The Clay Girl

by Heather Tucker

  I want it to be my mother’s voice I hear, or Todd, even Ronnie, but it’s O’Toole who unearths my face from the tangle of hair. “Breathe, darlin’. You’re okay now.” He looks up. “Christ, Irwin, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I see the Dick’s boots backing away and hear the scared animal in his throat.

  O’Toole stands me up. My legs, the floor, turn rubbery. “You gotta get out of here. Dry yourself off. Get the kid changed.” He mops blood off my chin. “Just go ’til he calms down.”

  The room spins when I bend over to secure Mikey’s arm. He’s like dragging a boat through sand but I sludge him into my room. Through violent shivers and eerie silence I remove his wet clothes and bundle him in my comforter. “We’re okay. It’s over.” My right eye is swelling and the size of my lip won’t let my mouth close. I hurry into jeans and layers of sweaters. “Stay here. I’ll get your clothes.”

  It strikes me how absurd socks are as I struggle them onto Mikey’s feet, but they’re not optional in a Canadian February. It hits me, too, harder than Dick’s fist, that my mother is watching TV. The Tool forces five bucks into my hand. “Go grab a burger. Come back after he goes in for his shift.”

  A burger? We want a hospital, Ari.

  Mikey and I are hustled out the door with half-zipped coats and no mitts. Our wet hair turns stiff in the cold. Mikey blurs into wobbly lines as I try to focus. “We should go to emerg.”

  Words shiver out of him. “They’ll call the police.”

  The distance to any of our havens is farther than my reserves. “I’ve got to sit, Mikey.”

  He nabs my hand and pulls me along the narrow space between crapdom and next door. He lifts the cover to the cellar entrance, descends the crumbling steps, pushes open the door, and scuttles into his fort. I manage to get in, but I know getting my quivery self out won’t be easy. It’s smaller than the single mattress, so it feels like we’re in a boat. The height of it only gives me room for an angled sit. We zip into the sleeping bag and burrow under one of Babcia’s featherbeds. “We can only stay until the Dick goes. If you can’t wake me, you have to call for help.”

  He nods into my chest and holds on tight. The cellar is damp-cold but the small nest feels intoxicatingly warm with the lid closed. As voices expand and contract above us, Mikey’s grip tightens.

  I rest my head against the metal wall. “What set him off?”

  “Miss Mumford said I was the best student in the class. She showed him my work.”

  “And?”

  “He saw my hero page about Huey.”

  I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Escaping in darkness would’ve been easier. A cross-hatching of pale silver lines slice through the vent holes. My first thought is that I’m failing math, the second, I have to figure out where we go from here. Mikey’s breathing sounds like metal on metal. Every scrape hurts my head. What am I supposed to do, Jasper? I want my sisters. Jennah knows about beatings, but taking a mess to her house would knock her carefully choreographed equilibrium off-kilter and the thought of prayer from Jory’s church makes my teeth twitch.

  Sabina knows about war.

  Mikey whimpers as I wrestle my stiff body out of our cocoon. His cheek feels white hot.

  I struggle out of the box. As I squat and pee over the drain in the cement floor, mist rises from my stream. I peek at the driveway through the narrow window. The Dick’s car is gone. I check my watch. If he went to work we have maybe a half hour until he gets home.

  Before opening the cellar door I listen for sounds of stirring, then creep to the phone on the wall. It rings ten times before someone picks up. I whisper, “We need help.”

  “Ari?”

  “Come, please.”

  “Otto will be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll be at the corner.”

  Dr. Shomski is Sabina’s second cousin and despite the Appleton blight on the Zajac clan he has always been kind to me. He knows I’m lying when I tell him Mikey fell in the lake and that I got banged up pulling him out, but he trusts Sabina to sort out the truth.

  He whispers something to Sabina in Polish, and I ask, “Is Mikey okay?”

  He rips prescription orders off of a little pad and tucks doctor gear into his black bag. “His larynx is quite irritated and his lungs congested. What concerns me more is the both of you staying away from dangerous water. I’ll check back this evening.”

