Going Down Swinging

by Billie Livingston

  When we finished our tea, Todd told Mrs. Hood we had to get going. She stood and wiped her hands on her apron, said it was lovely to meet me and led us to the door, talking about umbrellas. Todd and I clomped down the wet steps; it’d started to rain. Neither of us said anything until we were back in the car.

  He turned the ignition. “So? Did you like them?” And the wipers rubbed squeaks and grunts against the window.

  “Yeah. They were pretty nice.” If they were his friends I didn’t want to talk bad about them. And they did seem pretty OK and I’d probably like them better if I knew them. “Mrs. Hood was nice and I liked Spike.” I waited. I wanted to meet whoever else he had in mind before I decided.

  Todd watched me and rocked his head up and down. “Well, I mean, do you think you might like to stay here while your mom’s in the hospital?” He said Mum like Mawm. It sounded fakey or prissy or something.

  “Um, here? Well, I guess so. Yeah, sure. What about my cat, because I have to have Henry with me, so I don’t know.”

  “Well, no, you couldn’t bring Henry, someone else would have to look after him. It wouldn’t be for long, I’m sure we could find someone.” He looked so big on the whole thing that I didn’t want to be a pain. Mum was always calling me a fuss-budget about stuff so I thought maybe I should just stick it out for a few days. Todd smiled and grabbed the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Good.” He stuck one in his mouth. “OK, let’s go back to your place and get your things together.” He lit one and sucked it like there was milkshake on the other end. “The sooner you’re taken care of, the sooner we can start taking care of your mom.” The engine shook as he put it in gear and started down the street.

  “Yeah but. Um. Well yeah, but does my mum know? I can’t just go if my mum doesn’t know,” and I didn’t think she did really. Of course she did, Todd told me, she signed the consent didn’t she. Yeah, but. She changed her mind. She told me the night before that she didn’t want me going anywhere, she couldn’t bear it. Todd just talked about the hospital and her drinking and how much better things would be. I figured he was right; if I left, she wouldn’t have any excuse, she’d have to go wherever it was she went when she quit drinking. And in a few days I could come home and the place would be clean and we could pack up and move. I could start a new school and maybe we could live on a street with trees.

  When we got home, Henry slithered through my shins and made his chirpy meows at me. I kneeled and scratched his head, picked him up, and Todd asked if I had a suitcase. I stood still, breathing Henry’s fur, and thinking how much worse everything looked when a stranger was in the house, how bad it smelled, how dirty it still was even since the Welfare sent someone over to clean it up. I was a traitor again and I kept my nose in Henry’s shoulder. Todd looked fidgety. Neither of us was saying so, but half the game was getting out before she came home. If she caught us, if she caught me leaving with a bag of clothes, she’d go crazy. Henry wiggled away and jumped on the floor. There was probably a suitcase somewhere, but I didn’t feel like stealing Mum’s to run away from her.

  Todd went to the kitchen and came back with a garbage bag. “OK, let’s try to grab as much as we can so you can have a few things with you.” We picked through my drawers and stuff lying around the bedroom. Todd winced when he picked my clothes off the floor. I didn’t look at him again until he brought me back to the Hoods’. Then I didn’t want him to leave.

  He sat in the living room with Lilly and me while we watched Wendy show off Lilly’s cat: she threw a red ball, the kind I used to play jacks, and Spike scrambled down the living room to get it. He pounced and bit and clawed it with his back legs before chomping it up and trotting back to Wendy’s feet. He dropped it there and looked up at her. She threw it again and Spike fetched. I looked at Lilly; she sat straight like a spelling-bee kid, all proud of herself. The Persian never moved from the windowsill. She was Wendy’s cat—her name was Marble and nobody said much else about her. Then Lilly squealed and said, “Show her hockey.”

  Wendy grabbed the ball and all of us followed her to the bathroom. Lilly was second through the door, said “Gimme,” and took it out of Wendy’s squishy thick hand. “Com’ere Spike, com’ere boy,” and she threw the ball in the bathtub. Spike leaped in and fwapped the ball around the sides, then bounced back to guard the drain, batting it just in time to keep it out of the hole. Todd chuckled over my shoulder and I could hear teeth clicking from biting his nail. The ball boinged off the side of the tub and plopped in the drain. Spike pounced and growled, tore it out of the hole and ripped at it with his back claws, before he chucked it down the tub and went back to playing goalie. Todd nudged me. “Pretty good, eh?”

