by Jill MacLean
Fresh air...I don’t ever want to be a Shrike again.
I change into my old duds, haul out the vacuum cleaner and the Windex, and fire the living-room curtains into the garbage.
Too bad, Ma.
If I look back, I think my real dad leaving for Fort McMurray and never coming home even though the company would’ve paid for the trip—it took my mother by surprise. She’d lost interest in him, sure—Ady’s 48” flatscreen with satellite hook-up had become a bigger draw than my dad. But she hadn’t expected him to take off. For a few months she stayed home more, cooked the occasional meal, even vacuumed.
Then Seal comes into town, good-looking, good-natured Seal, and lands himself a job at the liquor store. She starts buying wine. She’s no drinker. Seal falls for her and who can blame him? He moves in. For over a year, everything’s hunky-dory. My mother’s happy, and our own TV is turned off soon as Seal walks in the door.
It doesn’t last. She goes back to Ady’s, first during the days, then evenings, as their eBay business takes off. For a year, there was a lot of yelling—the same kind of yelling I remember before my real dad took off. After that, Seal went quiet. Like he knew he couldn’t compete with antique glass and yard sales.
He started hanging out at Tim Hortons when he wasn’t working. And now, unless Tate is stringing me a line and I don’t think she is, he’s dating someone else.
I spray Windex and wipe the glass as though clean windows will solve all my problems.
When Seal comes home after his shift, the room’s tore apart. “Another trip to the mall?” he says.
“Can you afford new curtains and a cover for the couch?” Which is my cue to say I know where he spent the night.
“Pay day yesterday,” he says, patting the wallet in his back pocket. “Why don’t we leave now, and we’ll pick up a pizza on the way home? So we don’t mess up the kitchen.”
“I dunno why I’m doing all this cleaning.”
He straightens the hose on the vacuum. “You make any new friends?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you cleaning the house because you’re afraid of knocking on other kids’ doors?”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. Did you measure the windows?”
“I’m cleaning the house because my mother sure isn’t going to.”
He winces. We leave for town.
He has an errand at Home Hardware, so I start searching for slipcovers and curtains in the mall across the way. I’m rushing from one store to the next when I nearly bump into a woman who’s scooting out of the religious bookstore. “Sorry!” I gasp.
It’s Mrs. Cody, Tate’s mother, Mr. Cody on her heels. Her dress is beige and shapeless, peppered with little black squiggles like worms; he’s in a black suit, same as the undertaker’s at the funeral parlor. When they recognize me, their faces harden.
Mr. Cody says, “The Lord sits in judgment on sinners.”
Mrs. Cody says, “They shall be cast into everlasting flames.”
Which of them cut Tate’s hair, hacking at it with scissors, the blades flashing in the light?
I scuttle around them and run back to Home Hardware. I need Seal, easy-going Seal with his friendly blue eyes.
He’s at the checkout, chatting with the young guy who’s passing him the VISA slip. What if my mother had glommed onto someone like Mr. Cody? And wouldn’t I rather have Lissie Sugden as my mother than Mrs. Cody?
Seal sees me and waves his bottle of windshield washer at me, smiling. I march up to him, my feelings tumbling around like clothes in the dryer, and blurt, “I love you.”
My face turns red. So does his. All these years and have I ever told him how I feel about him? At first, I missed my real dad too much; then before you know it, Seal and my mother were at odds; and once I turned twelve, it seemed kind of childish.
Right there in Home Hardware, other shoppers brushing past us, he puts his arms around me in a clumsy hug. “I love you, too.”
I really do love him. It isn’t blackmail, so he’ll keep living at home. At least, I hope it isn’t.
We find what we’re looking for and drive home. After we eat the pizza, we fit the dark brown slipcover on the couch, and I arrange the new cushions, turquoise, white and brown, two on one side, one on the other. Then we hang the curtains that match the cushions. The floor’s already vacuumed and wet-mopped, lemon oil on the old coffee table, and ever since we left Home Hardware, I’ve been nerving myself to ask him about Davina.
Can’t do it. I’m too scared of the answer. What if he moves out?
