The Chaos (6 page)

I rolled my eyes. “Please. It’s Ben.”

Glory sniffed. “Don’t matter. He’s a boy, and he not supposed to be in here.”

Ben said, “Come on! Like I’m gonna be peeking up any girls’ skirts. Besides, it’s not like there’s anyone in here.”

Glory hissed. “I’m here, all right? You trying to tell me I’m not anybody?”

I said, “You know he means nobody else, Glory. Just the three of us.”

Softly, she replied, “You really hurt Tafari, you know?”

And there it was. “Well, you seem to be working hard at making him feel better.”

Ben muttered, “Two girls fighting over a guy. How original.”

Glory kept brushing her hair into a sleek wave. “I told you; he and I have been talking, is all.”

I glared at her. “I bet.”

She actually looked hurt through the anger. “Time was, you used to trust me.”

“Time was, you weren’t trying to steal my boyfriend.”

She put the brush down and turned to face me. “Which boyfriend, girl? You dumped him, right? So tell me, nah? Is which boyfriend of yours I trying to steal?”

I had nothing to say to that. I looked down at my feet.

“And stop talking about ‘steal.’ Like a boy is a candy bar you
carry around in your purse with no will of him own.”

“I’m saying,” muttered Ben in agreement. He stepped in between us, a ref keeping two warring prizefighters apart. “Okay, okay, I got it. Here’s what you two are gonna do. We’ll cut Tafari in half, and you can share him.” Glory and I stared openmouthed at Ben. He said, “Only I get his bottom half first. Kind of like a finder’s fee.”

Glory was the one who broke. She glanced at me. She sputtered out a short laugh. Which got me started laughing, too. Glory’s laugh always did. She and I both just fell out giggling. I high-fived Ben, and then Glory and I were hugging.

“Is he all right?” I asked Glory. “Tafari, I mean.”

“He will be.”

“He’s mad at me?”

“He’s sad. And hurt, and confused. He really liked you, Scotch.”

Ow. “Not anymore, though, right?”

She smiled ruefully. “He’s trying not to, but the boy got it bad for you, girl. You should talk to him.”

“I—”

The washroom door opened and two girls came in. They eeped in alarm when they saw Ben. “It’s all right,” he said. “This girl was fainting”—he pointed at Gloria—“and I just helped my friend carry her in here so we could get some cold water on her face. You all right, sweetie?” he asked Gloria. She nodded and fanned herself, trying to look faint while her eyeballs were practically bulging out of her head with the effort of not laughing.

I said to the two surprised girls, “We’re going now.” I bundled Ben and Glory out of there, the three of us giggling like old times. Friday night! We stopped in the hallway to sort our various knapsacks and bags.

“You guys,” said Glory shyly, “I’m going to that patty place in the market. Wanna come?”

Ben replied, “Can’t. Gotta screen that new Star Trek movie for GSA on Monday. You could come with me to that.”

Glory and I sometimes attended meetings of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. It was Ben who had persuaded us to give it a try. I shook my head. “Not this time. My folks want us to be home to see them off.” I kinda liked the GSA, but they always wanted to talk about politics and demonstrations. Me, I’d rather talk about Katastrophe and Meshell Ndegeocello.

Glory’s eyes widened. “Your folks are going away? Without you?”

“Yeah, for the weekend!” I exulted. This felt good, the two of us talking again. I’d never been this angry at Glory before this. It’d hurt to not be her friend. “I gotta run. They’re expecting me home. Ben can fill you in.”

Ben shouldered his bag. “But I’m going to my movie.”

Glory said, “I’ll go with you, Ben.”

“Cool. Scotch, you sure?”

“I really can’t. I’ll catch you guys later.”

“Say hi to Richard,” Gloria told me, blushing. How could I have forgotten? Glory had a thing for my big brother, not for his best friend, Tafari.

It was going to be a great weekend.

Dad was in the living room, watching his favorite 100 percent fake reality cop show on the TV. He loved those shows so much.

He caught me glancing at the screen. “No television until after homework, young lady.”

“Yes, Dad.” As if. Fat chance I’d be I doing any homework this Friday evening. He and Mom would be outta here soon. No way they would know whether I was watching TV or not. I could catch up on my homework on Sunday.

“Come give your daddy a hug.” He opened his arms. He got his hug, but then I immediately moved away and sat at the other end of the couch. I ignored how his face fell. That was just the price he paid for what he’d done to Rich. I’d been making him pay it the whole time Rich was in jail, and I wasn’t going to stop now.