  After he left, the house was strange and prickly. Nobody said much. We had hamburgers for dinner at the dinner table, not in front of the TV. And they didn’t know how to play switcheroo, so we just watched Happy Days until it was bedtime for Lilly and me. It bugged me going to bed when she did. I was practically nine.

  I took the bus to school the next day and daydreamed about Mum, what she did when she came home and found me gone. Todd said he was going over there when he left me. But he couldn’t talk to her really, not like me. I wanted to be the one to talk to her, but he told me not to call. None of my friends even knew where I was. Nobody did. If I never went to school that day they would’ve thought I disappeared, which I kind of liked—the mystery of it—but then I still didn’t have much friends at my new school, so they might not’ve even noticed. I wondered if Mum was in the hospital or in her bed right now. Probably crying. Maybe she had to cry, though, maybe she had to just cry out everything until she got better.

  After school, Mrs. Hood picked me up and took me to get my hair cut. She scowled at me in the mirror while the hairdresser pumped my chair up. She didn’t really look as mum-ish as I thought. She told the hairdresser to just try and make me look presentable, told me she was going to go have a coffee and left us staring at the mirror.

  The hairdresser picked some hair from the side of my head, sighed, and let it drop before bringing me to a sink. I thought about the way Todd took my clothes up off the floor, like he was picking up snotty Kleenex. She tied a brown plastic bib on me, then wound a towel round my neck and lowered me back against the sink. My neck didn’t go down the way she wanted, in the groove thing on the sink. She huffed and pulled me back up, pushed me back down, nudged the chair closer to the sink. She blew air out her nose, left and came back with three towels for me to sit on. When she finally had my head where she wanted, she soaped it up and then kinda stared around my ears and said, “When’s the last time your hair was washed?” She sounded like her face when she first touched my head.

  I didn’t know. I said, “Probably day before yesterday.” She hmmed and scrubbed harder. I shut my mouth and kept it shut till she finished the haircut. My eyes hurt from not crying and I imagined horrible things my mother would do to her for this.

  Next morning was the doctor’s appointment. We sat in the waiting room for around half an hour, Mrs. Hood flipping through magazines, her lips squishing up under her nose at stuff she was reading. I watched the glass door we came in through to see my reflection; see, if I looked quick and pretended not to know me, if my hair really looked like Keith Partridge. The receptionist called “Hoffman” and I went frozen. Mrs. Hood nudged me. I went to the counter; the receptionist smiled. “Hi there, how are you today? Here, maybe you can just go to the bathroom and bring me back a sample.” I took the cup and the key and went down the hall. I figured she meant pee but I wasn’t sure exactly, and if she meant pee, how much did she want? And how was I supposed to hide a cup of it coming back?

  Then the key didn’t fit the lock. I tried it upside down. Didn’t fit. I went back to the receptionist, trying not to touch my hair again and draw attention. I asked her if it was the key to the girls’ room.

  “No sir!” She said it loud and smiled big like she was in a talent show or something. “That’s for the boys’.”
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  I put the key on the counter. “I’m not a boy.”

  Her face kept still a second till it went, “Ah—oh! I’m—” and she made tisky noises and shook her head and grabbed at my file. “Grr … ace—of course you’re not. Did I give you the boys’ key? Here you go. Miss.” Her smile was smaller.

  I brought back the cup mostly full and a nurse took me in a room and asked me to take off everything except my underpants, said she’d be right back. She didn’t leave me anything to put on. Mum’s doctor always gave me a paper poncho. I took off my clothes and sat scrunched on the table with my hands between my knees, feeling the room breathe on me until she came back. She was pretty with a hoppy ponytail. She wrapped the black band thing around my arm, pumped it tight and asked about what I did that day, if I had a bowel movement. Figured it probably meant pee again, so I just said yes. She asked me what it was like, I told her regular. When the black band thing was loose again, she took it off my arm and asked about the colour; I said that was regular too. She asked me about sleeping, eating, aches and pains; anything I had to tell about, I called it regular. She seemed to think that was pretty funny and I liked her for it. I liked hearing someone laugh again and have it be cuz of me. When we finished she told me to sit tight, she’d be right back.

