Soul Siren

by Aisha Duquesne

  She was petite but there was something challenging in those glamorous Indian features that made the boys back off, that in one glance immediately sized you up and found you wanting. She treated Erica no different from any other student, but I think she was irritated by Erica’s popularity. In handing back a marked paper, I can remember Miss Ogis raising her voice from her desk, miffed that Erica and Debbie Farmer were softly rehearsing a number for Choir Class, “Miss Houston, can we talk about your grade or do I need to get clearance from the entourage?”

  I think that’s what influenced Erica’s choice at the talent showcase, the Toni Braxton tune. She was being cheeky. And it was in the first term of our senior year when she got up on that stage and blew ’em away that things began to change. I have a copy of that videotape because I’m in it, and it’s fascinating to examine the pre-star Erica. The girl smiling nervously, not knowing what to do with her hands, not yet groomed by the record industry. The cheers reaching a crescendo as she relaxes and begins to move around the stage for her second number, doing Lauryn Hill’s “Everything Is Everything.” “Come on, y’all, sing with me!” she shouted to the students in the gym, and suddenly we were not at a little talent show under basketball hoops and near bleachers, we were at a concert, her first one. After winter—

  After winter, sang girls standing below, moving with the beat.

  Must come the spring, sang Erica, and she let out the throttle on her voice and gave those white kids a gospel wail they had never heard before. Change, it comes eventuallyeeee…

  We had agreed that for the show, we’d each take turns backing up each other’s numbers, with me bowing out of my chance to be in the spotlight alone. As the applause went on for the Lauryn Hill cover, Deb, who was right next to me, laughed and said, “There is no way I’m gonna follow that!”

  So while other kids could be the Great Brain or the Stoner or the shy guy who bloomed in Drama class, Erica became The Voice. She was already trying to write songs but she wouldn’t show them to anyone except me. I can recall her humming something as we sat in the hall, our backs leaned against our lockers over Spare Period, and I asked, “What’s that?”

  She flashed me one of those neon smiles of hers and said, “Something of my own. Well, my Dad helped a lot with it really. Mostly the bridge. He lets me use some of his old songs to put in my own.” She laughed suddenly and added, “Sometimes I can’t remember what I wrote and what he did anymore! You really like it, Mish?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, and I did. Funny to think that three years later, that snippet of music she sang for me would become “Late Night Promises.” “Do some more.”

  “Nah, Deb’s coming,” she said, nodding her head towards our friend down the hall. Debbie Farmer, wearing at the moment Erica’s borrowed sweater over a peach-coloured top—one that was the same design as the top Erica bought at the Suzy Shiers store on Yonge Street last week.

  “So what if she is?” I whispered.

  Erica ignored my question. “What do you think, Mish? You really like it?”

  “This is what I mean,” I complained. “I can barely pass Choir! Deb knows music theory—you should sing it for her.”

  “Michelle,” she groaned. “Of course, Deb will like it! She likes everything. It’s like…she tries too goddamn hard.”

  “She wants to be like you, that’s all. You know? Imitation the sincerest form of flattery and all that?”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s embarrassing,” said Erica. “I like her and all, but, Jesus, girl, find your own style. Doesn’t she know I’d like her more if she thought for herself?”

  “Why don’t you tell her, then?” I suggested. Then I added, “In a nice way.”

  Erica laughed. “This is why I love you, Mish. I don’t have to tell you stuff like that. And you help me. You make me think.” Her face clouded as a fresh notion occurred to her. “That shit never bothers you, does it?”

  “What?”

  “What they say about you when we hang,” explained Erica. Then she dismissed the notion with a wave. “Forget it, it’s stupid.”

  “Erica,” I said, “you trying to spare my feelings over something?”

  “No, no,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “They shouldn’t talk about you like Deb. It’s not the same…I mean you don’t copy me, so I don’t understand the seven-point-five on the bitch-o-meter. You’re just…quiet. Always scribbling in your notebooks. Now that—that’s not fair! I sing you everything I come up with, and you never show me—”

  I clutched my notebook close to my chest and leaned away from her. “Hey, I didn’t ask you about your songs!”

