Born Ugly

by Beth Goobie

  “Dragged yourself out of your drunken stupor, eh?” she called as she caught sight of Shir coming down the hall. “How many did you slosh last night, Shir—six? Or did you manage to work your way through an entire twelve-pack?”

  “I’m all right,” mumbled Shir, realizing her mother’s tone wasn’t angry—just needling, digging in with her voice. Ducking her head, she edged past the end of the couch. “I wasn’t drinking, just hanging around. Why d’you always think I’m out drinking?”

  “Because you are always out drinking,” snapped her mother. “Just like your father—drunk as a stone. The first time I saw your face, a minute after you were born, I knew you’d grow up to be just like him.”

  A savage pounding started up in Shir’s head. Pot calling the kettle black, she thought, but all she said was, “I told you, I’m all right.” Receiving no reply, she chanced a glance at the couch and saw her mother staring at the TV, her eyes glazed the way they got when she ditched whatever was going on around her and went off someplace in her head. Janice Rutz spent a lot of time in her head, which at the moment was just fine with Shir. Relieved, she continued into the kitchen and got out the Cheerios and the milk, then set herself up at the table, squirreled in behind it, her back to the wall. With no one there to watch, she could go to town on the special effects. Maple syrup, corn syrup, chocolate syrup, and a big dollop of honey—the more the merrier. Squeezing happily, Shir watched the various liquids flow out of their containers into her cereal bowl, then added several tablespoons of brown sugar for good measure.

  “If Mom catches you at that, your head’s going straight into the TV,” said a voice, and Shir looked up to see her sister walk into the kitchen. Hair curled, her makeup impeccable, even Stella’s jeans were ironed. Quickly, Shir refocused on her cereal bowl.

  “So?” she mumbled. “I could probably preach a better sermon than that guy she’s watching.”

  Leaned against the counter, Stella gave a hissing laugh. “About what?” she demanded. “How to drink the entire liquor store and still come home standing?”

  Shir shrugged. “I always come home standing,” she said.

  “Barely,” said Stella, sliding some bread into the toaster. “You were banging into the walls coming down the hall last night. Lucky Mom was asleep.”

  Again Shir shrugged. “My lucky night,” she muttered.

  A long silence followed. Ignoring it, Shir concentrated on the gooey mess in front of her. It was one of her better concoctions, the accumulated mass of syrup outweighing the Cheerios and milk combined. Besides, if she looked up now, she knew what she would see—Stella’s dark doe-like eyes, boring into her skull with utter disbelief. One year younger, Stella spent a lot of time staring at Shir whenever they were alone in a room together. It was as if she still couldn’t believe, even after fifteen years, that they were genetically linked.

  Not such a surprise, really, thought Shir, watching a thick gob of syrup slide off her spoon. Stella’s dad had been one of a long list of guys who had floated into Janice Rutz’s life during one of the many periods Shir’s dad had floated out of it. With long dark hair, chestnut brown eyes, what could be considered a fairly normal nose, and a wide smiling mouth, Stella’s face verged on pretty. At least, a lot of guys seemed to think so.

  After Stella had been born, Janice Rutz had gotten a hysterectomy. As far as Shir was concerned, it had been one of her mother’s better ideas.

  “Would you mind not staring so hard?” she asked, keeping her gaze fixed on her cereal. “Your eyes are, like, doing major brain surgery on my head.”

  “No prob,” Stella said casually. Pulling her bread out of the toaster, she smeared it with cinnamon spread. The sound of brisk munching followed. Out in the living room, a loud warbling erupted as a church choir took over the TV screen with “Amazing Grace.” Shir rolled her eyes. The song never seemed to wear out—for anyone, that is, but her.

  “So, did he kiss you?” asked Stella.

  The question, coming out of the blue like that, caused an immediate choke-up of Cheerios in Shir’s throat. “Kiss me?” she gulped. Guardedly, she shot a glance at her sister. “Did who kiss me?” she asked in a half-whisper.

  “Wade Sullivan,” said Stella, flashing a quick, bright smile—quick and bright as the edge of a razor blade. “That’s where you were last night, wasn’t it—at his party?”

