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Writers Room | On the Wildfires: Of Course She Ran Back

by Mikaela Brewer ​for The 44 North, Senior Editor



after Natalie Diaz’s “Of Course She Looked Back”


In a small middle school classroom in Red Lake, Ontario, Rilla Fable was called upon to answer a question in English class. 


Cocking his head to the side, so that his ear became a funnel for her voice, Mr. Wilcox nodded as Rilla spoke. But it was clear he hadn’t heard her, for he paraphrased his own question following a kind smile. 


Rilla wasn’t one for speaking, really, at all. But Jack, who sat behind her and had turned thirteen first, said that she better be careful: Her vocal cords would surely dry out if she didn’t use them enough, catching fire like sticks rubbed together when she ever did need to speak. 


Despite what everyone else thought, her inner world wasn’t, likewise, silent. It was anything but. 


Rilla glanced out the window. The smoke was so dense that the teachers’ parking lot was no longer visible. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened: The brush fires couldn’t be seen. Nor could the snapping and cracking be heard. 


***


Rilla’s N95 mask strings were too tight, folding her ears down as she walked home from school. Her dad’s cycling sunglasses, with wraparound wind protection, didn’t block the ash from slipping behind her contact lenses. The fires weren’t far now, and the sky was thick with an orange haze that bled the sun’s light. Surely, the evacuation order would come soon. 


Rilla stopped, knelt, and thumbed a brown-singed red lily growing from the boulevard. She looked across the dry grass as she stood; the wildlife was scorched along the sidewalks. Summer gardens had scattered into crumbs across front yards. Tree leaves had withered to lace. Rilla swept a finger along her bare forearm: No sweat. The air itself seemed dead, parched in the 35-degree heat.


Taking a shortcut through a paved ravine without sidewalks, Rilla had to avoid the bluffs this time—closed to the public to delay the fire spreading. There wasn’t much foot or car traffic here, given the steep, uneven asphalt, but there was usually a wide river bisecting the road, continuing beneath it. Rilla could always hear it rushing a few hundred metres away, comforted: It always seemed to know which direction to run. But there was no sound, now. For weeks it had been nothing but a small stream, hardly even a ‘burn’ as Rilla’s Scottish grandfather would’ve called it. But nestled among it were the friendly faces she’d hoped to see—the real reason she took this shortcut.


Rilla stopped on the metal-plated bridge overlooking the river, smiling as she watched pots being filled in the stream, soon to soak and soften dried ramen noodles. The coloured tents looked like a carnival, and perhaps that wasn’t an entirely dismissive observation. Each person she’d met in the encampment had a skill to offer the group: Cooking, sewing, medicine, geography, and knowledge of safe injection sites. The difference was, no one lined up to see the brilliance they had to offer the world. Locals seemed to see them as glitches in their life: Stains, filth, and impurity. They didn’t see Tomah’s large brown hands whittling wooden brushes and spoons from fallen trees, or Mag’s knowledge of nettle, witch hazel, and willow bark, or the fact that she could make absorbent diapers. There was Jern’s dexterity with a knife and needle, crafting bandages and clothes from scraps. Arnold seemed to have a complete territorial map of the area in his head, all the way to Thunder Bay. And then there was fourteen-year-old Fariq, who made Rilla blush, and tracked the moon while he carried buckets of toothpaste water to be discarded away from the stream. Just now, he looked up from mending a shoe with thread and needle alongside Jern. His serious, dark brows unfurrowed as he smiled and nodded. Rilla nodded back, lifting her elbows from the bridge that overlooked the encampment to wave. Would they ever be seen past houselessness, or struggling with heroin, psychosis, schizophrenia, HIV, and more that Rilla hadn’t yet seen the impact of? She admired their togetherness and their skills, but quickly caught herself: They were worthy of care, belonging, food, shelter, and dignity—unconditionally.


Fariq waved to her, but it seemed sad, as if ‘goodbye’ in code. She had to go home, now. The sky was reddening. 


***


No one was home, which wasn’t unusual. As Rilla sat at the island on a bar stool, shelling pistachios, the kitchen saturated with orange light streaming in the windows. But Rilla stood to close the curtains as she did every evening: With her eyes closed, clearing shell residue from her teeth with her tongue. She didn’t want to see the sign across the street, today or any day, but just as she thought of it, the curtain clips clattered over the tension rod, and an alarming sound reverberated through the small townhouse. The evacuation order.


Rilla clamped her eyes shut and accidentally swallowed a sharp bit of shell. Her phone continued to siren, and the curtain clips seemed to reverberate their clanging in her teeth. She opened her eyes, just a crack, no wider than what was left of the burn in the ravine, and her gaze fell on the sign. One of those black and white, “Safer Ontario” signs filled with straight-faced, armed police officers in flapjackets. As the screen changed every day, it read abbreviated versions of, “Protecting Ontario neighbourhoods: Ontario is working to protect our neighbourhoods by tackling auto theft, clearing encampments, shutting down drug injection sites near schools and daycares, building more jails and strengthening the bail system, so criminals stay behind bars.”


Rilla winced, shook her head until dizziness blurred the image, and turned away.


