The Cloaca

by Andrew Hood

  The dojo supplied her with a crisp new karategi. All week Frances wore that gi around the house, waiting for someone to knock so she could answer the door in it. No one came by. It was exam time.

  At her second class Frances was physically awkward and weak and her height was not the evasive advantage she assumed it would be. She got flipped more than she flipped and the mats weren’t as soft as she thought they legally should be. The worst of it, Sensei Brian turned out to be a phenomenal asshole who used the word faggoty more than once and wouldn’t stop staring down Frances’s gi when she bowed. When she caught him he had winked and that great gi was just pajamas now.

  Another time, in the messy wake of a seven-month fling with a Women’s Studies major who liked to be strangled, Frances got fixed on becoming this amazing accordion player. She would play in any band around town, and be constantly on tour with whoever would have her. Off to the side and intense, accordion players were Frances’s favorite, the way they leaned over their squeezebox and listened hard to the thing the way she imagined mechanics listened to engines. Using squirrelled tip money she had been saving for a possible third stab at school, Frances bought an accordion, only it never occurred to her that she would have to learn how to play the thing. Frances had assumed that it would come naturally to her, like how a baby, chucked into a pool, just swims away.

  And then there were countless other times and countless other things. There were boyfriends and girlfriends, and university degrees, and philosophies both low- and highfalutin. There were trades and travel plans. And there was quitting the same café job over and over, and there were depressions that came in all kinds of sloppy, shitty, trite shades. Everything in Frances’s life was adding up to something like Zeno’s paradox, which Frances understood enough to know that it had something to do with moving forward but never getting anywhere.

  She was ready for a meltdown at thirty, that imaginary line she had drawn between when it was okay to be a fuck-up and when it wasn’t. But thirty came and went without any significant cracking, without any significant anything. A plan to move to Montreal fell through like too many groceries in a wet paper bag, and a photo essay about the fancy sneakers Southern Ontario Mennonites wore ended when Frances watched a ten-year-old Elvis impersonator get hoofed in the chest by a horse at the St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market. But that spring Frances joined a queer backyard spandex wrestling league and, for a time, everything seemed stable, life seemed livable.

  The panic came at thirty-one, phoning home for her birthday wishes. “It’s like they say about life being like a box of chocolates,” her step-mom had offered, unsolicited, while she waited for Frances’s dad to come in from mowing the lawn. “Maybe your box just didn’t come with one of those chocolate map-y things and you have to do little nibbles on every piece to find what you like. That’s just your box of chocolates, hon.” Frances had hung up. When her dad phoned back it wasn’t with birthday wishes, just instructions on how Frances was to treat her step-mom, as if the woman was some easily-spooked Pomeranian with a long list of dietary restrictions.

  The next night, in a weed-tizzy tinctured with too much red wine, Frances slipped away from her birthday party. After a delirious bus ride where she seriously worried about being attacked by a gaggle of sullen kids in black hoodies—where was that gi when she needed it?—she stormed the Corbet Community Centre and signed up for a beginner’s art class for adults.

  “Because I just feel like my whole life has just been doodling,” was the reason Frances gave back at her party, purple wine smirks in the corners of her mouth, “and I want to start drawing, you know? Fuck.”

  Frances’s co-workers had baked her a vagina cake. It was brought out and Frances huffed at the thirty-one candles that formed the pubic hair over the petally flourishes of pink and red icing, only they were the kind of candles that didn’t blow out. Frances’s bush fire just guttered and no one knew what to do.

  Frances arrived for her first art class, keen as hell and a smidge higher than she wanted to be, to find a classroom of chattering children. Waiting by the door was a woman with a clipboard and rolls of masking tape on her wrists like jewelry. She wasn’t wearing a bra and from a few rooms away Frances could discern the general shape of her breasts and her nipples through the hazy blouse. Up close those things were harder to make out, but still there, still obvious now that Frances knew what to look for.

  “I’ve fudged the nights,” Frances admitted. “Or I wrote down the wrong room.”

  The woman scanned her clipboard, clucking her tongue. She looked younger than she probably was, and had the distinct, curbside couch smell of the more free-wheeling population in town. Frances had often wondered what these people did for work, and here it was. Maybe Frances could inquire about teaching a class at the community centre. Making Bongs From Things Around the House 101. First class: An Apple a Day Keeps More Than the Doctor Away.

  “You’re Dr. Ludlow?” the teacher gasped, apparently thrilled that she had found the name.

  Only when Frances was particularly twisted did she pretend a professional career. The night of her party was foggy, her cleanest memory being everyone burning themselves trying to take the relentless candles out of the cake. And then everyone standing around sucking their fingers. And then more wine, and some let-down mushrooms. And to end the night Frances had disastrously fooled around with a girl nearly half her age.

  Bad Service, the café that Frances had been working at on and off for thirteen years, had recently hired a fresh crew of first-year university students to replace the graduates who left in the spring. Frances’s party had been at the café, and the new hires had brought along all their buddies. They quizzed Frances about bands and books and movies that she had never heard of, acting flabbergasted and slighted that she was unaware, advising her with a medical severity that she really should check them out. Emboldened by whiskey, Frances started to fabricate art that she could act shocked that these kids were not experts on.

  “You’ve never heard Oedipus and the Motherfuckers? Oh my god, you really should check them out.” “You’ve never read Louis Tully? Jesus Christ, you need to track down a copy of The Confabulators like fucking ASAP.” “How have you never seen Elbow Kissers? You wouldn’t think that watching an old man try to kiss his elbow for two hours could be so moving, but holy fuck. I nearly fucking cried. Fucking. Cried.”

