Going Down Swinging

by Billie Livingston

  Lilly’s head whipped up from her plate. “You farted!” and she was still using her Waltons voice, then she screamed it at Wendy, “She farted! Ew.” My face got prickles. I dropped my fork and started to giggle. “Ew! She done it on purpose. That’s disgustin’.”

  If it wasn’t for the giggle, I would’ve been paralyzed stiff. Wendy pushed her lips under her nose, then put down her fork. I gritted my teeth and swallowed the giggle. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  Lilly slouched in her chair. “You, miss, are the most disgustin’ pig in the whole world. Ah cain’t eat this now. Ah hate you. February is not never gonna come.”

  Wendy finally opened her mouth. “You’re a heathen.” Except she said it like Kingdom Hall, not like Waltons. But it made me do another quacky laugh—whenever Mum said “heathen,” it was a joke. Wendy said, “I think it’s your bedtime, Grace.” I giggled a bit more, knowing it wasn’t funny for sure now. “Grace. Go to bed. You don’t eat what’s put in front of you and then you do that right at the dinner table. Go. Now.” I put down my fork, put my hand over my mouth and left. I laid in bed watching the clock, listening to Lilly stay up almost two hours past our bedtime.

  “So. I’m going to phone her,” I said. Wendy didn’t even look at me and they all stayed doing what they were doing. I stood with my head against the phone, wishing I could rip it off the wall and drag it to a closet where the coats and clothes would keep my talking from going right into everyone’s ears. I huddled around the phone and dialled, scared all the sudden that I wouldn’t know what to say. The iron was spitting behind me and Spike slammed the ball into the cupboards.

  When she answered, it was like I just fell into a giant tub of mum and her voice was gurgling around me. I could see her and smell her. I could feel her like breath on my face. Her voice smelled clean and like the olive oil she poured in her bathwater all the time. I could feel her patting the middle of my back, vibrating my ribs, and hear the amethyst rock clicking in her ring like crickets.

  She sounded out of breath. There was a little shake in her voice when she asked how I was, how the family looking after me was and my new school, and if I missed her. I kept saying “fine” until it got to the missing-her part and my throat squeezed. I said, “Yeah,” and I said it again because I couldn’t speak hardly.

  Her voice kept being all over me and she asked a zillion things about nothing and I wanted her to keep thinking up stuff to say, until she got to, “Well, let me get a pen, Lamby, OK, what’s your number there and we’ll phone each other … oop, wait … OK, what’s her name, the woman looking after you?”

  I tried to keep the butterflies down. Everything would be OK. Mum could call and maybe Mrs. Hood would like her and invite her here for tea sometimes and things would get better. I said, “Mrs. Hood,” into the receiver and Mrs. Hood’s head jumped up, her eyes all buggy. I thought maybe she burned herself, but I kept going. “It’s 327—”

  “No!” She stood her iron up, her lips stuck in an 0.

  “What?” I looked at her.

  “What what?” my mother said. “What’s the matter?”

  Mrs. Hood shook her head and her lips pulled back like she was going to get hit in the face with something. My brains went all quiet. I said, back in the phone, “Um, it’s—”

  Mrs. Hood hissed at me, “You cannot give out this number!” My throat squeezed again.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” Her voice welled up in my eyes.

  “Mm, I can’t. I’m not allowed. Said I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you’re not allowed?” Her voice was snaking up.

  “Mrs. Hood said I can’t.” Mrs. Hood hissed from me saying her name again. The line was quiet. “Mummy?”

  “Well isn’t that just lovely.” Mum’s words were like bites. “Baker says they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses—whatever happened to ‘honour thy mother and father’—that woman forbids you to give your number to your own mother? What, pray tell, does she think I’m going to do for chrissake?”

  “Don’t know.” I wanted to go stuff myself between my mattresses. “I’m sorry. I can keep calling you. I’m sorry.”

  “And stop saying you’re sorry—Uh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I just mean it’s not your fault. You can bet Baker’s going to get an earful about this, goddamn little draft-dodging nothing. Bloody low-lifes trying to separate a child from her mother!” More quiet. “Are you still there?”

  “Uh huh.” My chest was going to fall out my back.

