Girl in Shades (13 page)

Our silence continues for most of a week. My father is the one to break it, although I already know what he's going to say because I've been listening to him plan it in his head.

We are in the kitchen. I'm scrubbing a plate, but not like I really mean to get it clean. I'm just trying to focus on something else while he makes his after-dinner coffee.

“I would like Connie to live here with us.”

I don't say anything, still.

“I know it seems sudden, but I guess you are old enough to know that we are in a relationship with each other now. It's gotten serious, and well, I think we need to make the next step.”

I can hardly hear what my father is saying on account of his jumbled up thoughts pounding out from his head to mine.
God, I'm such a wimp, fucking loser, tell her, don't ask her
. I have to close my eyes just to hear his actual words.

“What about Mother?” I answer finally. He looks confused, as if to say,
She's dead remember
? “So you can't even mourn her death for a year before getting some other woman?”

“Maya . . .” He looks like he is thinking about how to answer. His mind is silent and there is red light weaving its way around his head and across his heart. “You know I cared for your mother.” Hair has fallen onto his forehead, and he's continually brushing it away with his fingertips — like a woman would.

“You have some way of showing it, really.”

“This has nothing to do with your mother.”

He leaves to go upstairs before I can tell him again that there is no way I will let that bitch live in our house. He leaves a trail of yellow behind him that cascades down his back and brushes the floor before disappearing.

The next evening she is there. Connie. Sitting at our dinner table with her sinister raven hair, her perked up boobs, and her bangs teased towards the ceiling. She holds her cutlery like she's trying to show off her manicured nails. My father has cooked dinner — fish and peas and French fries browned in the oven. I eat, but I am not saying anything about it — or anything at all.

“So, how was school today, Maya?” my father asks me, like there is no strange woman sitting at our table mashing up tiny vegetables with pinched lips.

I only glare at him as my answer.

Then from inside Connie:
God and Jesus this is uncomfortable. This food tastes terrible.

“Did you learn anything new or whatever?” my father asks in a final attempt. I decide it's time to talk.

“Why don't you just tell him you don't like the food?” I say. Connie looks horrified, her penciled eyebrows up near her hairline. “You can totally tell anyway by the way you're eating it.”

“You don't like it, honey?” (My father to Connie.)

“Steven, she's just making trouble is all. It's wonderful.” She slowly lowers her cleavage onto the table (gross) and strokes my father's arm with her long red nails. He seems satisfied.

When Father is getting the vanilla ice cream, Connie turns to glare at me.
Just like her lunatic mother
, she thinks.

Screw you
, I mouth to her and leave the table.

Connie does not come back for another dinner. Instead, my father starts spending most of the evenings at her apartment downtown. He sends a babysitter over for the first little while — this teenage girl named Katie, who talks constantly about her boyfriend, Dan, and how he's going to join the military next September. Katie stays from after school to bedtime. We eat dinner together. Eventually, I get bored of her and one day tell her that my father has changed his mind — that he doesn't want her to come anymore. She agrees without much convincing, takes the money he's left on the dining room table, and leaves early.

I start coming home to an empty house. I eat alone. Father usually gets home when I'm in bed, but I always turn over towards the wall when he peeks into my room. I can hear him thinking — he doesn't like what he's doing, but he's doing it anyway. I keep the money he's left for Katie in a secret spot under my mattress.

By spring, Father has realized that Katie isn't coming anymore (she called him once to see if he wanted her help again), but he still starts staying overnight at Connie's most nights. He checks in every few days, for new clothes and to grab the bills and such. If I'm watching TV, he will sit with me while I ignore him. If I'm not home, or in my room with the door shut, he will leave money on the table. Once he even left a note: “You'll be thirteen soon, which is probably old enough to stay by yourself sometimes. Call me at work if you need anything.”

I don't call, but I'm starting to need him again. I sometimes wish I could forget it all, forgive him for dishonouring a woman who needed him so much . . . who almost had a new baby girl for him. I wish I could forgive that. Forgive him for moving on with such a tramp.

It's lonely at home when it's empty. I am hearing my mother's moans through this house — they are stuck in the walls. And her complaints and criticisms are hanging down from the ceiling, smothering me while I sleep. I wonder — do angry people go to heaven?

I hear my father in the night too — his voice clouds my dreams. He's confused and worried — manic almost — and he's going over everything many times, wondering how to make things good between us. He has started to love Connie.

I've been turning Corey Hart up really loud while I try to sleep, to drown everything out.

When I go out
I can see the world from inside
Without a doubt
I can shake my head and scream and shout
Because I can't take it no more
I can't stand it no more

Who's laughin' at me?

Through the night

But even Corey Hart and his deep lyrics aren't helping.

I turn thirteen alone. No cake. No candles. Chauncey and Heather are both at summer camp near Lake Blackstrap. I use twenty-five cents to buy a Twinkie from the corner store and suck the cream out slowly before I eat the rest of it. On this day, a Tuesday, sunny sky, small wisps of clouds, no wind, something arrives in the mailbox. It's a birthday card from my Grandma and Grandpa Devine in PEI. There is a flower on the front, with a butterfly, and a little blond girl who looks about four or something. She's wearing a white bonnet and she's smiling. I open it up and the bills fall out onto the ground . . .
To a wonderful Granddaughter. Happy Birthday
. And in my grandmother's shaky handwriting on the inside flap:

Maya, we wanted to wish you a happy day. You must be missing your mother terribly. We are thinking about you, and though we couldn't be at the funeral (on account of your grandfather's heart), we were there in spirit. I hope you and your dad are doing well. I've been trying to call but no one is picking up. Please tell your dad to call me soon . . . I'm getting a tad bit worried. May you receive all the blessings of the world on this beautiful day.

