Going Down Swinging

by Billie Livingston

  Todd Baker’s standing there, uncomfortable and sheepish, smile plastered on. He looks down as if he’s about to kick at the dirt with his toe, then ambles into the kitchen. You titter and tap fingers on your breast plate, say, Grace is a little upset, I just told her about Henry, her cat, and—you shrug at the room to say the rest is obvious. Grab a Kleenex off the table and kneel in front of her to dab, run your fingers back through her hair, and her arms come forward and she flops face first into your neck. And you say, Oof, sweety, and hug her and thump your palm slow against the rhythm of her panting tears. Sorry, we just need a second, you say to him, carefully reading the I-Feel-Like-A-Dolt printed in block letters across his forehead.

  He rubs the corduroy patches on the elbows of his blazer, jams hands in his pockets and pulls them back out. Yeah, oh course, take all the time you need. Grace, did you tell your mom about the bird you got for your birthday? She snorts and chokes a yes. Oh, he says, pulls the left hand out of his pocket and stuffs it back in again.

  Hoffman, Anne Eilleen

  13.12.74 (T. Baker) Grace went to visit her mother today and stayed for the evening. Things went fairly well. I have spoken at length to Mrs. Hoffman, asking for her help in insuring that Grace does not run from Mrs. Hood’s and she has been cooperative in this matter.

  Grace Twelve

  DECEMBER 1974

  I COULDN’T STOP FEELING like I was going to cry after being at Mum’s. Seemed like I should’ve been able to stay; she was sober now and she had a new place and she was going to AA again. I thought that was supposed to be the reason I had to go to the Hoods’ in the first place. And you could tell she was better cuz of how much she got done by herself, got everything moved, got the phone hooked up, got us a pullout couch, and got me birthday presents on top of it. She was still kind of shaky, but she was her again. And still I wasn’t allowed to stay. At night, I lied awake and made up dreams about racing down the street with nothing but a bag of clothes and Lyle. That’s what I called Todd Baker’s budgie, Lyle. He lived beside my bed in his cage hanging from the stand Todd brought me.

  The night after, I decided I had to work harder at training Lyle. I was doing it by sticking my hand in his cage every once in a while like The Handbook of Budgies and Budgerigars said to do to get him sitting on my finger like the bird in the picture. I wasn’t doing it that good, though—I was supposed to use a pencil or a stick to bring him along slowly, but I wanted him to like me now. I wanted him to sit on my shoulder and go with me everywhere. Anyway, I kept sticking my hand in and Lyle kept screeching and flapping until I gave up and read some of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But I went back to the cage because I figured if I did it super slow, if I moved really slowly to the cage, put my hand in, really slowly—then Mrs. Hood yelled up the stairs for lights out and I yanked my hand and sent Lyle squawking his head off.

  I flicked the light out and went to look out my window. Maybe Mum was doing the same in her room, kneeling on her bed, staring out at the laneway. She wasn’t anything like Mrs. Hood, the way she told me about God. Mum’s God was nice and gave presents and stuff—“Every unselfish good deed you do will be rewarded threefold.” She never said anything about the end of the world or lions and lambs. I stood there and tried to yell a prayer in my head and get God to give me a sign, like whisper in my ear or make Lyle talk. But Wendy made it sound as if God didn’t even like me. He was getting rid of me and all the stuff I wanted: there was going to be a new heaven and a new earth because this earth would pass away and there would be no sea. Didn’t even make sense; didn’t He like the beach? And fish and seagulls—why didn’t He like seagulls? And if there was no more death, where would He put everybody? They were always talking on TV about the population explosion and how there was too many of us already. Except for, first, He was going to kill everybody, though, so maybe that’s just what He does, lets it get really crowded and then kills everybody.

  I let go of the windowsill and backed up to do this thing that I did every night where I ran and jumped on my bed with the lights out so that it was like being blind and flying through the dark until my bed caught me. Except tonight I leaped wrong and went crashing down on the floor. My shins hurt so bad I could feel it in my ears and Mrs. Hood hollered up the stairs. I curled up and held myself, saying “Nothing” as loud as I could, but I could hardly make my lungs move. Then I pulled myself onto my bed and laid there trying to breathe pain-butterflies out of my chest. God seemed creepy all the sudden. Snickery. Like a drooly lizard-thing sitting on me, waiting.

