Cricket in a Fist

by Naomi K. Lewis

  Six

  Jasmine showered quickly under cold water, soaking her bathing suit, and passed several nude women before walking around the tiled corner. Everything about it was good: the smell that she felt in her sinuses and her eyes; the rough concrete under her feet after she abandoned her flip-flops by the wall to hurry, shivering, to the edge of the slow lane; even the bad radio music echoing against the water and up to the high, high ceiling. The room’s colour scheme was brown, beige and yellow, maybe intended to remind you of the beach. Several people were circle-swimming just fast enough to stay afloat, and Jasmine pulled down her goggles to slip in for a couple of warm-up freestyle laps. One middle-aged lady jerked along with her legs way down in the water, resting her torso on a kickboard. Justin, Jasmine’s old swimming coach, used to joke that those boards had two purposes — to improve kicking and to fool people into thinking they were actually swimming.

  Besides the chlorine and the radio music and the occasional sound of a lifeguard’s whistle, every pool was different. The height of the ceiling, the acoustics, the colour of the tiles and the walls. Jasmine usually swam at a public pool, and this one seemed even bigger than the one at Dad’s university, though both were Olympicsize. The ceiling here was higher, and there was a second, smaller pool off to the side for old people and babies who didn’t know how to swim. An aerobics class was flailing around in there. High overhead, in the wall above the balcony, was the long window of a room at street level where people could watch from the comfort of sofas. Agatha was up there, surveying the scene from behind glass so the chlorine wouldn’t sting her eyes and frizz her hair. She was trying to be in charge again, as if the night before had never happened. As if she hadn’t gotten Jasmine stoned, had never suggested they ride around on the subway, eating Thai food out of cardboard boxes and whispering about the other people on board, laughing until they cried.

  It would have made sense to go swimming the day before while Agatha was working; the pool was only a few blocks from the bookstore, but Agatha didn’t want to leave Jasmine alone even for a second. Jasmine had brought her swimming gear just in case and mentioned the pool again as her sister unlocked Eternal Present. “That’s okay,” Agatha said. The doorway was full of beads on strings that you had to push aside to get in. “We’ll go together, tomorrow.” As if Jasmine couldn’t be trusted alone; as if she hadn’t been going to the pool by herself after school since she was twelve. As if she hadn’t taken the bus all the way to Toronto with no help from anyone, and taken the bus to Aylmer before that. What Agatha didn’t know was that Jasmine had been drunk on peach schnapps a week earlier in Benna’s house, dancing to hilarious disco music, making Benna laugh until she cried, no parents to be seen. But Jasmine knew she had to be a good guest — she didn’t want Agatha calling Dad and ruining everything. So she put on her clothes and ate the cereal her sister put on the table, even though she never ate cereal because she hated how it was always soggy by the time you got to the bottom of the bowl. The apartment looked different in the daylight. Worse. It was just a big room with a lot of stuff thrown into it. The walls were too white, and the corners too blunt, and the ceiling was cardboard, with a big, brown water stain. While Jasmine did her eyeliner and finished drying her hair, Agatha stood at the door with her jacket on, repeating a million times that Jasmine was making her late.

  Practising her bilateral breathing, Jasmine waited for all the events of the last thirty-six hours to fit together; she waited for a clear picture of what she was going to do next. Everything was all planned out, except the three words. Three perfect words. In the middle lane, she pushed off hard, streamlining her body, arms straight, hands clasped above her head. When both her ears were underwater, the sound was like the inside of a seashell. She counted more than two seconds before breakout and then slowly built speed, like Justin had taught her, and was surprised that her body felt normal, not even achy, and definitely not sick like after she drank the peach schnapps. Drugs were supposed to be so bad, but she felt completely fine, and no more addicted than before. When she rolled over for a length of backstroke, Jasmine tried to spot Agatha up above, but her goggles blurred everything. Blurry was a good word for how J. Virginia Morgan made Jasmine feel. As if she couldn’t get a clear idea of anything.

