Over Our Heads

by Andrea Thompson

  In the morning, Mamma Shirley made everyone breakfast. Just Jack read the newspaper in his undershirt and track pants, and all the furry black hair on his arms and legs peeked out. After breakfast, Mamma Shirley put everything away, and Just Jack put on the blue shirt with a shiny broach pinned on it. Jamie Francis said that it was a “badge” and that Just Jack needed it so they’d know he wasn’t a criminal when he went to work in the Pen.

  Emma didn’t know what the Pen was, but she knew it wasn’t the same pen that you write with. She thought it may have had something to do with Pig-Pen, Charlie Brown’s friend with the dust cloud around him. Emma thought the Pen must have been dirty whatever it was. But she wasn’t sure, and she didn’t ask. She didn’t want to talk to anyone there yet. All the air in the house was like a big bowl of cold, gooey porridge. Emma didn’t want to breathe it in, didn’t want it to get stuck to all her words. She could nod her head for “yes,” and shake it for “no.” That was enough.

  The first real friend Emma made at the house on Columbia Street was Barney, the dog next door. Emma had been out in the backyard, searching the sky for eagles, when she heard a little old man voice in her head. At first it whispered, then grew louder. Hello, hello, hello, it said, and made her look toward the wooden back porch in the yard next door.

  “Hello?” Emma said out loud.

  Something shuffled under the porch, and then a dog came out and walked toward her. Emma crouched down and put her hand through the chain-link fence, reaching out to the graying muzzle. The old dog took a sniff and then looked her in the eyes in a way that made Emma feel like she knew him. She wondered if this little old man-dog would be her friend. Yes. The answer went straight from the dog’s mind into her own.

  Then Emma closed her eyes to see if her new friend had anything else to say. This time there were no words, instead he sent her a picture, like a Polaroid developing inside her brain. The image came into focus: slices of steaming roast of beef in a dog dish. Emma opened her eyes. The old dog looked at her, tail wagging, and for the first time since she came to Foster’s house, Emma laughed.

  5.

  RACHEL PUT THE BENZ into park in the driveway of old number 66. It always shamed her that her grandmother’s house was in such a terrible state of disrepair. In photographs of when Grandpa was alive, the house looked respectable, but ever since Rachel could remember, the house had been slowly falling apart. What did that say about her, that she had allowed her grandmother to live that way? Rachel peered through the windshield at the garage door. The paint was so mottled and peeling it looked like army camouflage. Beside the house, the eaves were rusty, dangling from their nails. It wasn’t as if Grandma couldn’t have afforded to put a little work into the place.

  “It’s not the money,” she’d say whenever Rachel brought up the subject of repairs. “It’s the change. I can’t stand any more changes. I’ve had enough for a lifetime. Me and this house are going to fall apart together. And that’s that.”

  It was a shame. Given a little loving care, the place could have stood a chance. Instead, it was an accident waiting to happen, standing in embarrassing contrast to the other houses on the street. Every other dwelling in the area had been given some sort of attention over the years – fresh paint, a new roof or a sandblasting of the dirty old brick. But not number 66. What charm it once held had crumbled. Number 66 was a teardown.

  Rachel sat in her Benz in the driveway for a moment to gather her thoughts before going in. There was a lot to do, and she wanted to make sure she kept everything on track. All the clothes needed to be trashed. She could get Emma to do that, as well as tossing out the knick-knacks that littered every imaginable surface. Once the clutter was cleared, Rachel could focus on cleaning. She’d already contacted an estate sale company about the furniture and appliances. They’d pick up whatever was left over from the garage sale on Saturday, and let it go to the highest bidder. Most of the furniture was good quality, some pieces were even antiques. The old mahogany dining room table, scratches and all, would likely bring in at least a grand. The couch and chairs were new, so they’d go pretty fast. The main thing was to get everything cleared out as soon as possible. While most houses show better with a bit of furniture, in this case their best bet was to empty the house out, rather than try to sell it full of Grandma’s clutter. In this market, Rachel could likely turn the place over in a few weeks if she could get Emma to pitch in and stay focused. Sam was flying in late tomorrow night, but would be busy with the realtor friend he was bringing by on Wednesday, so he wouldn’t be able to help out much. They needed to get started as soon as possible if things were going to stay on track. With both Rachel and Emma working at it over the next few days, it should take almost the whole week to clear the contents, though it would be double that time if Emma lost focus, which was a real possibility.

