Cricket in a Fist

by Naomi K. Lewis

  “Sure,” said Benna, putting the pamphlet on the bed beside her and stretching out her legs. She rested her feet, in their black nylons, on Jasmine’s pillow. “What’s a burden?”

  “It’s something that weighs you down. Something you’re stuck with, that you don’t want.” Jasmine liked explaining things, except that Benna always said “Oh,” as if she was disappointed and bored with the lameness of the answer.

  Whenever Dad was home, Jasmine hurried Benna past him and up to her room, not only because she was afraid he’d tell them some dorky joke, but because she didn’t want to hear him describe Benna as not the sharpest tool in the shed, which he would surely do if he had a chance to talk with her. Benna might not know a lot of the things Dad thought were important, but she knew how to be cool. She knew how to dye her own hair the lightest colour of blond you could get, and how to wear clothes that were kind of punk, kind of skanky. She knew how to talk to guys, and Jasmine had noticed before they became friends that Benna wore shoes without socks in winter and her ankles didn’t show any signs of being cold. Dad was so far from knowing how to be cool that he didn’t even recognize it when he saw it.

  “You should have something, too,” Jasmine said, sitting on the bed beside Benna, Teen Star calendar in hand.

  “But we’re not at my place.”

  “Your bag’s full of junk.” Benna crawled past Jasmine to retrieve her backpack from the end of the bed. She unzipped it and dumped the contents, lint and dirt tumbling out right onto Jasmine’s comforter. Benna looked blankly at the pile of books, paper and old lipsticks. She poked a couple of receipts and other crumpled papers and grimaced at a balled-up pair of nylons.

  “Oh God,” she said finally, holding a scrap of binder paper between her fingers.

  “What’s that?”

  “Some phone number. The guy from the Ex. Remember, I told you? In the summer? The Ferris wheel guy?”

  “Right,” Jasmine said quickly, not wanting to hear the whole story again.

  “As if he really believed I was sixteen,” said Benna.

  “Okay.” Jasmine handed Benna a pen. “Write your three words on the back.” Benna sat, thinking, and Jasmine waited, looking at her friend’s black nail polish, which never seemed to chip. Jasmine imagined the high school guy from the summer kissing Benna up at the top of the Ferris wheel and maybe putting Benna’s fingers in his mouth, one by one.

  Benna handed Jasmine the scrap of paper, where she’d written, Fuck! You! Asshole!

  “Now,” Jasmine told Benna, “we set them on fire.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. In the wastebasket. Let’s do it in the bathroom.” Jasmine emptied her metal wastebasket, put the calendar and her three words in it and held it out for Benna.

  With the trash can and its contents set up in the middle of the tub, Jasmine had a moment of doubt. She’d read and reread the article that described one of Virginia’s workshops, and now she read the important passage to Benna: She sprays a generous amount of lighter fluid into the metal container and smiles at her audience. “You should probably do this outside,” she cautions. “I can’t be held responsible for burnt-down houses.” The ten women and one man laugh, eyeing the bin warily. “You want to run up here and save these relics, don’t you?” says Virginia, grinning. More nervous laughter. Virginia lights a match. “Bombs away,” she says. The flames spread fast, then burn high and blue, the metal can and its contents looking like a giant flaming sambuca. “Forget it!” she exclaims, and her audience joins in tentatively. “Forget it!” she yells, and everyone yells along with her.

  Jasmine stared down at the printout in her hand and then looked at Benna. She didn’t have any lighter fluid, but luckily Benna suggested dousing the calendar with Lara’s facial toner. Still, the metal bin didn’t fill with fire, didn’t billow with flames like in the photographs of Virginia’s workshops. Jasmine and Benna leaned over to watch the phone number disappear quickly, with a brief burst of real fire, and then waited as a small blue flame crept over the calendar, crumpling it, turning it black. Slowly, the edges crumbled into ash.

  “Forget it,” Jasmine said. Forget it was J. Virginia Morgan’s “mantra,” according to the magazine article. Benna echoed her, not even trying to sound as if she cared. Jasmine sat down on the edge of the tub to wait, and Benna lowered the lid to sit on the toilet.

