Beyond Blonde

by Teresa Toten

  “So vat is it, buboola?” Auntie Eva was fussing with coffeecake, bread, schnitzel, kielbasa, sausages, hard-boiled eggs, and pickles. Everything you need for a quick snack. Instead of going home after spending the night at Madison’s, I asked a mildly mortified Kit to drop me off at Auntie Eva’s. I had to reassure her the whole way that the previous night’s damage was limited, thanks to the ever-so-smug David. We did not revisit her tampon-mopping or table-hopping.

  Mama had showings all day, and I just didn’t want to trip around an empty condo. So, here I was at crazy Eva’s. She was whipping out Royal Crown Derby teacups and Waterford crystal shot glasses. “Auntie Eva, it’s just me. This is so not necessary.”

  “Shhht, shhht!” she said, brandishing a knife. “Iz not every day my baby buboola comes to see her Auntie Eva. It iz an occasion. Da?” She resumed kielbasa cutting. “Vy do you tink I put up vit your koo-koo Mama and Papa? It is only for you, because you are dat fantastik and beautiful!”

  I defy anybody not to melt in the face of that much enthusiastic adoration.

  “I love you too, Auntie Eva.”

  Uh-oh. Mistake. She thundered over at lightning speed, carving knife in hand, and smother-hugged me. An Auntie special where your face is shoved into voluminous bits of fabric, 72-Hour Wonderbra, and Auntie mass.

  Just before I was about to pass out, she returned to the kielbasa. “So vhy are you greasing me vit your present?”

  I thought about it … and then let it go. I shrugged and bit my lip. Then, “You mean, gracing me with your presence?” I couldn’t help myself.

  “Zat is vat I said.” But her heart wasn’t in it. She raised an eyebrow and sat across from me. “Are you maybe feeling a depressing coming on after all? Vas ve vrong in tinking you are not sensitive enough for a depressing?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “What does a depression feel like?”

  “If you got to ask,” she smiled, “you don’t got von. You are not maybe drinking too much? I know you crazy kids …”

  “No, Auntie Eva, I drink my shot of brandy with you guys and that’s pretty much it.” We picked up our glasses, clinked to a hearty “Živili!”

  To life.

  But I was still feeling pretty lifeless, all in all.

  She eyed me. “Have some kielbasa, eat. Iz not good for your breasts if you get too skinny.”

  “Is it made with pork?”

  “Pa sure,” she said proudly. “I got it from za Ukrainian butcher.”

  “Sorry, Auntie Eva, I can’t eat pork. It’s against one of my religions.”

  “But za Hindu peoples eat pork. I asked to za Indian lady next door. Cows are a problem, but not za pig.”

  Hindu? How did she get Hindu? “No, Auntie Eva, I’m a Buddhist Jew.” But then again, Hindu might be fun. I made a note to myself to look it up as soon as I got back home.

  “Oh.” She looked confused. “So za Buddhist part cancels za Jewish part, no?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Buddhists are vegetarian.” Auntie Eva clutched her chest. I might as well have said heroin addict. “Although it may not be a totally strict thing.” She sat down again. “And I’m going to be this reform kind of Jewish, but even they maybe have a pork thing, you see. And of course I’m a little bit Catholic too.”

  “Of course.” She nodded. “I vill remember for fish on Fridays.”

  I’m not an idiot. I know I sounded like an idiot. Thing is, she didn’t treat me like one when she could have, maybe should have. Instead Auntie Eva did her level best to keep my religions straight and not step on my spiritual toes.

  “Zer vas for sure lotsa God vit za drunks, da?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s where I got the idea.”

  She hustled right back to the kitchen and came back wielding more meat. “Beef salami!” She looked triumphant. “It vas a good place, da?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I didn’t feel weird there at all.”

  “Yoy!” Massive chest clutching. “You are feeling veird vit your Auntie Eva?”

  “No, Auntie Eva.” I was smother-hugged again. “How could anyone feel weird with you?” I mumbled into her chest. She let go and examined me like she was counting freckles. “Iz not your fault, Sophie, za drinking, za prison, za separation.”

  “Still, it’s a hell of a list when you start thinking about it.” I downed my brandy and went for the beef salami.

