His dad leaned across him then and said to Aunty, “Why are we sitting way back here?”
“Foster wants to.”
“I do not!”
“No, he doesn’t!” Dad replied.
“Shush! Both of you!” Mom said.
It had already started, but Foster couldn’t hear a thing. The people looked small from back here. Not Pillow Top Mountain small, but smaller than usual. Someone was using a microphone, which only added shrill decibels to the already distorted voices from the apse.
Foster believed in all sorts of gods and wondered which one was responsible for putting fingers on babies. He’d never seen the finger of God, so he knew it was either really, really small or invisible. Seeing as how God would have to be pretty big to get around as much as he did, Foster assumed the whole hand of God was probably invisible. Like shrink wrap covering the leftover salad—you could only see it when the light hit it a certain way or if you wrinkled it trying to peel it off. The light in church was thick with colors, so Foster looked dizzyingly hard into the dark corners on the off chance God’s finger would be in as much of a hurry as Dad.
“How are you? Nice to see you!” A lady sitting two rows ahead had spun around and fired an unforgiving whisper in their direction. It carried like water in a sieve, splashing into the spaces between people and causing some to startle and shift.
“Ruby!” Dad’s voice, at a volume Foster recognized at once as inappropriate, a volume Mom often described as “an outside voice” when Foster used it, hit the back of every head in the church like a bullet.
There was a short and distinct swishing sound as everyone spun around and then resettled. Mom placed her hand firmly on Dad’s knee.
“No, it’s me, Caroline!” the lady replied in a hissy whisper.
“Who?” The shifting and resettling of guests was unmistakably less tolerant this time. Some of the faces that turned lingered longer, and were like thunderclouds.
“Shush, Malcolm!” Mom said. Then she said to the Ruby-Caroline, “Not now,” with a desperate, pleading smile.
The Ruby-Caroline looked annoyed, as if she thought Mom was telling her off. Foster knew Mom wasn’t meaning to tell her off. Even after the Ruby-Caroline had turned to face the front again, she occasionally flicked her head around and rolled her eyes in a harrumphing way.
“Wait! That’s Caroline!” Dad bawled into the ceremony. Then he started to laugh. The sort of greeting-laugh you hear between grown-ups when they suddenly come across people they usually avoid and can’t think of a way to get out of it. Then he said to Mom, equally loudly, “I’ve never liked her.”
Aunty immediately got up and moved to the pew Ruby-Caroline was occupying. She scooched in next to her and started whispering in her ear. Half the room was looking at them all now. Foster was embarrassed. Mom was shoving Dad along the pew with her hip and Dad was getting angry. Foster had to anchor himself to his seat with one hand to avoid being shoved onto the floor. Mom leaned across Dad and hissed, “Move, Foster!” Foster began the humiliating slide to the end of the pew, feeling the way the Ruby-Caroline had looked. Though as she spun in her seat to have a look now, her eyes were snappy with smug curiosity. Foster felt sorry for her then, even though she seemed so pleased with herself. Foster sometimes did that—put on his pride face when he was really hurt. Sometimes withholding the show of hurt was the only defense left. And here was the Ruby-Caroline being told off and told she wasn’t liked. She leaned over to Aunty and said something then that made Aunty look like she’d been slapped upside the head with a wet fish.
Aunty came back and pulled Foster to his feet with the same force she’d only just used to deposit him. She then leaned across and took Dad’s hand to ease him to his feet. Dad looked confused and upset. Mom was sliding along the pew herself when she suddenly arced upward as if she’d sat on a tack, a resounding Urrrgghh! flying from her squared mouth as if she were the choir soloist. She had skidded into the puddle Dad had left behind.
Foster was burning inside and out as he watched Mom ease her way over the slick spot. She caught herself midskid as her heel lithely slid through the urine that had dripped onto the floor. When she reached Foster, her skirt was wet.
“It’s all right, Fossie,” she said, resting her palm on his cheek. He realized then that he wasn’t moving. His joints had locked. Aunty had already led Dad away, but Foster couldn’t stop staring at the pee on the floor. He could smell it now too.
