The Clay Girl

by Heather Tucker

  “Hey, Mags. I’m running for VP. You want to be on my campaign team?”

  She slides her glasses up her nose and nods.

  “First meeting, Thursday at three ten. Student council room.”

  Margaret buoys, floating off to face the horrors of the girl’s change room.

  “For that, Chase Pace, I’m making you the coolest campaign T-shirts in the history of politics. I better go and make sure they don’t hang her by her undershirt.”

  On the home front I feel a little like Margaret. Scared, wanting to avoid certain halls.

  The un-blued house sells quick. Len whistles at the profit. “I can smell the ocean air, corka.”

  Mum has the balls to show up with Officer Dick holding out a hungry hand for half. Mum’s always been a looker, which has gotten her a lot of mileage and maybe too much forgiveness. Tonight, she wobbles in on spiky silver sandals. Her exposed skin, and there’s a lot of it, is tanned like a brown leather sofa. She’s permed her hair big, either that or a bleached poodle has exploded from her follicles. Her black skirt is so mini I fear there’s no room for underwears underneath and her boobies perk in an itsy-bitsy yellow tank top. I’d laugh if I didn’t feel so belly-sick.

  Dignity curtains Len’s exposed heart-ends. “Theresa, if you’re saying you want a divorce, I understand. We’ll meet with our lawyers to discuss a fair settlement.”

  She folds her hot-pink lips. “The house is half mine. Just write me a cheque and we can be done with it.” Len would hand over the dough in a minute if he didn’t know Mum would be back in a week for more.

  “No, Theresa. I’m sure Officer Irwin will agree it’s better to settle things legally.”

  Irwin sucks in his gut and adjusts his pants.

  Mum teeters in daily. Horrifying, mortifying really, to have a mother acting my age. Yesterday she had on a black bra under a pink fishnetty thing. Irwin keeps sending her over with demands for her share of the Zajac empire which has inflated to Rockefeller bigness in his eyes.

  Len tosses me my backpack. “They just parked down the street. Go out the back.”

  “Is it okay if I just stay at Rhonda’s?”

  “Make sure you get your homework done.”

  Things are turning into a big mess. According to the law Len doesn’t have to give Mum much of anything. The store is in Iggy’s name, always has been. Len owned the house before they married and he’d paid for it lock, stock, and peril. Money from its sale is in Iggy’s account. Too bad Officer Dick and his Dickhead Chick have clued in that Len wants me and they decide that incarcerating me at Dick headquarters is a way to make him settle up.

  Having a home away from home as freaky, if not freakier, than the Appleton Asylum is almost comforting. Chase’s dad suits up for big business every morning, but he gets down and funky at day’s end. LSD is given like communion, but for me it’s a ticket to hell. Life on my outside is a bad enough trip. Put demons in my head and I’ve nowhere left to go. Everyone smokes pot like cigarettes and believe sharing is spiritual. I’d hook Jory up with Mr. Pace, but a hippie chick already shares his bed. He’s cool with Tyler helping himself to Rhonda as long as his “Mr. Love” wears an overcoat, dozens of which, by the way, fill a bowl by the front door.

  The first time I slept in Chase’s bed a twist and shout played in my gut until I figured the existential love thing out. All the edges were off as we sat on a cloud-big sofa. Chase played with my hair and pulled my ear to his lips. “Lay beside me tonight, Ari.” I followed him, thinking it was what a girl had to do to keep a man like him. I got down to my underpants, blue with a yellow sun on my bum. His hand stopped mine as I lifted my tank toward naked skin. “No, I like this.” My body tingled when he curled up behind, pulling me as close as two bodies could be. “Tomorrow I’ll read to you. Tonight I just want to feel your heartbeat.” I’d heard that one before but he really did seem more interested in the music under my skin than the tit between my heart and his hand. Rubber Soul played on the stereo and I fell asleep.

