Baygirl

by Heather Smith

  “So how come no one told me?” I repeated.

  “There’s been a lot going on, Kit,” said Mom. “Do you have to know every detail?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “I do. Especially when one of the ‘details’ involves me moving to this sucky neighborhood.”

  “It’s a fine neighborhood,” said Mom.

  “Not!” my father snorted.

  “This isn’t funny, Phonse.”

  Dad was driving slowly, and Mom was looking at house numbers.

  “This is it,” said Mom.

  We pulled up to a small, scruffy-looking house.

  “You didn’t tell me because you knew I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Uncle Iggy wasn’t living in his big house anymore.”

  My mother got out of the car and opened my door. “We didn’t tell you because it didn’t matter. We were moving no matter what. Now get out of the car, put a smile on your face, and come say hello to your uncle Iggy.”

  I had to hide my shock when I saw him. Cool, hip Uncle Iggy was gone and in his place was a sloppy, disheveled bum. Instead of his usual crisp blue jeans and fitted T-shirts, Uncle Iggy was wearing a stained sweater and baggy sweatpants. Stuff you’d wear to bed. Stuff you’d wear if you had a messy painting job to do. Stuff that’s not good enough for anything else. And his hair used to be messy on purpose. Now it was just plain messy…and a bit greasy too. He looked hopeless. I guess that’s what happens when a tractor-trailer crashes into your wife’s car, leaving you a widower in your early thirties.

  “Hi, Kit. Wow, you’ve really changed.” He gave me an awkward hug. Years ago he would have grabbed my hands and whirled me around, saying, “You’re my favorite niece, you know,” and I would have answered, “I’m your only niece!” It used to be our own little joke. Uncle Iggy didn’t look like he joked much anymore.

  Uncle Iggy’s house was as shabby as he was. All his great furniture from the big house was nowhere to be seen. The only thing I recognized was the old leather chair he’d bought in his university days. Aunt Margie had teased him, saying that once they were married she wouldn’t allow the chair in the new house. But she did, even though it was well worn and had a few burn holes in the arm. Now there were so many burn holes that it wasn’t a leather chair dotted with a few burn holes but a big burn hole dotted with bits of leather chair. Uncle Iggy had always been a smoker, but this was ridiculous. Even the walls and ceilings were sooty. If I was going to be living in a giant ashtray for God knows how long, I figured I might as well start smoking myself.

  Uncle Iggy led us into the kitchen for tea. Paint was peeling off the walls, the cabinets were missing their handles, the faucet had a steady drip, and the linoleum was peppered with his signature burn holes.

  “Like what you’ve done to the place,” said Dad. Mom slapped him on the arm.

  At least your ugly, stinky chair will fit in with the decor, I thought.

  “I’m only having a lark, missus,” said Dad. “Iggy here knows that, don’t you, Iggy?”

  Iggy looked down. “Oh, yeah, sure.” My heart sank. He looked so meek.

  “Where’s all your nice furniture, Ig?” Mom asked.

  He shook his head. “I…I couldn’t stand to look at it.”

  Mom reached for his hand.

  We sat at the kitchen table under a cloud of awkward silence. Uncle Iggy looked at me. “Sorry to be such a downer, Kit.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “I got your room all ready for you,” he said, a note of hope in his voice.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “You’ll be sleeping in Margie’s sewing room,” he said. Then he added, as if I’d be pleased, “And it still smells of her.”

  I almost choked on my tea.

  “Well, whoopdi-bloody-doo!” boomed Dad, with a smirk. “You’ll be sleeping in your poor old dead aunt Margie’s sewing room. And it still smells of her!”

  Mom shot him a look and then plastered a smile on her face so fake, it verged on deranged. “Well, isn’t that lovely, Kit?”

  Dad got up and pulled his suitcase over to the table. “C’mon, Iggy,” he said, “let’s have a drink.” He popped open the lid and revealed his very own traveling liquor store, bottles and bottles of booze nestled in a very sparse collection of clothes.

