Belinda hadn't spoken to her in eighteen years. Her mother still sent them parcels at Christmas, too big for Belinda to hide, and a card on her birthday. The card always contained three crisp Canadian $50 bills, which must have required a special trip to the bank. The price of forgiveness. Belinda kept the cash for years, in case of emergency. She slotted the bills into an envelope that she taped under the top drawer in the kitchen, where no one else would find them. It was better to pretend that ties had been severed.
WHEN I WAS IN
grade three I had this best friend named Michelle. I called her Shelley, even though nobody else did. It seemed to suit her 'cause she was the colour of those small white seashells that glow when you hold them up to the sun. When we hooked our arms we looked like a yin-yang symbol, we contrasted so much. I wished more than anything that my skin was as milky and smooth as hers instead of brown like tea. And instead of stick-straight dark hair like mine, she had fine curly hair that was so blonde it was practically white. She spoke with a very soft and high-pitched voice, the kind of voice a bluebird in a Disney cartoon would have. Her arms and legs were so bony I actually believed that if I held her hand too tight, tiny little cracks would appear and travel all the way through her hand and up her arm and the whole limb would shatter into a million pieces. But I adored her for being so white and breakable. When I think of her now with all that fine curly hair and those bony arms and legs I see her as a human incarnation of a porcelain doll, which is funny because I treated her like my baby. I dragged her along everywhere I went and made sure she got to bounce first when we played King's Court at recess. I gave her seven of my scratch-and-sniff stickers to trade because her mom wouldn't buy her any. She had butter sandwiches for lunch every day, so I always broke off a piece of my chocolate-dipped granola bar to give her for dessert.
For the longest time I didn't know she was poor. And not poor in the way that we were, in the way that Mum said we were,
Don't you know how poor I am,
when I asked if we could go to Chuck E. Cheese's two weekends in a row. Shelley was poor enough to have to wear flip-flops to school up until October when Mrs. Goldsmith gave her a pair of hand-me-down running shoes. They were obviously boys' shoes with their wide soles and their fat blue stripes on the sides, and they looked totally ridiculous on Shelley's little bird feet. When she came to school wearing them for the first time I marched her right into the corner of the coatroom before anyone else could see her, hissed into her face, What the heck kind of shoes are those to be wearing? Those are for
boys,
silly! I made her take them off and I threw them into the garbage along with all the banana peels and snotty tissues and sandwich crusts.
I don't have any other shoes to wear, she said. She stood there in her socks watching me.
Socks are better than those ugly things, I told her. Besides, they clean the floor every day here so what's the point of wearing shoes? I hooked my arm in Shelley's and walked her into the classroom, making sure to veer around the spots where old grey gum had been mashed into the carpet.
You would think, just by looking at her, that Shelley would be the kind of kid who'd cry if someone threw her shoes in the garbage and made her walk around in her socks. But she didn't.
She didn't bat an eye, acted like this kind of thing happened to her every day. She didn't seem worried at all about what she would do when everyone went outside into the muddy grass and puddles at recess, or when the end of the day came and she had to walk home. Of course, none of that stuff ended up being a problem because Mrs. Goldsmith noticed right away and made me fish the shoes out of the garbage.
Thinking about it now makes me want to cry. I think about Shelley watching me toss out the shoes she was given like they were trash, and the worst part was that she didn't say or do anything to stop me. The fact that she didn't cry or whine or even look shocked at all is probably the saddest thing I can even think of. I was the kind of kid who would throw a tantrum and tell Mum I hated her when she wouldn't let me have a lava lamp instead of a regular night-light. I can't even imagine what kinds of things Shelley had to put up with when being forced to wear shoes that had just been picked out the garbage and were covered in sticky brown juices and crumbs wasn't the biggest tragedy she'd ever experienced. To her, it wasn't even a tragedy at all.