  A heaviness settled over Shir, and she stared at the bloated Cheerios floating in her cereal bowl. “I wasn’t at his party,” she said finally. “And anyway, how did you know I was at a party?”

  “Just did,” said Stella, the smile in her voice speaking louder than her words. Shir didn’t have to look up to feel the smugness written all over her sister’s goddam pretty face.

  “Just did how?” she asked hoarsely.

  “I don’t think you really want to know,” Stella singsonged softly. “But I’ll tell you anyway. Everyone knew. Well, maybe not exactly everyone. Maybe only half the school. You know, the … Well, you know.”

  Shoulders slumped, Shir sat turning her spoon over and over, watching the curves catch and throw light. Stella didn’t have to come out and say it in so many words, it was obvious who she meant—the popular kids, the ones that mattered. Altogether, they comprised maybe ten percent of Collier High’s student population, and Stella was definitely on their outer fringes. She was exaggerating, clearly; still, if she had known about Wade’s plan in advance, others had, too—probably quite a few.

  “So, if you knew,” mumbled Shir, the realization pouring through her, “why didn’t you warn me? So I didn’t waste my time going to that fucking party.”

  Another brisk chewing episode ensued, followed by a little Stella-type giggle. Little Stella-type giggles made Shir want to grind eggshells with her teeth.

  “Thought you might enjoy the experience,” her sister said finally. “It was your first kiss, right?”

  Shir’s hands were shaking. In her mind’s eye, she kept seeing it—a skyscraper-sized fist zooming across the kitchen and pulverizing Stella into a tiny, giggling pile of dust. Setting down her spoon, Shir placed both hands carefully in her lap.

  “Do you have swimming practice at one?” she asked, fighting the wobble in her voice.

  “Um … yeah,” said Stella, as if this was the dumbest question she had ever been asked.

  “Well,” said Shir, keeping her eyes fixed on the table. “I would suggest you get your ass out of this kitchen and go put on your swimsuit or something. Because if you stand there for, like, five seconds more, I am going to do massive physical damage to you.”

  “Oh, really?” said Stella, her voice rising.

  Lifting her eyes, Shir looked directly at her sister. “Yeah, really,” she said quietly, her voice even, but her meaning crystal. Fuck Mom sitting in the next room, she thought grimly, and fuck the YWCA self-defense course. With the way Shir was feeling right now, Stella was five seconds away from termination. And one warning was all she was going to get.

  Stella got the drift. Dark, doe-like eyes widening, she pushed herself away from the counter. “Well,” she muttered vaguely, glancing around herself as if consulting with the air. “I guess it is getting late.”

  Without another word, she left the kitchen. Seconds later, Shir heard the careful click of the lock sliding into place on her sister’s bedroom door. Alone in the kitchen, she stared glumly at the mush in her cereal bowl. Truth be told, the stuff looked like a before and an after shot that had been merged together. Just looking at it, you couldn’t tell if this was food that was still supposed to be eaten, or glop that had already been digested and then regurgitated.

  Sort of like my life, Shir thought dully. Most days, it felt as if she was living something that someone else had swallowed, then chucked back up in disgust.

  Out in the living room, the TV preacher was calling for the offering and reminding the congregation that God had commanded them to tithe a full ten percent. Anything over that was extra, something that woul
d get them bonus points with the divine. Getting up from the table, Shir carried her bowl to the sink and dumped the contents. Then she turned on the tap and stood watching the clean water sluice the murky guck down the drain. It was all gone now—her conversation with Stella, last night’s party, and Wade Sullivan’s ugly comments.

  The question was, did that leave anything worth living for? A sudden stinging blurred Shir’s eyes. Turning from the sink, she left the kitchen and headed to her room.

  Two

  Ugly, she was ugly, thought Shir. No question about it. Glumly, she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Born ugly in a way that was never going to change. No Cinderella slipper here, no Sleeping Beauty to wake with a kiss, even for a toonie. No, hers was the kind of face that fairy tales reserved for dwarfs and goblins, a face without a single redeeming feature. Even the eyes were ugly—small, squinty, and of a queer, pale blue that never seemed to hold any expression. It was almost as if they were made of glass.

