Monkey Beach

by Eden Robinson

  “Na’, dummy!” Ma-ma-oo yelled at Alexis. “Don’t go with him! Are you blind? He’s after your money!”

  Frank stared at me sometimes. When I caught him, he’d roll his eyes all the way back so only the whites showed, or he’d flip his eyelids up so they were red, or he’d do something equally silly and distracting. But the times he didn’t know I knew he was watching me, he had this mopey, strained look, like he really needed to pee but had to hold it.

  I caught him again when we were hanging out at the rec centre. We were horsing around in the bleachers, waiting for the junior boys basketball practice to start. They were all on the team. Pooch was trying to bounce a basketball off my head. I whacked his arm and the basketball went flying. I smacked the back of his head.

  “Ow!” he said indignantly.

  “You goof,” I said.

  “Now look what you did,” Pooch said, rubbing his neck. One of the little kids had grabbed the ball and was running across the gym with it. Pooch took off after him. Cheese lifted one cheek off the bleachers and blew a big, juicy fart.

  “Earthquake!” Frank shouted.

  Cheese followed it up with a reverberating burp. He turned around and smiled at us like he was waiting for compliments.

  “Holy shit,” I said, scooting three seats back as pungent waves wafted up towards me and Frank.

  “Like yours smell like roses,” Cheese said.

  “Mine,” I informed him, “don’t smell like something crawled up my butt and died.”

  “You’re fucking gross,” Cheese said.

  I turned to Frank to back me up and caught him giving me one of those I-need-to-pee looks. It weirded me out enough that I couldn’t speak. Frank pretended to fall off his seat and grabbed his throat like he was choking. Cheese kicked Frank’s foot. Pooch came bounding back and stopped dead when he reached Cheese’s odour zone.

  “You gotta start wearing deodorant,” Pooch said.

  None of the guys liked to hang around my house, because Mom made them nervous. Pooch’s house was like Ma-ma-oo’s, old and drafty. Frank’s house was a party palace, so we usually ended up in Cheese’s house, which meant long sessions of listening to his guitar-playing. Cheese was a huge Van Halen fan and wanted to be the Native David Lee Roth, but he couldn’t sing a note, so he settled for the electric guitar. He’d bought the guitar at a garage sale, and then sent away for an Easy-Play Van Halen fingering book, and went at it nonstop, his brothers told me, rolling their eyes. On the last day of classes at the beginning of the Christmas break, Pooch, Frank and me sprawled across Cheese’s bed reading his Mad magazine collection.

  “You’re killing me,” said Frank after one really long session, in which Cheese played along with every song on the album Women and Children First.

  “Up yours,” Cheese said.

  “You should play punk,” Pooch said helpfully. “You just have to be loud to play in a punk band.”

  “Punk sucks,” Cheese said.

  “So do you,” Frank said.

  “You’re gonna be laughing out the other side of your mouth when I’m famous. I’m gonna have a big house, six cars, shitloads of money and marry a model. Not one of the dogs in the village.”

  I snorted. “Models’ll be dying to marry you, Mr. America.”

  Frank laughed. “Yeah, Cheese, you’d be lucky to screw a poodle.”

  “At least I got plans.”

  “I got plans. I’m getting the hell out of here,” Frank said.

  “Wow,” Cheese said, practising one of his rock poses, legs apart, one hand on the neck of the guitar, the other hand pumped in the air. “That’s an impressive plan.”

  “You must have spent years thinking that one up,” Pooch said.

  “Yeah, about as much time as you and your ‘I’m gonna work in the potlines and buy a truck’ plan.”

  “It’s gonna be a big truck,” Pooch said. “And you’re gonna be knocking around the village till you’re a hundred.”

  “Excu-use me. A big truck.”

  While they argued, I folded the back of the Mad magazine. Unfolded, it showed a guy getting his diploma. Folded, he was chugging a huge beer glass in a frat house.

  As I was walking home, I realized that I hadn’t given the future much thought. It would be easy to go along with Mom and Dad’s plans, since they were assuming I’d go off to university. Then again, I couldn’t see myself going in for another four years of school after I graduated. The only thing more painful than that would be getting all my teeth extracted without anaesthetic.

