Monkey Beach

The family is cleaning and smoking fish. Lisa and Ma-ma-oo go off into the woods in search of a plant called oxasuli. Ma-ma-oo tells Lisa that oxasuli can “kill you […]. You have to respect it” (151). She says it will keep ghosts away, takes some home, and smudges the house with it. Ma-ma-oo gives a cedar tree some tobacco when she takes some of its branches, saying the gift is for the tree spirits. She tells Lisa that one of the tree spirits was “a little man with red hair,” which shakes Lisa, who recalls her dreams of the little man. She asks Ma-ma-oo what it means to see the little man. Ma-ma-oo tells Lisa that seeing him means “you have the gift, just like your mother. Didn’t she tell you about it?” (153). She explains that the maternal side of Lisa’s family has strong spiritual connections to the spirits. Ma-ma-oo tells Lisa that her great-grandmother was a medicine woman but warns her about dealing with medicine without proper knowledge.

In the present time, Lisa sees a raven from the boat, which causes her to remember Ma-ma-oo’s stories about a shape-shifting trickster raven named Weegit. She then flashes back to the period of her youth after Mick’s funeral and Tab’s departure from Kitamaat. Frank transfers to Lisa’s school and torments her, and Lisa feels depressed. One night while Al is out watching hockey, Jimmy grabs their father’s car keys and asks Lisa to go for a ride with him. They take the car and ride to town, having fun until the cops stop them and escort them home. Lisa’s parents only yell at her, never thinking that the joy ride was Jimmy’s idea.

In the present time, still in the boat, Lisa remembers picking berries with Ma-ma-oo. There are numerous types of blueberries named in the Haisla language, and Lisa reflects on this diversity. She then sees a flock of crows and then a flock of sea gulls. This prompts her to think about the different names for groups of the different birds: a murder of crows and a squabble of gulls. She then gets lost in reverie about the anatomy of the heart and lungs.

Lisa flashes back to memories of school. Frank continues to torment her, and her grades suffer, but Jimmy is placed on the honor roll. Lisa finds school irrelevant and instead finds refuge in music. One day, when Jimmy’s popular friends come over, she hides in his closet, embarrassing him by leaping out of it wearing a monkey mask. Another day, Lisa and Frank fight after Frank puts a dead frog in her desk. She sits with Erica at lunch but finds the table’s talk about boys and clothes dull. When the other girls make fun of Lisa, Lisa and Erica fight. Erica ends up crying, and Lisa does not feel good about upsetting her cousin. Lisa becomes extremely unpopular after the incident.

One day, Lisa and Ma-ma-oo take a cake Ma-ma-oo made and feed it to a fire they built at the graveyard. The two talk about the dead and communicating with them. Ma-ma-oo sings a song with lines like “[f]ood is dust in my mouth without you” (174). She tells Lisa that she cut her hair in mourning after Ba-ba-oo died. Lisa then goes home and hacks off her own hair in mourning for Mick. Lisa then burns her hair as a symbol of release.

At school, Erica’s friend Lou Ann says she will beat Lisa up, but Lisa punches her first. To Lisa’s surprise, Frank befriends her afterward. She becomes a part of Frank’s gang, realizing she had previously had an “unspoken rule” against playing with boys. While slightly wistful about being rejected by the girls, Lisa finds companionship among the boys.