  Jasmine had spent most of the previous morning sitting in a big beanbag chair, flipping through magazines about tattoos and crystals and watching Agatha say hi to Eternal Present customers as they came through the beads, which wasn’t very often. A couple of times, people asked Agatha to open the jewellery case, and one woman bought a T-shirt with a picture of a frog on it. Jasmine liked the chunky stainless steel rings and wished she had some extra money, but she couldn’t spend anything because she only had just enough for a bus ticket back home, or to somewhere else. So as soon as she bought something, that was it. She was in Toronto for life, or until she figured out how to get more money.

  Agatha’s life was a lot different than Jasmine used to think. As they’d left the apartment and walked to the corner, Jasmine had looked up at her sister’s windows. The building didn’t even look like a place where someone would live. It was square and brick, with big, flat windows, and the rest of the street was stores instead of houses. She’d pictured Agatha living in one of a long row of brick town-houses, like in movies of London or New York. The kind of place where people sit on the front steps, talking to each other.

  When they got off the streetcar, Agatha had explained that they were on College Street and then stopped in a café to buy herself a coffee. Jasmine said she wanted one, too, though she’d never drunk coffee in her life. Filled to the brim with cream and sugar, it was still as bitter as coffee ice cream, which Jasmine hated. But they walked down a street of old brick houses, and Agatha drank her coffee as if she needed it to live, so Jasmine forced down as much as she could.

  She kept holding the cup for a couple of hours before dumping the rest in the toilet. The washroom was at the back of a storage space lined with boxes, just like the one at Tam-Tam’s old salon. But this room wasn’t clean and white-tiled; it had an old, fraying blue carpet and a red velour sofa that would surely release dust clouds if anyone sat on it. Jasmine wandered back past Agatha, behind the cash, over to the window, and returned to her beanbag chair. She sat down with a sigh, and Agatha looked up from her book to shrug sympathetically, as if she was bored, too. Agatha had always been that way. Even when Jasmine was little, when she spent weekends at Tam-Tam’s and she and Agatha shared Tam-Tam’s dead mother’s bed. Agatha would just read and read, and maybe write something down in a notebook, and Jasmine wasn’t even allowed to say anything for hours. One time, Jasmine had been so bored, sitting on the afghan-covered bed, colouring and trying to see patterns in the wallpaper, that she’d grabbed a fistful of Agatha’s short, bleached-blond hair and bitten her as hard as she could, right on the side of the chin. She remembered Tam-Tam opening the door, horrified at the howl, Agatha leaning into her hand to hide tooth-marks. Tam-Tam held her chest as if she was trying not to have a heart attack. Then Jasmine sat on the counter in the bathroom while Agatha washed the germs out of her skin. At Tam-Tam’s house, they weren’t allowed to leave drops of water in the sink; they had to wipe it out with a tissue before leaving the room. It was a bit funny, afterwards, to see the marks on Agatha’s face and how Tam-Tam pretended not to notice them, probably because she thought Agatha got them from a boy. Even Agatha thought it was funny.

  Squirming with boredom in the beanbag chair, Jasmine felt like a six-year-old, her jaw and fists aching to break through the surface of something, to make something happen. “You’re just like Tam-Tam,” she said. “Working in a store where only women go.”

  Agatha nodded, without looking up. “I guess that’s true,” she said.

  “Have you talked to Tam-Tam lately?”

  “Not that long ago.” She hadn’t talked to Tam-Tam in weeks, at least. Maybe months. Jasmine knew it, because Tam-Tam was always saying that Agatha never called anym
ore.

  “I just saw her a few days ago,” Jasmine said. “She bought me this sweater.”

  Agatha put her book face-down, so the spine might crack. “It’s tighter than you would normally wear,” she said. Jasmine crossed her arms. “I mean, it’s nice.”

  “Sure.”

  “It really is. Tam-Tam has good taste.”

  “She has a boyfriend, you know.”

  “No!” Agatha actually looked interested in something Jasmine was saying, for once. “No she doesn’t.”

  “Yes she does! This man who owns a restaurant near her house. His wife used to get her hair cut at the salon before she died. Now he takes Tam-Tam out for dinner all the time.”

  “They must be friends,” Agatha said.