  Benna got bored first and wandered over to the mirror to put her own bleached hair in a bun and then take it down again. Jasmine checked the slow smouldering in the trash can; there was a faint smell of melting plastic.

  “It fucking stinks in here, by the way,” Benna said. Her hair was so, so blond, but not dried out at all.

  “My sister tried to bleach her hair one time,” Jasmine said. “When I was a kid. And ended up shaving it all off.” Benna laughed. “Her hair was in the tub the next day. No one cleaned it up. Someone took a shower with it in there, too, so it turned into this wet clump. It was in there forever.” Agatha’s bald head and the wet mass of multi-toned hair in the bathtub seemed to coincide with long conversations in the living room, Dad, Agatha and Tam-Tam all looking panic-stricken. Agatha took to wearing a tuque in the apartment, pulled down to the tops of her glasses. She even wore it to bed, and Jasmine remembered sleeping with her sister, pushing her hand under the hat and feeling Agatha’s head, prickly in one direction and velvety in the other.

  Pushing her goggles up to her forehead, Jasmine tried to see her sister again, up in the window. Just a smudge of blond hair and blue jacket. Agatha looked so different now, with her long, blond hair and no glasses. She still dressed cool, though, and looked awesome at the bus terminal in that Halloween dress with the A on it. Readjusting her goggles, Jasmine checked for the fast Asian guy and pushed off, rolled onto her back.

  Jasmine had already loved swimming back when her real mother was around, and Agatha used to take her to the pool, which was far enough that they had to take the bus. When she swam, Jasmine would pretend to be a dolphin, far from any land, with miles of open blue water in every direction. A dolphin looks big and lumpy on solid ground but becomes sleek and fast in the middle of the ocean, where it belongs. She had seen tropical fish from inside a submarine when Grandma and Grandpa Winter took her to Barbados, and she loved the brightly coloured creatures around and below her, swimming alone and in schools. All quiet and watchful, purposeful and independent. She still thought of the sea sometimes when she swam, but more often she thought of space. She was training for the day she’d be tethered to a space shuttle, the earth huge and blue. Often she’d imagined unhooking the rope that bound her to the shuttle and pushing herself away. In space, there’s no drag, no resistance, so once she pushed off, she’d keep moving forever, and quickly, away from all the people who didn’t understand her anyway. She pictured their surprised faces framed by the shuttle’s round windows as they watched her float away into the vastness, waving goodbye. All the people who treated her like a kid and got mad at her for things she kept accidentally doing wrong. Like skipping swimming, and then school, and running away.

  And now stealing. Stealing not only from a store, but then from her own sister, which was probably considered even worse. Like how murdering a family member is worse than if the victim’s just a normal person. According to the laws of every major religion and every country ever, stealing is wrong. It wasn’t as if Jasmine didn’t know that, or didn’t feel bad about it. She didn’t think stealing was a fun pastime like Benna did. Even at La Boutique, in the mall, where she knew all the staff, Benna often came out of the changing room with lacy underwear and skimpy dresses under her jeans and the sweatshirt she wore specifically for this purpose. Jasmine would never have done that; once she stole a lipstick from the drugstore to see if she could, but then she felt terrible and put it back the next day, before she opened it. According to J. Virginia Morgan herself, though, sometimes it’s the right thing to put aside everyday rules. For instance, she told one interviewer, honesty is certainly the
best policy, but it isn’t always the best practice. This was a seriously hard sentence to understand, but after a long phone discussion with Grandpa Winter about the difference between policy and practice, Jasmine was pretty sure she got it. Anyway, the point was, sometimes there’s something really important that has to happen, and you have to make it happen, even if it means doing something a bit illegal or weird, like stealing something that you really need or telling a lie to spare someone’s feelings. Or leaving your husband and two daughters and never looking back.

  Grandpa Winter was also the one who explained to Jasmine what sophistry meant. When someone seems really convincing but they’re really tricking you by sounding all smart; when you know there’s something wrong with what someone’s saying, but you can’t quite figure out what it is, that’s sophistry. Jasmine tried to explain to Benna why she was pretty sure J. Virginia Morgan’s writing fell into this category. “It’s bullshit, you know?” Jasmine said. “That’s basically what I mean. My real mother writes all this bullshit, but she’s just an asshole. You know?” But Benna just lay back on her waterbed with her fishnetted legs up the wall and her hair all messy and looked kind of beautiful, kind of brain dead. The really crappy thing was that Mei would have understood everything, but Mei wasn’t the one Jasmine wanted.

