Girl in Shades

by Allison Baggio

  I start coming home to an empty house. I eat alone. Father usually gets home when I’m in bed, but I always turn over towards the wall when he peeks into my room. I can hear him thinking — he doesn’t like what he’s doing, but he’s doing it anyway. I keep the money he’s left for Katie in a secret spot under my mattress.

  By spring, Father has realized that Katie isn’t coming anymore (she called him once to see if he wanted her help again), but he still starts staying overnight at Connie’s most nights. He checks in every few days, for new clothes and to grab the bills and such. If I’m watching TV, he will sit with me while I ignore him. If I’m not home, or in my room with the door shut, he will leave money on the table. Once he even left a note: “You’ll be thirteen soon, which is probably old enough to stay by yourself sometimes. Call me at work if you need anything.”

  I don’t call, but I’m starting to need him again. I sometimes wish I could forget it all, forgive him for dishonouring a woman who needed him so much . . . who almost had a new baby girl for him. I wish I could forgive that. Forgive him for moving on with such a tramp.

  It’s lonely at home when it’s empty. I am hearing my mother’s moans through this house — they are stuck in the walls. And her complaints and criticisms are hanging down from the ceiling, smothering me while I sleep. I wonder — do angry people go to heaven?

  I hear my father in the night too — his voice clouds my dreams. He’s confused and worried — manic almost — and he’s going over everything many times, wondering how to make things good between us. He has started to love Connie.

  I’ve been turning Corey Hart up really loud while I try to sleep, to drown everything out.

  When I go out

  I can see the world from inside

  Without a doubt

  I can shake my head and scream and shout

  Because I can’t take it no more

  I can’t stand it no more

  Who’s laughin’ at me?

  Through the night

  But even Corey Hart and his deep lyrics aren’t helping.

  I turn thirteen alone. No cake. No candles. Chauncey and Heather are both at summer camp near Lake Blackstrap. I use twenty-five cents to buy a Twinkie from the corner store and suck the cream out slowly before I eat the rest of it. On this day, a Tuesday, sunny sky, small wisps of clouds, no wind, something arrives in the mailbox. It’s a birthday card from my Grandma and Grandpa Devine in PEI. There is a flower on the front, with a butterfly, and a little blond girl who looks about four or something. She’s wearing a white bonnet and she’s smiling. I open it up and the bills fall out onto the ground . . . To a wonderful Granddaughter. Happy Birthday. And in my grandmother’s shaky handwriting on the inside flap:

  Maya, we wanted to wish you a happy day. You must be missing your mother terribly. We are thinking about you, and though we couldn’t be at the funeral (on account of your grandfather’s heart), we were there in spirit. I hope you and your dad are doing well. I’ve been trying to call but no one is picking up. Please tell your dad to call me soon . . . I’m getting a tad bit worried. May you receive all the blessings of the world on this beautiful day.

  Grandma and Grandpa Devine

  It’s been so long since I even saw my father’s parents, I don’t even know if I would recognize them. Why don’t they come get me instead of sending money?

  I take the bus to McDonald’s and order a McChicken, fries, and a large Coke. I stuff ketchup and salt packages in my pocket when I leave to stock up at home. And I buy groceries: TV dinners, canned beans, hotdog wieners, Kraft Dinner, a tub of margarine, spaghetti, chocolate spread, a package of pencil crayons, birthday candles, candy pink nail polish, apples.

  For the rest of the summer, I watch television mostly: Donahue, Diff’rent Strokes, Facts of Life, Gimme a Break! and Family Ties. I watch these shows over and over, around and around. I watch television until my eyes start to hurt and my head starts to pound. Until the static starts to eat me.