  Otto goes to the drugstore while Sabina calls our schools. She makes soft food, checks Mikey’s temperature, and tucks him into bed. “Sleep without fear, słoneczko.” The name little sun suits his small, fair head poking out from under the quilt. She plumps a pillow on the other bed. “In you get, corka.”

  A Dick defense plan feels urgent, studying for my math makeup test is an imperative, my history paper was due yesterday, today I’m missing a biology lab worth twenty percent of my mark, my hair is matted with blood and the left the side of my face is a freakish mix of tingles and throbbing. “I can’t sleep, Auntie.”

  “Lie down. I have a poultice to take some of the swelling down.” I comply and she retrieves something that fills the room with the fragrance of spring rain. She gives me a white pill then covers half my face with a gauze bag filled with cold goop.

  I squeal like a piglet.

  “It will hurt only for a few minutes then the pain will calm.”

  Jasper slides up and down my toe to distract me. Smells like cucumber.

  “What is this?”

  “Comfrey.” She makes a futile attempt to unstress my hair. “Rest if you can.”

  “I’m sorry to be all this trouble.”

  “Trouble is unwanted. You, corka, are wanted, you are precious to me.”

  The little pill eases the pain but the accompanying dreams are as appealing as the “acid tests” conducted in my past. We don’t like this, Ari.

  I know, Jasper. And I’m going to fail biology.

  I drift, waking over and over from Dali-like dreams—Still Life Moving Fast. The Face of War . . . distortions too close to my truth.

  I give up and shower. As the mist on the mirror retreats I wonder where the Dick would have dumped our bodies if O’Toole hadn’t needed to piss.

  The poultice has not produced the miracle I’d hoped for and my face resembles a surreal Mexican sunset. As I slip into the clothes Sabina put out for me I wonder if she mixed up the pile: silky new underwear from the boutique, black tights, a soft hand-knit pullover, a peasant skirt that a peacock would envy, and one of Babcia’s warmest shawls.

  I join Sabina in the workroom. She scolds when I start folding the pressed shirts. “Eat before you start.”

  “I nabbed three perogies from the kitchen.” In truth, I considered a soda cracker and just didn’t want the bother of throwing it up. “What am I supposed to do, Auntie?”

  “I know someone who could get you and Mikey passports. Poland would have you safe with Jacquie and out of their reach.”

  “I got a passport after Uncle Iggy died. I have no clue how the Dick found out but he said if I ever ran away he’d have his associates nab Jory and . . . by the end of what they’d do to her, she’d be begging for her God to take her. If that didn’t bring me back he’d go after Jillianne, let a gang of pervs at her. Then he said he’d beat Jennah to death and set Wilf up to take the fall. He smiled that greasy smile, ‘Then what else could Nana and Pops do but move into that pretty bungalow of Jennah’s and take care of those little orphans?’ He was likely just messing with me but look what he did to Iggy.”

  “Ari, you know that those of us who care about you cannot allow this to continue.”

  “No shit. But you have to help me figure out how to do that without getting my sisters murdered. Len said you were my age when you took on the Germans. He said you were the smartest cog in the Resistance wheel.”

  “I was a naïve girl pl
aying a dangerous game. It was a time with few options.”

  “What are my options?”

  “The authorities.”

  “I have a file of two-bit crimes and suspicions, but no proof. And look, we all know he set up the Aquarius robbery but where’s the evidence? If I deliver what I have to the wrong person, Mikey and I are screwed. Mum would never back me up. If I do something that costs him his job but doesn’t land him in jail, I’m dead.”

  “You are right. This needs to be planned very carefully.” She pats the work table. “Up you get. Lie back.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to gather the troops. No one is going to be willing to discuss anything when they see your face. Mr. Ellis for one will call the police.”

  I stretch out my long legs and tuck the shawl under my head. “This can’t be covered up.”

