Everybody Knows by Jaclyn Port
In “Everybody Knows,” Jaclyn Port immerses the reader in the misadventures of neighborhood children set in a climate dystopian landscape through the less commonly used plural first person point of view. Though the children face fraught circumstances—food scarcity, an overcrowded house, an unsafe park, and internal conflicts among the adults—the reader is somewhat insulated from this world’s realities, because we are witnessing events from a child’s collective and escapade-seeking perspective, where trash is considered “potential treasures.” The collective we also conveys the voice and character of the children—even as they try to establish their individuality—through their fast-paced, run-on thoughts, only slowing down when the children enunciate multi-syllabic words they do not comprehend, like “am-bi-guo-us.”
At the same time, we’re reminded of how much weight children apply to the words spoken by adults. Port uses capital letters to reflect when the adults are speaking or when the children are quoting the adults. As Port notes, “I navigate voice in my stories with both intention and instinct…there are many choices that build up how these kids sound: the deconstruction of words they don’t know as they sound them out, the use of capitalization when they parrot what the adults say to them, and the meandering way they move from thought to thought.” The capitalization also serves to convey topics the children are too naive to comprehend, which allows the reader to appreciate the story from both the children’s and the adults’ point of view.
And yet, the children don’t always abide by the warnings from the adults—they question and test them. In doing so, they discover possibilities in this perilous world that the adults might well heed from the children. Throughout this story, Port’s adept application of point of view, voice, and capitalization takes this fine piece and elevates it to ex-traor-di-nary. —CRAFT
It’s summer and everybody knows that’s the best time for an adventure. We have to have an adventure because we are In Everyone’s Hair and There Are Too Many Damn Kids In This Damn House and It’s A Lovely February Day So Why Don’t You Enjoy It Before The Weather Gets Hot, and these are things all the adults agree on so they must be true.
We’re lucky. There are lots of other kids in this neighbourhood for us to have adventures with. There is us and we live in this house and that house and that house over there. There are the squatters and they live in the con-demned houses. We ask Dad what con-demned means and he says The Government Lies About The Houses Being Unsafe To Create Artificial Scarcity And Force Rent Up and Mom says Don’t Go In Those Houses You’ll Fall Through The Floor and Dad says Jackie They’re Not Going To Fall Through The Floor and then they fight. The squatters don’t hang out with us, though, because their parents said our parents would report them but that’s not true because they would need to agree on it first. But we wouldn’t hang out with the squatters anyways because they’re boring because they don’t go to school so they don’t know anything. Also, they’re mean to us.
Then there are the crispers, who are from the CRSP families which is the Climate Refugee Settlement Program. Dad says We Were Right To Take Them In Because The Developed World Was Responsible For Most Of The Historical Carbon Emissions and Mom says If We Didn’t Let Them In We Wouldn’t Be Living Twenty-One In A House and then they fight.
But twenty-one isn’t so bad because it’s a really big house. Dad says it used to be a single-family house, which is a lot of space for just a few people. Dad says it was the Result Of Misguided Urban Planning That Created A Dependency On Cars, though we don’t have a car so it must not have worked. The only thing we don’t like about the house is we are the only kids, except for Mrs. Smith’s baby, who is new and cries all the time and Mrs. Smith cries a lot now too. Mom says she is Having Problems Feeding The Baby. And there is Mykaela and Joshua, who the other adults call kids, maybe because they don’t work but they also don’t go to school—all they do is lock themselves in the basement and swear and giggle, and we can’t tell if they are brother and sister or boyfriend and girlfriend but when we asked, Mykaela told us to Fuck Off and threw a shoe at us, which is also what she told us when we invited her on the adventure, which is fine because it would just be more people sharing the bicycle and we were just being nice because Mom says we should Be Nice To Them and They Have A Lot Going On.
Everybody knows the best place for an adventure is the park. We know Don’t Go To The Park It Is Full Of Hypodermic Needles That Will Pump You Full Of Monkeypox so we say we’re going to the library, which they would know was a lie if they ever went themselves because it’s been closed for six months. The park is called Fish Creek, though there aren’t fish anymore or even a creek, and Mom says there were deer there when she was a kid but they aren’t there now, but there is the ravine, which we never go in because it’s too hard to climb, and still lots of trees and trash or, as we like to call it, potential treasures.
