Cricket in a Fist
Page 28
I looked down at the shoebox in my hand. I opened it and pulled out the brightest of the faded red cranes, the others following. They dangled from the mustard yellow yarn like a mobile. It took Dad a moment to recognize them, and then he leaned to look closer. “Are those . . . ”
I nodded.
“Ginny used to make — do you girls know what those are?”
I opened my door and got out of the car. I hurried around to the back; the wind was blowing harder, and I pushed a strand of hair out of my mouth. After tying one end of the yarn securely to the car’s antenna, I tested my knot; the yarn was still strong, after a quarter of a century. I climbed back in the car.
“We know what they are,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jasmine said. “That’s so cool.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “You can both stay at my place, and we’ll leave for Ottawa in the morning.”
“But your job?” said Dad.
“I’ll tell them it’s a family emergency. If they don’t understand, I guess I’ll have to find a new job.” I felt far less confident about this decision than I tried to sound. “I’m sure they’ll understand. Okay, Dad?”
“Good girl,” he said. Jasmine and I turned to watch Mama’s cranes out the back window as he pulled out onto Avenue Road. “We’ll see if they hold together all the way home,” Dad said. “They’re just paper, and this is a real wind.” We watched the red birds lift and flutter like a kite’s tail in the sun’s quickly fading crimson glow.
Eyes closed, I couldn’t see or hear anything but the water against my head. If it weren’t for the unforgiving porcelain behind my neck and the already cold drop of water sliding down behind my ear, I would have been perfectly comfortable. Cassandra rubbed my scalp, and I opened my eyes to see the underside of her chin, a line where beige face collided with white neck. I saw the backing of her nose ring inside her nostril. When Cassandra lifted her hands off my head, I saw that she was wearing latex gloves. She pulled them off and helped me sit up, then combed out my hair and blow-dried it before I followed her back to her station.
“Wow,” said Cassandra, and we both looked at me in the mirror. My hair was red as a crayon. In contrast, my eyebrows were almost white and my eyes bright grey, even through my glasses. “Wait right here,” Cassandra said. She came back with a box of makeup. “Take off those glasses and close your eyes.”
I hardly recognized my reflection when she was through, and not only because my glasses were off. Cassandra had given me red false eyelashes that curled up like the spokes of a rake. Silvery-black liner surrounded my eyes, and my eyebrows were shaded a light reddish brown. My lips were as red as my hair. “You’re going to look amazing tonight.”
I put on my glasses, and the lashes bumped them when I blinked. The costume was ruined now that I’d spilled my guts to Mama. It had lost all power, gone slack. I stared, deflated, at my absurdly brilliant head. I didn’t even feel like dressing up and going to the dance anymore. Helena would be there with her volleyball friends, and I’d have to watch her glancing at Swithin while he ignored her. Ingo Bachmann would never go to a school dance. I only wanted to sit down with Mama and hear her explain herself. My anger had faded, and I was eager for the earnest discussion that comes after a fight.
“Enjoy it, babe,” said Cassandra. “That colour will start fading as soon as you shampoo.”
She’d turned me into someone else.
Mama was already in her coat when I got to the door, and Minnie wiggled her bum as I readjusted her in my arms. “You’re getting heavy, Fireman Jeffrey,” I told her, making her giggle crazily. With a bit of a struggle, I disentangled her limbs from my body and set her on the floor, and she grabbed my hand. Mama kissed TamTam’s cheeks, and I watched for any sign of change. Any indication that her mother had changed for her today, the way Mama changed for me when I read Asher Acker’s letter. Instead of the usual air kiss, Mama’s lips made unabashed contact with Tam-Tam’s cheek, and she leaned forward to hold her mother in a close, weary hug. Surprised, Tam-Tam patted the middle of my mother’s trench-coated back.
Mama stood at the top of the stairs, holding the door open, waiting for me and Minnie to go through. “Go ahead,” I said. Mama sighed and started down the staircase. I watched her back, her harried gait. Mama click-click-clicked on her high heels. Still walking, she turned to look back at us. Minnie’s fire truck was on the next stair, and I realized Mama hadn’t noticed it, that she was on a collision course. “He was right, in a way,” she called up to me.
I was paralyzed on the top step, Minnie’s hand in mine. “But,” Mama added.
“Watch out!” I said.
I did say that, but was it before or after Mama’s foot was on the truck? Before or after the audible crack of ankle bone? Her leg flew up, hand grabbing for the orange rail, and her body jerked in a strange, whiplash turn so she was facing us. The fire truck clattered down the stairs as Minnie screamed. Mama’s eyes and mouth were wide open. She seemed to pause, to look straight at me before flailing into a back dive. I yelled, absurdly, “Wait!” and there was a thud, a crack louder than any human head should ever make. Dad would draw diagrams, trying to figure it out. He sketched Mama’s brain inside a stick-figure body flying backwards down a staircase, lines and equations indicating the velocity of the fall, the force of impact. He drew an arrow pointing at the front right of her forehead, sketched it over and over, perplexed.
Minnie stopped screaming, and it was strangely quiet. I was aware of rain against the door. On the bottom step, the plastic fire truck had landed upright and unharmed, and Mama’s high heels pointed up the stairs at me, her left foot twisted at an unnatural angle. Usually, after an accident, Mama would swear at the top of her lungs, but this time she didn’t make a sound. Her body slid backwards down the stairs as slowly and peacefully as a bag of sand.
Acknowledgements
I developed these characters and ideas throughout my master’s degree at the University of New Brunswick, and I’m grateful to my mentors there, especially to John Ball for his guidance and for pushing me to send that first attempt out into the world. “The Guiding Light,” a story from a previous draft of this work, won the 2007 Fiddlehead fiction contest and appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of the magazine. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Council for the Arts provided financial assistance during stages of writing this book. Laurel Boone, my editor, gently and expertly showed me how to turn a collection of ideas into a novel. I thank everyone at Goose Lane Editions for making me feel in such capable hands, especially Dawn Louwen, proofreader extraordinaire.
I am grateful to all the people who wittingly or unwittingly sparked ideas, those who provided essential details, and those who critiqued bits and pieces along the way. I owe a special debt to my constant first reader, Barbara Romanik, who read every word between these covers, along with many other words she wisely advised me to delete; my parents, David and Christina Lewis, and my sister, Chloe Lewis, for always telling me to write and never suggesting I do something more practical; my Oma, Mary van Embden, for many hours-long talks about everything from Dutch phrases to the depth of the ocean at a particular beach; and all my family for teaching me, from a young age, that the world is full of eccentric, loveable characters with mysterious pasts. Everything is easier with the love and support of Melissa Kehoe, Nomi Claire Lazar and Sarah Steele. And thanks to Jason Markusoff, for every little thing.