Baygirl

by Heather Smith

Anne-Marie was huddled with a group of girls. “Hey, girlfriend!” she yelled, pulling me into her circle and leaving Elliot standing awkwardly on his own.

  “Love his hair,” whispered a girl with raccoon-inspired eye makeup.

  They all turned and stared at him. Elliot looked behind him to see what they were looking at, and when he realized it was him, he gave a dorky wave.

  Anne-Marie laughed. “He’s such a geek.”

  I shot her a dirty look.

  “In a good way,” she added.

  A busty girl wearing a crop top spoke up. “What’s his name?”

  I so didn’t want to be there. “Elliot.”

  “Tell her what you call him though,” urged Anne-Marie.

  I let out a bored sigh. “Moptop.”

  This set them off cackling like a bunch of witches.

  “What’s he like?” asked a girl who smelled like my father’s chair.

  I had to get out of there. “He’s great.”

  “No, I mean, what’s he like? You know, in the bedroom department?”

  More witchlike cackles.

  “I gotta go get a…beer.” I backed away from the group and grabbed Elliot’s arm, pulling him toward the stairs.

  He laughed. “Is there a cauldron in the middle of that circle?”

  “I know. It’s like Halloween over there.”

  “I take it you’d like to leave?”

  “Yep. Five minutes in and I’m done.”

  “You were right. We would’ve had more fun playing cards with your dad. Let’s go.”

  We were going up the stairs when Elliot grabbed the back of his head.

  “Aw, shit!” he yelled.

  “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  He didn’t answer but just kept holding the back of his head, a dazed look on his face.

  I looked around the room, trying to make sense of what had happened. A beer bottle lay at Elliot’s feet. Toby Burt and Will Hanrahan stood in the corner, laughing.

  The room fell silent.

  I stormed over to Toby and Will. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “Do what?” Toby shrugged.

  “I know it was one of you assholes.”

  Anne-Marie rushed over and stood between us. “Back off, Kit. It wasn’t Toby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Well, one of them did it.”

  Anne-Marie put her face close to mine. “You shouldn’t go throwing accusations around.”

  “Your stupid boyfriend shouldn’t go throwing beer bottles around.”

  “Come on, Kit,” Elliot called. “Let’s just go.”

  “Hey, Afro boy!” said Will. “You just going to run away and let you girlfriend fight your battles?”

  “What battle? I don’t even know you jerks.”

  “Call us jerks again and you’ll know exactly what battle.”

  I pushed Anne-Marie out of my way, stood on my tiptoes and screamed in their faces, “Jerks!”

  Toby Burt grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me backward so hard that I fell to the floor, bonking my head as I landed.

  The room was spinning. “Nice boyfriend,” I said to a blurry Anne-Marie.

  Someone came up behind me and slid his hands under my arms, pulling me to standing, and I didn’t have to turn around to see it was Elliot. I knew his touch and I knew his smell. He set me on the couch and whispered, “Don’t move an inch. Stay here, out of the way.” Then, calmly and purposefully, he walked up to a smirking Toby Burt, who laughed and said, “What are you gonna do, Little Orphan Annie?”

  “This,” said Elliot. He punched Toby quickly and accurately, square in the face.

  Toby fell to the floor, his face in his hands. Will pounced on Elliot. He sat on his chest, grabbed his collar and screamed in his face, “You broke his nose, you lunatic. Now I’m going to break your face!”

  Some kids screamed for them to stop. Others started chanting, “Fight!” And when Will punched Elliot once, then twice, one kid said they were calling the cops.

  At first I sat on my hands so I wouldn’t move, but on the third punch I jumped up and yelled for someone, anyone, to get Will off him. The person who finally did was Toby.

  He yanked on Will’s shirt. “Will! Stop! Get off him! Someone’s going to call the cops!” Will got up and backed away. Elliot’s face was puffy, his eyes were almost swollen shut, and blood trickled from his nose. I tried not to cry. I bent down and helped him up. “You look as bruised as an old banana.”

