Girl in Shades

by Allison Baggio

  “And where would Elijah have gotten such a colourful idea?”

  “I’m sorry, but Maya told Elijah and Elijah told me.” I put my index fingers inside my mouth and bit down.

  “I think that Maya and I should go now.”

  “Mari, please don’t go. I can help you through this like you helped me. We can talk about it; we can pray about it. Jesus has the power to help you last long enough. You can deliver the baby.”

  “Jesus,” my mother said. “Has nothing to do with anything.” She grabbed me by the hand, and walked us back to the door. “I know you just want to help, Trudie, and I can’t blame you for that,” she said with a long sigh that seemed to empty out all the air she had. “Why don’t you come by in a few days.”

  Mrs. Roughen nodded and bit her fist, something that I thought they only did in movies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, and always to try to be funny.

  At the vegetable market, my mother threw up in front of the carrots and across from the field tomatoes. I couldn’t decide if it was her sickness tossing up her stomach or my sister getting comfortable. Her puke was orange and white with only a few small chunks (the banana she ate for breakfast) and it created an abstract blob on the wet cement floor. We both stood staring down at it for a while, until my mother mentioned how it kind of looked like my father. By that time, the scent had reached my nose and was fighting to get in.

  “It stinks,” I said.

  “Imagine how bad it smells on the inside of us.”

  “Not too bad for a baby though, right?”

  “Babies can’t smell yet,” she said. My mother smiled then, stretching her cheeks up over her facial bones. It made me think that she had changed her mind — that she was going to try to let the baby grow. I knew that deciding to try could get you halfway there.

  “Clean up, produce aisle!” a voice shouted out over the intercom.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said and we curled our fingers around shiny tomato skins, dropped them in our basket and headed for the front of the store.

  In the check-out line I saw him. His picture, between an action shot of Cyndi Lauper and and a photo of Boy George peeking up from under a black hat, his face full of makeup. Corey Hart. His picture on the front of the paper. The headline read: “Musicians Make Waves.” You don’t have to believe in signs from the universe to notice them when they are blaring out at you. And to me, that was a sign. Some way, somehow, Corey had found a way to be there for me. And he, along with my mother and my baby sister, were here to stay. I could almost see his paper lips start to move then: Just a little more time is all we’re askin’ for. ’Cause just a little more time could open closin’ doors . . .

  He understood what I was going through — which was enough to make anyone feel better.

  Later, I pulled a sharp razor across the skin on my mother’s scalp, severing the hairs that had grown. I had to use two or three razors, spraying the cream and going over and over the same spots. She was tired by the time we were finished and was slumping on the toilet. I brought her out to her teepee and she handed me the Bhagavad Gita before she sat down. I knew the drill. I held the book and she called out random numbers.

  “Page twenty-seven,” she said and I read.

  “Be not over-glad attaining joy, and be not over-sad encountering grief, but, stayed on Brahma, still constant let each abide! The sage whose soul holds off from other contacts, in himself finds bliss.”

  Mother closed her eyes and nodded like it was written for her. I think now she was probably trying to hide her own confusion.

  “Mother,” I asked. “How did you even learn about this strange book?”

  “A wise person taught me about it.”

  “A man from India?”

  “Yes, India.”

  “Did he buy you this copy?” I held up the tattered collection of pages in my hand.

  “He gave it to me, yes.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  “Not now, Maya.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “The winds guided us together, that’s all.”

  In my dreams that night, I looked in the yellow eyes of a giant tiger. Shiny mane of fur that shimmered in the light from somewhere, teeth that made me imagine the colour of my own blood, and the taste. I turned to run, through tall blades of grass, my feet coming down into the dirt. “Roooooaarrr,” from the tiger and I ran faster. It started to rain and the raindrops turned into people, tiny people cheering me on, telling me to speed up, telling me not to give up. I ran straight into the chest of a man. Turned around to see that the tiger was gone. Vanished, like he never existed in the first place. And the man’s arms were long, and they wrapped around me. Creamy skin that matched my own. Strong arms that welcomed me home.

  Two days later, Mrs. Roughen came by the house, only she wasn’t alone. She had a lady with a microphone and a man with a video camera with her.

  They came right in after my father opened the door.

  “Steven, delightful to see you,” Mrs. Roughen said, teasing up her bangs nervously with her right hand. “You don’t mind if we visit with Mari in the backyard . . . I believe she’s expecting me.”

  It was not true. None of us were expecting her, especially not with a news crew. It left me wondering why, and my father, with his mouth dropped opened, thinking: Why won’t this woman just go away? Fucking bitch.

  Mrs. Roughen plowed her way past us before my father and I could stop her. Within seconds, she, the woman with the microphone, and the man with the video camera were standing outside the teepee. Mrs. Roughen tentatively peeled back the flap to find my mother.

