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Year One
Moorhead
Just after the trees and the lakes and the hills fall away, when the landscape flattens and stretches on forever, there, up ahead, is Moorhead. It’s gray and plain in the distance. We don’t need to turn off or exit for it. We need only keep going straight and reduce speed, and the road brings us in. Gas stations, stores, and a Perkins restaurant pop up around us. Down that street is Moorhead State University, where Scott goes, but he’ll show me that another time. First, he wants to show me his apartment.
The building is eight blocks from campus, next to the railroad tracks. It’s plain beige, three stories tall. A plain beige rectangle box. Scott leads the way down the hallway. It smells a bit like garbage and the carpet is stained. His apartment is halfway down on the left. Our apartment, I should say. Scott unlocks the door and steps aside, letting me go first. There’s brown carpet covering the floor and the walls are painted white.
“I wish the place was a little nicer,” he says.
“It’s fine.” I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen worse. It’s only temporary, anyway. We’ll only be here for nine months.
That night, I lie in bed and listen to the sounds of the place. The floor squeaks above us, the pipes tap in the wall by our heads when the neighbours flush their toilets, and cars drive by every few seconds on the street outside our bedroom window. There’s a blanket tacked over the window to keep the light out, but it can’t block the sounds from coming in. It'll be alright, though. I'm used to unfamiliar surroundings. I take a deep breath and let sleep come.
Suddenly, the walls are shaking. I sit straight up in bed. “What’s that?” I call out.
“Just the freight train,” Scott says. “It comes every night.”
The train horn sounds, and it’s like someone’s blowing a whistle in my ear. “It does that every night?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Get used to it?” My words hang in the air and fade away with the passing train. I don’t want to get used to it. I’m not here to teach myself to tolerate and put up with stuff and get used to things. I’m here to…what? Experience. Love. Be with Scott.
And what else? What am I going to do here? In a few hours Scott will be getting up and heading off to school, and after that he’ll be going to work at his part-time job at a motel nearby. What will I do? Nothing. Fact is, I don’t have anything to do. I won’t be able to enroll in classes, get a job, or even get a driver’s license until the immigration paperwork goes through, which will be months. Until then, I’m just waiting. Watching Scott do his thing, waiting for us to start doing our thing.
Thoughts of Salt Spring flash through my mind. Friends gathered around the fire pit in Sophie’s back yard. Sitting on the ledge, watching the ferry roll past. Selling bracelets in the park. Walking. Drinking lattes in the coffee shop.
An eternity later, light starts to bleed through the sides of the blanket hanging over the window. Then, the alarm goes off and the new day begins. When Scott leaves for class, I head out on foot to explore the neighbourhood. I can't go to school, I can't get a job, and I can't drive, but I can walk. I can walk as long and far as I want.
I zip up my jacket, pull my floppy hat down to cover my ears, and head to the right. Beside our building is another one just like it. In the next block there are two more, darker brown, and then two beige ones, like ours. In the fourth block the street narrows and some houses are intermingled with apartment buildings. Chain-link fenced yards hold barking dogs, and flags dangle from porches and mailboxes. Block after block of this, and still no sidewalk, I turn around and retrace my steps.
The next day, I try another direction. No sidewalk this way, either. Three blocks ahead there’s an intersection with no walk sign or cross walk, and I get honked at when I try to dart across. It’s not made for pedestrians. After a few more blocks of nothing but the same, I give up and go back.
A couple weeks later it’s too cold to walk anyway. Fall in Moorhead is like the short winter on Salt Spring, cold and wet. Freezing rain batters the windows, driven by the howling winds. Dead leaves blow against the building and lie in soggy clumps. All the trees are bare, and in the morning everything is covered with frost. By the end of October, the wide, flat landscape is white with ice and snow, and I’m struck by the total and utter lack of color.
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