  “They go on dates.” Jasmine felt like grabbing her sister around her skinny neck and shaking her. Agatha had left Jasmine all alone with their family for years and years and now acted as if she knew more about them than Jasmine did. “His name’s Victor. He sleeps over.” Jasmine had no evidence for these sleepovers, but she was sure it was true. “Oh yeah, and she’s thinking about moving, now that she finally sold Cassandra the salon. She’s going through all her stuff, getting rid of things. She gave me a bunch of old clothes, like from the sixties. And she’s been sending boxes of junk to the Sally Ann.”

  “Wow. Huh.”

  “What?” said Jasmine. Agatha shook her head. “What?” said Jasmine again. “What were you thinking when I said that about Tam-Tam moving?” She pulled herself out of the chair, walked over to the jewellery case and tapped her fingers on it, smudging the glass. It drove her crazy how secretive her sister was. Jasmine told Agatha everything, and then Agatha just gazed off into space as if she were thinking a million things but couldn’t be bothered to say them out loud.

  “It’s so frustrating,” Jasmine started, and then noticed her sister looking worriedly at the store’s back wall, behind Jasmine’s back. “What?” Jasmine turned. It only took her a moment to understand. There on the bookshelf at Agatha’s work were rows of books full of advice and ways to find your True Self, and right in the middle of the middle shelf were all three of J. Virginia Morgan’s books, shiny and new, with the latest one, Accidents, placed face out. Below her eyes, Jasmine felt the familiar throb of dismay, the sick, slick ache in her throat. Agatha sat across from these bright red covers every day; she sold J. Virginia Morgan’s books to people. She must have read them all, too, every word, the same words Jasmine had read. Jasmine and Agatha could have been talking about those words, all this time.

  “Min?” said Agatha. Jasmine held her fingertips against her nostrils, breathed rapidly through her mouth and put her head back just as her sister said, “No!” Somehow, Agatha managed to bolt out from behind the counter, grab Jasmine by both shoulders and turn her away from the books just as she sneezed. Blood splattered the jewellery case. “Jesus!” said Agatha.

  Hand over her face, Jasmine felt blood drip down her wrist, and she let out a loud laugh.

  “Jasmine,” said Agatha. She found a box of tissues behind the counter.

  “Agatha,” Jasmine imitated her sister’s bossy tone. She held a wad of tissues under her nose, tossed it onto the soiled glass case and pulled some clean paper from the box.

  “Jasmine,” Agatha sighed again.

  “What is your problem? It’s not like I’m having a nosebleed on purpose.”

  “I didn’t say it was on purpose,” Agatha said.

  “Then why do you keep saying my name like that?”

  “Like what?”

  Jasmine mimicked the condescending, exasperated tone perfectly and, from the silence that followed, knew she’d hit a nerve. Agatha went into the storage room, and Jasmine hoped a customer would come in and see the blood before it was cleaned up, but no one did, and her sister reappeared with a bucket full of soapy water. “You can clean that up,” said Agatha.

  “No way.” Jasmine shook her head as Agatha went back and sat behind the counter. “I can’t clean that up. Why don’t you even care that I’m having a nosebleed?”

  “You can go to the washroom until your nose stops bleeding, and then you can clean it up.”

  “There is no fucking way I’m cleaning that up,” Jasmine said. “You think you’re so grown up. You’re being mature right now or something?” Agatha started to say Jasmine’s name again and stopped herself. “I can’t believe you didn’t e-mail me back.” When Jasmine raised her voice, it sounded absurdly nasal and made her nose bleed harder. “Those books are right there,” she said, lowering her voice and pinching her septum harder. “You knew all about this and you wouldn’t tell me anything. Why do you tell me stuff anymore? She’s my mother, too.” Agatha looked ghostly pale, the way she always did when nervous or upset, her eyes so intense they were scary. “Do you talk to her?” Jasmine said. “Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never met her? She’s never come here?”

  “She’s never come here. I’ve never met her, Jasmine.”

  Jasmine tossed her tissues aside for some clean ones, then went to the storage room and shut herself into the washroom. It took about five minutes for the blood to stop, and then she sat on the toilet to stare at the blue tiles and their filthy grout. It was so weird that Agatha worked in this store. A store that sold J. Virginia Morgan’s books. It was so fucked up. Agatha could have warned her that morning, when she forced Jasmine to get out of bed and get ready to come to work with her. Jasmine had woken a few minutes earlier to the sound of Agatha showering, relieved because she realized she’d been dreaming about something other than Benna. Something about a library, about her sister. And it had been a full five or ten minutes before it occurred to her to wonder what Benna was doing. Whether Benna missed her. And what she’d said, which was the worst part, when she got back to school.

