Lemon

by Cordelia Strube

  ‘She’s a whore. I want to hurt her so bad, shove her tits down her throat.’

  ‘There’s somebody in here,’ Nicole observes.

  ‘Who?’

  I jump down and flush the toilet.

  ‘It’s Limone,’ Nicole says. She recognizes my boots. I open the cubicle and try to look busy washing my hands.

  ‘You tell your friend to stay away from Nicole’s party,’ Kirsten orders. I’ve never been able to compute how somebody so bossy can be popular. Do people like being bossed around? Is that what made old Adolf prom king? Or Winston? Mrs. Freeman was telling us about the bombing of Dresden. Even though the war was won, the Brits wanted to test their bombs so they dropped them on civilians in Dresden. All the pows who weren’t killed were freed to dig ditches for dead Germans. Everybody makes old Winston out to be a hero but what about Dresden?

  ‘She’s not my friend,’ I say.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘She thinks I’m a freak.’

  Neither of them say damn right because I’m supposed to be writing a play and there might be a part in it for them.

  ‘Do you want to come?’ Nicole asks. She has this imbecilic habit of sticking the tip of her thumb in her mouth and resting it on her lower teeth. ‘You’re welcome to come if you want.’

  ‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ I say and scoot.

  Rossi’s watching a show where people undergo plastic surgery to look like somebody famous. They’re operating on a woman who wants to look like Cher, which is pretty wild when you consider how much reconstruction Cher has had.

  ‘That’s heinous,’ Tora says. She’s doing homework, which drives me nuts. She’s always going on about how she hates life and school, meanwhile she’s averaging 98 percent. You just know, after she figures out that Creative Writing is a waste of time, she’ll become a shrink or something.

  ‘Did you girls find something to eat?’Mrs. Barnfield shouts. She’s on the floor with her legs on the bed again. The bank warned of more layoffs. Mrs. Barnfield says she’s not worried because she has seniority, but you can tell she’s worried out of her mind because she’s verging on comatose. Rossi says she’s not even swallowing her cans of gruel.

  ‘Rossi, sweetheart, are there any more Triscuits?’

  Rossi doesn’t answer her mother – she rarely does – so I shout, ‘We found Bits & Bites, Mrs. Barnfield.’

  I haven’t told Rossi about Kirsten wanting to shove her tits down her throat. But it seems pretty obvious it would be better for all concerned if Rossi doesn’t go to the party.

  ‘I want to be reconstructed to look like Tatiana,’ she says.

  ‘Who’s Tatiana?’ Tora asks, solving equations at record speed.

  ‘Are you serious? She’s like, only the most gorgeous supermodel in the entire world.’

  The plastic surgeon starts marking up some other woman’s face with felt marker. I read more of The Great Gatsby, which is another novel about some guy mooning over a girl he can’t have.

  ‘I don’t know how you can stand to read all the time,’ Rossi says.

  ‘So, are you seriously going to the party with Doyle?’

  ‘You have a problem with that?’

  ‘No problem. He’s pretty revolting, though, seriously.’

  ‘What would you know about revolting?’

  ‘He shoved his tongue down my throat and his fingers up my snatch.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Tora says.

  ‘That’s called sex.’

  ‘Remember that boy in JK,’ I ask, ‘who got you to take off your underpants and put on his?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure you do, he was this four-year-old pervert. Doyle reminds me of him.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Tora asks. ‘Maybe it was Doyle and he changed his name in shame.’

  ‘You guys are so totally uptight. Like, why don’t you just grow up?’

  ‘Are you going to let Doyle ding you?’ I ask. I almost call her old sport. Gatsby’s always calling everybody old sport. Which gives you an indication of just how deluded he is.

  ‘Is that any business of yours?’ Rossi demands.

  ‘I think he’s counting on it. Price of admission.’

  ‘Lord preserve us,’ Tora says.

  Rossi sighs wearily and stares back at the blood and gore on the one-eyed monster.

  ‘I’ve been invited to Nicole’s party,’ I say.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘I’ll take you if you’re determined to go.’ I know some karate moves and could probably protect her.

  ‘No way did they invite you.’