  He gave a pained laugh. “It’s a bit too late for the code word.”

  I guided him up the stairs. As we walked out Will Hanrahan’s front door, I thought I heard Anne-Marie call my name. But I didn’t turn around. I didn’t care if I ever saw her again.

  Dad flipped out when he saw us. He ran to the bathroom and raided the medicine cabinet. He pulled out bottles and bandages and creams and practically threw them at me.

  He was on the edge of hysteria. “Do something, Kit! Fix him!”

  I picked up one of the tubes. “Hemorrhoid cream is not going to help, Dad.”

  He was pacing. “Ice, ice—that’s what we need. Ice.”

  While he ran to the freezer, I ran to Ms. Bartlett’s. Within minutes she was in the house and in control. She examined the back of Elliot’s head and put a Baggie of ice on the huge lump that had formed. She cleaned the blood off his face and looked in his eyes, asking him if he knew what day it was and where he was.

  Satisfied with his answers, she said, “He’ll be okay.”

  Dad poured Elliot a small drop of something strong and put it in his hand.

  “Get this down ya, son.”

  “Dad!” I protested, but Ms. Bartlett put her hand on my shoulder and whispered, “He’s just trying to help.” So I let it go.

  When I explained what had happened, I started shaking and crying uncontrollably. It was like some kind of delayed reaction.

  Dad freaked out. “That bastard pushed you, Kitty? Are you okay? Your head—does it hurt?”

  “My head’s fine, Dad,” I said. “But I don’t think Elliot’s is.”

  Dad started pacing again. “Well, we should call the cops, right? I mean, this is assault and battery!”

  Ms. Bartlett put the kettle on.

  “There’s no point,” said Elliot. “I threw the first punch.”

  I blew my nose and wiped my eyes with a tissue. “But they threw a bottle at your head!”

  “Yeah, but no one can prove that. Everyone there saw me punch that guy in the face. I shouldn’t have reacted. I should have just left.”

  “You would have if it wasn’t for me. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have screamed in their faces. I should have walked away.”

  Ms. Bartlett passed me a warm facecloth. “Calm down, love. Give your face a wash.”

  “You were right, Kit,” said Elliot. “We should never have gone in the first place.”

  The creaking of the floorboards was driving me nuts. Ms. Bartlett took my dad by the arm and sat him in his chair.

  “Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” she said. “What’s done is done. Elliot’s right: there’s no point in calling the police. Every kid in town is going to say he started it, and where will that leave him?”

  Dad poured himself a big drink. “As usual, nice guys finish last. It’s not bloody fair.”

  Ms. Bartlett put a pot of tea on the table. “No, it’s not.”

  Elliot took a sip of Dad’s drink and grimaced. Ms. Bartlett swapped it for a cup of tea and said she’d better get back to Frank.

  “Wake him every hour tonight, Kit. We want to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion. If you can’t wake him, come get me right awa
y.”

  When my alarm went off the first time that night, I went downstairs and saw Dad sitting in the kitchen with a pot of tea. “I already checked him,” he said. “Go back to bed, love.” And I was grateful, because I was awfully tired. I reset my alarm, and when I went down an hour later, Dad was still sitting there at the table. “Just checked him. He’s fine. Go to bed, love. No need to set your alarm again. I got this.”

  I crawled back into bed and held my alarm clock in my hand. Elliot had to be woken every single hour. What if Dad passed out and forgot? I reset the alarm and put the clock on my bedside table. I closed my eyes. He was drinking tea, just tea. He had said, I got this. I reached out into the darkness of my bedroom, flipped the alarm off and didn’t wake up again until morning.

  Elliot looked like crap when he boarded the bus back to St. John’s. I was worried his parents would take one look at him and never let him come to Parsons Bay again, but he said not to worry, that he could handle his parents.

  I asked him to check on Mr. Adams for me and see how he was doing. A week later I got a letter in the mail.

