Over Our Heads

by Andrea Thompson

  Emma had bent down, and peered under the furnace. The laundry room exhaled, and Mamma Shirley and her words were gone. The sound was coming from behind the furnace, in a small alcove where Grandma had stacked all the boxes labelled, Wanda.

  As soon as she had seen the name, Emma could smell her – that sweet smell of sandalwood and sweat that combined to make “mother” in a way that Emma’s memories never could. Memories lied. They told people one thing, but left out important details, as if everyone was too weak to handle it, as if knowing the whole truth would make your brain explode. Memory hadn’t trusted her, so Emma had decided that memory couldn’t be trusted. But a smell told the whole story. A smell couldn’t lie if it tried. Wanda had been there, with Emma in the basement, and there was something she wanted to say.

  The moment that Emma found the box where the scratching sound was coming from, it had stopped. She put the box on the floor, then flipped it open with the end of a broom. Instead of some trapped animal, it was full of books. The astrology book sat on top, and as soon as she opened it, she knew it was what had called her. Inside the front cover was the inscription: I hope this helps you, love Mom. She had been able to tell from the writing that Grandma had given it to Wanda, but she had also known that in this moment, those words were a message from Wanda to her.

  Astrology explained a lot of things that never made sense before. For one thing, it explained Maggie West. Scorpios were famous for holding a grudge, even if you were a Pisces like Emma, who was supposed to get along with them. No matter what sign you were, when you got on the bad side of a Scorpio, it was only a matter of time until they gave it to you just when you least expected it. Zap – a stinger right in the butt.

  The only good that came out of Maggie’s bullying was that word got out that Emma wasn’t afraid to stand up to her. Just like at their first standoff that day on the playground, Emma still didn’t run away from Maggie. Sure, if she caught sight of her black fur-trimmed bomber jacket slipping behind some snowy bush up ahead on the way to school, Emma would cross the street. But if she was close enough to see the whites of Maggie’s eyes, she’d stand her ground. Even though it looked like bravery, it wasn’t. It was faith. She wore her turtle on the inside of her shirt those days.

  “You gotta get a back bone, Emma,” Rachel had said when Emma had told her about Maggie’s tormenting. “Why do you think I never got bullied?”

  She had wanted to say, “The reason you never got bullied, Rachel, is because you fit in. You know all the right things to do. You belong.” But instead, Emma stayed silent.

  “You think it’s bad at your school? Ha, I wish I was still twelve years old like you. Wait till next year, and you get to junior high!” Rachel went on to say that astrology was a load of horseshit, but Emma wasn’t listening anymore. She knew Rachel didn’t believe in the stars, but that was because she was a Virgo. Virgos needed proof.

  By the time Emma left public school for Sunnyside Junior High, it started to feel like her troubles were over. For one thing, Maggie West didn’t go to Sunnyside. Also, at junior high, there were a lot more kids that looked different. More Chinese kids, Indian kids (from the real India), black kids, and even brown ones like Emma who you couldn’t say for sure what they were. Now the big problem was figuring out what to tell people. When she was in New West, everyone thought she was an Indian, and Emma went along with it. At Garden Avenue Public School, she was black and that was that. But at Sunnyside, some of the other black kids looked at her funny when she talked to the white kids from her old school. At lunchtime, Emma decided to try to lie low. She tried not to make eye contact in the line-up at the cafeteria, and sat with her friends from public school, Ling and Ina. They weren’t black, but they weren’t white either. Still, one day she heard one of the black kids whisper Oreo, when she was walking past to return her tray. Is that what she was here, black on the outside and white in the middle? Emma wasn’t bothered too much about that, though, because whispers were nothing after dealing with Maggie West.