  ‘They invited her because of the play,’ Tora the future shrink says.

  ‘They’d call us dykes,’ Rossi says.

  ‘Let ’em.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m going with Doyle. He’s taking me in his dad’s car.’

  ‘Don’t let him do any racing,’ I say. ‘A couple of geniuses raced their parents’ Mercs and smashed a taxi, killing the driver. He was from Pakistan, two days short of becoming a Canadian citizen. He’d been sending money to his wife in Pakistan and was planning to bring her over.’

  ‘Why are you telling us this?’ Rossi demands. ‘That is so totally depressing, like, why do you repeat stuff like that?’

  ‘Cautionary tale,’ Tora says.

  ‘The cops found a car-racing video game in one of the Mercs,’ I elaborate. ‘Some game where you race through city streets smashing into other cars. One of the rich boys is black, meaning nobody can pin the tragedy on poverty and race. It could be anyone, anywhere.’

  ‘What’s happened to the youth of today?’ Tora says while solving another five-page math problem.

  ‘If the politicians and corporate kings can bomb, steal, destroy entire cultures and ecosystems, why should we behave ourselves?’

  ‘Where are our moral leaders?’ Tora says.

  ‘Seriously, it’s not like hard work pays off. Ooops, there goes your pension you’ve been paying into for thirty years.’ I grab another handful of Bits & Bites and toss back a couple of Cheerios. ‘It’s way more fun to race in cyberspace. When that gets boring, do it for real. Kill a Paki.’

  Rossi’s riveted to the tube where a surgeon is marking up a woman’s ass. ‘Oh I so totally want to get that done,’ Rossi says. ‘Like, just get my ass lifted. I so want J. Lo’s ass. Like, before she got pregnant.’

  I’m making eighteen slushies for a Brownie troop. I was a Brownie but couldn’t conform. All that pledging to share and be a friend, meanwhile those girls would rip your face off. I was constantly on the outs, partnerless, the last one to find a spot in the circle. I enjoyed earning the badges, doing the research on the Huron or something. The other Brownies exchanged secret notes while I presented my project on the three sisters – corn, beans and squash – that the Huron cultivated. They lived in longhouses where the women ran things because the men were out hunting. The women decided who could marry who and who should be banned from the longhouse. They wouldn’t put up with deadbeat husbands, would order them out into the cold to freeze to death. The downside was that the women died around forty from inhaling all that smoke from the fires.

  The Brownies are squabbling about flavours and grabbing at each other’s slushies.

  ‘So what’s with Rossi?’ Doyle demands.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Does she do it with dogs?’

  ‘Did she do it with you?’

  ‘Very funny.’ He’s got the mop out and is pretending to clean the floor. ‘They’re saying some pretty perverted things about her.’

  ‘Consider the source.’

  ‘Why would they lie about that shit?’

  ‘Why lie about weapons of mass destruction? To get a war going, clever clogs. Kirsten hates Rossi, wants her obliterated.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hmmm, let me think. Could it be because she’s drop-dead gorgeous and Jake’s been sniffing around her?’

  ‘They say she’s the latest go-to girl.�
�

  I ignore him. Think about Gatsby chasing Daisy, getting them all to drive to town for drinks. It’s stinking hot and air conditioning hasn’t been invented yet. They’re lying around on couches drinking g&ts and complaining about the heat. Gatsby’s making moony eyes at Daisy, and wife-beater Tom’s getting miffed. Old Jay’s got this idea that little miss Daisy is going to run off with him but Tom knows better. His wife’s a spoiled brat who likes her comforts and her shitcan marriage because she expects nothing from it. Expectation kills you every time.

  ‘You shouldn’t be reading at work,’ Doyle says.

  ‘I already wiped things down, old sport.’

  ‘Did you check the napkin dispensers?’

  ‘Bing bing bing.’

  ‘Has Rossi said anything about going to the party with me?’

  ‘She said she’s going to the party with you.’

  The old guy in the Speedy Muffler cap presses his crotch against the counter. I don’t ask what he wants, just get it for him but at the last minute hand it to Doyle and say, ‘I’ve got to whiz.’ Sorry to disappoint, old sport.