  “All we need is a little distraction while we come up with a plan.” She gets out paints and brushes and goes to work. “Just relax and tell me what you are thinking right now.”

  “The thing skittering around like quicksilver is that he wanted to be Mikey’s hero and he near killed him because he wasn’t.”

  “Who are his heroes?”

  “People with money, power. He’s a major butt-kisser around Wilf.”

  “Jennah’s husband?”

  “There’s always a pissing match when they’re together but Wilf is clearly alpha dog.”

  “Before we can diffuse this bomb we need to understand the tick-tick-tick. Is Officer Irwin a religious man?”

  “He gets shined up in uniform for special Sundays and positions himself for an audience with Father Humphrey.”

  “How is he with his own father?”

  “I’ve only met him once. The Dick grovelled around him like a kicked dog.”

  The tiny brush on my skin hurts and soothes. “What is the happiest you have seen him?”

  “Winning on poker night.”

  “Deeper happiness.”

  “The man has less depth than the pores on his nose.”

  She dots my nose. “Then you go deeper. See him,” she says, but what I see is the rage in his face as he held me under. “Or, just let your mind float.”

  “The police chief made rounds before Christmas. Apparently, he stopped and talked to the Dick, shook his hand, thanked him for his service. You would’ve thought the Queen of England had knelt at his feet. Drunk or sober, that’s all I heard about for weeks.”

  “One thing I learned during the war is that a man’s behaviour snapped into line the instant his superior came into the picture.”

  “Should I invite Chief Mackey for dinner?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I was kidding.”

  The bell over the door clatters and Jennah’s voice follows. “Sabina?”

  “In here.”

  Her voice moves closer. “Have you heard from Ari?”

  “She is here.”

  She opens the door and adds things up. “Holy ghost and jam. What did that bastard do?”

  “Long story.” Sabina stands and stretches. “Let me check on Mikey and put the kettle on.”

  I sit cross-legged on the table. “How come you’re looking for me?”

  “Mum called. Asked if I knew where you were.”

  Mum dialed a phone?

  FIFTY

  This is the Resistance ready for the battle ahead: Mina and Ellis, Sabina, Jennah, Chase, me, even my boss Bernie has agreed to make his resources available. Otto and Wilf are entertaining the kids at Jennah’s house.

  Ellis’ despair when he hears what happened makes me believe that Len is close. He calms down, but is reluctant to support any plans that have Mikey and me returning to crapdom. “Vandervolt suspects what’s going on. One call and she’d get them out.”

  “But where would she dump them?” Chase has a magic marker behind his ear and is assembling a flip chart. “Ari could take care of herself. But Mikey? And how long before the Dick had them returned?”

  “There are any number of places where they’d be safe. My sister in Quebec would take them in a heartbeat.”

  Chase asks, “And could you promise he wouldn’t hurt her sisters to punish Ari?”

  “No.” The heels of Ellis’ palms push against his temples. “So what do we do?”

  Sabina pours coffee. “We can’t out-bully or out-muscle him, but we sure as hell can outsmart him.”

  “That’s just it. Stupid is stupid and does stupid things. There’s no controlling that.”

  Chase is enjoying this a little too much. “So we make Ari and Mikey too hot to touch.”

  “How? They are nothing to that bloody fool.”

  Sabina’s bracelets jingle. “We make hurting them cost him what he craves more than anything.”

  Ellis asks, “What? Money?”

  Chase uncaps his marker and writes, RECOGNITION. “He wants approval from people above him.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “So far we’ve identified,” the marker squeaks and it hurts my teeth, “Father Humphrey, Chief James Mackey, and William Dennison.”

  “Mayor Dennison?”

  “Jennah knows his daughter and wife from committees. I’m on his youth council and Wilf knows him from Hydro negotiations.”

  Mina says, “Bill Dennison was principal at Ellis’ first school. We’ve worked on his campaigns.”

  “Boooonus.” Chase writes on his clipboard. “Okay, while Jennah and Ari are on their mission at the precinct we’ll finalize the plan for cozying up to the mayor. Then Ari and I will go to the Riverboat as usual.”

