Lemon

by Cordelia Strube

  ‘Bugs don’t think,’ Wackoboy declares.

  ‘Wrong again, son,’ I say. ‘Ants have bigger brains in proportion to body size than humans. I bet this bug has a humongous brain.’

  We watch it heading in one direction then being obstructed by a block and changing tactics.

  ‘It keeps going,’ Vaughn says. ‘It’ll keep going until it can’t go anymore.’

  ‘Then what?’ Molly asks.

  ‘It’ll die.’

  ‘I don’t want it to die!’ she blurts with more emotion than I’ve ever heard from her.

  ‘We’ll take it outside,’ Vaughn says. ‘Set it free.’

  ‘The windows don’t open,’ I point out.

  He finds a piece of scrap paper and waits patiently for the bug to crawl on it. He cups his hand around the paper and the bug and heads for the elevator. The kids scramble after him, dragging their poles, keeping their eyes on the bug. If Vaughn hadn’t been here, they probably would have stomped on it.

  ‘I shall return,’ he says, winking at me as the elevator doors close.

  ‘Talk to me,’ he says. We’re sitting in Tim Hortons, hoping for a fire. Beside us are two forty-something men who think they’re sex gods. They check out every woman in the joint. ‘So this bank teller,’ the paunchier one says, ‘asked me to go for a coffee.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ the other Adonis responds. ‘She asked you for a coffee? Really? That’s awesome.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s the first step, I mean coffee, that’s like the first move. After that, I mean, not that day but next time it’s like, showtime.’ Both sex gods are wearing leather bomber jackets to hide their Molson tumours.

  Vaughn’s still staring at me. He can stare all he wants. I snuck into icu. She didn’t even look like Kadylak. Illness wipes out personality. You’re just more diseased flesh. One of the Holocaust memoirs I read said that when you’re dying of starvation, nothing matters except the next piece of bread. You don’t even see the corpses around you, you step on them, chasing that next piece of bread. Cancer’s like that. After a certain point nobody sees you anymore.

  ‘How’s your friend?’ Vaughn asks.

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘At the hospital. Drew says there’s a girl there who calls you.’

  ‘She’s in icu.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says and he actually looks it. Most people say sorry while they’re thinking about what movie they’re going to rent or something.

  ‘What’d she look like?’ the sex god who wasn’t invited out for coffee asks.

  ‘Brown hair, five-nine, which is short for me.’

  ‘You’re kidding? Five-nine is short for you?’

  ‘She was all over me. Must’ve seen those cheques rolling in.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say. We walk home and, I have to admit it’s alright having a man around. You breathe easier and don’t jump at every sound. Maybe women put up with crap from men because they want bodyguards. I’d like to get in touch with that bank teller, warn her that next time is Showtime.

  Drew jumps up when she sees me. ‘I’ve been so worried,’ she says. She hugs me which is completely weird since we don’t hug. We’re all jutting bones, jabbing each other.

  ‘It was pretty lame,’ I say. ‘No Columbine.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ she says, which is pretty outrageous considering she’s an atheist. ‘Do you want some tea or hot chocolate or anything?’

  ‘I’m pretty whacked.’ I’m not up for sitting around being thankful that I’m alive. Kadylak’s dying and I can do shit about it.

  19

  No one’s returning my calls to the hospital. I could go down there again but Brenda, the catfish, will probably boot me out. Volunteers aren’t supposed to get involved with the patients. I turn on the radio. Some fashion columnist is talking about what a crime it is that manufacturers produce knock-offs of designer clothes. You can buy a knock-off of an Yves Saint Laurent fourteen-thousand-dollar jacket for two hundred bucks. ‘It’s a crime,’ she keeps repeating. I want to be this woman, sweating about knock-offs and this season’s skirt lengths. She says everybody’s wearing wide belts – everybody – and fitted jackets with frayed edges. She describes a ‘fabulous skirt’ she’s planning to buy after the show. She talks as though this will be an accomplishment. Two seconds later some weary aid worker comes on to discuss impoverished women in India shoving wood and anything else they can find up their vaginas to plug their menstrual bleeding. If they’re lucky enough to get work as labourers, they don’t drink or eat all day because they can’t shit or piss in front of the men. So they get urinary-tract and bladder infections and there are no antibiotics to treat them. ‘Women die from these easily treatable diseases,’ the aid worker says. Meanwhile drug companies are raking in the dough. You’d think a couple of global corporations could spare a few million Kotex and a few million cheap pills. But hey, I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I should be shopping for a fabulous skirt.

