Mud Girl (7 page)

“What is this anyway?”

“Sunstroke,” she says.

It feels good to have a name to attach to it.

Rhodes opens one of the bags she's brought with her. “Here's cream,” she says, and she smooths the ointment over Abi's arms and upper back. Rhodes's fingers are light on her skin, and even that's too much. “The other things in the bag are for you, too,” she says, an attempt to distract her, Abi suspects. She tries not to pull away from Rhodes's touch.

Other than Horace with his juice berries, Abi can't remember when someone last bought something for her.

Then she remembers how Mum took her shopping for clothes the week before she left.
Was she planning on leaving then? Is that why she insisted on two pairs of shoes – she only ever bought one at a time – and a trip to the lingerie department for two bras and enough underwear to fill a drawer?
Abi should have known then, right? Just thinking of that drawer of underwear makes her want to cry. Why has she never put this together before? Maybe it's got something to do with Rhodes's hands on her shoulders, gentle.

Abi opens the bag and pulls out a plastic bottle.
TEEN MULTI-VITAMINS
. “Worried about my nutrition?” she asks. Who wouldn't be; not a fresh anything in the fridge.

Next a bottle of Midol.

“I had terrible cramps when I was your age,” Rhodes says in a low voice. As if Dad would bother to listen.

There's a box of Tampax.

“My mother left me a lifetime supply.” It is, too. Takes up both shelves under the bathroom sink.
And what had I thought that meant? She was planning on having a period forever? Never shopping again? There was never enough money for bulk shopping.

Abi feels foolish and sick, and she'd really like to be alone. She pulls herself up to stand. “I'm feeling a lot better now. Really. You don't have to be here.”

Rhodes stares at her with those eyes, green and full of questions.

“Really,” Abi says. “I'm fine. I'll just lie down, go to sleep.” She ducks her head, put her hands out to the sides –
feel as if I need some balance
 – and makes her way toward her room. She suspects that in the house plans, her room was actually a closet, but someone put a regular door on it. A door that opens into the kitchen. Otherwise you wouldn't get a thing inside.

“This is cozy.” Rhodes has followed her.

“Yeah.” Abi flops down on the narrow mattress.
Just go.

But Rhodes has gone to get another cool cloth for her forehead. When she comes back, she kneels on the floor beside the bed, her hand resting on the cloth. Abi has to admit, it feels good, the coolness under her hand, the water running down her temples into her hair.

Rhodes spies the paper bag in the corner where she's thrown it. “Oh, have you had a chance to look at the knitting book?” Chirp.

“Pink's not my thing.” Abi pulls the blanket up to her nose; she's shivering now.

“Oh, I have every colour there is,” Rhodes burbles. “I'll bring something else next time.”

Happy as a pig in shit, isn't that what they say?
Abi wants to tell her to go, but it's too much effort to get the words out,
so she turns toward the wall, and Rhodes is quiet, her hand on Abi's forehead. Abi closes her eyes and sees the fireworks – green and pink and Fourth of July.

“There's heat exploding on my eyelids,” she says. “Looks a lot like fireworks.”

There's a quiet and appreciative chuckle from Rhodes.

“So you never miss fireworks, eh?” Abi asks her.

Rhodes hasn't said a word about that night.

“When I watch fireworks I always feel the exact same wonder I felt as a kid. Exactly the same. Never changes.” Maybe she guesses that Abi feels badly about turning down her invite, and then showing up with Jude, because next she says, “I'm glad you were able to see them.”

She's glad?
Abi manages to say,

“You forgive too easily.” “You think?” is all Rhodes says, and her hand doesn't move from Abi's forehead.

Tucked into her Ribs

T
here's a knock on the door first thing in the morning. It wakens Abi. As she stumbles out of bed, something falls from her head: the cloth, crusty-dry and moulded to a rounded shape. The skin over her joints pulls and burns, and it takes longer than you'd imagine to get to the door.

There's an old man just walking away as she opens it. He turns back with a smile. “Food bank,” he says with a wave, then moves on to the small red car half sitting in the roadway.

“Pardon?”

He comes over the wooden walkway with a box in his hands. Abi can see a box of Muffets, her favourite cereal, sticking out. She begins to salivate, realizes she's eaten nothing since yesterday noon.

He raises his knee under the box to support it, and frees a hand for her to shake. “You must be Aba,” he says. “My name's Colm, and that there's my granddaughter, Fiona. Probably about your age.”

Abi looks to the passenger window of the car and sees a girl. Or at least, the side of a girl's face. She's staring ahead as if the car is moving top speed down a highway. Her hair is pulled straight back and her brows are down over her eyes.

“Fiona!” her grandpa calls. He has to call her again before she turns.

Abi knows that face; she has seen her in English class at school. Fiona never speaks. She only whispers to other girls, and laughs, those
ha
sort of laughs. When she does raise her voice, it's to taunt poor Stu Stevenson. That rule about “ignore the bully – they'll go away…” Well, Stu Stevenson has had lots of practice at “ignore” and Fiona still doesn't go away. Abi's surprised he hasn't given up on bleaching his hair to that scruffy yellow. He just goes about his business, whatever it might be.
Doggedly
would be the word for how he does that.

“Come on out, girl!” says her grandpa. “It's all part of our deal! Move your bum!”

