Every time I went through a breakup, or had a crazy screw-the-world feminist/activist/anarchist spell, or when my roots got bad, my split ends got crunchy, and my bangs got straggly but I was too broke to get my hair done properly, I’d boldly proclaim, “That’s it, I’m shaving my head!” Even just a few months ago, I stood in front of the mirror, ponytail in hand and scissors poised. But I always backed off, because head shaving was for women with nothing to actually lose. “One of these days,” I’d say, “when I’m older. Wiser. Braver.” Put it on the Fuck It Bucket List.

“I have cordless clippers in the car,” Char says.

“I don’t want to know why.”

“Right you don’t. But if it makes ya feel better, I clean them really, really good.”

She plucks her nipple from the sleeping babe’s mouth and stuffs the boob back into her sarong. With one hand, she unravels the zebra scarf from her head, sending a mess of Javexed dreadlocks splashing down her back, and deftly fashions it into a snug-fitting sling. She tucks the baby inside, and tells me the real story of her four-month-old son.

His name is Daktari Christ MacIsaac. His father was the twenty-year-old Congolese diamond smuggler. When he found out she was pregnant, he smacked her around a bit. But nobody smacks Char MacIsaac around and gets away with it. They found his body in a dumpster in Kinshasa. Of course, the guy was a serious criminal in an extraordinarily high-stakes, cutthroat, throat-cutting underground industry. He had enemies and rivals and friends ready to kill him at the drop of a hat. So, in all probability, Char had nothing to do with the fact that this dude wound up in a pile of napkins, goat scraps, and rotten cassava mush out behind the Sultani Hotel. Without a mark on his body. Poisoned, it seems.

By the time they found him, Char was in Halifax, where she gave birth to sweet little brown-skinned, orange-haired Daktari Christ MacIsaac before meandering back home to Cape Breton to live with her folks. Wasn’t long before they kicked her out, for reasons Char claims not to know, and now she’s renting a room in her mother’s ex-best friend’s basement, and borrowing her mother’s ex-best friend’s prized divorce-settlement car — that ex-best friend being Peggy.

Char MacIsaac has always been a blurrer of lines. Daring or dangerous? Intrepid or insane? Fact or fiction? I still can’t tell. It is part of her crazy charm. I never bother to dig too deep for the truth with her. It’s more fun to do a little vicarious living through her wild, worldly stories while still feeling like I’ve got my shit together. Even though my shit is clearly falling apart now, and even though her wild, worldly stories seem more made up by the minute.

“Anyway. Nobody smacks me around and gets away with it.” She flips off her monstrous sunglasses and winks an exaggerated wink with her makeup-laden eye. “Hey, got any good food? Havin’ this little parasite on my tit does a number on my apple-tite.”