Kadylak’s staring at a corner of the room.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘It’s the man in the black coat.’
She’s seen him before. It could be the drugs making her hallucinate or the fact that she hasn’t eaten for days.
‘Tell him to back off,’ I say. ‘Tell him to go spook around someplace else. Is there anything you want to eat? What about noodle soup? Do you want me to nuke one of those for you? Or what about some custard?’
‘Are the police going to arrest you?’
‘Nope. It was one big snafu. They thought I was some other girl. I brought Tilly.’
‘Is she still in the mine?’
‘She is, but the master’s there with her.’
‘Why?’
‘He went down to make sure all his serfs were earning their stale bread.’
‘Where’s Simon?’
‘Milking cows or something.’ I don’t tell her Simon’s in his barn, stuffing the very same lady of the manor the master was diddling.
‘Can you read?’
There’s trouble down the mine. Old Clive, the master, gets trapped under a falling beam and can’t move his legs. Tilly holds his hand and tells him not to worry, sir, they’ll find us. Clive says he’s less frightened with her there. She demonstrates her desire to serve by feeding him her stale bread.
‘Are there rats in the mine?’ Kadylak asks.
‘Probably.’
‘In my country, when men get trapped in mines, they eat rats.’
‘Well, I don’t think Ms. Cookson’s going to want her heroine eating rodents.’
We read on and, bless my soul, Tilly and Clive are rescued. But tragedy has struck. Old Clive will never walk again.
‘How will he work?’ Kadylak asks.
‘He doesn’t work. He’s an aristocrat.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Someone who inherits all kinds of land and cash made off the sweat of poor people.’
‘I like Clive.’
‘He’s alright.’
‘It will be hard for him to be in a wheelchair.’
‘Maybe he’ll get a couple of slaves to carry him around. They had all kinds of slaves back then. That’s how the aristocrats got even richer. All those black people on plantations.’ I pass her a juice box.
‘When they were picking cotton,’ I continue, ‘they had to stay bent over. Imagine spending all day hunched over, tearing sticky cotton off bushes and getting whipped every time you tried to straighten up.’
Kadylak’s looking at me, sucking on her straw. It’s good she’s keeping liquids down.
‘What did the other girl do?’ she asks.
‘What other girl?’
‘That the police wanted. What did she do?’
‘Oh. I’m not sure. Shoplifting or something.’ It’s getting easier to lie to her.
‘What’s shoplifting?’
‘Stealing.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’
‘Hell, no.’ Speaking of shoplifting brings to mind the spinning tops. I dig around in my backpack and spin them on her table. She gasps as if I’ve performed a magic trick. The tops teeter and stumble. ‘You try,’ I tell her. It feels like a miracle, being here with her, spinning the tops. It feels like a dream.
Drew’s watching some documentary on Susan B. Anthony they keep recycling on the History Channel. They make like we’ve come a long way, baby, since Sue cast her vote. Like there’s no glass ceiling anymore, and boys and girls get equal pay.
‘Have you seen this?’ Drew asks me.
‘Yep.’
‘She was an extraordinary woman.’
The sombre photo of Sue comes onscreen. The narrator insists that, before Sue adopted the black dress and red cloak, she was actually a very perky person with lots of suitors. I guess that makes her a real woman, the fact that she wore pretty dresses and had lots of suitors before she became a crusader for women’s rights. The narrator says giving up pretty clothes and suitors must have been a sacrifice for her. Au contraire, mon garçon. Sue probably figured out the dudes were dullards, probably wore black to scare them off.
I look in the fridge, which is loaded with healthy food I didn’t buy. Ergo Treeboy must have been shopping. I resent being robbed of the opportunity to feign normalcy at the Valu-Mart. I find a yogourt and aim for the stairs but Drew heads me off. ‘Are you going to tell me what the police wanted?’
‘Some girl was shoplifting. They thought maybe I saw her.’
‘Did you?’
‘What?’
‘See her?’