  Halfway into the spring of her first year at Sunnyside, Emma started to worry that her good luck was over though. One day, she woke up in the morning, and noticed that her pendant was gone. She had left it on the nightstand, as she did every night, but when she woke up in the morning, it was missing. That day, she asked her grandma if she had seen it, and she’d even asked Rachel about it. But Grandma said no, and Rachel laughed and said, “As if I’d want that thing. Emma, please.” Emma felt naked without her turtle – naked and alone. All those years, she had carried her turtle medicine around her neck, along with all her memories of Jenny and Big Jim. It had been so long ago; Emma thought sometimes that she might have made them up. Big Jim seemed more like a childish ideal of the wise-old-man than a real person. His memory reminded her of the eagle who used to whisper to her when she was a baby on the beach. Maybe she had mixed the two up by accident. Or maybe all of it – talking to animals, to Big Jim inside her head, maybe none of it was real. All Emma knew for sure, was that with her turtle pendant now gone, she felt as if she had lost her connection to that time back on Columbia Street, to all the people she used to know, and to the person she used to be.

  Emma spent weeks feeling the loss, wishing she had something else to focus her mind on, when she began to learn how to lucid dream. The first time Emma figured out she was in charge of what happened in her dreams, she had been having a nightmare where Norman Bates from Psycho was chasing her down Columbia Street. She remembered feeling panicked, as he closed in on her. She tried to think of what she could do to escape. She knew she couldn’t outrun him, and he had an axe so she’d get chopped up if she played possum. She was starting to get desperate, and began thinking about how weird it was to have a guy from a movie chasing her down Columbia Street in the first place. Then she heard it, an old quiet voice that reminded her of Barney, whispering: You’re dreaming.

  Then poof! Norman Bates was gone.

  After that night Emma started to experiment. At first she couldn’t remember her dreams when she woke up in the morning. Sometimes, she would wake with no memory of anything other than going to bed the night before, and sometimes she would wake with a head full of jumbled details that were washed from her mind by the time she’d finished showering. Every once in a while, Emma would recall an entire dream, and when she got lucky, she’d remember hearing that warm, familiar voice reassuring her that none of it was real.

  Emma decided to do research. She went to the school library, and took out a book called Lucid Dreaming For Beginners that said that lots of people knew how to remember they were dreaming without needing a voice to tell them. Anybody could learn how to do it if they practiced enough. It said that the best way to learn how to remember your dreams was by keeping a journal to write them in, so Emma decided to give that a try. Every night before bed, she would write “tonight I will remember my dream” at the top of the page, then, when she woke in the morning, she’d write down whatever she could remember before her feet hit the floor.

  By the time Emma was in grade eight and had been at Sunnyside for over a year, she found that she could remember her dreams most nights, yet she still didn’t bother trying to talk to Rachel about her experiments. She knew that Rachel would come to the same conclusion she did about pretty much everything Emma said these days.

  “You’re crazy,” is the way Rachel had put it the first time. The two of them had been at the zoo together one Saturday. Grandma had dropped them off in the morning because Rachel was writing an essay on the evolution of the human race and wanted to go see the apes. Emma had said she wanted to come along because she hadn’t been to the big new Metro Toronto Zoo yet, but secretly it was because she had wanted to see if any of the animals wanted to talk to her or send pictures to her mind. A chance to talk to an ape was too good to pass up. Ever since she’d read in the newspaper about that grad student in Tennessee who was teaching a gorilla to use sign language, Emma had known that i
f anyone would have something interesting to say, it would be an ape.

  But once Rachel and Emma had gotten to the zoo, everything had become too noisy for Emma to listen properly. She had been able to see pictures in her mind that reminded her of scenes from the movie, Planet of the Apes – visions of sad apes in cages, and then snap shots of people behind bars. Gorillas were ironic and bitter. Maybe it was simply a reaction to the suffering of the apes that had made Emma go soft in that moment, or maybe it was because Rachel had suddenly been giving Emma so much attention. She had been treating her like a friend, making jokes, pretending to be a monkey, picking bugs out of Emma’s hair.

  Or maybe Emma had thought it was safe, because just before they got to the ape pavilion, Rachel had been confiding in Emma about the real reason she decided to run for the head of student council.