I also bought a new floor mat, which I put at the front door with a big note on top. LORNE SUGDEN—BOOTS OFF!!
Which is when I realize the real reason I’m cleaning the house. It’s to keep Lorne and Seal home, the both of them. To make it so nice, they won’t leave me.
Fourteen
to ruin
If I thought that taking on Mel and Tate near the cafeteria would make kids flock to me desperate to be my best buddy, I was wrong.
We’re kept in at recess and noon because it’s raining, a steady drizzle that can soak through your jacket in no time. Mel stays on the bus in Long Bight, then stands up with Tate for the first stop in Fiddlers Cove. Hud’s gazing out the window, while Prinny and Laice are chattering away like me and Hanna used to.
Mr. Murphy smiles at me. “Take care,” he says.
I run for the house. Tate and Mel are strolling toward her place like Mr. and Mrs. Cody have given them their blessing. Indoors, I go through the usual routine. It’s mid-June. Even though it’s drizzling, I don’t want to close every window in the house. But I do it anyway.
I flip on the radio. Old-fashioned disco, the kind of beat Hanna and me used to dance to, and suddenly I miss her so sharp it’s like she left yesterday. Flinging the refrigerator door open, I decide to fix myself a snack. More for comfort than because I’m hungry. If only it was January, so I wouldn’t mind being under house arrest.
I reach for the Cheez Whiz.
“You gonna share that, Sigrid?”
The jar drops to the floor, bounces, and rolls. Very slowly, I turn around.
Tate is leaning against the table. Mel’s standing by the door. I say faintly, “I locked both doors. How did you get in?”
Tate sneers at me. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
The motor on the fridge starts to whir. I close the door, turn the radio off, and stoop to pick up the jar of Cheez Whiz, my brain scuttling in tight little circles. “Want a snack?” I say.
My phone’s on my bureau. Not a hope of getting past Mel.
Tate looks around. “Who cleaned the place up? It wasn’t Seal, he’s hardly ever home. Can’t imagine it was Lorne. Must’ve been you, right?”
She wanders closer to the sink, fingers the crisp hem of the new curtains. “I hear Davina keeps a clean house. Good cook, too. Are you a good cook, Sigrid?”
I once saw Buck’s cat play with a bird, the bird paralysed with fear, the cat lifting its claws then pouncing again just as the wings started to flutter. Wings that were wet with cat spit. Our landline phone’s on the table. Might as well be on Knucklebones.
“Seal works until ten tonight,” Tate says, “and Lorne’s on late shift at the garage. So we’re on our own, just the three of us. Cosy, eh?”
Mel shifts impatiently. “Let’s get on with it.”
“No hurry,” Tate says. “On our way in, I noticed new curtains and cushions in the living room. Is Seal feeling guilty? Is that why he’s forking out the dough?”
“You’d have to ask him,” I say. Truculent was how Mr. Marsden described the Emperor Napoleon, and truculent is how I make myself sound, even though inside I’m as terrified as Prinny the afternoon we cornered her on the wharf.
Tate opens the flour canister, peers inside, and sifts flour through her fingers. Very deliberately, she sprinkles some on the floor.
I take a step forward. “Don’t!”
Tate takes a bigger h
andful. “How about I spell your name?” She starts spilling a steady stream on the linoleum. “S – I – G – R – ”
“You’re getting it on your sneakers.”
“You let me worry about that,” Tate says, picks up the canister, and dumps the rest of the flour on the counter.
As a big white cloud settles on the toaster, the coffeemaker, and the sink tray, I lunge at her. “Stop it!”
Mel grabs me from behind, pinning my elbows to my sides. I throw myself forward, breathing in flour, so angry I forget to be afraid. “Tate, so help me, if you mess up my kitchen, I’ll sic Seal on you.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Tate says. “Not unless you want your mother to see this photo my cousin took.”
She holds it out. Seal is standing beside a small blue car, his arm around a woman wearing a plain green dress; he’s smiling into her eyes as if no one else in the world exists.
It’s Davina Murphy.
“My mother already knows about him and Davina.” I sound convincing, even to myself.