‘Nope.’
‘How did they know you were there?’
‘Where?’
‘At the store. Or was she shoplifting ice cream?’
‘They saw me on the surveillance camera.’
Drew grabs her head again. ‘Why are you lying to me?’
‘Why are you so concerned all of a sudden? It’s not like you’re my mother.’
This gives her pause. She stops grabbing her head and squints as if I’m very far away and she can hardly see me.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say.
‘Why didn’t you go to school today? Don’t turn your back on me, young woman.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ I tell her and, I have to admit, it feels pretty liberating saying it. I guess I’ve been wanting to say it for years but have been afraid she’d boot me out or something. Now I don’t care. I say it again, spacing the words this time. ‘Go … fuck … yourself.’
She just turns away, goes back to Susan B. I was hoping she’d try to garrotte me or something.
The worst part is nothing’s changed. Except that I dream about glass splintering inside me.
I saw David Weiss outside Dollarama. I went up to him because I wanted to say I was sorry and all that. He pretended not to recognize me.
All these horrible things happen and the world keeps turning its back on you. Mrs. Freeman was talking about the Armenian genocide, how the Turks keep pretending it didn’t happen. They didn’t have cellphones in 1915 so the only evidence is what people choose to remember and if you’re a Turk you don’t want to remember that you raped and killed mothers with babies. You want to think your great-great-granddaddy looked swell in a uniform with a sabre on his belt.
I dig around in the yogourt for the jam at the bottom. I’m supposed to be working on that essay for Swails but I can’t get interested. He always gives me shitty marks.
There’s knocking on my door and I know it’s Treeboy.
‘What?’ I demand.
‘Requesting entry.’
‘Don’t let me stop you.’
He sits at my desk and stares at me for about an hour. I start singing ‘The Hokey Pokey.’ ‘You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out. You put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. And that’s what it’s all a-bout.’
The Tree Frog doesn’t budge. Maybe he thinks I can’t see him on the bark. I roll on my side so my back’s to him. ‘Don’t mind me,’ I say, ‘just need to grab some shut-eye.’
‘I’m finding it hard to believe they didn’t hurt you.’
‘Try harder, sonny.’
The fact is I could shower a million times and it wouldn’t get their prints off me. I’m marked for life.
25
I always thought the Aztecs were smart agriculturalists and all that but Drew’s National Geographic says they were constantly sacrificing people to some god or other, then eating the leftovers. They had no livestock, just corn and beans, so eating each other not only kept the population down but provided protein. They were always starting wars so they could convert the pows into chow. They lined them up by the hundreds before cutting out their hearts. The ribcage was too tough to penetrate so the holy men would slice open the victim’s belly, reach up under the bones and grab the beating heart. They’d yank it out and show it to the sacrificee before shoving it down the mouth
of some statue. When they ran out of pows, they started rounding up the locals. Nobody rebelled because they figured that’s what you had to do to keep the sun coming up. No sun meant no crops, which meant they’d die anyway. The sun god, Huitzilopochtli, was a big eater. When old Cortés showed up with his ships and armour, Moctezuma figured he was a god and offered him some bleeding hearts. Cortés, being a canny European, used his god status to mindfuck the Aztecs who were already pretty obsessed with the collapse of the universe and all that. The way Moctezuma saw it, Cortés wasn’t just any god but the Feathered Serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, who wanted to be the only god. Which meant they had to stop feeding hearts to the other gods to keep the Feathered Serpent god – Cortés – happy. He kept acting displeased, which totally freaked out the Aztecs. They got more and more stressed about which gods to feed and even more freaked about the world ending. They started beating up on each other, which made it easy for Cortés to divide and conquer. Which brings to mind our current situation. We’re all freaked about pollution and war and all that, but instead of doing something intelligent about it we make more pollution and war. We’re going the way of the Aztecs and we don’t need a Spaniard to get us there.
I hear knocking.
‘You have to go to school,’ Drew says through the door.