  Dear Kit,

  I had a visit from your fancy man today, the one with the ginormous bird’s nest on top of his head. His face was a mess. When I asked him what happened he stood on my doorstep rambling on about how he had been to Parsons Bay and there was a party and you didn’t want to go, but he did, and there was a fight and he got hit in the head. He went on and on and on for so long that I had no choice but to invite him in. I said, “Listen here, lad, I have no idea what you are on about, but I sense there’s been trouble. Come in and we’ll talk over tea.” So we went into the kitchen and before he filled me in on the fracas at the party, he said, and I quote, “Sit your bum down, Mr. Adams. I’ll get the tea.” At first I thought, How rude! The impertinence! The impudence! The rudeness! The gall! But once I sat my bum down I thought, Lovely jubbly, how absolutely wonderful it is to be tended on. Speaking of which, I don’t recall you ever telling me to sit my bum down. You, young lady, could take a page or two from Bird’s Nest’s book.

  Anyhoo, he told me you were wondering how I was doing. Well, nosey parker, if you must know, I am fine.

  I do miss our visits though.

  And about that spot of bother you had at that party…mind yourself and keep your nose clean. If you dance with the devil you’ll get poked by his horns.

  May the force be with you,

  Mr. Adams

  I read the letter to Nan. She smiled and said she liked Mr. Adams’s style.

  “You’ll meet him someday,” I said.

  “No, Kit, I won’t.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I love you, Kit,” she said, and my heart was bursting and sinking at the same time.

  “I love you too,” I said. “See you next time.”

  But when I went to visit her the next day, her breathing was real bad and she was being moved to Intensive Care. I got scared and ran home, and when I told Dad, he looked scared too. We went back to the hospital together, where they told us that Nan was hooked up to a machine to help her breathe. “It doesn’t look good,” her doctor said. I felt like I might throw up. When I looked at Dad, the color had drained out of his face. It was hard to look at Nan with that horrible tube coming out of her mouth, but she was looking at me with glazed eyes. I didn’t want her to know I was scared, so I faked a smile. Dad kept talking to her, telling her useless stuff like what kind of wonderful prizes there were on The Price is Right that morning. When the nurses said it was time for us to leave, I held Nan’s hand. I tried not to cry, because that would just make her feel bad and dying was probably bad enough without feeling guilty about it.

  When I went back the day after that, the nurses said they were sorry, and I said, “For what?” and then I realized she was gone. In movies when people are told that someone they love has died, their knees buckle and they collapse to the floor, screaming and bawling. But I was frozen. It was like my feet were stuck in mud. But the weirdest thing of all was how badly I wanted my dad. When I was finally able to speak, I asked the nurses about him. They said he had been there earlier and that he’d freaked out. They’d tried to talk to him, relax him, and asked him if he’d like to talk to the chaplain, but he’d taken off. Like a shot, they said.

  He wasn’t in the pub or the liquor store or his chair at home. Where was he? I needed him. I wondered if he, too, liked it at the top of the cliff, no matter what the weather, so I pulled up my hood and ran to the trailhead, fighting the wind and the rain the whole way. I was about to head up the hill when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, something lying on the wharf, right next to the Breakin’ Wind. As I got closer I saw that it was Dad, passed out in the fetal position, an empty bottle and a puddle of vomit next to his face.

  I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Dad! Wake up! Come on! Wake up!” The wind howled around us and the wharf bobbed like crazy, the stupid empty bottle rolling back and forth, back and forth, across the wooden planks. I tried not to look at his puke. I tried not to breathe in his stink. I hit him on the arm. “Dad! Will you just get up?” The bottle rolled this way. The bottle rolled that way. I hit him again. Harder. “I don’t need this right now. Get up, you useless piece of shit!” I made a tight fist. I punched him. “Please. Get the hell up!” Rattle to the left. Rattle to the right. I let out a scream and snatched the bottle. I leaned off and threw it with all my might against the boat. It made a loud smash that woke my dad with a start. He looked confused. A tiny bit of me felt sorry for him. I closed my eyes and willed the anger out of my body so that it wouldn’t show in my voice. “Get up, Dad. Let’s go home. It’s cold.”

