Girl in Shades (14 page)

I told Heather and Chauncey I wasn't going. It would look too suspicious: taking extra candy, staying out late to try and pick up extras. Plus, I needed to get past my neighborhood, not stay around here where everyone knows me and my father. I didn't need to answer any more questions about my mother's illness, or my father's.

I decide to take the bus across the river. Clutching my sack, I am one of many made-up faces: Cabbage Patch Kids, pumpkins that light up, punk rockers with neon hair and fluorescent hair bands. Most of them are in groups of friends, travelling to the rich neighborhoods. Some of them have their parents with them, hands on shoulders steadying them. I get off the bus near downtown and start to visit doors belonging to big and fancy houses. After each opened door comes something like this:

Me: “Trick or treat.”

Them: “Well, what have we got here?”

Me: “I'm dressed up as a mother.”

Them: “Hmmm, a mother you say (grabbing chins with thumbs and middle fingers), yes, yes, I guess you do look like somebody's mother, maybe the Beaver's mother (laughing), you know, June Cleaver?”

Me: “I know.”

And candy drops into my bag. Unlike the other children beside me, I am not disappointed when nuts or raisins are dropped into my sac instead of chocolate or chips — the perfect late-night snacks. I know that I have to start thinking realistically.

I keep trick-or-treating until 10:00, when the streets are dark and the other children have disappeared into their cozy houses. The chill riding in the air all afternoon has picked up and I have to wrap myself up with the scarf I kept hidden in the bottom of my bag all evening. The air turns frosty thick and snowflakes start to fall as I ring the doorbell for what I have decided will be my final house of the evening. A short man with a round belly shoves open the door. I can see his chest hairs under his white T-shirt, his hair is slicked back, his jeans are too tight.

“What have we here?” he says through his nose.

“I'm a lady,” I say. The explanations are starting to make me tired.

“And a beautiful lady you are,” he says, running his fingers up and down his thighs over and over. The inside of this man's house smells like tuna, and turpentine, the kind my father used to clean his paint brushes when he stained our deck. “Exotic-looking specimen. Are your parents from the East?”

“Do you have anything to give out?” I say impatiently, wishing my father was waiting at the sidewalk like he used to do when I was little.

“You better believe I do,” the man says. “Come in first, though.” He reaches out to grab the corner of my pink sweater between his chubby fingers. I swat him away, annoyed, but he does it again, pinching his mouth like he's on a mission.

I panic. I feel my mother standing beside me, stiff, with her arms out to protect me.

I pull my arm back and aim to punch him in the chest like I've seen on
The A-Team
. I miss and get him in the chin instead.

“Screw off, buddy!” I scream, and his head flies back.

“You little whore!” he yells after me as I run away. I look back briefly to see him rubbing his jaw, the colour in the air around his face is confused and undecided.

At the bus stop I start to cry. Holding my large sack of candy that sits like a pregnant belly in my lap, I wish I had someone to take me home. When the bus arrives, my arms have relaxed to the point where I can hardly move them enough to carry the sack. My arms are asleep.

“You really brought it home,” the bus driver says as I get on and drop the coins in his slot. “Heading back over the river?”

I nod. He smiles. He has white teeth and kind eyes.

Back in my empty house, with walls like mirrors looking back at me, I dump my bag onto the living room floor and start sorting it out.

“Gosh, can you believe all the Tootsie Rolls?” I say to no one, like I'm making small talk to recover after a hard day. “And Cracker Jacks, wow, people are not this generous around here. And full-size chocolate bars even.”

I create families of goodies on the carpet and start to order them by nutritional content: apples, popcorn, raisins, and pumpkins seeds lead to Dubble Bubble gum, small cardboard Chiclets boxes, and Twizzlers in plastic wrappers. I peel one open and hold a pink Twizzler between my teeth.

The phone rings, and in my sugar high, I forget that I'm not answering it.

It's Grandmother Devine.

“Hello, Maya,” she says with a soft but shaky voice. “I'm so glad to have gotten you. Happy Halloween. How have you been holding up?”

“Fine,” I say back.

