Girl in Shades (17 page)

The lady with the microphone kept fishing: “We've heard that you also hold a very special skill, a psychic ESP ability, if you will. Has this helped give you strength in any respect?”

Mother was stunned — I could hear her heart pounding loudly from inside her head, its shocked beat seemed to fill the air around us. Her lips parted. The light from on top of the camera created a glare against the tarp walls. I bit my lip and fiddled with the strings that tied back the door. What was happening? And why? My resentment for my mother — and now for Mrs. Roughen and this microphone lady — bubbled low in my stomach, threatening to explode.

Finally, my mother opened her mouth and instead of denying that she had any supernatural gift, she said: “Yes, I have been blessed with a little extra when it comes to my senses. I can see and hear things others can't. And I suppose I just really know what others need in their lives.”

My mother glanced at me straight-faced, and I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Can you give us an example of these abilities, Marigold?”

“I can see people's auras.”

“Auras? Really!” the lady with the microphone said, amazed. “And how am I looking today, in the aura department?” She was mocking her. Her aura was ruby red with darker parts closer to her body.

“You have a nice bright green energy right now.” Mother was mocking her back. “You should get out and work in your garden when you get home. You need some time to de-stress from all the work you've been doing.”

“That's true,” the lady with the microphone said. “How did you know I've been under stress?”

“Just a feeling.”

Give me a break, I thought.

I didn't want to hear any more of this conversation. But for some reason, I couldn't will my legs to move. Then, things turned more serious.

“And Marigold, I have also heard that you have received some other, joyful news recently — that you are expecting a child.” There was no emotion from my mother's face, but Mrs. Roughen covered her mouth like she was trying to hold in a wail. “Would you like to send out any message to doctors or other professionals who may have advice on how best to protect your unborn child?”

“Get out” was what my mother said to that question. “Leave, now. This whole thing is stupid.” My mother started swatting the microphone with her lean fingers — feebly but with determination. But the lady holding the microphone resisted. A fight ensued, which I am embarrassed to recount here because Mother really lost it — screaming, kicking, and squirming like a toddler pulling a tantrum.

As I escorted the news people and a shocked Mrs. Roughen to the front door, it was hard to tell that I was the daughter and she was supposed to have been the mother.

Father shouted, “Good riddance!” from the kitchen when I shut the door behind them.

Luckily, my mother's fit was not included in the footage on the Saskatoon News at 5 that evening. They only showed her wise and smirking, sitting up on the bed in her teepee, telling the lady with the microphone the colour of her aura, and another shot of her inadvertently rubbing her belly and looking down, as a voice-over stated that Marigold Devine was “desperate to find a way to save her unborn child, and would welcome prayers and any support that could be offered. And that in exchange, she may even be able to offer you a psychic view into your future (fake laugh).”

Some people never leave you — they get stuck in your psyche. This was how a lot of people felt about seeing my mother on TV that night — and how I've always felt about her.

Yes, this woman, this Marigold Devine — mother, sufferer, mystic, hero — needed us all. And we all needed to believe that she would be okay.

My father smashed the television set. The one that had shown us the news interview with Mother. I found the set the next morning after we watched. It was lying on its side in a pathetic heap. Its screen was cracked, antennas bent, knobs missing. Father pretended he didn't notice it.

For the next day he paced. Around the house from one room to the next, murmuring things that I couldn't hear, inside or out.

“We should sue,” he said at breakfast the following morning when Mother was out sitting in the teepee alone and I was gobbling down cereal so I could get back to her.

“Sue who?”

“The evening news,” my father said, shaking his head so fast he seemed to have two noses and four eyeballs.

“I have to get back out there,” I said, dropping my empty bowl in the sink with a ceramic clang.

“Wait, take this out to her,” he said as he grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the table and placed it in my hands.

“Why isn't she talking anymore?” I asked him.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Maya.”

“I don't like it.”

I left him alone, leaning against the counter, his left hand rubbing those straight white indents on his forehead.

By the afternoon that day it had started. The people: at the front door, looking over the back fence from the yard behind, trying to peek back from between houses.

The visitors were everywhere, trying to catch a glimpse of my mother. They were like people who turn their heads to catch a glimpse of a gory car crash. Or maybe those who turn their cars around to try to help. Either way, they wanted to be a part of my mother's tragedy. And of course see if maybe she had some sort of psychic insights about their lives.