  I stood briefly on the backyard deck. The humid summer air was awash in colour — colours emanated from everywhere . . . from the people who were there, pestering my mother, from my mother perhaps. They seemed to be mingling to create a bizarre dark-coloured rainbow — plum, canary, pumpkin — the rainbow dipped and flowed, as if to signal an ominous but key moment in my mother’s story. I doubted whether any of the people connected to these colours actually gave a crap about my mother.

  By the time my father and I got out to the teepee, the lady was already speaking into her microphone while the man with the video camera taped her.

  “We’re here outside the teepee of Marigold Devine, a Saskatoon resident who in the face of terminal cancer has bravely decided to forgo all treatment and spend her final days in a state of meditation in the backyard of her home.”

  “Ahh, geez, will you please stop it,” my father said, at which point Mrs. Roughen popped out of the teepee to silence him.

  “Shhhhh, Steven, it’s fine, really. Mari is all right with this. It’s going to help everyone involved.”

  “Trudie, you really make me sick.” My father gave up too easily. He went back into the house, leaving me alone with all that. Though I didn’t see it at the time, it would have been pretty hard for an eleven-year-old kid to make sure her mother wasn’t exploited. I wanted to though — really.

  The scene inside the teepee: The lady with the microphone standing over my mother, who was in her bed, sitting up with her hands folded in her lap, lips puckered, mustard light around her face, moaning in her head. Mrs. Roughen, standing by the door of the teepee like she’s on lookout, smiling with her head cocked, thinking about how incredibly proud she was to be helping my mother, and wondering what people will think of her for trying to do it. The man holding the camera wearing a white T-shirt and scratching his armpit.

  “Now, Marigold, we know this must be a hard time for you, with all you’re going through. What gets you through it all?”

  My mother winced, annoyed by the hungry lion that had pounced on her while she was sleeping and seemingly unsure herself about how she ended up in this situation.

  “I guess I just do the best I can,” she said, but apparently they were looking for somet
hing more inspirational.

  The lady with the microphone kept fishing: “We’ve heard that you also hold a very special skill, a psychic ESP ability, if you will. Has this helped give you strength in any respect?”

  Mother was stunned — I could hear her heart pounding loudly from inside her head, its shocked beat seemed to fill the air around us. Her lips parted. The light from on top of the camera created a glare against the tarp walls. I bit my lip and fiddled with the strings that tied back the door. What was happening? And why? My resentment for my mother — and now for Mrs. Roughen and this microphone lady — bubbled low in my stomach, threatening to explode.

  Finally, my mother opened her mouth and instead of denying that she had any supernatural gift, she said: “Yes, I have been blessed with a little extra when it comes to my senses. I can see and hear things others can’t. And I suppose I just really know what others need in their lives.”

  My mother glanced at me straight-faced, and I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Can you give us an example of these abilities, Marigold?”

  “I can see people’s auras.”

  “Auras? Really!” the lady with the microphone said, amazed. “And how am I looking today, in the aura department?” She was mocking her. Her aura was ruby red with darker parts closer to her body.

  “You have a nice bright green energy right now.” Mother was mocking her back. “You should get out and work in your garden when you get home. You need some time to de-stress from all the work you’ve been doing.”

  “That’s true,” the lady with the microphone said. “How did you know I’ve been under stress?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Give me a break, I thought.

  I didn’t want to hear any more of this conversation. But for some reason, I couldn’t will my legs to move. Then, things turned more serious.

  “And Marigold, I have also heard that you have received some other, joyful news recently — that you are expecting a child.” There was no emotion from my mother’s face, but Mrs. Roughen covered her mouth like she was trying to hold in a wail. “Would you like to send out any message to doctors or other professionals who may have advice on how best to protect your unborn child?”

  “Get out” was what my mother said to that question. “Leave, now. This whole thing is stupid.” My mother started swatting the microphone with her lean fingers — feebly but with determination. But the lady holding the microphone resisted. A fight ensued, which I am embarrassed to recount here because Mother really lost it — screaming, kicking, and squirming like a toddler pulling a tantrum.

  As I escorted the news people and a shocked Mrs. Roughen to the front door, it was hard to tell that I was the daughter and she was supposed to have been the mother.

  Father shouted, “Good riddance!” from the kitchen when I shut the door behind them.

  Luckily, my mother’s fit was not included in the footage on the Saskatoon News at 5 that evening. They only showed her wise and smirking, sitting up on the bed in her teepee, telling the lady with the microphone the colour of her aura, and another shot of her inadvertently rubbing her belly and looking down, as a voice-over stated that Marigold Devine was “desperate to find a way to save her unborn child, and would welcome prayers and any support that could be offered. And that in exchange, she may even be able to offer you a psychic view into your future (fake laugh).”

  Some people never leave you — they get stuck in your psyche. This was how a lot of people felt about seeing my mother on TV that night — and how I’ve always felt about her.

  Yes, this woman, this Marigold Devine — mother, sufferer, mystic, hero — needed us all. And we all needed to believe that she would be okay.

