Lemon (2 page)

That's why boys get into guns. It's easy and you can scare people who wouldn't give you a job interview if you offered to blow them. Well, maybe if you offered to blow them.

‘There's no room out there,' I say. ‘It's way too crowded. We need more war and pestilence.'

‘You cannot,' Blecher says, ‘you simply cannot expect to function with such a bleak outlook.'

‘I don't expect to function.'

‘You'll break your mother's heart.'

‘Which one?'

2

D
rew's hunched over the crosswords again, still in Damian's old pjs.

‘Do you want anything from the store?' I ask. ‘There must be something you'll eat.' I think she shakes her head. She's stopped picking up after me. The place looks like a tornado hit.

Instead of jail, the knifer's getting medication and treatment for pms, plus therapy for depression and anger management. She's supposed to keep an hour-by-hour log of her mood and seek counselling if it's negative. She wears a wristwatch that beeps every forty-five minutes to remind her to check her mood. She hasn't returned to school. She told the judge she was sorry and that she wants to meet with Drew to apologize in person. Drew can't face her, couldn't even attend the court proceedings. The letter opener was twenty-three centimetres long. Drew had to have surgery to remove it. I caught her trying to look at the scar in the full-length mirror. She couldn't turn her head enough to see it properly but I saw it, red and ridged, like something out of a horror movie.

I push my cart around the Valu-Mart, sniff and squeeze things, pretend I'm like other people, buy some Black Forest ham thinking Drew might go for it instead of peanut butter. Her first husband's son is coming next week. He's a tree saver, climbs trees and lives in them. He gives the trees names and has a special tree-saver name himself, Thor or something. I stare at the frozen foods trying to figure out what a tree saver might eat that I can nuke because old Drew won't be playing hostess any time soon. Zippy was always buying prepared foods and becoming hysterical when the food didn't look like it did on
TV
. Me, the seven-year-old wizard, explained that
TV
wasn't like real life. Zippy had a problem with this concept, was always comparing her daily grind with the smoke and mirrors on the one-eyed monster. ‘It's not humanly possible to look that good,' she'd say, regarding some liposuctioned model type. I decided there was no way
I
was going to spend my life sitting in front of a box that told me I was ugly. I quit
TV
and even movies, the modern ones anyway, because they get inside my head: all those hard bodies jumping in and out of cars and rutting.
Plus the violence. Rossi forced me to watch
Gangs of New York
and I couldn't handle all that butchery. What's his name, who was in
Titanic
, was in it and Rossi's got the hots for him. Ever since her breasts sprouted, Rossi's only concern is whether guys think she's sexy. I tell her they'd ram a tree if it had a hole in it. Tora has small breasts and writes poems in lower case about her isolation. She's been working on an ode about the stabbing, depicting Drew as some kind of girl Jesus. The three of us were eating fries at the time of the incident, heard a hollering and saw Drew with the letter opener sticking out of her back, still holding her food tray. She must be the only principal in history who eats in the cafeteria. Anyway, preoccupied with the greater good, she didn't twig to the fact that she'd been seriously wounded. She carefully set down the tray, switching to conflict-resolution mode, but the knifer didn't seem too interested and started swiping at Drew with her paws, calling her a cunt-shitting bitch. This got the mob's attention; even the geeks looked up from their techno-crap. Finally Mr. Coombs, super-jock phys. ed. teacher, tackled the girl from behind and held her arms behind her back. She kept wiggling around, shoving her ass into his crotch, making Coombs' eyebrows pop. When the paramedics arrived, Drew was lying motionless with her legs sticking out at weird angles.

‘How's your mother?' Damian asks.

‘Which one?'

‘Has she left the house yet?'

‘Negative.'

Ever since Damian started feeling guilty about leaving me on suicide watch for mother number one, he's been taking me out. We started with doughnuts but have progressed to beer. The waitresses act wenchy around him and don't ask my age. I guess he's good-looking, though his hair's thinning a bit. He's alright. I've never expected much from him. When he isn't chasing pussy, he's stomping around in a hard hat on building sites. He met Drew when he was the site manager for our school reno. Now he's with some other tomato he really wants me to like. They play tennis and drag me out so I can miss every single ball.