We keep our best finds in our fort which is made from our first best finds: a big plastic tarp and paint buckets for stools and a big world map which Kadidia says is old because it doesn’t show South Sudan but still helps us impress Miss with all the countries we know.
Today the park is guarded by dogs digging in the fresh trash. We talk on what to do, because everybody knows if you look a stray dog in the eye, it’ll chase you, and if you run past a stray dog, it’ll chase you, so we walk past really slow with our eyes on the dirt and only breathe once we can’t see them any more.
The trees are brown and the grass is brown and the ravine is brown but the trash, the trash is like colourful flowers, so we rush right to the freshest pile to see who can find the most beautiful thing. Khadafi finds high-heel shoes with red bottoms he can almost walk in and Kallie finds a mannequin lying on its back with its leg all twisted under it, but Kaden wins, he finds a big piece of poster paper, no tears and only one water stain in the corner, ce-ru-le-an blue like the sky, and a pack of markers that we test on our arms and three work, including a dark blue one. Khris says blue-on-blue would be stupid, it wouldn’t show up, but Kallie says blue and blue is the ocean and sky, Miss showed us that in class, and we like that, and Kady says blue on blue could be for secret messages that we need to keep secret, and we like that even more. We just need to decide on a secret. It is hard to decide on our most important secret and we discuss this until almost sunset and we worry we’ll miss dinner again.
And then Khadafi says we didn’t even decide what language to write in and Khris says This Is Canada and We Speak English Here, which isn’t exactly true because a few of the crispers speak Bambara with each other and Kyint-Kyint doesn’t speak anything any of us know, she just watches us talk like she’s watching a tennis match, but she understands if you show her. And Kadidia says if we wrote in Bambara, our messages would be extra secret, but that wouldn’t work because we wouldn’t be able to read them either, but that also isn’t exactly true because a few of us could. And then Kanyon says that Truths Cannot Be Communicated In Words Only Our Original Primal Voices and then he screams, and we aren’t sure what that means but Kanyon’s mom is a bit funny in the head and Kanyon says my mom isn’t funny, her jokes are terrible, and Kaden nearly tells him what else funny means but we shush him. And Kadidia started crying when Kanyon screamed and Khadafi is speaking to her with words we don’t know and we just ignore them—she’s fine, she just scares easily.
And then we see the blue marker is sitting with the cap off and drying out and no one remembers who was the last to use it, but everybody knows you should always put the cap back on, which isn’t exactly true because clearly someone doesn’t. And Khris says maybe it was Kyint-Kyint because she doesn’t know anything, which isn’t exactly true, she probably knows lots of things, she just can’t tell us, which also isn’t exactly true because she is the first to notice the rain clouds and she tells us by pointing. So we wrap the poster and markers in as much plastic as we can find, which is a lot, and hide it in the fort and go home.
The next day is school, which is hard to sit through when you have the taste of a fresh adventure in your mouth, but it means we can ask Miss what we should write on the paper. We argue about how to ask it, like what is the best secret or the biggest truth, but we eventually settle on, if you could only write one thing down what would it be. Miss says The Most Important Book Is The Bible It Would Be The First Thing I Would Save, and we ask her what is in it, and she says The Government Says I Am Not Allowed To Talk About It With You, and we decide that means it is a really important secret, so we beg her, and she says It Is Full of Advice On How Humans Should Treat Their Fellow Humans And That’s All I Can Say. We thank her and each of us takes a blue pen, even though All Stationary Must Stay In The Classroom, and Miss sees us and doesn’t say anything. And we go home because Miss teaches us in the morning and the big kids in the afternoon, but sometimes we tell our parents that Miss wanted a full day with us so we don’t have to do an ex-plan-a-tion.
When we get home Mrs. Smith is crying and the baby is crying and Mr. Singh is yelling for Just Five Minutes Of Silence In This Damn House That’s All I Want. The baby does cry a lot and we really wish it could talk because screaming is no good for saying anything. Mom and Dad are in our room, and Dad says Maybe She Should Have Had An Abortion and Mom says Don’t Say That, and Dad says Maybe You Should Have Had An Abortion or Two and Mom says Fuck You Gregory, and we ask what an a-bor-tion is and Dad asks How Long Have You Kids Been Standing There. We ask if they could write down only one thing, what would it be, and Mom says That Your Mother Loves You Very Much and Dad leaves the room. He must need more time to think.