  “Hmm, well, I guess you can’t say much with them in the room.”

  “Uh huh.”

  She sighed. “OK, well, you’ve got my number now, right? So the next time you go over to see Sadie and Eddy, call me from there. You’ll be over there, won’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “I wish I could have been with you on your birthday, honey.”

  “Uhhuh.”

  “Well, we’ll have our own little celebration together, I have presents for you, you know. I don’t know when he’s bringing you, but soon, I think—don’t be upset, angel, we’ll get through this, we’re tough, right?” and she sang a bit of “You and Me Against the World,” by Helen Reddy.

  “Uh hmm.”

  “Don’t worry, OK? I love you—I love you to pieces.” I said me-too and she said, “Just a few days till we see each other and then it’ll be Christmas and we’ll have all that lovely time together.” I uh-huh-ea again and she let a big breath out with, “OK, lovey, I’ll let you go. Call me, OK?—we’ll do it on the sly, he-he.”

  Eilleen Ten

  DECEMBER 1974

  YOU ARE IN your new apartment, trying to make it look cheerful, clean, at least, as you’re waiting for the fruit of your womb. You’ve made a chocolate birthday cake; it’s kind of low-slung in the middle, filled in with extra icing because Grace loves the icing more than the cake. Or is that you? Can’t remember. Does she like pickles? and what kind of chip dip? and you’ve been saying things like, it doesn’t matter, just so long as we’re together, while wrapping her presents and wondering will she even like Silly Putty or is that too young?—but it’s OK because you’ve compensated with a black-velvet-strapped Timex that looks grownup as hell and shit, how does one wrap a watch box so it doesn’t look as crappily slapped together as the rest of the loot? But she’ll just tear it all off anyway; rip it like she’s fighting her way out of a wet paper bag because that’s half the fun. That much you remember.

  She’s due any minute and so you go back in the bathroom and check again. Do you look motherly? Is this what mothers look like? You blot off some lipstick. No, now you look sickly, you’re not a woman who shines without lipstick. And you pace back in the kitchen, it’s a huge kitchen, she’ll like that. It’s a basement, but at least it’s in someone’s house: safer, not so anonymous. Right now you’re of a mind to have people know who you are, at least the you you are now. To hear hello followed by your name makes your backbone straighter, helps you feel here.

  If you didn’t have to sleep in that bedroom, it’d be better. The five days you’ve been here, you’ve waited till the very last second to get into bed because there’s something about that bed in that room with nothing else but a dresser; it becomes apparent that your life is one empty Cracker Jack box and you really have nothing, not even a phone number to the only thing that you love. Fucking Baker, you let him have it for that, telling your flesh and blood that she may not give her whereabouts to her own mother. You’d hate him if there was enough there to hate, American weasel. Draft-dodging little turd. Wonder if he gets a nice gold star on his report card for this particular absconding. He barely addressed your demands, said he hardly thought it was an issue with which to concern yourself at this point in time and furthermore it was against the rules. The rules. What do the rules say about kidnapping? What do they say about dragging a kid out of her school, uprooting her, placing her with religious freaks?

  There’s a soft knock at the door. Then a snappier one and you
breathe deep twice, too deep, and your first step’s a dizzy one.

  You open the door, fast and sweeping à la Harriet Nelson, and there she is. And him standing behind her. You say nothing to him and grab her, throw your arms in great octopus swings and suction her to your shoulder, lift her up just a little till your back shifts and maybe picking her up’s not such a good idea. Baker says he’ll be back at nine. That’s three and a half hours. How to pack a birthday and four weeks and a million apologies and sobriety and a clean house and fresh breath and love and love and no crying and lightness and mirth into three and a half hours. You swallow and hold her at arm’s length, even though it hurts to let her go that far, and think, Let’s join the circus, the Marines, lets run like hell and never come back again, but instead you touch her new hair like a sheared lamb and say, Whose idea was this? Not hers, she says, they did it. Call them jerks and tell her she’ll look good as new in a couple weeks. That’s the good thing about mops, they grow back. You squeeze her again because she’s rag-doll limp and you’re trying to squeeze out her scares, squeeze back the miles and miles and years and years since you’ve hugged another living soul. Then, slide off her coat, some little burlap sack of a thing she says they bought her with Child Protection vouchers. It’s all right, she says. I’m not that crazy about it.