  “They have liquor stores in St. John’s, you know,” I said.

  Dad ignored me and surveyed his stash. “What are you drinking these days, Ig? What can I get ya? We’ll have a drink together—just like the old days.”

  Uncle Iggy stared into his teacup. “Well, you see, Phonse, the thing is, I’ve been going to these AA meeting thingies…”

  “AA?” asked Dad.

  “Yeah. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous?”

  “I know what it is, Iggy. I just don’t know why you’d want to go there.”

  Uncle Iggy rubbed his face with his hands. “I did something stupid.”

  “What?” asked Mom.

  “I almost burned the house down.”

  Mom went pale. “What? What happened?”

  Uncle Iggy ran his hands through his hair. “I was drunk. I don’t know what happened. I…I…I don’t know.”

  Mom reached out and took his hand. “It’s okay, Iggy.”

  “I woke up and the house was filled with smoke.”

  That explained the smoky walls and ceilings.

  “I must have dropped a lit cigarette somewhere.”

  His voice was going all cracked, and I prayed he wouldn’t cry.

  “The old man next door, Mr. Adams, he came in and woke me. The fire alarm was going off and I didn’t even hear it. That’s how out of it I was. The carpet was burning. I’m lucky it didn’t spread. But then again, maybe…maybe…”

  “No, Iggy,” Mom said, staring him in the eye. “Don’t even go there.”

  Go where? I was confused.

  “Maybe I’d be better off if the whole place had blown up. With me in it.” He dropped his head on the table and broke down. My stomach twisted into a tangled knot.

  My mother hugged her brother tight. “Why didn’t you tell us things were this bad? I knew you were a bit depressed, but—”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it,” Uncle Iggy sobbed.

  The room fell silent except for a few sniffles from Uncle Iggy and some shhhs from my mother. Then we heard the kish of a can being opened.

  “Phonse!” yelled Mom.

  “I need a friggin’ drink after all of that,” said Dad, guzzling a beer. “That’s some heavy stuff.”

  Uncle Iggy stared hard at my father. “Phonse, when I almost burned this place down I knew it was time to admit I was an alcoholic. What is it going to take before you do the same?”

  My mother stood up and rubbed her hands together nervously. “Now, then, how about a nice cup of tea?”

  “Why would I admit I was an alcoholic,” asked Dad, “when I’m not?”

  “It’s milk and one sugar, right, Iggy?”

  “Come with me, Phonse,” said Iggy. “To AA. You can join me on my journey to sobriety.”

  My father burst out laughing. “Journey to friggin’ sobriety?” He crushed the empty beer can against the table. “Is that the kind of bullshit this AA cult is telling ya? Friggin’ AA. Taking the enjoyment out of people’s lives, that’s what they do. Who do they think they are, these AA people? I’ll tell you who they are. I’ll tell ya what AA stands for—arrogant arseholes.”

  Uncle Iggy looked over at me. “Why don’t you watch your language and calm down, Phonse?”

  Dad grabbed another can of beer from his suitcase and raised it in the air like it was a trophy. “This’ll calm me down,” he yelled. “This always calms me down. No one will ever tell me that I can’t have the thing that calms me down!”
/>   He opened the can and downed it. He was soooo far from calm.

  Uncle Iggy pushed his chair back and stood up tall. He stared directly at my father. “If you want to drink, fine. It’s your choice. But this is my house. So keep your voice down and watch your language in front of my sister and my niece.”

  Uncle Iggy didn’t look so meek anymore.

  Dad stared at him for a moment, then sat down. He opened a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink, eyeing Uncle Iggy the entire time.

  Mom put her hands on her thighs and bent toward me until her face was in mine. “Why don’t you go see your new room, Kit? Go on,” she said. “Go check it out. That’s a good girl.”

  Uncle Iggy put a hand on Mom’s shoulder and pulled her away from me. “She’s not a puppy, Emily.”