Joshua and Mr. Singh are in the kitchen and Joshua is lighting a cigarette on the stove and Mr. Singh says Don’t Waste Gas and Where Did You Get The Money For That What About Paying Your Rent and Joshua blows smoke in his face and Mr. Singh says Don’t Smoke That In Front Of The Kids and Joshua says It’s Just As Legal As Your Whiskey and Mykaela comes in and says Where Did You Get The Money For That What About Our Tickets and Joshua says Don’t Worry About It Babe and then they fight. And Mr. Singh says Why Don’t You Kids Go Play Outside.
So we go to the park to dig in the trash.
When we get there, we see the squatters digging, so we say hey, which could be hey like hello and could be hey like hey-go-away-this-is-our-trash-pile—hey is am-bi-guo-us and that’s why we like it. And the squatters won’t know the difference anyways. So we say hey and they look at us and we look at them, and then they run, but we don’t because we see the dogs are there as well and we don’t want to get chased. So the squatters get to our fort before us.
Everybody knows that Sharing Is Caring and Sharing Is How We Make Our World A Bigger Place, but we get awful tired of sharing all the time, which is why we have the fort. It’s ours.
So we tell them to please leave our fort, with our best manners, and they say that they wanna trade, so we decide to listen to what they have to say, because on the one hand we don’t like the squatters, but on the other hand we want to see what they found. They found four soggy books and a doll and clothes, so many clothes, so we say we want the doll, so they say they want the tarp, and we say not the tarp, so they say they want the map, and we say not the map, so they say we want the blue paper, and we say not the blue paper, and they say this is stupid, and we say you’re stupid. And they throw the doll at us and run away.
And the doll is on the ground with its legs all twisted weird, so we leave it there. We didn’t really want it anyways.
The school is closed because the teachers haven’t been paid in six months because the bailout package wasn’t voted on because the government pro-rogued again.
We ask Mr. Singh what pro-rogued means and he says It’s A More Efficient Way Of Accomplishing Nothing, and we ask Mom and she says It’s Like When Your Father Walks Out Of The Room To Avoid Answering A Question. And then Dad walks into the room and asks what we are talking about and Mom laughs. We haven’t heard her laugh in so long.
Because we can’t go to school, we can go to the House Meeting On A Motion To Evict Joshua And Mykaela For Not Pulling Their Weight Around Here, except Mykaela isn’t even here to defend herself, and Joshua says We Have Less Weight To Pull We Aren’t The Ones Squeezing Out More Offspring and Mr. Singh says In My Day We’d Have That Cheek Beaten Out Of Us and Joshua says Ooh Kinky and Mr. Singh says Insolent Brat and Joshua says Cranky Old Perv, and there are at least three words we don’t know but we stay quiet because This Was Not The Time To Ask.
And then Mykaela comes in and asks What’s This All About and Mr. Singh says You’re Evicted and Mom says We Haven’t Voted Yet and They Just Need Time To Get Back On Their Feet, and Mykaela says It’s Fine I Have The Tickets To Yellowknife, and Joshua says Where Did You Get The Money For That, and Mykaela says Don’t Worry About It Babe, and we ask if we also get to vote, and the answer is No.
And then Mrs. Smith comes in and she looks really pale and we realize we haven’t heard the baby all morning and that must mean it’s feeling better and Mom rushes into Mrs. Smith’s room and it seems like we aren’t going to vote at all anymore and Why Don’t You Kids Go Play Outside so we do.
It is really windy today, so we can play some of the best games like all of us line-up ae-ro-dy-na-mic and pretend we’re flying, or making your hair stick out and pretend you styled it like that, or making your coat stick out like wings and pretend you’re flying because if something is big and flat the air can push on it and make it fly like Miss taught us with paper airplanes. Though the crispers get a bit scaredy when it gets this windy. We think it’s funny that they scare so easily.
