If Clara

by Martha Baillie

  Clara

  I put in my earbuds and Arcade Fire did their best to stop Kevin, but they weren’t quick enough. He slipped his words in, slid them through the music wall: ‘You sure fucked up big time on the bus. They’ll be coming for you next. The dentist makes everyone pay. When did you last sit in the chair? Open wide. Tell me when it hurts. In he’ll reach, revving up the drill. Dental work, mental work. They’ll be reporting you next. Here’s one who needs taking care of. Better keep your mouth shut. No more sucking on other people’s beeswax. Rots your teeth. Serves you right.’

  I wrote his name in large letters. He hates when I do that. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Spread out the pages on the floor. Maximum exposure. Annabelle passed me her crayons. I used a whole pad of construction paper. Some of the paper I covered in thick layers of crayon. Then I dug out his name with my fingernails. KEVIN. I liked the feeling of the wax under my nails. He was quieting, barely mumbling his vicious taunts, keeping them down his throat, where they belong, then Anabelle saw how stubby her crayons looked, I’d used so much and pressed so hard, and she started snivelling, so Kevin leaned right over and whispered in her ear, ‘That’s what you get, blubberhead, for lending Clara your crayons.’ Then he kicked her in the shins. I couldn’t shut them out or shut them in, tried walking in circles, cutting them in, cutting them out, going in circles, fists in my ears, when I saw the library book on my kitchen counter.

  Syrian Folk Tales from the Hearth. I’d brought it home ages ago. I always return my books on time but this one I purposely lost and paid for. Kamar needed it. I put it in my bag and that’s how Kamar was born. I took it because of the women on the bus. Open wide. They were seated right behind me, not the least interested in me, all absorbed in planning for their refugees, collecting shoes, collecting coats, hoping for a family soon. I searched my bag for my earbuds but couldn’t find them, must have left them at home, like an idiot. I tried humming under my breath to shut the women out, but they were loud. Yelling might have drowned them out, but I do not yell in public. To yell in public is demeaning and makes me feel like shit. The two of them were really getting off on describing teeth. Teeth of refugee children, teeth of refugee parents, and the rot between, and the dying nerves, and bleeding gums, and I pushed my way to the doors and rang the bell but not too many times, though probably I did ring it several times, because someone did say something to me, so I pulled my hat down over my ears. Then the bus stopped. Thank God, it stopped.

  I walked and walked, the rest of the way to the library. There it was, lying in the photocopier when I opened the lid. Someone had forgotten and was maybe coming back, but I took it anyhow. Syrian Folk Tales from the Hearth. I meant to tear it up when I got home. No more Syria, no more dentists strapping people into chairs. I’d tell the library, ‘I’ve lost an item and am prepared to pay,’ then rip the book to shreds.

  Kamar didn’t exist, not yet. But the girl who gouges out her eye when everyone else is spilling the beans and breaking their horns, and the girl who’s blinded by the crow, they’ve existed forever, the ones who can’t be cured. By the time I arrived at Dr. Burns’s office I couldn’t explain. I had the book with me but I wouldn’t show it to her. Syrian Folk Tales from the Hearth. Every time I started to take it out of my bag I burst into tears. I sat there, sobbing, and then my hour was up. ‘How will you get home?’ she asked. ‘I’ll walk,’ I told her. ‘I’m not taking the bus. I refuse to take the bus. I’ll consider taking public transport another day.’

  I walked, and by the time I got home, Kamar had begun, and so long as I kept my mouth shut, nobody could take her from me, not even Dr. Burns, and Kamar wasn’t going to get caught in a novel, she was going to be poetry until I opened my mouth and Dr. Burns wanted her to become a novel. I began to imagine I could be like other people. So I walked out my door and left Kamar on Daisy Harding’s front porch. I betrayed her without Kevin or anyone else telling me to.

  Julia

  A parrot named Caesar. He is handsome and often hangs upside down from the bars of his cage. Bold, in his plumage of indigo, orange, and emerald, he fixes his round, unnerving eye on any person who approaches.