  As if just holding each other equals a big insufficiency, we keep what we do under the covers a secret, just for us to know, but he’s lonely for me to be there and his arms soften the continued unravelling of my world.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Poseys. Who picked that name for Nazi torture? The nurses splay Grandma on the bed with posey restraints around her ankles and wrists. Chase isn’t squeamish like most boys. He thinks Grandma’s fissured face is a treasure map and death is a rapturous journey. I think it’s worse than discovering the hotel room you booked is the lower level of an outhouse. The nurses let Chase play “Blowin’ in the Wind” because Gladys stops yelling Bingo numbers whenever he sings.

  I untie Grandma’s shackles. I don’t care if she plows headfirst over the side of the bed. It would be better than this. Len comes around eight. “Ari, you go with Chase. I’ll sit with her until Dolores arrives.”

  Chase hands Len the guitar and kisses my cheek because he knows I’m staying.

  Len strums, calling gypsy angels to the room and I help myself to the spot beside Grandma. Not a hint of floury goodness remains on her hands. “Did you know Grandma taught Auntie Mary to make those cinnamon buns?” Grandma’s hands are a mess of mauve worms and they’re cold. “Do you believe in heaven, Len?”

  “I believe there’s more, but I’m not sure what that means. I can’t swallow that death is the last chapter this creative life writes. Nor, that grief is how love ends. I believe we die to be reborn into another’s life.”

  “I feel like I’ve been born a hundred times and not one of the births is quite my own.”

  “I understand that.”

  Auntie Dolores pokes her head around the curtain. “Hariet, you shouldn’t be on that bed. It’s unsanitary. Len, get her home. She has school tomorrow.”

  “Hi, Auntie Dolores.” I hug her big. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Look at how tall you’ve grown.”

  “Babcia’s cooking.”

  “Go on now. I’ll sit with her.”

  “Don’t let them tie her back up.”

  Aunt Dolores smiles, a mercy smile. “I’ll hog-tie the nurses before I let that happen.”

  I kiss Grandma’s used-up tissue cheek. “You have no legs, so fly—be born again.”

  The night is September cool. Len’s hand warms my shoulder. “May I take my best girl on a date?” We walk to The Goof, the local diner with the burned out “D” in the Good Food sign. Over grilled cheese and chocolate milk we listen to “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”

  “So, are we needing to have a talk of the birds and bees, corka?”

  “You know how just being with Zodiac is the best medicine in the world? Chase is my Zodiac.”

  Len’s forehead ripples with brain confusion.

  “You can relax. Our relationship is metaphysical.” We talk over brownies and “Heartbreak Hotel” about opening our store. Len and I come to a silence, like passing under a bridge in a rainstorm. I hear the red vinyl seat squeak under my bum and smell a fresh pot brewing. Brownie icing stretches over my tongue and my neck hairs startle-up as I feel someone at the big window. I look past the painted words: Hot Breakfast $1.50 and see my young Grandma looking in, smiling, then moving on.

  The wallop of shit-pureed-sausage-’n’-egg-disinfectant at Sunny Crest is replaced by flowers that don’t know that too much sweet is as good as a stink. No one told my mother that neon green and cleavage are not the best choice for a funeral, or that messy tears are best spilled when you’ve chosen waterproof eye-gunk.

  Everyone is smoking. Jasper coughs, Guess no one’s read the report that smoking fast-tracks you for Resthaven’s mahogany bed and worm breakfast. There’s a tree out back where a girl can catch a breath of air and remember a Grandma who knit red mittens, never forgot a birthday, and talked to me woman to woman.

  “Len said I�
�d find you out here.” Mr. West hands me a hankie. “Sorry about your Grandma.” A funeral situation that sends Mr. West back my way means I can take a hug and he can give one. His arms are full of the hush-hush comfort that makes a body feel lighter. He whispers into my hair, “Miss Standish is inside.”

  I’ve grown taller. Our faces could meet if he leaned down two inches and I stretched up one. “Would you like to meet Aunt Mary?”

  “East Coast Mary? I’d love to.”

  Long, long after he’s gone, maybe still now, I feel the heat of his hand on my back as he gentled me back inside.

  Auntie Dolores says, “Jennah, you’ve done all right for yourself.” It’s a big house, filled with big payoffs. Jennah keeps it perfect for Wilf. The kids sit quiet and good. Dean, just turned four, serves ’round a plate of cocktail weenies.

