Looking for X

by Deborah Ellis

  “Have you ever heard the soup song?” X didn’t answer, of course, so I started singing it. As I was taking a deep breath before the final line, X spoke, so softly that I didn’t hear her at first.

  “I used to be a folk singer.”

  The deep breath I’d taken drained quietly out of my body.

  “I used to sing folk songs in Yorkville.” Yorkville is the part of Toronto where the hippies used to hang out in the sixties. I tried to imagine X as a hippie, with love beads around her neck and a guitar over her shoulder. I couldn’t picture it.

  “Is that when the secret police started following you?”

  X didn’t answer me. As I waited for her to say something more, I realized how late it had gotten. The afternoon had gone. Night time had come. By now, Mom and the boys would be back. I wished I’d left a note.

  X started singing. Her voice was raspy and tuneless, as though her brain could remember singing, but the memory hadn’t gotten down as far as her voice yet.

  “Where have all the flowers gone?” she sang. I knew the song. I sang it with her. We sat on that park bench in the growing darkness, with bits of rain dripping down on us, and we softly sang to the park. We went from one song to another. I forgot the rest of the world existed.

  “Hey, what is this? A bloody Girl Guide meeting?”

  The rude voice jolted me back to reality.

  A pack of skinheads had crept up behind us, and we were now surrounded.

  Tammy hadn’t needed to warn me to stay away from skinheads. Everything about these folks smelled of trouble. (In fact, everything about them smelled.) They wore heavy black boots and military coats with Nazi symbols and skulls on them. They had shaved heads. They didn’t even have hair to cover up part of their ugly faces.

  At one time, they must have all been little pink babies, cute and gurgly, but that was as hard for me to imagine as X being a hippie.

  “Never judge people as a group,” Tammy was always saying to me. “Judge them as individuals.” But it’s hard to judge people as individuals when they travel in packs and all act the same.

  “X, let’s get going,” I said quietly, slowly standing up. These people are wild animals, I thought. I’ll keep calm, and move slowly, and they won’t attack.

  X had disappeared into her trench coat, like a turtle into its shell. She wasn’t moving.

  “They shouldn’t allow trash like this in the park,” one of them said, kicking at X’s leg.

  “X, come on, let’s go,” I pleaded, but X acted as if she didn’t hear me.

  “X? What kind of a name is that? X? Short for Extra-defective?” The guy who said that was fat, bald and ugly. He looked like he swallowed beer cans whole. He thought he had made a joke, and he laughed. The other skinheads laughed with him.

  “What’s in the bag, Defect?” One of them grabbed for X’s suitcase. X was frozen.

  “Leave her alone!” I yelled, giving him a push. He laughed and pushed me back. I fell into the mud. I bounced up again and rushed at him, but the big one got in my way.

  “What are you so excited about?”

  I punched him hard in his blubbery stomach. He doubled over, clutching himself. I jumped around him and saw the others punching and pulling at X. One of them had her suitcase.

  Maybe they weren’t real skinheads at all. Maybe they were with the secret police.

  I leapt at them with a shriek that David and Daniel would have been proud to make. I don’t know which one I landed on. I wasn’t aiming for any jerk in particular.

  At that point, I lost track of what was happening. I know I was being kicked, punched and shoved, and I also know that I got in a few good kicks and punches of my own.

  The fight was broken up by a police siren. The cops hadn’t come for us — they kept driving right on by the park — but it was enough to send the skinheads back into the cover of the trees.

  X and I were sprawled out on the ground. I crawled over to her. “X, are you okay?” I put my head down close to hers. She was moaning a bit. “Can you get up?”

  Rain was starting to come down for real. I shook X again. “Let me help you up.”

  Her suitcase had been yanked open. There was nothing inside. I scrambled around on the ground, looking for any jewels or secret papers the skinheads might have dropped when they made their getaway. I couldn’t find anything.

  Leaning against the bench, X struggled to her feet. I closed the suitcase and handed it to her. She looked all hunched in and ashamed.

  “You should see a doctor. Do you want me to go with you to the hospital?”

  X turned away from me, as if she didn’t want me to see her. I asked her again, but she just shrugged down into herself and walked away.

  I headed home, wondering what to tell Tammy. She’d forbidden me to fight, so I couldn’t tell her the truth. The best lie I could come up with was that I’d slipped and fell, and that’s how I got my clothes dirty. It was a pretty lame lie. Not even I believed it.

  The skinheads were still in the park, right at the corner I’d have to pass. I was sure they were waiting for me.

  Forgetting all the rules of Elmer the Safety Elephant — who never had to deal with skinheads — I dashed into the street, narrowly avoiding several cars that honked angrily. I headed south, then east, through the schoolyard, and up into Regent Park. I entered my building the back way.

  Mom was home. She was furious. First she hugged me, because she was glad I was safe. Then she glared at me with a face of stone and ice.

  “Well?”

