The Shore Girl

by Fran Kimmel

  Delta went for some kind of day procedure at the woman’s clinic today. A “woman’s engagement” she called it, though I can’t imagine her woman’s parts. Delta knew she’d be late getting home and asked me to check on Buttercup. “Will you get her outside?” she asked. “Let her stand in the snow for a minute or two and take in the fresh air? She enjoys the birds, you know.”

  When I unlocked the door with Delta’s key, Buttercup was stumbling around the kitchen, a white plastic bag wrapped tightly around her head. With each wet, wheezy intake of air, the bag moulded to the dog’s head. She shook her head furiously, but it only smushed tighter. I lifted the bag away. Buttercup, drenched and panting, collapsed to the floor. But then a minute later she had turned herself around and started circling again. Like nothing had happened.

  I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror, and pulled a plastic bag over my head. I cinched it tightly under my chin, eyelashes trapped against filmy white, the bag breathing with me, caressing my lips, and covering my tongue.

  I admired Buttercup. The dog had spunk.

  * * *

  Rebee walks home alone each day. Vanessa and Susan, best friends forever, have since lost interest in their buddy assignment and get rides from their mothers. Rebee cuts through the schoolyard, and then hurries past the tire piles and three-legged chairs leaning in doorways, the old cars on bricks that never leave their yards. The neighbourhood has a sticky feel. Like you’re walking through muck. I know this because Rebee and I take the same route until we get to the dumpster at Forrest Drive, then Rebee turns right.

  Delta and I live eight blocks from the Messenger school. In a town this size, the good, the bad and the ugly are all smooshed together. Delta has bird feeders in her spruce trees, plastic deer wedged in the snow, marigolds and petunias come spring, I bet, while the guy next door chains a Rottweiler to a metal post out front.

  Delta has a silver Cadillac, big enough to move into, and perches on a pillow so she can see over her steering wheel. Her feet barely reach the pedals. She offers me a ride each morning, but I prefer the walk — the neighbourhood smells and the cold on my face.

  Rebee was keeping her head down, like a dog sniffing a trail, like nobody would see her if she couldn’t see them. She’d made it to the dumpster, turned right. I wanted to see where she lived.

  “Wait up, Rebee,” I called from behind. She turned too quickly, fear in her eyes, dropping her bag in the snow.

  “It’s just me. Miss Bel. I’ll walk with you.” I bent down, picked up the bag, brushed it off, and passed it back to her. Rebee took it and kept on going, like she couldn’t wait to get off the street.

  “We’re the new girls in town.” I walked behind her. Few people had shovelled and we tried to match our footprints to those already made. Rebee’s boots filled with snow. “How do you like it so far?”

  Rebee shrugged. She didn’t look up, the red pompom bobbing on top of her hat. She pulled down the scarf that covered her mouth so she could swipe at her runny nose.

  “What do you like best?” Our breath foamed in the winter air. I puffed over her head, creating a roof that disappeared. The cold sun was so dazzling it made me squint.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” She hadn’t said a word to me since her tooth fell into my pocket. A tiny pink nail poked through the thumb of her mitten. “Come on. You’ve got to have a favourite.”

  “Sunburst.”

  “I knew it. Sunburst’s my favourite, too.”

  We were at a corner. I hadn’t walked this street before but it was more of the same — more white-laced curtains next door to unhinged shutters. Rebee looked both ways, climbed over the mountain made by the Winter Lake snowplow, and stepped out onto the street. There were no cars, no people.

  We made it to the other side. She stood in front of the corner house, a dilapidated monster three storeys high, definitely more the motorcycle flag than the lacy curtains type. Rebee leaned back and looked up, first at the top floor of the house, then at me.

  “Will I get a turn again?” she asked.

  “Well, I can’t say for sure. Sunburst can’t be decided ahead of time.”

  Rebee stared at me a minute, crinkling her eyes, then said, “I’m going to make juice.”

  “What kind?”

  “Grape. Maybe.”

  “I’ll come in with you. Purple is a good colour.”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “Unless it’s the teacher. The teacher is okay.” I knew this was wrong, even as I said it. But she was so alone, so small.

