That must have been the night the baby was made.
Chapter Nine
My father, or Steve, as Connie from his office calls him, has a tattoo over his heart. I sometimes wonder if Connie has seen it, especially now that Mother is gone. Maybe he has hidden it from her as he has hidden it from me my whole life. I have only seen it a few times.
When I was around seven, my mother told me the story of how he got it. We were waiting to hand out flyers in front of the public school I would have attended if I had not been home-schooled, when she told me how he had made the tattoo himself. He had taken some black ink out of a pen, looked into the mirror shirtless, and with one of his mother’s sewing needles, trapped black ink under his skin by pushing the pin in and out. She didn’t mention how much it hurt him, but I’m sure it must have. I’d have been done after the first prick.
He got it before they were married and before I was born. When she told me about it, she had a look of regret, like maybe she wished he hadn’t done it.
His tattoo says “Mari,” my mother’s nickname. Maybe he had intended to create her entire name, “Marigold,” but had got tired at the “i.” It’s hard to say with my father. Regardless, from then on my mother’s nickname made its home on my father’s chest. “Mari” in black, shaky letters. “Mari,” darker in some spots and spread out along a crooked line.
The first time I saw it, I was five and my father had taken me swimming in the outdoor pool at the end of Lakeview Street. We had to get out of the house that day — Mother was sad in bed for the first time I can remember.
“Why do you have that there?” I said, pointing when he removed his shirt. This made a wrinkled lady look too and crinkle her nose in distaste.
“‘Mari’ is short for your mother’s name,” he told me as he slid into the chlorinated pool and bent his knees so that his tattoo dropped under the waterline. That’s all he wanted to say about it.
After that, I would try to catch glimpses of the “Mari” tattoo whenever I could. When I caught him changing his shirt I would look right at the spot. When he wore white thin T-shirts, I would squint to try to make out the outline, as if my mother herself was trapped under there.
At the age of eight I vowed to get a tattoo myself, as soon as I was old enough to take the bus downtown.
As far as I am concerned, my father is careless. Getting ready for school, I whip around the corner into the bathroom to find him standing there. Two beats provide me with an unobstructed viewing of his “Mari” tattoo, black on his wet skin. I try not to look at anything else.
“Shut the door!” my father screams.
“Lock the door next time,” I mutter, closing it myself without turning the knob.
From behind the closed door: “What did you say?!” It opens again with the kick of a heel. My father, with a towel wrapped around his waist, tosses a stick of deodorant into the sink and comes after me.
“Don’t talk back to me, Maya, I’m sick of it!” He grabs me in the hall by my pyjama top, taking a handful of fleece into his fist, and pushes me to the ground. Gravity stuns me quiet. My father trips to his knees and I wonder if he is going to pounce on me. Instead, he covers his face with his fingers. His bare back curves and his shoulders start to rock.
“I’m sorry for talking back,” I say curling myself into the carpet, into an indestructible ball, protecting myself from the mucky air mixing itself up around my father’s head. When he speaks, I can tell that his nose has filled up, and when he looks up I can see that his eyes are swelling red. It’s not your fault. It’s never been your fault, I hear him think, but out loud he says nothing, only pats me on the head, stands, and turns to go back into the bathroom. I feel as though a hurricane has switched direction at the last second, saving my home from being destroyed.
To apologize for throwing me, my father takes me to his office to photocopy parts of my body. I choose to do my face first, while he stands guard at the door of the copy room. Balancing on a stool, I press my nose onto the cool glass and push the lid into my head with my right hand. The machine squishes my body like I am the meat in a Xerox sandwich. I push the green button with my free hand. Light travels across my face, bringing heat with it. Through my eyelids, my eyeballs fill with white and my head and my body. I disappear into a hot, bright world. And it seems more real than what is supposed to be. I press the button again, repeating the flash. Does it hurt? Not really. I hear my face slide out on paper, for as many times as I have pressed “start.”
“I told you, not your face,” my father says, hanging over me, pulling me back. “You’re going to fry your brain. Do your hands instead.”
I take his advice and place my palm flat on the glass, crunching the lid over my knuckles. He presses the green button for me three times. Soon I wave at myself from the out tray. I pick up the pages and study the black and white image of my hand. The tiny lines form a triangle that traps empty space within it. I imagine living there with what Aunt Leah told me was my lifeline, stretching halfway across my hand. Not long enough to shelter me, I hear a repeat of Aunt Leah’s words — “It’s short, but it may just mean you will reinvent yourself.”
“Wanna do your butt?” my father asks, laughing.
“No, thanks.” I flip past my hand picture and see the one of my face: me — only squished, like I am trying to get in, or out.
“Are you done then?”
“Yes, thanks.”
We go back into my father’s office. Connie’s there. And just like most days I’m there, she runs over to him like he’s a magnet.
Green. Green. Green. I can hardly see her because of all the green around her face and body.
“Steve, Steve,” she says. “There you are. I need you, hon.” She puts her hand on the small of his back, which makes him smile.