“I don’t think so—your mother’s too busy buying and selling to have time for gossip.”
Smiling, Tate wanders into the pantry. “Oh my,” she says, “everything in prissy little rows.”
With one sweep of her arm, she topples ketchup, pickles, jam, and peanut butter onto the floor. The jar of jam cracks open, strawberries seeping onto the green swirls on the linoleum.
I bash my heel into Mel’s shin, hitting bone through my sneaker. Elbow her in the gut, pull free, and shove Tate hard. Her elbow cracks against a shelf. She screeches, “Get her, Mel!”
Mel’s big body fills the door to the pantry.
Stupid, stupid, why didn’t I run for the living room while I had the chance?
Slowly she advances on me, her eyes bright with anticipation. Terror knifes through the rage in my chest.
“This time,” Tate says, “don’t let go of her.”
Mel’s fingers close on my arm. Her nails dig in, me paralysed like the bird. She yanks me around so I’m facing Tate, snaps her big fist around my other arm. Tate bends over, scoops up some jam, and smears it into my hair. The rest she smears on the wall. Then she opens a container of mustard and trails yellow sauce over the cans of fruit.
“Seal will know who did this,” I croak.
“Then you better clean it up before he arrives home. Think of the photo.”
She knocks some more stuff on the floor. A can of coffee gets her attention. She picks it up, thoughtfully. “Back up, Mel,” she says. “Let’s redecorate the living room.”
Mel hauls me into the living room, me kicking and throwing myself around as hard as I can because I love what I did to our place and it’s killing me to see how easy Tate’s wrecking it. “I’ll get you for this—both of you. I dunno how or when, but believe me, you’ll be sorry.”
Tate pries the lid off the can of coffee and sprinkles coffee grains over the couch. Then she brings in the sugar canister and a bottle of the powdered milk Seal prefers to real cream, don’t ask me why.
“Better than Tim Hortons,” she says, pouring sugar and white powder over the coffee. “Oh look, triple-triple.”
In the bathroom she squirts Lorne’s shaving cream on the mirror. Tate was here. She pours liquid soap into the toilet and flushes so bubbles overflow down the sides. Then she dumps toilet bowl cleaner into the tub, wafts the counter with hair spray, picks up the red soap dish, looks at it, head to one side, and smashes it on the floor.
The soap dish was the last red one in the store—I knew I had to have it the moment I saw it. I fling my weight backward, driving Mel into the counter. She grunts. My left arm’s free, but before I can free the other, she cups her big arm around my throat, half-lifting me off the floor.
“Hold her still, Mel,” Tate orders.
I’m not holding still for anyone. I buck and kick. Mel’s other arm snakes around my waist. I throw a leftie punch at Tate who says, her own fury rising to meet mine, “Mel, why d’you think I put up with you? Do your job!”
There’s a fierce fast tussle, which I lose. Mel’s fists clamp my elbows so tight I know I’ll have bruises. Calm as if she’s at the beauty parlor, Tate takes out my nail polish and paints traitor on my arm, her face so close I can see the beginnings of a zit on her chin.
Nail polish stinks. “I’m no traitor, Tate Cody—I saved your skin. Yours and Mel’s. I’m gonna write a letter to your father, telling him what you did today.”
She doesn’t even bat her lashes, which are long and dark, much longer than mine. “Little tug there, Mel.”
Mel tugs. Even though I try not to groan, the sound escapes anyway.
“Lots more where that come from,” Tate says. “Seal with his arm around Davina…how romantic is that?”
“Were you born mean?” I whisper.
“Let’s check out your bedroom,” Tate says. “What, no new curtains in here, Sigrid? Don’t figure you’re worth it?”
My jaw drops. Is that why I didn’t ask Seal for money for the matching bedspread and curtains I saw at the mall? Clear as if they’re in front of me, I can see the swirls of green and purple, like the colors were dancing.
The bedspread and curtains are still in the store in their plastic wrap. Safe.