  I told her as much truth as I could, without getting myself into more trouble. “I’m sorry about the potatoes, Mom. I was just about to do them when I saw X outside waiting for me, so I took her a sandwich, and tried to leave right away, but then she started talking and...singing. We sang together for a bit, then she went her way, and I headed home, only I slipped and fell in the mud. That’s why I’m all dirty.” I stopped for a breath, and to see how well my lie was going over. Tammy’s expression hadn’t changed. I could tell she knew I was lying.

  “Go and get washed for supper. Put your pajamas on. You’re going right to bed after you do the dishes.”

  I was very muddy, so I jumped in the shower. Parts of my body were very sore. I felt myself all over to see if anything was broken. Everything seemed in one piece. There was blood in several places where their hard boots had kicked me. The hot water felt good. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t.

  Supper was on the table when I got out. We were having soup poured over mashed potatoes. I wanted to tell Tammy about singing X the soup song, but her face was still angry, so I didn’t say anything.

  When the dishes were done, I went to bed. I tried to do my homework there for awhile, until Tammy turned off my light. “You had your chance to do that earlier,” she said. She did kiss me goodnight, but it didn’t feel like she meant it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MUD

  When I got to school the next morning, the windows were boarded up. Not all the windows. Just the ones on Miss Melon’s classroom.

  “What happened?” I asked a kid in my home-room class.

  “Somebody broke all the windows in Melonball’s class last night. Threw mud and leaves and stuff all over the classroom, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Overheard the teachers.”

  “Do they know who did it?”

  “Probably somebody who didn’t like Miss Melon.”

  There was a strange feeling in the class all that morning. The boards on the windows made the classroom dark and eerie, even though all the lights were on.

  The other kids were acting strange, too. They’d look at me, and look away again.

  I stood alone at the fence during morning recess. Some kid was throwing a ball against the boards where the windows used to be, until a teacher yelled at him to knock it off.

  Tiffany and her gang walked by. They looked at me and laughed. I turned my back to them so I wouldn’t have to see their g
oofy faces.

  Mom was coming up the sidewalk toward the school. I raised my hand to wave at her. Just then, she looked at me, and I stopped my hand in mid-wave. She looked angry, disappointed and...hopeless.

  I didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going on. As soon as we got back to class after recess, Miss Melon gave the class some chapters to read. Then she looked at me and said, “Come with me.”

  She held my arm all the way to the principal’s office.

  The same gang of sour adults was there, minus Tiffany’s mother. A cop was with them. He was ten feet tall.

  I was getting scared. This wasn’t like my last visit to the principal’s office, where I knew I’d be punished, but I didn’t care. I knew then that what I had done was right, even if it was wrong, if you know what I mean.

  This time, I didn’t even know what I had done, although I was pretty sure they all thought I had done something.

  And this time, Tammy wasn’t jumping up and down to defend me. She just sat still. She also looked very, very tired.

  The principal was the only one who spoke. He called me by my unmentionable name. I listened for Tammy to correct him, but she said nothing.

  “As you know, there was damage done to the school last night. We’re trying to get to the bottom of it, and we’d like to know where you were yesterday evening.”

  “I was at home.”

  “Before you were at home.”

  “I was in Allan Gardens with...” I started to say “with X,” but I didn’t want the cop to know about her. “With a friend,” I said instead.

  “What is the name and address of this friend?”

  I looked at the cop. He towered above everyone, and his frown was aimed at me.

  “Answer the question.”

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked, my voice sounding very small.

  “You were seen running away from the school last night. You returned home with your clothes torn and muddy, and you could not give your mother an explanation of how they got that way. Yes, I’d say you were in trouble.”

  I stared at Tammy, my jaw dropping to my chest. My mother had ratted on me to the enemy. She had never done that before. I had believed, deep down inside me, that she never would.

  Tammy looked right back at me, but there was nothing in her face or eyes to make me feel better.

  I looked away from her.

  “I didn’t break those windows.”

  “Then where were you last night?”

  “I told you. I was in Allan Gardens with a friend.”

  “If you were in Allan Gardens, why were you running away from the school?”

  I had no answer for that.

  “Will you at least tell us the name of the friend you were with?”

  I looked at Tammy again. She knew I was with X! Why didn’t she say so? But she said nothing. She just sat in the chair and looked at her hands.

  I stopped being afraid then and started getting angry.

  “I will not give you her name,” I said, loudly and clearly, looking the principal straight in his little pig eyes. He looked like someone from the secret police. No wonder X was afraid of them.

  “There is no friend,” Tammy finally spoke up, but what she said horrified me.

  “Khyber has an imaginary friend she calls X, but there really isn’t such a person. She makes sandwiches for herself to eat in the park after school, but she tells me they’re for her friend X so I won’t think she’s eating more than her share. We’re on a tight budget,” she explained.

  Tammy’s words made me cold and numb all over.

  The principal spoke. “In that case, (unmentionable name), you leave us no choice. You’re a bright girl, and we’ve bent over backwards to give you every advantage, but you’re choosing instead to waste your talents. You are unable or unwilling to clear your name. I’m sorry to have to put the burden of your misbehavior back on your mother, but you have forced us to do this.”

