Flying With Amelia

by Anne Degrace

  I was the youngest in my family of four, a late child. By the time I was in kindergarten my eldest siblings Anthony and Eleanor — twins — were already in university. By the time I was in grade three, Janice was gone, too, and it was just me at home.

  “She gets everything,” Eleanor would say when she’d come home for the summer and see my new green five-speed bike or hear I was going to summer camp. She hated that I got my own room while she had always had to share with Janice. Still, my mother never quite got over the lean years of raising the first three children while Dad was working his way up the company, and she was always telling me how much things cost, and what we couldn’t afford. I had a keen sense that I could not expect to get the things my friends had, and felt guilty when I did get the bike or two weeks at camp.

  I looked nothing like my siblings, fair where they were dark, myopic when their vision was perfect. I had buck teeth I hid behind my hand when I smiled. Once, I overheard Andrea and Mandy speculating as to whether I might have been adopted. But when I asked my mother, suddenly suspicious, she reassured me. Eleanor, home at the time, said: “Did you think they’d have taken you on by choice?”

  But if I enjoyed the benefit of being the only one left at home, as Eleanor complained, it was not so beneficial at school. There, I felt the difference of older parents who were not as interesting as those of my friends. They didn’t go to Puerto Vallarta in March. They never had cocktail parties. When we went to Ogilvie’s, my mother chose the conservative powder blue pantsuit for me, not the one with the buckles. “Doesn’t this look snazzy,” she’d say.

  I squinted at the board for the first week of school before Miss McGrath noticed and called my parents. A week later I wore small rectangular glasses with pink frames that had sparkly bits at the temples. For the first few days they made the ground look closer, and, disoriented, I tripped frequently, causing Andrea to call me “Spazz.” Even Freddy Andrews called me “Four-eyes,” which offended me terribly because he was a dwarf, and nobody was allowed to call him anything but Freddy.

  WHEN WANDA CAME into the classroom that day, looking the way she did, the last thing in the world I wanted to be was her Special Friend. Not for any amount of time. “Four-eyes” and “Spazz” had too recently been abandoned for me to feel any real security. Throughout the morning I felt her presence, a burden.

  At recess Miss McGrath called me over and reminded me of my duties.

  “Show Wanda around, Meg,” she told me. “Make sure she feels welcome, so she won’t be lonely. It’s hard to be alone in a new place.”

  She held the door open for us and watched our departure. We were the last to leave the classroom.

  In the girls’ yard a group of girls were skipping Double Dutch, chanting: “Vote, vote, vote for dear old Jen-ny, who’s that knocking at the door? If it’s Jenny let her in and we’ll sock her in the chin, and we won’t vote for Jenny anymore! (Shut the door, kiss the floor, say no more.)” The name would change for each girl who jumped and gestured between the alternating plastic ropes. Against the school wall a marketplace had already materialized with all the speed required for as much hot trading and gambling as could be had in fifteen minutes. Twenty or so girls had set up marbles along the sunbaked wall in various configurations on the pavement, shouting like barkers at the fair. “Hit one, you win them all!” or “Hit the peewee crystal, win a crystal boulder!”

  “What are they playing?” Wanda asked me. Didn’t she know anything?

  “Marbles,” I said, like she might be stupid. Then, as it struck me that here was someone I could actually impress, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out a handful of marbles. “Here, I’ll show you,” I said.

  I had four catseyes and one beauty, the catseyes clear with a twist of colour in the centre, the beauty milky white and streaked with orange. The beauties were my favourites, usually worth extra shots. “I have more at home,” I told Wanda as she peered into my palm. I pushed my glasses up my nose and surveyed the prospects.

  “Over here,” I said, approaching a girl I knew only slightly, a grade sixer.