  Chapter Seventeen

  My father smashed the television set. The one that had shown us the news interview with Mother. I found the set the next morning after we watched. It was lying on its side in a pathetic heap. Its screen was cracked, antennas bent, knobs missing. Father pretended he didn’t notice it.

  For the next day he paced. Around the house from one room to the next, murmuring things that I couldn’t hear, inside or out.

  “We should sue,” he said at breakfast the following morning when Mother was out sitting in the teepee alone and I was gobbling down cereal so I could get back to her.

  “Sue who?”

  “The evening news,” my father said, shaking his head so fast he seemed to have two noses and four eyeballs.

  “I have to get back out there,” I said, dropping my empty bowl in the sink with a ceramic clang.

  “Wait, take this out to her,” he said as he grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the table and placed it in my hands.

  “Why isn’t she talking anymore?” I asked him.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Maya.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  I left him alone, leaning against the counter, his left hand rubbing those straight white indents on his forehead.

  By the afternoon that day it had started. The people: at the front door, looking over the back fence from the yard behind, trying to peek back from between houses.

  The visitors were everywhere, trying to catch a glimpse of my mother. They were like people who turn their heads to catch a glimpse of a gory car crash. Or maybe those who turn their cars around to try to help. Either way, they wanted to be a part of my mother’s tragedy. And of course see if maybe she had some sort of psychic insights about their lives.

  They carried things with them when they came: blankets, hand-knit sweaters, plastic bags, coffee cakes, bottles of wine, baby booties. Sometimes they left the stuff on the front porch, like bouquets of flowers, but mostly they waited out front, waited for my father to open the front door, which he refused to do.

  All afternoon the crowd gathered outside the house. I watched from between the front blinds. By 4:30, there was a circle of women holding hands and humming prayers with their eyes half-shut. Someone had a sign that said: “Save a life. Save an unborn child.”

  I tried to spend most of my time in the teepee with my mother, who was only staring and starting to shake a bit. My father was out there too. He came out after he dead-bolted the front door and moved the dining room buffet in front of the entrance to block it.

  My father held my mother’s hand. The three of us were silent, until I spoke.

  “Maybe they can help her?”

  “Help her do what, Maya?” my father asked with a sigh.

  “Get her better. Find a way to save the baby.”

  “There’s no way, Maya.” He had tears then. “It’s just a waiting game now.”

  “Maybe I could carry the baby?”

  My father would not respond to my suggestion. He was annoyed by my foolish idea that the baby could be taken from my mother and injected into my own stomach. Little did he know, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that we could actually do it — I was just trying to be creative.

  By nightfall they had candles. Woman were singing and praying in large groups. One woman with hectic curls flying out from her face was throwing herself around in a patch of dirt on the front lawn screaming, “Please, Jesus!” over and over, on her knees with her arms waving above her head.

  I watched it all through the corner of the front window. And when the news crew arrived and started interviewing people, I saw that too. Father didn’t see any of it. He forbade me to open the door and stayed out in the backyard with Mother.

  In the morning, Mrs. Roughen lowered herself over the back fence while I was eating breakfast, tearing her skirt as she fell. I ran from the back door to see her.

  “Maya, you didn’t answer your phone!”

  “It’s unhooked,” I said, like she was the reason we did it.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “Still sleeping.” The people in the crowd out front had settled into pup tents
for the night and were yet to wake.

  “Maya, I have to talk to your mother.”

  “She’s not talking. To anyone.”

  “Just let me see her then.”

  I rolled my eyes and moved towards the teepee. We walked in together.

  Mother had laid herself back on the bed. A sour milk and armpit smell hung in the air around her, and there was grey and black pulsing weakly around her face.

  “Marigold, it’s me, Trudie.”

  No response.

  “Marigold, I’m sorry about what happened. I’m only trying to help you, you and the baby. . . .”

  Nothing from Mother.

  “I told you, she’s not talking anymore.”

  “Has she taken some sort of vow of silence?” Mrs. Roughen asked, smoothing her hair down on the side of her face and adjusting her purple leather belt, which had shifted in her climb over the fence.

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  “We need to get her cleaned up,” she said, shifting back her dangling bracelets to pull my mother up. “Has she eaten?”

  “Yogurt and a banana yesterday. She had a few crackers this morning. And I have been using a crazy straw to help give her water.”

  “Let’s get her into the bath.”

  We carried her into the house, Mrs. Roughen with her arms under Mother’s armpits and me carrying her feet, then slid off her clothes and laid her down naked in the bathtub. From the window in the bathroom I could hear the visitors stirring. Someone was singing “Turn, turn, turn,” and small groups of voices were loudly praying things to Jesus. While Mrs. Roughen washed her hair and soaped up my mother’s frail body, I took a peek through the small window above the sink: about forty of them had returned this morning. The cameras were gone, but the rest of them were still clutching gifts in their arms. A tall, thin woman with blond hair approached our front door.

  “Should I answer it?”

  “Not yet, Maya. Let’s get her clean and back in bed. Then, we can let them visit with her.”