Grandma and Grandpa Devine

It's been so long since I even saw my father's parents, I don't even know if I would recognize them. Why don't they come get me instead of sending money?

I take the bus to McDonald's and order a McChicken, fries, and a large Coke. I stuff ketchup and salt packages in my pocket when I leave to stock up at home. And I buy groceries: TV dinners, canned beans, hotdog wieners, Kraft Dinner, a tub of margarine, spaghetti, chocolate spread, a package of pencil crayons, birthday candles, candy pink nail polish, apples.

For the rest of the summer, I watch television mostly:
Donahue
,
Diff'rent Strokes
,
Facts of Life
,
Gimme a Break!
and
Family Ties
. I watch these shows over and over, around and around. I watch television until my eyes start to hurt and my head starts to pound. Until the static starts to eat me.

One of the nights at 2 a.m., I go to the bathroom to get an Aspirin, except I forget to turn on the light and just stare into the blackness of my reflection, wondering if it's true what they say: that if I turn around three times saying “Bloody Mary” I will see the horrible and bloody face of an old hag. Isn't that how it goes? Instead, as my eyes adjust, I begin to see my own face, round and small in the tall mirror, with my long, dark hair now falling down to past my shoulders. And soon, a rainbow of brilliant purple-blue light fans out around my head, fluttering like it's protecting me, guiding me. I feel warm all over, and safe, safe like I haven't felt at all since Father started staying at Connie's. Since Mother died. I am safe here inside this brilliant light. It is all that I am, and it's enough.

I wake up in the morning on the bathroom floor — the only light is coming in through the window, from that thing called the sun.

On September 1st, one week before school is supposed to start again, someone knocks on my front door. I am cleaning the toilet with yellow gloves that stretch on and a pail of sudsy water. I peel off the gloves, throw them into the bathtub and go to the door.

It's Jackie knocking.

“What are you doing here?” I say to her. I haven't seen her since school ended.

“I heard a rumour that your father's car is never here anymore, so I wanted to see if it's true that you're living alone.” She wears white shorts that are way too high on her thighs. Her knees are scratched up.

“Of course I don't live here alone.”

“I'll call the police.”

“I told you. I'm not.”

“Let me see then.”

“See what?”

“The inside of the house.” We are staring directly into each other's eyes. She is pinching hers so they are almost shut.

“Let's see inside.” A new voice has come up behind her. Vanessa Wychuck. And beside her, Sherry Riptella. Two more sets of small tight shorts. She's brought her gang.

“Screw off, I'm not letting you in here,” I tell them. For a moment I think I hear Elijah's voice too; from Toronto he says, “Piss off, leave her alone.”

“What's that on your neck, Maya?” Jackie wines. “A hickey?”

“No, she's too much of a prude to have a hickey,” Vanessa says. I try to look down and she brings her closed fist up under my chin.

“Ouch!” I yell, pronouncing the word like it has several syllables.

“What a baby,” Vanessa says.

“She deserved it,” Sherry adds.

“I'm warning you guys, get lost. My father is just upstairs and when he sees you there is going to be trouble.”

“Why isn't his car in the driveway then?” (Jackie.)

“It's in the shop. The brakes gave out.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Take your chances then, Tacky, go upstairs. But I have to warn you, he gets angry when people interrupt him when he is working.” Jackie grits her teeth together, Vanessa and Sherry look at their fingernails. “See his running shoes are right there. He's here I tell you.”

“You are such a bitch, Maya.”

“Thank you, Jackie — and yourself as well.”

“We'll be back. I still think you are here alone.” Jackie says this after she has decided to leave.

Then they each turn their jelly shoes around and walk away. But something has changed. Jackie heard a rumour. Someone started a rumour. Someone knows my father has left me.

Summer ends and grade eight begins. I go to school. I go again and again. I hang out with Chauncey and Heather at recess but I make sure to put on my happy face . . . the one I keep hidden in the back of the closet when I'm at home. Days begin to appear between my father's visits. He starts to leave me more money instead of food in the fridge. I get tired of lugging grocery bags home on the bus and trying to cook stuff. I start to feel hungry all the time. No one suspects anything.

Halloween arrives and I'm delighted by what it could mean for me. Halloween candy, apples, popcorn balls, tiny sweets that soothe my tongue — easy ways to stay fed. All I need to do is find something to dress up as. I decide to go out as a mother, but not my own: pearls from my mother's jewellery box, a pink button-up sweater I found in the chest at the end of her bed, red lipstick borrowed from Heather, my long grey skirt with the scratchy fabric I wore in the choir. I wrap my hair into a tight bun and stick in straight bobby pins I found in the bathroom drawer. I grab a pillow case and head out the door alone, dropping down the front steps like I'm happy to be going. I feel like a grown-up for the first time; an adult in grown-up clothes, with lipstick that changes my smile.