  “Hit one, you win them all,” she called as we approached. “One shot for the catseyes, three for the beauty,” she told me, eyeing the marbles in my hand. She had three beauties in a triangular formation. The advance beauty, slightly smaller in size, was nestled in a slight dip just behind a diagonally raised crack in the pavement. A clever trick: if you shot for the closest one, your shooter would hit the rise and deflect away from the marble. The best chance was to shoot for either beauty in the back, a farther shot but a better bet. I got right down to pavement level like a pool shark eyeing an angle. The asphalt felt rough on my knees through my leotards. I could feel Wanda beside me, watching me.

  The first catseye succumbed to the cant of the pavement, rolling sideways and into the waiting palm of the grade five girl, who scooped it into her purple Seagram’s bag. The second, shot so as to compensate for the slant, missed the mark as well. I took a breath, and decided to go for the other beauty in the back, inching my knees across the pavement for a better angle. I used my best pitch, the gentle thumb flick that always, always, won for me. There was that angle again, a dip in the pavement I didn’t see and wasn’t expecting. My fourth catseye also missed the mark.

  I rubbed my beauty, my last marble, my favourite marble, between my palms. I was sure now that my initial assessment must have been wrong, that the front beauty was the easy shot. How sneaky to make the one that looked easiest the one that was easiest, a brilliant strategy. I blew into my hands.

  The bell rang.

  “There’s no time,” I said, relieved.

  The grade sixer eyed my orange beauty. “Yes there is,” she said.

  “Not for three shots.”

  “Okay, one, but if you hit it I’ll give you six beauties,” she said.

  It was a good deal, and if I was right, the front beauty would be the easy hit after all. But what if I was wrong?

  “Do it,” whispered Wanda. She was looking at me in admiration. The schoolyard was almost empty, and the wall yawned between us and the door. The recess teacher was waiting, holding the door open for the stragglers.

  I blew on my marble again, rolled it between my thumb and index finger, and shot. Missed. My orange beauty disappeared into the purple Seagram’s bag, and the bag disappeared with the grade six girl who ran into the school before I had even stood up.

  “Sorry,” said Wanda. “If you come over to my house after school, I’ll give you one just like it.”

  I didn’t believe her. After all, it was obvious she didn’t even know what the game was. “I have lots more at home,” I told her. But I didn’t have another beauty like the one I had lost, and I didn’t wait for her as I ran towards the door.

  After school, Wanda came up beside me as I got my lunch kit from the cloakroom. She didn’t say anything, just stood there. Did she think I was going to walk her home?

  “I don’t live near you,” I told her. I was sure she didn’t live in my neighbourhood. She didn’t say anything, just stood there with her pilly leotards and her big, scruffy shoes. I noticed for the first time that her mousy hair was held back with two barrettes shaped like kittens. Baby barrettes.

  “I have to go,” I said, seeing Donna, Andrea, and Mandy gathering at the end of the hall. We always walked together. As I moved away, Wanda moved with me. I could feel her presence as she walked beside me, but I didn’t know what to say. Miss McGrath had asked me to be her Special Friend, and Miss McGrath was counting on me. As we approached, my friends turned to meet us.

  “Hi Wanda,” Mandy said in a tone I knew. “It’s neat that you’re in our class. Where do you live?”

  “Gilmore Park,” said Wanda.

  Andrea rolled her eyes. “What does your dad do?” Her own father was a lawyer.

  “I don’t know.”


  “You don’t know what your dad does?”

  Wanda appeared flustered. We waited, one beat, two.

  “He’s away a lot,” she said finally. “On business trips.”

  We waited again. “But what does he do?” asked Donna.

  “He can’t tell us. It’s top secret.”

  “Like a spy?” Andrea looked around at all of us, a smile playing on her lips. There had been a show on television last weekend in which a girl’s father was a spy, and the family didn’t know anything about it. At first you thought he was a spy for the bad guys with the accents and then you found out he was really a double agent working for the good guys, the ones who talked like normal people. It was likely that Wanda had seen the show. Everyone had.

  Wanda nodded earnestly.

  We split up at the corner of Avon and Cambridge, Wanda walking towards the busy road that she’d have to cross to get home.