  He stood up, as if he were about to issue a royal decree.

  “This school no longer has a place for you. Consider yourself expelled.”

  Expelled! “You can’t expel me,” I shouted, “because I quit!”

  I turned and left the room. I tried to slam the door, but it had one of those slow-closing things on it. It’s impossible to slam doors like that.

  I moved through the office so fast, I knocked piles of papers off the desk and slammed into a teacher who was unscrewing the lid of a jar of green paint. The paint splattered all over the teacher’s sweater. Unfortunately, I was too angry to enjoy it.

  My anger gave me power. My rage made me giddy. I was glad they had expelled me! I’d never have to go back there again!

  I got my stuff out of my locker — all that I wanted of it, anyway — crammed the padlock into my back pocket and gave the locker door a good, hard slam. You can slam locker doors, and I slammed mine two or three more times — not out of temper, but just because I felt like it.

  A teacher stuck her head out the classroom door and said something stern, but I didn’t care. I laughed and laughed my way out of the school.

  Then Tammy caught up with me, and I stopped laughing.

  “I can’t believe you’re acting like this,” she said. “Now, on top of everything else that I have to deal with, I’ve got to find another school for you. Plus, I have to pay for the windows you broke. How am I going to do that?”

  I stopped walking. “Mom, you know I didn’t break those windows!”

  “I don’t know that, Khyber. You lied to me about where you were and what you were doing last night, telling me you were with some imaginary friend, which you really should have outgrown a long time ago. You come home covered in mud, and you disobeyed me by being out in the first place. No, I certainly do not know that you didn’t break those windows.”

  It felt like I was walking with a stranger, with someone who didn’t know me.

  It was a very lonely, very sad feeling.

  The gutters along the edge of the sidewalk were filled with muddy rainwater. Bits of garbage floated by.

  “You are unable or unwilling to clear your name,” the principal had said.

  A clear name. I pictured a cold mountain stream, running fast, but clear enough to see straight through to the pebbles at the bottom.

  My name is like the water in the gutter, I thought. I have to get it like the mountain stream. I have to clear my name.

  Until I did, my name was Mud.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TAKING LEAVE

  Mom and I didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the day.

  I stayed out of her way, on my bunk, but I didn’t feel like reading and I didn’t feel like looking at my atlases.

  After supper, Juba came over. She and Mom talked in the kitchen while I got the twins ready for bed. Their stuff was off the shelves and out of their drawers again, but the boxes weren’t around. Tammy must have stashed them in her room. I did not go in there to check.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to Mom that would make things better.

  When my brothers were in their pajamas, I went to bed. I hurt in a lot of places, and I had big, purple bruises all over my body.

  I felt lost and alone, and I cried until I fell asleep.

  Tammy didn’t come to my alcove to kiss me goodnight.

  I woke up a few hours later.

  The apartment was quiet. I looked out the window at the life on the street, and wondered what was going to happen the next day.

  Tammy would probably make me stick with her all the time, in case I got a sudden urge to rush off and break some more windows. She’d still be mad at me, of course. She’d still think I broke the school windows. She’d still think she couldn’t trust me.

  She might not talk to me all day. She might be so angry and disappointed, she wouldn’t have anything to say to me.

  I felt completely and utterly alone.

  I could go into her room, wake her up, and confess that I had been fighting.
She’d punish me for fighting, but I could handle punishment.

  I was halfway down my ladder when I remembered that Mom didn’t believe that X was a real person. If she didn’t believe that, she wouldn’t believe that I was fighting skinheads to defend her.

  If only I could provide her with proof, but what proof did I have? I couldn’t very well go up to the skinheads and say, “Excuse me, you ugly creatures, would you mind very much telling my mother that you were beating me up last night when I was supposed to be breaking windows?”

  Sure.

  I crawled back into bed.

  X was my only hope. If I could tell X what had happened, she might agree to speak to my mom. At least then I could prove to Mom that X wasn’t some “imaginary friend.”

  But X might not be back in the neighborhood for days — longer, maybe, since she was probably afraid she’d get beaten up again.

  I sat up on my elbows. There was only one way out of this. I’d have to go out and find X, and bring her back here. She’d be nervous, at first, at meeting Mom, but I thought she’d trust me enough to believe me when I told her that Mom was not a member of the secret police.

  Tammy would never let me go off on my own, and once I started another school, I’d be trapped. My only choice was to go tonight. With a bit of luck, I’d bring X home in time for breakfast.

  I waited awhile longer, to make sure Tammy was sound asleep so she wouldn’t hear me. I planned everything out in my head, so that I’d know just what to do when I got down from my bunk.

  When I had it all planned out, I crept down, got dressed and went into the kitchen. I made a couple of peanut butter and corn syrup sandwiches, cringing with every sound. Food might help persuade X to come back with me.

  I left Mom a note on the kitchen table. It read, “Gone to find X.” I signed it, “Love, Khyber.”

  I put my key around my neck, tucked it under my sweater and grabbed my jacket.