Lowlife by Issie Patterson

                         Nicolas Vigier



 Lowlife 
                    

    Marley signed up for self-defence classes only after she was punched in the face. It seemed, said Smith, like a very unintuitive move. He told her so after they’d watched a movie as a sort of forced sibling bonding ritual. Marley was living in his little bungalow in North Vancouver while she looked for her own apartment. The heating only worked intermittently, so each room had its own noisy space heater. The space heater in the basement was so loud that Marley found it hard to hear anything in the movie. Smith eventually put subtitles on, and they would describe ambient noise in the film like so:
    {Joyful, childlike music blares}
    {Sobbing without hope}
    {Gleeful vocalization}
    After the credits rolled, the siblings drank ciders in the messy kitchen and talked about how much they hated the movie. The violence had been cartoonish, the characters flat. Their hate lacked passion or conviction, though, and soon there was a silence.
    “So, Marley,” said Smith.
    Marley knew he was going to ask her about what happened last week because he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He pushed his bottlecap around with one finger. “Mom told me you got attacked, or something, eh?”
    Marley had been walking down Granville Street in broad daylight on a Tuesday. She was on her way to her shift at a tattoo parlor. It was a receptionist gig, a new job. She still got butterflies on her way to work, nervous as to whether she would impress or disappoint her new colleagues.
    A woman with choppy short hair who was maybe high on something locked eyes with Marely. She didn’t look well, Marley remembered thinking that. She was a white woman and her skin was so pale and anemic that Marley could see the veins on her neck. The woman was wearing a faded Patagonia windbreaker that had a huge black mark on the right sleeve.
    The woman shouted, “Townie bitch!” at Marley with so much rage that Marley’s heart felt like it was squeezing itself three sizes smaller. Marley attempted to ignore her. Then the woman punched her in the face.
    “What did you do?” asked Smith. There was a note of judgement in his voice, because he likely already knew what Marley did.
    “I froze,” said Marley. “I couldn’t do anything.”
    An old lady in a long skirt had dragged Marley’s attacker off her, screaming. Then the woman who attacked Marley had taken off sprinting down the street, like some sort of spooked animal. The old lady had introduced herself as Nellie and escorted Marley to work, pulling a seemingly endless supply of crumpled tissues from her pocket to soak up the blood pouring from Marley’s nose. Marley was in shock and could only form one-word responses to Nellie’s questions. She thought maybe her mouth had gone numb, or she’d lost the ability to speak. Marley had smiled woodenly like a marionette for the whole conversation, as if the incident had been funny. Blood caked on her upper lip.
    “Well, Marley, you’ve always said you wanted to take judo,” said Smith. 
    “Self-defense,” Marley corrected him.
     He shrugged. “Too bad you didn’t take those classes.”
    “I’m going to now,” Marley said. “Just in case, you know.”
    “I don’t think there’s much of a point. I mean, it probably won’t happen again.”
    Marley was certain it would happen again. She flinched when someone gestured too enthusiastically near her on the street. In an elevator at her friend’s apartment building, she almost had a panic attack when a man reached across her to press a button. She went on a date with a guy who was very touchy, and she flinched when he touched her shoulder. They didn’t go on another date.
    Nellie, the old lady, had given Marley her number. “As your rescuer, I feel obliged,” Nellie had said, smiling. Marley was a bit ashamed by the weirdness of being saved by an old woman, so she didn’t intend to call Nellie. But she felt lonely one night after work, and Smith was ignoring her, so Marley did call her.
    “Hello?” Nellie spoke too loudly into the phone.
    Marley moved the phone away from her ear a bit and replied, “It’s me. Marley.”
    “Sorry, there’s a whole lot of noise here.” There was a sound like a lid clanging against a pot. “Who’s this, again?”
    “Marley,” she repeated, clearly. She eyed her bedroom door. She didn’t want Smith to come in to inquire about who she was speaking to. “The woman that you, uh—"
    “Oh, yes! That’s right. Are you alright, dear?”
    “I’m okay.”
    Marley stared at her bedroom’s blank wall. She kept meaning to put something up, a poster or a map. The blandness of the room made her feel sad. Smith used it as a storage room, and Marley often felt as unwanted and useless as the boxes and sheet-covered furniture. “I wanted to thank you.”
    “No need,” said Nellie. “Any woman would’ve done the same. We’ve got to look out for each other! Sisterhood and all that.”
    Marley found this old-fashioned tidbit a bit embarrassing. But she smiled and said, “For sure, you’re right.”
    “Do you want to come over for dinner, dear?”
    Marley hesitated. “You mean, like, now?”
    “Sure. I’m making quinoa. I’m experimenting.”