‘Who says?’
‘You have to go to school, or tell me what’s going on.’
There’s no way I’m letting her feel sorry for me.
‘I’ll go to school if you drive me.’ I know she won’t leave the house.
‘Since when do you need a drive to school?’
‘Since today.’ I hear nothing, just a pregnant pause. You always read about those in novels.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll drive you. Let’s go or you’ll be late.’
‘There’s no way you’re driving that car.’
She’s thrown her raincoat over Damian’s PJS. She pumps the gas. Vroom vroom. It stalls. I start singing ‘The Hokey Pokey’ again.
‘Please stop that,’ she says, jamming the ignition. I stare at our old camping gear hanging on the garage wall. I enjoyed those trips, scampering around the woods, pretending I was an Indian collecting herbs and barks for medicines. Only I wasn’t going to give any to the white people, Damian and Drew. I’d let them die of scurvy, couldn’t wait to see their gums rot and their teeth fall out. I have a picture of the last living Beothuk girl. White folk made her a servant and the master raped her and all that.
The engine starts up again and Drew backs out of the garage. Rush hour’s in full swing. Stressed-out drivers rush to dead-end jobs. I turn on the radio and learn that in the last ten years the top 1 percent of rich Americans have amassed more wealth than the bottom 99 altogether.
‘Hope you’ve got your licence on you,’ I say.
She keeps her eyes on the road, looking grimmer than I’ve ever seen her.
‘Watch out for joggers,’ I caution. ‘One got mashed the other day, was out burning carbs, then slam. Her hubby and kiddies were home waiting for her. They’d just ordered pizza.’
‘Why do you retain these horrible, horrible stories? What does it do for you?’
‘Makes my story less horrible.’
‘Your story isn’t horrible at all. You’re spoiled rotten.’ She slams on the brakes, avoiding a squirrel. She hit one once and watched it quiver forever, stood in the street getting hysterical. I stayed in the car pretending I didn’t know her.
‘How long is Vaughn staying?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Doesn’t he have anywhere to go?’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘He’s alright.’ I’m thinking there’s some sick Oedipal thing going on between them. They’re not even related. ‘I just think it’s weird he’s around all of a sudden.’
‘Why is that weird?’
‘Because he’s never been around before.’ I heard them murmuring to each other this morning. They sounded like lovers. ‘He said you went to the store with him.’
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘Doesn’t he have his own mother?’
‘She works for Dupont.’
‘What about his father?’
‘He works for Dupont.’
‘So he can’t stay with them because they work for Dupont?’
‘What about your mother, Lemon? You won’t even talk to the poor woman.’
‘Which one?’
‘You know very well which one.’
‘Oh, you mean the one who dropped me in the Walmart toilet?’ Why’s she mentioning my bio mother all of a sudden? Does she want me out? So her and Treeboy can frolic happily ever after?
‘She most certainly did not drop you in a Walmart toilet. She gave you up out of necessity. You know nothing about her, or even the circumstances, and yet you’ve already condemned her.’
‘She condemned me.’
She pulls up outside the schoolyard and digs around in the glove compartment for her shades – probably because she doesn’t want to be recognized. She looks scared out of her mind, her lips twitch and her shoulders vibrate around her ears. She hasn’t been here since she was knifed. ‘Nice place, eh?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t you glad you brought me here?’
‘What am I supposed to do, Lemon? I’m doing the best I can here. You tell me what I’m supposed to do.’ I can’t see her eyes behind the glasses.
‘You’re the grown-up,’ I say.
She grabs the wheel the way she’s been grabbing her head lately. ‘Do you hear yourself? That snide, self-important tone? It’s rude, it’s disrespectful and I’ve had it, really I’ve had it.’ She keeps shaking her head, staring at the misfits in the yard. Suddenly old Blecher flings herself against the driver’s-side window. Drew yelps.