“When’re you and Mom leaving?” I asked him.

He sighed and turned his attention to the TV again. “In about twenty minutes.”

All
right
! I only nodded, but inside, I was doing a victory dance.

“I left dinner for you kids in the oven.”

“In the UH-ven?” I said, teasingly. He always said it OH-ven, with a long
O
. Like he said “bowl” so it rhymed with “owl.”

He gave me a sideways look. He knew that I’d just made fun of him. I’d better watch it. I asked him, “What’d you make?”

“Oxtail. Peas and rice. Salad. Yellow yam. A plate each for you and Richard. And you going to eat all the yam I put on your plate.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He put the remote down on the arm of the couch. “That is sufficient. You will not speak that way to me, young lady.”

Crap, now I’d made him tetchy. Better deal with it now. Otherwise the next twenty minutes would be nothing but lecturing about how when he was a small boy, his father would have tanned his behind for speaking to him too familiar, and
Young lady, is this kind of irresponsible behavior that got you into trouble,
yadda, yadda. “I’m sorry, Dad. I promise I’ll eat it all.”

“That’s better.” He turned his eyes back to the television. He muttered, almost as if I weren’t in the room, “Can’t afford to be wasting your mother’s hard-earned dollars.” He rubbed his twisted leg. Dad ran a construction company. He preferred to do some of the work with his own hands, but his leg hadn’t been the same since he’d fallen from scaffolding when I was a little girl.

I heard Mom before I saw her. From the sound of it, she was at the top of the stairs. “Rich! Come down to the living room, please?”

“Please,” question mark. Not her usual “please,” period. She was sounding a little bit apologetic around Richard nowadays. Good.

“Cutty, is Sojourner down there with you?”

“Yes, darling.”

“I’m here, Mom.”

“That’s good, you’re on time. Come and help me with these bags, please.”

I, of course, still got “please,” period. When they took me out of LeBrun High, they decided that I needed a more “diverse” school, as in a school where I wasn’t one of only five black people out of hundreds of students. That meant the big city; Toronto. Mom would never let on how much she’d hated to move all the way here, the long drive to work and back every day. How much she missed the town of Guelph. But ever since then she’d been starchier with me.

“Coming, Mom.”

Dad sighed. He shifted grumpily around on the couch, moving his leg to a more comfortable position. Mom had asked me to help her with the bags, not Dad. For all I was mad at him and Mom, I found myself shooting him a sympathetic look. He scowled and looked away.

I took the stairs two at a time, until Dad ordered me to act more ladylike.

Mom stood at the top of the stairs between her big red suitcase and Dad’s smaller navy one. She was going over something printed on a couple sheets of paper in her hand. She frowned at the list and shook her head. “I forgot to put down your aunt Maryssa’s number in case of any trouble.”

“It’s in my cell phone, Mom. Don’t fret.”

“Oh. Is it in Rich’s?” Mom had her hair done in that way I liked. She’d pulled it away from her forehead with a snug head wrap, leaving the soft mass of her nappy cloud of hair to poof out the back like a static explosion of pretty.

“I don’t know.” My hair was a mixture of Mom’s and Dad’s; it was medium brown and fell in natural ringlets. Lots
of girls envied it. “Hey, isn’t Auntie Mryss really our cousin?”

“Your dad’s cousin. So, your second cousin once removed, or something.” She hadn’t even looked up from double-checking her blessed list. She was wearing a sensible beige skirt, a plain, sensible cream blouse, with a sensible beige jacket. The wishy-washy beige did exactly that; washed the color from her deeper brown face.

“Wouldn’t Dad’s cousin just be our second cousin?”

“Whatever she is, just call her ‘Auntie,’ dear.”

“Cecily,” Dad called from downstairs. “You wanted to get on the road before the worst of the traffic.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Rich!”

Almost all her clothes made her look gray. Like I did, when I dressed in the colors she picked out for me.

Rich opened his bedroom door. He didn’t make eye contact with her, just came and lifted the bigger suitcase. I got the other one, and he and I thumped them down the stairs with Mom following behind, nattering at us. “I’ve made three copies of this list. You each get one, and I’ll put one on the fridge door.”

“Yes, Mom,” Rich and I sang in unison.

