My Winnipeg, Personified

Earlier this week, on a question-and-answer forum I frequent, a question was made that I liked. But in the flurry of elections and dinners and comings and goings of the week, I never got to answer. I want to do it now, and here, on my own e-turf — and invite others to answer with me, on their turf or mine.

If your city, state or province was a person, what would it be like?

My Winnipeg is an old man in a moth-bitten buffalo coat.

He got it from his father, who used to be a police officer here before the streetcars went to rust. It was balled up in the attic, stuffed in a pair of tattered Eaton’s bags and crushed beneath a box which held his mother’s set of silver. The forks and serving spoons were black with tarnish; he made his daughter take them to the pawn shop. She never came back with any money: he hopes she just took them home, but never thinks to ask.

But the coat, the coat he kept and wore.

On Monday nights when the wind is cool, he pulls it around his slumped and slender frame, adjusts the pins holding the sleeve to the shoulder, and sits out on his balcony. It’s only on the second floor, no great view: from here, he can see the parking lot. From the parking lot he can see Main Street. From Main Street he can see the tops of withered trees, a panoply of browns and beyond that, the blinking light atop the whatchamacallit. The big one. Richardson building.

There’s a pile of kindling in the barbeque. He touches it with a flame: the smoke only billows for a minute. But a minute is enough.

They met on the shore of Lake Winnipeg while the bonfire blazed. She was wearing polyester pants, yellow, nipped below her ribs where a white blouse tumbled forth. She had a checkered kerchief around her hair and a sunburn on her nose. He tried three times to pronounce her name. Baw-danna? She covered her mouth when she giggled. “Just call me Danna.”

For their first daughter: Oksana.

For their second: Jennifer.

“It’s just easier,” Danna said, and rolled her eyes. It should have been a sign. “None of her beaus will have to try three times to get it right.”

One of them (Jennifer?) has his mother’s set of silver now. It worries him that he can’t remember which. Maybe he should ask, he thinks, but he knows he will forget. (No, it was Oksana… sure it was Oksana.)

No matter: the nights are getting cold. He slips a hand into his buffalo coat. There’s a new hole in the lining, one his mother would have sewn. He fingers it while the howl of a motorcycle crescendos up the street. If there’s a pulse in this city, he thinks, it’s made by internal combustion and moving parts. Where did they put those streetcars? Did they lose them all to rust?

Goddamnit, he mumbles. That’s why I voted for Juba.

The kindling’s gone to ash and the fire flickers out, leaving shadow to veil his face from the kids making out in the busted-up Honda below. His pocket twitches, beeps the tune of The Mary Ellen Carter. Crooked fingers fumble to pull the phone to his ear. Jennifer? Could be Jennifer. Definitely not Oksana. 

“Hello,” he says, throat clenched from the chill. “Fine, fine. Before I forget…”