“Uh, yes, hi Connie.” My father seems unsettled. “I will come and sign that contract in a moment.”
Connie licks her lips and picks at her bangs, trying to tease them up with her index finger and thumb. She stares at him, to me, and back. Finally she speaks. “Right, the contract that needs signing. That’s why I need you, exactly.” She winks at my father and walks past him, the curves of her bottom shifting back and forth under her black dress. To my surprise, I hear her thinking, Mi corazón, mi corazón, mi corazón. Tell her, Steve.
“Tell me what?” I yell at her without deciding to.
“Huh?” she turns back and blurts out, contorting her face into something ugly.
“Maya, stop it,” my father says and I say sorry. (I’ve got to watch that.) “I’ll catch up with you later, Connie. I’ve got to take Maya back to school.”
At school I discover that I have missed the morning class, mathematics, which suits me fine. Kids are already milling in the hallways before lunch, which is where I meet Chauncey and Heather.
“Maya, hi!” Chauncey says through his nose, scraping a pimple off his chin. “Did you hear that Jackie isn’t here again today? That’s almost seven days away from school. What a baby.”
“I heard her mom is keeping her away because she’s scared of her getting hurt again,” Heather adds.
“It was her own fault,” I say, pleased to have new comrades. “She has to learn to keep her trap shut about my mother.” They grow silent then, but Heather adds that her own mother attended my mother’s funeral, that she had also come to pray for her near the end. This is not something I want to dwell on, so I ask them what they are doing for lunch.
We eat our sandwiches in the lunchroom together (I made mine myself). Chauncey drops some “sloppy” from his Sloppy Joe on his blue button-up. Heather eats only one small corner of her bun and I eat mine down heartily, like this was my last supper.
By Christmas time, Connie is spending at least one night a week sleeping with my father in my mother’s bed. I pretend not to hear her as she quietly knocks on the front door after I’m asleep a
nd my father lets her in. I hear them talking, followed by silence in which I lie awake in bed listening, tracing the outline of my father’s “Mari” tattoo in my mind’s eye, and watching crimson streaks of light from my own body shoot around me in the dark.
Chapter Ten
Father and I have our first Christmas without Mother there to pack the ripped-open wrapping paper into green garbage bags. In fact, there are no real presents at all. On Christmas morning, without a tree, my father gives me a gift certificate for ballet lessons (like I’ll ever use them), and I give him four Mars bars wrapped in newspaper topped with a Christmas bow I found on the street.
Neither of us can really be bothered this year, especially when only half of our family is left.
After Christmas, in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, Father tells me that he is taking a business trip to San Francisco with Connie from his office. That’s what he says. And inside his head he is saying, I should be able to do this. I can get on with my life. It’s not a sin to need a little physical pleasure. Yuck, is all I can think, but I say he can go, that it’s fine.
He wants me to stay at our neighbour Mrs. Pretty’s house, which I flatly refuse.
“I’m not going anywhere. She’ll make me sit on her flowered couch and listen to her play the piano.”
“Maya, please,” he says, which doesn’t help his case. I know Mrs. Pretty will want me to talk with her about Mother’s “passing,” which is something I don’t want to do right now, especially with her.
He says that he knows that Mrs. Pretty and her annoying cocker spaniel are not the ideal New Year’s Eve dates, but that I am still only twelve and it is his responsibility to look after me.
“Why don’t you stay home then?”
“Maya, it’s for work. You know I have no choice.”
“Sure.”
“You’ll go over then?”
I nod yes. But as soon as my father has loaded his suitcase into his car and driven away, I call Mrs. Pretty to say he decided not to go.
“I’m glad, Maya,” she says. “He should be putting you first, anyway.”
“Yes, he should,” I say.
“You have yourself a happy New Year, Maya.”
I hang up the phone.
New Year’s Eve is lonely and silent. Without my father, the walls of our house seem to be growing out, like a balloon expanding as it fills with my hot breath. In the middle I sit very still, a scared animal, trying not to be discovered.
The New Year has arrived — 1986. My father is still not home from his trip, though he said he would be back on New Year’s Day.
He hasn’t called me. I don’t know whether to be furious or worried. I tried calling the number for the hotel, but I only got a lot of ringing and an automated voice — “Room 1111, leave message after the tone.”
I did not leave a message. But the phone rings after I hang up.
“Father?” I say into the phone, like I’m some sort of lost little girl in the mall.
“No, Maya. This is Mrs. Pretty.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“I don’t appreciate you playing games with me, young lady. I just got a call from your father. He wanted to tell you that he’s going to be a few days late coming home, but of course you’re not here, are you?”
“Sorry.”
“You’re lucky this time. I told him you were in the shower, but I think he was wise to me. I think the best thing for you to do is pack your bag and come over here right away. We can pretend this little lie of yours never happened.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
“It’s not charity.” Her voice sounds softer, like she’s trying to soothe me with her words. “Just come over, please.”
“No, thank you. My aunt is coming over.”
