Walking Backward

by Catherine Austen

Monday, August 27th

  I called Karen yesterday, but her mom said she wasn’t home. I think she was lying. I called Simpson and he said, “Yeah, Karen’s back from camp but I haven’t seen her.” I can’t tell if he’s lying.

  I read a book about phobias. I feel sorry for people who have them. Like selenophobia, a fear of the moon, or chionophobia, a fear of snow. I’m always happy to see the moon, and I get excited every time it snows. People with phobias never have those great feelings.

  There’s a fear of walking, called basiphobia, and even a fear of thinking, called phronemophobia. You’d be a total mental case if you were scared to death of thinking.

  The fear of snakes is called ophidiophobia, and it’s pretty common.

  Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous French general, was ailurophobic, which means afraid of cats. If all those people he conquered had let out their house-cats, maybe he’d have run away. I can picture Charlie and Cleo chasing Napoleon back to his ship, with his crazy hat falling off his head as he ran, and the two cats all fierce and proud of living up to their names at last.

  People with phobias need to exercise to release stress. The book recommended walking, but if you had basiphobia or you were in a hurry, you could try biking instead. If Mom had biked to her office that day, she’d have released her stress and not crashed the car. But who knows? Maybe a snake sunning itself on the bike path would have made her spaz out and crash into a three-year-old tricyclist and kill him. Then she’d have killed herself out of guilt. So there’d be two families destroyed instead of just one. You can never say for sure that the horrible thing that’s happening to you is the worst thing possible. It could always be worse. But it could be better too. She could have just pulled the car over.

  I was working on the scrapbook this weekend, sorting through photos and putting stories in order. I remembered a story Mom told me just before Sam turned four. She took him to the store to pick up his birthday cake—which was a Scooby-Doo cake, no surprise there—and he started crying on the way home. He was in the car seat beside his cake box, happy as can be, when all of a sudden he started bawling his eyes out. Mom thought maybe he’d crushed the cake. But no, it was fine. She asked him, “What’s wrong?” And he said, “I don’t want to get older.” He said he wanted to stay three years old forever, but with cake and presents. I can totally relate to that. Life is good when you’re three years old.

  Mom said she wished we could stay little forever. She called it a selfish wish. She said she should want us to grow into adults who find our place in the world and have families of our own. But in her heart, she wanted to keep us small and together. “In the center of each other’s lives,” she called it. I told her that wasn’t a selfish wish at all, because Sammy was probably happier at three than he’d ever be again in his life. I said I was probably happier when I was three too. I asked if she was happier as a grown-up, with her work and us and Dad, or as a little girl with Grandma. She said she didn’t remember being a little girl.

  It sucks that you can’t remember. I honestly believe the first five years of life are the best. You’re happy doing anything. Cutting construction paper is a really good time when you’re three. You play with toys all day and you’re really into it, not just pretending. Everyone makes a big deal of everything you do. They tell you you’re great because you poop in a toilet. How can you top that kind of admiration? Plus you’re with your mom all the time, and she adores you and looks at you like she couldn’t possibly be happier than she is with you. Unless you have a rotten mother, in which case it would totally suck to be three and you couldn’t wait to grow up. But if you have a nice mom, it’s great. Until your nice mom dies. Then it sucks.

  It’s eight o’clock in the morning, and I should feed the cats. I didn’t sleep much last night because we have an incredibly important day today. We’re going to meet Sammy’s kindergarten teacher. Dad took the morning off work. He’s in the shower right now. Sam’s supposed to bring his school supplies to the classroom— except we haven’t bought them yet—and we get a tour of the building and meet the teacher, whose name Dad can’t remember. He can’t find the letter about it, but he knows the meeting is at ten o’clock, because he wrote it in his agenda. That gives us time to buy school supplies.

  Mom used to lay out all our supplies on the kitchen table the night before school started. She’d label every single pencil and pack them up one by one and tick them off the supply list, as if it was an emergency kit like the kind people keep in bomb shelters, and if I only got one glue stick instead of two, everything would fall to pieces.