  “Idiot,” Jasmine said out loud, hoping this meant she didn’t love Benna anymore.

  *

  Someone tapped her toes, so Jasmine finished her length and stopped at the lane’s corner to let the faster swimmer, a muscular Asian guy, pass. She touched her nostrils, to check, out of habit. Only once had her nose started bleeding in a pool, when she jumped off the highest diving board to prove to Justin she wasn’t scared. Usually she got nosebleeds when she was sitting around thinking about something awful. People seemed to think she made it happen just to be gross. But she didn’t. She couldn’t help it.

  She had waited as long as she could before peering into the store to see that Agatha had already scrubbed the glass and the wall and was discussing the aromatherapy display with a beautiful hippie. The bucket was sitting inside the storage room’s door, and Jasmine tipped the dirty water into the toilet, then stowed the bucket under the sink. She sat quietly on the beanbag chair for the rest of Agatha’s shift, moving only when her sister went into the back. Then she slipped copies of J. Virginia Morgan’s second and third books into her backpack and carefully reassembled the remaining books so no one could tell anything was missing.

  It had been only two weeks since the last time, since she’d sneezed blood all over her clean white bed sheets and one of her bedroom walls. She’d missed her Audrey Hepburn poster by inches, and it took Lara a whole hour of scrubbing to clean the wall. Jasmine sat in the bathtub, recovering, waiting for her sheets to be changed.

  “Do you realize,” Lara said, coming into the room without knocking — luckily, Jasmine had closed the shower curtain — “that my mother is deathly ill?” Lara was really a lawyer, but she stayed home half the week because Bev was dying and they wanted to see each other a lot first. It didn’t make much sense because Bev just wanted to watch TV all the time anyway, and she always made Lara upset. The really funny thing about it was that Lara’s mother didn’t even seem that sick. Besides being skinnier than before, which was an improvement, she seemed fine. It was like one of those illnesses in the movies, when you’re supposed to live it up because one day soon, with a brief, fierce pain in
the chest, you will drop dead.

  “So?” said Jasmine indignantly. Dad always told Jasmine she looked indignant, another good word for how she felt about J. Virginia Morgan.

  Waiting out the lap, Jasmine thought of how desperate Lara had sounded as she left the room, saying, “Next time you do this, you’re cleaning it up yourself.” She felt a strange twinge of remorse. Lara had still been mad, after all, about the fire and the resulting round, black scorch mark on the bottom of the tub. Jasmine realized she hated the scorch mark now, too, but only because it would always remind her of Benna. How Benna didn’t care where Jasmine was, or why she was gone, or whether she would ever come back. It was weird not to exchange e-mails, not to read about Benna’s day. It was so weird to go through with the plan Benna had helped her rehearse, knowing they would never even talk about it.

  Benna had been sitting on Jasmine’s bed, reading out loud. “Hold the object for one minute and then write down three words describing how it makes you feel.”

  Jasmine picked up the Teen Star calendar from her desk. “Retarded, retarded, retarded,” she said.

  “It makes you feel retarded?”

  “Okay,” said Jasmine, and thought about it for real. J. Virginia Morgan’s pamphlet, which Jasmine had ordered from the website, recommended checking the backs of closets and drawers to find the perfect “buried burden.” The calendar, which Hilary had given her for Christmas, was in a drawer, under all the socks. Jasmine thought hard. “Pissed off,” she said. “Embarrassed. Disappointed.” Benna said she was supposed to write them down, so Jasmine wrote her answers in black marker on the back of a crumpled geography assignment and held up the paper for Benna to see.

  “Okay,” Benna said. “Would you display this object on your mantel, your coffee table or your wall? No? Then you’ve . . . um . . . ex . . .”

  “Excavated.”

  “Excavated a buried burden. What does that mean, anyways?”

  “Excavated? It’s like when you dig up dinosaur bones or old pots or something.”