  Uncle Iggy got my suitcase from where I’d left it by the front door.

  “Your room’s upstairs,” he said. “Second door on the right.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Then I dragged my case up the stairs to poor old dead Aunt Margie’s sewing room and wished I was back in Parsons Bay in a room that smelled of me.

  The sewing room walls were covered with dark wood paneling. The one window in the room was tiny. I threw my suitcase on the bed and took a sniff. Thankfully, the room didn’t smell like much of anything.

  There was a glass candy dish on top of the dresser. I thought of Ms. Bartlett and Turkish delight. I took some change out of my pocket and threw it in the dish. One dollar and fifty cents. Not only was my new room a dark cave, but I was also poor.

  Uncle Iggy poked his head in. “I put some of Margie’s things in here,” he said. “Some clothes and stuff. Help yourself. I have no use for any of it.”

  “Oh, okay, thanks.”

  After Uncle Iggy had left, I looked in the closet. Margie had good taste. I pulled on a denim jacket but felt weird wearing something that had belonged to someone else. Someone I had hardly known. Someone who was dead. I hung it back up and shut the closet door.

  Feeling claustrophobic, I went outside and sat on the porch. The iron railing was rusty, and the concrete steps were crumbling. The garden was a bunch of overgrown bushes and weeds, dotted here and there with chip wrappers and other scraps of paper. It was like there had been a windstorm on garbage day and no one had bothered to clean up afterward. What a shithole. My eyes wandered away from Uncle Iggy’s house, and I took in the houses around me. I realized that this little shithole, my new home, was just one of many small shitholes in this giant shithole neighborhood. I wondered how far from Uncle Iggy’s house I’d have to walk before the atmosphere changed to something nicer.

  I thought about Nan’s kitchen. I thought about sitting at her table, drinking baby tea, listening to her transistor radio and watching the fishing boats coming back to port, knowing they had a full catch by the swarm of gulls around them. I was nestled deep in my thoughts when something came flying toward me, jarring me back to my shithole existence. “Tally-ho!” someone yelled. I shielded my head with my arms and held my breath. Something bounced off my foot. I looked down. There in the dirt lay a big hunk of doughy-looking bread.

  “What the hell?” I yelled.

  “Eh-up, lass!”

  I followed the voice and saw an old man in a brown cardigan standing on the steps of the house next door.

  “What?”

  “Eh-up, lass!”

  “What?”

  The old man let out an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t you understand English? HELLO THERE, GIRL!”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Crackin’ good day, eh?” He swept his arms up toward the sky.

  I looked at the overcast sky above me.

  “Um, I guess so.”

  He started to sing. “‘Oh what a beautiful mornin’, oh, what a beautiful day. I’ve got a beautiful feelin’, everything’s goin’ my way.’”

  He looked at me expectantly, as if I was supposed to say something. But what do you say after someone sings? I wondered if I should clap. Maybe he was expecting me to break out in song. Maybe he wanted to do a duet. Maybe he lived his life as a musical.

  “Um, nice song.”

  “Nice? Nice?” He made a combination of exasperated noises—harrumph, tsk-tsk, tut-tut—and started to walk back into his house.

  “Hey,” I called, picking up the lump of bread. “What’s this?”

  “What’s that? I’ll ’ave you know that that is a Yorkshire pudding. Been ’round for a donkey’s age. From way back in the Middle Ages, like.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “But why did you throw it at me?”

  He looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “Flippin’ hell! It’s a welcome present, lass. Serve it with roast beef and gravy! Ta-ra!”

  He went back into his house and left me on Uncle Iggy’s front step. I put the Yorkshire pudding to my nose and took a whiff. It actually smelled quite good—good enough to eat…except for the grass and gravel.

  I went inside and told Uncle Iggy what had happened. “Look what the guy next door threw at me,” I said, holding up the Yorkshire pudding.

  Uncle Iggy laughed. “Typical Mr. Adams.”

  “Mr. Adams? The guy who saved you from the fire?”