  The next morning Mrs. Hood said that if I was going to be crashing around upstairs all hours of the night, then maybe I’d like to go to bed a couple hours early and get it out of my system. I tried to explain but I couldn’t get my words right lately, and she cut me off. “That’s fine, Grace. From now on, bedtime’s at seven.” Lilly smiled with her lips sucked in and Wendy looked like I got what I deserved. Eight days left till Christmas vacation, till going to Mum’s.

  The next Sunday, when there were five left, I sat on my bed and copied cartoons out of the newspaper onto Silly Putty. I had sheets and blankets over my window and mirror, and Lyle was flying free. I hoped he was going to love me more every time I gave him freedom, and eventually he’d fly on my finger the way Wendy said was going to only happen after Armageddon. We just came back from Kingdom Hall a couple hours before and Mrs. Hood was in the kitchen baking; the smell of banana bread fumed under my door and Lyle walked across my dresser, pecking pencils and one of my socks.

  Then the doorbell bonged because Wendy and Lilly’s sister, Julia, was coming today. I met her once before. She was around the same age as Charlie and she wasn’t a Jehovah Witness. In a way I kind of wanted to see her again because she was more like normal, but I didn’t want to come out of my room. Todd Baker’s voice was in my head, saying, “I’m sure it’s your imagination, Grace, of course the Hoods like you. You’re just feeling insecure because you’re a little homesick.”

  I listened to them kissing and hello-’ing and I imagined the hugs. It was making me be homesick for Charlie. I couldn’t even write her a letter if I wanted to cuz we didn’t have her address. And now she wouldn’t have ours either, so I started thinking about all the ways she could find me again—she could call directory assistance and find Mum’s new phone number or she could write a letter to Welfare and ask them to give it to me or she could hire a private detective who would go from school to school asking if Grace Hoffman was there. I left my Silly Putty, opened The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and reread the same sentence over and over until I gave up. Plates clacked downstairs, then a kettle whistle and laughs here and there, mumbling and Lilly’s voice going loud and high and Julia’s over top. More mumbles, some clear words. Julia sounded mad all the sudden. “Oh Christ! For God’s sake—every goddamn time I call or come into this house, all I hear is Grace this and Grace that! You torture the hell outta that kid!” and Lilly’s voice, “No way! It’s her. She’s the one who starts it. And plus—she farted! Right at the dinner! And one time in Kingdom Hall!”

  My face went prickly and I held my stomach. Then Julia said, “Well, big friggin’ deal. I’d like to go fart in Kingdom Hall myself. That poor little bugger, God knows what living in this house does to her digestion. Try leaving her alone, for God’s sake! And if she’s so bad, she’s got an ass, smack it and be done with it!”

  Then Mrs. Hood went, “I don’t believe in hitting children.”

  “No? but you believe in torturing them. I don’t know how the kid survives—it’s a psychological hellhole … what!? Well, so what, she’s not a Witness, so where do you get off trying to—” and her voice quieted off.

  Then more mumbling and Lilly squealing, “Huh! Alls I know is I’ll be glad when it’s February,” and Wendy saying something about testing patience until Julia hollered over top, “Listen to them! Obnoxious little brats—the Grim Reaper and her little dog too—and You! You’re the foster mother! So foster!” and Mrs. Ho
od made hissing noises and the shush voice, and mumbles again and more of Julia’s sighs and snorts.

  I was on my hands and knees listening at my door by then, wishing it wasn’t squeaky so I could open it. Then suddenly there was running thumps on the stairs and I ran back on my bed till the feet passed and Lilly’s door slammed. I opened my book and stared at a page, all weird cuz of feeling like, Huh-I-was-right and then Oh-no-I-was-right. It was still only December fifteen.