Tate tosses stuff out of my drawers onto the floor, rips the bedclothes apart, and smashes the lightbulb from my lamp. Last thing she does is tear the notes from my binders, crushing the paper in her fists. But she knows, and so do I, that it’s too late in the year for this to matter very much. Instead of making me feel hopeful—she’s done, she and Mel will leave now—it only makes me more afraid.
“Kitchen,” she says briskly.
Standing by the counter, she stirs macaroni, Graham cracker crumbs, and caramel pudding into the flour already on the floor. How am I gonna clean up all this mess? It’ll take hours.
Casually she daubs some of the mix on the window, then stands back. “Maybe I should’ve been an artist.” Without changing her tone, she adds, “Sigrid, never interfere with me and Mel again. At school, on the bus, or on the street. Do you understand?”
Smarten up, Sigrid. Say yes. “Depends what you’re up to.”
“Guess you don’t understand. Mel…”
Mel tips me onto the floor, face first into macaroni and caramel pudding. Then she sits on me, squishing the air from my lungs. Caramel on her fingernails.
“Now do you understand?” Tate says.
“You break my ribs, even my mother will notice.”
Mel pushes my face into the floor. I can’t breathe. I start to panic, drumming my toes on the floor. Dead weight. Can’t budge.
Tate says, “Ease off a little, Mel. Maybe she has something to say.”
I can feel Mel’s reluctance. But she moves her hand off the back of my neck. I heave in air. “Yeah, I understand.”
“You’re sure now?”
“I’m sure.”
And don’t I despise myself for giving in.
“Good,” Tate says. “Time for us to leave, Mel, so Sigrid has lots of time to clean up before her men waltz in the door. Leaving their boots on the mat like well-trained puppies.”
Mel lurches to her feet. I lie still, hearing their footsteps crunch over the coffee grains and sugar on the living-room floor. The door opens and closes. My cheek falls to the floor. Caramel slimes my ear. Caramel and tears.
Slow tears, dripping on the linoleum, one by one.
Fifteen
to lie
A sob works its way past the tightness in my throat. Another one follows. I never cry because what’s the point but I’m crying now, crying like Selena and Vi when we bullied them and how’s that for justice and I want to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow in my clean and tidy bedroom.
Not a chance.
I cry some more.
Then, moving slow as Danny Grimsby with a hangover, I stagger to my feet. Kleenex to blow my nose. Cold water to scrub at my face and ears until the l
umpy caramel mix sluices down the sink. Warm water to wet my hair and rinse the jam out. New towel to dry my face and hair.
Pick the macaroni out of the sink. Breathe deep. Look around.
Almost, I start to cry again.
I should lock the front door.
And that’s when I remember that I left my pencil case, with my house key inside, in my desk at recess while I went to the washroom. No trouble for Tate to steal the key, make a copy at noon, then sneak the key back while I was still in the cafeteria.
So that’s how they got in.
If Tate has a key, we’ll have to change the locks. If I tell Seal what happened, Tate will give that photo to my mother.
I’ll lie to him.
All evening to concoct one simple lie. And clean up the mess.
I start in my bedroom, because that’s easiest fixed. I have enough money in my bank account to buy that snazzy bedspread and curtains. I’m gonna do it. I’m worth it, worth every cent, $59.99 plus tax.
So there, Tate Cody.
I gash my finger on the smashed light bulb. Does blood wash off a floor easier than flour, macaroni, and caramel? Stay tuned.
After shaking the cushions on the couch, I plug in the vacuum. I’m some glad Tate didn’t touch the curtains, and that the coffee was dry and didn’t stain the new cushions.
Bathroom next. I near to lose heart when I see the red shards of the soap dish scattered over the floor. First thing I do is scrub traitor off my arm with polish remover, its acetone-smell fighting with the ammonia-smell of the toilet bowl cleanser in the tub. Worst part of the clean-up is the hair spray, sticky on the counter. Vim works, though, along with elbow grease. At least the bath mat’s clean, and the towels.
The kitchen takes forever. I go through six buckets of water cleaning the shelves in the pantry, the kitchen counters, and the linoleum. Mustard, flour, jam, macaroni, graham cracker crumbs, ground coffee, sugar, powdered milk, and caramel pudding all get added to the Saturday grocery list.