  “See you tomorrow, Wanda,” we called.

  There were four blocks to go before we would begin to split off towards our separate homes. Mandy was the first to speak.

  “She is so weird,” she said.

  “Yeah, as if her dad’s really a spy,” offered Donna.

  “Weird,” Mandy said again. “Weird Wanda. Wanda Weird.”

  Andrea laughed, and I joined in. “Her name sounds like wombat,” Andrea said.

  “What’s a wombat?” I asked.

  “Some kind of animal. In Australia. They’re really ugly, with piggy snouts.” She pressed her thumb to her nose, pushing it upwards, and snorted.

  IT STARTED OUT just between us, the jokes about Wanda. The way she talked, what she ate, the way she wore her clothes. The way she followed me around, even when the few days during which I was supposed to be her “Special Friend” were long past. Andrea teased me about it: “Wombat likes you. You’re so lucky to be her Special Friend,” she said.

  It was one day when Andrea and I were walking across the school field to the big maple tree, Wanda trailing behind us, that Andrea said over her shoulder, “This is private, Wombat.” I didn’t look behind, but I could sense her stop where she was. As if it was me in her shoes as they stood, unmoving, on the scuffed earth.

  After that, Wanda left me alone. She left all of us alone. As she did, we grew bolder, talking about her when she was not quite out of earshot. We never called her Wanda anymore, only Wombat.

  “I’ll bet she never washes,” Donna would say. “I’ll bet they don’t shower where she comes from.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then: “Where does she come from?”

  “Somewhere in Europe.” Donna said vaguely.

  “Yeah, somewhere where they don’t shave their pits,” Andrea snorted with laughter, and we all joined in. Andrea, who had sprouted several hairs under her arms and shaved them off weekly, was an expert in armpits and all bodily functions. This made me nervous, me without hairs at all, and so I laughed louder than I meant to, a barking laugh that drew their attention.

  “Hey, Meg, you’re her Special Friend. Ask her.” Mandy grinned at me.

  “Ask her what?”

  “Ask her if they shave their pits where she comes from. I double dare you!”

  WHEN I APPROACHED Wanda the next day, my tone friendly, she was suspicious.

  “You want to play with me?” she said, unsure.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s walk over to the big tree.”

  We walked together to the maple tree, feet crunching on dry leaves, their smell earthy. Once I was alone with Wanda I had no idea how to ask her where she was from or what their hygiene habits were there, even with a double dare behind the question. Instead, I asked about where she lived before Gilmore Park.

  “The west end,” she told me. “But my mum’s job moved over here. She works for a big company. It has offices all over the place.”

  “What company?”

  “I doubt you’ve ever heard of it,” she said, sounding snobby. She was looking up into the branches of the maple, most of the leaves gone, now. The lower branches had been cut off so we wouldn’t climb the tree, something that was forbidden anyway. I thought of the marble I had lost thanks to her, and the teasing I got about being her Special Friend.

  “Want to climb up?” I asked her.

  “Are we allowed?”

  “Sure. Here, I’ll give you a leg up.”

  “Then how will you get up?” she asked me.

  “I climb this tree all the time. It’s easy for me,” I said. She looked at me doubtfully. “C’mon,” I said again. “Are you chicken?”

  She put her shoe in my clasped hands. The sole was worn smooth. Her clothes smelled of dry leaves. She didn’t smell bad, like I thought she would. She pushed up to reach the lowest branch, didn’t make it, and fell back against me, her arm around my neck, knocking off my glasses.

  “Sorry,” she said. Over her shoulder I could see Donna, Andrea, and Mandy grouped together by the corner of the playground, watching. I cupped my hands for her foot and she tried again, this time catching hold of the branch with her right hand. I could see her underpants as she swung her foot free.

  “Where do you come from?” I asked as I watched the grey underpants swaying above me.

  “I told you,” she grunted. “The west end.”

  “Before that.”