I try to tell myself that even though I was an insensitive brat, I was still a good friend to her. I like to think that maybe I helped her forget about all the depressing stuff in her life and just have fun being a kid. We had some good times together. We made up an Ewok language and when anyone else was around we'd speak only in Ewok, shake our heads when people said Huh? We were only able to memorize a handful of words so we basically had the same dumb conversation every time, something to the effect of How are you today, I am fine, Do you like rollypolly berries, Yes I do. We thought words like rollypolly definitely sounded like Ewok because they were cute and fun to say. The only word I can clearly remember writing into our Ewok dictionary was âooba.' That meant goodbye.
In our schoolyard, there was this long grass that grew all along the chain-link fences. The grass grew really tall because the mowers could never cut that close to the fence. Shelley and I used to collect the grass, pull it up by its roots and weave it together for our Tarzan rope. We imagined that once we'd lashed the braids together, we'd have one rope long enough and strong enough to tie to a tree so we could swing from it. I think every kid has a fantasy of living in the jungle and swinging through trees from ropes. When you're a kid you can imagine how it would feel to jump off the branch of a gigantic tree, tall as a skyscraper, your stomach falling right out, your arms hanging on for dear life and your whole body clenched and ready to get schmucked â but then all of a sudden everything becomes slow motion. You see another rope hanging from another tree slowly coming towards you, and then you realize that all you have to do is reach right out and grab it. And you would feel like the whole jungle was built just for you, like there would always be a rope hanging for you wherever you needed it. It would feel like freedom.
Shelley and I never got far enough to figure out how to connect the grass braids because we left them lying in a pile against the fence and someone stole them. I don't know why we didn't find a better place to keep them. Maybe we knew that it wouldn't work anyway, wanted to save ourselves the disappointment.
For a long time I didn't think about Shelley. I'd almost forgotten all about her until I had the crop circle dream. It had only been two days since Mum left. Remembering the way I felt when I woke up makes me want to call it a nightmare, but there wasn't anything particularly scary about it, really.
In the dream, Mum was sitting in a field. There was tall grass all around her, so tall and dense that you wouldn't be able to find her unless you looked down from the sky. She was sitting on her knees in the middle of a circle where the grass had been cut short, and it looked like the circle had been cut to fit her body perfectly. It seemed like I was sitting right in front of her except I couldn't have been because there was only just enough space in the circle for her. Her knees were brushing against the wall of grass stalks.
Then she reached out and took a handful of grass. The sound of roots pulling up was like ripping stitches out of denim. But the roots weren't thick and gnarly like I expected. They were very long and thin and flowy, like hair. And when she combed her fingers through the roots to separate them into strands, I noticed that Mum's hands were also long and thin and white, with see-through fingernails. Shelley's hands.
I still get goosebumps just thinking about it. It was like I was seeing Mum as a ghost. It felt like it was happening in real life, as if wherever Mum was at that moment, she might be actually, truly, dead.
You know how dreams always make perfect sense for the first few minutes after you wake up? You think, Thank God it was just a dream, as if all the crazy stuff that happened in your head could feasibly happen in real life. Then you try to tell someone about this crazy dream you had,
Isn't that funny?
Isn't that messed up?
and they look at you like, So what? Big deal. It always turns out to be one of those âyou had to be there' stories. That's why I didn't bother telling Jess when I went to her room in the morning to see if she was awake yet. That and I didn't really feel like sitting there on her bed like a mental patient while she pulled out her dream dictionary and prattled on about the symbolic meaning of grass.
Besides, it was Saturday morning, and Jess was busy being her usual worry-wart self.
We can't just
leave
him here, Grace, she kept saying. Not with Wiley acting like a total head-case.
We can't tell Da we aren't going for dim sum either, I said.
I know, she said, rubbing circles into her temples with her fingers. It drives me nuts when Jess does things like that. I know the only reason she does them is 'cause adults do. The other thing she does when she wants to act stressed is pinch the bridge of her nose between her thumb and finger and scrunch her eyes up, like she's got a migraine or sinus congestion. When she does those things I just feel like telling her how ridiculous she is, that she's such a melodramatic wannabe-grown-up.