  Absorbed in thoughts, I didn’t notice the girl until I bumped into her. She grinned at me, her arms crossed. I didn’t recognize her for a moment until she said, “Lisa? Jeez. I thought you were a guy.”

  “Tab?”

  “In the flesh.”

  I gawked at her. The thrown-together look she’d usually sported had been replaced by biker-chick black and studs. She had silver earrings looped all the way up one ear and a single gold hoop in the other.

  “I didn’t know you were coming up for Christmas. How long are you here?”

  She shrugged. “As long as I want.”

  She pulled her jacket open and showed me her tattoo. Not a homemade job, either. She had actually gone to a tattoo parlour in Vancouver. A snarling black tiger gripped her muscle on her upper arm, its claws drawing tattoo blood.

  “My boyfriend has exactly the same one in the same place,” she said.

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Boy,” I said. “You must love him a lot.”

  “Nope,” she said. “I just wanted him to pay for the tattoo.”

  “You want to come over for dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  Mom was attempting to hold a gingerbread house wall up when we walked into the kitchen. The gingerbread house looked burnt and the roof was lopsided and she’d slathered it in red and green Smarties that bled all over the icing. Alexis swished her tail back and forth as she sat on one of the kitchen chairs and watched Mom’s progress with attentive bobs of her head.

  “Come hold this,” she said, then did a double take when she saw Tab. “Oh! My goodness, how … grown-up you look, Tabitha. Merry Christmas! How long are you here?”

  Tab shrugged.

  I eagerly eyed the candies. “What do you want me to hold?”

  “This stupid wall won’t stay up.”

  “You need toothpicks,” Tab said, kicking off her boots. “That’s what I saw on TV. And you get some tall glasses and put the walls between them until they dry, then you put the roof on.”

  “Now you tell me,” Mom said.

  We managed to get the walls up, but Mom had made the roof too steep, so no matter how long we held the pieces in place, they slid off and eventually broke. The icing hardened that night to the consistency of steel and Dad chipped a molar when he tried to sneak one of her roof slabs. Mom planned on using the remaining gingerbread house as a cookie bowl until Alexis left a mouse in it.

  “A comment on my baking?” Mom said to Alexis. She picked up a pair of tongs she’d set aside especially for the purpose of disposing of my cat’s victims. Then she gingerly lifted the mouse by the tail and chucked it in a plastic bag.

  “Her contribution to the Christmas spirit,” Dad said.

  “Let’s put your stuff upstairs,” I said to Tab.

  Tab hauled her duffel bag over her shoulder and followed me to my room. She opened my window and lit a cigarette.

  “Put it out!” I hissed. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”

  Mom came into my room to see if we were settling in all right. Tab dropped the cigarette out the window, but you could still smell it in the room. I thought Mom would throw a hairy, but she just asked if we needed more blankets.

  “I’m fine,” Tab said.

  “We should phone your mother and tell her where you are.”

  “She knows.”

  “Oh,” Mom said, closing the door as she left. “W
ell, you know where the towels are. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” Tab took off her jacket. She stretched her arms over her head.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

  She glanced at me warily. “Me too.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a book. “Do you want me to do your horoscope?”

  “Cool.”

  Later than night, Tab pinched my arm until I woke up. “Ow, quit it.”

  “There’s someone in the room,” she whispered, eyes bugged out with fear.

  I sat up, instantly awake. Please, I thought, don’t be the little man. Tab leaned over and I heard a metallic rasp, then saw the silver flash of a long knife. She turned her head, making a slow sweep of the room.

  Alexis leaped on the bed with a mouse skull in her mouth. She dropped it in my lap. “Mrrr.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tab said. She slipped the knife back in her bag. She pushed Alexis off the bed. “You fucking freaky little bitch, you scared the shit out of me.”

  “Mrrr.”

  “Same to you.” Tab started to laugh. She flopped back against the bed.

  “Where’d you get the knife?”