  I lean against the fence surveying my sister-house. Jennah is dressed like Grace Kelly. Her face resembles Auntie Dolores’ Royal Doulton ladies and the glass of her eyes glistens exactly like Mum’s; well, Mum’s before the eye-gunk situation. Jillianne, out on a compassion pass, tucks herself small on a chaise, staring at sky-reflections in the swimming pool. With her hair cropped short she looks like a newly hatched bird, scared to fly. Jory has another tattoo, a butterfly, the antennae curling round her eye and she has a swelling belly under her peasant dress. Franc slips his dark glasses on Jacquie and smoothes the headache lines from her forehead.

  Auntie Nia sighs over my shoulder, “Jacquie’s migraines still bad?”

  “Getting worse.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “The tests all say she’s fine.”

  “A good roll in some red mud would do her a universe of good. You hear anything from June?”

  “I send postcards regular to Coombs hoping someone knows her and will pass them along.”

  “Quite the collection of wabi-sabi pots you girls are. Let’s see if I can’t get some decent food into Jory while I’m here.”

  I cozy up to a shrub when Uncle Gord moves in, sizing me up with greedy eyes. “Well, look at you, Hariet. Who’d have thought you’d turn into a fashion model.” I wish I’d gone for the Amish cover instead of the Mary Quant look. “Give your old uncle a hug.”

  I back away, searching for escape and find Auntie Mary right behind. “Come get something to eat.” I’m not much of a crybaby but fat tears surface anyway. Auntie M catches them with her sleeve. “What is it?”

  It’s the smell of an uncle touching my bum, sliding a hand under my shirt, beer-breath mumbling, Nice of Vincent to break in his girls for the rest of us. It’s Jory waving ten bucks, Look what Uncle Gordo gave me. But I say, “I miss Grandma.”Now, it’s a giggling mother with maxed-out hair draped over Officer Irwin’s arm.

  Auntie Mary navigates me through the intoxicated mourners. “Let’s get Len to take you home.”

  Bob Dylan, grade-A shit, and pressing campaign T-shirts may not be a proper way to spend Grandma’s funeral day, but it makes the hurting edges less razored and makes Chase’s reflections on death more poetic. “Babe, all this energy’s exploding into the universe, like this nuclear love bomb. Can’t you feel the love drifting over all humanity?”

  I am feeling it until Jacquie thrusts her head around the door. “Hide. Stay put ’til we say.”

  We shut everything down, grab all evidence, then burrow into the centre of some stacked boxes. “Sh-sh-sh. Stop laughing.” He piles T-shirts under our heads. “Sh-sh-sh, you’re safe with me. What the fuck are we doing?”

  “Don’t know.” Like a punch, exhaustion hits and I’m more tired than I’ve ever been in all my days on this earth.

  We listen to voices through the vents. “She’s coming home with me until you pay up.”

  “She’s not here.”

  Mum’s spiky shoes stab each step to the upstairs. A few minutes later, they needle the basement steps. I pull Chase’s right hand over my mouth and his left over my heart to muffle the cannon bangs. Purply light spills in as the door opens, then yellow light pours down from the switching on of the bare bulb over the workbench.

  Officer Dick sniffs. “What’s that smell?”

  Jacquie is as smooth as Arielle’s bottom. “Hemp fibres, from pressing the T-shirts.”

  Detective Dick sleuths. “This press is hot.”

  “Babcia was pressing stock. Ari isn’t here.”

  “Where is she? We’ll pick her up.”

  Right. He’ll feel you up.

  Oh, Jasper. He’s dirt, dirt, and I’m gonna be mud.

  “Likely a walk by the lake.”

  Len says, “No, Sunny Crest. She’s taking some of the flowers over to Gladys.”

  Jasper, why hadn’t we thought to really do that?

  Tomorrow we will if you’re not incarcerated.

  Mum shrills like a stressed loon. “I’m not being swindled out of this, too.”

  “For Christ sake, Mum, no one swindled you out of anything. Sunny Crest was expensive. After the funeral and plot, that’s all that was left.”

  I surface for air as the enemy retreats, wondering why a mother who becomes so absorbed by her men has let none of Len’s goodness soak in. Chase whispers, “What was that about?”