  You pat her shoulder and bring her into the living room, show her the pullout couch you got for twenty-five bucks and the TV—well, that was there before—but here, look at the bedroom; no, maybe not, it’s kind of depressing. She stands stock-still in this bedroom, then walks to the bed, kneels on one pillow to look out the window into the laneway and says, It’s good how it’s on the ground like this—you could escape, you could get out lots of ways—like if there was a fire or something. Don’t remember her being so concerned with fire safety.

  You tell her that you thought you’d make pork chops for dinner and she could have raw carrots and radishes and a baked potato. You like baked potato, right? and you’re embarrassed that you had to ask that. The brain cell with that information seems to be on the fritz just now and she says Yes politely, which somehow is more humiliating than regular Yeah-of-course-what-kinda-dope-are-you kid tone. Or we could have snacky finger food stuff like cheese and crackers and pickles and raw veggies with french onion chip dip and I got salt-and-vinegar chips too and peaner butter. For a nice peaner butter and jammitch sammitch? She says it’s o.k., porkchops are good. But she seems funny, her voice does, her soul is lagging behind. And you want to cry because you feel exactly the same way.

  While frying and slicing, you ask if she’s still taking baton lessons. She says it’s over, with a sullen stare into the table. We had this recital thing that parents and people came to where we got judged and marked and stuff. Sadie got first place, she says. Sadie’s beginning to piss you off too, but you brush it aside and say, Well, how’d you do? was it fun? and she says, It was OK, I lost points because my mouth moved while I was counting and then I dropped my baton, except for it bounced on the tip and I caught it and the judges didn’t see. And she smirks, looks pleased with herself—putting one over on the judges: a proud family history. She got Honourable Mention in the end and you expound on how fabulous that is. She’s not offering a whole lot of information, so you ask about Explorers and she says that they had a party at Halloween, and we were all supposed to bring a dessert thing and I brought digestive cookies because I, well, first I went to the bakery and it was kind of expensive for just twelve cookies except if you buy twelve you get thirteen and it’s called a bakers dozen, so I bought that so I could get the extra one and then I kind of ate some of them and then there weren’t enough, so I bought digestive ones because I like them, but then at the party the other girl’s mothers all baked stuff for them and two of the girls looked at me and said, “Nice baby cookies—Smooth move Ex-Lax.” And they all started laughing at me, about bringing stuff out of a package and … I don’t know, I went a couple more times and then I quit. Alas more evidence of your not-up-to-snuff mothering, but who do those brats think they are anyway, so you say Well, who needs a bunch of crummy little creeps like that around? I don’t blame you, I’d’ve quit too.

  When the pork chops are ready and the potatoes are soft and the margarine’s on a dish beside a bowl of raw vegetables and cheese is cut up waiting to sit down on a comfy cracker, you say, So would you like to eat at the table or in the living room and watch TV? and she says maybe we should eat at the table as if that might be the wisest because what if the dinner cops pull up, we’ll be screwed.

  It’s quarter to eight before she seems remotely like herself. It happens in mid-bite of chocolate cake and comes out in the shape of a squiggly giggle and before you can stop yourself it’s out your mouth: Did you tell Todd Baker about a dream you had with a man chasing you down an alley?

  Chocolate gooed yeah.

  Oh, Grace, why?

  What d’you mean? Why not?

  Bee—Sweety! Don’t you get what—don’t you see how he took that? He reported it, you know, he said, “I’m sorry, Eilleen, but I don’t feel that I had a choice.” And he was insinuating that you could’ve been molested by “one of my men,” as he put it—not to mention the fact that he thinks that my drinking may have caused you irreparable damage. I don’t know—maybe he was right. But honey, things are different now—I’m better and I’m scared that if we’re not careful, they won’t give you back to me. Please be careful, if they—just—I couldn’t stand to lose you for any longer.