  I wanted to hear my mum’s voice so bad, but the only time I could talk to her was over at Sadie and Eddy’s. Even Josh’s place didn’t feel safe any more, Sheryl Sugarman looked funny or sounded funny at me about my mum now. Sadie and Eddy’s mother, Alice, liked Mum, though, and always had messages to tell me when I came over. It was getting to be the only place I didn’t feel scared, but it took two buses to get there and Mrs. Hood wouldn’t always let me. She said it was too much to ask of their mother, for me to be there all the time; it was hard enough dealing with two kids never mind a third.

  The day after Julia was at the house, I called my mum after school from a phone booth and listened to her voice and the television in the background. I kept a finger in my other ear so traffic wouldn’t drown her out. I started asking her about Charlie and if she wrote us a letter yet. Mum said no but not to worry, that it’d only been a month and she was probably really busy getting settled and taking care of the baby. Then she started talking about Christmas and how she already had two Christmas presents for me. I told her about Lilly being mad because a kid in her class gave her a Christmas card. Mum said that was ridiculous, that my Great Aunt Judith was a Jehovah’s Witness and she sent cards to family at Christmas. Then she asked how it was going over there anyway. I told her, fine. I didn’t want to upset her and part of me was worried maybe Mum was unpredictable, maybe it’d make her explode so big, Armageddon’d be nothing compared. Plus she had all this getting-better stuff to do; the whole point was not to have to worry about me while she was getting better. She said, “You sound a little blue, angel. Sure everything’s all right?”

  “Yup. I’m just counting days till I get off school. This school where I’m at now’s boring. And I miss you and I want time to hurry up so we can have Christmas time together. Did you get a tree yet?”

  “Well, actually, I was wondering what you’d think about an artificial tree this year? Alice was saying that Ray could get us a pretty nice cheap one.”

  I got all scrunchy inside again. “No. We have to get a real one. Cuz it smells good and it’ll feel like a fakey Christmas if the tree’s all fakey.”

  “Okey-dokey, far be it from me to have a fakey Christmas.” Then she said that she loved me to pieces and was marking off the days too. She asked what else I wanted for Christmas.

  I called her the next day and the next day that week and she still never got a tree. The thing was, what if when it came down to it she didn’t get one, or what if she got us one of those skinny-boned old Charlie Brown trees? And maybe she’d hurt her back if she had to carry it all by herself.

  Two days before school got out I took the bus up Main Street, got my thirteen bucks out of my bank account and went to a Christmas-tree place. It was like a secret mission, creeping between Christmas trees, scared Mrs. Hood would drive by or Wendy would see what I was doing and tell her mother or tell me I was pagan and that Armageddon was coming before Christmas anyway. I wrapped my scarf higher, for a mask, and looked over the trees until this skinny guy with sunglasses and a leather jacket came out of the trailer, folding his arms from the cold. He walked over with a goony kind of grin and went, “What can I do you for?” I told him I needed a tree, that I was getting it for my mum cuz of her being sick. He nodded and lowered his sunglasses to look at me. His eyes were red and like he just got woken up, and he said, “Huh. So you’re the family tree-shopper, huh?—what were you lookin to spend?”

  “Um, around five dollars.” He nodded and showed me the five-dollar trees.

  I looked at him and at them. “They’re kind of ugly, these ones.”

  He chuckled and looked down, kicking the dirt. “Yeah, they ain’t so hot.”

  “I’ll just have a look around, if you don’t mind,” I told him and he snorted and nodded, rubbing his arms and said, “Hey, be my guest.”

  It took some looking until I found one that wasn’t that huge or too beautiful, and I reached in and tried to pull it up. The stick-guy came over and stuffed his hand in to the middle of the tree, lifted it up and stamped it down a couple feet back. He brushed its branches and gave it another stamp. “Yeah, this old girl’s not bad. Nice shape to her.”

  “How tall is it?”

  “Huh, well, around six foot. You picked a good-lookin’ tree. Not too glamorous, just good-lookin’.”

  “Well, is it way more money than the other ones from over there?”

  “Well, yeah, it’s—well I’ll tell ya, you’re kind of a funny kid, how ’bout I mark her down on special since your mum’s sick and all that. Today only, five bucks.”