  It still felt bad to have taken Agatha’s prized possession, even if it was for her own good. It had only been the previous evening that Jasmine found out about the shoebox. After they took the streetcar home in silence, Agatha had put on a CD and then sat on the sofa with her eyes closed for the longest time. Jasmine sat beside her and watched. Agatha was really mad, Jasmine guessed, about the whole nosebleed thing, and maybe the whole running away thing, which was so unfair. Just as Jasmine was wondering if they were ever going to have dinner and was trying to decide whether to bring it up, Agatha leaned forward to reach under the couch. “Tam-Tam sent me this,” she said. “I guess because she’s getting rid of old stuff, like you said. She didn’t tell me she was moving.” Agatha put the shoebox on the cushion between them. Jasmine asked what was inside, and Agatha put her hand on the lid. Tam-Tam had offered Jasmine all those old clothes, but it was still annoying that Agatha got this secret box, obviously with something precious inside.

  “It’s one of Oma Esther’s books. And” — Agatha held it closed with both hands — “something our mother gave Tam-Tam.”

  Jasmine couldn’t believe it. Why did Tam-Tam give this to Agatha, who never even called her? She took a deep breath. “What do you mean? Stuff she didn’t burn?”

  “Yeah.” Agatha must have known what it said in The Willing Amnesiac. That their mother had burnt everything. Agatha carefully put the lid aside. The box was full of folded, colourful paper, all different shades of red. “They’re origami cranes.” Agatha pulled one out and the others followed; they were tied together by a long piece of yarn. Agatha stood and held her arm over her head, to show Jasmine how long it was.

  “That’s it? They look so old.”

  “They’re as old as I am. Our mother made them when she was pregnant with me. I heard about them a long time ago. I read about them in an old letter I found once, from my biological father to Dad. It’s so strange to have them. I can’t believe Mama kept them all that time.”

  It had been a long time since Jasmine heard Agatha talk about her “biological father.” That’s what she’d always called him, back when she lived with Tam-Tam and was suddenly obsessed with this person’s existence and with the fact that she wasn’t actually related to Dad or Lara. “How could I live with them?” Agatha said once. “I’d be like a foster child.” She told Jasmine, back then, that her biological father had wanted to meet her, but Dad and their mother wouldn’t let him. Jasmine hated him, this stupid biological father of Agatha’s, out there somewhere, making Agatha special and not totally Jasmine’s sister.

  Jasmine touched one of the cranes. “Why were they the only thing she didn’t burn? Why did she give them to Tam-Tam?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” Agatha said, sitting with the string looped over her hands. “When our mother made these, she thought they would protect her. Maybe she thought they would protect Tam-Tam, too.”

  “But Virginia doesn’t believe in lucky things, like — superstition.”

  Agatha shrugged. “I don’t know if anyone can really not believe in anything. You know, really not believe that anything is connected. Not even one moment to the next. In Virginia’s second book, she says that continuity of the self through time is an illusion. An illusion that catches us, like a trap. Do you know what she means by that?”

  “Not really. Do you?”

  “I think so. But I don’t think anyone could really believe that. Or, you know, that they could break free.”

  “What book is that?” Jasmine asked, looking in the box. Agatha put the cranes down. “It’s one of Oma Esther’s cookbooks. The one with the challah recipe, this bread I used to make with her. Look here.” Agatha opened the book to a page in the middle, scrawled all over in pencil.

  “She had nice handwriting,” Jasmine said.

  “I know. Look, she wrote my name there, and her sister’s. Anke, that was her sister.”

  “What language is that?”

  “I think it’s Dutch. I should find out what it says. Maybe I will, sometime.”

  “Agatha,” Jasmine said quickly, before she could change her mind. “Our mother has one of those workshops tomorrow. In Toronto. It says where on her website. Will you take me there?” Agatha stared at Jasmine and shook her head slowly. “Come on,” Jasmine urged.