They carried things with them when they came: blankets, hand-knit sweaters, plastic bags, coffee cakes, bottles of wine, baby booties. Sometimes they left the stuff on the front porch, like bouquets of flowers, but mostly they waited out front, waited for my father to open the front door, which he refused to do.

All afternoon the crowd gathered outside the house. I watched from between the front blinds. By 4:30, there was a circle of women holding hands and humming prayers with their eyes half-shut. Someone had a sign that said: “Save a life. Save an unborn child.”

I tried to spend most of my time in the teepee with my mother, who was only staring and starting to shake a bit. My father was out there too. He came out after he dead-bolted the front door and moved the dining room buffet in front of the entrance to block it.

My father held my mother's hand. The three of us were silent, until I spoke.

“Maybe they can help her?”

“Help her do what, Maya?” my father asked with a sigh.

“Get her better. Find a way to save the baby.”

“There's no way, Maya.” He had tears then. “It's just a waiting game now.”

“Maybe I could carry the baby?”

My father would not respond to my suggestion. He was annoyed by my foolish idea that the baby could be taken from my mother and injected into my own stomach. Little did he know, I wasn't stupid enough to believe that we could actually do it — I was just trying to be creative.

By nightfall they had candles. Woman were singing and praying in large groups. One woman with hectic curls flying out from her face was throwing herself around in a patch of dirt on the front lawn screaming, “Please, Jesus!” over and over, on her knees with her arms waving above her head.

I watched it all through the corner of the front window. And when the news crew arrived and started interviewing people, I saw that too. Father didn't see any of it. He forbade me to open the door and stayed out in the backyard with Mother.

In the morning, Mrs. Roughen lowered herself over the back fence while I was eating breakfast, tearing her skirt as she fell. I ran from the back door to see her.

“Maya, you didn't answer your phone!”

“It's unhooked,” I said, like she was the reason we did it.

“Where's your father?”

“Still sleeping.” The people in the crowd out front had settled into pup tents for the night and were yet to wake.

“Maya, I have to talk to your mother.”

“She's not talking. To anyone.”

“Just let me see her then.”

I rolled my eyes and moved towards the teepee. We walked in together.

Mother had laid herself back on the bed. A sour milk and armpit smell hung in the air around her, and there was grey and black pulsing weakly around her face.

“Marigold, it's me, Trudie.”

No response.

“Marigold, I'm sorry about what happened. I'm only trying to help you, you and the baby. . . .”

Nothing from Mother.

“I told you, she's not talking anymore.”

“Has she taken some sort of vow of silence?” Mrs. Roughen asked, smoothing her hair down on the side of her face and adjusting her purple leather belt, which had shifted in her climb over the fence.

“Don't know,” I said.

“We need to get her cleaned up,” she said, shifting back her dangling bracelets to pull my mother up. “Has she eaten?”

“Yogurt and a banana yesterday. She had a few crackers this morning. And I have been using a crazy straw to help give her water.”

“Let's get her into the bath.”

We carried her into the house, Mrs. Roughen with her arms under Mother's armpits and me carrying her feet, then slid off her clothes and laid her down naked in the bathtub. From the window in the bathroom I could hear the visitors stirring. Someone was singing “Turn, turn, turn,” and small groups of voices were loudly praying things to Jesus. While Mrs. Roughen washed her hair and soaped up my mother's frail body, I took a peek through the small window above the sink: about forty of them had returned this morning. The cameras were gone, but the rest of them were still clutching gifts in their arms. A tall, thin woman with blond hair approached our front door.

“Should I answer it?”

“Not yet, Maya. Let's get her clean and back in bed. Then, we can let them visit with her.”

“But Father won't like it. Plus, I don't think she wants to see anyone now.”

“We have to, Maya, the story has been on the news. People want to help, that's all. We should let them have that.”

But Mrs. Roughen's thoughts told me something different. She was thinking about herself — if she looked pretty enough, how she might get interviewed on the news herself, how people might care what she had to say, that she might even meet a new husband out of the whole thing (she didn't want to be too hopeful in case she got disappointed, but maybe).

“I want nothing to do with this!” I screamed, and sat on the floor.

Mrs. Roughen dressed Mother in a robe from her closet, a shiny pink one that zipped up at the front and had a lace collar. Mother only mumbled and looked annoyed while she did it. Her limbs hung heavy like she had already died and her sounds were only little bits of trapped air escaping.