“You should know better!” An old lady had appeared from nowhere, like the finger of God, and had a talon-like grip on Foster’s shoulder. Then she said to Mom, “Do you need any help, dear? It’s all just attention-seeking, you know.”
“No, thank you, we’re fine,” Mom said. She was easing Foster toward the door when it suddenly and sickeningly occurred to him that Mom was letting the old lady believe that he was the one who had peed. He looked up at his mom and felt a shame that rolled his bowels. He got ready to go out by himself, he made his own sandwiches, he picked up his toys. He didn’t pee his pants. In that moment he hated her.
When they got home, Mom put Dad in the bath while Aunty put the kettle on. Foster sat on the floor in the hall just outside the bathroom door and listened to the calm talk and low laughter. It had been all quiet fury in the car on the drive home. Aunty had been angry at the Ruby-Caroline, which felt unfair to Foster. She seemed like a nice lady who just wanted to say hello. She didn’t know Dad was going to use his outside voice in the most inside of inside places, and then pee himself. But Aunty fumed as she drove, occasionally spitting out half sentences in a kind of hiss-whinny Foster knew was the dead end of cranky.
“Stupid woman! If she’d just shut the…Idiotic!…told her not to…and you know what she said to me?”
“I think Linda’s upset,” Dad said to Mom. “Why are you upset, Linda?”
“She’s not upset,” Mom said.
“Yes, I am,” Aunty said quietly. Then louder, “And why can’t I be upset? Why are we all walking on eggshells around Malcolm? Why can’t I be angry? He won’t remember I’ve been angry anyway!”
“Mom, can I put the window down, please?” Foster tapped the window release energetically: frantic Morse code, no result.
“I didn’t even want to go,” Mom said. “You’re the one who insisted.”
“You can’t just hide him away, for heaven’s sake. He needs to get out,” Aunty replied.
“Can I have the window down, Aunty?”
“Why is Linda upset?” Dad asked again.
“Besides, he had a good time. Malcolm, you had a good time, didn’t you?” Aunty flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror before adding, “Oh no, he is sitting on a towel, isn’t he?”
“It smells bad in here,” Dad said. Aunty released the window lock and opened two windows halfway.
Foster used to be allowed in the bathroom with Dad. Now Mom said he needed privacy—which was strange because he’d just peed in a church. Dad used to tell some of his best stories while bathing. Foster would sit on the bathroom floor with his soldiers made cavalry by way of horses fashioned from toilet paper rolls and toothpicks. He would wage wars on the cold tiles, his horses carrying the injured back to the safety of a talcum powder beach. Dad had once told Foster that in terrible battles people sometimes lost their arms or legs, but would feel as if the missing pieces were still there.
“Can a man with no legs have itchy feet then?” Foster had asked.
“Oh yes,” Dad had said. “It’s called a phantom feeling. This is how remarkable your brain is, Fossie. It can re-create the feeling of something it knows should be there, but isn’t. Your brain can fill in all sorts of holes. Make you experience things you thought were gone forever. Like telling a story.”
Foster hugged his knees, his back against the closed bathroom door, and listened to his parents’ voices on the other side. He imagined Dad’s profile, half a face that looked a bit empty lately, and felt a stab of phantom feeling. A funny ache that told him th
e stories were still inside Dad somewhere, like an amputated foot that still itches.
“Fossie?” Aunty stood in front of him in the hallway. She held out her hand and said, “Well, we didn’t get to stay for cake, did we?”
“Was there cake?”
“There’s always cake.” Aunty pulled Foster to his feet and gripped his chin between thumb and forefinger. Her hand smelled sharp and robust, like the cleaner Mom used on the kitchen sink. “So,” she continued, “want to go get some cake?”
“Why did Dad pee in church?” He hadn’t been sure he was going to say it until it was said. He had a feeling that it wasn’t something he was supposed to ask at all. Nobody had mentioned it. Foster thought someone should at least mention it. He felt speaking it out loud had halved the thing already, and placed the blame squarely where it belonged. He could still feel the old lady’s talons.