  She looks pissed off, stares at her icing, scrapes off a forkful and sloughs it on the side of her plate before taking another bite of cake. But I dreamed it! And it was kind of a weird dream and it was like a story and I felt like telling it and I never—and anyway, you weren’t even in it. I didn’t say anything about you!

  Why have you done this; she’s nine years old; how the hell is she supposed to know? I know, Angel. I’m sorry. I’m sorry things have been so bad that you would have nightmares like that, but I’ll make it up to you. I feel like he tricked us into this whole thing, anyway. Neither of us thought you’d be away this long and look what they did, that … snotrag’s got you there for three months—and suddenly she chokes on her cake, laughing and coughing and laughing and laughing. What’s so funny?

  Snotrag! You said snotrag, and she coughs and says, I think I got chocolate cake up my nose.

  By quarter to nine, she’s sitting in a pile of ripped-up wrapping paper and a pencil crayon set and felt pens that smell like fruit and a novel called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Game of Life while the face of a Timex glints off her wrist. And as if on cue, as if suddenly someone had yanked blinders off this part of her brain, her head jolts up and her mouth says, Henry! Where’s Henry? She looks embarrassed and ashamed like a bad mother and you know the feeling because that name has just made you feel like the worst one on the planet. She stands up, then sits back down. Where’s Henry, why didn’t he come? Is somebody else looking after him?

  Yeah, that’s it, someone who had to move to Texas and needed a cat. Think. Shit, it’s almost ten to. Baker’ll be here. Not now. I don’t know. He’s a cat. He’s around. And you suddenly wish your child had narcolepsy, just for now. But there’s nothing to do but stutter and ask her if she’d like a cup of tea with you and she says, Mum! and you crack, turn off the faucet and say, Damn. Oh angel, I’m sorry, I lied. I just—Henry fell. At least we think that’s what happened. After you went to stay with the Hoods—and that’s a fitting name for them if I haven’t said so already—h-huh, ah, well, I went into the hospital and George was in town, so I got hold of him and asked him if he’d go over and feed the cat. And, uh, you know how Henry used to get outside from the window by climbing the stucco up and down the building? Anyway, George said he found the cat lying out on the grass below the living-room window and his back was broken. And George didn’t want me to see him, he thought I should let him handle it and he thought it’d be better if we didn’t tell you, or I thought,
if we just made something up for a while. Until things settled down. He was dying, sweety—so George took him and had him put to sleep. I’m sorry. Oh god—you’re a liar and an asshole: your children get broken and your children’s children. Even if you’d sent him to the SPCA he might’ve had a better chance. And your voice cracks when you say, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want to tell you. If I could go back and change things I would. I promise. I’m sorry.

  Her face is dewy, a river is flowing underneath. It’s five to nine. Shit-shit-shit. There’s no time to be who you were trying to prove you were. She nods and folds her arms and nods until her whole body is nodding and she looks like someone in a nuthouse. Please, baby, honey, it’ll be all right—Henry knew you loved him and it was—we’ll get a new cat, we’ll get a kitten together. You’ve got her on your lap now, rocking her yourself; if she’s going to rock like this, you want to at least pretend it’s you who’s rocking her. Then she starts to shake and sob and the tears come in a torrent. They pop from every pore on her face, her arms limp so you have to pick them up and tie them around your neck. Oh, honey. Shhhh, it’s OK, I promise everything’ll be OK. I promise-promise-promise. Please, Lamby, Todd Baker’ll be here any minute, and if he sees you so upset, he might not bring you back, he might think seeing me is too upsetting for you. Please don’t cry, please. Shhh, it’s OK. There, honey, there, it’s OK, but this is four weeks’ worth, or four months or years, or it’s all the tears of all the stolen babies in the world. And there’s a rap on the door. On time, of course—why the hell do these fuckers always have to be on time? Doesn’t anybody dawdle any more? Listen, lovey, we’ll get a little fluffy kitten and we’ll—and in a couple weeks it’ll be Christmas—and you toss Just a minute over your shoulder—and we’ll have lots of time, just the two of us. We can do anything we want, please, angel, please don’t do this. I know you’re sad—me too, but they might not bring you back. And the knocking starts up again, so you ease out from under her, sit her back in the chair before you go to the door.