“Do you miss her?”
“She was an idiot.”
“You can still miss an idiot. I miss my sister.”
“Did she off herself too?”
“No. She wouldn’t leave the family. And I did. But then I was the black sheep like Heather.”
The girl snorted. “That’s what you think. Heather always came back. Except this time. That’s what pisses them off more than anything.”
Sharon looked at the computer screen again. Wonder Woman could make anyone tell the truth with that golden lasso, but she’d been displaced by snaky lines that hadn’t yet made their shape plain. “I wish Heather could have talked to someone.”
“What for? So they could give her a bunch of pills to zone her out again?”
“I took pills,” Sharon said. “I got off them and it wasn’t fun. Your sister must have gone through hell. But I found a therapist to talk to who didn’t tell anybody what I said. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what I might have done. That’s why I would never tell anyone what someone told me.” It was Sharon’s turn to rudely stare, willing her thoughts into this child’s brain: she could be told; she would believe. “I know you stole the gun. Why?”
The girl sat motionless, then lowered her eyes as if talking inside, making a decision about something. “I showed the gun to Heather. I said, if she needed it. So she’d know where it was. Not to hurt herself. For protection, that’s all. Now she’s gone and,” the girl glared, daring Sharon to be shocked, outraged, “I hate her!”
“I understand that,” Sharon said. “My sister and I needed protection, too. What do you need protection from?”
Her eyes were on the girl’s, offering a promise. She was the mom, a garden wall surrounding all children who came into her house. But this was not her house and Cathy was blinking rapidly as if an eyelash had got into her eyes and she was rubbing them to hide her confusion. She picked up everything from the floor, shoving it into her backpack. She yawned. There were shadows under her eyes. “Thanks for coming, Mrs. Lewis. I’ve got to finish my homework and clean up before my parents get home.”
She stood to walk her boyfriend’s mother out, politely dismissing her. But in the hallway, when Sharon retrieved her bag from the table, she opened it to take out a pen and a scrap of paper, writing on the back of a Best Foods receipt. “Here’s my cell number. Put it in your backpack, okay? Just call if you need me.”
At home after the kids were in bed, Sharon baked and cooked until two a.m., thinking that the truth stank. She made roast chicken with carrots and potatoes. She made cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies, and wheat-free banana muffins. While the food was in the oven, she mopped the floor, she cleaned out the fridge, she didn’t think about Mother’s Day. The trick was to keep moving. You can run across hot coals if you move quickly enough. It has to do with the properties of thermal conductivity and the fact that human feet are mostly water. Human thought, however, is not. So at last, exhausted, she stood still and let someone else take over.
INSIDE
Ally was in the kitchen with Echo. Since that first time, they’d often come to the kitchen to sit on the Housekeeper’s lap, if she wasn’t busy, or to play quietly in a corner if she was taking care of Sharon, as she was now. Sharon sat with her eyes closed while the Housekeeper talked, trying to get through to her. Ally thought if she gave Sharon a good pinch, she’d open her eyes, but the Housekeeper wouldn’t let her. Sharon had to open her eyes her own self. Ally thought a pinch would be better.
“I like music boxes,” Ally said to Echo. Through the window, she could see Lyssa and Alec hanging out by the creek. Maybe she’d go to the creek sometime. “Cathy has lots.”
“She closed the cat one fast. She made a funny face,” Echo said. He was drawing on the kitchen floor with chalk, faces and circles within circles. “I seed what was in the box.”
She turned from the window. “What?”
“Lots of sticks.”
“What kinda sticks?”
“The kind you put in a puter. Different coloured ones.”
“Like the one with the drawings in it?”
“Uh huh. But they had numbers on them. One, two, three like that. And writing on them.”
“Show me,” she said.
B-A-C-K-U-P, he wrote in big crooked letters. “What’s that, Ally?”
She turned to the Housekeeper to ask but the Housekeeper shook her head, too busy to answer, and Ally looked out the window again at the tree and the field and the creek. She pulled a chair to the window, climbed on the chair and watched for a while. It was just a field, not too scary. There weren’t any cows mooing in it, and the window was just a little bit above the ground. She stood on her tiptoes to see better, and then moved back on her heels. Tiptoes and heels, tiptoes and heels while she thought, and then she jumped.