  I thought about grabbing his hand and helping him to his feet, but I didn’t. Instead, I left the big clump of disgusting, pathetic sadness on the wharf. But I walked home slowly enough for him to catch up.

  Nan had been dead for hours. And I hadn’t shed a single tear. Not even when I returned to her empty house and was hit with the realization that she’d never set foot in it again.

  “Get out of those wet clothes,” I said to my father. “I’ll make a pot of tea.”

  “I don’t want tea,” my father said. “I want something else.”

  I practically threw the kettle on the stove. “You’re having tea.”

  He didn’t argue.

  I sat in Nan’s rocker. I listened for the kettle’s familiar whistle and stared at the familiar yellow walls. The house looked the same as ever, but it couldn’t have felt more different. My eyes moved from the walls to the counter, where the biscuit tin sat empty. I was struck with the thought that I would never taste Nan’s tea buns again. Yet deep inside I felt nothing. I was numb.

  I rocked to the slow tick of the clock. One second felt like ten. Time dragged. And except for the creaking of Dad moving around on the floor above, the house was eerily silent. So when the kettle whistled, I didn’t rush to take it off the heat. I allowed its piercing scream to fill the room. I left it to splutter and screech and rumble. I closed my eyes and rocked harder and faster. Noise is what I wanted. Crazy, meaningless noise.

  Then it stopped.

  “What the hell are you doing?” my father asked.

  I opened my eyes. “Waiting for the kettle to boil.”

  “Kitty, love…”

  I stood up. “I’ll get the tea.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll do it…if you want.”

  “I don’t.”

  I poured the water into the pot and covered it with the multicolored tea cozy. I thought about Mr. Adams, who was the same age as Nan, and wished time would stand still.

  My dad was hovering. “If you need to talk…”

  I turned around. “About what?” I snapped.

  His eyes filled with tears.

  “We’re out of sugar,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.”


  I bolted. Up to the cliff. Where I screamed and screeched louder and longer than any kettle ever could. Then I sat on a boulder and stared out at the ocean, struck by its unusual calm. The lashing rain and howling wind had stopped. Just like that. The weather was as unpredictable as my life.

  eight

  The Funeral

  Dad struck the match with a quick flick of his wrist. The smell of sulphur shot up my nose, tickling the hairs in my nostrils and making my eyes water.

  “Geez, Dad, watch it. You’re gonna set my hair on fire.”

  He probably thought it was his big moment, me and him hugging like this. It’d had the potential, I suppose, before he decided to light up a smoke in the middle of it.

  The flame was at my eye level, and I watched it bring life to Dad’s cigarette. A few quick puffs, and the end ignited—bright red turned orange and then black, mottled and Halloweeny. The embers got bright every time he took a big puff and went dim every time he exhaled. Bright, dim, bright, dim. It was fascinating to watch. A long ash formed on the end of the cigarette. The longer he smoked, the longer it got. I waited for it to fall, but it didn’t. How was that possible? It looked so fragile. The mixture of colors was beautiful. Too bad something so pretty can kill you.

  He rested his hand on my head. I didn’t say, Move your bloody hand, you idiot ’cause it might’ve seemed harsh considering that his mother was lying dead in the churchyard behind us. So I just stood there, stiff as a board, my arms dangling at my side.

  He’d cried earlier. It made me feel weird—like when you wake up late and realize you’re supposed to be somewhere and everything feels wrong and it takes you ages to recover. His bottom lip trembled and I thought, Oh shit, don’t cry, please don’t cry, but he did and snot ran down his upper lip, and I had that waking-up-late feeling and was grossed out at the same time.

  The smoke floating out of his mouth snaked up my nose and slithered down my throat and into my lungs, constricting them. I swallowed a cough and wondered why I was being so nice. He patted my back like I was a golden retriever. A crazy kind of patting that verged on whacking. He was so out of his comfort zone.