Going Down Swinging (2 page)

Numb.

For the next few days you didn’t move much, except the occasional rocking. You brought Grace to bed with you most nights and held on, breathing deeply through her child-smooth hair as though it were an oxygen mask, her little body a scuba.

She is the last thing, the last possession; she is the padding on the wall that keeps you from beating your head to bone and mash. So often you catch yourself whispering in her ear, making plans, the primary request being that she never grow up, that she remain small, pliable and loving.

Now the house feels colder, as if there’s been a death. It’s this decade, this fucking sixties hangover, this time. Every time you turn on the TV, another insufferable teenager with centre-parted limp hair hanging dreary down the sides of her sulky face, giving it the look of a mooning teardrop, spouting off about Vietnam, about the consent she never gave to her own birth. Their sit-ins, love-ins, beads and flower power. Fuck them. Fuck them for making you cry every time you see a teenage girl on the street, every time you nearly call out to a strange girl with dark welling eyes.

She’s right maybe, maybe you’re out of your ever-lovin’ mind. Or maybe not so much. But how many people threaten their children with knives, order them out of the house? Then again, how many children threaten to steal their sister from home? None of it’s right. Nothing will ever be right again. Every time you hear the words in your chest, hear that day, you want to go upstairs, just go upstairs and take something. Before it all cracks into a thousand million splinters. It’s all too clear and ugly. A person’s got to take something, prescribe a nice smoky film on things—when things are too clear, the world is a closed glass door; you don’t see what’s coming until you’re already shatters and shreds.

Grace One
APRIL 1973

S
HE STOOD
in front of the bathroom mirror, with a beer on the counter, and painted black lines over her top lashes, then thinner ones under her bottoms. She was going out man-hunting and I sat on the toilet with my heels on the seat and got a picture in my head of her going slinky like a tigress through the alleyways. She painted blue on her lids and rubbed some lipstick on her cheeks to look rosy. The last part was the most important; even if she didn’t have time for anything else, she got her face right in the mirror and made a sharp shiny lipstick-mouth. I swallowed and swallowed, trying to think of something good to say. She looked at me in the mirror and said, “What’s the matter, you look like you’re about to cry.”

“Can’t you stay home, can’t we watch TV or something? or play a game?”

“Honey, just let me get out for a while and I’ll be much easier to be around. Maybe I’ll find us a nice man who’ll take me for dinner and take you horseback riding and be sweet to us.” I didn’t say anything, so she asked me, “Are you going to stay up here so you’ll feel closer to Frank and Janet?”

“No.” I didn’t feel like being down the hall from stupid Frank and Janet, all gooey-lovey and doing whatever they were doing in Charlie’s room. Since they moved in, Mum was either hating them for every second they spent in the bathroom or loving them for being last-minute babysitters.

“Do you want to bring a pillow and blanket downstairs and watch
TV
and then I’ll bring you back up when I get home?”

I didn’t say anything, just nodded. “Grace, why are you making such a production out of this? It’s not as if I’ve never gone out at night before.” I nodded. “Oh, come on now, stop with the crocodile tears.” I started hating that expression of hers since I found out it meant fake. I dropped my feet onto the yellow mat that hugged around the toilet. There was a space of tile where its fluffy arms were coming away. I crushed it back and stomped out.

From my bed I could see into her room, so I left my door open: I wanted to watch her go back and forth getting ready. Except she hucked her own door almost closed, so I had to listen instead. I listened to her pulling on pantyhose then swear and yank them back off and rummage for different ones. Skirts and hot pants shushed over her hips, the zippers zedding up and down every time she changed her mind. Then, what sounded like sweaters pulling over her head; my favourite one had a short zipper right at the neck. Then the sound that told you she’d almost made up her mind: the clunk and zipper of her boots coming on. First just one—she always did it that way: high heel on one foot, boot on the other, leg up, leg down, other leg up. And down.

Another zipper. It’d be boots tonight. She bought two pairs a couple months before, one red, one white, both made of shiny crinkle stuff that was clingy on her legs. The boots usually meant hot pants. (Skirts got high strappy shoes—rain or sun or snow.) It was still wintertime, so probably the red; she didn’t think white was right for the winter, even though I tried to tell her it went good with the snow. I listened to her go around her room, she usually did that—prowled around, turning in the mirror to make sure.

Her boots came down the hall toward my room. There was a pause as her heel snagged the carpet. A snap when she yanked free. She poked her head in my room. I was pretending to read
Danny Meadowmouse
, one of the books Charlie sent me for Christmas from Vancouver.

I looked up. She had on my favourite outfit: black hot pants, a tight red turtleneck and a black tam. Plus the red boots. She sat down on the edge of the bed and patted her belly. “I’m getting fat.”

I put the book down. “No, you’re not.” Her stomach did bulge a little under her sweater, but it looked pretty. Her boobs, her belly and her hips, all pointed at you like soft round fingers.

She sighed and patted my leg. “It’s almost spring and it’s still winter. Leave it to bloody Toronto.” Mum picked a lint off her sweater and kept talking. “When you were a baby, in Vancouver, we used to take you and Charlie to the beach, and you used to run around in the nude, giggling your little head off. And your dad would chase you and threaten to unscrew your belly button and let your bum fall off. And you’d scream and hold your bum; you were such a funny little bird.”