  Auntie Eva grabbed both of my arms. “I love zem boat.” She looked to the ceiling. “Even sometimes your Papa. But zey are boat crazy peoples. Vat zey do iz because of Magda and Slavko not because of you. Iz not your fault, understand?”

  “I know.” I nodded. I knew I didn’t make the world go around, make parents drink or break up, whatever. I knew that. But I also knew that there had to have been something I should have done, should be doing right now even, but didn’t know what or how. “I better get back now. Mama will be home.” Auntie Eva eyed me, hard. She wasn’t buying it. I saw it play out underneath her makeup.

  “Okay,” she sighed. She was going to let it pass. After one more smother hug for the road, I was off. “Even zo it’s for sure zer stupid fault,” she called from the doorway, “you must cut some slacks for zem.”

  “You mean, cut them some slack!” I yelled from the sidewalk.

  “Zat is vat I said!” she yelled back.

  She did that one on purpose. I was still smiling when I got home.

  Mama whipped open the door as I was rooting around for my key. I braced myself for the full-frontal assault. How was the party? Was there drinking? Were there drugs? What did I do? How was it at Madison’s? When was I going to do my homework? What tests did I have this week? Did I have morning or afternoon practice? And on and on.

  Instead she said, “Good, let’s go!”

  “Huh? Where?”

  “To da Alcoholics’ Club!” She glanced at her watch.

  “What?”

  “Remember, dey have da open meetings at 4 P.M.? Let’s go! You vant to? Ve vill go instantly, right avay.”

  Auntie Eva must have called as soon as she shut the door. And said what? I wondered. “Sure.” I nodded.

  “Good!” She ran back into her bedroom. I plopped onto the sofa. It was 3:35, Mama’s “instant” departures were usually hobbled by finding the right pair of shoes, which meant a change of skirts, which necessitated a different handbag, which meant a slow transfer of all items from one bag to the other, which meant a check to see whether the lipstick was still suitable, which of course, it never was so.…

  “Ready?”

  Three forty-one, surely a new Mama record. She grabbed some business cards.

  “Mama, not at an AA meeting!”

  “I vont push,” she promised. “But alcoholics need someplace to live, too.”

  I tossed my overnight bag into my room and joined her.

  I felt all bubbly the whole way over in the car. Mama sang “Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley” from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland. She’s been turning to movie musicals a lot lately, and Judy Garland in particular. Judy was Mama’s girl when she was extra fried.

  Some of the men were outside smoking, like the last time. I guess the guys in the suits and pressed pants were inside. Some of the outside guys were rough and unshaven, some were missing teeth, some were missing showers. All of them smiled at us, at me.

  “Hi, welcome back.”

  “Hey, good to see you.”

  “Welcome.”

  They missed me! I lit up and calmed down at the same time. As we made our way up the aisle, Mama whispered, “Papa and I are going out on za date on Friday.”

  I made my way into the row. “You can’t date. You’re married. Married people don’t date.”

  People around us smiled, welcomed, smiled some more.

  “I read about it in za Good Housekeeping magazine,” she sniffed. “A date night brings back za romance and completely, totally, for sure, revitalizes za marriage.”

 
; Right. Only if Papa had read the same article. Otherwise, I was pretty sure that he’d think that he was just going out for spaghetti.

  “Good evening and welcome. My name is Jake and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi Jake,” we all said. I wondered why Peter, our MC from last time, wasn’t up there. I saw him in the third row. Maybe it was a rotating deal. I looked around the room, reread all the Twelve Steps, and unwound a bit. The basement had worked its magic again. I was about to tell Mama when I noticed that she wasn’t really there. Mama wasn’t listening to Jake or anyone because she was so full of my father. I could tell. I knew all the signs. An almost smile, laughing eyes. She was with him. Papa might as well be sitting beside her. Mama was hearing his music, his poetry.

  We went on to the Serenity Prayer. I knew it off by heart now. I had taken to praying it in front of my Buddhist-Jewish-Catholic altar every day, well almost every day. Despite that, it was like I hadn’t heard the words until this minute. Mama and I stood up.

  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.”