  Kind of a while went by, and I was sitting there thinking how I was glad I ate lots of bacon and eggs and toast for breakfast and had good blood sugar cuz, God, it would’ve been crappy to hear the English Lady arguing or else whispers and stuff and be naked on top of it. I started thinking how Sheryl Sugarman was maybe right and smart and then I figured maybe I was supposed to get dressed and I was about to jump down, my chest all light again, when the nurse opened the door and came in with a little Chinese man. He was in a white coat and his face hardly moved. “Grace, OK, this is Doctor Lee, he’s going to examine you today,” and she left.

  I folded my arms. It was cold. He told me to lie on my back in not-that-great English and started looking over my whole skin and everything, pressing and knocking, asking if it hurt—breathe in, breathe out. Then he looked down my underpants. I was going to cry and I crunched my teeth together. He asked me to turn over on my stomach and asked where every one of the marks on my back came from. I fell and tripped so much, I couldn’t remember how I got any, except for the big scar on my backbone that I had from sliding down the porch steps when Eddy chased me and Sadie. I said I fell, and Dr. Lee’s face kept still and he sounded like he thought I was lying. He wanted me to explain better, but I didn’t want to tell how Eddy was running after us with the shitbag, a paper bag of poo he said he found. I started making stuff up. Dr. Lee didn’t look at my eyes; it was like I didn’t have any.

  I looked away and clenched some more and changed my mind: I wasn’t going to cry, and I looked at the wall to think about something else. I saw his framed doctor certificate up there and two things cut out of the newspaper. I kept staring at the newspaper pictures until I figured out he was in both. One headline said “Child Abuse,” and “Lee Heads C.P.A. Crackdown” was on the other; one picture showed just his face and one showed him at a table with some other people. He was some kind of famous doctor-guy. He wasn’t just Dr. Lee, he was the Dr. Lee, Bad Mother Hunter. In my imagination I sat up and yelled, “She hits me.” He wouldn’t smile exactly, but he’d be glad or proud or something. I never said anything in real life though, so he pulled up the elastic on the back of my underpants and looked in at my bum. No one ever saw me without a paper poncho on and never without my mum in the room.

  I closed my eyes. He was in on it too. They all wanted to trick me into saying something bad about her. She warned me. She said it only took two doctors’ signatures and they could put her away. I kept my mouth as shut as I could; just yes and no. I wasn’t going to help him up on any more walls.

  The next morning we sat over breakfast. I was taking more time off school again because Mrs. Hood said I had to get new clothes because Todd dropped off clothes vouchers and it would be best if we got it over with today, especially if I was going to be switching schools. Lilly was crabbed. “How come I never get to take school off to go shopping—you’re the one who said I need new shoes, but you take her instead.”

  Mrs. Hood brought a heavy black pan to the table, took her flipper and slapped one pancake on each of our plates. I was only half listening and couldn’t figure out what she meant about switching schools. She told Lilly to stop being such a busybody. “You’re in nowhere near the situation that Grace is in.” Lilly kept arguing about the holes in her shoes and “you always do that” and “what about me.”

  When it was quiet a second I said, “Well, I don’t think it’ll be a big deal for me to miss a couple days of school and I’m fine taking the bus cuz it’ll only be a few more days till my mum’s better anyhow and I can catch up on my normal school then. We’re probably moving anyway. We got evicted.”

  Lilly stopped chewing to stare at me. Wendy snorted and started coughing on her pancake. Lilly giggled, drank some juice and slapped her on the back. Wendy swallowed and said, “What’s it like to be evicted?” Mrs. Hood yelled Wendy’s name at her and Wendy kept going. “And who said anything about a few days, anyhow? You’re here for way longer than that, kid, you’re here till February. Three months.” She threw in that last part like it was normal. Three months is three months.

  “At least,” Lilly said with chewed-up pancake practically falling out.

  I tried to keep my voice normal. George told me one time about dogs and horses and how they could smell your fear. I could taste mine. I put my fork down. “No I won’t. My mum’ll be all right sooner than that. It’s just for a bit.” I picked my fork up again and everyone was staring at my hands and smelling their fear of forks, wondering what kind of idiot-kid has hands that can’t use a fork properly. I didn’t want pancakes anyway—Mum would’ve never let me eat white flour and syrup for breakfast. I’d get sick if I stayed here. I’d catch malnourishment. Adelle Davis’s cookbook said children who aren’t fed properly get misshaped bums and weird soft bones. My mum’d be mad if she saw me eating this way.