Mum always makes it sound like it used to be fluffy heaven when I was a baby. Like we used to have a real family. The pictures make it look like that, but mostly I remember yelling and the house being always dark. Mum looked at my hand. She said I was going to grow into one big dog with hands that size. I tried to think of more stuff to talk about.

“Will you sing me songs before you leave?”

“Oh god, sweety, I don’t feel up to it. You’re getting too old for bedtime songs anyway.”

“Please …?”

She sighed. “One. I’ll just sing one fast one, and then I have to go, OK?”

“The piggy song.”

“Oh god, the piggy song. I haven’t got it in me tonight, honey … just … OK:

There once was a piggy who lived in a sty and six little piggies had she. She waddled around saying oink oink oink and the little ones said wee wee wee.

Now six little piggies grew skinny and lean, and skinny and lean grew they from trying so hard to say oink oink oink when they only should say wee wee wee.

She leaned and kissed me. I grabbed round her neck and held on till she tried to straighten up and still had me hanging off her. She patted my back. “OK, sweety, that’s enough, come on now, give me a kiss and let me go. Grace, enough now, you’re being silly.” She yanked my arms off her neck. “For goodness sake, what’s with you tonight?”

“Don’t want you to go. Can’t you just stay?”

“Come on, angel, I’ll be back in no time flat. And Janet and Frank are here, it’s not as if you’ll be all alone.”

I listened to the quiet when she quit talking. She kissed my cheek and my mouth and told me she’d bring me back a happy. That’s our name for treats,
happies
. When she got up off the edge of my bed, my mattress sucked back against the wall. The hallway floor creaked and hangers clanged each other in the closet when she got her coat. Her boots came back to my door. “OK, lamby, I’ll see you later, don’t go to sleep too late, OK? You’re OK? Lock the door after I go, but don’t put the chain on.” I stared. She sighed, “OK, I will be back soonly.”

She kissed the air and waved. Her boots stepped downstairs. I could hear her keys—probably checking to make sure she had everything. She called, “Bye, angel,” and I jumped off the bed and ran down the steps. Tears were coming—I was being a baby.

“Mummy? Mum?” She had the door open, and she turned. “Can I have a kiss goodbye?” I couldn’t think of anything else. She leaned and squeezed and kissed beside my eye, said “I love you,” and then I started—tears and tears. I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop begging and dragging at her neck and choking on the tears and guck going down my throat.

She looked mad at me. “Honey, stop now, stop, don’t do this, please. Why are you crying? Honey, this is ridiculous—come on, Grace, I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for going out one night—one night!” I sucked my breath in. She squished off the tears under my eye with her thumb, said, “What’s gotten into you?” and kissed me again. “OK now, everything’s fine. I’ll be back in a few hours.” She stepped backwards, kissed the air and waved, and closed the door behind her.

It felt like wet Kleenex going through my chest. I ran to the window, saw her coming onto the sidewalk from our path, saw her move her tam down on her forehead, look at me in the window and wave again. My hands went against the glass, and crying noises came out of me like hiccups. I couldn’t stop calling her and begging through the window. She was leaving and she wasn’t coming back.

She looked up again and frowned and stopped. I could see her mouth moving, making “Stop it” shapes. One boot stomped and her head fell back and she looked at the sky, like she was yelling at God or the angels or someone. She looked at me again and then away, shaking her head. She stomped with both her feet and then her purse hand dropped and her bag bounced against her knees She took two hard stomps away, then she bent forward at me in the window, mouthing, “Grace, stop it-stop it-stop it.” She turned and stomped back up the sidewalk. I was too glad to be scared.

She slammed the door shut behind her. “All right, OK, I’m staying. There, OK? I’m not going anywhere! Happy?” I ran to the hall, shoved my face in her belly and held. She ran her hand over the back of my head and called me “Weird little creature.”

After Mum called her friend to cancel their plan, we sat at the kitchen table, me with hot milk and honey and two pieces of cinnamon toast, Mum just taking bites off mine. She played with one of my feet in her lap, and after a while said, “Let’s take a trip. Let’s go see your nanna and grandad in New Brunswick.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a couple weeks.”

“Fine by me,” I said, and slurped and held some hot milk on my tongue until my throat had to have the sweet honey-pain against its back.

Eilleen Two
MAY 1973

I
T’S GOING ON MORNING
and you are on a Greyhound to Saint John, New Brunswick—well, Montreal actually, and then from there you’ll connect with one back home, the womb. Is that what you’re doing, bussing it back to the womb? Grace is passed out in the seat beside you—bare feet and you’re hardly out of April—filthy feet, dirty nails. No wonder she’s got kids at school calling her stinky, telling her she’s got cooties. Why is it so hard to keep one kid clean? Why will you never hear the phrase,
Mummy, where are some clean socks?

S’pose it doesn’t matter, you touch her bangs, the angry bit springing off to the side, watch violet colour her skin through the window, street lights and trees, high beams and clouds, shadow then strobe. She’s the one thing that keeps you from saying
I wish I’d never laid eyes on that prick in the first place
—son of a bitch wouldn’t even give you money to go visit your parents. Tried to tell him,
This may be the last time I see them
, but he didn’t believe you, or didn’t give a damn. One day you’re not going to wake up, they’ve told you that, doctors have.
Take another drink and you’re dead
.