  Ellis sighs, “Ari, at least give yourself a break from work.”

  Chase says, “No can do. Bernie is good friends with the chief of police. He’s organizing a sit-down to discuss ongoing problems in Yorkville with key players. Ari is going to be at that table.”

  “To do what?”

  “The Chief sees the hippies as one of Toronto’s biggest problems. Ari has a lot of insights to offer.”

  My head ratchets up. “I do?”

  “We’ll go over the key points. The media will be there. The Dick just has to get wind of Ari having the Chief’s ear.” Chase checks his watch. “Jennah, a lot is riding on you. How do you want to handle this?”

  “Give me half an hour. I’ll just zip home and get myself presentable.”

  When she’s gone Sabina scolds, “Ari, eat something.”

  “Sorry, Auntie, I can’t face anything until this formidable pain in the ass is down to a manageable hemorrhoid.”

  When Jennah returns she looks more alluring than Grace Kelly in High Society. While she was gone Mina finished the whimsical masterpiece Sabina started on the bruised side of my face. Now luminescent dragonflies stretch open-winged over pale flowers.

  Ellis says, “I still think we should give it the weekend. Let him calm down.”

  Jennah works her hands into elegant white gloves. “The station house is safer than Switzerland, and striking while the remorse is hot will get us a better deal.”

  “Remorse? The only one he cares about is himself.”

  “Maybe so, but I guarantee he’s scared shitless about how the mess is going to sort itself out, if only for his own sake. Come on, Ari. Grab the goods.”

  Sabina hands me our weapons: a large box of pastries and a thermos of coffee. “You both look beautiful.”

  Looking pretty and offering food are, I suppose, how women armour-up for battle.

  As luck would have it, the Dick has the evening shift. We march into the precinct. Really, Jennah more glides in and tilts her head to the man at the desk. “Excuse me—” She deciphers his badge and pronounces his name with a Parisian lilt. “Officer Fournier. We need to see Officer Richard Irwin on an urgent matter.”

  He’s so mesmeri
zed by Jennah there’s no need to make an excuse for the Van Gogh on my face.

  The officer scuttles away and Jennah warns, “Remember, look contrite and keep your mouth shut.”

  “If I could I would.” I attempt to bring my puffy upper lip in line with my pouty bottom one.

  She hands me a tissue. “If you can’t close it at least dab up the drool so the violets don’t run.”

  The Dick bursts through a swinging door, his coat half on, and attempts to sweep us out the door. “There’s a coffee shop on the corner.”

  Jennah skirts around him and waltzes into the inner sanctum. The air does what it always does when Jennah enters a room full of men, it organizes into a whistle. She smiles and speaks to the room. “Nonsense, Richard. I’ve brought nourishment for your men.” She sets the box down on some gape-mouthed guy’s desk. “Dig in, boys.”

  The Dick commandeers us toward a grubby little office. “You’ve no right to be coming to my job like this.”

  “You should have thought of that before your handiwork barged into my work.” She dusts off a chair and sits. “Imagine my humiliation when in the middle of a meeting with the mayor’s daughter, two half-drowned, bleeding relatives show up at my door.”

  The chair moans as it takes the Dick’s weight. “Yeah, right. Don’t con a con.”

  “Lorna Dennison and I are co-chairs on a committee called Science in the Classroom. Domestic violence is another passion of hers. Even more so of her mother, Dorothy.”

  “What did that one say?” He chins to me and finally takes in my face. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that?”

  Jennah says, “Lucky for you, it’s camouflage. Ari said, very generously I might add, that Mikey fell in the lake and that she hit her face on a rock trying to save him.”

  “That’s exactly what happened and you can’t prove any different.”

  “Oh, Richard, please. I’m an expert at this.” Jennah slops on the hogwash. “I have notarized photographs of the handprint under that paint. One we all know will match yours. And, did you know, there’s new technology that can identify fingerprints from bruise patterns?”