  “They likely thought money was coming from Grandma.”

  “What’s that got to do with nabbing you?”

  “I’m leverage to pry money out of Len.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Definition of mortifying humiliation: a cop nabbing you in front of your school, bashing your head on the frame of his cruiser while stuffing you into the back seat. He delivers me to a craphouse in downtown Toronto. Officer Dick smiles like Dudley Do-Wrong at his stinking buddy. “Thanks, O’Toole. Appreciate you bringing her home.”

  Two junior Dicks stand gawking on the beat-up porch. Mum opens her arms. “Hariet, thank God you’re here.”

  “Don’t touch me, you bitch.”

  Officer Dick backhands my face, hard. “Watch how you talk to your mother. Get inside.”

  I calculate the odds: one drugged-out mother in sparkle flip-flops, one beer-bellied cop, one doughboy, and one barefoot stoner against one long-legged, pissed-off girl with twelve blocks at most to Yorkville. These Royal Canadian Mount-me’s are not getting this woman.

  I bolt to the Village, peel through the Riverboat, taking cover behind the condiments in the storage room. Crystal follows me in. “Shit, Ari. What happened to your eye?”

  “Satan and his spawn are after me.”

  In Yorkville sympathy runs big for those oppressed by establishment bastards. “I’ll get some ice,” she says.

  Bernie comes in with Crystal. “What’s the trouble, doll?”

  The whole done-wrong drama spills out.

  “Crash upstairs long as you need.”

  More dropped-out humanity wanders around my hideout than pores on Officer Dick’s nose, but still I feel alone. I miss Zodiac and Chase. Most of all I miss Len. Oh, and I miss clothes. Not for me. Jory brought me stuff. But some crashers take their clothes off and can’t remember where they put them. Now, I’m no prude but no matter how I look at giant slugs flapping free I can’t see pretty. In the past, I’ve kept my eyes closed whenever a weenie came out, but now I’m having some good ganders and I wonder if, under their jeans, Mr. West and Jake dangle like these guys. Steve catches me looking at his package and the thing stands up, points right at me. I hope it doesn’t mean anything too weird that I think the chicks are nicer to look at—tits perk but they never point.

  Jory brings my books. I rub the love child growing in her belly as she preaches salvation. “At the meeting last week, Pastor prophesized that this baby will help bring peace to this broken world.”

  “Maybe the kid could help Len negotiate my release.” Which can’t happen soon enough. No one here messes with me but sometimes an unwashed per
son, lost on their way back from taking a whiz helps themselves to the other half of my mattress mistaking me for their love child.

  “Sorry, Ari, thought you were Cheyenne.”

  Chase shows up at eleven unable to wait until tomorrow to see me. He’s taking me home tomorrow for a civilized sit-down. Auntie Nia’s lawyer friend, Mr. Lukeman, came and took a picture of my face at its rainbow finest. But my living with Len all boils down to money. Mr. Lukeman has drilled into Chick of Dick that she gets next to nothing, seeing as everything belonged to Len’s family and she did the adultering and the leaving. Len has agreed to sacrifice half of the proceeds from sale of the house in return for ironclad custody of me.

  “It’s looking like you’ll be able to live at the store and go back to school.”

  I clutch at Chase’s arm around my body. “I’m scared to go back. I’ll be the freak of the school.”

  “Being picked off the sidewalk by police and going missing for a week has elevated you to ultra cool. Besides the school VP has your back.”

  I turn as the love symphony plays around us. “How about my front?”

  “I have your mind and spirit, Ari. That’s ultimate connection.”

  “Can I at least have a kiss?”

  He kisses my eyes, my nose, my cheeks, then catches my lips in a connection that’s nothing like Jake’s. “I love you so much, Ari.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Mr. Lukeman finalizes the divorce details. Thirteen thousand dollars will be sacrificed in exchange for custody of me. As soon as things are signed Len and I are heading east.

  Mrs. Russell hands back my character study for English. “Fascinating piece of work, Ari, but it was supposed to be a non-fiction piece.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Russell, I really wish it was fiction.” I tuck Naked People into my backpack. “The guy with the belly swag is still giving me nightmares.”