Something Wicked (2 page)

Ms. Switzer’s hand goes up and she scribbles our essay topic across the blackboard. Occasionally you get a good teacher like Ms. Switzer who makes you actually wake up out of your dazed stupor and learn something. She’s not young or old, ugly or pretty. She’s not a bitch or a softie. She’s something in the middle of all those things, which just makes her … real.

She writes,
The first human statement is a scream.

I am excited to do this assignment. I have so much to say. Great ideas race through my mind, but by the time I place my hand on the page, my head is already empty again. That’s my learning disability: I can’t squeeze my brilliant, billowing thoughts through my teeny, tiny pen and into sentences on a page.

The excitement over the English homework never went away, it’s just that I get caught up in other things. Like after school, meeting my best friends Allison and Jessica, who beg me to come smoke a few blunts in the park because I’ve barely seen them all summer since I’m always with Michael. I met Ally in the beginning of grade nine, but Jess has been my friend since grade one. They’re a lot different. Allison is tough and butchy, with steel-toed black combats, while Jessica is more like a plain-Jane princess with a sharp stick. But we all get along really good, especially when we’re high.

Mark, Luc, Devon, and Kyle and a few other guys come along, stopping for some tokes before going to play hoops. We chill with them because Devon and Jess have been together forever, at least eight months. And Luc bought a twenty-sixer, and this Afro-haired guy who is hilarious had some E for us. And it is an Indian summer, and sitting with the grass tickling
my bare legs, talking to Jess and Ally, checking out the guys, is just so … summer. And the ball slap-slaps against the hot asphalt and the metal chain net chink-chinks like shattering crystal, as if every sound were amplified a million times in my ear. And all this just overrides any recollection of English homework, because being here, now, is all that seems to matter. Life isn’t in a classroom. This is where you find living. In this school field. In Jess’s uncontrollable laughter. In Kyle’s hand that picks at the grass and drops the shiny blades into piles on my bare legs. In his warm fingers rubbing the pieces off my thighs. In the smell of green.

Three

It’s after nine when I leave the park, and the closer I get to my apartment, the more mad I become. It happens every day lately, no matter how good my day is. But this is nothing that new, because I’m so goddamn angry all the time. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m always on the edge. The only time I’m not angry is when I’m high. That’s the only time I’m nice to people and it’s the only time I feel like I’m a “nice person.”

My mother says I was born with a scowl on my face, a permanently curled lip. She thinks that even when I was in the womb, I had my arms crossed the way I always do now. She says she could feel my pointy elbows through her tummy, like I was refusing to co-operate even in there. “I mean, what could you possibly be defying in the womb, Hon?”

She was only half joking when she said this, so I ignored her. I ignore most of what my mother says. She’s not terrible or anything, she’s just not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and most of what she says is stupid.

I’m hoping my mom won’t be home, but I see her as soon as I open the door. She’s lying on the couch in a tank and underwear, smoking a cigarette and watching her stupid
soap opera. I throw my backpack on the chair and head to the kitchen to get something to eat.

“Well hello to you too!” she shouts.

I ignore her because I’m too focused on finding something, anything, other than potato chips and cereal to eat. I look in the cupboards and there’s only canned peas and other canned shit. Then I look in the fridge. Nothing. Some pop, some mustard and other bottles, and a package of expired bacon.

“There’s nothing to eat!”

“What do you mean? There’s lots. Have some cereal.”

I come out of the kitchen and pick up my backpack. “I’m fucking sick of that bran crap.”

“Sorry, Hon, I’ll order pizza,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.

“It’s too late. I’m going to bed.”

“Where were you, anyway?” she asks, but I ignore her.

I slam the door to my room to show my disapproval of her mothering skills. I mean, she’s supposed to provide, at the most basic, food and shelter. Isn’t she? I take out my binder and lie in bed to start my English assignment.

The first human statement is a scream.

I pick up my pen and wonder where to start, what word to write first. I have so many thoughts. I think it’s so true. That we’re born into suffering. That we’re these innocent little beings and that, as soon as we see the world, we take that first breath and scream ’cause we know life is going to be rough. I think about all the tragedies on the news and the crazy people and the wars happening. It’s like sometimes I think humans were put on this earth as a test to see how much pain we can take.

After a while of still staring at the page, there’s a knock on my door. “Hon?”

“I’m busy!” I shout.