“He just got confused,” Aunty said.
“Did he think he was on the toilet?”
“Sort of. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Mom had said that a lot lately too. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.” Foster found this response unsatisfying. It was the way grown-ups said they didn’t want to talk about it. At least, they didn’t want to talk about it with him. He knew they talked about it later, away from him, in places he used to be invited to and now was not. Like the bathroom.
“So,” Aunty said. “Do you want to come with me for cake?”
Foster wanted cake very much, but he eased his face out of Aunty’s fingers and said, “No.”
When he got to his room, he slammed the door.
There was cake later. Aunty went and got it, and when she came back, the three of them—she, Mom, and Dad—sat at the kitchen table and ate it. Foster cracked his door open just a bit, so it didn’t make any noise. He could hear the rustle of cellophane and the clink of forks on china and the low voices, and no one came to get him. Even though he’d sent himself to his room, he felt the exclusion like an arrow.
Somehow it got to school. Someone had been at the church, some grown-up Foster didn’t know. But that grown-up knew someone who knew someone who had kids, and all of a sudden Foster found himself on the receiving end of some peculiar attention he couldn’t account for. Boys would sniff him as they went past and then giggle. There were some jokes about restricting fluids from the older boys. Foster laughed along at first because everyone else was laughing and he didn’t understand. He didn’t want to be kept outside the joke. He had been kept outside a lot lately, so if there was a joke, and people were laughing, he was happy to laugh along too. But then Jack, who got picked on a lot because he was smaller than everyone else and had a facial tic, told Foster, “They’re laughing at you. They reckon you peed your pants in church.”
“I know that, stupid,” Foster replied. But he hadn’t known. The knowledge stung, but he wasn’t about to worsen his humiliation by admitting he was stupid as well. “It wasn’t me, anyway,” he continued. Foster tried to sound casual and hoped his sudden breathlessness didn’t make his panic show.
“Who did, then?”
“Dad. He’s sick, you know.”
“I thought he was just mental.”
“He’s not mental!” Foster said, thinking about the smell in the car. “He just got confused.”
“About what?”
“Where he was.” Foster turned on the tone Aunty used. Firm and instructive.
“Did he think he was on the toilet?”
“Sort of,” Foster replied. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“Not worried,” Jack said. “Don’t care. You’re the one with the mental dad.”
Foster was going to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make things worse. He was wretched about the whole thing. He concentrated on the cake he hadn’t been invited to share, because it gave him something real to be angry about.
When they walked into class and sat down, Foster saw Jack lean over to Blinky and whisper in his ear. Then both boys turned around laughing, Blinky’s eyelids fluttering like a bee’s wing. Foster felt bad-dream breathless, made all the worse because he knew he was already awake.
Dad had once told Foster a story about a queen who was part bee and part lady. She had wings that beat so fast their thrum was like the ping of a harmonic on a guitar string. Her name was Melaina, a name Foster thought as musical as the sound of her trembling wings. She lived in the underworld, probably the same place Mom’s moat snakes came from. Dad didn’t actually say that, but Foster imagined the underworld to be full of dark things that trap princesses and inspire heroes. But Melaina was very sad. After dark she would take flight among sleeping humans and bring them a draft of honey laced with her melancholy. Dad said that’s where bad dreams come from. And when she finished whispering her sadness into the ear of a soundly sleeping boy, she would leave a fine dust of golden pollen on his eyelashes, like a sticky gauze. That’s why it’s so hard to wake up from a nightmare, Dad said. She was not to be feared, but pitied. Dad sat on the edge of Foster’s bed on the night of that story until he fell asleep again. Dad didn’t sit on the edge of Foster’s bed much anymore.
“Foster Sumner!”
Blinky and Jack were still looking at Foster, but so was the whole class now. Mr. Ballantyne was looking too.
