“Behave yourself!”
Grandma never hit me and I was stunned. But only for a moment. I grabbed the brush off the floor and hugged it to my chest. “It’s mine! It is! Grandma gave it to me when she was sick. When I combed her hair for her every day. She said I could have it when…when…when the time came.”
The truth of what she meant by that was…she knew she was dying. She knew she wasn’t going to get better.
I looked at the shepherdess on the back of the brush and cried.
“What’s going on in here?” Mabel, standing in the doorway. Hazel began her claim all over again.
“Anton gave Shirley that brush set when they got married. You know as well as I do she’d never give it to Cass. Why, it might be worth quite a lot.” She added, “Knowing Anton.” She said it with a funny smirk.
Mabel. “I know no such thing, Hazel. It’s a used brush and comb. If it means that much to Cass, then we should let her have something of Shirley’s.”
I did not understand why Mabel was being nice to me.
Hazel wasn’t done. “Well, I never! You’d like that, wouldn’t you? And her going to live with you. I’ll be checking to see whose dresser it is on every time I visit. Just you watch me.”
“Hazel May Hunter, you were always jealous that Shirley married Anton. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“Huh! I thank the good Lord every day for sparing me the likes of that sod.”
“Oh! As if he ever glanced in your direction! And as for visiting, don’t be holding your breath, Hazel!”
I looked back and forth at them both and understood. It was like watching two girls fighting in the school playground. Mabel wasn’t being nice to me – she was being mean to her sister.
I did feel smug now, as I arranged the set, some of Grandma’s hairs in the bristles. I would never pull them out. If I held the brush to my nose and sniffed deeply, I could smell Grandma. And if I closed my eyes at the same time, I could pretend she was bending down to hug me, my nose buried in her soft auburn hair.
I held up the mirror. It was a little clouded, but it was the only mirror in this room.
Red hair in a ponytail. Blue eyes. Freckles. Three teeth missing. I wondered when I might start to look as pretty as Rita.
Supper was awful. Watery potatoes and pink chicken. Nobody spoke. We three sat at the plastic-covered kitchen table, as the clock went tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock till I thought I’d scream.
All meals were awful in this house. I offered some useful suggestions, but they were ignored.
Porridge every morning for breakfast. Mabel got up at five a.m. to make it for Fred who left by six to go to work in a factory. I got the cold, lumpy leftovers, stuck on the pot’s bottom.
“Grandma let me put brown sugar on porridge. And Carnation Evaporated Milk. It tastes better.”
“Porridge tastes like porridge. You’ll eat what you’re given.”
And every morning – the dreaded ordeal. “Open up.”
“No! What is it? It smells awful.”
“Do as you’re told. Open up, or else!”
So I opened up and Mabel shoved a spoon in my mouth and I gagged and swallowed the worst thing you could imagine. Dead, rotting fish.
“It’s cod liver oil. A spoonful a day keeps the doctor away.”
“I’ll run away if I have to take this again!”
Smack! The spoon across the back of my hand.
“You are an ungrateful miss. After all we’ve done for the likes of you.”
Off to school – a new school. The horror of starting three months late and standing at the front of the room to be looked over and judged.
“This is Cass Jovanovich. She’s new here because she’s come to live with a relative. Her parents are dead, and I know you’ll all be nice to her.”
Are teachers really that dumb? I was something weird and different. It started at recess with a new version of an old skipping song.
Cassie, Cassie took an ax, gave her parents forty whacks.
For how else could a mother and a father die?
“Was it disease? My mom said I shouldn’t play with you. Maybe you’re con-tay-jus.”
Cooties. I was a favorite “it.” Cassie’s Cooties became a new game.
Mabel had no imagination and sent me off every morning with that same tinned corned beef sandwich for lunch. I think when I complained before she must have bought a thousand tins out of spite. I never ate it. Anyone else who stayed at school for lunch got a much better meal than I did. Some even got little bags of potato chips and doll-sized boxes of raisins. I decided to start stealing lunch from others. I did this by putting my hand up every day around 11:25 to go to the bathroom. Then I swiped something from someone’s cubby as I went by. Never the same cubby twice in a week. Never the whole lunch.