  By now Erica was half hugging me, half trying to tear the notebook out of my arms, and Deb bounded up, calling out, “Hey, what’s going on!”

  “Mish is writing porn for Jason Todd to give to his new girlfriend,” said Erica matter-of-factly. “He’s paying her to do it.”

  “I am not!” I protested. “Shut up!”

  “Fifty bucks,” said Erica, making up a commission price for my talents on the spot.

  And Deb, so trusting, laughed and looked at me as if I would actually make a confession.

  I pointed a finger at Erica. “You! You are evil. People believe you when you say shit like that, and I don’t know why!”

  Erica was rolling on the floor, laughing away. “I know! Ain’t it great? You have to look ’em straight in the face and talk about it like you heard it on the news.”

  “You love pulling stuff like that,” I said, pretending to still be disgusted with her, but I couldn’t. I never could.

  Erica, making up stories just to test whether folks would believe her. Erica and her quirky sense of humour, which I suppose is another Canadian thing, when you think of a country that gave the world Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd and Jim Carrey. And then Erica, The Voice. We reminisced about high school one night over a bottle of rum at her apartment in Manhattan, talking about teachers, talking about old boyfriends, which meant mostly hers since I only ever had two, and I learned something new about that time that helped shape her perspective. She recognised it herself.

  “Alex Hardy.” She said the guy’s name like a swear. “Right after the talent show, he told everyone we slept together a couple of times. The son-of-a-bitch.”

  Her first taste of tabloid gossip without the tabloid. He hadn’t breathed a word about their intimacy until she had sung those two songs up on the stage in the gym.

  “You just can’t trust them,” she said. “They always want to get into your pants, then they want to advertise it.”

  “What are you going to do?” I said, which was my way of asking: What do you do? Because I told you at the beginning: Erica Jones likes sex. A lot. I had seen her appetite outweigh her judgement over discretion plenty of times.

  “Never let ’em be able to talk about it,” said Erica. “Ever, ever, ever.”

  It would be a while before I learned how exactly that was done in each case, before I learned all the corollaries of this maxim and what it meant for how Erica treated men, how she lured them in but kept them at bay. I don’t think either of us dreamed it would put us both in such hot water.

  Of course, there was a backlash in school over The Voice, and since we were Erica’s crowd, we sensed and felt it first. I remember Deb, Sarah Copps and I all hanging around the Clinique counter in the Eaton’s department store at Toronto’s best-known mall, the Eaton Centre, when the peroxide bitches as we called them decided to accost us. Jasmine Dorsey, the leader, Natalie Blumenthal and Anna Wakowski.

  “Hey, Deb, you did a really good job of imitating the scenery behind Erica,” said Jasmine, and she and her friends broke into a spontaneous off-key imitation of our backing vocals. Then they burst into catty giggles—it was how the game was played.

  “At least we had the nerve to get up there,” snapped Debbie.

  “But you backed out of following Erica, didn’t you? I know Michelle’s happy following her around like a puppy dog, but shit, Deb, I gave
you credit for wanting to grab some spotlight for yourself.”

  “I didn’t see you shaking your bony ass up on stage, Jasmine. But then I guess you’re tired of putting out in the gym. And the lights were on that day.”

  We watched Jasmine’s eyes widen.

  My one contribution to all this smartass banter was to whisper to Deb, “You got to give her a two-second delay for it to click.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Brown!” Jasmine was telling me, while to Deb, she said, “You fucking—”

  I saw Jasmine reach into her purse for her pepper spray. The story had gone around school that she liked to pull this trick on somebody she didn’t like. She would need it, too. Deb was a tall girl with four brothers who had taught her how to fight dirty. She’d scratch the hell out of Jasmine and yank her hair out if she got a fistful. I would be out of luck if the other girls went for Sarah and me. I had never been in a fight in my life, not even in grade school, and my mother would have been horrified if I ever was.

  “Just what are you girls doing?”