  “Oh.”

  We stared at each other a second. “Well? what d’ya say, kid?”

  “OK. Thank you,” and I gave him the two twos and a one out of my coat pocket. I had the rest hid in my boot so he wouldn’t think I was rich or anything.

  He scrunched the bills up and stuffed them in the hip pocket of his jeans, then said, “So what’s the deal here, you carryin’?”

  “Um, can I use your phone? And if I arrange for a guy to come get it, would you hold it for me till he comes?”

  “Sure thing. Y’ gotta like a kid with connections.”

  I called Sadie and Eddy’s dad, and told him I just got a good deal on a tree and could one of his furniture guys come get it and bring it over to Mum’s. Ray laughed in my ear and I thought I heard him slap the table. “You’re Danny’s kid all right. Okey-dokey, just gimme the address or the intersection or whatever the heck you got goin’ there.”

  The next day I came home after school, planning to make a list of all the stuff I wanted to bring to my mum’s. I’d called her from school and she made a big deal over me for getting the tree and I was super-excited about Christmas. One more sleep left. I wasn’t going to be able to take Lyle, but I didn’t know if I could trust them to feed him while I was gone, to change his water. I ran upstairs, thinking about how Lyle probably got more freedom than any other bird he knew. I opened the door and closed it behind me so he wouldn’t get out and get us both yelled at. I called his name. Then looked in my closet. Then went over to see under my bed, when some blue caught my eye and Lyle was lying under my window. My unsheeted window. My unsheeted mirror. I kneeled and picked him up; he was still limp and soft. Tears started coming in my nose and I told him how sorry I was for letting him fly against glass he couldn’t see, and stroked his wobbly neck.

  My face was burning wet when I came down to show Mrs. Hood. “And it’s my fault cuz I didn’t cover stuff up,” I told her.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea. “Aww. I’m sorry, Grace, that’s too bad. You should get rid of him, though; there’s all kinds of mites and parasites on birds, so you better throw him out.” I looked at her then him and kissed his head before I put on my coat and went out back to bury him. Then I stayed in my room until the next morning.

  In the morning, they sat across from me over breakfast. Lilly had baggy red eyes, and she stabbed her pancakes then slammed them on her plate and Wendy took deep breaths and chewed slow. I was tired too, from crying most of the night, and I stared into space.

  “Shake your head, your eyes are stuck!” Lilly spat at me, pancake flying out her mouth. My brain snapped back to the room and I looked down on my plate. “A-duhh!” she said and clanged her fork down.

  “I’m—I wasn’t looking at you, didn’t see you, I mean.”

  Lilly rolled her eyes. “Well, maybe if you weren’t bawling all night over a dumb bird—stupid gomer, you didn’t even have it long enough to cry—and did you have to cry s
o friggin’ loud?”

  “Lilly!” Mrs. Hood gave the warning voice. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk.”

  “What! I said friggin’!”

  “We all heard what you said.”

  Lilly looked at me and did yowly imitations.

  Wendy breathed out hard. “Lilly, shut up, I had to listen to the real thing all night,” and reached across her for the butter.

  Lilly smacked her arm. “Wouldja don’t, that’s rude!”

  Wendy stared at her arm and then at Lilly, put the butter down and, really calm, said, “Don’t ever do that again, Lilly.” Lilly got one of those stunned shudders in her face and neck that only Wendy could make her have and told Wendy to get lost. Wendy cleared her throat. “You know, Grace, you’re not supposed to advertise your grief. Jesus said you’re not supposed to show it because if you make a sad face, you’re just like the hypocrites and your face gets ugly and then everybody knows. You should act natural when you’re sad, so only God knows, and then you’ll get rewarded.”

  Lilly chewed and looked at me. “She’s got the same ugly face all the time, how’re you s’posed to tell the difference.”

  “Lilly!” Mrs. Hood turned off the stove and brought the last of the pancakes to the table. “I told you I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. At the rate you’re going, Judgment Day will be a pretty scary one for you, won’t it? Grace’s pet died. How would either of you feel if one of the cats died?” and she stomped back to the stove and plopped the pan down.