I had no idea I was such a good thief. I took a skipping rope one day and a pink tam with a tassel on another, just because I couldn’t believe how easy it was.
My teacher wasn’t really as stupid as I suggested. One day she followed me out into the hall – I guess I shouldn’t have “gone to the bathroom” every day at the same time – and she caught me. I had stolen Marsha’s new red mittens and was wearing them as I ate a cookie from Debbie’s lunch.
Mabel was called to the principal’s office. While I waited, Mr. Cozycabbage – no one could pronounce his real name – was nice to me. He suggested I was misbehaving because I missed my parents.
Mabel arrived. “Cass had a good Christian upbringing because of my sister. And I’ll have none of it! None of it! There’ll be no thieves in my house!” She hauled me down the hallway. I remember faces staring. There was pointing and giggling.
Then she muttered about my mother being a tramp. A tramp! I suddenly pictured Rita wearing raggedy clothes and carrying a stick with a bundle and jumping on and off railway trains.
Mabel had a ruler and she smacked my hands over and over. I was sent to my room. I didn’t mind. I could smell boiled spinach again.
Last time she cooked spinach I wouldn’t eat it. It sat there, this scoop of green-gray mush on my plate. I put a small bit on my fork, but halfway to my mouth the smell got to me and I knew I was going to throw up. I put my fork down. “I can’t eat this,” I said.
“Oh, yes you will. And you’ll sit there until you do.”
“Grandma didn’t make me eat spinach. She tried, but she gave up. Even when I said I might be able to eat it from the tin like Popeye. I don’t know how he does it. Spinach in the tin is worse.”
Mabel didn’t know much about Popeye. They had a television, but they only watched The Lawrence Welk Show. Sometimes they watched Hazel because it was about a maid called Hazel and Mabel made jokes about her sister. But no cartoons. At school, I couldn’t talk about Captain Kangaroo or Mighty Mouse with the other kids.
“I don’t care what nonsense my sister put up with. In this house, you’ll eat your spinach, and you’ll like it.”
And so I sat there until nine o’clock until I had the brilliant idea of putting the spinach into the garbage and pushing it down deep. I showed Mabel my plate – with just a little bit left for a better lie – and she said I could go to bed.
The door flew open in the morning and Mabel was there with her ruler, trying to get at me. I jumped from the bed and leaped side to side, all the while hearing the whoosh-whoosh of the ruler slicing through air.
I was now a thief and a liar.
Nothing but shame and trouble.
I had to stay in my bedroom all morning. I got out the photo of Rita and asked why she went and died on me. Twice Mabel came in without knocking and asked who I was talking to. She even went over to the closet and yanked open the door.
I said I was saying my prayers.
“Hmmmph!” She didn’t look convinced.
Chapter Eight
Mabel wanted me to stay in my room all weekend as punishment, but Lana arrived in the afternoon to take me out. She wasn’t thrilled when her aunt told her I couldn’t go.
“I came all this way, Aunt Mabel, and I don’t care what she’s done.”
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head missy, married woman or no.”
“Aw, shucks, Aunt Mable. I didn’t mean anything. Just…let her off the hook. She hasn’t had an easy life. I’ll get her back tomorrow by supper. Give you and Uncle Fred a break.” Lana was a good wheedler.
“A break for what, I’d like to know,” Mabel sniffed.
Lana dug Mabel in the ribs, playfully. “Aw jeez, Aunt Mabel. You’re not that old!”
“You’ll be keeping your nasty thoughts to yourself.”
Lana laughed. I didn’t know why. “Come on, Cass. Dick’s waiting in the car.” Then, in a stage whisper to me, “He can’t stand to set foot in this mausoleum.”