  “No,” Mrs. Hood said, “Wendy’s right, you’ll be here three months—until February.”

  I had a stomach ache. Todd Baker would have said something, he wouldn’t have lied. I was getting dizzy cuz my bones were going soft probably and my blood was getting evaporated; there wasn’t going to be enough left to hold me up that much longer. Mum always said I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want. I wanted her so much. But she was probably in a hospital somewhere and I couldn’t call her in front of them anyway. Wendy and Lilly glinted under the kitchen light, watching each other, cutting up their pancakes piece by piece. The air in my chest went thick.

  “Will Grace be coming with us to Kingdom Hall?” Lilly asked.

  Mrs. Hood put a bunch of pancakes on a plate and put them on the table. I whispered, “No thank you,” and looked at Mrs. Hood to find out what Kingdom Hall was. It sounded fun, in a way, like there’d be a Ferris wheel and fairy princesses and stuff.

  She said, “I don’t know. We’ll see if she’d like to. Have you been to a Kingdom Hall before, Grace?”

  I shook my head.

  “We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Lilly yapped. Loud, the same way she said “At least.” I’d heard that name before and asked her what it meant. “It means we spread the message that Armageddon is coming soon and the lion will lie down with the lamb and birds will fly to your finger and me and Wendy are getting tigers after Armageddon!”

  “No I’m not, ‘member I told you I want to have a bear.”

  “Why do you wanna bear? They’re all dumb and slow. What would you get, Grace? Except for you’re not a Witness, so you won’t be here when God puts Satan in chains. All the people who don’t believe won’t be, um, brought to life again after Judgment Day, like out of the ground, they just die and they don’t get to be here when Jesus is building paradise and they just stay in death and get eaten by worms cuz, um �
� but after the great battle, the ones of us that’s—believe will be saved or they’ll be, mm—resurrected if they already died, but the ones who don’t will be killed when God gives Jesus the keys to rule the new earth. Only we get to live forever with Jehovah cuz we served him.” She smiled like a pumpkin at me, threw a braid back over her shoulder and poured more syrup.

  I looked at their mum. She was leaning back in her chair, sipping from her teacup. I looked back at Lilly, sick of her. “You can’t have a tiger for a pet.”

  “Yes You Can!”

  “Calm down, Lilly. If Grace wants to come to the next meeting, she can learn what it’s all about then. You should go get ready for school anyway, and Grace and I have to get ready ourselves.”

  “Yeah Lilly,” Wendy told her and whispered, “Little spaz,” before she drank a whole bunch of orange juice to wash her pancake down.

  “Shut up, Wendy, you’re the spaz! I was just telling her! Cuz we’re s’posed to! We’re s’posed to witness, y’stupid!”

  “OK, that’s enough—get ready for school.” Mrs. Hood stood and reached for Lilly’s plate. “Grace, is that all you’re eating?” I nodded.

  Wendy let her eyelids droop at me as she came out from behind the table. “Won’t get away with that for long,” and she went upstairs; Lilly giggled and skipped behind.

  Hoffman, Anne Eilleen

  4.11.74 (T. Baker) Morning visit to Mr. Thompson, principal at Wolfe Elementary. I had called previously to briefly explain Gracees home situation, her non-ward status, and pending foster placement.

  Two visits to Mrs. H. during the day – not home. Sheryl Sugarman did not know where she was.

  Visit to Wolfe Elementary in afternoon. Grace seen and new foster home placement explained to her. This would be Mrs. J. Hood, 545 West 19th Avenue (876–5374). Grace and I had quite a long talk then went off to Mrs. Hood’s. Mrs. Hood struck me as a very warm, caring person, the house was very tidy, and she and Grace got along very well. We returned to Mrs. H’s apartment and on the way, Grace was very cheerful – she liked Mrs. Hood very much, liked the idea of having her own room. Mrs. H. not home when we arrived – we gathered up the basics that Grace needed from among the clothing and junk strewn in tangles on the floor. Many things were too filthy to take along, or simply could not be found.