  Maybe the eyebrows were okay, she thought, running a fingertip over the right one. Not too bushy and not too thin, they covered the area they were supposed to in your basic parallel arches. And her body was normal, neither fat nor rail-thin. But after that, it was all downhill. The worst aspect of her appearance was obviously her nose. It wasn’t just that it was so enormous the rest of her had no choice but to skulk along in its shadow, there was also the size of her nostrils to consider. They were huge, cavernous. In grade five, it had been the favorite lunch-hour pastime to stick various objects inside them. Sometimes Shir had been the one to stick in something; sometimes a group of boys had held her down and done it. Stones, shoelaces, dill pickles—the inspiration had been endless. One boy had even brought his pet guppies to school and inserted them live.

  They had died in her nose. Occasionally Shir still woke in the middle of the night, sweat pouring off her as she relived the sensation of those desperately wriggling guppies. It had been her choice; she had agreed in advance to having them stuck in there, but not to being held down or having her nose plugged after the guppies had been shoved in. Even now, years later, she could feel the exact moment the guppies’ little fishy souls had left their bodies—two brilliant bursts of energy that had swum straight up her nose and into her brain. They were still there, those guppy souls, swimming the inside of her head. Telling her things: Don’t believe anything you hear. There’s an enemy lurking behind every smile. Never let yourself get so small, they can do to you what they did to us.

  The thing about those guppies was that they had been pretty, Shir thought bleakly. Silvery fins, quick twisting bodies. Lines of light flashing in their fishbowl water. And still, hands had reached for them and squished out their tiny guppy breaths.

  Quickly, she turned from the mirror. Shakes, she was getting the shakes. Well, it served her right—getting herself worked up over a couple of dumb guppies that had died five years ago. God, was she dumb, thought Shir. Drunk as a stone, like Mom said. Gently, she thunked her drunk stone forehead against the bathroom wall. Knock some sense into herself, yeah—bang, bang, bang. There, that was better. Now the shakes were gone and she could no longer remember what she had been thinking about. Which was fine with her, because as far as she could tell, it hadn’t been too pleasant.

  A long sigh shuddered through her. Glancing at her watch, Shir saw it was 1:54. The day was yet young; the floor had stopped its bleary wobble; and her headache was on the mend. What should she do? she wondered. Homework? Nah, homework was a disease. Reaching for the window-latch, she opened it, stuck out her head, and breathed deeply. That’s better, she thought, fingering a nearby poplar branch. Already the first buds were beginning to show, the last of the snow long gone.

  “Shirley,” called a voice from down the hall, sharp and with a bit of an edge.

  Mom, thought Shir, stiffening slightly. “Yeah?” she called back, keeping her voice neutral, in the nothing zone.

  “The phone’s for you,” continued her mother, her tone still edgy, as if put out about it. “It’s Mr. Anderson. He wants you to come in and do some deliveries.”

  Instantly, Shir straightened. Slamming the window shut, she erupted out of the bathroom and took the entire length of the hall in one expert slide. “Hello, Mr. Anderson!” she sang into the phone, as she grabbed it from her mother’s outstretched hand. Mr. Anderson ran Bill’s Grocer, a neighborhood corner store over on 12th Street. Six months ago, he had hired Shir part-time to stock shelves and do deliveries. Sunday-afternoon deliveries came about once a month, and they usually meant good tips.

  “Hi, Shirley,” said Mr. Anderson, his voice booming into her ear, slightly nasal because of the phone. “Can you make it here by three? I’ve got four deliveries for you.”

  “Sure thing, sir,” Shir said immediately. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “No need to rush,” said Mr. Anderson, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “Three o’clock is fine.”

  “Great, sir,” said Shir. “I’ll be there right away, sir.” Hanging up the phone, she headed for the door.

  “Shirley Rutz, you put on a clean sweatshirt before going out,” called her mother from the couch. “And brush your goddam hair, for Chrissake!”