  It was still morning. There was plenty of time to get a head start on things before Emma arrived. There were the insurance people to call. There’d be some money coming in from that, no doubt, but getting it would involve processing time. Her grandmother’s account was still active, so Rachel would have to go by the bank to let the manager know. At least she’d been able to call the funeral home over the weekend and talk to them about some of the details. Of course, they had been open. People died seven days a week. The total was more than Rachel had imagined, as she forgotten to figure a casket in her calculations. She had chastised herself for that. She was an actuary; it was her job to foresee the probable. Naturally they’d need a casket, even for a cremation. It’s not like the body is tossed into a big fire like in some third-world ritual. There’d need to be something for her to be laid in. Then set on fire.

  Rachel judged herself for thinking it, but thought it all the same. What a waste. And how would anyone know? Chances were, shifty funeral homes claimed to burn the casket, but then reused it instead. Maybe she should make the arrangements with the funeral home first, then close the bank account. She could put the service on Grandma’s credit card. Was it wrong to let her grandmother pay for her own funeral? No, it wasn’t wrong, or a moral issue. It was a simple matter of accounting. There was plenty in the savings, and the insurance would top the balance back up after the expenses for the funeral came out. It wasn’t like Rachel wouldn’t be out-of-pocket, waiting for the will to be settled. Someone had to pay for repairs, painters, paint, and landscaping. Rachel would cover the costs for the time being. That was enough. Why should she feel bad anyway? It wasn’t like she was asking anyone else to take these things on.

  She’d fish out the banking and insurance papers when she got inside the house, and go through the rest of the paperwork in the afternoon. That way she could stay in the dining room, and keep her nose down. She’d put Emma to work on the bedroom closet. That would likely take her half-sister all afternoon. Longer, if she fell apart.

  6.

  FOSTER WASN’T A REAL BOY, it was just the name they give to a house full of kids with nowhere else to go. When Emma was five, Just Jack finally explained it at breakfast one day. Mamma Shirley had just given them all pancakes, and when she sat down, she told Emma and Jamie Francis that they were getting a big sister. Just Jack put down the paper said, “For Chrissake, Shirley, don’t mess with their heads,” and explained the whole Foster business once and for all. Then he told Emma she would have to share her room. “She’s not your sister though, Emma girl. Not a real sister anyway.”

  A few days later, Emma’s not-real sister arrived. Her name was Nina Buziak, and she acted like a big shot, just because she was twelve and got to wear lipgloss and nylons to school. Emma didn’t like her much because she had mean eyes and yellow hair with brown roots, and she wore cheap perfume that made her smell like bacon. At first, Nina wouldn’t talk to Emma, which suited Emma just fine because Emma still didn’t like talking much to anyone except Barney. Then, about a week after she moved in, Emma heard Nina’s voice in the dark just before bed, saying, “What�
�s the matter with you, anyway. How come you don’t talk? Are you a retard? I heard Mamma Shirley say she thinks you might be a retard. If you are, then she’s gonna have to send you away to go live with all the other retarded kids at Woodlands.”

  Emma didn’t know what “retard” meant, but she knew it wasn’t good, and was pretty sure that she wasn’t one, so she said, “I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with me,” into the darkness, and then felt tricked into talking to bacon-head Nina Buziak. “I just don’t talk because,” she began to explain, but it was too late. She could hear from the sound of breathing in the room that Nina was already asleep.

  After that night, Emma let herself talk more. She even began to believe that maybe she was going to make a friend of Nina Buziak, but Nina set her straight. “I still don’t like you, even if you’re not retarded, because I don’t like dirty Indians,” she said. Emma didn’t know what she was talking about, but Mamma Shirley who was around the corner listening from the kitchen, piped in. “We don’t talk about stuff like that in this house, Nina. Besides, we don’t know for sure that Emma’s an Indian. She might be a Paki or even a Negro. We don’t know what she is. But whatever it is, it isn’t her fault, and we don’t want anyone upset around here, so we just don’t talk about it, understand?”