This is the first time I have ever hung up the phone on somebody. Then I lock the front door and watch Dynasty on the living room couch with my mother’s comforter wrapped around me.
I spend the weekend heating up cans of beans baked on the stovetop and nibbling on a loaf of Wonder Bread piece by piece. And now, with the Sunday sun dropping down behind our back fence, I wonder if maybe he’s not coming back at all.
Floors creak when I breathe, clocks tick like they are telling me something. There must be a mouse zigzagging across the hall floor because I hear tiny footsteps. I sleep in my mother and father’s bed. One tiny me that can’t possibly take up the whole space of the mattress.
And tomorrow morning I have to go back to school. I have already laid out my clothes for the day on my bed: red stockings, a plaid skirt, and a white blouse which I ironed myself and spread out neatly so that no teachers would think I looked uncared for. But the night is so long, the clock only seems to change numbers once an hour or so. Cars are going by outside; they don’t know I am inside, alone.
I have put my mother’s aromatherapy bottles up on the nightstand, just the special ones, calming ones — lavender, patchouli, orange. They are lined up like tiny soldiers and I am sniffing them one by one. Each fragrance bursts out of the bottle and into the darkness when I suck it up my nose. My brown tape player has a handle so I can carry it, and I have put it on the floor beside the bed. Inside is the Boy in the Box tape I bought with Aunt Leah shortly after the funeral. When I think I need to hear a man’s voice, I turn on Corey Hart.
So if you’re lost and on your own
You can never surrender
And if your path won’t lead you home
You can never surrender
I can pretend I still have two parents, even though I don’t. A lot of things appear to be real even though they aren’t underneath — television shows, for example, the man from that movie Tootsie who pretends to be a lady, waxy fruit in a bowl, clouds that look like animals, Mrs. Roughen’s blond hair, bacon bits from a jar, the feeling that thunder is hitting the top of your house. It’s become windy outside, and I worry that the windows in my parents’ bedroom will break through, though I’m not sure why because they never have before.
When morning comes, I slide red tights up each of my pale legs, pull my hair into a ponytail, and brush my teeth with much more than a pea-sized drop of toothpaste. I’m under my winter jacket, scarf, and wool hat, but the January sun still paints my nose, mocking me — what do you think you’re doing? People are going to find out you’re all alone. I keep going, turning to lock the door behind me and reaching a foot out to drop myself down the front steps. My body cuts through the air — arms swinging, head looking up, backpack sturdy on my back, lips pursed together.
“Why are you so dressed up today?” Brian says to me, and I can feel my face flush hot. But then, “I think you forgot to brush your hair, though.” I run my fingers through the knotted hair of my ponytail.
“Mind your own business!” I blast out to him as I slide into my seat.
“Maybe you are trying to go out with one of the greasy museum workers at Boomtown!”
I scowl at this and then remember it is field trip day. “I forgot, today is the day we go to Boomtown,” I say mostly to myself but Brian hears.
“No duh!” he replies.
“Shut up.” My father signed the approval form before Christmas holidays — when he was still here.
Even though I have been to the Western Development Museum tons of times and feel like we have outgrown it, the trip does let the grade seven classes be merged, which means I can spend the day with Chauncey and Heather.
They greet me beside the bus. Chauncey with his arm in the air, waving, and Heather with her head cocked playfully, smiling.
“We thought we could sit together!” Chauncey says. His words seem to get trapped in bubbles that float from his mouth. “Bitch Jackie is not coming!”
Heather links her arm in mine and pulls me onto the bus. Her attention makes me feel like I am the only one who has been chosen, ever.
“Hey, aren’t you that kid from the shampoo commercial?” — this from the lady behind the counter as we enter. I feel red cover my face again, and I give her a smile with no teeth.
“Yes, she’s famous!” Chauncey yells out to her as we pass through the metal turnstile. He pats me on my head, which makes me laugh. “You can have her autograph, but you’ll have to pass it by me first. I’m her manager.”
“Who says you get to be her manager?” Heather says.
“Because I’m a guy, that’s why. People will take me more seriously.”
“Yeah, right! And you are barely a guy even.”
“What did you say?”
We are standing at the end of the Boomtown main street: Chauncey, Heather and I. The fake houses that we couldn’t wait to explore in the third and fourth grades are waiting before us like aging celebrities. I look up to the sky, to the place above our heads, above the wooden buildings that say things like “Harness Shop” and “Feed Stable” — and I see the black ceiling. Crossbeams cut through the sky with huge floodlights creating suns. Chauncey and Heather are still fighting over who gets to be my manager.
“Do you think I’m not manly enough to be someone’s manager, Heather?”
“I never said that.” Heather’s body seems to be shrinking, her bones getting smaller around. I can hear from inside that she is sorry, either that or I am getting the sense.
“Well, why don’t you just screw off.” Chauncey takes off by himself through this inside town. A town set up to be real, to be outside, to be home to people going about their lives, going to school, going to the general store, going to jail. But the people we see are only mannequins, and they’re not fooling anybody.
Girl in Shades Page 8