  She didn’t even pretend to mouth the words. As soon as we sat down again, Mama grabbed my knee and whispered, “He is for sure finished vit za drinking.” An elderly gentleman in front of her turned around and smiled a smile that could crack your heart.

  We smiled back.

  “And, after ve have some revitalizing dates,” her nails dug deeper into my knee, “Papa vill move back to da home right avay. Home.”

  Silent sirens fired in and around me here in this most welcoming and protected of places. Who was she trying to convince? My mother was the most powerful person on earth. She brought out the sun every single day. She moved us seven times by herself to protect me. Made the trip to the Kingston Penitentiary by herself for years. Commanded the all-powerful Aunties. Worked two jobs, scraped and scrambled until she bought us a place to live in a “good” neighbourhood. Mama could do anything … except maybe be without Papa.

  Jake was introducing the speaker for tonight.

  It was hard to breathe.

  “I promise,” she mouthed.

  That word. God, I hated that word. A promise was a low-down lying thing. It was a movie star dressed in sequins and dirty underwear. Mama of all people should know that. Papa promised her as much as he promised me. So, here in this sacred place, full of God and drunks, it came to me clearly. I couldn’t trust her. Mama was not infallible. Mama was just my mother. And even here in this sacred place, that little piece of clarity left me shivering.

  We played Oakwood High our second game out. I don’t know what those parents do to their kids out there at St. Clair Avenue and Dufferin Street, but they’re behemoths, every single one of them, the players, the fans, everybody. A behemoth is a big Biblical-type beast. My spiritual quest was doing wonders for my vocabulary. I had to look up every other word in the religions encyclopedia. Anyway, Oakwood’s senior team, hell, even their junior team, didn’t have a girl on it that didn’t clock in at seven feet, 250 pounds, and was fast. I lit two candles on my altar this morning and prayed to everybody on there. Oakwood scared the crap out of us. Our entire team, including subs, didn’t add up to 250 pounds.

  Oakwood won city champs last year when me and the Blondes should technically still have been on Northern’s junior team. They used us for kindling on their march toward the finals. Okay, so maybe all the teams did that, but Oakwood injected an element of sadism into the march. For over a month now, David was on our butts, drilling harder, demanding greater speed, increasing shot percentage, and, this last week in particular, asking us to play dirtier. He calls it “combating, negating, and isolating” questionable plays. Word is that his father, an American, was a former Navy SEAL, which must have had something to do with our workouts. I hate to admit it, but we were better. We were also still three thousand pounds too light, and all the suicides in the world weren’t going to change that.

  As we warmed up, we tried to ignore them warming up. It didn’t work. Just the sound of heavy feet pounding the floor as they sunk in all their practice shots was unnerving. David threw me a ball and was in front of me, guarding, in a split second. “Suck it up and shake them off, Sophie,” he hissed. “Are you the captain, or do you want to fetch towels and oranges?”

  I hated his guts and each one of his internal organs, kidneys, spleen … he was right.

  Every time I peeked over at them lumbering through their drills, the power and snap of their passes, their sheer size, a little more of my mojo leaked out. Okay. No more. I made a quick and tiny sign of the cross, hoping that Buddha and Moses and everybody else who was holy would be okay with it, and then I deked by him and made my shot.

  “I am the captain,” I turned to him, “sir.”

  He shot me another ball. “Yes, you are, Sophie.”

  Would it kill him to smile?

  “Yoohoo, yoohoo, Sophie!”

  I knew they were coming and still it was a shock. I think I go into hard-core denial until I’m faced with incontrovertible proof. In this case it was Mama, waving a white lace hanky at me. “Hallo, darrrling!” The Blondes waved back, knowing full well that that just encourages them. Auntie Eva, Auntie Radmila, and Auntie Luba all fished around their handbags until they found their white lace hankies. This was hampered somewhat by them trying to find good seats right behind the basket, which required displacing some Oakwood fans who were even more menacing looking than their team.

  We were whistled off the floor, reviewed our strategy in the huddle, and whistled back onto the floor to start. Our fans were whooping and waving their little hankies in a furious show of support.