  Miss Ogis. It was surreal to find her here, our teacher, dressed down in a T-shirt, jeans and a denim jacket. She looked even younger in casual dress, and I wondered if she would get carded if she decided to walk into a bar. Her soft yet stern voice made every one of us straighten up even though we were on neutral territory. I don’t know if I even hid my relief.

  “Jasmine was just complimenting our performance at the show,” said Deb, folding her arms and giving her enemy the thousand-mile stare.

  Jasmine didn’t give a damn about playing along. She said sweetly, “And I was about to give Deborah here a sample of Mace I brought back from my trip to Rochester.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Miss Ogis. “Only I know you won’t do such a foolish thing. Not in a public place. And certainly not in front of me.”

  “It’s Saturday,” said Jasmine, still talking in a mild singsong, “and you’re not our teacher here.”

  Miss Ogis matched her tone perfectly and replied, “That’s right, Jasmine, I’m not. Which means I’m free to call the store security and tell them about the five lipsticks I saw you stash away in your purse.”

  I tried not to laugh as I watched the blood drain out of Jasmine’s cheeks.

  “So what’s it going to be, my dear? You want to show how you’re not a lady and have a fight right here by the counter? Or do you all want to take yourselves out on Yonge Street?”

  Jasmine gave Deb, Sarah and me a last look full of daggers and turned on her heel. Off she went with her friends in tow. Miss Ogis turned and gave us a curt nod.

  “I suppose you think she’s worth it,” she said.

  Deb didn’t know it was better for her to keep her mouth shut. “How can it be her fault? She’s not even here!”

  “No,” said Miss Ogis. “No, she’s not. Maybe you should think about that.”

  Roles

  Deborah did think about it. I knew something was wrong, that something had profoundly shaken her up when we were playing basketball in the gym, MacDonald versus Danforth Collegiate. Deb badly fouled one of the Danforth girls, which cost us a penalty shot easily dunked through the hoop by her victim. I saw Miss Ogis go over to her on the bench and obviously ask What’s going on with you? Deb shook her head, muttering a noncommittal answer I didn’t need to hear. She kept playing, but her game was off. We lost. And long after the other girls had quickly showered and gone home, I finished up helping to put away some equipment and found myself staring at Deb’s back as she leaned against the locker, her dark arms and neck still polished with sweat.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Her voice raw with emotion.

  “What’s going on, Deb?”

  “That stupid little bitch…”

  “Who?”

  She turned around, and I could see all the anger, all the self-loathing and tearful pain. “Jasmine! That fucking little peroxide bitch. She really pegged it. I’m a joke, aren’t I?”

  She didn’t know what to do with herself so she finally stripped off and grabbed her towel, going for a perfunctory shower. I stood outside the great tiled room, caught up in her rant, doing my best not to look like I was staring at the soap suds running down her long legs and her belly.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Erica!” Deb shouted over the hiss of the water. “I’ve been such an idiot over her, Mish! I’m a joke. And you know what? It’s gonna stop. I’m gonna find my own look, I’m not going to ask her anything anymore on how to do stuff and—”

  “What?” I demanded. “All because of what that cow Jasmine said? Deborah, get real! She was talking about us singing—”

  “It’s bigger than that, and you know it, Michelle. Everybody thinks it’s so funny—”

  “It’s not like that,” I argued. “I borrow clothes from Erica, she borrows clothes from me, and you—”

  “No,” she insisted, stepping out and towelling herself off. “You guys swap stuff. She doesn’t need anything of mine. She doesn’t hang on my every word. You want to be part of the Erica Jones fan club, Mish? You carry on without me. Jesus…”

  She was frantically getting dressed, and as she pulled out her top from the locker, she noticed it was another one of her collection that she’d copied from Erica’s wardrobe. Standing in her bra, wishing she could toss it aside and wear anything else but. She looked up at the ceiling.

  “A fucking joke,” she muttered again.