  Clarissa’s writing letters to her parents to beg for forgiveness. You have to wonder what kind of sick puppy Samuel Richardson was, writing a heroine who spends 24/7 praying or begging forgiveness from her abusers. Although I guess that’s pretty standard, the persecuted seeking approval from their persecutors. All those Jews obeying the Germans, trying to please the borderliners so they wouldn’t plug them with bullets. In one Holocaust memoir this baby, whose parents were plugged with bullets, was hidden by goy Poles. She was taken to the Poles’ flooded basement. Waist-deep in sludge, the Pole’s son held her to his chest. Years later he told her that his parents had instructed him to drown her in the sludge if she cried because if the Nazis found out the goys were hiding a Jew, they’d all be killed. She didn’t cry and they took her to a convent where she lived till the war was over. Grown up and supposedly recovered in Canada, she couldn’t remember anything about the convent or what had happened to her parents. Her daughter became a psychologist and took her mother back to Poland to the convent. It turned out a ninety-four-year-old nun remembered the woman as a child and had never stopped loving her or thinking about her in sixty-something years. The psychologist figured that her mother had been able to survive the horror of the war because she’d been loved unconditionally by the nun. Even though she’d blocked the nun out with all her other war trauma, the security that love produces stayed with her. After she’d been reunited with the nun and her childhood, she stopped having nightmares about the war. You have to wonder if all children were loved, I mean really loved not just owned, controlled, spoiled and gloated over, we’d have a better world.

  It’s party day. I’d pass but I’m worried about Rossi. I watch her apply five pounds of makeup. Mrs. Barnfield’s constipated again and spending six hours on the toilet, which creates tensions over bathroom usage.

  ‘George II died trying to force a crap,’ I whisper to Rossi. ‘Seriously, I’m worried about her. It’s not healthy. And anyway, why’s she trying to poop when she’s hardly eating?’

  Rossi doesn’t respond, has that lean and hungry look she gets after she’s been making herself puke. She’s trying on toddler clothes. ‘Do I look fat? Honestly, do these jeans make my ass look fat?’

  ‘Try a wide belt and a frayed jacket,’ I suggest. ‘Everybody is wearing them this season.’

  Mrs. Barnfield exits the washroom looking less tense, which is a good sign. Plus she starts cleaning her kitchen cabinets. She’s one of those types who takes everything out and actually wipes the shelves. ‘You look beautiful, angel,’ she says to Rossi. She’s always telling Ross how great she looks. I get the feeling she loves her unconditionally, which makes it hard to understand why Rossi is so messed up. Unless it has to do with her dad being a video poker addict and all that. He was never around, which might explain Rossi’s need to get attention from anything with a penis.

  Mrs. Barnfield’s all excited because Rossi got invited to a party finally. ‘I used to love parties,’ she says. ‘I was a real
party girl.’

  ‘Were you into disco?’ I ask.

  ‘You bet. You should’ve seen me in my platform shoes.’

  Rossi turns her back on her mother and sticks out her tongue like she’s gagging.

  ‘What colour were they?’ I ask.

  ‘Hot pink,’ Mrs. Barnfield says. ‘With gold stars on the platforms.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘They’d be worth serious coin these days, I bet.’ I like Mrs. Barnfield and can’t figure out why Rossi’s so mean to her all the time.

  ‘We wore halters and bell-bottoms and sweated like pigs,’ Mrs. Barnfield says.

  ‘Pigs don’t sweat,’ Rossi says.

  ‘And we drank sodas,’ Mrs. Barnfield says. ‘And maybe a little rum and Coke but no drugs. Don’t do drugs tonight, angel, okay? No E, isn’t that what they’re all doing? A girl had a heart attack taking E.’

  Rossi leans into the bathroom mirror to line her lips.