  Alice and I discovered him in the sunroom off the lounge. I feel better about her decision to stay at St. Rita’s Residence for Seniors, now that she can visit Caesar. ‘For now, you are here, for now. Later we’ll see,’ I tell her, though she doesn’t complain. I have her on waiting lists for several places. ‘There will be people you know at Cavendish Gardens. When a room becomes free, they’ll call us. For now, you have Caesar. You sound happy enough. Or are you just being brave?’ Alice assures me she’s not just being brave. Caesar struts and eyes us with interest. Alice and Caesar, both are caged. For now, Alice has a room on the eleventh floor, facing south, into blinding sunlight except on overcast days. She has curtains made of a fabric she likes. She pulls them across the window to keep out the glare. The window overlooks a miniature world of rooftops and trees that ends in a taut line of lake, blue or silver, depending on the hour and the weather. Neither my eyes nor Alice’s can see beyond the water. Neither her gaze nor mine can slip between the lake and the sky pressing down.

  Alice observes the world as if she were swimming through thick milk. To have the cataracts removed from her eyes – this idea frightens her. She chooses to swim through milk rather than undergo routine surgery. The choice is hers. I cannot say what I will do when my turn comes. We have met with the surgeon, who agrees that the choice is hers alone to make. She is wheeled, thrice daily, out of her room with its milky view, and along a narrow corridor to the cramped elevator in which she rides down for meals, which she eats in a dining room with large windows at one end, square tables under pink tablecloths, and from all directions the shouting of the disturbed. Colourless food has become an inescapable feature of her days. Some of the diners prove capable of coherent conversation. Others stare mutely at their plates. Someone is cursing at this very moment, ‘Goddamn sonuvabitch,’ in response to which Amanda Alderson yells, ‘Amanda Alderson wants her ice cream now. Please bring Amanda Alderson her dessert at once.’

  This morning, while seated in her wheelchair, waiting for the elevator, Amanda kicked the buttocks of the caregiver standing in front of her.

  ‘Amanda, please don’t kick me. You must not kick me or anyone else. Please, try to be polite,’ instructed the caregiver, to which Amanda retorted, ‘You be polite. You try behaving for a change. If you can’t behave, I’ll kick you again.’

  After lunch, once a week, a pianist plays popular songs on the upright piano beside the fish tank. She encourages residents to sing along. ‘She’s pleasant,’ says Alice. ‘I mouth the words. I’ve never been able to carry a tune, as you know. And how are you, Julia? Tell me about Julia.’

  ‘I spoke with Clara. She’s coming to see you tomorrow.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How wonderful that will be. Clara and Julia together.’

  ‘Yes, both your daughters and you. The three of us together.’

  ‘Tell me about Julia.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. Shall we go see Caesar?’

  ‘Sure. Why not.’

  ‘While we’re visiting with Caesar, I’ll tell you about Julia.’

  ‘Good. I’ll like that. And it’s true that Clara will come tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, she’ll come. She’s said that she will. And you must not mention your cataracts.’

  Maurice

  He has agreed to fly. Bruce will leave the earth with me, tomorrow. We’ll both be strapped in, buttocks nestled in our plastic seats, surrounded by air, propeller whirring, and gasoline sloshing behind our heads. Up, up, and slowly away. No wind. There can be no wind, or we must not fly.

  Julia

  Should I have not stepped inside? I knocked. She opened the door. She said she’d be ready in a moment, and she began to close the door, then hesitated. She asked, ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Sure,’ I answered.
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  From the front hall I saw that she’d painted words on the walls of the living room. See not, speak not. Death to the Profligate. A bird had been roughly brushed into existence in black paint, its beak held shut by an X. To the right of the unusable fireplace she’d painted a faceless pink child wearing a checkered pinafore dress and clutching a string tied to a heartshaped balloon with I am dead written on it.

  Her living room had become her studio – everywhere sculptures made from scraps of metal and wire. She’d knitted covers, slipped them over the sleeves of LPS, left an oval or sometimes a square opening in the woollen surface. Through this hole the singer peered out. She’d chosen only albums with photos of singers on the sleeve.

  In a matter of minutes Clara returned from her bedroom at the back of her apartment. She was ready to go out. She locked the door behind us.

