My Book of Life By Angel (11 page)

T
he angel was gone

and Melli was still holding her white doughnut

and with her big open-­mouth smile

and sparkly sugar on her teeth

and she said, “Angel.”

She said my name out loud,

made it sound like the prettiest word in the En­glish language

made my name sound like a poem to me.

I said, oh Melli, you poet.

T
hen Melli pointed to Call

and said something to the white-­haired officer,

and the officer looked at Call

which pinned Call to the floor,

Call who was not expecting white-­haired officers

and Melli telling on him.

I took out the tie pin

and gave it to Daddy Dave

and said, I'm not a thief,

and the white-haired officer looked at Daddy Dave.

So much looking.

S
o I looked at Call

in his eyes, right in his eyes,

and I was not scared anymore.

I saw something flicking there,

something electric,

a white wire of light, arcing in the eye—

as if his eye remembered seeing something—

then it was gone,

and all I could see in the juicy part of his eyes

­were crusted, burnt things—

but I knew my eyes ­were filled with floating gold,

and you ­can't be afraid with eyeballs like that.

T
hen I looked him right in the shirt pocket

and in the pocket was an envelope

and I slipped the envelope out

and it was the one I sent to Dad

and on it ­were the letters RTS—

moved—address unknown—

in black marker.

RTS, return to sender,

the prettiest letters in the alphabet.

I said to Call, they moved.

You don't know where Jeremy is anymore.

And I did my invisible angel thing

with everybody looking at Call and Daddy Dave,

and I walked away

right past the grumpy queens

right out the front door

and I walked with Serena's money

and my book of life in my purse

and floating gold in my eyeballs—

I
walked to the end of the block

and I walked past the library

and past the phone booth

and into China

and I walked past the Jimi Hendrix shrine,

him singing about the moon and the deep blue sea

and fly on, fly on,

and all the way to the gate of ten thousand happinesses

where I named Widow Paula and it was true—

A
van with tinted windows pulled up beside me

drove beside me

while I just kept walking in my boughten flip-­flops

and my feet being art as they just kept walking

to they didn't know where or to who—

and the van followed me to a bookstore

where I just walked right in.

I
breathed in the books,

the good smell a million books make,

and the bookstore was my home

and the leather reading chair was my chair

and the bookstore clerk loved to see me read.

He smiled, said, can I help you?

I said, yes, do thy have paradise lost?

and he said, come this way

and I came

and he did.

I bought my own copy of paradise lost

with Serena's money and said, good job, dead Serena,

and I sat in my chair by my window

and turned to the last book of paradise lost

to the very last book, book twelve,

and nobody could stop me.

T
he clerk circling around the store

always ending up at my chair

watching me read book twelve

and the van outside circling around the block

and me reading where Adam and Eve get told a story

in which they ­were the beginning of stories,

and the world was all before them—

All the world. It said that.

It said in book twelve

that all the world was before them

and they could choose
.
.
.

Author's Note

A
ngel, Serena, Melli, Widow, Call and Daddy Dave are my
own invention. But inside my made-­up story is much that is true.

It is true that a young girl is commonly lured into prostitution because the man she thinks is her boyfriend turns out to be a pimp. Sometimes he is the one who introduces her to street drugs. Often, once she is “turned out,” she takes drugs to help her tolerate the lifestyle. She stays for many reasons: because she
must feed her addiction, because she is afraid she will be beaten or killed if she leaves, or because her pimp has threatened to hurt her family members if she leaves. Each girl's story is different.

It is true that, beginning in 1983, a number of women disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, an area notorious for its poverty, open drug use and high rate of HIV infection—­one of the highest in the world. Most but not all of the women who vanished from the Eastside ­were sex workers.
Over the next
thirteen years, families and friends filed missing-­persons reports, giving reasons why they thought their loved ones ­were
not just missing but dead. Nothing was done.

In 1997, the same year that eleven more women went missing, Robert William “Willy” Pickton handcuffed and attacked a sex worker, who fled naked with knife wounds to her stomach. The charges against Pickton ­were stayed, however, because the sex worker was not considered a
reliable witness. She cannot be named because a court ban prohibits using her real name.

In 1998, an additional ten women went missing. Police ­were told that bloody clothing and a number of women's purses, complete with ID, had been seen lying around Pickton's farm. That same year the Vancouver Police Department issued a news release saying that law enforcement officers did not believe a serial killer was behind the disappearances.

By the time Pickton was arrested in 2002, nineteen more women had been reported missing. Investigators found on his farm the remains and the DNA of thirty-­two of the missing women. Pickton admitted to the murders of forty-­nine women; he was convicted of six counts of second-­degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for twenty-­five years.

I respectfully acknowledge that the names I use on pages 49 and 117 refer to several of the real missing women: Debra Jones, Dawn Crey, Dianne Rock, Sarah de Vries and Janet Henry.

The Missing Women of
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside*

Yvonne Abigosis

Sereena Abotsway

Sharon Abraham

Elaine Allenbach

Angela Arseneault

Sherry Baker

Cindy Beck

Yvonne Boen

Andrea Borhaven

Heather Bottomley

Heather Chinnock

Nancy Clark

Wendy Crawford

Marcella Creison

Dawn Crey

Sarah de Vries

Sheryl Donahue

Tiffany Drew

Elaine Dumba

Sheila Egan

Cara Ellis

Gloria Fedyshyn

Cynthia Feliks

Marnie Frey

Jennifer Furminger

Catherine Gonzalez

Rebecca Guno

Michelle Gurney

Inga Hall

Helen Hallmark

Ruby Hardy

Janet Henry

Tanya Holyk

Sherry Irving

Angela Jardine

Andrea Joesbury

Patricia Johnson

Debra Jones

Catherine Knight

Kerry Koski

Marie Laliberte

Stephanie Lane

Danielle Larue

Kellie Little

Verna Littlechief

Laura Mah

Jacquelene McDonell

Diana Melnick

Leigh Miner

Marilyn Moore

Jackie Murdock

Georgina Papin

Tania Petersen

Sherry Rail

Dianne Rock

Elsie Sebastian

Ingrid Soet

Dorothy Spence

Teresa Triff

Sharon Ward

Kathleen Wattley

Olivia Williams

Taressa Williams

Mona Wilson

Brenda Wolfe

Frances Young

Julie Young

* Sources: missingpeople.net and Missing Women Task Force list, 2007

Thanks

I wish to express my deep gratitude to Candace Fisher, Sarah
Gough, Stephen Roxburgh, Julie Larios and Brenda Bowen, who gave me guidance and much-­needed encouragement as I wrote this book. I am always grateful to my family, who inspire me in my work. I am especially indebted to my brilliant editors Margaret Ferguson and Shelley Tanaka. Thanks also to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts for their timely support.

Martine Leavitt

About the Publisher

Groundwood Books, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children's books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.

Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.

We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.