  I see Larry Bone ordering from Wok About and think maybe I should let him whip my ass later. Just another teen murder. They’re talking about getting gun-sniffing dogs at our school. Not enough money for textbooks but, hey, let’s get us some gun-sniffing dogs. There’s progress for you.

  Bone’s by himself for a change, looking half-normal, digging in his pocket for cash to pay for his lo mein. I almost feel bad about kicking his face in. I pass the woman who orders smoothies from me. She always looks nervous, fidgeting with her purse or her cell or something. And she wears hats, which is unfortunate. Nervous people in hats should be avoided. She smiles anemically at me. ‘G’day,’ I say. I hate retail. All these parasites think they know you just because you happen to know their favourite flavour.

  The washroom’s crowded with smoking girls. They mess with their hair and faces. I gag from second-hand smoke while I wipe somebody else’s piss off the seat. How is it okay to spray piss all over the seat?

  The nervous woman in the hat is at the sink dabbing at strawberry smoothie on her blouse. ‘I had a bit of a spill,’ she says.

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Do you enjoy your job?’ she asks, forcing a howdy-doody, brain-damaged smile. ‘I’ve always thought it would be wonderful to work in an ice cream parlour.’

  ‘They’re taking applications,’ I say.

  She holds her hands under the dryer for about six hours, gawping at me the whole time. I don’t know if she’s gay or what but she totally creeps me out. I wipe my hands on my pants. The mall’s blasting that Joni Mitchell song about how if she had a river she’d skate away on it. Roger that.

  13

  In the early nineties some Russian construction worker was digging around birch trees when he stumbled on the missing Romanov’s bones. He said he heard a crunching sound and knew it meant either coal or bone. First he dug up a chunk of pelvis then a piece of a child’s skull. The archaeologists swarmed the place and declared it was obvious that Alexei and Maria didn’t die peacefully because their remains were very damaged. They’d been beaten and kicked around, their bodies doused in acid and burned. I know the Bolsheviks hated the Imperial family because they’d been living off the serfs and all that, but I still don’t think that justifies a blood fest. That’s what I mean when I say revolutions turn rotten. You don’t wake up a family in the middle of the night, drag them to the basement and blast them. Alexei was only thirteen. Czar Nicholas – imperialist tyrant that he was – had already abdicated, everything had been taken from him, it wasn’t like he was a threat. The soldiers totally humiliated the family; they couldn’t even take a piss without a soldier watching. They transported them to Moscow in peasant carts. This was after they’d killed Rasputin, the empress’s guru and confidante. So she was seriously wrecked, sitting on straw while poor people threw rotten food at her. Same old mob story.

  It’s like with David Weiss getting swarmed. They wanted his binders because he’d written all these notes for a test they had to take. Weiss is obsessive about his binders, labels them, has inserts with different headings, carries them everywhere. He wants to be a chemical engineer. They pushed him to the floor and started kicking him. When they ‘wind’ people they kick them in the gut until they start to vomit or cough blood. Weiss clung to his binders for protection but the thugs kept at it, busting his nose and glasses. They started dancing around, mocking the way he had to squint to see. It’s hard to actually witness swarmings because the person getting beaten is on the ground, surrounded. So you can’t say you saw the whole thing. Mostly you hear it. The corridors are too crowded anyway, people just step around it. He didn’t return to class, must have made a break for it when the security guard was getting his ketchup chips. Usually you have to get buzzed out.

  Anyway, they called him Jew Boy and all you can think is, can’t we get beyond this? Nobody will report it, of course, including moi. Snitching means you’re next. Even the teachers turn a blind eye because they’re scared the thugs will key their cars.

  The paper had a picture of the Romanovs sitting on the roof of their prison house in Siberia. They weren’t permitted outside. The only way they could get fresh air was on the roof. They looked so forlorn up there, staring at the camera. You just know Nicholas knew they were doomed. The Bolsheviks even shot their servants.

  Drew’s spooning peanut butter out of the jar, doesn’t even bother with bread anymore. Maybe she’s starving herself to death, punishing herself for failing to problem-solve. This would mean I’d have to look for new digs, go live with Damian and the tomato. I don’t want this.