It didn’t hurt when she fell onto the grass. She stood up and nobody stopped her as she ran across the grass to the creek. There she squatted on the bank. She liked the sound that frogs made, creek, creek, creek. That was why the little river was called a creek. Lyssa was talking to Alec about boring stuff.
She interrupted them. “What is backup?”
“That’s what Sharon does after she finishes bookkeeping,” Lyssa said. “Sharon puts a flash drive in the USB port and she backs it up.”
“What for?”
“She makes a copy of her work and she puts it on the stick in case something happens to the computer. Why do you want to know?”
“Because.” Maybe she’d stick out her tongue and run away. She would have, for sure, if Lyssa hadn’t come over and sat down beside her.
“Hey,” Lyssa said. “We’ve got Mayfest at the end of the month. Is there anything you want me to get?”
“Like what?”
“Like, oh I dunno, say a teddy bear?”
On the outside Callisto was getting ready to go to their sister-in-law’s house, looking for an umbrella because the forecast said rain, but the inside was alight there by the creek. Ally and Lyssa sat side by side, one small and one bigger, knowing what they knew together, and knowing what they knew separately.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
It was Mother’s Day and the women were in Eleanor’s house, putting together gift baskets for the refugee centre across from Christie Pits. “Hand me a soap. Green,” Mimi ordered her daughter-in-law. Tied to every handle was a paper heart. Three finished baskets were in a row on the floor. “Why did you leave this for the last minute? This isn’t work for today. You should have done it a week ago.”
“One green soap.” Callisto passed it to Mimi, wondering how Sharon survived this family. At the round table mounded high with items for the baskets, she sat across from her mother-in-law, who, not content with Chinese proverbs, was now righteously reciting English ones. A stitch in time saves nine. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Eleanor had flown the coop, gone to get more supplies, leaving Callisto alone with her mother-in-law and the knick-knacks displayed on shelves, on top of the stereo and in the bay window: one hundred and four figurines and crystal animals.
“Hand me a loofah,” Mimi ordered as if her arms were too short to reach the pile in the middle of the table and filling her basket was more important than anything else.
“One loofah.” Callisto handed it over. Silently, sullenly, she put soap, shampoo, deodorant, moisturizer, bubble bath, shower gel, a loofah, peppermint foot liniment, and a box of six chocolates into a basket, then wrapped ribbon around the handle, cutting the end and tucking it under. How did Sharon stand this day after day?
“When is Josh coming to help?” Mimi asked.
“After Dan gets home.”
“Handball again,” Mimi sniffed. Her hair was newly cut and she wore her good wool jacket, her navy trousers, a silk blouse. On the lapel of her jacket was a brooch, an enamel chrysanthemum. She was not afraid to wear heels, bringing her height to a royal five foot two. It was Mother’s Day and so she h
ad dressed up even just to fill baskets for refugees. “Josh can come with the girls now.” Judy was playing with her cousins at their house. “They’ll play here.”
“He has to study for a test,” Callisto said.
“With that girl?”
“Yes.” The ribbon unwound. Why didn’t it stay tucked in, like her mother-in-law’s did? Callisto yanked it off and tried again.
“You should tell him no girlfriend. She isn’t good for him. How many times do I tell you?”
“I didn’t count,” Callisto said.
“Like this is better.” Mimi grabbed the ribbon.
“I don’t care.” Callisto grabbed the ribbon back. She was irritable though she had no right to be, for it was her job to keep the mind clear.
Mimi reached for the ribbon again. “Let me show you the right way.”
“No!” she snapped. “I don’t want your help. It is none of your business who my son likes.” Her mind was not clear. It was a storm, a green hurricane in her eyes.
“I am his nai-nai. I should have a say.”
“If a person is free, he makes his own choice.”
“He should listen to his mother and his mother should listen to his grandmother. Look what you’re wearing. Not even lipstick.”