“What do you think this means about remaining human, or finding the human spirit, in difficult times?” Mr. Wilcox had asked about Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. 


“To grieve, prepare, and breathe,” Rilla had replied, recalling the fascinating etymology of that word ‘spirit’: The breath of life, or of God. 


There was only fire to breathe, now. Breathing would be hard—speech even harder. But Rilla’s voice had never been loud, and maybe it wasn’t a speaking voice she needed, but a quiet, generative one to disrupt the silence she longed for. One that says: Witness.


In the distance, flames cast ghostly shadows on the underbelly of the clouds. They flickered through the curtains like the sun through closed eyelids. 


What if they didn’t receive the evacuation order? Rilla wracked her brain for a memory of anyone in the encampment with a phone. 


Her rage churned from grief in her stomach, like cheese from milk. She knew her dads would be texting her that they were coming, driving towards the meeting spot they’d chosen that morning: Under the sign. It stood on two thick concrete poles above the seesaw, a sentinel on two immovable legs. 


Parallel burns streamed down Rilla’s face as she grabbed her evacuation-ready bag and walked outside, grateful, now, for the tightness of the mask.


Do they have masks?


Out the front door, Rilla could see the flames licking the treetops in the hills. Fire isn’t survivable. Rilla knew that much. It can’t be breathed, digested, or burned inside the body. But she was sure that’s what her grief felt like. Only when she was safe would she cough up the ash of all that had burned behind her. 


The anticipatory grief, it seemed, wouldn’t burn into anything but a stream in a ravine. Rilla scanned the county road her house sat on. Across the street, to the left, was the playground and the sign. To the right was the lip of the ravine. Rilla closed her eyes so tight, they squeezed out ash and salt. Hardening is human, whether into the charred bone of death, or alive into the salty-sting of regret.


Of course, when Rilla opened her eyes, she ran back.



Resources:


Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: What We Carry Forward

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor-in-Chief


Les Misérables at the West End, featuring the 40th Anniversary London cast. Photo courtesy of the production.
Les Misérables at the West End, featuring the 40th Anniversary London cast. Photo courtesy of the production.

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in a London theatre watching Les Misérables, a musical I had not seen for many years, based on a book I loved as a teenager.


I had mixed feelings about going. I knew it would be a good performance, but I had already seen the musical twice and wondered whether the experience would offer me anything new. Instead, the soaring, grief-filled music took me by surprise. Perhaps it was the perspective brought by time and distance, or simply the experience of encountering a familiar story at a different stage of life, but I found myself unexpectedly moved by both its force and its continuing relevance.


Les Mis left me thinking about memory, grief, repair and redemption: Themes echoed throughout this issue, beginning with Alaina Zhang’s thoughtful review and analysis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.


We often speak of "moving on" or "moving forward" as though healing requires us to leave the past behind. But perhaps the more difficult—and more honest—task is learning what to carry forward.


The pieces in this issue approach that question from many directions. In the Writers’ Room, Mikaela Brewer’s short story, "On the Wildfires: Of Course She Ran Back," follows a young girl walking home through wildfire smoke, confronting an environmental crisis her generation did not create but will nevertheless inherit. In Poet’s Corner, a discussion of Amanda Gunn’s "Ordinary Sugar" considers memory, ancestry and the ordinary acts through which people remain present in our lives.


Two feature essays examine darker forms of inheritance. In the first instalment of a three-part series, Randa Ali explores the environmental costs of war and the damage that continues long after the immediate fighting has ended. Temi Jolaawo’s "It’s in Our DNA: The Resurgence of Eugenics and Health Propaganda" examines how discredited ideas can return in new forms when the histories behind them are forgotten or deliberately distorted.


Elsewhere, "Dinner Isn’t Debt: What Paying the Bill Reveals About Romance, Power, and Control" considers the expectations we bring into intimate relationships, while "Searching for a Voice in Politics: Youth Are Citizens Now, Not in the Future" challenges us to recognize youth as full participants in civic life now, rather than treating their voices as preparation for some later point when their citizenship will finally count.


We also share key insights, notes and quotations from our recent live podcast event, Beyond Words: Addressing Anti-Black Racism and Discriminatory Language in Schools, along with Farhaan Batchkhan’s essay, "Racist Language Is Never Just a Joke: On Building a World Worth Belonging To."


And last but certainly not least, our spotlighted artist, Patrick de Belen, invites us into grief, memory, responsibility, silence, scars, wounds, and how they coexist across creative work and relationships alike.


Together, these pieces ask us to consider not only what we remember, but what our remembering requires of us.


We are all shaped by what came before: The stories our families tell, the histories our countries choose to remember or forget, the landscapes altered by decisions made long before we arrived, and the private joys and griefs that change how we move through the world. But inheritance is not the same as destiny. Part of becoming fully ourselves, individually and collectively, is deciding what we will carry forward, what we will repair and what we must finally learn to put down.


I will end with a recommendation to see Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, The Odyssey—or better yet, to read the original. I particularly recommend Emily Wilson’s translation, although Wilson herself has offered a decidedly critical assessment of the film.