  We entered by a heavy cracked glass door. Inside, a mat was stacked with giant men’s boots and mud-caked runners. We trudged up the steep wooden stairs, past the leftover tuna and burnt cheese smell, past the number three and four doors on the second landing, then switched directions and climbed one more flight until we got to number five. Rebee took her boots off, shaking out the snow, and placed them upside down beside the door. I did the same. Then she stripped off her mittens, hat and coat. She reached under her sweater and pulled out a key on a chain around her neck, turned the key in the lock, and we were in.

  “Nobody’s home,” Rebee said.

  “You’re home,” I said, dropping my coat on the floor. “You’re somebody.”

  Rebee half-smiled. I loved the look of that bare place. The living room was a triangle, with big pillows on the floor and an electric heater inside a brick fireplace. After wading through Delta’s bric-a-brac, drowning in her doilies, I felt like a sock gliding along the worn hardwood. Rebee went into the little room off the living room. I followed. It had an off-kilter look, a slanting ceiling and peeling wallpaper. None of the yellowed pansies lined up at the seams. Rebee went over to a small closet on the short side, opened the miniature door, and hung her coat on a hook, placing her bag inside. There was a foam mattress on the floor, a striped pillow with no pillowcase, and a blue blanket folded neatly on top. No chairs, no dresser.

  Rebee turned, staring at me like she didn’t know how I got there.

  “So,” I said. “Let’s make us some juice.”

  She led me past a second small room with another foam mattress on the floor, this one blanket-heaped, with a woman’s sweaters and jeans scattered about. We got to a small kitchen space. There was no window, no place for a table, just a sink full of dirty dishes, stove, and fridge. Rebee opened the fridge. Yellows, reds, greens. A half-dozen apples, two oranges, Cheez Whiz, ketchup, a paper bag, broccoli, spinach. The sociologists would have a heyday in here, call this part “fridgology,” make some asinine correlation between rolling oranges and transitory lifestyles, urban alienation.

  Rebee hadn’t said a word.

  “I lived on a farm. Not a real farm, just a few crazy chickens. We had to go outside to go to the toilet.”

  There was one juice can in the empty freezer and Rebee pulled it out and popped the lid off with the end of a spoon from the sink. We peered in. Only a small amount of purple concentrate stuck to the bottom of the can.

  “I tried to do all my business before it got dark. Only, the more I thought about not having to go, the more I had to go, until I couldn’t think about anything else.”

  Rebee placed the juice can on the space by the taps, reached into the dishes pile and fished out a plastic cup. She rinsed the cup in warm water. I took it from her and waited until the water steamed so I could rinse it again. Then she scooped what was left of the concentrate into the cup and filled it with cold water.

  “You can have this one,” she said to me, passing me the spoon and the cup with the purple sludge at the bottom. “You have to stir, mix it all through.”

  She’d given me the last of it. I started stirring. “So every night, I’d head to the outhouse in my pyjamas and housecoat and my outhouse boots. I waited until the last possible moment. I actually had to squeeze my legs together as I ran.”

  Rebee watched. She seemed intent on me getting my juice right. I kept stirring.

  “I carried a big flas
hlight and when I got into the outhouse, I’d shine the light on the ceiling and the walls. There was a little screen on top of the wooden door, to let in fresh air I guess, but it didn’t help. A hundred dead flies stuck to that screen all summer. In the winter, my dad stuck up a board piece to keep out the fresh air. That didn’t help either. We can share this juice, okay?”

  Rebee shook her head. “I’ll have mine later. After the dishes.”

  I dropped my spoon in the sink and asked if we could go sit on the big pillows. My drink was lavender from top to bottom. Rebee led me into the living room, walking backwards, keeping her eye on my juice. I sat on the blue pillow and leaned against the wall under the curtainless window. Stones of strange shapes were lined up on the windowsill above our heads. The late afternoon sun filtered in, dropping shadows on the brick mantel above the heater. Rebee pulled the green pillow close to mine, leaned against the wall beside me, her legs tucked close to her chest. The air was so dry it crackled.

