Mud Girl (3 page)

So. Dad does do something besides pour cereal in a bowl, sit in his chair, go for a pee.

The woman is waiting for Abi to speak.

“Well.” Big Sister straightens and brings her round shoulders to attention. “Would you like to go for a walk?”

That's probably number three or four in the Suggestions for New Big Sisters list. Right after Friendly Approach and Say Something Nice About Surroundings.

“There's not really anywhere to walk around here,” Abi says. Across the street is the old Halfyards' house, set far back and empty for years, boarded up, and their rusting car collection, with grass growing where seats used to be. And Abi hopes the woman doesn't say anything about the field that stretches for about fifty metres along the east side of the house, caught between the road and the river. A narrow strip of scrub bushes, blackberry, and the ancient willow. The field has nothing to do with the house or school or Mum or…anything. Except him.
My Boy
, is how Abi thinks of him.

Big Sister needs no more discouragement.

“Well, you know,” she begins in a soap-opera-character voice, “I don't really like to walk all that much anyway.”
Lower voiced and even more confiding. “I don't buy into all this women-should-be-fit-as-racehorses nonsense.” She sits on the bench, and it gives Abi a jolt to see her there in her mother's place. Makes her remember her wish, and wish she hadn't.
What do they say? “Careful what you wish; it might come true.”
Maybe people can get by with just one parent, even a sack-of-old-potatoes parent. After all, she has been getting by with Dad for ten months now.

Big Sister looks back toward the house. “That's quite the blue.” She motions to the back wall.

“Yes,” Abi agrees, “that's quite the blue.”

“Isn't the front of the house white?” Big Sister looks perplexed.

“Dirty white,” says Abi, and wishes she hadn't. She doesn't explain further.

“Well,” Big Sister says, after a while. (Because Abi's so quiet?) “I guess I'll be going now.”

Abi suspects she's not what the woman expected. By her age, she should know – nothing is.

“How about if I come back on Saturday? We'll go into town. Or something,” Big Sister adds. “I'll think of something!”

Abi wants to say no. That's the word that comes first to her mind. But the summer days loom long and quiet ahead of her, and this woman won't last long; she'll probably show
up the one time and that'll be it. Might even be interesting to see how long she
does
last. And there is that thinning hair and sad chirp. That's enough to make the “no” go away.

“After lunch,” Abi says finally. She doesn't want Saturday ruined.

“Afternoon then.” Now the Big Sister smile is slower. She turns to go, picking her way over the boards in her heels. She finally reaches the wharf that runs along the side of the house. “Can you sew?” Her chirp carries over the sound of the current, the constant of vehicle engines.

“Sew?”

She repeats. “Sew.” Chirp. Smile.

“Of course,” Abi says.

“Oh.” Not quite so chirpy at that. She seems almost disappointed. “Well…” A pause. “That's good, really. Hardly anyone knows how to sew these days.”

“My mother – God Rest Her Feet – taught me.”

Big Sister's eyebrows have risen. “God Rest Her Feet?”

“She's not dead. She's on the run. Somewhere.”

“God Rest Her Feet,” the woman murmurs, “taught you to sew.”

“Yes,” says Abi, but she doesn't say anything about sewing being one of Life's Necessities. That's what Mum always called it. Along with knowing how to read a bus schedule and never have to ask the driver a question, and when to make eye
contact with someone, and when not to. Some of these bits of knowledge Abi will use always, others never. Her mother – grhf – might have written her own book.
Island of One
it would be titled, with a subtitle of
The Book of Self-Sustainability
. The word “vocabulary” wouldn't even be in it.

“Buttons and hems – you have to be able to do that much for yourself,” would be the title of one chapter. Another would be, “How to select vegetables and fruit in the grocery store to last a week,” and another, “Always wear a black skirt to a job interview.”

“But did she teach you how to knit?” asks Big Sister.

Knitting was not one of Life's Necessities, but Abi doesn't tell this woman that. It might crush her, she fears. So she says only, “No.”

“Ah!” Triumph is there. “Well. I can teach you,” she says, and her smile of very white teeth is surprising and even pretty, and then it's gone.

She must be too far away to read the expression on Abi's face.

She disappears around the side of the house, then reappears, her face a big mess of concern. “Oh my!”

“Well?”

“My name. I forgot to tell you my name.”

“What is it?”

She hesitates. “Mary.”

Okay, there are a lot of Marys in the world. Always have been. Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Mary, Abi's mother.

“Can I call you something else?”

She falters. “Well. My surname is Rhodes.”

“I'll call you Rhodes then.”

She hesitates, turns to leave, and back again, like she's in one of those old detective shows.
Just one more thing.

“It must be tough…”

“What's that?” Abi says.

“Well, not having another woman in the house.”

Who told her? Was it on the sign-up form? Or did someone say something?

“Yeah, sure.” Superwoman, this. Abi can almost see her cape, the giant M on her shirt. At least when she's flying, she won't have to worry about tripping on those shoes; landing on them could be something else, though.

“You're smiling!” Rhodes says.

“Just at a picture in my head.”

“Oh, I think this is going to be such fun!” Off she goes, on her heels, her hips swaying as if she's dancing. Abi didn't know it was possible to walk on heels like that. It's quite amazing, really. She's glad when the woman rounds the corner and there's no chance she'll turn back and catch Abi gawping after her.