Christ, relax, Jess, I said. It's not like he'd be alone.
Jess paced over to her bedroom door, closed it and locked it even though Wiley was in the garage, all the way at the opposite corner of the house.
Have you
seen
the kitchen? Jess said, her eyes bulging.
Why yes, I have, I said chirpily. It's blue with white cabinets, what's your point? I knew that Jess was referring to the stacks of unwashed dishes, the dried-up splotches of Coke that had been spilled all over the stove elements, the balls of used tissues spilling out of a cough syrup box that was sitting in a red puddle next to the sink, the counters dusted in fine, technicolourorange Cheezie powder.
Seriously, Grace. There were nine empty Cheezie bags in the garbage. Nine!
Scandalous! I gasped. If he's eating Cheezies, God knows what else he might do!
Jess gave me the look of death, crossed her arms tight over her chest. I could tell she was trying her best to think of something mean to say.
You may not want to hear this, she said, because I know you're like best buds and all, but Wiley is â disturbed. Mentally. Mummy told me.
And whatever Mum says is true, right? I laughed. I made it sound like I was laughing at her, but it was more to cover up the fluttery feeling in my stomach. I thought about what had happened the day before. Wiley's wired look, his âresolution.'
Jess narrowed her eyes. What is that supposed to mean?
she asked. It wasn't sarcasm. I felt sorry for her, being seventeen and still so naïve.
I guess we'll just have to take Squid with us, I said.
Yeah, right, Jess said, âcause Daddy'll love that.
We'll just tell him that Squid loves Chinese food, and he reeeeally wants to come.
Jess bit her lip. You're not going to tell him about Mummy being gone, are you? she said.
Of course not! He'd probably make us stay at his house.
Probably, Jess agreed.
See, Da suffers from chronic obliviousness. It's not really his fault, since he only sees us every couple of weeks, but he seems to think that time just stops when we're not with him. To him we're still two little girls aged seven and nine. Once, after I let it slip over the phone that I was home alone with Squid, he drove to our house and gave me a cheque made out to Mum for two hundred dollars. Tell her to get a babysitter, he said.
Da was waiting in the car outside our house like usual when he came to pick us up for lunch. I went up to his window to ask about taking Squid along while Jess and Squid waited inside. He said okay but I could tell he was annoyed about having to pay for an extra person. I just pretended not to notice his grouchy tone, ran back inside and told Jess and Squid to put on their shoes. Then I went to the back door and opened it, peeked into the garage.
We're taking Squid with us for lunch, I told Wiley. He was rummaging through the utility shelves, trying to pull out an old dusty drill tangled up with an extension cord. His hands were pulling at the cords as if it were a matter of life and death. Finally, they came free.
Lunch? he said, holding the tangled cords up like a web. Man, I haven't eaten since yesterday! He tossed the cords on the floor, on top of a pile of other tools.
There's leftover pizza in the fridge, I said. And tons of other stuff. You'll be fine.
Oh sure, sure, he said, waving his hand like a traffic cop,
move it along
. Got too much to do in here anyway. Don't worry about me. Don't worry about me at all, I'm a big boy, I'll take care of myself. He giggled, mechanically. You have fun, he said. Let loose.
I left quickly, put on my shoes without bothering to tie the laces, and went out the front door.
When I joined Jess and Squid in the car, Da was suddenly acting all cheery. He was asking Squid about school, and he had his fake happy face on where he smiles with his teeth parted, the way he does when he's talking to his boss about the high grades Jess and I always get in school,
she got a 98% on her exam, which
subject was it again?
Squid didn't know any better, having only talked to Da maybe twice in his entire life. Since Da has always treated our house like quarantine, I wasn't even sure how long it had been since he and Squid had seen each other. But Squid nattered on about his assembly, how he remembered all the words to the songs and he never used to be able to remember things so good.
As soon as we sat down at the restaurant, Squid announced, I really really really like Chinese food. We'd coached him.