“But it must be so hard, dear. Death has a way of pulling the life out of all of us. I know that Leah was quite choked up when she got back from the funeral. I'm sorry that your grandfather and I couldn't be there. You know his bad heart — air travel is out of the question, and I can't bear to leave him.”

“Yes, I remember. How is Aunt Leah?”

“She's escaped to Toronto. Starting a crazy life, on the street for all we know. We pray for her. Can I please talk to your father?”

“He's sick.”

“What sort of sickness, dear?”

“He has laryngitis. He can't talk.”

“Not at all?”

“No, not at all. He can listen though, I'll get him.” I pretended to be my father listening while she talked.

“Steven, dear — Steven, is that you?” I grunt. “Steven, I wanted to let you know that your father and I are thinking of you. Gosh, it must be hard without Mari. We want you to know that you can reach out to us if you want to. Remember, Steven, you did the right thing, the respectable thing, staying with her and Maya. Maybe this will be just the kind of fresh start you needed. The fresh start that you were cheated out of.”

“He's gone now,” I say. “He had to go throw up.”

“That's a shame. Tell him to call us when he is feeling better.”

“I will.”

“And you take care.”

I grunt.

“Goodbye, dear.”

I hated my grandmother for saying those things, especially when I hardly even remember what her face looks like.

Father comes over the morning after Halloween — when I'm at school. I know because two of my Tootsie rolls are missing and he's left more money on the table and taken the credit card and phone bills I lined up on the counter.

He's also left another note:

Maya, things get so difficult in life, but like it or not, you're still my daughter. I am so proud of you for being so responsible and looking after the house when I'm gone. I am going to make sure this works out. I hope we can start talking again soon — I really do. I'm at a loss for what to do next.

His handwriting is messy and frantic. He must have run out of room on the paper, because he has left no signature at the bottom of the page.

Prairie winter arrives in November to hurl its strength. Frozen eyelashes, breath that freezes in my throat, ground slippery under my feet, boots out of the closet, warm meals of vegetarian chili from cans I buy, turning up the knob for the furnace at night. The walk to school is longer because I am taking smaller steps to stay in the heat of my body. Underneath my ratty cotton candy parka, my bones are starting to stick out in strange places: from my hips, below my neck, on the tips of my shoulders, maybe even my chin, which is hidden behind the blue scarf my father used to wear. I don't feel much like eating lately.

My house is getting big and lonely. Sometimes, I admit, I want my father back in it. He only stops by now when I'm at school, or when I'm asleep — I hear him poking around at things in the night. Sometimes he opens the door to my room and I pretend to be sleeping so he will go. He leaves money and sometimes a bag of groceries on the dining room table as usual.

Two different days at school I decide I need him back and call him at work from the pay phone out front. Both times I get his machine: “This is Steven Devine, your call is important to me.”

I don't leave a message.

There are other times when I just want to leave, so that my father doesn't have to worry about me at all. He can sell the house and pretend that none of this even existed — that my mother was never sick out back.

I have a secret plan to escape and fly to Montreal next summer. I've started saving money to buy a plane ticket, but it means I can't spend much of the money he gives me. I try skipping lunch at school, but I'm usually so hungry that I give in and buy fries with Chauncey and Heather.

I know it's going to cost a lot to fly away anywhere, so I decide to hold a yard sale.

“In November?” Heather says when I tell her. “There are three foot snow drifts already, people will be freezing.”

“Okay, garage sale,” I say. “My father is away on business. I want to earn some extra money before he gets back and finds out.”

“For what?” Chauncey asks.

“Stuff.”

“Like new clothes and makeup and things?” Heather says.

“Maybe a vacation. In the summer.”

“What will you sell?” Chauncey asks.

“My mother's old jewellery, her clothes . . .”

“Won't you miss that stuff?” Heather says.

“I'll keep the important stuff.”

“It's kind of creepy though,” Chauncey adds. “To know that someone is walking around in your mother's clothes.”

“She didn't wear any of it when she was sick. She mostly wore a sheet.”