  ‘You look absolutely gorgeous, honey. Do you need some money? Take a cab home, okay?’ This is another thing that blows my mind about Mrs. Barnfield, she’s always forcing cash on Rossi. Even when we were little and I was getting fifty cents a week, old Ross was walking around with a wad. ‘Do you know this boy she’s going with?’ Mrs. Barnfield asks me.

  ‘Doyle? Yeah.’

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘He’s alright.’

  ‘He wasn’t one of the boys responsible for the lockdown?’

  ‘Nope. I work with him at Dairy Dream.’

  ‘Oh really? He’s got a job then, that’s nice.’

  ‘His dad’s a dentist.’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs. Barnfield’s eyes go all dreamy as she works out the daughter-married-to-dentist fantasy, the big house, the Mercs, the grandkiddies. Poor Mrs. Barnfield. ‘Well, I won’t wait up,’ she says. ‘I know you’re a big girl now but please, angel, don’t be too late. Give me a smooch.’ Rossi allows her mother to kiss her cheek before she takes her cash.

  Doyle’s not too happy to see me. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  I lounge in the back seat. He just got his licence and drives around for hours in his dad’s guzzler.

  ‘She was invited,’ Rossi says. ‘We might as well give her a ride.’

  ‘You’ve done something different with your hair,’ I tell him. He ignores me, plays gangsta rap, bopping to the beat. I’m thinking about my depression because that’s got to be what this is. Some psychologist is saying that King Harold was depressed before he lost the battle of Hastings to William, the Norman invader. They’re saying being branded a heretic by Rome depressed Harold. He supposedly suffered intense feelings of guilt and loss, which was why he sucked as a leader. I’m suffering intense feelings of guilt and loss about everything – Kadylak, Mr. Paluska, my mothers. I even feel badly about duping Lund and Huff, and about not giving a goose’s turd about anything that’s going on around me. You’re supposed to care about stuff in your immediate vicinity but I’m sitting around worrying about girls from Thailand being sold as cash crops, being shipped in airless containers to New York brothels. I worry about women being burned because their dowry money isn’t enough, or because some hothead husband decides they’ve been unfaithful, or getting stoned to death for not wearing a burqa. But boys killing boys in my neighbourhood? A knifing in the school that’s got everybody in a flap? It happens.

  Speaking of consumer goods, Nicole’s house is full them. Doyle and Rossi lose me asap. I go for a whiz, spend some time examining the bidet, making the water squirt. Maybe it feels good having water squirt up inside you, maybe Nicole and her ma get off on it. I consider trying it but somebody’s pounding at the door. I go look for food, eat some pizza and tacos. Nobody notices me, which is good. I lean against the wall and watch the ritual. Girls run their fingers through their hair, boys ogle. Girls gossip and slander and say like every second word. Boys talk tough, say like every second word and fucking every three seconds. Beside me some wizards are talking about sports, how some fucking team is losing all its fucking players. ‘It’s a fucking tragedy,’ the shaggy-haired one says. Another genius can’t decide whether or not to buy the new Nintendo, ‘Like, what if the fucking thing goes on sale? Last game I bought, the fuckers put it on sale like, the day after. Fucking rip-off.’

  One of the artsy-crowd queers is saying, ‘Let’s go get matching sweaters,’ in a squeaky voice to anyone who’ll listen. He’s one of those types who survives by acting brain-damaged. He only gets invited because he provides freak- show entertainment.

  I eat more tacos, wishing I’d brought a book. The music’s slamming my brain around, making me think about George Eliot putting leeches on her head to get rid of headaches. It’s hard to imagine old Marian, her real name, reaching into a jar and grabbing the bloodsuckers then plastering them on her forehead. Meanwhile she was writing about all those beautiful pining heroines. Old Marian hooked up with a couple of serious dweezles in her own love search. You have to wonder if it was because her mother liked her pretty sister better, and of course her brother who was numero uno and could do no wrong. Not only was Marian ugly but she didn’t go to church. When her mother died Marian felt so guilty she started going to church with her father and wiping his snot till he kicked off. Then there was nobody to love her, which is why she went after putzes. Finally she found a guy who was as ugly as she was but he was already married. He told her she was brilliant and hid the crappy reviews from her. He decided he couldn’t live without her so he left the wife and kiddies and shacked up with Marian. A lot of people weren’t too happy about this, especially the gentry types who’d freaked when they found out George Eliot was a woman. If she’d been a nice little church-going Victorian lady, they might have been able to handle it but there was old Marian, living in sin and refusing to go to fancy dress balls.