Lipstick? Why were they talking about lipstick? If Callisto was concentrating, she would have seen the fish underwater, the words beneath the words. But she was tired of filling baskets and listening to her mother-in-law bicker and so, like an outsider, not Sharon but herself if she had been the outsider, she said, “Who cares?”
“I tell you how good you look with a little lipstick.”
Callisto stood up and walked with dignity to the row of baskets, adding hers. Now there were four. “Excuse me,” she said as she squeezed behind her mother-in-law to get to her chair, only the breathlessness of her voice betraying the storm that had not yet died.
“So polite.” There was an edge to Mimi’s voice. What more did she wish? “My mother-in-law used to say enemies are polite.”
“I am not your enemy.” Callisto returned to her seat, taking another basket. She deposited soap. Bubble bath. Shower gel. Perhaps this was why Sharon performed menial tasks, to avoid such conversations.
“You’re shouting.” Mimi pulled a lace handkerchief from her breast pocket, wiping her eyes.
“Pardon me.” She had lost her temper, but it was now regained, her apology as soft as could be.
“In China a woman goes to her husband’s family. Before the wedding, everyone is very polite,” Mimi said as her daughter-in-law unfurled tissue paper with a snap. “Afterward, mother-in-law can do anything she wants, and daughter-in-law is still polite.” Her voice was flat as if she too knew how to keep the mind clear, hands clasped on the table, gripping the lace hanky. “After I got married, we lived with Jake’s parents until we could buy a house. I did everything for my mother-in-law. She yelled at me from morning till night, and I accepted it.”
“Why?” Callisto asked. Her husband’s eyes were the same colour as his mother’s. With the new cut her hair was now entirely grey. She had horizontal lines at the corners of her eyes and vertical lines below them, curving over her cheekbones.
“That’s how a mother-in-law treats her son’s wife. She didn’t speak much English and I didn’t either, so she shouted in her own language. After a while, I started to understand some words. Then one day, I realized what she was shouting. ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ All day long she was saying, ‘Even a Chinese shiksa must know how to talk. Am I deaf? Am I stupid? What already?’ ” Mimi’s hands trembled, then stopped by force of her will. She reached for her bag, put the handkerchief inside. Her feet barely reached the floor. “After that, we argue all the time. I want to do it my way and she wants me to do it her way. I loved her like my own mother. Even more. She was the one who told me I was pregnant with Eleanor. I said no, I can’t be. I can’t have more children. The doctors said so.” Mimi cleared her throat. “I wanted to be just like her with my son’s wife. But no matter what I do, all the time you keep me like this.” She stretched out her arm, hand up, head turned away. Then she faced Callisto with unshielded eyes showing the unguarded truth of her existence in them. “Jake isn’t Jake anymore. My daughter is busy. You don’t need me.” There was no self-pity in her voice, only the statement of fact. She had crossed an ocean alone; she was still crossing it. And when death came, she would face it as a fact to be reckoned with and her reckoning would be fierce.
“You’re needed,” Callisto said. “We need you.”
“Today you argue with me.” Mimi rose from her chair and came around the table. “First time.” Her mother-in-law put her hands on Callisto’s shoulders, kissing her forehead. It was the first kiss of Callisto’s life, old lips pressed to her forehead where the third eye could see visions, a feathery kiss, dry. “I’m seventy, but …” Mimi pinched the hem of her jacket, bringing the folds together. “Then and now is like this for me. Here I was Xiao Mei. Here I was Mimi. It isn’t long ago.”
“Yes,” Callisto said. So time played tricks on singletons, too. When someone aged, the skin wrinkled and creased, features coarsened, dark skin lightened and light skin darkened until even racial origins were obscured by old age. And yet inside the eyes, time folded into a lightning bolt. “I understand.”
“Next time I bring you goldfish. For good luck. And I bring a nice colour of lipstick. You try it,” Mimi said.
Callisto laughed, surprising herself with the sound of it as the key turned in the front door and Eleanor entered with two shopping bags and more help. She’d dragged home her daughter, who’d been trying on makeup with her cousins. Her face was red where she’d scrubbed it off. As the younger kids would just be in the way, they were staying home with Josh, but Cathy was here, too, willing to lend a hand. Her right, since her left was bandaged. Ingrid came in behind them.