Regardless of how faithfully the adaptation captures Homer’s work, the story’s enduring themes reinforce an idea that runs throughout this issue: Every generation inherits a world shaped by memories it did not personally create. We inherit stories, wounds, traditions, warnings and unfinished work.


Our responsibility is not to hand the next generation a version of the past stripped of discomfort. It is to help them carry its hard truths without being crushed by them—and to trust them to create something wiser and more compassionate from what remains.


Thank you, as always, for reading.


Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor-in-Chief, The 44 North Media


Film Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

by Alaina Zhang ​for The 44 North, Newsletter & Reviews Editor


“Please let me keep this memory, just this one.” —Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 

Last quarter, I was lucky enough to take a class called Medieval Dreams and Visions. After reading works by Chaucer, Dante, and other authors who lived centuries ago, we ended the quarter by watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 


The 2004 film follows a young man, Joel, as he revisits his diary after several years. Sitting next to the beach, the cold wind slashing against his face, he finds it difficult to recall why there are missing pages in his diary, remembered only by where they were torn away. The hollowness is all-consuming. Soon after, on a train, he meets a young woman named Clementine whom he quickly falls in love with. Later, it’s revealed that the two had previously been in a relationship, which ended poorly: Clementine had undergone a surgery to erase all memories of Joel. The disjointedness Joel feels at the beginning of the film was, in fact, the result of his own surgery to, in turn, forget Clementine.


The dream-like setting of the film lends masterfully to the theme of vulnerability it aims to portray. Not just a romance or sci-fi movie, the story is really about self-confrontation and reconciliation. Joel, upon realizing that he does not in fact want to forget Clementine, is forced to navigate his own brain and walk the memory lane of his mind. One of the most poignant moments in the film is when Joel enters the memory of being bullied by other kids and Clementine—a version of her inside his head—is watching. Childhood trauma is private and often so shameful that adults bury it deep inside themselves. Joel, however, is forced to confront those memories, which shaped who he is now. In a film, it’s healing for us to see Clementine bearing witness, whether real or imagined by Joel; Childhood trauma isn’t observable by our adult friends or partners, even if we verbally share memories with them. The scene ends with Clementine dragging Joel away, and although all of this takes place inside Joel’s mind, it’s real enough to make him—and us—feel seen in a vulnerable moment. 


My perception of the film also shifted because of my class. One of the surrounding questions we were interested in throughout the quarter was why authors across the ages are so drawn to the experience of dreaming and continue to weave it into their works. In the movie, the dream world is less a dream and more a disorganized catalogue of memories, which invite us, alongside the characters, to navigate the reflection, trauma, and life that make up who one is in relationship with others. 


For me, dreams have always been a special source of inspiration—a place where I can witness my deepest desires and hopes materialize in strange ways. My dream world is also a space where I truly feel safe and free, a space available only to myself. Admittedly, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to decipher the meaning of my dreams or know whether they have meaning at all, but what I do believe is that dreams can confirm my insecurities, trauma, restrained feelings, and thoughts. What surfaces in my dreams is a combination of magic and reality in its rawest form, and the act of dreaming alone can be reassurance that my life can take on alternative endings, parallel worlds, and unimaginable possibilities. 


The idea of “making sense” of a dream is, in fact, similar to the art of interpretation itself. In our class, this was one of the reasons we attributed to the prevalence of using dreaming as a storytelling framework. When we read about dreams, there are often at least two, if not more, layers of interpretation at play: We’re simultaneously making sense of a bewildering experience and attempting to decipher why a work was presented through the lens of dreams in the first place. When creatives build dream worlds for us that don’t exist, or exist in a multiverse, the seeds are often personal or collective memory re-imagined. This unique meaning-making opportunity, via dreams, expands how we think and remember. In other words, we can see that more is possible beyond our waking, conscious hours. 


That’s exactly what I felt Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind expressed. After Clementine and Joel realize what they’ve gone through, after they hear the ugly things they said about each other before the surgery, they still decide to give each other another chance—at least in being remembered if not in a relationship. They’re also choosing to give a chance to the idea of a possibility, even if it might not end in the best way. 


Relationships can be terrifying. We can never know what someone else thinks, nor what their words and actions mean. Though the procedure of memory probing and removal in the film seems cinematic and unbelievable,  we, too, probe through our own minds, equipped with nothing but fear, to dig up memories—ones we never wished to revisit—in search of some truth about ourselves. The difference between the film and reality is what makes it most powerful; the story asks: What if we were to show all of this to someone else, who we love, with an equally complex past? Would it really be incriminating? Or would it heal the ways we think we’re alone? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind provided me with a newfound perspective on what it means to be in a relationship with others, and to be in a relationship with oneself. 


We spend almost a third of our lives in deep sleep, dreaming. Perhaps, like Joel and Clementine, we’re sorting through the entangled web of our dreams, trying to find the confirmation, confidence, and reassurance we all need to move forward when our eyes open again and a new, terrifying, inevitable day awaits us. But the landscape of memory is worth walking, because as Joel and Clementine show us, we’re never the only ones there when we think we’re better off alone.

 

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