‘She should be seeing a therapist,' he says.

‘To which mother would you be referring?'

‘Drew, obviously.'

‘Obviously.' I like saying that word, stretching out the
ob
then gliding into the
vious
.

One table over, a couple are shoving tongues down each other's throats. Damian's pretending he hasn't noticed.

‘I'd like some nachos,' I say, knowing the cheese will stick to my thighs.

‘Whatever you want,' he says, wiping sweat off his forehead with his napkin. He always sweats around me. I figure it's due to his high blood pressure and compulsive lying. ‘A little bird told me your biological mother wants to meet you.'

I don't say anything because I know
he
will.

‘That's exciting,' he says. He always says, ‘That's exciting,' or ‘How exciting.' It never is. I ask the waitress for nachos.

He leans over the table, giving me his undivided attention. ‘Aren't you just a tad curious about her?'

I don't tell him she's probably trailer trash who hopes my existence will give her life meaning.

‘Zippy phoned the other day,' he says. ‘She thinks you'll never forgive her.'

That's sweet, the two of them talking behind my back. ‘They let her out?'

‘She hasn't been institutionalized for some time, Limone. If you paid attention you would know this.'

‘Are
you
paying attention? I mean, she was your wife. Maybe if you paid her more than a dollar a month, she wouldn't have to clean toilets.'

‘For your information, she is no longer with Molly Maid. She's working at Marty Millionaire.'

‘That's exciting.' I try to picture Zippy in her fluffy bathrobe hustling couches.

The nachos arrive and I start shoving them in my mouth. When I was eight I decided to stop reacting to humans. Reacting gives them power, which they can use against you. Registering nothing shields you. The attackers throw jibes and punches but go unrewarded. You're still inside your body feeling the pain, but the ass-faces can't see it. This is particularly useful when boys stalk you. I'm classified as a ‘dog,' which means they pass me off to a friend: ‘How 'bout some sucky-fucky with my friend here, bitch?' What is it about boys and packs? A bunch of them are currently swarming total strangers. Even if the victims offer up their iPods and cells, the dullards still beat the crap out of them. So I take precautions, dress baggy, cover up. Avoid all techno gizmos.

‘Why don't you give her a shout?' he asks.

‘Who?'

‘Your real mom. It can't hurt and, who knows, you might like her.'

‘What's it to you if I call her?'

‘Limone, you're a little short on role models right now. She might be just what you need, with Drew in rough shape.'

‘Drew's fine.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Don't think, okay, do me a favour,
don't think.'

He does one of his walrus sighs then takes a gander at the couple swapping spit. I ingest more nachos, thinking about that woman who adopted two unbelievably cute Guatemalan babies only to discover that she couldn't ‘bond' with them. Nine loveless years later she passed them back to the adoption agency. ‘I made a mistake,' she said. ‘They deserve so much more than I can give.' Of course the boys weren't cute babies anymore and nobody wanted to adopt them. They're in foster care. I cut out their photo and put it in my mother/daughter scrapbook, even though they're boys.

‘You're really growing up,' Damian observes. ‘If you wore some decent clothes you might even be pretty. Whoever would have thunk it?' Not only does he say
thunk
but another favourite phrase is
How d'you like dem apples?
It is truly painful being associated with him.

‘Do you need clothes? Some summer dresses?'

What's he got in mind? Something short and sheer? A pair of fuck-me pumps?

‘You know,' Damian says, breathing beer, ‘you're always welcome to come and live with me and Goldie.' He only asks me when he's drunk. I push the plate of carbs and fats at him.

‘I gotta go.'

‘D'you need a ride?'

‘Negative.'

‘Don't be a stranger.'