Mimi stared at Cathy’s bandage. “One hand. You won’t be much help.”
“It’s fine,” Eleanor said. “Come on in.”
They ranged in age from eleven to seventy, and the only one of them who didn’t count weeks was Mimi, as even Eleanor’s daughter had started her period. Two had known the pain of childbirth (three if Callisto, who was inside during the labour, were to be included); two had known rape; three had made love (four if counting Callisto, who had never been forward for it); two were virgins, and one of those—Ingrid—only in the most technical sense.
They sat around the table, hands busy as they made conversation. Mrs. Brown’s cottage was slated to be torn down this summer. What a shame, it being a landmark. Cathy thought someone should petition the city. Who would be eliminated on Survival of the Fittest? Mimi made tea and found ready-to-bake Chinese buns in the freezer. Fifteen minutes later the oven timer dinged and she took them out.
“The buns are good. What’s in them?” Ingrid said.
“Red bean paste and sesame. Did you call your mother today?” Mimi asked.
“I wish I could.” Ingrid separated a couple of sheets of tissue paper from the bundle. “My mother died when I was ten.”
“Nai-Nai’s mother died when she was a kid, too,” Judy said. She was wearing her usual basketball shirt and baggy pants. But her silver sports glasses had a slash of pink on the side, and in her underwear was a sanitary pad.
“What was she like?” Ingrid asked.
Mimi poured herself more tea. “She was very strict because she wanted me to marry well. She combed my hair until I cried. And she wrote poems. Like this: ‘Your impudent lips, your fingers like a snail’s trail on my skin.’ ” Mimi stopped reciting. “There’s more, not for little girls.”
“Nai-Nai! I’m almost as tall as you are. Did you look like her?”
“No, she was beautiful, like the movie star Ruan.” Mimi drank her tea, wishing it was something stronger. “My father had two wives, an older one and Mama. She wrote love poems to him. When First Wife found them, she burned them. No use to complain. First Wife can do
whatever she wants, Second Wife nothing. After that my mother gave up poetry. She smoked opium and didn’t care what I did. Then the war made her alive again for a while.” Mimi checked her basket. Everything but chocolate. She reached for a box. “What happened to your mama, Ingrid?”
“She died in a car accident.” Ingrid pushed back her chair and carried her basket to the row on the floor. “I was raised by my grandmother after that.”
“I never met my grandmother,” Cathy said. There was no part in her hair today. Someone had brushed it back from her forehead, put it up in a ponytail; she couldn’t have done it with her hurt hand.
Mimi took the empty plates to the sink, rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher, speaking with her back to the table. “I never expected to have a daughter. You’re my baobei.”
Eleanor made her way around the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area, and put an arm around her mother’s shoulder. “Let’s have some wine,” she said. “I’ve got three-quarters of a bottle in the fridge and it’s going to go bad.”
“If it’s white, I’ll have some. I wouldn’t want to spill red wine on my clothes. It stains,” Cathy said, sounding so much like herself that someone could assume she was if she hadn’t just asked for wine.
“Me, too, Mom. Now that I’m a woman and everything.”
“No! What are you girls thinking?” Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. “Judy, you can fix that basket. You’ve put two soaps in there and no shampoo. I’ll get you and Cathy some Coke.” Soon the wine bottle, pop bottle and glasses were on the table, surrounded by tissue paper and green apple shower gel.
“What’s a baobei?” Cathy asked.
“Treasure,” Callisto explained, though she, herself, had never been anyone’s treasure or even anyone’s trash—just no one’s at all. “Your sister didn’t have a mother’s day,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever.” The girl poured a little wine into her cup. She was favouring the bandaged hand, keeping it in her lap. From inside, Sharon was trying to reach through to say no, to get hold of the cup. But Callisto refused to switch. For an instant too small to measure, she turned around inside and said, Stop. Drinking wine is not the worst that could be done.
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