  One of the nights at 2 a.m., I go to the bathroom to get an Aspirin, except I forget to turn on the light and just stare into the blackness of my reflection, wondering if it’s true what they say: that if I turn around three times saying “Bloody Mary” I will see the horrible and bloody face of an old hag. Isn’t that how it goes? Instead, as my eyes adjust, I begin to see my own face, round and small in the tall mirror, with my long, dark hair now falling down to past my shoulders. And soon, a rainbow of brilliant purple-blue light fans out around my head, fluttering like it’s protecting me, guiding me. I feel warm all over, and safe, safe like I haven’t felt at all since Father started staying at Connie’s. Since Mother died. I am safe here inside this brilliant light. It is all that I am, and it’s enough.

  I wake up in the morning on the bathroom floor — the only light is coming in through the window, from that thing called the sun.

  On September 1st, one week before school is supposed to start again, someone knocks on my front door. I am cleaning the toilet with yellow gloves that stretch on and a pail of sudsy water. I peel off the gloves, throw them into the bathtub and go to the door.

  It’s Jackie knocking.

  “What are you doing here?” I say to her. I haven’t seen her since school ended.

  “I heard a rumour that your father’s car is never here anymore, so I wanted to see if it’s true that you’re living alone.” She wears white shorts that are way too high on her thighs. Her knees are scratched up.

  “Of course I don’t live here alone.”

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “I told you. I’m not.”

  “Let me see then.”

  “See what?”

  “The inside of the house.” We are staring directly into each other’s eyes. She is pinching hers so they are almost shut.

  “Let’s see inside.” A new voice has come up behind her. Vanessa Wychuck. And beside her, Sherry Riptella. Two more sets of small tight shorts. She’s brought her gang.

  “Screw off, I’m not letting you in here,” I tell them. For a moment I think I hear Elijah’s voice too; from Toronto he says, “Piss off, leave her alone.”

  “What’s that on your neck, Maya?” Jackie wines. “A hickey?”

  “No, she’s too much of a prude to have a hickey,” Vanessa says. I try to look down and she brings her closed fist up under my chin.

  “Ouch!” I yell, pronouncing the word like it has several syllables.

  “What a baby,” Vanessa says.

  “She deserved it,” Sherry adds.

  “I’m warning you guys, get lost. My father is just upstairs and when he sees you there is going to be trouble.”

  “Why isn’t his car in the driveway then?” (Jackie.)

  “It’s in the shop. The brakes gave out.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Take your chances then, Tacky, go upstairs. But I have to warn you, he gets angry when people interrupt him when he is working.” Jackie grits her teeth together, Vanessa and Sherry look at their fingernails. “See his running shoes are right there. He’s here I tell you.”

  “You are such a bitch, Maya.”

  “Thank you, Jackie — and yourself as well.”

  “We’ll be back. I still think you are here alone.” Jackie says this after she has decided to leave.

  Then they each turn their jelly shoes around and walk away. But something has changed. Jackie heard a rumour. Someone started a rumour. Someone knows my father has left me.

  Summer ends and grade eight begins. I go to school. I go again and again. I hang out with Chauncey and Heather at recess but I make sure to put on my happy face . . . the one I keep hidden in the back of the closet when I’m at home. Days begin to appear between my father’s visits. He starts to leave me more money instead of food in the fridge. I get tired of lugging grocery bags home on the bus and trying to cook stuff.
I start to feel hungry all the time. No one suspects anything.

  Halloween arrives and I’m delighted by what it could mean for me. Halloween candy, apples, popcorn balls, tiny sweets that soothe my tongue — easy ways to stay fed. All I need to do is find something to dress up as. I decide to go out as a mother, but not my own: pearls from my mother’s jewellery box, a pink button-up sweater I found in the chest at the end of her bed, red lipstick borrowed from Heather, my long grey skirt with the scratchy fabric I wore in the choir. I wrap my hair into a tight bun and stick in straight bobby pins I found in the bathroom drawer. I grab a pillow case and head out the door alone, dropping down the front steps like I’m happy to be going. I feel like a grown-up for the first time; an adult in grown-up clothes, with lipstick that changes my smile.