  ‘There’s some kind of fungus on peanuts that’s bad for you,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe you should try varying your diet.’

  ‘Anything happen at school?’

  ‘Negative. Did you go out?’

  ‘I sprinkled cayenne pepper. It’s supposed to burn their eyes.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘The cats.’ She spoons more peanut butter.

  ‘Is Vaughn around?’

  ‘I thought I heard him come in. The hospital phoned for you. A girl was asking for you.’ That must be Kadylak. It’s too late to call back. I try not to worry about her, seek refuge in my room and listen to Mr. Sinatra telling me he’s got me under his skin. Meanwhile he’s being a dirtbag to his wives.

  When Gatsby and Daisy drive back in his fancy white convertible, she smashes into the floozie Tom was dinging. The floozie, thinking it’s Tom in the convertible coming to rescue her from moving to the prairie with her gas-pumping husband, rushes into the road. Daisy doesn’t stop the car to see if they can help the floozie. She keeps on driving and Gatsby keeps on swooning over her. With a dead woman in the road. No wonder Zelda went nuts. Although they say Scott rescued her when she tried to throw herself in front of an express train. So maybe he did truly love her.

  I try to concentrate on the play, get old Lillian into kinky underwear she bought online because the vamp on the soap was wearing it. Her beau, pretending to be Speedy Gonzales, chases her, shouting, ‘I’ll catch you, pussy gato! Arriba, arriba!’ They keep tripping over her newly purchased consumer goods. Lillian starts swatting him with towels and calling him old sport. He’s digging it but pretty soon it’s obvious that towels aren’t enough and he has to get thwacked with an umbrella. It’s all about feeling, this beating up. When you’re kicking the shit out of somebody, you’re hoping to feel something. When you don’t, you kick harder.

  ‘Phone for you,’ Drew says without opening the door. We have this thing about respecting each other’s privacy. We respect each other so much we’re total strangers.

  ‘Did you hear about Weiss?’ Rossi asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s in the hospital with a concussion, a broken nose and busted ribs.’

  ‘At least he’s not dead.’

  ‘Nobody saw who did it.’

  You just know Gatsb
y isn’t going to report Daisy’s hit and run. He’ll take the rap and go to prison for her. She’ll be drinking mint juleps and getting swatted by hubby while old Jay plays blushing bride.

  ‘How’s the play coming?’ Rossi asks.

  ‘Bitchin’.’

  ‘Is there a part for me in it?’

  When you consider that ass-kissing makes the world go around, and that there’s no way you can kiss ass, you know you’re going to be cleaning toilets for a living. Then all of a sudden you’re writing a play and everybody wants to kiss your ass and you can’t stand that either, and you realize it’s a lose-lose.

  ‘My mother freaked in the hairdresser’s today,’ Rossi says. ‘She said they made her hair orange but it’s the same colour it always is. I’m a little worried about her.’ I don’t tell her it’s obvious her mother is dying. I don’t tell people when stuff is obvious. They hate you for it.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to writing,’ I say.

  ‘You are so lucky you have talent,’ she says. Kiss, kiss.

  Vaughn’s on the deck, ready to howl at the moon. ‘Ding ding ding,’ I say. Don’t know why I’m bothering, just that I’m feeling scared. Not of Bonehead particularly. Nothing that specific.

  ‘What’s up?’ he says.

  ‘What do you make of that tree?’ I ask, immediately regretting that I used the tree word again.

  ‘Very nice.’

  The personal trainer drummer is thumping along to Led Zeppelin. Treeboy doesn’t seem to mind. I consider telling him that the guy thumps his dog with a shovel but decide this might not be a conversation starter.

  ‘I sit in trees sometimes,’ I blurt. ‘You see all kinds of stuff. People forget you’re there.’

  ‘That’s one of the problems,’ he says.

  Thump thump thump.

  ‘They found these wild boys in B.C.,’ I say, dismayed that once again I’m babbling around this guy. ‘They were raised in the remote wilderness and have never been to school or watched TV or anything. The Salvation Army gave them fifty bucks for food and the boys said it was far too much. Can you imagine any so-called civilized kid refusing fifty bucks?’

  He shakes his head.