I did have to help carry her back out to the teepee, because I knew that's where she wanted to be.

We got her back into bed, sitting up with her hands crossed in her lap. Mrs. Roughen spread a sheet over her legs and tied back the teepee windows to let air through, August air rich with hot asphalt and lawn clippings.

It was eleven in the morning. My father was still in bed.

I still did not want Mother to be visited. To be exploited.

“They may have ideas about how to help,” Mrs. Roughen said, trying to convince me. Which did make sense, I guess.

Eventually, I helped her push the buffet out of the way of the door. It squeaked on the hardwood. “For all we know, they could help make a miracle happen.” She squeezed my hand. Her fingers were moist and slippery.

She had me there. I wanted to help. I wanted my mother back. I wanted to start being a kid again, and a big sister. To have my family.

Mrs. Roughen decided to let them in one at a time, and in pairs if they were related.

“Please remove your shoes, walk straight through the house, through the back door, and you can visit her in the teepee in the backyard. Donations are appreciated. You have ten minutes. Maya will show you where.”

“Thank you,” said the first girl, with a pained smile. She was about twenty-five, wearing a short jean skirt, black T-shirt, and a yellow bandana to hold back her long hair. She held a tiny velvet bag by a string.

The girl had purple around her that radiated out from her head and shoulders like heat on a highway.

“This way,” Mrs. Roughen said, walking towards the back door.

“Thank you,” the girl said again. I closed the front door and locked it. And I didn't let the girl see my mother alone. I followed her out back to the teepee, and watched with all the suspicion an eleven-year-old girl could muster.

The girl squatted beside my mother's bed. My mother sat up staring, her hands still folded in her lap.

“She's not talking today,” I said. “It's sort of a vow of silence kind of thing.”

“It's okay,” the girl said and turned towards my mother. “Mrs. Devine, my name is Alisha. I wanted to give you something that I think could help you.” She opened her tiny velvet bag and took out two eye-sized rocks, one white, one green, turned my mother's hand around and dropped them in her palm. “These are quartz and malachite. They will help you heal your blockages and in your healing.”

“How can they do that?” I said.

“By emitting vibrations that will align her again with the divine light energy,” Alisha said, folding my mother's fingers over the stones.

“And that will help her get better, save the baby?”

“If she believes in it,” Alisha said, looking back at me stoically, her blue eyes reaching out to light up the pale air in the teepee.

My mother threw the rocks with one quick snap across the teepee.

I followed the path of the stones, knelt down, and picked them up.

“Thanks,” I said to Alisha, and she put her arm on my shoulder.

Next, my father's voice erupted from the house like thunder on a still evening: “Trudie, what the hell?!”

“I think you should go now,” I said to Alisha. “My father is awake.” She gave my mother a sideways pitying glance and followed me back into the house.

My father stood in only his underwear, the pudgy parts of his belly sticking out, his “Mari” tattoo swimming in his chest hair. Mrs. Roughen stood across from him in the entrance to the house.

“Thank you for letting me visit your wife, Mr. Devine,” Alisha said slipping into her shoes, her voice remaining calm.

“Get out” was all he said in return.

“Don't be mean!” I shouted. “She gave mother something really cool!”

“Maya, shut up.” He swung his arm to push me onto the first step leading upstairs. At the same time, Alisha opened the front door to leave and Mrs. Roughen came into the foyer: “Steven, I know you're upset, but listen . . .”

The door opened again.

My father was knocked to the floor by the crowd of people pushing their way into the house. He knocked his head on the banister I was clutching.

All the visitors pushed through the door: limping old ladies, bouncy fat women, a Native man with feathers around his head.

“Slowly,” Mrs. Roughen said. “You'll all get a chance to bring your good wishes to Marigold.” She was rushing them along, pushing them into the backyard before my father came to.

A cameraman came through the door and began to film my father, lying on his back with his arms hurled out to the sides.

“Stop taking pictures of him!” I said, pulling the man's arm. A woman stood in front of my father and spoke into a microphone: “I'm at Marigold Devine's home, where a dangerous mob has stormed the house and attacked Marigold Devine's husband, leaving him unconscious. Stacey Nixon reporting.”

The cameraman leaned down towards my father's face and I kicked him in the shin.

“Ouch! You little brat,” he said.