TOURISTS STROLL A VICTORIA WATERWAY
Reena Virk (March 10, 1983–November 14, 1997) was a bullied murder victim. Swarmed by girls and one boy, she was drowned under the Craigflower Bridge at the end of the Gorge waterway in Victoria, British Columbia. 1. The double–decker. The preserved, random address book: Tiffany, Jasmine, Jill, Crystal, Kelly, Warren. Clouds the colour of tea, afternoon, the Inner harbour. Journal and English schoolgirl Nivea cream in her backpack. She was finding her voice like the social worker said. She hadn’t written a word. Was found inscribed on Portage Inlet, Craigflower Bridge, the last overpass before the cigarette stubbed into her forehead. Call it Bindi, her mother said, but black. There were Greyhound busses rolling past the Empress, girls gliding through the school halls on platform heels, saying, No you’re not. 2. Great grandfather Pallan worked the rock quarry that became Butchart Gardens. Limestone dust in the seams of leather satchel, in laces and notebook, a fine powder whitening his lips and lashes. In Punjabi Reena means mirror. Like her social worker said, her voice in her backpack. Now sealed in a box in a vault in a cellar at the courthouse on Burdett, also Samantha’s yearbook, Hannah’s perfume: Polo Sport by Ralph Lauren. Empty bottle, broken youth shelter, bus shelter, detention centre, group home, Kiwanis. Seven Oaks’ ward of the state on her way to a party. The party. I’m here to fight. A girl. Her name starts with an R or, like, an S. 3. Waiting hours in the candy aisle at Mac’s, and nobody. Blue nails on the rotary dial in the phone booth, ring around a boy, girls. Ten, twenty calls a day, trying to fit in. Gangsta rap, Ice–T’s Just Watch What You Say while we all fall like the sky that November night, down, the Russian satellite in fireballs. The exploding rocket ricocheting earth’s atmosphere five, six times. Swarming in parallel procession. On the wet fields of Shoreline high school, girls pointed up, screaming, a glut of calls to CFAX 1070. Horse–drawn carriages along the Gorge under the shattered sky. Inarticulate sleeves pulled over her hands, the dive team searching, sifting through the murk, Careful. 4. CRIPS scrawled on her indelible wrist. Fourteen–year–old blank looks, cool disgust and pity and hatred with its sidekick Exhaust jeans, Mossimo sweatshirt. Made to pay. Every time we kicked, she puked blood. Her body’s address book of schoolgirls shuffling in the hallway outside courtroom 402. Then it was over and her wrist, phoning, phoning, phoning. 5. Times–Colonist free swimming lessons in the protected Gorge inlet within biking distance, Mount Doug, Mount Tolmie. Veering toward desperate; a big, dark let–me–in girl making up stories, clinging to eel grass. Which girl had parents? What happened happened to lips, head, eyes, wrist, twisted fist, taunts and jeers. The communal inseparable from the child, the arms’ down, the dark white–capped mountains in the distance. Kayakers paddle through Victoria and Saanich before reaching Portage Inlet. Last pass. Craigflower Bridge; the little fires along its banks. |