  “I always checked the hole no matter how bad I had to pee. I wouldn’t pull down my pyjama bottoms until I shined my flashlight down the hole.”

  I passed my cup to Rebee. She hesitated, then took a small sip, leaving a purple film above her upper lip. She was really very pretty.

  “What were you looking for? Down that hole.”

  I wondered if this was what it would be like to have a child of your own. To come home from work and have her waiting. She’ll have stirred up some juice. When she listens to your story, she asks all the right questions.

  “The craptrap monster. I thought he lived down there and waited in the dark, and if you weren’t fast enough, he’d reach up and pull you down.”

  “Monsters aren’t real, Miss Bel,” Rebee shifted closer. She was holding the juice by then and she took a big drink.

  “Real enough. One time, I was checking out that hole, one hand covering my nose, scared breathless ’cause of the rain. It hurt like a beating on the short run to the outhouse. Like a thousand horses pounding their hooves on me, then all around me on the outhouse roof. Just a flicker, then another, then my flashlight went dead. It was so pitch black I couldn’t see the pieces of me, not the shape of my hand, not my pyjama bottoms or boot tops, certainly not the hole. But I could hear him, feel him. His waking up, his hot breath sizzling up through that hole, the rumble and creak getting louder.”

  “Was it the monster?” Rebee pressed further into me, our arms touching, and took another long swig.

  “I think so.”

  Rebee squeezed her legs together and shuddered. “Did you run away?”

  “I couldn’t. Couldn’t turn around, couldn’t do anything. I was frozen to my spot on the slippery wood, leaning into the hole, peeing down my leg. Yes, that’s right, Rebee. I was peeing down my leg. Eventually, I got my mouth to work. I screamed as loud as I could.”

  “Your mom came and got you?” Rebee looked at me hopefully. It took me a minute to choose my ending. “No. Nobody came. My parents had the radio going and, with all that rain, they didn’t hear me.”

  But I didn’t believe what I was telling Rebee. Mom must have heard me screaming. I’d read about that queasy gut feeling a mother gets when her child is in trouble. How could she not have known?

  “My mom is down by the water,” Rebee said. “Probably she is.”

  “I finally got my legs moving and backed out of there slowly. I opened my mouth wide and screamed all the way to the house in the hammering rain, nearly drowning myself. I stayed out of the outhouse after dark from then on. I headed in its direction, so no one would suspect, then squatted behind the outhouse beside that little clump of sagebrush, which did quite well from all the attention I showered on it.”

  Rebee passed me the cup again and I finished the last mouthful.

  “We have a inside bathroom. We always have a bathroom,” Rebee said. “I hate bathtubs. Can you swim?”

  “Nope. Not a stroke.”

  “Me either,” she looked scared at the thought. “The last one didn’t have hardly any hot water. It didn’t come with a plug. I folded up a washcloth and put it over the hole but the water leaked out, really fast, and then there was just cold left.”

  “I guess those were short baths.”

  “Sometimes we don’t have a bathtub, just a shower. That’s better. This one has a — ”

  Someone was turning a key in the lock. Rebee jumped so quickly she lost her footing on the pillow, crashed down, and bounced back up again.

  A woman with long flowing hair glided through the door, looked at me on her pillow and stood perfectly still. Mrs. Bagot would label her foreign, imported, like me. Though she was nothing like me. She was light to my dark, zero degrees latitude, a fiery heat to my north frigid zone. I felt startled by her fierce stare. The way she stood with her legs apart, arms at her side.

  “My teacher is here. Miss Bel. She walked me home. She didn’t ask me questions.”

  The woman turned to speak to the girl, who shrank back slightly. “So she was invited in, then? Oh. That’s odd, because that’s against the rules. You know better. What is it that she wants exactly? Why is she here?”

  Her words were for me, though she stared intently at Rebee, who was looking down, pulling at the string that cinched up her sweatpants. All I wanted, exactly, was to be able to stay.