  “Christmas present. You’re lucky,” she said just as I was closing my eyes, so quietly I barely heard her. “Mom’s been hammered since Mick died. At least your parents just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  Dad made French toast for breakfast. Jimmy eyed Tab then nodded when she sat beside him. Her mouth quirked.

  “Hey, Jimmy.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Are you kids going up to the rec centre for Santa—”

  “Aw, Dad,” Jimmy said. “We’re not babies any more.”

  “We’re going,” Tab said.

  “We are?” I said.

  She smiled. “We can’t miss free candy.”

  We hung around the house until it was time to go. Santa Night is usually the choir singing a few carols, the little kids doing skits, while other kids run around like crazy until the finale, when Santa arrives and gives out bags of candy. As we walked into the gym, we saw Erica already entrenched in the back bleachers with her gang. They stopped talking when we came into the gym, stared at us, and then started snickering.

  “Wow,” Erica said just loud enough for us to hear. “It’s the queens of the Kmart set.”

  “You want a doobie?” Tab said. “I could sure use one.”

  I nervously followed Tab outside to the back of the rec centre and across a ditch to the elementary school. We sat in the swings. Tab pulled out two joints and handed me one. Tab put her joint to her mouth and hunched over to hide it. “Wanesica,” she said, lighting up.

  I copied her, hunched so far over that my head almost touched my knees. The stuff tasted as good as skunk cabbage smelled, was harsh and scratchy on my throat, and I ended up coughing most of it out. Tab grinned at me and hit my back. “Don’t fucking waste it, man. That’s five bucks a pop.”

  “This tastes like shit.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I managed half a joint then coughed so hard I got a headache. My fingers were numb from the cold by the time Tab finished hers. Tension eased out of my body. I started to smile. Tab watched me, smug. Her eyes were bright red. I giggled. “Tabby the red-eyed reindeer had a very shiny eeeeeeye, and if you ever saw it, saw it, you would even laugh and dieeee.”

  “Jeez, you’re a cheap date,” she said, leaning back.

  “Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say, Tabby, with your eyes so bright, won’t you light my doobie tonight?”

  I went on until she smacked me on the side of the head. I could feel the hit ripple through my brain. I closed my eyes to feel it better, swaying. When I opened them, Tab was biting her lip in worry. “You okay?” She shook her head sadly. “I think you should stick to sugar rushes.”

  “Ah, relax.” Swaying hard, I felt like I was moving through water, moving in slow motion, like I was Jamie Summers, the Bionic Woman, getting ready to kick some bad-guy butt.

  “Cut it out.” Tab looked around nervously. “You are embarrassing.”

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s what family’s for.”

  “Jesus.” She handed me her bottle of eye drops. “You really are nuts.”

  I kicked the ground with the toe of my runner. It squeaked. “I missed you too.”

  “Lean back and put this in your eye. Yeah, like that. Now the other. Come on, hurry up or your parents will skin me alive.”

  I handed the bottle back to her. “We don’t have to go home. We could go over to Frank’s. Pooch and Cheese—”

  “You’re hanging out with them?” she said incredulously.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So?”

  “Jeez, you’ve got more guts than brains, that’s for sure.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  She shook her head. “Frank’s okay. Pooch is weird. Cheese is a pervert.”

  “He is not!”

  “You remember when all those panties went missing from the clotheslines? That was Cheese and his retarded brother.”

  “Yeah? Who said?”

  “People.”

  “I don’t listen to gossip,” I said piously.

  She snorted. “Mm-hmm. And I just say no to drugs.”

  We ended up going home because it got cold enough for the channel to steam. When the ocean temperature is higher than the air, steam swirls above the waves. The colder it is, the higher the steam rises. I stopped to watch the pale, twisting forms strain to reach the darkening sky. They were so tall, they looked like the ghosts of trees.

  I had watched a video in geography class about Siberia. In this one place, it drops so far below freezing, the rubber on the soles of your running shoes cracks when you step outside. As soon as a breath leaves your body, the vapour in it crystallizes, then tinkles as it drifts to the ground. The people there call that sound the music of your soul. Tab tugged on my arm and said if we stayed outside any longer, her tits were going to fall off.

