteen when you grow up expecting to change jobs whenever you want throughout your life. The government granted over-eighteens Career Fluidity Privileges, except artists. Not many artists declared their status and either went to jail, gave up or made work in secret. I agree with the forum posters who say we’re still feeling the effects of that period, of what they call, “The Great Artist Decline.” It would be great to get some first-hand information from Aggy to post when I’m back home and, who knows, make a new friend. I was too excited to sleep and still awake when the Camp’s alarm whooped at the crack of dawn.
I unzipped my tent to find Aggy waiting for me, sipping from a steel thermos, the escaped steam curling around her face and fluff of white hair. She reached out and I held her little, crushable hand. We walked to the row of trailers and she whispered instructions for where to go and what to get before we leave to plant. I moved quickly through the shower/bathroom trailer, food trailer and day supplies trailer, where I got enough for both of us. Never felt stronger than carrying two backpacks, one over my chest, and a jumbo garbage bag full of seedlings. Aggy carried only her thermos, with both hands, and maintained a steady pace out of the Camp and into amber fog, the rising sun trapped in a sky of resin.
We dipped down into a valley, a couple steep parts that Aggy handled with ease, showing me how to lean against rock walls and shuffle for traction. At the bottom of the valley, new trees, taller than the stalks of a corn maze, were planted in neat rows far off in the distance. The trees closer to us were little spikes and the rest of the space was barren ash. We were the first ones to leave the Camp and no one had caught up with us yet. It was quiet enough to hear wind gently blow up the valley slopes and rustle fresh leaves. I handed Aggy her shovel, took off the backpacks and shook out hundreds of seedlings from the garbage bag. I was ready to get started, we had to plant ten bag’s worth before they’d let us come back for dinner, but Aggy stood still. Somewhere in the valley, a bird whirled and whistled. Aggy opened her mouth, took a sharp breath and repeated the call. Her voice was like a camera flash going off in the dark, bright and shocking. I couldn’t help smiling, and she smiled back, then did it again, adding more flair to it, dancing over high and low notes. A few seconds later, the bird called back the exact same song.
“That bird is incredible,” I said. My eyes must have looked wild with no sleep.
Aggy leaned close to my ear, the smell of her filled my nose, and she whispered, “That’s not a bird.” Then she carefully knelt down and began digging her first hole of the day.
JESSICA BLOOM has fiction published in Pithead Chapel and Sand Journal. She was second runner-up for Prism International’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and longlisted for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize. Other writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, Vice, Playboy and The Phnom Penh Post. She has a BFA in creative writing from the University of Victoria, an MA in media studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and MA in counselling psychology from Yorkville University. She lives in Toronto.
The art that appears alongside this piece is by GRANT RAUN.