‘It’s only me,’ Blecher shouts through the glass because Drew isn’t rolling down the window. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s so good to see you. How are you?’ Drew stares at her hands on the wheel.
‘I was thinking about you the other day,’ Blecher shouts, ‘and I thought, Drew just has to work through it. It’s like a splinter, it just has to work itself out.’
I push open my door and dissolve into the mob where I hear the predictable chorus of sick words: cunt, slit, gash, twat, yo bitch, where’s your lesbo friend? I keep my head down, think of animals – they don’t bother you if you avoid eye contact.
On the steps I look back and Drew’s still there, immobilized by Blecher, and for a second I feel sorry for her but then I remember that she doesn’t need me anymore, that I’m spoiled rotten, snide, self-important. She has Treeboy now.
Megan, the former mute who is now empowered by Prozac, says it’s disgraceful that Toby Belch and his buddies lock up Malvolio. ‘Why are they so hostile?’ she demands.
‘That’s an interesting question,’ Huff says. ‘Why are Sir Toby and his cohorts so hostile toward Malvolio?’
‘Because he’s a dick,’ Taylor in the dog collar offers.
‘Define dick,’ Megan says.
Some dick left a note on my locker saying I’ll get worse treatment than Rossi if I testify. Slade the blow-job freak has been wearing my ripped underpants on his head. Some psychologist on the radio said humans are angry primates out of control.
‘He’s a fag,’ Bonehead says.
‘Totally,’ Taylor adds, ‘he’s like, wearing fucking stockings.’
‘Since when does how someone dresses make them homosexual?’ Megan demands.
‘That’s a good question,’ Huff says, leaning on the back of his chair. ‘Since when does attire define the man, or woman for that matter? Limone, what are your thoughts?’
‘You is what you wears,’ I say.
‘What does that make Malvolio then, cross-gartered in yellow stockings?’
‘A faggot,’ an angry primate concludes.
‘Nobody has the right to lock someone in hideous darkness,’ Megan declares. She’s had her hair cut short. It used to h
ang over her face and she chewed on it. ‘Think Guantánamo,’ she persists, ‘children were being held at Guantá-namo.’
‘Gwan-what?’ the primate says.
‘That’s what’s wrong with the world,’ Megan concludes. ‘Men thinking they can just go ahead and lock people up.’
‘Or kill them,’ I offer.
I tell Mrs. Wartowski I think Vronsky’s a jerk and I don’t see how Anna could leave her little boy to shack up with him.
‘Only because her husband won’t let her take the boy with her,’ she argues.
‘That’s no excuse. You don’t desert your kid. It’s your responsibility.’ Then I remember that Mrs. Wartowski’s biological parents were wired together and thrown in the Danube by her adoptive parents.
‘One day you’ll fall in love,’ Mrs. Wartowski says, ‘and then you’ll understand.’ She gazes at me, all dreamy and delusional.
I grab a science rag and sit with my back to the wall. There’s nobody around but Chester Gropp, the pimple farm, popping bubble wrap. I read about all the plastic in the oceans. Some ship lost a container over the side and dropped ten thousand plastic ducks into the Pacific. The albatross thought they were food and started eating and regurgitating them to feed their babies. The albatross couldn’t figure out why their babies were dying. All kinds of sea creatures eat the plastic bobbing on the ocean and don’t know that it’s killing them.
I read about cancer and stem-cell research. You can slash, poison and burn but if one cancerous stem cell remains, the cancer’s coming back. I figure in twenty years current cancer treatment will look barbaric, like leeches and bleeding.
Chester stops popping bubble wrap to pick his nose and wipe his fingers on his jeans.
It turns out a cheap, simple drug that has been used for years to treat metabolic disorders also happens to kill almost all cancers. But it’s not patented, which means drug companies aren’t interested in carrying out clinical trials using the drug because there’s no money in it. I read that scientists are messing around with human/cow and human/rabbit hybrids. I read that they’ve created genetically modified chickens to lay anticancer eggs.
Lemon Page 20