And then Kaden thinks that maybe the best thing to write on the paper would be something everyone already knows but needs reminding of, so they’d believe us when they read it and be happy to read it, and we like that so we go to the park to get our blue paper.
We see the squatters on the way, near the ravine, and we look at them and they look at us and we don’t say hey this time. Our fort is all a mess from the wind too. The tarp is half off and a bucket tipped over and the map is a little ripped so we need to find tape or something in the trash and the blue paper is missing.
It must be the squatters and that’s why they didn’t say hey, so we go find them and we say hey but it’s the third kind of hey, and we say you took it, and they say no we didn’t and took what and the wind blew it into the ravine, which was a pretty sus-pi-cious answer. So we say you’re lying, and they say no it’s true because the paper is big and flat and the air can push on it and make it fly.
So we run over to the ravine and we look and we look and we find it and it doesn’t look far down but we can’t see how to get down. Khadafi says I’ll get it, I don’t scare easily, and we say it’s okay to be scared and we’d be scared and we don’t think it’s a good idea but he goes and he climbs down and—
He falls and he’s on his back with his leg all twisted under him.
Did you know that if a person falls into a ravine, they don’t even make a sound? That even if their mouth opens in the shape of words, none will come out, like a TV on mute? Until they realize the pain they’re in, and the way their leg is bent beneath them? We always thought we would scream. It’s the best way we have of saying anything.
We know we don’t know much, we’re told it all the time, but one thing we know for sure is not to climb down into the ravine and to Ask An Adult For Help so we go back to the house.
Mrs. Smith Lost The Baby and we didn’t understand because they were all just sitting there instead of looking and it couldn’t even walk. Not like when we get lost. And we wanted to ask, but it really seemed like This Was Still Not The Time To Ask, but we find Dad on the porch and he’s smoking a cigarette and if we weren’t so scared we would ask Where Did You Get The Money For That like you’re supposed to, but instead we say that Khadafi fell into the ravine and he doesn’t even look at us, he just says You Kids Aren’t As Good Liars As You Think You Are It’s Just Easier For Us To Believe You Than To Raise You Right, and we say no it’s true and he says Khadafi and we say yeah and he says Not My Kid and smokes the cigarette and says Not My Kid Not My Problem.
We find Mykaela and Joshua outside and they’re sitting on the curb and they have bottles around their feet and we say we need help and Mykaela says What’s That Lassie Did Timmy Fall Down Into The Well, and only Kallie has the courage to say no the ravine. Mykaela and Joshua laugh and Mikaela looks over and says Oh You’re Serious and she stands up and wobbles and touches the lamppost and Joshua still laughs and then he sees Mikaela standing and says Oh You’re Serious and she says Yup and he says I’m Not Going and she says Yup and he says What’s That Supposed To Mean but then we start pulling Mykaela’s hand because we don’t know how someone so much taller than us can move so slowly.
Then we go to the park, and Mykaela says You’re Not Supposed To Go To The Park and we say we only went today, and we run past the dogs who do chase us, we were right, but they don’t chase us all the way. Then Mykaela throws up in the bushes and we know throwing up too well, so we rub her back and say there there and she cries and says You Kids Are So Nice. Kaden nearly tells her that’s because Mom makes us be nice to her but we shush him.
At the ravine the squatters are still there and we ask them why and they say so he doesn’t get lonely and he’s in pain and they found rope in the trash last week and they’ll give it to us no trade. And Kyint-Kyint helps us tie a knot around a good tree and shows Mykaela how to knot the rope around her butt like a diaper and how to climb down like she’s walking on the side of the ravine. And Mykaela climbs down like she’s walking and only slips a bit and picks up Khadafi and he cries and he’s scared and we understand—we know feeling scared too well.
Mykaela can’t climb up the rope and hold Khadafi at the same time, so she holds the rope and we grab it and we pull and the crispers grab the rope and they pull and the squatters grab it and they pull, and Kanyon screams and we all scream and we pull and we scream.
Because everybody knows if we all pull in the same direction, everything will turn out fine.
JACLYN PORT is a Canadian writer currently living and teaching in China. She enjoys reading, hikes and long walks, and making her own writing notebooks. She has work previously published in The Downtime Review, Corvid Queen, and January House.
Featured image by Liz Weddon, courtesy of Unsplash.