Late shifts at the hospital don't bother me. I like talking to the kids who can't sleep. The lucky ones have parents dozing on sofa beds in their rooms, but there's always some loner whose parents work nights or have to look after other sibs. My job is mostly to make sure the younger ones don't pull out their ivs. Contrary to popular belief, kids don't usually die from cancer these days. Unless it's neural blastoma, which is pretty rare and only happens to the under-fives. Leukemia is usually treatable, although sometimes the chemo and radiation cause infections. The worst is when the brain gets infected, because it can result in brain damage. If the kid makes it, she has to learn how to walk again, hold a crayon, a spoon. By the time she's up to speed on feeding herself, chances are the cancer's back. But mostly the kids pull through. In the short term anyway. In the long term they're more susceptible to adult cancers but nobody talks about that. So I don't sweat the cancer ward.

The parents can be a problem, freaking out where the kids can hear them. The parents check their brains when they step through the hospital doors, morph into emoting blobs in the elevators. I always ask them to fuss and blither in private because their children don't want to hear about dying, they want to party. Sometimes they're
too weak to do much so I perform puppet shows by their beds, the more violent the better. The girls always want a wedding at the end. The boys want everyone blown up. I tell them somebody has to live to keep the human race going. ‘Why?' they ask, which is a good question.

I really like this six-year-old named Kadylak whose parents are Ukrainian and clock long hours at shit jobs to pay for the cancer drugs their daughter needs when she's not in the hospital. Even though Kadylak knows making extra cash is why they're not around, it's obvious she misses them like crazy. She rocks in her sleep and calls for them. I put my arms around her and hold her steady till she relaxes. You can always tell when a kid's fallen asleep because suddenly they weigh an extra fifty pounds and have no bones in their bodies. Most children with cancer become pretty self-absorbed what with the treatment and pain and the feeling that the world's left them behind. But Kadylak keeps an eye on things, people's moods. If I'm sad, angry, frustrated, Kadylak wants to know about it. ‘Why are you so fussterated?' Usually I tell her and she listens. Nobody else does. Blecher's head bobs but she's not hearing what I'm saying; I'm tempted to ask her why she doesn't do something useful, like learn how to masturbate, but I can't risk another suspension. Kadylak's a big believer in ‘tomorrow,' which is wild considering she's got cancer. ‘It'll be different tomorrow,' she says. She never says,
It'll be better tomorrow.
Just
different.

3

T
he truth is I want a biological mother like the Jewish girl's. When the Nazis evicted them, Mutti sent her daughter on the
Kindertransport
to England even though losing Marianne was killing her. Mutti told Marianne that she had to let her go to a better life because there would be no life in Germany. Mutti sacrificed herself for her daughter. She pinned a letter inside her dress that told Marianne how much she loved her, that she couldn't bear the thought of not watching her grow, not fixing her hair, not lengthening her dresses. That's how my real mother is in my heart. In my head she's that girl who gave birth in the can at Walmart and left the baby in the toilet bowl. Gives new meaning to the phrase
shop till you drop
.

I'm digging through the debris in my locker for that French textbook I pretend to read to keep Babineaux off my case, when Tora thrusts one of her poems at me:

i'm in my own world
all alone in this
icy blue sky
i see no one
hear no one
i cry tears of pain
but i no longer ask
why am i here

‘Awesome,' I say, avoiding eye contact. I've considered telling her the truth re her verse but suspect this would mean losing an ally, which I can't afford. Personally, I think telling the truth is overrated.

Rossi shows up, smearing on lip gloss. ‘So what are you guys doing for lunch?'

‘Sitting in the yard and flicking boogers,' I say.

There's a party none of us are invited to, at Nicole's. She's one of Queen Bee Kirsten's followers. Being excluded has Rossi in a funk.

‘That's like, the tenth party this year,' she whines.

I can't imagine going to a ‘party.' I'd have to look interested.

‘She's invited
everybody
,' Rossi says. I'm worried about her. She doesn't see what's happening, that she's been labelled
skank
; that soon they'll be dissing her in the halls and online, pelting her with rocks and toilet paper. Last year Kirsten pushed a broken bottle into a skank's face. Of course there were no witnesses. And yet somehow word got around that the skank's chin had been hanging off her face. I want to protect Rossi from a similar assault. We've known each other since
JK
, swapped Winnie the Pooh stories, cried at the end when Christopher Robin asks Pooh to remember him always no matter what happens.