“Keep your list with you at all times. In your handbag, Scotch. Rich can put his in his wallet.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Dad was waiting in the hallway, leaning on his cane. He’d barely seen Rich before he snapped, “Richard, how you could make your little sister carry that heavy suitcase down the stairs all by herself?”

Rich boggled at him. “But she can—”

I cut in with, “Mom told me to—”

Mom overruled us all. “Cutty, she’s a strapping young woman. Let her do some fetching and carrying. She’ll need to be strong in this life.” She sighed and plucked a couple
of envelopes from the letter slot on the hallway wall. Using the top of her big red suitcase as a table, she folded two of her precious lists into precise thirds and put each one in an envelope. She tucked the flaps inside and handed one to me and one to Rich. “Are you two sure you’ll be okay on your own?”

Rich’s face hardened. “I was on my own in jail for three months.”

Mom drew back a little, like he’d pushed her. “Rich, darling, I—”

I gave him a play slap to the shoulder. “Hey! I came to see you!”

He sighed. “Yeah, you did. You and Tafari.”

Dad grunted, a bitter, one-note laugh. “You make your bed, you haffe lie in it. Bring those things out to the car.” He turned and limped toward the door.

Mom said sadly, “I’ll just put this list on the fridge door.” She was darting her eyes everywhere, except in our direction. She bustled into the kitchen.

Rich and I followed Dad outside to the car. Dad yanked on the lid of the trunk. It was locked. Mom had the key. “Chuh,” said Dad, frustrated. He used to like driving. Now, his leg wouldn’t let him. He leaned against the car, watching our front door for when Mum would come out. He didn’t say anything to us. He just stood there, a broad, medium-height white Jamaican man, grimly handsome with short, light brown hair going to gray. That old brown plaid jacket of his was all pills and thin spots, but he wouldn’t wear any of his others.

I casually brushed away a Horseless Head Man that had chosen that moment to land on the suitcase I was carrying. And I felt it. Its skin was cool, but it felt alive and muscle-y against the back of my hand. I jerked my hand back. Jesus, now I was thinking I could feel them.

The motion must have caught Rich’s eye. “What’s
with you?” he asked softly. Mostly we tried not to let our folks hear us talking to each other. A little privacy, you know?

“Nothing. I was just remembering a boa constrictor some Animal Rescue woman brought to our class one time.” The Horseless Head Man was looping in cheerful circles around Dad’s head.

Rich looked skyward. “You’re so weird.”

“You’re weirder.” Not really a snappy comeback. It was the best I could come up with after the shock I’d just had.

Dad started drumming his fingers quietly on the trunk of the car. He was still staring at our front door. “But where your mother is, ee? We supposed to be on the road by now.”

We didn’t answer. His leg was probably achy from standing this long, but he would never say that. He kept drumming, in a steady syncopation. The Horseless Head Man was gone, heaven knows when or where. They were like that. After a while, Rich started humming, improvising a tune to Dad’s beat. Dad said nothing, didn’t even look Rich’s way. He kept his fingers moving, though. He let the car take a little bit more of his weight. Closed his eyes.

Our front door opened and Mum came out. She took one look at the strain on Dad’s face and came bustling over. “Sorry, honey.” She unlocked the car doors and got in on the driver’s side. She waited while Dad got in and Rich and I loaded up the trunk with their suitcases. She fussed a bit more over whether Rich and I knew how to contact them in an emergency, and reminded Rich about his appointment with his parole officer. “I’m trusting you children,” she said.

Just before she rolled up the window on her side, Dad called through it, “And I don’t want any of your friends coming to visit while we’re away, you hear me?”

We both said, “Yes, Dad.”

And finally, the small, neat navy Subaru drove away, taking our millstones with it. We kept waving until Mom rounded the corner out of sight. Even then, although we were grinning like fools at each other, we did a calm, well-behaved walk back into the house. You never knew when nosey Mr. Walter from next door was watching. But the minute the front door was closed, we whooped and hollered and started dancing around the room, crazy Muppet-style. “They’re gone!” I yelled, “They’re gone! For two whole days, they’re gone!”

Rich gave me a high five.

“Freedom for the stallion!” I bellowed. “Or . . . I dunno . . . stallionette?”

Rich grinned at me. “You are such a goof.” He mimed holding a mike. “Freedom for the stallion, freedom from the chains, freedom for these young foals, freedom from the pains, t’aint no thing to take this life for a spin . . .”