  “It’s not that I give a rat’s ass about all that school spirit bullshit, or like I really want to see my face plastered all over the school. Believe it or not I think the whole “vote for me” thing is a little pathetic. But I’m thinking about my future. Some universities care about that extra-curricular stuff, and when it comes time, I want my pick of the crop. I’ve got a plan, Emma. I’ve already started investing some of the money I make from tutoring. I’m not going to be one of those women waiting for some knight in shining armour to come save her. Because you never know what’s going to happen in life. Know what I mean?” Rachel had looked up and for a moment Emma saw an expression she had rarely seen on her sister’s face – vulnerability. Emma had been so in awe that she kept quiet, not confessing to Rachel that no, she had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I mean, let’s face it,” Rachel had continued, “I’ve got the brains in the family. I may as well do something with them. And what I plan to do is become an astronomer, or a theoretical physicist, like Einstein, except a woman, and with better hair. Then, once I have a career and discover something amazing, I’ll be ready to buy a Mercedes and get married and join the Boulevard Club, and then start having kids. I’m going to have two. One of each.”

  Emma had been stunned silent. Not so much by the details of Rachel’s plan, but by the fact that Rachel had told her about it. Ever since Wanda had left, the rift had deepened between Emma and Rachel. For one thing, it had become clear that the whole being sent away to Alaska story was a lie. Grandma didn’t know what Emma was talking about when she finally asked her about it. Alaska. Rachel had made it sound so terrible, but when Emma looked it up, all she saw were lakes, ocean, and mountains. Some of the shots even showed night skies streaked with the green, blue, purple, and indigo. To Emma, it was like a colder, more magical version of home. Emma had been angry with Rachel at first for trying to manipulate her like that, and swore she’d never forgive her until she apologized. Emma had never told Rachel any of this, but she had imagined that Rachel’s conscience would catch up to her, and she would eventually come clean. But Rachel had showed no remorse, no matter how long Emma gave her the silent treatment. So Emma had given up waiting for an apology, and accepted the fact that her sister wanted nothing to do with her. Anyway, she had known Rachel couldn’t help it because Rachel was a Virgo, and Virgos never believed they were wrong because that would make them feel like a bad person.

  So, this confession, this outpouring of Rachel’s plans for the future, had left Emma feeling like maybe that day at the zoo was the beginning of a whole new chapter between them. It was in that moment, after Rachel’s confession, and joking around with the apes together, that Emma had let her guard down. She had figured it was safe, that Rachel would understand, especially if it was something about how much humans were like animals, since Rachel was writing the essay about it and all. So Emma had spoken out loud the thoughts that entered her head as they stood, watching the apes and catching their breath.

  “Oh, I feel bad making fun of the poor guys,” Emma said. “They’re already upset enough about being in jail.”

  Emma had known she had said the wrong thing by the way Rachel stopped laughing all of a sudden.

  “It’s not a jail, Emma. It’s a zoo for God’s sakes, and as if you know what the hell apes are thinking, anyway.” Rachel turned away from the cage, snapping her bubble gum.

  Later, Emma had thought that this was where she should have just kept her trap shut, but at the time, she was still a bit dizzy from all the laughing, and all the apes talking at once in the background. She’d hoped that if she was able to get Rachel to understand this once, it might change things between them. Maybe they could even eat lunch together at school once in awhile.

  “Well, it’s not like I speak ape or anything,” Emma had said, “but when they look at me, I can see in their eyes how they feel, and then it’s like I can hear what they’re thinking inside my head. Like it’s my thought, but I know it came from someplace else.” It hadn’t been until the words left Emma’s mouth that she realized how they would sound when they got to Rachel’s ears.

  That’s when Rachel said, “You’re crazy.” It hadn’t been so much the words, because Rachel had said way worse things to Emma before when she was mad, or just joking around. No, it hadn’t been the words; it was the look in Rachel’s eyes. It was something between fear and disgust. It was a look that had made the hairs on Emma’s arm stand up on end. Woodlands. They had to have places like Woodlands in Ontario, too.