I got in the backseat of their car and felt like I’d escaped from prison. We drove down Yonge Street, and Dick honked his horn when we drove by the CHUM station, turning his transistor radio up high. Some song called “Hit the Road, Jack.” I wished I could not come back to Mabel’s no more no more no more no more, like the song said.
We went for pizza, just like Lana promised. Vesuvio’s Restaurant was in a place called the Junction, and Lana and Dick had a fight because Lana said it was the best pizza, but Dick said they didn’t serve booze. Lana won, but I don’t know what the big deal was. Dick had a silver flask in his pocket and swigged from it whenever the waiter wasn’t looking. The waiter brought a pizza to the table on a silver plate and cut it in slices, and after three weeks of Mabel’s cooking I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. We had spumoni ice cream for dessert, like they do in Italy, and I wanted to move to Italy that very moment. The waiter pronounced it Eat-ah-lee and that made sense.
The waiter called me seen-your-Rita and kissed my hand when we left. I wondered how he knew my mother’s name.
We went back to Lana and Dick’s apartment and watched Hockey Night in Canada. I saw a school yearbook on a shelf and began leafing through it.
And there she was – Rita. She was arm in arm with another girl, and when I peered closely, I saw that it was Lana.
Of course. Of course. Lana and Rita were cousins. Lana would know Rita. Of course! And they even went to the same high school. How dumb could I be?!
I turned to Lana, and she made a grab for the book, but I twisted away.
“You knew her, didn’t you? You knew my mother. You could tell me about her, couldn’t you? Couldn’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. I…I knew her.”
“Pipe down!” Dick said, and he got up to turn the volume louder.
Lana looked at the ceiling and then seemed to make her mind up about something because she nodded her head again. “Come in here.”
We sat at the kitchen table and opened the yearbook and found four pictures of Rita. In one she was wearing a tight sweater with those funny pointy bosoms. Underneath someone had written, The Original Sweater Girl!
Dick came in for another beer. He looked over our shoulders and whistled. “I’d forgotten how good she looked. Hot damn!”
“Dick!” Lana giggled. “You’re terrible!”
Dick got his beer and then pointed a finger at my mother. “Well…sure explains everything now, doesn’t it?”
“What does it explain?”
“Nothing. He’s just being…male.” Then Lana turned the pages and I saw a picture of my mom on the swim team, standing in a row of girls in front of a swimming pool.
“Where’s that?”
“At our school. Humberside. We had an indoor pool. Rita was a good swimmer.”
I studied the swim team. “How come her chest isn’t pointy like in the other photo?”
Lana laughed. “Well come on. You don’t wear a brassiere under a bathing suit.”
She saw the confused look on my face. “In this photo,” – and she stabbed at the original sweater girl – “Rita was wearing the new brassiere. Pointy tips. Like Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe.”
“Were they on the swim team?”
“They’re movie stars, Dumbo!” She flipped to another page and I saw a photo of my mother at the prom. Junior princess! My mother was junior princess!
“Wow! Grandma said she was popular!”
Lana stared at the photo, and I think she was crying. “Yep. Junior princess in ninth grade.”
“How did she die?” I whispered.
“Aunt Shirley didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head. “She said when I was older.”
Lana breathed out a sigh and it seemed to me she was relieved. “Well, then, that’s what we’ll do. I’ll tell you when you’re older.” She jumped up. “Want some ice cream?”
I almost reminded her we’d just had ice cream at Vesuvio’s but didn’t bother. Not my fault if adults give me seconds of dessert. And besides, Mabel’s idea of dessert was stale pound cake from the week-old section of the Dominion store bakery. Ugh.
It was boring vanilla, but Lana let me put BeeHive corn syrup on it.
“Christmas is coming soon. Ever go to the Santa Claus Parade?”
“Once. With Grandma.”
“Well…want to go again? With me? Rita and I used to go. Even when we were older and didn’t believe – ”
“Didn’t believe what?”
“Oh, um, didn’t believe…that we should go. Too old. Little kids couldn’t see around us.”