She opens the door and pokes her head inside. She has makeup on and the perfume stench gushes into my room. “I’m heading out for a bit, okay? Won’t be late, but don’t chain the door.”

“What about the pizza?”

“You said you didn’t want any.”

“Huggghh.” I sigh loudly. “I would have had some. I’m still awake.”

“Sorry,” she says. “Look, I gotta go. Night night. Okay?” She winks and doesn’t bother waiting for an answer.

I try to go back to my assignment, but now my mind is on my mom and too pissed off to think clearly, so I decide to just turn off the light and go to sleep and wake up early in the morning to finish it.

What is it about mothers that screws you up? Why can’t the story ever be about fathers? Is it because they’re always absent? My friends who actually know their messed-up fathers fall into seven categories: A) The father abuses the mother. B) The father abuses them. C) The father is an asshole. D) The father is a lazy ass. E) The father drinks. F) The father took off. G) All of the above.

All this is so overt. So easy to detect.

And my father? Trick question. Everything but B. So if this was on a test, I wouldn’t be able to answer. Anyway, my father split when I was just a baby, so there is not much more I know about him (or care to know) other than he slept till noon, he was always late, when he spilled something he didn’t clean it up, and he threw temper tantrums every once in a while. I know this because when I do all these things, my mother will say, “You’re just like your father.”

Mothers don’t fit into these simple categories. They are more complicated. They screw you up without you even knowing it. At least with fathers, there’s a definite conflict. A
clear and present danger. And, hopefully, a clear resolution. Call the police. Call Children’s Aid Society. Leave.

My mother.

Youngish. Hippish. Pretty.

Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen.

And so she gave me independence at a young age. Instilled decision making. Discussed the rights and wrongs after the first time I trashed my room, at age ten, instead of punishing me. When I was fourteen, she took me to the gynecologist, who inserted a birth control capsule into my arm even though I wasn’t yet having sex. Since I was smoking ganja anyway, she showed me how to responsibly roll a joint and measure amounts. And since I was partying, she let my friends and me party under her roof because it was safer than on the streets.

But she forgot something.

I’m a kid!

My brain is different. There are articles in science magazines about this. I highlighted the points and gave them to her.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Everyone knows this one too.

My mother.

Insecure. Addictive personality. Afraid of conflict.

Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen. Then at eighteen and a half, she moved in with a boyfriend. At eighteen and nine months, she had me. At twenty-one, she had a second boyfriend, who had a small grow op in the back room beside my nursery. At twenty-two, she went into therapy and took medication. At twenty-three, she joined AA. At twenty-four, she went back to school until she got pregnant again with my little brother Bradley, who died when he was six. And then things
really
got messed up.

Four

Early the next morning, before school starts, I sit in the cafeteria with this guy in grade twelve, Jeremy, and have a coffee. Jeremy is a player, and all the girls both hate him and love him. He’s so incredibly gorgeous and smart, he can do whatever he wants. Him and me are just friends, but we used to fool around every once in a while, just for fun.

We sit and talk about nothing special. I have my English homework in front of me: a blank page. I have been tapping my pen over it for fifteen minutes now, as if the ink would magically spill out and write the composition itself.

“I can write it right now for you,” Jeremy finally offers. “Give me your pen.”

I pass him my pen and paper.

“But it’ll cost you,” he adds, smiling slyly and running his tongue along his lip in this totally sexy way.

I roll my eyes. “Give me my pen back,” I order, holding out my hand.

He pulls the pen away and holds it to his chest. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just give it back,” I say again, smiling but resolute. There’s
no way I will mess around with him now, because I have a boyfriend and I don’t do that anymore. I don’t blame him for trying, though, because nobody knows about me and Michael.

He passes me the pen and I put it down to the paper as if I’m going to write something. “Now, shut up. I need to concentrate,” I say.

He gets up quickly, pushing the chair hard, making a high-pitched shrieking noise. I’m surprised he’s so angry. It was no big deal, but whatever. I don’t care. I keep my eyes on the page and he walks away.

For some reason I attract the most messed-up guys. I’m like a magnet for psychos—the ones with anger problems or jealousy or a few who seem incapable of caring deeply about anyone, including their families.

I wish every guy came with a description card disclosing his inner emotional baggage. Like those papers you get in a chocolate box telling you what’s inside so you don’t waste your efforts on something you know you won’t like.