  “No,” Emma started desperately. “It’s just…”

  “It’s just that you hear apes talking in your head sometimes.” Rachel had stopped laughing.

  “Yes. No. It’s just that – never mind. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

  “And why wouldn’t I understand? Because I don’t speak ape?”

  “No. Because you’re a Virgo,” Emma stammered.

  Rachel had laughed then, making circles with her finger at the side of her head. “I leave you to talk horoscopes with your furry little friends here.” She had walked toward the pavilion door.

  “Where are you going?” Emma asked.

  “Going to find a pay phone and call Grandma. I’m going to tell her to come pick us up,” Rachel had said with a smirk. “And I’ll tell her she can drop you off at the loony bin on the way home.”

  Emma had stood still and silent as a possum, but inside her head, she was screaming, “Damn you Rachel. Damn you all to hell!”

  28.

  RACHEL PARKED THE BENZ in front of the supermarket. She had planned to go to the corner store to get the coffee cream for the wake, but then she remembered they were out of eggs as well. People would be drinking, so who knew how many would want to stay the night? Best to get stocked up on the essentials while she could.

  She had decided to stay over at her grandmother’s house the night before. Her reasons were idiotic, she knew, but that didn’t stop her. She didn’t want Emma and Sam to spend too much time alone together. It wasn’t jealousy in spite of how Emma might have perceived it. It was pragmatism, another inconvenient, yet necessary step in ensuring things stayed on track. Who knew what sort of plan the two of them might have cooked up if left alone in the house? It was enough that Rachel had agreed to let them be in charge of the funeral. She hadn’t wanted to, but she’d had to. As executor, she had to deal with closing all of Grandma’s accounts for most of the week – gas, electric, cable, and on and on. Everything had taken longer than the time she’d allotted. Plus, the insurance people had been impossible. Nothing could move without Wanda. Rachel had tried to explain to them that it was a simple administrative error. She was an actuary for God’s sakes; she knew how these things worked. She had respect for protocol. But still, they refused to budge until every “i” was dotted, every “t” crossed. In the end the house would be hers, that much she knew for sure – hers and Emma’s.

  Inside the store, Rachel stopped her cart in the frozen food aisle and scanned the shelves for orange juice. She tried not to think about Lester, but his face was still fresh in her
mind. When she had first gone downstairs to make coffee earlier that morning, there he was, sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, still in his clothes from the night before.

  “I’m a night owl, Rach,” he had told her one night when they lived together. “That’s when I get creative. During the day, there’s too much noise. Not just the noise, but the rumbling. The vibration of the city rumbles right through me. Even with your eyes closed, you can feel it. Some people think that working in a darkroom is like being in some sort of sensory deprivation chamber, but even in there, you can feel it – everybody rushing around. The city’s a hustle, I should know. I’m a hustler.” Lester had laughed, and run his hand through his hair. “Sure, I can handle the jungle when I need to get shit done, but I can’t work on photography in that vibe. I need dead calm when I’m developing. The energy feels clear when everyone’s gone to sleep. Maybe I’m tapping into some sort of collective REM consciousness or something.”

  Rachel had rolled her eyes at that one, which just egged him on.

  “You know they’ve done experiments. I saw this documentary with Emma once – you would have loved it. It was very scientific. There’s this bunch of researchers on a mission to prove that there really is such a thing as collective consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project, I think it was called. It used these random number generators, which are totally legit as far as physics is concerned, to see if the power of collective thought creates changes out there, and they found it was true. They wired people up all around the world, and just before 9/11, the numbers shot through the roof. It was wild. Emma wanted to write a poem about it.” Lester was in super-animated mode now, pacing the bedroom floor. Rachel was in bed in her pajamas, resenting having to watch the show, and had looked back down to her book.