  Emma didn’t understand at all, but knew enough not to ask Mamma Shirley what she meant, and no way was she ever going to talk to Nina again. So, instead, she asked Jamie Francis who laughed. “Mamma Shirley’s such a square. Nobody says Negro anymore. I don’t think you are one anyways, but if you were, so what? Jimi Hendrix is coloured and he’s famous. Lots of coloured people are famous. Look at Michael Jackson. Him and his whole family are coloured. Nina’s just mad ’cause her mom got rid of her. She’s trailer trash. Don’t let her bum you out.”

  Later that day, to cheer her up, Jamie Francis asked Emma if she wanted to see him make Mamma Shirley cry. Emma said, “Yes,” just to see what would happen, and because she was a little bit mad about the “Negro” word, even if she wasn’t sure why. They found Mamma Shirley hanging up the laundry outside the house, and Jamie Francis yelled out, “Hey Mamma Shirley, are you a foster mom because you can’t have kids? Emma wants to know.” Mamma Shirley looked at Jamie Francis with horror, then big, fat, black makeup tears fell down her face. Jamie Francis giggled and whispered to Emma that he’d heard Mamma Shirley tell Just Jack one time about how bad she felt ’cause she almost had a baby once, but had had an operation to get rid of it instead. So now her insides were messed up, and she thought God would stop being mad at her about it if she looked after the kids nobody else wanted. Emma’s head swam with all this information. What was a baby doing inside Mamma Shirley? And why would she get rid of it? Where had it gone?

  Emma felt bad for Mamma Shirley, but the big white-headed bird that still flew overhead and spoke to her sometimes, said: Don’t worry about her, she’ll be fine. He also told her that Jamie Francis felt bad now too, and was going to vacuum the living room for Mamma Shirley when he went inside. That would make Mamma Shirley happy. She liked it when everything was neat and tidy. That was why there was plastic on the couch that made squeaky, crunchy sounds when you sat on it.

  Everything stayed like that, with just the five of them in Foster’s house on Columbia Street until just after Emma’s sixth birthday. The snow had gone, and Just Jack had raked the yard bare of all the winter dirt and leaves. Emma was waiting for the bulbs to bust up with red tulips, when something else happened instead. A new boy came to live with them.

  The new boy was four months younger than Emma. He talked a lot and wore silly clothes: fancy shirts, bow ties, and black shoes that looked wet all the time. When she first met him, and looked at his shoes, Emma laughed out loud. When Mamma Shirley told Emma his name was Lester Templeton, Emma laughed even harder, until Mamma Shirley clucked and said, “Shush,” and gave Emma the hard eyes. Jamie Francis gave Lester a good looking over before he decided that Lester was all right. “He dresses funny, that’s for sure. But he doesn’t look mean like the last one.” Jamie Francis called Lester “fresh meat,” and told Lester if he didn’t do anything stupid, he’d let Lester have his clothes when he grew out of them.

  While Lester was upstairs unpacking his old, beat-up, Winnie-the-Pooh suitcase in his new room, Mamma Shirley told them that Lester had other clothes he could wear, but that he wore those silly ones because he thought it would make his parents come back. But it wouldn’t. Lester’s parents had both died in a car crash. Hit and run. Both of them, dead, at the same time. Jamie Francis asked Lester about it later that day, but Lester shook his head. “They’re coming back,” he said. “You’re stupid. You don’t know anything!”

  Lester started shouting until Jamie Francis said, “Okay, okay, pipe down squirt, will ya?”

  Lester stopped yelling, but didn’t stop talking. “They’re coming back. They are! They’re just away on vacation, but they’re gonna come get me soon,” he told them, “So I have to look sharp. I want to look sharp so they’ll keep me with them this time.”