“Oh yeah.” And from her head:
I remember from television. Mom thought she was crazy.

“Heather, I am going to pretend you didn't say that.”

“Say what?”

I put the garage sale sign at the end of my driveway. It is a piece of cardboard nailed to a piece of wood I found in my father's workshop. I wedge it into the snow. On the day of the sale I pile on layers of clothing — sweaters, ski pants, wool socks — and sit on a lawn chair in our garage, my boots resting on the concrete floor. I have taken all my mother's jewellery out of her cabinet: her pearls, a broach with a lady's profile on it, a gold chain that links with a heart, a silver chain. I've laid it all out on a small patio table with a sign that says, “Let's negotiate.” I had to look up the word “negotiate” in the dictionary to make sure I got it right but am pretty sure it will help me get more money.

I am not worried about getting rid of the jewellery; my mother hardly wore it and I think most of it was given to her by my grandmother when she was younger — family heirlooms maybe. My mother was not the jewellery type, and if my grandmother had gotten to know her better, maybe she would have known that.

My mother's clothes — blouses, skirts, slacks — are hung up around the garage on metal hangers. Their presence gives me the distinct sense that my mother is watching me, maybe even standing around me. Other than that, I put a few of my father's old suits up for sale, and some of his ties that had fallen to the bottom of his closet.

Heather is the first to knock on the closed garage door. She wears a one-piece ski suit that does up in the centre with a fat zipper, her head is hidden under a toque, and she carries a thermos and a blue box under her arm.

“I brought hot chocolate!” she says when I open the door. “And a Trivial Pursuit game my dad bought my mom as a present. She never plays it, so I thought we could have a game before we sell it.”

“Thanks, Heather.” The cold air whips against the garage door as I slide it closed again, scraping metal as I go.

“Maya, this is so cool that you get to stay alone when your father is out of town. I can't even imagine my mom giving me this kind of freedom. You really do have it all.” Her tiny body is leaning up against the patio table and I think how small and delicate she looks, like she could freeze or fall over if put in the right circumstances.

Chauncey is next to arrive. “Maya, I really don't know how much business you're going to get, what with the cold temperature and all. A yard sale in November? Really?”

“It's important, okay?” I say. “I need the extra money.”

He nods and the three of us sit down to play Trivial Pursuit. A small space heater chugs out warmth from its place by the wall beside us and we cover our hands with our mittens to keep warm. After we have chosen our colours — me orange, Heather pink, and Chauncey blue, Heather rolls the dice and lands on the pink square.

Chauncey reads the card: “Heather, who was the first singer to put three consecutive releases on the top of the British charts?”

“How should I know?”

“Just think about it, Heath.”

“The Beatles.”

“That's a group, not a person.”

“Elton John.”

“No.”

“David Bowie.”

“No.”

“I give up.”

“You suck at this game, Heather. You really do.”

“Just give me the answer, Chauncey.”

“Elvis Presley.” Chauncey puts the card back into the blue box.

“Who knew?”

“Maya, your turn to roll.” I pick up the dice while still looking at the garage door. I move forward four spaces and land on a green box. Heather reads: “What colour was the rain that fell on Hiroshima for two hours after the bombing?”

“Black,” I say.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

A knock on the garage door.

“The people are here!” Heather says in a loud voice. I grab the rope attached to the door and slide it upwards. There in front of me, in a heavy parka and Eskimo jacket with fur trim, are Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Parchewski, two of the women who used to come with Mrs. Roughen to visit with my mother in her teepee.

“Maya,” Mrs. Bell says. “We saw your sign outside and thought we would come to say hello. How have you been?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“And your father?”

“He's out of town on business.”

“I see. Well, let's take a look.” She rubs her boots across the cement of the garage floor until she peers over the table of merchandise. Mrs. Parchewski follows, saying nothing. “Looks like you have some of your mother's things here.”

“Yes.”

“Her chains? A brooch. And some of her old dresses.”

“Make me an offer.”

“Maya, don't you want to keep these things? To remember your mother.”

“I remember her just fine.”

“But these things were a part of her.”