  The rest of us are totally disorganized compared to her. I can’t believe that Dad makes maps at work. You’d think a person would have to be organized for that. I’m surprised Dad doesn’t get the capital cities mixed up, or put the mountains in the wrong places, or leave whole countries off the map.

  I’m going with him to meet Sammy’s teacher, even though the letter didn’t invite siblings. I figure it will take at least me and Dad to make up for one organized parent. Even with both of us, there’s a good chance we’ll come out of the meeting and not remember the teacher’s name. We told Sam that was his job.

  Sammy just walked into my room wearing new clothes. Really nice, clean things with no wrinkles or stains. I have no idea where they came from. He said Mom put them on his bed. He didn’t actually say “Mom.” He said, “My mommy.” Like we’ve each got our own. He always says that. Dad used to ask, “So how was your day, Sam?” And Sammy would say, “My mommy met me for lunch.” And Dad would look at Mom just to make sure she was the mommy Sam was talking about.

  It’s not possible that Mom put new clothes on Sam’s bed, so where did they come from?

  It was Dad who put the clothes on Sam’s bed. He went shopping yesterday. He bought clothes for me too, but he can’t remember where he put the bags. I asked, “Why didn’t you buy the school supplies at the same time?” He looked at me like maybe I was expecting a bit much and getting the clothes was out of character enough.

  We bought Sam a Power Rangers schoolbag and a Scooby-Doo pencil case and a Transformers lunch box—even though he’s never even seen Transformers. And pencils with happy faces on them, and purple glue sticks, and his whole list of supplies. He was thrilled with his new things, and the cashiers were smiling over how adorable he is.

  His teacher is named Madame Denis. When Sammy heard that, he told her the joke, “Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Madame.” “Madame who?” “Madame foot’s caught in the door.” Then he exploded with laughter. Madame Denis just shook her head and said, “We don’t say that word in school.” Sammy asked, “What word?” Madame Denis glared at Dad like he was an incompetent parent.

  She helped Sam take his supplies out of his bag to keep at school. She told him to take the lunch box and schoolbag home and bring them back and forth every day. “Like Josh does,” Sammy said. Madame Denis gave me a look that said I better not forget my lunch box or I’ll be hearing from her. She gave Dad a list of lunch suggestions, because there’s a kid in Sam’s class who’s allergic to peanuts, so you have to bring alternatives. There’s stuff on the list like chicken drumstick and pasta salad and food I never once got in my lunch even when Mom was alive. There’s a cafeteria at the junior high school, so I can buy lunch. In kindergarten they have pizza Fridays, but all the other days they have to bring a packed lunch. I can’t see Dad fixing up a chicken drumstick and pasta salad, so we’ll stock up on microwavable Chef Boyardee.

  Madame Denis is very strict. She won’t let Sammy walk backward in school. Not in the classroom, not in the hall, not outside, not anywhere. She said it’s dangerous. She said, without the least bit of sympathy, “It would make your mother cry to see you walking backward.” Just like that. And she never even met our mother.

  She said, “There are better ways to keep people alive in your heart.” I told her about the scrapbook we’re making. She said it sounds lovely and when it’s done Sam can bring it into class one time
if he wants.

  She said, “You can also remember someone by wearing something special, either something they owned or made, or a locket with their picture in it.” She opened up her necklace and showed us a picture of a little girl. She didn’t say if it was her daughter or her sister or whoever, but I’m guessing it’s someone dead.

  I told her that was a good idea, but Sammy doesn’t walk backward to remember Mom. He walks backward to remember all the people who are still alive, so if they die he’ll remember their faces. She said, “Nonsense.” Just like that. She said if you walk backward you have to think too much about where you’re going to properly concentrate on what you’re seeing. She said instead of walking backward, when Sammy leaves a room or says good-bye to someone, he can take a pretend picture with his fingers, then turn around and walk forward to wherever he’s going.

  I think the pretend picture thing is just as weird as walking backward, but maybe it’s more acceptable among kindergarteners.

  Madame Denis said we have no idea who’s going to die. Maybe it’s not the person you’re leaving who’ll die, but the person you’re heading toward. So you should walk in the safest way possible, and forward is the only way allowed in school.