  When Emma heard Lester say this in his silly clothes, with his shoulders slumped down, she thought to herself, Lester Templeton is the saddest boy in the whole world. He was like the baby bird that Emma had found one day, flopping and crying: Help me, help me, in the middle of the backyard. Barney had said the little bird was a goner, but Emma had picked it up and kept it in a box with Kleenex stuffed in it. She’d fed the little bird worms from the garden, and had left the box in the branches of the crab apple tree, leaving the lid open in case the mamma bird came looking. One morning Emma had noticed the box lay empty on the ground, little bits of Kleenex scattered like snow in the grass. Barney had said he thought Puffy the cat down the street got it, or maybe a raccoon. “No,” Emma had told him when Barney came to look. “It flew away to be with its family.” She’d said the words, but didn’t believe them. That night, she had dreamt of a snake slithering though the grass with a bulge in its middle.

  Standing in the living room with Mamma Shirley and this new little boy, Emma thought about the bird. She took a breath, closed her eyes and opened them again. Little Lester was still smiling, and full of silly hope. She wanted to tell him to smarten up, but she couldn’t. Looking at Lester made her too full of love to scold him. It wasn’t his fault he thought stupid things. He was just a sad little boy. He didn’t know anything. He was only five-and-a-half years old.

  By the time the sound of crickets filled the hot summer air, Lester and Emma had become inseparable. Nina and Jamie Francis were out of school, and Mamma Shirley said that things were getting too crazy with all the kids underfoot. Just Jack had some vacation time from the Pen coming to him, so he offered to take Jamie Francis and Lester camping in the Kootenays. Emma was supposed to stay home with Mamma Shirley and Nina, but when they told her, she ran to her room and cried until Mamma Shirley said, “Geez Louise, okay, okay. You can go camping with the boys.”

  They all slept in a big tent that smelled like a basement for two weeks that summer, and ate baked beans warmed up in a dirty old pot. They swam in the lake every day, even when it rained. Lester got poison ivy, and Jamie Francis got a fishhook stuck in his finger, but nothing bad happened to Emma. Even when she had to go to the outhouse at night, and Jamie Francis told her that if she peed too loud, bears would come and eat her, Emma wasn’t afraid. Once, when they went to the woodlot next to the dump, they did see a bear. The bear didn’t want to eat them, but it still wasn’t happy they were around. It didn’t say so out loud or anything, but Emma got a feeling in her belly when she looked at it, and then words came into her head that weren’t hers. The bear said that it didn’t want anything to do with the stupid campers, and then showed Emma a movie of people driving fast past cubs in cars that sounded like thunder. The bear also said it hated the way the humans teased them with snacks they could smell, but couldn’t get their paws on.

  One night, when Jamie Francis was pokin
g the fire with part of a fallen branch, and Lester was trying to get everyone to sing “99 Bottles of Beer,” Just Jack drank his Molson Golden and made everyone roast marshmallows on a stick because it was fun. Later, when the beer made his words sound like his mouth was full of mashed potatoes, Just Jack decided to tell them all about the Pen. He didn’t want to at first, but Jamie Francis kept asking, so finally he gave in.

  “It’s not the sort of place you want to go to unless you had to. I’m lucky I work in the piggery and not inside the old skookum with the rest.”

  “Skookum?” Jamie Francis asked. Just Jack laughed.

  “Yeah, that’s what they call it, the skookum house. It’s Indian for ‘big house.’ That’s what they call it in Indian language. There’s a lot of Indians in there,” Just Jack said, turning his head just enough for Emma to catch him looking at her in the light of the campfire. “Lots of other types too, and all of them bad. Bad to the bone.”

  “But you don’t get to hang out with any of the criminals? I mean you just sit around with the pigs all day instead?” Jamie Francis asked.

  “I’d rather be with pigs than criminals any day!” Lester added.

  Just Jack laughed. “I don’t blame you, Les. But no, James, I still have to spend time with the men in the piggery. They do the feeding, cleaning and grunt work, and I supervise them. It’s no picnic, though, don’t get me wrong. Those fellas, even them that are some part decent, some part not totally eaten up by evil thoughts, well, they still turn hard after a while in the Pen. There’s something about being locked away that messes a person up. Takes his manhood away. That’s what makes them really dangerous, the fact that they’ve already been to hell. They’ve got nothing to lose.”