“She never wore them. I asked my father and he said it would be all right to get rid of them.”

“I see.” Mrs. Bell holds an old teacup in her hands, while Mrs. Parchewski is taking off her scarf to fasten a pearl necklace around her neck. “I guess it doesn't hurt to look then,” Mrs. Bell says. “You know how we felt about your mother.” And from Mrs. Bell's mind:
Mari never really did anything for me.
I sigh and look at the ceiling while they sift through everything with their chubby fingers. Picking things up, dropping them, trying on, comparing, running their palms over smooth fabric. Over their white faces, huge blobs of cherry light are forming, opening and closing like giant hands, interweaving with each other, momentarily blocking out their sympathetic grins.

Heather pours hot chocolate into the lid of her thermos and starts to sip. Chauncey shakes the plastic bag of Trivial Pursuit pies.

They buy most of it: two chains, the pearl necklace, three old dresses and a pair of dress pumps, the teacup, a pair of red leg warmers.

“How about one hundred?” I say to them.

“Maya dear, don't you think that is a bit outrageous? We'll give you fifty dollars.”

“This is expensive stuff. Nothing under one hundred.”

Mrs. Bell pulls four twenties from her wallet and Mrs. Parchewski hands me a twenty dollar bill from her pocket. They put everything into purses, under their jackets, and over their arms. I open the door to let them out.

“Maya, good job!” Heather says when they are gone. “You totally negotiated like an expert.”

“You have to do what you have to do,” I say.

“What are you going to do with the money?” Chauncey asks.

“Buy stuff I need, I guess.” I think about warm dinners, lunches from the cafeteria, and maybe a new pair of winter boots.

“Yeah, like the new Corey Hart record,” Heather says. “We know you love him.”

“Not even!” I say. “Other stuff.”

The garage door goes up and down three more times with people from my street. By the end of the day, almost all of my mother's stuff is gone, as well as my father's snowblower and his power drill, which I let go for $50 each — he'll never miss them. Altogether, I have made
$
325. When Chauncey and Heather are gone, I put all the money inside my pillowcase and fall asleep on it. The garage is empty again, and even more of my mother is gone. I dream that my skin is melting off, leaving me nothing but muscle and bones. And that I take all my skin, pack it into baggies, and sell it at a road-side stand to unsuspecting people who think it is chicken. My sleep passes like a choppy collection of false starts, never letting up, never letting me relax.

Soon, I start feeling dizzy and stop going to school. First one day, then another. My house begins to feel like a safe place — the only place where I can hide myself. On day five away, I lie on my mother and father's bed looking up at a white ceiling that occasionally drops to graze the top of my face. The sun goes down and soon Chauncey and Heather are outside the window of my parents' bedroom. I hear stones being thrown against the glass and their voices, tiny and far away, calling my name.

“Maya, are you in there? Maya, come down,” they say in unison. I stand up and throw myself against the window, using the crank by my waist to open it.

“I'm here,” I say, my eyes half closed by the pain in my forehead.

“Why weren't you at school?” Chauncey asks, holding his dark arm out like he is carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

“I'm sick,” I say weakly. “I need to sleep.”

“Let us up,” Heather says. “We want to talk with you about something. People are talking about you.”

“I can't right now. I'm too dizzy. I need to sleep.”

Chauncey: “Maya, are you alone in there?”

“I might be alone for now.”

“What?” they both say.

“We don't understand,” says Heather. “Come down now!”

“I'm closing this window up now. It's so cold in here. Bye, bye now.” I fall to the floor. I hear them pounding on the front door with their fists. They are trying to break the lock. They are trying to open the front windows. They are trying to get in. But soon, the silence returns.

The walls of my house are melting. Shrinking and dripping like candle wax. The TV set in my parents' bedroom is shrivelling up and taking the dresser with it. Falling into nothing. The floor is getting smaller but I am still at the centre of it. Lamps are tipping onto the floor and then burning up into themselves. The second floor of my house is lowering me down to the earth, until nothing is left around me. Nothing but dark earth and grass, and the tree that used to be outside my bedroom window, now reaching down to cover me.