  She said she certainly hoped that Dad didn’t let Sammy walk backward on the roads or sidewalks. Dad shrugged and said he bought new school clothes. She seemed to take that as a good answer.

  Madame Denis has some special kind of kindergarten-teacher power, because Sammy is now walking forward. He turns around to take imaginary pictures, but that’s still a big improvement. And it only took twenty minutes with Madame Denis for Sam to master. She’ll have him totally normal by Christmas.

  On the way home from kindergarten, we stopped at the garden center and bought a tree for Mom, like Mitchell’s family has for his father. I wanted a rosebush, but Dad said we’d kill it with too much water or not enough light, and then we’d feel terrible. So we bought a cedar tree instead. Mom liked the way cedars twist into different shapes and the way they smell. We’re going to plant it in the middle of the front yard, where it will have lots of room to grow. We’re calling it Mom’s Tree.

  In Europe, you can have yourself composted when you die, then mulched into soil and put under a tree, so your memory tree is actually feeding on what’s left of your body. I find that very sick and gross, but I read that it’s becoming popular. The planet is running out of space to bury people. In some cities, instead of buying a grave forever, you rent one for fifty years. They dig you up after you’ve decomposed and everyone has stopped visiting you, and they put a new dead person there. That wouldn’t work for Mom, because Sammy and I will still be alive in fifty years. I don’t want to show up at the grave and find a stranger buried there.

  Except we never visit Mom’s grave. Sammy’s scared of graveyards, and it’s too far for me to bike. Plus it’s where I made a total idiot of myself. I still can’t stand the thought of her body under all that earth. I might freak out again and try to dig her up, and I don’t think Dr. Tierney is prepared to handle that.

  If we have Mom’s Tree and her scrapbooks, maybe we should have just rented the grave. I don’t intend to ever go near the place. The idea of the person you love all rotten and wormy under the ground is totally gross. But not as gross as feeding them to your tree.

  At the garden center, while Dad was talking to some woman, acting like a pathetic divorced man, Sammy dropped his Power Ranger in a tub of pinwheels and freaked out. I thought he’d been stabbed in the heart while I wasn’t looking, or maybe one of his eardrums exploded or his eyeball fell out. I spent five minutes checking him for wounds before I figured out why he was screaming. Dad rushed over, and we had to dump all the pinwheels out of the tub to reach the Power Ranger. The clerk was angry, but the pinwheels were plastic so it’s not like they got ruined from being on the floor. We put them all back.

  We have to cure Sam of his Ranger obsession. Dad said he could take the toy to a jeweler to make into a necklace so Sam wouldn’t lose it again. But that won’t work. It’s too big to tuck under a shirt. Everyone would say, “Hey, kid, there’s a Power Ranger hanging from your neck.” And Sam would say, “Yeah, that’s my dead mom.” And presto, he’d be the weird kid.

  I said we could buy some Power Ranger underwear to replace the doll, but Sammy looked at me like that was just sick and wrong. I don’t know what we’ll do. I doubt if he’ll ever lose the toy by forgetting where he put it, because he honestly never lets go of it. But he might set it down for a second to pull his boots on, and it could get kicked across the floor accidentally. Then some kid would take it home. Kids steal things all the time. Someone stole my Yu-Gi-Oh! cards when I snuck them to school in grade four to duel at lunchtime.

  While Dad was bothering the woman in the garden center, Sammy told me he doesn’t ever want a new mom. I called Mitchell at his office this afternoon to tell him to stop looking. That was weird, because it’s Mom’s old phone number. Mitchell asked how my dad was doing, and I said, “He’s busy with work and the time machine.” I told him about Sam’s new clothes and how Dad came to my soccer game and cleaned the litter box. Mitchell said he’s sure that Dad will come around eventually.

  I told him that Native Americans take a year to mourn, and Mitchell said, “Yeah, you already told me that.” I told him the joke about what did the Buddha say to the hot-dog vendor, and he said, “Yeah, your mom told me that.” So I said, “What did the hot dog say when it won the race?” He said, “I don’t know. What?” I said, “I’m the wiener!” And he laughed.

  Wednesday, August 29th

  This day keeps getting worse and worse.