  I told Heather and Chauncey I wasn’t going. It would look too suspicious: taking extra candy, staying out late to try and pick up extras. Plus, I needed to get past my neighborhood, not stay around here where everyone knows me and my father. I didn’t need to answer any more questions about my mother’s illness, or my father’s.

  I decide to take the bus across the river. Clutching my sack, I am one of many made-up faces: Cabbage Patch Kids, pumpkins that light up, punk rockers with neon hair and fluorescent hair bands. Most of them are in groups of friends, travelling to the rich neighborhoods. Some of them have their parents with them, hands on shoulders steadying them. I get off the bus near downtown and start to visit doors belonging to big and fancy houses. After each opened door comes something like this:

  Me: “Trick or treat.”

  Them: “Well, what have we got here?”

  Me: “I’m dressed up as a mother.”

  Them: “Hmmm, a mother you say (grabbing chins with thumbs and middle fingers), yes, yes, I guess you do look like somebody’s mother, maybe the Beaver’s mother (laughing), you know, June Cleaver?”

  Me: “I know.”

  And candy drops into my bag. Unlike the other children beside me, I am not disappointed when nuts or raisins are dropped into my sac instead of chocolate or chips — the perfect late-night snacks. I know that I have to start thinking realistically.

  I keep trick-or-treating until 10:00, when the streets are dark and the other children have disappeared into their cozy houses. The chill riding in the air all afternoon has picked up and I have to wrap myself up with the scarf I kept hidden in the bottom of my bag all evening. The air turns frosty thick and snowflakes start to fall as I ring the doorbell for what I have decided will be my final house of the evening. A short man with a round belly shoves open the door. I can see his chest hairs under his white T-shirt, his hair is slicked back, his jeans are too tight.

  “What have we here?” he says through his nose.

  “I’m a lady,” I say. The explanations are starting to make me tired.

  “And a beautiful lady you are,” he says, running his fingers up and down his thighs over and over. The inside of this man’s house smells like tuna, and turpentine, the kind my father used to clean his paint brushes when he stained our deck. “Exotic-looking specimen. Are your parents from the East?”

  “Do you have anything to give out?” I say impatiently, wishing my father was waiting at the sidewalk like he used to do when I was little.

  “You better believe I do,” the man says. “Come in first, though.” He reaches out to grab the corner of my pink sweater between his chubby fingers. I swat him away, annoyed, but he does it again, pinching his mouth like he’s on a mission.

  I panic. I feel my mother standing beside me, stiff, with her arms out to protect me.

  I pull my arm back and aim to punch him in the chest like I’ve seen on The A-Team. I miss and get him in the chin instead.

  “Screw off, buddy!” I scream, and his head flies back.

  “You little whore!” he yells after me as I run away. I look back briefly to see him rubbing his jaw, the colour in the air around his face is confused and undecided.

  At the bus stop I start to cry. Holding my large sack of candy that sits like a pregnant belly in my lap, I wish I had someone to take me home. When the bus arrives, my arms have relaxed to the point where I can hardly move them enough to carry the sack. My arms are asleep.

  “You really brought it home,” the bus driver says as I get on and drop the coins in his slot. “Heading back over the river?”

  I nod. He smiles. He has white teeth and kind eyes.

  Back in my empty house, with walls like mirrors looking back at me, I dump my bag onto the living room floor and start sorting it out.

  “Gosh, can you believe all the Tootsie Rolls?” I say to no one, like I’m making small talk to recover after a hard day. “And Cracker Jacks, wow, people are not this generous around here. And full-size chocolate bars even.”

  I create families of goodies on the carpet and start to order them by nutritional content: apples, popcorn, raisins, and pumpkins seeds lead to Dubble Bubble gum, small cardboard Chiclets boxes, and Twizzlers in plastic wrappers. I peel one open and hold a pink Twizzler between my teeth.