  “You’re not,” I said, hugging her now to comfort her. “You’re beautiful, you’re talented. You know that, you must know that…”

  I wrapped my arms around her waist, patting her back, and she held on to me for what felt like dear life. She was half a head taller than me, my face buried in her hair, her body so warm, and I don’t know what it was that made me lose my mind, but I kissed her neck like a close friend, like a sister. And as she sniffed and pulled back to rub her eyes, I had my face very close to hers, and I moved in.

  Startled, she stared at me and demanded: “What the hell are you doing?”

  Oh, God. Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God—there’s no taking it back. Idiot, you’re an idiot, oh no—

  “Nothing, Deb, you’re upset, and I was trying to make you feel—”

  “Mish, get your hands off me! What is this?”

  Dying inside, I still held her hands and wasn’t letting go. She yanked them savagely back even while I said, “You don’t understand! I didn’t mean anything, Deb, please don’t make such a big deal out of—”

  “I’m not stupid, Michelle! I know you and Erica think I am, but I’m not! And I’m not a…”

  “I’m not either,” I said stupidly, as if a denial could do anything now.

  “I can’t deal with your shit on top of mine, Mish.” And she stormed out of the locker room.

  It was me upset now, wailing uncontrollably, facing a worse shame than Deb could ever expect in the MacDonald hallways, and I was still crying when she found me in the shower, hugging myself against the wall, wondering how I could come back the next day. Miss Ogis, stepping forward just beyond the sprinkling beads of water, no longer in her coaching track suit but in her formal wear for the classroom.

  “You’re going to be all right,” she said.

  “You don’t know,” I sobbed, “you don’t know…”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I heard.”

  “You…? You heard us?”

  She kicked off her shoes and stepped closer to me, putting a hand on my bare shoulder. “Poor dumb Deborah hasn’t even guessed the real truth of it, has she?”

  I felt my nose running as I stood naked in the pounding spray of water, and it was this that temporarily embarrassed me. Fool. Your nose running while all of what you are will be out there tomorrow for ridicule. I wiped my nose and rubbed my eyes. Hurt and broken, I said, “What are you talking about?”

  “Deborah. She dresses like Erica, she wants to sing like Erica…She even copies her g
estures. That’s why you reached out to her. And that silly girl doesn’t even know she’s not the one you really want.”

  I felt my body racked by a new uncontrollable sob of agony and I slid down the tiles of the wall to my knees.

  “Come on now, come on,” whispered Miss Ogis, kneeling quickly and rocking me in her arms. “Despite what the books say, no one ever died from having an overflow of love to give.”

  “I’m—tomorrow’s freak—for—for Home Room!” I stuttered through sobs.

  “No, you’re not,” she whispered. “You won’t be. Honest. You’re a beautiful girl, and there is nothing—nothing wrong with this need you feel. Or how you want to express it.”

  Her face was very close to mine, and her fingertips were gently caressing my face. She wasn’t clumsy and unaware of what she was doing, not like I was with Deborah.

  I could taste the salt of my tears running down my cheeks, and I had forgotten for a moment that I was naked, wrapped up in my own shame and personal agony. I heard Miss Ogis whisper again Come here, and she embraced me protectively once more, her hands running down my back. When I sat back against the tiled wall, I laughed self-consciously because her blouse was all wet from the hug, and she shook her head to say, Hey, forget it.

  “You don’t know what to do with yourself, do you?” said my teacher.

  Her fingertips ran down both my breasts and then ever so gently felt their weight, and she held my eyes. “Do you want to know what it’s all about?” she asked me. “Do you want to know how it can be?”

  I nodded dumbly like a child, feeling the rush of heat between my legs. I sat there, still half in the spray of the shower nozzle like rays of a spotlight, beads of water collecting and running down my breasts, and Miss Ogis—because this is how I still thought of her—sat in front of me, her golden brown face shining with the steam and the spray. Her blouse had become transparent with the water, a gauze curtain in front of two beautiful globes of that light hue, and she kept massaging my breasts with gentle pressure until my puckered nipples felt enormous. I felt like I had collapsed into a dream, feeling expert fingers touch me between my legs, playing with my clitoris, and then her small perfect mouth enveloped one of my nipples and sucked, making me shudder.