  “I don’t want anything, thanks,” I said, uncrossing my legs, standing, stretching, sauntering towards her, my hand extended. “My name is Belinda. The kids call me Miss Bel.” She took my hand, squeezed my fingers a little too hard, and dropped her arm back to her side. From this close, she looked primordial. She was slightly taller than me, but a similar build. She had the same long limbs, same tiny wrists, same striking lack of a bosom. Her irises were ringed in amber, cat’s eyes, swollen pupils, whites barely showing. Stoned-looking, but you knew she wasn’t high.

  “We’re both new to Winter Lake. I beat you by a couple of months. Thought I’d stop in and say hello.”

  She took off her coat and chucked it into the room with the clothes heap. She was holding a pink and glittery pancake rock that came from her pocket. I thought she was thinking about bonking me on the head, but she didn’t. Rebee ducked into the kitchen and turned on the water.

  “Doing that social work teacher chore. Checking out the home. Making sure the family works,” she said.

  “Heavens no. Nobody can get the family to work. No, I’m not checking on anything. Not writing a report. Just popped in for some juice.”

  She walked over to the window and placed her stone with the others before turning to me.

  “Well, thanks for popping in.”

  I couldn’t leave. The room was murky in the fading light, hardwood dents mottling. Soon it would be dark. I walked to the window, turning so that we were both facing into the room. We leaned against the sticky windowsill, our fingertips resting on chipped paint. I swallowed the urge to wash my hands. We could see Rebee in the kitchen, perched on a stool, head bent over the sink, arms paddling through bubbly water. We stood like this, side by side.

  “If I was writing a report, I’d give you ten stars. For your lack of crap. For renting the top floor. Spinach and grape juice.”

  “You’ve been rooting through the drawers too, Miss Bel?”

  We were standing so close I could see her chest press up and down inside her black turtleneck. Mesmerizing, slow and deep. I tried to match my breathing to hers, but I was panting almost.

  “You’re a surprise to me.” I fought with my voice to keep it low and controlled. “I walk down a Winter Lake street and stare at the windows and try to imagine the people who live behind them and how their lives go. I imagine overweight housewives with polyester tights. Painted toenails. A baby in a playpen struggling to get out. A woman with a phone to her breast, cradling it so hard I think she might shatter. I’ve seen all these pictures in my head. But no one like you.”

  “Am I supposed to be flattered? Or is this the part where I call the cops?” She pushe
d away from the window and from me, practically floating to the fireplace mantel. Her fingers were steady as she lit the yellow candle with matches from her jeans pocket. When she turned to face me again, her eyes reflected the glow from the candle’s flame.

  “I don’t know how you talked my kid into letting you in. You like peeping through windows, well, here you have it. The whole enchilada.” She swept her hand across the room. “You’ve seen it. Said your hello. Goodbye then.”

  Rebee was banging around in the kitchen.

  “You’re very rude.” Six steps across the cold hardwood and I was beside her again, standing so close to the dancing flame I could feel its heat, the sulphur smell of the dead match. We stared at each other, neither backing down.

  “Goodbye, Miss Bel,” she said finally.

  I walked slowly to the door, scooped up my coat, and left. I didn’t say goodbye to Rebee. And I didn’t tell her mother that I would come again.

  * * *

  Rebee never made it to school the next day. Or the day after that. Today, I’m about done for. I’m the kind of weary that makes the backs of your knees ache, the backs of your eyeballs sting, your tongue taste gritty, where sounds are too loud and you’re jumping at nothing. I haven’t slept since I met her.

  Yesterday afternoon, I pulled out Rebee’s file from the storage room beside Mrs. Bagot’s office and memorized its checks and scribbles. Mother — Harmony Shore. Father — not applicable. Siblings — blank. Last place of residence — Peace River. Emergency contact — Victoria (Vic) Shore. Allergies — none. No medical conditions. No family doctor. All the wrong questions.

  Last night I made enough light to do heart surgery by dragging two more of Delta’s floor lamps into my bedroom. Usually I can keep entertained, give in to the fact that I’m the only one on the prairies who can’t close her eyes for seventy-two hours straight. Sometimes I work at giving my left hand a chance. I write myself left-handed notes. Or I go through my closet, change all the hangers so my shirt buttons face the other way. Or I disinfect the floor beside the toilet where that poor woman wedged herself and polish Delta’s hot water tank until it dazzles.