  The phone rings, and in my sugar high, I forget that I’m not answering it.

  It’s Grandmother Devine.

  “Hello, Maya,” she says with a soft but shaky voice. “I’m so glad to have gotten you. Happy Halloween. How have you been holding up?”

  “Fine,” I say back.

  “But it must be so hard, dear. Death has a way of pulling the life out of all of us. I know that Leah was quite choked up when she got back from the funeral. I’m sorry that your grandfather and I couldn’t be there. You know his bad heart — air travel is out of the question, and I can’t bear to leave him.”

  “Yes, I remember. How is Aunt Leah?”

  “She’s escaped to Toronto. Starting a crazy life, on the street for all we know. We pray for her. Can I please talk to your father?”

  “He’s sick.”

  “What sort of sickness, dear?”

  “He has laryngitis. He can’t talk.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No, not at all. He can listen though, I’ll get him.” I pretended to be my father listening while she talked.

  “Steven, dear — Steven, is that you?” I grunt. “Steven, I wanted to let you know that your father and I are thinking of you. Gosh, it must be hard without Mari. We want you to know that you can reach out to us if you want to. Remember, Steven, you did the right thing, the respectable thing, staying with her and Maya. Maybe this will be just the kind of fresh start you needed. The fresh start that you were cheated out of.”

  “He’s gone now,” I say. “He had to go throw up.”

  “That’s a shame. Tell him to call us when he is feeling better.”

  “I will.”

  “And you take care.”

  I grunt.

  “Goodbye, dear.”

  I hated my grandmother for saying those things, especially when I hardly even remember what her face looks like.

  Father comes over the morning after Halloween — when I’m at school. I know because two of my Tootsie rolls are missing and he’s left more money on the table and taken the credit card and phone bills I lined up on the counter.

  He’s also left another note:

  Maya, things get so difficult in life, but like it or not, you’re still my daughter. I am so proud of you for being so responsible and looking after the house when I’m gone. I am going to make sure this works out. I hope we can start talking again soon — I really do. I’m at a loss for what to do next.

  His handwriting is messy and frantic. He must have run out of room on the paper, because he has left no signature at the bottom of the page.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prairie winter arrives in November to hurl its strength. Frozen eyelashes, breath that freezes in my throat, ground slippery under my feet, boots out of the closet, warm meals of v
egetarian chili from cans I buy, turning up the knob for the furnace at night. The walk to school is longer because I am taking smaller steps to stay in the heat of my body. Underneath my ratty cotton candy parka, my bones are starting to stick out in strange places: from my hips, below my neck, on the tips of my shoulders, maybe even my chin, which is hidden behind the blue scarf my father used to wear. I don’t feel much like eating lately.

  My house is getting big and lonely. Sometimes, I admit, I want my father back in it. He only stops by now when I’m at school, or when I’m asleep — I hear him poking around at things in the night. Sometimes he opens the door to my room and I pretend to be sleeping so he will go. He leaves money and sometimes a bag of groceries on the dining room table as usual.

  Two different days at school I decide I need him back and call him at work from the pay phone out front. Both times I get his machine: “This is Steven Devine, your call is important to me.”

  I don’t leave a message.

  There are other times when I just want to leave, so that my father doesn’t have to worry about me at all. He can sell the house and pretend that none of this even existed — that my mother was never sick out back.

  I have a secret plan to escape and fly to Montreal next summer. I’ve started saving money to buy a plane ticket, but it means I can’t spend much of the money he gives me. I try skipping lunch at school, but I’m usually so hungry that I give in and buy fries with Chauncey and Heather.

  I know it’s going to cost a lot to fly away anywhere, so I decide to hold a yard sale.

  “In November?” Heather says when I tell her. “There are three foot snow drifts already, people will be freezing.”

  “Okay, garage sale,” I say. “My father is away on business. I want to earn some extra money before he gets back and finds out.”