Garbage Island
– Nonfiction Essay by Claire Fantus –
Featured in Issue 18 of Dreamers Magazine
Our reunion is always bliss, at least for the first hour. They trip over words with delight, catching me up on lost time, in whatever order. I fawn over them like newborns, bewildered by their mutating bodies, plump one day then stretched out the next. They are astonished I have returned, though I always do, because two days are like eternity for little minds.
“Daddy… I mean Mommy!” they chant, reorienting themselves to the handover between parents.
Each time they seem older, wiser, more robust, after a mere forty-eight hours apart. I am restored, but guilty for the pleasure of time alone, like I worked the system or committed a mother’s crime. Initially the feeling was more pervasive, like what mother spends half their time… and the sickening moment of estrangement when I bumped into them at Ferraro Foods with their father the very first Sunday we lived apart. Anonymity was impossible in our tiny mountain town. “Hi guys! Great to see you!” They seemed suspicious, my older boy raising his brow like I was a fake, a substitute that looked like mom but wasn’t quite right. Was I a subversive feminist, or merely a negligent mother disrupting the bonds of attachment for generations to come? Who cares, I thought, sucker punching my swirling world of self doubt, stepping on it like my kids do ants on the porch, moving their feet from side to side to ensure the thing is dead.
The garbage piles up in a matter of hours. Half eaten sandwiches and soggy cucumbers dumped out from their fermenting lunch bags, urine soaked pull-ups and underwear from their unpracticed bladders, and then of course, there’s a war ravaging in the pantry. No snack is enough to fill these ravenous wolves, and they raid the shelves like it is pandemic lockdown all over again. Empty granola wrappers fill up the trash with sticky juice boxes I should never have purchased but served their purpose: like shoving a breast in their mouths during the early days, they suck these boxes dry as I close my eyes for a mindful breath.
I suddenly recall our first holiday together, their father and I. He was a rover, having travelled most of the untrodden globe, often penniless, sleeping on park benches and in town squares, once concussed and left for dead, then having floated down the Rio Napo in a canoe gifted by a local indigenous band. He was also a storyteller, and could captivate a certain crowd of listeners, those like me who were seduced by language. A holiday with him promised the antithesis of stagnation, the perfect antidote to the deadness I sometimes carried inside. We snaked through Bucksin Gulch, one of the longest slot canyons in Southwestern Utah. Checking the weather was crucial because even a singular rain cloud could be a harbinger of flash floods and devastation. There was no way out except through, and then some parts required rope to climb past boulders and water shoes to wade through the knee-deep puddles, stagnant for months after the rain.
The hike was dry and we survived unscathed. It was the vestiges that were disturbing – animals that had fallen inside, dead or dying from the crush of the fall and the rushing current. Nothing organic remained, only rock, maybe limestone or sand, and a narrow gorge with steep walls encroaching. We passed an owl with an injured wing, a photographer devouring the specimen with his plush Canon. And then pockets of garbage along the way, serving as its own exhibit: granola bar wrappers, toilet paper and styrofoam cups by a rotting goat, then later plastic water bottles, a forgotten t-shirt, and wet socks along the shores of the Paria river.
My marriage was like one of these carcasses, mangled by rock in a downpour and then gradually depleted of sustenance. The lines of communication had perished alongside the bruised egos and dissonant narratives of he said/she said. The tall tales that had once wooed me later felt cruel for their embellishments and omissions.
My memories are interrupted by the jolt of real chaos descending. The dinner is not right. How dare I make chicken when they prefer macaroni and cheese! They are almost chanting, the Greek chorus. My body tenses up as my older son rejects all solutions put forward. What about some ketchup on the side, or a treat after dinner if you have ten bites or why don’t we sit close together the way you always like? I try the empathy card because how hard must it be! Sitting in school, tolerating the bullies and the gnawing feeling they’re a nuisance to tired teachers, and then having to traipse from one home to the next. Neither takes the bait. My older son grabs a clay pot nursing a young orchid. He stares me down. He raises up the plant with two fists, a direct threat to the order of things. I play interference, grabbing the pot and placing it on the highest shelf with the other offenders, blue truck and red race car; once benign toys, now concealed weapons.
I don’t know my children. It is a cold reality each time they return. There are new phrases (“what the heck!”) and rules (“you can have juice only if you’re eating your dinner at the same time”), my older son suddenly knows how to snap, and they keep talking about a dinosaur that survived the meteor against all odds (“he lives in the ocean, he’s not extinct, Daddy told us!”). The most important information is lost inside the vast canyon that is me and their father. How are they sleeping? Are they eating? Is Atti having stomachaches? Is Eli still scratching kids at recess? Did they return their library books? Are they happy? Grumpy? Sad? Wild? Did they ask about me? I am like a forlorn detective in an Edgar Allan Poe short story, or just an irritating filmgoer who missed the first ten minutes and keeps interrupting to ask what the hell is going on.
And then suddenly, a clue.
“Garbage Island!” The boys are cheering.
“What’s that?”
“Daddy showed us.” Eli is jumping and pulling at my sleeve.
“They’re these huge birds!” He raises his hands in the air to show me how tall.
Yeah, it’s so funny,” Atti chimes in. “When the bird goes away, that’s funny.”
I grab my phone reluctantly, searching “Garbage Island” in the browser. It’s an album. I find a music video, “Bird Queen of Garbage Island” by The Burning Hell. There are puppets dressed in plastic, nets and bones crooning on a garbage patch in the ocean about the apocalypse. The kids find it hilarious. I have to admit, it’s fucking brilliant.
The song reminds me of their father in the early days of our relationship. He used to cook us pancakes on a lazy Saturday in Toronto, an obscure album playing as we took turns with the cross-word. We would wander around Trinity Bellwoods often directionless, our dialogue pressured and bright, like our magical union could solve all pressing global issues with a hoppy beer. We were quite satisfied with ourselves back then, intoxicated by the grandiosity that often ignites a couple at first. He called me everyday professing his love. I’m the winner of the human lottery! His words inflated my ego like a helium balloon. For once I was weightless. I never felt more alive.
My attention wanders back to the children. Eli is twirling, Atti is doing his signature move like he’s playing the bongos. We dance together. Each wants their own turn being lifted, hugged, tickled, thrown in the air and then bounced onto the couch. They start talking freely, the details of the last two days slowly emerging.
“Daddy made us this egg sandwich, you never saw it before Mommy. It’s a piece of toast with a big hole in it.”
“Yeah, but then I cried at the park.”
“Oh my, what happened?”
“No Mommy, Atti fell on the slide but he’s okay.”
“Oh thank goodness.”
“Right here.” Atti points to a scratch on his knee.
“What did you have for dinner at Daddy’s?”
“Um, I forget.”
“That’s okay, it’s hard to remember everything.”
For now, through heaps of oceanic garbage, the canyon between their father and I has been traversed. I pray that the cleft between us all will become narrower with time; that our goodbyes are no longer death rituals repeating endlessly and blaring like a looping record, but merely a pause in time, a chance to tell each other our stories. I love you boys. Send my love to your father. Knowing my children again is like the comfort of a warm blanket. This feeling I will not throw away.
About the Author – Claire Fantus
Claire Fantus is a mother, writer, psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Rossland, BC. She loves a good jam band and the fiddle. She has been previously published in the Black Bear Review and has an upcoming story in Room Magazine.
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