  Madison jogged around me before she took her place for the jump. “Soph?” She smiled. “What’s with the Kleenex?”

  “Hankies,” I corrected. “Papa made the fatal mistake of trying to explain ‘the terrible towel’ tradition that the Pittsburgh Steelers football team started last year.” She looked blank. “Thousands of Pittsburgh’s most loyal fans noisily wave team towels at every opportunity to throw off the opposition. Unfortunately, Auntie Eva thinks it’s the most brilliant strategy in the history of sports.”

  “So, we have the horrible hankies?” She trotted over to centre court.

  “Seems like it.” Since he had to work, Papa swore that he would review all the rules and finer points of the game before he dropped them off. Easier said than done. My devoted fan base had been getting it exuberantly wrong for years. Twenty minutes of rules review wasn’t going to change that.

  The ref blew the whistle, we lost the toss, and my stomach rearranged itself into a gnarled knot.

  “Boo, boo, yoohoo, boo, boo!” Dear Moses, was that their new cheer? Hankies waved with abandon. The Oakwood fans looked confused.

  They were down our throats in an instant. “Move it or lose it, captain. Let’s go!” David ran up and down the court with us on the sidelines.

  Suddenly the floor charged with electricity.

  I stole the ball and ran up with Kit. As soon as I snapped it to her, I glanced in the direction of the hankies, then farther up. Yes, top right, last row. The ball came back to me, over to Sarah, back to me, to Kit, fake, to me, double fake, and over to Madison for two points. We were on the board. The horrible hankies went wild. He was sitting now, trying to blend in. Luke could never blend in.

  I remembered that they lived nearby. They. Did anyone else see?

  Oakwood snapped a pass to their left forward. I shot through and stole it. Kit was up the court in a flash, snap to Kit, back to me, a fake to Madison, and I walked in for the layup; 4 to 2.

  “Da, da, dat’s it, baby girl!” Mama was standing and yelling now. There was no passing her off as a casual fan. “Papa said to show your balls!”

  My Oakwood forward looked puzzled for a nanosecond, just long enough for me snatch the ball again. I fired it to Madison, who leapt like a gazelle over an Oakwood player, got the shot, and w
as hit hard on the way down. Two more points, plus the free throw. We knew lining up around the key that any element of surprise we had on them was evaporating and that it was going to be ugly from here on in. I didn’t care. Luke was here and I was fearless. Kit trotted over to smack my butt when she caught me looking at the upper part of the stands.

  “Damn,” she said. “Stay with me, girl.”

  “Yay, yoohoo, yoohoo, yay, Madison, Madison, ya da ya!”

  Not surprisingly, the horrible hankies didn’t grasp the finer points of the terrible-towel tradition, like you’re not supposed to distract your own players. Madison made the shot anyway. I was elbowed just tossing the loose ball back to their guard. Okay, now it begins.…

  I threw myself at everything and Oakwood fouled me like I was a two-for-one sale. The horrible hankies had the time of their lives. And I am ashamed to say that I posed. Luke was looking. I couldn’t help myself. For every single free throw, I elongated, bounced the ball just so, pulled the ball into my chest, and then tossed it up and over, holding the follow-through just a beat or two longer than was necessary. In between bounces, I cursed the stupid dorky tunics that Northern made us wear. Oakwood had silky shorts and sleeveless jerseys. Trying to look sexy and fierce in a navy blue tunic and grey bloomers was tough, but I still posed my guts out. And it worked. I’d have to remember my posing technique in future. I made thirteen out of a possible sixteen foul point shots in the first half. Coach took me off five minutes before the half ended. I knew it was David’s idea.

  I looked up.

  Gone.

  David caught me searching. Had he seen?

  He called me over, looking like I was holding his loved ones hostage instead of winning his game for him. “Sarah needs some confidence,” he said, “some juice.” It was true, they were double-teaming her and she only had four points. “Give it to her, captain.”

  What the hell? There wasn’t a piece of me that wasn’t in pain. I looked up again. Still gone. Never mind all those amazing posing points, he wanted more? The whistle blew and I yelled, “It’s all yours, Sarah,” as I ran back on court, replacing Kathy Bicks. “Let’s crank it up!”