  “That’s a really terrible idea.”

  “Please. I have to see her.”

  “No way.”

  Jasmine hadn’t really expected her to agree. She sat back and watched Agatha put the birds away, put the box under the couch. “I want to get rid of her,” Jasmine said. “Don’t you even care?”

  Agatha stared at Jasmine and shook her head, then stood and went to her bookshelf. She pulled away a cardigan draped over some of the books. “There are all Virginia’s books and others like them,” she said. “I’ve read pretty much every self-help book and every memoir by a woman ever written. See these? They were written in the 1700s. And these? The 1800s. I’ve read all of them. Trying to understand. So yeah, I do care, actually.”

  Agatha sat in the big, upholstered chair by the books, crossed her arms and sighed. A flash of movement in the kitchen caught Jasmine’s eye, and she jumped. A mouse stood in the middle of the floor, trembling with readiness to run. Agatha’s eyes were closed; she looked so tired. Wondering if she should say anything, Jasmine leaned forward, and the mouse darted under the fridge. Agatha drew up her legs and put her forehead on her knees.

  “What are they about?” Jasmine said. “The other women’s books?”

  “Mostly just the usual things.” Agatha didn’t open her eyes. “Love. God. Money. Some big solution for all your problems.”

  Love. On Bev’s favourite show, people were always falling in and out of love. Falling in love with one person and then accidentally falling in love with someone else and leaving the first standing alone with a ring box in his hand, eyebrows twitching with humiliation and anger. Even though it kept happening, the square-jawed doctors and police officers were always surprised. Lara hated these shows but sometimes watched them anyway, just to spend time with Bev. Jasmine’s real mother used to watch soaps, too; she remembered the almost painful boredom she’d felt when Agatha wasn’t home, and instead of playing, her mother sat on the brown corduroy couch watching the television as if it was telling her something important. The concerned, patently grown-up expressions on all the characters’ faces during their endless, intense conversations about the incomprehensible intricacies of daily life. It was so boring.

  “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” Jasmine said.

  “I just don’t right now,” Agatha said. “I was seeing someone for a few months, but we broke up.”

 
“Did he dump you?”

  “No. Well, no.” Agatha leaned back, wrapping a green and brown crocheted shawl from the back of the chair around her shoulders. “I broke up with him, actually.”

  Jasmine recognized the shawl. It used to be at Tam-Tam’s house, on Agatha’s bed. Esther’s old bed. Jasmine crawled over to sit at Agatha’s feet and touched the fabric. “Why?”

  “I just knew what would happen. He told me I was going to have an interesting life. We were lying on the bed” — she waved her hand toward the bed on the other side of the bookcases that she and Jasmine had been sharing — “and he sort of leaned over me and said, ‘You’re going to have a really interesting life.’”

  Jasmine agreed; that was awful. “So you just dumped him?” She realized she’d started picking little bits of lint off Agatha’s sock and pressing them together into a ball. She placed the lint-ball on her sister’s knee and set to work on the other sock.

  “Yup,” Agatha said.

  “Did you cry?”

  Agatha shrugged. “I cried for about an hour. The next day, I felt better. I guess there’s nothing worse than ending up with the wrong person, you know?” Jasmine asked where they met. “On the bus. The bus back from Ottawa in the spring.”

  “Did you love him?”

  Agatha said she didn’t, but then said, “Maybe. I could have, if he’d love me back, I guess. Oh, I guess I didn’t. He claimed he loved me after about two weeks. But he didn’t. Believe me.” Agatha stopped and leaned her head to one side, narrowing her eyes like she was trying to see inside Jasmine’s brain. “Do you love someone, Min?” Jasmine looked down at her hands and shook her head. “Someone you shouldn’t, maybe?” Agatha prompted. “Sometimes it really hurts, I know. Loving the wrong person.”

  “Have you ever loved the wrong person?”

  “I’ve liked people a lot, and felt like I loved them at the time. And it’s always been the wrong person. Jasmine, you can tell me if you want. Is it someone at school? An older guy? Someone really — weird? Your teacher or something?”