  ‘Have you seen Rossi?’ Doyle asks.

  ‘I thought she was with you.’

  ‘So did I.’ He frowns into the crowd. ‘They’re all looking at her on Jake’s cell. Maybe she took off.’

  ‘Are you worried about her?’

  ‘Shit, no, I hardly know her.’

  ‘Did you bump uglies yet?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Isn’t that why you brought her? To get into her thong?’

  ‘You are so bitter.’ He grabs some Cheezees and merges with the dancers.

  Queen Kirsten and King Jake start swapping spit on the couch and everybody else partners up. I look for Rossi, squeeze past overheated bodies, beer cans and cigarettes, spot Larry Bone and his junkies huddled over a coffee table snorting powder. Taylor in the dog collar grabs my ass but I keep moving. I see girls pushed up against the walls and I try to figure out if they’re enjoying it. They probably don’t know, have been faking it so long they’re not even inside their bodies. Maybe it’s like that for the boys as well. They’re scared shitless they won’t be able to get it up so they rush the process just so they can announce they fucked somebody. I push open sliding doors and step onto the deck. Butt-scratch-ers crowd around the gazebo, whooping and hollering. I sprawl on a lawn chair and look for stars. It’s always a challenge in the city, but sometimes I can spot the Dippers. On camping trips Drew used to show me constellations but I’ve forgotten most of them. She pointed out the North Star at the end of the Little Dipper’s handle and said it led slaves to freedom. When I asked her what happened on cloudy nights, she said some of them were given compasses by abolitionists. Alexander Ross posed as a birdwatcher so he could hang around plantations and guide slaves north. It’s nice to know there were whiteys risking their lives to help slaves. Levi Coffin got them into boats so they could cross Lake Erie. I think about this when I get really depressed about white people. But then, of course, escaped slaves weren’t exactly welcomed in Canada. If they got work at all, they were paid shit wages and their kids weren’t allowed in white schools. Yep, nobody was too excited about all those darkies comin’ to town.

  Somebody starts shrieking down around the gazebo. It�
�s customary for ditzes to screech at parties so I don’t sweat it. I smell weed and notice a few saggy asses passing around a blunt. Some wizard says, ‘Harsh toke, dude.’ I think about old Clarissa writing letters in prison. Lovelace tries to visit her but his former pal, Jack, scares him off with his sword. He tells Lovelace if he tries to approach Clarissa again, he’ll skewer him. I figure Clarissa and Jack will get hitched, although she’s stopped eating, which could present a problem. She’s still begging for her father’s forgiveness.

  I stare at the sliver of a moon and try to believe that Kadylak’s off the ventilator, sitting up in bed sucking on a freezie, that Mr. Paluska is massaging her feet.

  The screaming gets a little scarier. I’m thinking maybe I should call 911. Best not to get involved. I grab more pretzels, suck the salt off them. The stink of pot is making me queasy and the music’s getting louder. Soon the neighbours will call the cops who won’t show up. The screaming stops and after a while the crowd leaves the gazebo so I figure I’ll go chill in there, it’s screened, which means no bugs. It’s pretty dark but I sit on one of those built-in benches and return to my Kady-lak fantasy. I watch Mr. Paluska’s muscles again, imagine touching them, feeling them around me. My eyes adjust to the dark and I notice a heap of something in the corner. I figure it’s a pile of canvas or something but then it starts to move and I jump about six feet thinking it’s hiding a giant rat that’s about to claw me to death. It stops moving and I decide the second-hand weed smoke is making me hallucinate. After a couple of minutes of serious staring, I realize it’s a body. I get ready to bounce out of there but then the body starts making wounded noises. ‘Are you alright?’ I ask it. It doesn’t answer so I move a little closer. It’s a woman and she’s naked. ‘What happened?’ I ask. She’s in a fetal position with her hands over her head. I recognize her perfume.

  ‘Don’t let anybody in,’ Rossi whimpers.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They took my clothes.’

  ‘Who did?’