  “Yep. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here right now. Strange old guy. Harmless enough though.”

  I threw the hunk of dough into the garbage. Imagine throwing a Yorkshire pudding at someone. Still, I was relieved that he hadn’t thrown a side of roast beef as well.

  Living with three jobless adults wasn’t easy. I never got a moment alone in the house, so I spent most of the summer sitting on the front step. I didn’t mind though; it was my very own thinking spot.

  “Come in, Kit,” Uncle Iggy said, one cool August night. “It’s getting chilly. Come watch The Cosby Show with us.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I can hear Dad imitating Bill Cosby from here. His impersonation sucks. And anyway, they’re reruns. I’ve seen them all before.”

  Uncle Iggy sat next to me. “You can’t sit out here all the time, Kit.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think it’s good to be alone all the time.”

  “You’re alone all the time,” I said. “You barely leave your room.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “Because at your age you should be, I dunno, hanging out with friends.”

  I laughed. “What friends? I don’t have any here.”

  “Well, you will. School starts soon, right? That’s something to be excited about.”

  “Woohoo.”

  “Look, Kit, I know how you feel. Believe me, I had to drag myself out of my room tonight. But now that you guys are living here, maybe we should, I dunno, start having some family time.”

  I pushed some crumbling concrete off the step with my heel. “I don’t spend time with my family. It always ends in disaster. And I’m not going to waste my evenings watching him get drunk while Mom pretends everything is perfectly normal. So you can get the ‘happy family’ idea out of your head. It’s not going to happen. What I need is space and peace and quiet, not family time.”

  Uncle Iggy got up. “Follow me.”

  “I’m not going,” I said. “The last thing I want to do is listen to that lunatic yell at the TV.”

  He sighed. “Just follow me, Kit.”

  Inside, he opened the door to his den. “It’s all yours.”

  “What?”

  “My den. Privacy and warmth. Consider it yours.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Like almost every other room in the house, the wood-paneled den was drab and dark. But I didn’t care. It was way bigger than Aunt Margie’s sewing room. It had a TV and a desk, and now it was min
e. I threw my arms around Uncle Iggy. At first he didn’t hug back. It was like he’d forgotten how. But then he smiled and returned the hug.

  Uncle Iggy’s university diplomas hung on the wall. A Bachelor of Science in Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering hung next to a Master of Science in the same thing. When Mom would brag about how well Uncle Iggy was doing at university, Dad would dismiss it. “Ocean and Naval Arch-a-whatever-the-hell-they-call-it, my arse. Shipbuilding is what it is. Men have been building ships and boats for years and years, and they never needed no fancy university degree to do it either.”

  “You were at university for a long time,” I said to Iggy now, studying the dates on the diplomas.

  “Seven years in all,” he said. “Seven wasted years.”

  He sat down on the loveseat.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Booze happened,” he said. “After Margie died, I started drinking every night after work. Then eventually I started drinking during the day. I kept a flask in my desk. It eased the pain at the time. But it was just a Band-Aid. Once the drink wore off, it was still there—the hurt, the grief.”

  “It must have been hard.”

  “It was. Still is.”

  “How did you lose your job?”

  “The vessel designs I was turning in were far from seaworthy—they looked like doodles from a seven-year-old. They really had no choice but to fire me.”

  “But you stopped drinking. Won’t they take you back now?”

  “I had my chance, Kit, and I wrecked it. They won’t trust me now.”

  “How about another company?”

  “They’d want references that I’d never get. It’s a lost cause.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Don’t ever start drinking, Kit.”

  “I’m proud of you for quitting,” I said.

  “Thanks, Kit.”

  Ms. Bartlett put in a good word with her family and got Mom a job at Bartlett’s department store. Mom’s first day of work coincided with Uncle Iggy’s six-month anniversary of giving up alcohol. To celebrate, she planned a steak dinner.

  “It’s a special day,” she said. “Iggy hasn’t touched a drop in six months.”