  ‘Your living room,’ I said. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  We waited for the bus. As we rode in the bus, I remembered being carried by buses and streetcars to school. Because we were two, because I was not alone but accompanied by my older sister, our parents considered it safe for us to travel on our own. Together we’d walk to the bus stop. What we spoke about, I don’t remember. The weight of the books on my back, the straps cutting into my shoulders – that sensation I can retrieve. Already we were leading separate lives. I knew who Clara’s friends were but they were too old to be my friends. If I was seven, she was ten. How old were we? I neither knew nor asked what went on in her school world. Surviving in the classroom in which I was imprisoned all day, every day but Saturday and Sunday, week after week, consumed me. Evenings at home, we rediscovered each other. So that we could play hopscotch in the living room, we drew on the carpet with chalk. We drew giant faces, numbered the forehead, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. We hopped from feature to feature. Our father raised a questioning eyebrow, our mother declared that the carpet was old and our artistic freedom was what mattered. But as we walked to the bus in the morning, school looming, we retreated into our separate, anxious worlds.

  All institutions unnerve Clara. We arrived at St. Rita’s, signed in, rode up in the elevator. Alice was waiting, perched on the edge of her bed. Clara admired Alice’s necklace, Alice’s haircut, Alice’s good health. ‘What a wonderful view,’ she exclaimed, and Alice looked very pleased, and we all stood gazing out Alice’s window. We saw the strip of lake beneath the pale sky, and the many rooftops, and towers, and tops of trees separating us from the edge of the world. After we’d looked at the view, Clara wheeled Alice, our mother, hers as much as mine, along the corridor to the elevator, and we all three rode down.

  Caesar was waiting. We watched him hop excitedly from left to right on his swinging bar, the one suspended in the middle of his cage. We urged him to speak. We told him how much we admired his plumage and his bold demeanour.

  Minutes passed.

  ‘Caesar, Caesar. Oh, such a handsome fellow you are,’ declared Alice.

  ‘Caesar,’ I tried, ‘tkkkk, cackcackcack. Hey, gorgeous. Tkkktkttk.’

  ‘You are stunning,’ Clara told Caesar. ‘Crawwwkcrrrrkkk.’

  ‘Well, not today. He’s not in the mood,’ concluded Alice.

  ‘You never know,’ corrected Clara.

  ‘Hey, Caesar, tkkk, cackcackackk. Hey, handsome,’ I urged.

  ‘He won’t perform on command,’ said Alice. ‘Who likes to be told what to do?’

  Clara, who’d wandered a short distance away, now returned holding a fat snowman about five inches tall, made of white, plush. It had an orange nose and belonged to a family of toy snowmen arranged prematurely along the window ledge, in festive anticipation of December, a month when snow used to fall and accumulate. One of the snowmen was playing a small, stuffed piano, two were singing, another sweeping for the sake of sweeping. Clara held up her snowman for Caesar to examine. He hopped to and fro, in a crescendo of agitation.

  ‘Oh, so you like that?’ she asked, and poked the snowman’s nose between the bars, then pulled it back, just as Caesar’s beak lunged. She poked it in again, out, in, out, in. His agitation mounting, Caesar hopped right, left, right.

  ‘I love you,’ he screeched. ‘I love, I love you.’

  Clara laughed and laughed. Alice watched and smiled.

  ‘He knows that he’s handsome,’ said Alice.

  ‘I love you, I love you,’ insisted Caesar.

  ‘I love you, I love you,’ declared Clara.

  Clara

  I have survived seeing Alice. She’s become less dangerous. But I must remain vigilant, as she is sly. I wheeled her down the hall. I pushed and she rode. That was a good move. My mistake came earlier. Before we went to visit Alice, I let Julia in. I hadn’t intended to let her in. She knocked. I invited her in. She saw. Not everything, only the smallest amount. I didn’t want her to comment but she did. No, that’s not true. I wanted her to comment and she did. Both are true, did and didn’t. ‘Your living room, it’s wonderful.’ I felt happiness. I can do this, I thought.