Colm heads back into the house through the open door, and his granddaughter stares after him. Abi wonders what he's done for that look. What is their “deal” about?

When the girl finally climbs out of the car, she slams the door shut.

Abi stands back as the girl makes her way over the wooden walkway, and she can't stop the grin that rises to her face.
I'm thinking the word “flounce”…does anyone even use that word anymore? Flouncing Fiona.

“What're
you
grinning like an idiot about?” Fiona leans over Abi. She's a tall girl, the nasty granddaughter.

“Oh, Fiona – don't start,” says Colm. And he just fits those words into the rest of his sentence, which is something about “this being Will, and this being Aba.” There's a lilt to his voice that Abi likes. Something comforting to it.

“Yeah, I know. You told me all about them in the car,” she says. “I know Aba Jones from school.”

Abi would like to set her straight: just because Fiona has seen her at school doesn't mean she
knows
her. But there are a few things about Fiona that defy Abi to speak to her. Her tone, for one – low and angry; the sneer of her full lips; the bump in her nose that makes her look like an ancient statue that will withstand absolutely anything a plebeian like Abi might say.

Fiona is standing in the middle of the kitchen, and Abi realizes that she seems to be trying to hold her very long arms close to her body. Her elbows are tucked into her ribs, her hands hold each other, and there's a stiffness to her legs.

She doesn't want to touch anything in my house.
Abi feels a glow of shame and turns away. Colm is right in front of her, and she blinks to hold back the swimming in her eyes.

“It's nice to meet you finally after coming here every week. Your Da has told me about you.”

Da? Oh yeah, the guy who was going to take me to Disneyland.

“I'd forgotten he talks,” she says.

“Aye!” Colm laughs. “He does forget he has a voice now and then, doesn't he?” He goes back out the door and reappears shortly. “One more box will do!”

Fiona looks at him; his cheerful tone must annoy her. “Are we done here?” she asks.

“You have something else to do on your holiday?” he asks with a grin. He should know better.

Her face says as much. She leads the way out the door. Colm rests his hand on Dad's arm. “Next week, Will, we'll have a game of checkers, we will.” He turns once again to Abi. “You got something soothing for that burn?”

She nods.

“Good then,” he says.

Dad follows them to the door and he and Colm share a quick, comradely hug that surprises Abi.

“Next week.”

“Next week.”

After the screen door closes, Dad lifts the boxes onto the counter and begins to unpack them.

“How long have you been getting groceries this way?” Abi asks.

Dad stops and thinks. “Before Christmas, I guess it was. Someone phoned about it. I went down to some church to pick it up a couple of times and met Colm. He said that because I don't have a car, he'd bring it over after he was done his shift. He said we could play checkers.” Dad pauses for a long moment before a half-smile flickers over his face. “Last week he said he's going to find a chess set and teach me how to play something new.”

“Do you always play a game when he comes?”

“Most of the time.” Dad lines up a few cans of soup, a can of stew, a couple of beans.

Abi's mouth waters. She can't remember the last time she had brown beans. “Can I have those?”

Dad hands them to her.

“It doesn't bother you?” she asks, as she opens the can.

Dad looks at her. This also bothers her: how he has to concentrate on her question. She can see his eyes narrow to focus. She can hear his thoughts, like the water passing under the house, nearing, circling the words he wants to trap.

She asks again. “It doesn't bother you that we need the food bank?”

“It can't,” he says then, simply. “The EI ran out, and welfare isn't enough.”

She nods, trying to absorb that.

He reaches far into another cupboard. “I wondered when we'd use this.” He hands her another tin, this one of pineapple pieces.

This used to be a favourite. Mum would make it for quick suppers on cold evenings, with pieces of sausage, and brown bread toasted on the side. She finds the can opener and splits open the edge of the tin, and the familiar smell fills her with a sadness and reminds her how hungry she is. She heats the beans and pineapple until they bubble and pop, and sets down two bowls. It isn't until she's filled the second, and puts it in front of Dad that he looks directly at her, surprised. “No,” he says. “I don't want any. Thank you,” he adds, looking down. She feels again the sense of him retreating into that place inside himself.

By herself, she sits at the table and empties her plate, then his. She wonders about what else she's missed, being at school all these months…and what's he going to do when she leaves.

Paper Boats

A
bi's laid out her best. Well, not hers. Mum's. A long, narrow black skirt and white shirt. They don't have an iron, but she remembers how Mum used to steam clothes in the bathroom and after a night of hanging, it looks not bad. There are black shoes at the back of Mum's closet, and a belt hooked over a nail in the wall. The shoes fit perfectly, and the belt fits her waist three holes away from the one that Mum used. A bit of mascara, Cinnamon lipstick, hair in a perfectly smooth pony, and she's done.

I'd hire me!

Okay. She has her list of places to go, beginning with the one interview she managed to set up over the phone.
Mack's Coffee
. “Make sure you're here before eleven when we get
busy,” the manager had said. Abi hopes he doesn't always sound that grumpy. The only watch she has is an old one of Mum's. It reads twenty minutes after nine, and even though it's old, Abi knows it keeps perfect time. She slips it into the purse that was also Mum's, along with some bus fare from the jar on the counter, and gathers together the jobless résumés she made up the last week of school. One more trip to the toilet. She always has to pee when she's nervous.