  “Yugoslavia,” she said, one leg braced against the trunk, the other flailing in the air. “But we moved when I was seven because we’re Croats.”

  “What?” It sounded like Crow-rats. My father always said that crows were just rats with wings, and that’s what I was thinking about as I stepped back, watching her scramble up the trunk. I knew I was supposed to ask her if they shaved their armpits in Yugoslavia, but I didn’t know where that was, and suddenly that mattered. I tried to find the words to ask, to make good on the dare, in a mental scramble that mirrored Wanda’s struggle into the tree.

  She had both hands firmly on the branch and was working her feet up the trunk, her smooth soles slipping on the bark. I watched, the question temporarily forgotten. She was more agile than I thought she’d be. I had never been able to climb this tree. From the corner of my vision I could see my friends approaching.

  “Do they shave their armpits there?” I blurted suddenly as she hooked one leg over the first branch.

  “What?” she asked. And then she fell.

  WE WERE NICE to her for a little while after that. We all signed her cast, drawing hearts and peace signs from her wrist to her elbow. We wrote Flower Power in bubble letters. The a in Mandy was replaced with a big pink daisy. “Get well soon, Wanda,” she wrote. But when the excitement died, Wombat was back.

  That October, Ottawa was frozen in the spell of the Quebec crisis, beginning with the kidnappings of James Cross and, later, Pierre Laporte, names I’d never heard before but that now appeared everywhere. When Prime Minister Trudeau imposed the War Measures Act, “Good for him,” my mother said. My father, a Conservative, didn’t comment. All of Ottawa was in the grip of tension, every family transfixed by the newscasts. “These terrorists. It’s awful,” I’d hear my mother say almost nightly to my father as they watched the CBC news. “They have to be stopped, or they’ll just think they can get away with anything.”

  ON WEEKENDS WE gathered in one of our four houses, although less frequently in mine, where Granny was apt to say anything at any time. If we did, I carefully steered my friends past her, where she sat in the flowered chair in the living room, to the basement, where we had the old black-and-white TV, the brown hide-a-bed couch, the orange shag rug, and the African-print curtain that divided our hangout from the part with the furnace and the washing machine. That was where, one Saturday afternoon, Andrea lifted up her shirt and showed us her breasts, so the rest of us could see what we were in for. They looked like little mounds of soft whip
ped cream, the nipples pale pink. Donna and Mandy lifted their shirts, too, in front of the old mirror in the corner, checking for signs. I didn’t want to.

  “My mum might come down.” I said.

  “Chicken,” said Andrea. “It’s just your body. It’s natural, you know. Here, feel,” she took my hand and began to guide it towards her chest. Mum’s step on the stairs as she descended with a load of laundry caused a flurry of movement as shirts descended.

  “What are you girls up to?” she asked cheerfully. Fully clothed again, we giggled, falling against one another like puppies.

  WHEN WE RETURNED to school on Monday Wanda was absent. “Where’s Wombat?” asked Donna, and we all giggled at the double Ws. Each day she was absent, one of us would ask the question, dissolving into fits of laughter over the alliteration. When Wanda returned after two days, we could barely contain ourselves.

  “The Wombat Weturns,” whispered Andrea, sounding like Elmer Fudd. Wanda, in the desk on the other side of me, looked up. She had heard.

  Later, in the cloakroom, I asked her why she had been away.

  “My dad died,” she told me. I didn’t know what to say.

  But after school, Mandy snorted. “She doesn’t even have a dad,” she said. “My mum says Wanda’s mum is a single mother.”

  I had heard the term but couldn’t quite grasp the circumstance, so different from my own. Didn’t you need two parents to make a baby? I wondered. I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Mandy rolled her eyes.

  “You’re so stupid, Meg. Of course there were two parents. They had to have sex to have Wombat, didn’t they? They had to make Wombat Love.” She drew out the last words and we fell into fits of laughter, my own a little forced. I was happy to hide my embarrassment in the hilarity of the moment.