  Wonderful living room, I recited, just now, as an evening treat, as comfort food. Right away Kevin snickered. His meanest, tightest, most staccato laugh, which he reserves for occasions when he senses my vulnerability and knows that he can sneer me into obedience. ‘Fine,’ I told him, ‘I won’t let her in next time, have it your way.’ This made Bridgette start spinning in circles, tears and snot running down her cheeks, and in between gulps of these fluids, she kept calling out to anyone who might have been listening: ‘Kevin is picking on Clara, Kevin’s being mean to Clara, Kevin is a bully,’ which only caused Kevin to sharpen the blade of his snicker and drive it deeper between my ribs, until I promised not to open the door to anybody, not ever. ‘Let her in again,’ Kevin warned, his lips worming all over my ear, ‘and she’ll find out we exist, and you know what will happen then, don’t you? Sure you do. She’ll kill us. All of us. Bridgette first. She’ll stuff B’s snotty nose rag down her throat till she chokes. Then Gillian. Gilllian will really get it up the ass. You know what she’ll shove inside Gillian?’ He won’t shut up, not until I’m screaming so loudly that I have to stick my head under my pillow or stuff clothes in my mouth, so the people in the apartment upstairs won’t hear and come and knock on my door, because if they did that, if they knocked, or called the cops and the cops knocked, if anyone knocked now, I’d have no choice. But nobody’s knocking, and writing this down is quieting Kevin; the written word scares him. He clams up when I expose him on paper.

  Daisy

  My heel stopped, inches above the pencilled line. With my right ankle I pressed down on the left ankle. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the left foot slid, causing pain to spread from hip to knee, inside knee, down back of leg. Breathe.

  I will have to paint over the path my feet have made on the dining room wall. The leg is bending. Repeat: the leg is bending better than last week. Repeat. Breathe.

  I hear Maurice’s voice slipping through the wall, distraught.

  ‘Please, Bruce. Say something?’

  My heel slides then jitters, passes below the pencil line, sinks further than a moment ago. Hold. Hold. Release.

  ‘Bruce, if you won’t talk, you’ll never be free of this. Fine. Okay. Freedom is a bit too much to ask for. But don’t go mute on me. I miss you. Please don’t leave me out here, alone. I’m not coping well either. We were in it together. We were both beside her when she died. It certainly wasn’t your fault. It was mine, if anyone’s. My fault. Does that make me a murderer? If I’d not been so stupid, she’d be alive. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I killed her. You needn’t open your mouth. Your silence says plenty.’

  I stopped sliding my foot. Maurice lowered his voice to a whisper, or perhaps he stopped speaking. I lay on my back, wondering what catastrophe had occurred.

  Clara

  I’ve signed away my rights. F. H. Homsi will approve or disallow all editorial changes. Daisy would give me back my rights, if
I were to ask. I’m quite sure she would. But then I’d have to deal with Oliver Bodinar directly. I’d have to read his editorial notes, and I’d want to kill him. It’s better this way. I’ll never read the published text. I’ve given Kamar up for adoption, that’s what I have to keep reminding myself. I could have aborted her, but I wanted her to live. Don’t Get Me Wrong is the only coherent work I’ve ever produced and there won’t be another. I had to become Julia in order to write with a reader in mind, a reader eager to be told a story, and that’s not an experience I want to repeat. Dr. Burns told me to try. Dr. Burns who knows nothing, Dr. Burns insisted that I attempt coherent prose. Her Cleverness longs to pry my secrets out of me, delving with her psycho-tweezers. Dr. Burns also suggests that I try to socialize, that I attend a support group for the insane, with whom I have nothing in common but my insanity and with whom I’m therefore destined to become fast friends. What a load of shit. Insist, insist, she can be so fucking insistent, Dr. Burns can be; and so I caved and wrote a goddamn novel, to shut her up. At first it was just to shut her up. Then Kamar refused to go back where she’d come from. I had to continue writing for her sake. But now Kamar’s as good as dead. Mr. Oliver Bodinar, editor, amputator of words, passage inflator, flatulent master of a tiny press nobody’s heard of but Daisy, he has adopted Kamar. Adopt! Such euphemistic cowardice, you little bitch, you sold her. I’ve accepted money in exchange for her life. I’m a shit. Kevin’s right. I’m a piece of shit and should be forced to swallow myself. I’m also free of Kamar, free now to mess with language any way I please. Dr. Burns will have no purchase. If she asks me to be coherent, I’ll tell her: buy a copy of the goddamned book you forced me to write. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ Kevin’s hissing. ‘Ha, ha. They’ll turn your stupid book into a porn flick.’ I can feel his mouth, hot against my ear. I’ve got to see Dr. Burns. I won’t last. Not with Kevin drooling in triumph, filling my head with his slime. I’ll email Dr. Burns right away. I’ll go to the library, sign up for the internoose, stick my head in and press send. She’ll fit me in for an extra session. I’ll promise to fit in, she’ll extra me in, I’ll make it CLEAR. SHE MUST SEE ME, no half measures, no excuses.