  First thing in the morning I saw Karen at the park. She said, “Hi, Josh,” and then she walked away. I thought, I’m not taking this. I ran after her and asked why she was ignoring me. “You don’t have to be my girlfriend,” I said. “Or even my friend. But since we’ve known each other since grade two, you can’t just ignore me.” She took a big breath. I thought for sure she was going to tell me she likes Simpson—because he always changes the subject when I talk about her lately—but she didn’t. She told me about people she met at camp, kids I don’t even know. Then Sammy introduced her to his Power Ranger. “A snake killed my mom,” he said. Karen ran home without even speaking to him. She’s usually really nice to Sammy, so go figure that one.

  I don’t understand why she doesn’t like me anymore. Maybe I was mean to her when Mom first died. I yelled at almost everyone back then. Maybe it creeps her out to remember me freaking at the funeral. Or maybe it’s just that I’m grungy and I need a haircut. She must like another guy, maybe Simpson or someone she met at camp. She was away for six weeks, and that’s plenty of time to meet someone else. I wish she’d have the guts to tell me about him. Stringing me along like this is mean.

  When she told me she liked me at graduation, she didn’t just say she liked me. She said she’s always liked me, ever since we were little kids. When you like someone for years and you finally kiss them, you shouldn’t ditch them for some guy at camp. I’ve liked Karen for years, and I could meet a hundred girls at camp and I’d still like her. Maybe she was lying when she said she always liked me. Maybe she was just being nice and now she regrets it. I really don’t know.

  One thing I know is that you can’t travel back in time. That was the next rotten thing in my day. I went to the Museum of Nature and saw the Albert Einstein exhibit. I’ve never been to a museum without Mom before. The security guard stalked me the whole time I was there. I could understand it if Sammy were with me, trying to touch the artifacts. But I biked over on my own. It was the weirdest coincidence, because Cheetah was there with Jim. I saw them in the dinosaur section. Cheetah ran over and gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. The security guard stopped stalking me after that. I guess he thought they were my parents, even though Cheetah would have been about thirteen when I was born.

  They went through the Einstein exhibit with me. I learned two things. First, Albert Einste
in was Jewish, so he would have mourned his dead mom for a year. Second, his theory of general relativity doesn’t allow for backward time travel—except maybe in unusual situations like the presence of negative energy, which is antimatter, and which there’s definitely none of in my basement.

  A display called Can We Ever Go Back? listed the time-travel theories of different physicists. They pretty much all said no. The bottom of the display panel read: It is currently unknown if the laws of physics would allow for travel back in time. Dad’s time machine is doomed.

  It’s theoretically possible to go forward in time, but backward is unscientific. Backward is a leap of faith, and I have no faith—not Jewish or Muslim or Christian or Hindu, not time-travel faith like Dad, and not Power Ranger faith like Sammy. I wish I had some kind of faith, but I don’t. Not even forward-time-travel faith like Albert Einstein. It’s impossible to go back or forth in real life. Albert Einstein was Jewish and he was from Germany, so his relatives were probably all killed by the Nazis. I bet he wished he could zoom them forward to a time when the Nazis were defeated. But he couldn’t. We’re all stuck right here and now, and there’s no getting around it.

  Except if you wake up one day and your wife dies, and then you bury her and go down into your basement to build a time machine, and you stay down there, ignoring your kids for years. One day, when you came up from the basement, your kids would be grown and gone, and it would be like you traveled forward in time. And it would be wrong.

  Part of me deep down was hoping we could go back in time. When I read that it’s impossible, there was a thud in my chest, like something dropping down a well. Jim put my bike in Cheetah’s trunk and they drove me home. They tried to cheer me up, but I was so sad I didn’t say anything except good-bye.

  When I got home, Aunt Laura was mad because she thinks I’m too young to go into the city alone. She was sick of babysitting Sammy. She spoke in very short sentences with her voice snapping like a wet towel. It’s true that Sam can be tiring these days. I said, “Thanks for babysitting. You can go home now. I’ll get supper.” She said, “No. I’m waiting for your father.” She was obviously waiting to start a fight with him.