  Dad was too busy talking on the phone to hear us coming in, but when we closed the door he looked over, his face red.

  “Tab, it’s your mother.” He said. He held out the phone for her.

  As her mother screamed into the phone, Tab gave me a cynical smile, then ducked her head and played with the fringes on her jacket.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “Oh, besides the fact that Tab hitchhiked up here without telling her mother where she was going, nothing,” Dad said.

  After five minutes, Tab laid the phone on the table. She left the kitchen and went upstairs without looking at either of us. Dad picked up the receiver, listened for a while, then softly told Aunt Trudy to phone back when she calmed down.

  Tab was packing her things when I came into the bedroom.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Brain surgery,” she said.

  I sat on the bed and watched her, not knowing what to say. Dad came into the bedroom and watched Tab too. “Lisa, could you leave us alone for a minute?”

  I hesitated until he raised his eyebrow and gave me a look.

  Mom came home and asked me how Santa Night had gone. I told her about Tab running away from her mother. She sighed and went upstairs. They talked to Tab for about an hour. I made myself a sandwich and gobbled it down. I had some cookies, chips and a banana and was still hungry when my parents brought Tab into the kitchen and told me she would be going home for Christmas. Aunt Trudy had told them that Josh offered to drive her down to make up for “the incident.”

  “I’d rather hitch,” Tab said.

  “Do you know how dangerous that is?” Mom said. “Do you know what can happen to you?”

  Tab laughed bitterly.

  “Seriously, Tabitha,” Dad said.

  Her lips pulled back into a sneer, but she didn’t say anything else as she turned and went upstairs. I brought her cookies and a banana—peanut butter sandwich. She was curled into herself on my bed. I sat beside her and shook her leg until
she sat up and took some cookies.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “Okay. You want me to go?”

  She managed a smile. “Only if you bring me more cookies.”

  “Man, I’m starved too.”

  “They’re called the munchies. Haven’t you ever done pot before?”

  “Are you kidding? They’d kill me.”

  “Yeah. They would.”

  She turned to face the wall and wouldn’t respond to my poking except to snap, “Stop it.”

  I woke early in the morning. I heard voices drifting up through the register. Josh and Dad were having coffee. Jimmy was feeding the crows and they were squawking excitedly on the porch. In the winter, his flock almost doubled. I flinched from the brightness of the kitchen lights and drowsily poured myself some cereal.

  “When you leaving?” I said to Josh.

  “Soon as Sleeping Beauty gets out of bed,” he said.

  “Oh. Can she stay for a few days, or—”

  “Lisa,” Dad said in a warning tone.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, life’s a bitch,” Josh said. “The roads are icy from Prince Rupert to Williams Lake. It’ll take us days to get down.”

  “You got chains?” Dad asked.

  I stirred my cereal around the bowl and listened to them gripe about winter driving. Later, Tab came downstairs with her duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Josh took her bag and walked out to his truck. Tab gave me a hug, then followed him. He opened the car door for her. She got inside and stared straight ahead.

  For Christmas I made Ma-ma-oo a coiled pot in art class. When I saw the four gifts under her tree, I wished I’d made her something bigger. Mom and Dad had sat me and Jimmy down at the beginning of December and told us that Christmas was going to be tight. I assumed that everyone was going to have a tight holiday and didn’t think any more about it. I could stay the night because Mom and Dad were going to a Christmas dance.

  “Do you go to dances yet?”

  “No.”

  Ma-ma-oo laughed. “Why not? Don’t you like boys?”

  “What was Mimayus like?” I said, hoping to steer her away from this topic.

  “Mimayus? My crazy sister,” Ma-ma-oo said. “Oh, she loved to jitterbug. She danced all night long. All the boys wanted to dance with her. She bought the fanciest underwear. The boys lifted her up and spun her just to see her underwear. That’s why she loved to jitterbug. All the women hated her, she was so pretty. You look just like her. You have her eyes.”