“Yes?” Feeble, but it was the first thing to come out of Foster’s mouth.
“Wakey-wakey, Foster, I said,” Mr. Ballantyne continued. “It’s your turn to give class news. What would you like to share this morning?”
Foster had forgotten about class news. Usually Mom helped him think of something to bring to class that he could talk about. Once he’d brought in a praying mantis the size of Mom’s palm. She’d found it sunning itself on the kitchen windowsill and scooped it up, fingers kinked to gently tent the twiggy limbs. It had rocked back and forth on her hand, its huge head thrusting like a pigeon breast. Mom had put it in a shoe box with some leaves from the garden and said, “Now, that’s news, Fossie.”
But Foster didn’t have any news today.
“I don’t have any news today,” he said. That was when he heard someone quietly say, “Oh, he’s got news.” Everyone started to laugh. Foster had to hold hard to that untasted cake to stop himself from crying. He hadn’t cried at all, not really. Not even at the most terrible things, like Dad going missing or the church puddle.
“Settle down, everyone. No news at all, Foster? That’s all right. Maybe next week.” Mr. Ballantyne moved on to the next person, who had shells that used to be the home for living things. Sometimes the thing inside died, and sometimes it got too big and had to move into a bigger shell. You wouldn’t know the shell had nothing inside unless you got right up close and gave it a shake.
By recess, everyone knew it was Foster’s dad who had forgotten where he was and wet his pants, and although Foster was in the clear, so to speak, the snickering and nasty jokes continued. He began by laughing along with it all, as if he didn’t care what they thought or said. But the laughing along didn’t feel good, and Foster felt that if he laughed too hard he might break open. He needed something else. So from his sadness and his desperate need to hide from everything, Foster pictured his dad eating cake while he had to go to school. The result was anger. Foster decided his best way through the day was to join the ranks of the bullies against the real cause of his humiliation: Dad.
“It really stank!” he said, the small crowd around him beginning to grow. “I was like, ‘Put the window down! Put the window down.’ ” Boys around him were shrieking with laughter. “Mom sat in it. She had it all over her dress…he just stood there like a baby. Mr. Wet Pants!” Boys echoed the phrase, a singsong slur bouncing off shiny concrete verandas.
“What’d you do then?” someone asked.
“Got out of there, stupid!” Foster said. Suddenly all the boys were laughing at the stupid one who didn’t know what Foster did then.
Soon the small gathering b
roke apart as boys headed to the after-school pick-up area. Still the chuckling and repeating of the story as smaller and smaller groups of boys hurried away to waiting cars, taking the news of the general’s greatest lost battle farther and farther afield. Foster was now a part of the laughter instead of the object of it, popular by choosing the side of disgust over shame. He was one of the group again. It should have felt better than this. Foster couldn’t understand why it didn’t feel better.
Foster was the last one to be picked up. Mom was often late these days. As he waited, one of Jimmy Maher’s friends spun past on his bike and called out, “Maybe next time he’ll poo himself!”
Foster laughed hard, and waved. When he was finally alone, he cried. For the first time. He’d turned the tears into something else by the time Mom pulled the car up next to him, though.
Foster didn’t like it when Mom had a weekend shift at the meat factory. He knew she preferred nights to weekends because the money was better and Aunty was available, but she took the shift because she wanted to get ahead. That’s how she explained it to Foster. “We need to get ahead a little,” she said as she picked up the phone to call Miss Watson.
“Not Miss Watson,” Foster said.
“Oh, Fossie, please,” Mom said. “I know she’s boring, but it’s just for a few hours.”
“Why do you pay her? She doesn’t do anything.”
“She keeps you safe,” Mom replied. “Please, help me by not arguing.”
The phone call to Miss Watson was always a long one, or at least longer than Foster thought it needed to be when Mom was only after a yes or a no. Miss Watson seemed to do most of the talking. Mom seemed mostly embarrassed and way too grateful. Especially since Miss Watson always came. Once again Miss Watson arrived within the hour. With her book.
Sticky Notes Page 6