    Marley showed up to Nellie’s apartment an hour later with a bouquet of half-price flowers from the Superstore. Nellie lived on the third floor of an old brick building in East Van. Her house smelled like coffee and weed, and it was meticulous. There was a row of potted plants in the window. Each ceramic pot had a letter painted on it in whimsical cursive. When combined, the letters read: breathe.
    Nellie was wearing a grey hoodie and yoga pants. Her grey hair was held back by a purple hairband. Marley found it strange to see a woman who was likely in her seventies dressed up like a twenty-something. Marley had worn a floral blouse and skinny jeans. After being called a “townie bitch” by the woman who hit her, Marley had become self-conscious about dressing too rural. She had been wearing a big grey puffer and Timberlands with a red tuque covering her shaved head when she was punched. She didn’t see how this could classify her as a “townie”. People back in Abbotsford dressed like that, sure. But it wasn’t a certified rural look—was it? She now sent daily mirror selfies of her outfits to her best friend back home to verify that the outfit was flattering. Her best friend always replied with rows of encouraging emojis, so Marley was suspicious that she was biased and unwilling to give criticism. 
    Marley and Nellie ate quinoa and salmon at the small kitchen table. Nellie kept the glass balcony door open to let the soft March air in and put on a Tragically Hip CD.  They talked about small things first, but soon they were locked in a spiralling debate about the future of Vancouver. Nellie was adamant that Vancouver would have its soul sucked out and become a corporate wasteland. Marley argued that the young population would keep its soul intact.
    “Scum like that girl who attacked you will flourish in this New Vancouver,” said Nellie, as she poured more lemon water into both their glasses. “Don’t know what wolf raised her. Going around hitting people cause of the way they dress. It’s the twenty-first century, for god’s sake.”
    Marley went quiet, trying to process the many layers to Nellie’s speech. She found it interesting that Nellie should refer to Marley’s attacker as a girl, since she had very clearly been at least in her thirties. And although it was obvious that Marley wasn’t fond of the woman who’d called her a bitch and punched her, Marley didn’t think it was fair to call the woman scum. Who knew where she’d been the moment before she hit Marley? Maybe someone had hit her, and her only reaction was to pass on the violence like some sort of disturbed game of broken telephone.  
     Marley considered expressing all this to Nellie, but the old woman had already moved on. She was gesturing grandly as she talked about the hippies in Kitsilano in the seventies and the “sickness” of gentrification in the Downtown East Side.
    The scum comment stuck in Marley like shrapnel under her skin. She almost said no when Nellie asked if she could tag along to Marley’s self-defence class the next morning. But Nellie had saved her, that was undeniable. The way Nellie had screamed when she pulled the woman away from Marley had been primal, terrifying. It was something like a battle cry. You couldn’t fake that rage, Marley thought. That scream came from the deepest wells of Nellie’s soul.
    The self-defence class was run by a tiny blonde woman named Laura and her husband, Ryan, in a basement studio in a shopping mall. Laura and Ryan wore matching bright blue workout shirts. Ryan mostly hung back and acted as a dummy when needed. Laura had a huge voice for such a tiny person.
    “She’s a firecracker,” Nellie whispered to Marley.
    Nellie didn’t have workout clothes, so she was wearing a baggy Grateful Dead t-shirt and hiking shorts.
    Laura made everyone go around in a circle and introduce themselves. They had to tell the group one thing they wanted to get out of these classes. Nellie confidently pronounced that she wanted to be able to “take down any asshole who dares to bother me.” Marley stuttered something generic about wanting to be prepared for the worst.
     “She’s already experienced the worst,” Nellie said to the class, jabbing a thumb in Nellie’s direction.
    Marley didn’t understand if that was meant to be helpful, but she was mortified, nonetheless. Being punched on Granville Street was far from “the worst”. Her face went red and she focused on the foamy mat beneath her sock feet.
    “That’s why we’re here,” Laura said. “We’re here to prepare you for anything.”
    When it was Marley’s turn to practice sticking her thumbs into Ryan’s eye sockets, she pretended she had forgotten how to do it. Obviously, she wasn’t going to really hurt him. It was simulated violence. But she was meant to go through the motions in front of the class, as everyone had done. Ryan smelt like deodorant and was smiling encouragingly. Marley had noticed that all the self-defence scenarios Laura brought up involved a man assaulting a woman. Laura always used he/him pronouns when describing the robber, the rapist, or the mean drunk person in the alleyway.
    Laura held onto Marley’s wrists and took her through the motions like a puppeteer. Marley thought, could anyone really jab someone in the eye socket? It didn’t seem like a real thing that reasonable people would do.  