“The time Grandma took me we got up early, but I couldn’t see anything around dads with kids on their shoulders.”
“We’ll go. I promise. Rita would like that. Me taking you.”
Then it was time for bed and Lana let me sleep on the sofa and she gave me one of her own nightgowns because I was so excited to leave Mabel’s I forgot mine. It was pale pink and lacy and I thought about trying to steal it and take it home.
Home.
I can’t believe I ever thought of the hot dog with mustard as home.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t go to the Santa Claus Parade.
This is what happened.
“What are you writing?” Mabel asked.
“My list for Santa. How do you spell toboggan?”
“I don’t care what nonsense my sister put into your head in her house. In this house, we’re God-fearing folks.”
“Huh?”
She put her hands on her hips. “There is no such thing as Santa. It’s time you learned what’s what. And don’t be thinking there’ll be any gifts, either. It is a big enough gift having you here in our home.”
No Santa?
“But what about my stocking? Grandma made it for me. We always hang it over the fireplace.”
Fred piped up then, sticking his head around his paper. “No nails in the mantle.”
“You’re lying. You just don’t want to buy any presents. Of course there is a Santa!”
Fred slammed his paper on the arm of the chair. Mabel went white. “I will not be called a liar. And in my own house! You are an ungrateful brat and…”
She was coming toward me, and I ran to my room.
I had the long, lonely evening to think it all through. Santa getting around the world in one night. Squeezing down everyone’s chimney, even if the fire was lit. Santa carrying gifts for every kid in the world. Santa getting me everything I wanted. And then…when I found the Chatty Cathy doll I’d begged for in a box under Grandma’s bed. It was under the tree Christmas morning, but until now…
Kids are dumb.
When Lana came the next week to take me to the parade, I refused to go. I told her why, and I heard her yell at Mabel. I couldn’t catch it all, but I did hear, “Why are you always so mean?
Huh? Why do you think Liz left home? Did you ever think about that? Huh?” A plate dropped and then there was more yelling and then Lana barged into my room.
“Come on. Forget the parade. Let’s get out of here.”
She asked me where I’d like to go and I said High Park. We bought carrots and I fed the deer like I used to. It started to snow and we ran across Bloor Street and ordered cola floats at a soda shop with stools that twirled.
“Listen. I know it’s rough for you right now, kiddo. But don’t worry. Christmas won’t be so bad. I have a big secret. I could tell you, but…”
Slurp. “What? I won’t tell. Promise.” Slurp.
“Well…I guess if you’re big enough to know about Santa Claus you’re big enough to keep a secret. Right?”
Slurp. Nod.
“You can’t tell Mabel and Fred.” She leaned in and whispered as if Mabel and Fred were lurking nearby.
“Liz is coming home for Christmas. She hasn’t told her parents. She wrote me a letter.”
I didn’t know anything about Liz. I knew there was a room in Mabel’s house called her room. But it was always locked. Once I saw Mabel come out of it with sheets in her arms and although she pulled the door behind her, it didn’t quite catch. When I heard the wringer going in the basement, I tiptoed in. There were photographs of a girl and teddy bears and dolls on the bed and school pennants hung on walls and cheerleader pom-poms hanging from the curtain rod. The room was pink and lavender and white lace, and I was bitterly jealous that I didn’t have this room instead of the hot dog.
I heard Mabel plodding up the basement stairs and took off. I did not want to add snoop to thief and liar.
“Where is she? Why doesn’t she live at home? Why is it a secret she’s coming?” I demanded.
Lana looked the same as when I asked her about Rita. She sighed and said, “Well, let’s see. Liz wanted a change. And a friend was going to California, so she hitched a ride. She quit her job at the bank and left her guy.”
“So why’s it a secret now?”
“Oh…. She isn’t sure how they’ll take it, so…she’s doing a Christmas surprise. ’Tis the season and all that. Even Mabel and Fred should be jolly and loosen up a bit.”
Connecting Dots Page 3