  Briefly, Shir considered ignoring the order, then remembered she hadn’t brushed her hair since yesterday afternoon. “Gotcha!” she called, snapping a military salute as she passed the couch, then taking off in another long slide down the hall. A few swipes with her hairbrush, a clean Toronto Maple Leafs sweatshirt, and two Tylenol capsules to take care of the tail end of her headache, and she was once again making tracks for the door.

  “Take your jacket!” hollered Mom, her butt still glued to the couch and her eyes fixed on the TV. “And remember to be respectful. None of that filthy mouth you show around here.”

  With a quick slam of the door, Shir cut off her mother mid-sentence. No sense in listening to that any longer than necessary, she told herself. Pulling on her jacket, she ran down the apartment block’s back stairwell two steps at a time, then took the bottom five in one fell swoop. A few seconds to allow her legs to absorb the shock upon landing and she was out the door, unlocking the communal storage shed behind the building and dragging out her bike. “The Black Stallion” was what she called it, just a cheap Dunlop, and blue to boot, but who cared—nobody knew its soul name but her. Swinging a leg over the seat, she took off down the alley, and then it was just her and the Black, riding out the long sheer gusts of an early April wind.

  Twelfth Street was three blocks south, and Bill’s Grocer five blocks east. Zooming along a series of back alleys, Shir called out to every barking dog, taunting as the animals leapt furiously against fences, their teeth snapping her tailwind. Too quick coming out onto 14th Street, she had to swerve to miss a car, then took off again, ignoring the driver’s shouts. Good thing Mr. Anderson couldn’t see her now, she thought with a grin, or he would think twice about letting her drive the delivery van. Before hiring her, he had taken her for a test drive, watching as she had maneuvered corners and changed lanes. She had been sweating but she had done okay, at least, well enough to be hired. Fortunately, her mother had insisted Shir get her license as soon as she turned sixteen, mostly so she could send Shir out for groceries on weekends when she was too plastered to do anything but lie splayed on the couch and grunt.

  The thing Shir hadn’t been able to figure out yet was why Mr. Anderson had even thought of hiring her. After all, he had plenty of nephews, and there were always lots of neighborhood kids hanging around the store. But one day last September, when she had come in for a pop, he had looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time, and asked how old she was. Then he had asked if she wanted a job. “You bet!” she had said right off, then quickly added, “sir.” Every week since, she had come into work expecting the situation to have somehow backfired and Mr. Anderson to sorrowfully tell her the whole thing had been a mistake; he had never intended to actually hire her, and she now had to pay ba
ck all the wages she had earned. But instead, here she was, six months later, still showing up three days a week, after school and on weekends, and walking out at the end of a shift with money in her pocket. Today’s four deliveries could take as long as two hours if Mr. Anderson had her pack the boxes first. With tips, she should make enough to keep herself in beer for most of the week.

  A swing out of the alley brought her onto 12th Street, with a view of Bill’s Grocer at the next corner. As she caught sight of it, Shir slowed her pace, bringing the Black down to a gentle canter. No matter what her mother said, Shir thought proudly, she knew how to handle herself at work. She was a professional, always speaking respectfully to customers and never giving any back talk. Coasting into the curb, she dismounted and locked the Black to a stop sign, then headed into the store. As she entered, she was hit with the usual combination of aromas—lemons and apples, celery and Spic’n Span. To her left, a few customers were lined up at a till; Cathy, Mr. Anderson’s niece, gave her a quick wave from the cash register. Ducking her head, Shir waved back. Bill’s Grocer was a good place to work, she thought fiercely. Yeah, it was a friendly place—there must be hundreds of kids in this city who would like to work here—but Mr. Anderson had picked her; out of them all, he had chosen dog-faced, shit-ugly Shirley Jane Rutz.

  With a sigh, Shir stooped to pick up an orange that had fallen off a nearby stack, and set it on top of the pile. Then she walked to the back of the store, pushed open the door marked Employees Only, and entered the main storage area. Shelves packed with boxes lined the walls, and three meters to her right was Mr. Anderson, standing with his back to her while he spoke into his cell phone. Coming to a halt, Shir waited quietly. Her boss was talking in a low voice, pacing back and forth, and it was a minute before he saw her. When he did, he seemed to start, then lifted a hand, waved, and walked out of the store’s back entrance into the alley.