    By the end of the class, Marley was certain that she just wasn’t cut out for defending herself. Her brain didn’t work like that. Whenever something bad happened in life, she froze and hoped no one would notice her. She couldn’t even persuade her feet to move. Fight, flight, or freeze. Marley had heard that on a nature documentary. Animals who froze were often the ones whose bloody deaths were shown onscreen with sad orchestral music.
    Nellie insisted on taking Marley out for a coffee after the class. It was a sunny day, so they sat on a bench on Broadway near the entrance to a glass office building. Marley watched the women coming and going from the revolving doors. She noted how some wore blazers and skirts, and others wore jeans with warm, fashionable sweaters. She tried to catalogue the nice outfits in her mind for future reference.
    Nellie had loved the self-defence class. She couldn’t stop talking about how “fierce” she found Laura, how “instructive” she found the manoeuvres. “You’ll be ready next time some lowlife gets in your way,” Nellie told Marley.
    “She wasn’t a lowlife.”
    It took Marley a moment to realize what she’d said. She didn’t think the words had left her mouth until Nellie looked at her incredulously, her thin lips puckered in surprise.
    “What would you call her, then, Marley? An outstanding member of society?”
    Marley felt a hot, uncomfortable anger at the base of her throat. Instead of replying, she set down her to-go coffee cup and walked away. Nellie called something after her, but Marley didn’t hear it. She kept walking until she reached the Skytrain station, where she headed down the stairs and caught a train to Waterfront. On the SeaBus to North Vancouver, she leaned her warm forehead against the smudged window and listened to the women beside her gossip about someone’s ex.
    When Marley got home, Smith was sitting on the sofa doing nothing. She often caught him like this. Sometimes he would be holding something—his phone, a can of beer, a piece of paper—in his hand stiffly like a prop whose purpose he didn’t understand. He glanced up as she entered the room.
    “Were you at the gym?” he asked, noticing her bag.
    “Self-defense class.” Marley sat on the sofa beside him. Usually she sat in the recliner next to the sofa. Smith seemed surprised that they were sharing the same piece of furniture.
    “Did you learn anything?”
    “Do you think that Vancouver has a soul?” Marley asked, ignoring his question.
    Smith stared at the dark flat screen mounted on the wall., frowning. “What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know,” Marley said. She unrolled and rolled the sleeves of her jacket. She shouldn’t have tried to say something profound. The words sounded fake coming from her mouth. She felt like a wannabe intellectual like the guys back home who smoked weed and debated Marxism in someone’s basement.
    After a silence, Smith said, “If you want to believe it does, then it does.”
    “Yeah, makes sense.”
    “You know, I couldn’t believe it was a girl that hit you,” Smith said, suddenly. “I found this article online, like, saying it wasn’t as uncommon as people think. I mean, for girls to hit other girls.” He looked uncomfortable sharing this information, as if it were taboo or intimate.
    This comforted Marley. She had felt like a perverse outlier. Somehow, she had assigned herself blame for being struck by another woman. Her clothes really must have antagonised the woman, she caught herself thinking once.
    “This came for you in the mail.” Smith handed her a magazine wrapped in plastic.
    Marley took it, blushing, and murmured a thanks. It was a zine called Vancity Looks that had photos of stylish, tall women posing in front of mountains and streams. She’d seen it advertised on Instagram and thought it was a good way to evolve from her “townie” looks.
    In her room, Marley snipped out her favorite photos from the zine and stuck them to the white wall with duct tape. The women looked powerful and unapproachable. Maybe sleeping under them each night would imbue Marley with some sort of spiritual inner strength that she’d yet to foster.
    Nellie called Marley a few times that night. Marley ignored the calls and made a stir fry. She left some for Smith in a pink Tupperware. Then she went into her room and closed the door. She took out a pair of sewing scissors and cut the frayed hems of her favorite jeans. She liked the clean edges, they looked good. Marley tugged on the jeans and sat on the edge of the narrow bed.
    A text from Nellie arrived. It read: you are a very unreasonable young woman.
    Marley found this funny. It made her laugh so hard that she had to wipe some tears away from her cheeks with her palms. When she’d recovered, she deleted Nellie’s number. Then she lay back in her jeans and sports bra and rested her hands on her bare stomach. She looked at the women on the wall and thought, yeah, that’s what they would do, isn’t it? That’s what they would’ve done, too. 
​

Issie Patterson is a writer from Toronto, Canada. Her fiction has been published and is forthcoming in untethered magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, and Rue Scribe. Her reviews have appeared in Vancouver Weekly and PRISM International. Her stage plays have been performed on both coasts of Canada. She recently completed her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She currently lives in Nova Scotia.

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