Now what? Is Dad nuts? Last thing they need, someone poking around, finding out what they're about. Foster home, here comes Abi. Write the ticket now. Much as she hates this place, there could be worse. According to Mum, there could be worse. She tries not to think about what Mum told her – about when Mum was a kid – and she tries even harder not to think about what Mum never did tell her. What made it so bad.
What made it so bad, Mum?

Murky Blue & Fuzzy Pink

S
aturday mornings are different. Abi cleans the house. She doesn't know exactly why she does this, doesn't want to think about it that much, really. It's a feeling that comes over her when she does: as if, in some way
she
owns the house, instead of the other way around, which is how it usually feels. Or as if, just for a short time, she really does hold all the pieces of her life in her hand and they do fit together.

The front room is the kitchen and eating area, and the back of the house, looking out over the river, is the living area. The laundry is in a closet between. Dad's room is small, in the northeast corner, and Abi's is even smaller, just off the kitchen. The bathroom has a small and rusty tub, and camper-sized sink.

Abi always starts with the dishes in the sink. Then the sink itself, the faucets, the counters. Mugs on their pegs, and plates in a stack. The one cookbook and an old box of recipes in their place. Take out the garbage, to the trashcan on the narrow strip of porch out front. Then scrub the tabletop, the stove. Two burners dead this week. Maybe Dad'll fix it when all four are gone. The floor. Last, she shines the kitchen window that looks east, to the field. It's the only window that doesn't face the road or the river, the dust or the mud. On the other side of the house, where the river slows and sidles close to the road, there are no windows at all. The tv's by that wall. So are the letters sent to Uncle Bernard, and to Dad, by people who have found the bottles they sent out. (The one from off the coast of Oregon – the farthest away – is in the middle, framed, signed by T. Haliburton. It's always irritated Abi that there's no way of knowing if the T stands for Thomas or Tanya.) There used to be a photo of Uncle Bernard, but Mum always took it down, and Dad probably got tired of putting it back up. There was another photo, too, one of a sunset, taken by Mum. That's disappeared too.

But on this side of the house, out the kitchen window, there's the field, a patch of growing stuff that spreads wider as it moves away from the house. Mum tried to find out who owned it years ago, maybe with the thought to buy it, but it never worked out.

The rough-looking willow at the water's edge leans over as if the river's going to claim it, and beside the house and along the roadway there are the blackberry bushes that Abi's thankful for at the end of summer. The path between the blackberries grows narrower each year and there's a ragged patch of grass that dries in July.

But he's late today.
My Boy.
Almost half past noon. She opens the window a crack. Once she heard him whistling. The sound made everything inside her stand still. If she knew his name, she'd say it over and over in her head, and she'd die to say it aloud. So it's best she doesn't know. That way, when she thinks of him it's just a thought, a feeling that seeps into every nook of her mind – not loud echoing letters making her want to scream.

She can see him from the window on Saturdays, when he brings his lunch and sits on the old log washed up a million years ago, and she can wonder what he's thinking, watching the river. Once he almost caught her looking, but she moved quick enough. This house being what it is, he probably thinks no one lives here.

There he is, his hair brown and uncut, in waves falling across his face. She wonders what colour his eyes are: brown and warm; green, full of life; blue and bright. Her own: a dark murky blue-green, as if she's lived by the river so long it's become a part of her. Mud girl, living at the river's edge.

He sits with his back to her and she leaves the window. The sparkling kitchen mocks her, and she looks at the mouldy walls. The patches of soft grey are still there. Doesn't matter how much she cleans.

She hears a sound at the window, a tap, tap. And the chirp. “Aba! Oh,
ABA
!” that voice trills, and as Abi nears the window, she can see over Rhodes's hair, and see the boy's face looking in her direction with a grin. It's too late to duck.

Rhodes is decked out in black and brilliant yellow. Bumblebee bright, and heels of course. Another old-time word comes to Abi's mind:
fetching
. Yes, Rhodes looks fetching. She's not afraid to look as if she's not quite of her time and place. But just as Abi softens, again comes that voice.

“Aba!”

Abi suddenly doesn't want to be here, even though inside her something leaps: it's the first time she's seen
My Boy's
face directly.

“Yoo-hoo!”

Oh, no. Not “yoo-hoo.” Don't call out that!

There's even a twitch from Dad's chair at the sound.

Now
My Boy
is laughing. Rhodes is close enough to the window for Abi to look down and see her scalp under her hair, hair carefully heaped and sprayed. Abi can even see globules of spray tacking it into place. She'd like to do something with that hair – wash out all that stuff for a start.

“Aba!”

Rhodesy's so…earnest. It's just not good to be earnest like that. She might as well be out there in her underwear.
My Boy
is still chuckling as he crushes his lunch things into a bag, lights a cigarette and leaves, back through the path in the blackberry bushes, back to the mill or wherever it is he works. Abi always imagines that smell of cedar when she thinks of him.

She waits until the bushes stop quivering, until it doesn't matter anymore, and then she goes out the back door and calls to Rhodes. Maybe she just has an urge to watch her trip down the wharf in those shoes. She starts toward Abi. “There you are!” Her entire body seems to chirp. “What
ARE
we going to do today?”

“I thought you were going to think up something,” Abi says. She doesn't mean to be rude. It's just how it comes out.

Rhodes doesn't seem to notice. “Oh, I have, I have!” She glows. Abi thought only pregnant women were supposed to glow.

“In Betty – that's my car – ” she says, panting somewhat, “I brought my flower pressing kit.”

“Flower pressing?”

She gulps. “With the early summer flowers, I thought we could…”

Abi motions to the field. “There aren't too many flowers around here.”