  By midnight Frances’s friends her own age had all gone, apologizing about things they had to get up for the next day, leaving just Frances and these moody, cawing nineteen-year-olds. One kid with big boxy glasses like Frances’s mother used to wear, an old Toronto Blue Jays ringer, and the left side of her head shaved, had taken a sloppy shine to Frances, had kept winking at her.

  Around dawn, as she was bluntly kissing this youth back at her house, Frances had wondered what she’d even been doing in 1991, while this kid whose hand was now starting to rub her crotch like a migrained temple was being born. Watching The Cosby Show probably, like everyone else, except more alone and more cynically and, eventually, a bit drunk and in love with Denise Huxtable.

  In the heat of what Frances assumed had been passion, or what was supposed to look and sound like passion, this teenager had moaned “Teach me!”

  Before Frances could ask, this girl, Betsy—who could probably still count how times she’d been drunk—started fumbling clothes off, snagging feet and catching earrings. “I want you to teach me stuff,” Betsy said, trying to do a sexy voice while struggling with her own bra. Frances hadn’t even decided yet whether she wanted this to be a no clothes thing or not.

  “What do you mean teach you stuff? What stuff?”

  Betsy nudged at Frances’s breast with her foot and winked. “I want you to show me whatever you want me to know about.”

  And that’s when Frances sobered enough to understand that this girl believed she was with an older, travelled woman. She expected Frances to impart her y
ears of bawdy wisdom all over her body, a bit chubby with baby fat still. But what the fuck did Frances know about sex? Fifteen years on the job and all she had figured out was that the people who think they know what they’re doing, or have a store of stuff that they do, are the creepiest, and are probably bored with sex. These people just want at your bum. What the fuck did Frances know about anything for that matter? In the end, she and Betsy had done some pedestrian, Junior High-grade stuff until Betsy left to puke.

  “That’s me,” Frances agreed with the clipboard. She smiled at the art teacher, and the art teacher smiled back. She was one of those local hippies who, though they didn’t shave their legs and were covered with as many as seven scarves at one time, had perfect white teeth and carefully shaped eyebrows.

  “And Frances is on her way?” The teacher looked past Frances, down the hall, still smiling.

  “Frances?” Frances glanced over her own shoulder, half expecting to see herself, dawdling, bent at the water fountain.

  “Your daughter.”

  Frances looked again down the empty hall.

  With a peach pit chin Frances admitted that she was Frances. And in a choked hush she did her best to explain about doodling vs. drawing, and Zeno, and a little bit about karate and the summer she had decided to be a carpenter but walked out the first night after seeing some guy get the drawstrings of his shorts caught in a machine and his crotch nearly mangled.

  “All I want for my life right now,” she explained, whispering and harried, “is to make things look like what they’re supposed to be. That’s all.”

  Marilyn—that was the teacher’s name—smiled wider. Her teeth were perfect. The kind you just wanted to lick. “It’s fine by me if you join the class,” she said, putting her hand on Frances’s shoulder, exposing a bristly armpit, “But it’s not entirely up to me, doc.” And then she winked.

  The class was all ponytails, baseball hats, and track pants. A dozen nine- and ten-year-olds were seated around four large teacher’s desks pushed together. The clamour of them stopped when the door opened. They eyed Frances as she took a seat in their midst, most of them breathing out of their mouths and not blinking enough.

  Frances waved demurely. She felt awkward and overdressed, and maybe higher than she’d first thought. She had braced herself to be the youngest in a class filled with bored, chatty middle-aged women, the kind of women she imagined took beginner art classes. Those idle women who always came into Bad Service in groups of ten, who raved for hours over glasses of wine, and then wanted to pay individually on debit. “It says option for tip on here,” they’d squint at the machine, never bringing their glasses for some reason, “Is there an option to not?” Maybe because of her size, these woman had always treated Frances like a child, so for their imagined sake she had tried to put on the airs of maturity. A dour plum skirt, a limp brown sweater, saddle shoes, and a pair of glasses without a prescription.

  “So there’s been a mix-up,” Marilyn started, and went on to explain the gist of Frances’s predicament. The kids looked at her like she was something on TV.

  And then Frances was put to a vote. The class buried their heads in their arms while Frances and Marilyn watched. The room smelled like old rulers and pencil shavings. At a distance again, in the unflattering greeny light of the fluorescents, Frances got a clear enough look at her new teacher’s boobs to give a description to a police sketch artist.

  While the children were nestled in the crooks of their arms like sleeping pigeons, it occurred to Frances that now was a ripe time to secret around the room and steal all of their little knapsacks. What did they have in those bags? Dolls? Stickers? Cellphones and computers? What did kids do with themselves these days?

  Her wandering, criminal eyes caught Marilyn’s. The woman winked again at Frances, as if she was on board with the whole knapsack stealing idea. They’d split the haul.

  Like high-fiving and skateboards, winking seemed to be making a comeback, Frances was starting to notice. What exactly was she supposed to understand? All a wink was confirming was that the other person knew what was going on. But if you don’t know what they know, or what they think you know, then a wink means nothing.

  At the vote, all the hands had gone up in favour of Frances—except one. One hand couldn’t stay down enough.

  After class Frances scanned the parking lot for that kid, that redhead with a melon as big as a pumpkin that for the rest of the night had stared hatefully at her like he was trying to blow her up with his mind. After outlining the course—a two month trajectory from The Basics and The Fundamentals to the final Secret Project!!!!—they had gone around the table for introductions. “I’m fickle Frances,” Frances had offered, “and my favorite food is foie gras.” The kids had really tittered at that one, whatever it meant. “I’m just Derek,” the redhead complained when it was his turn, “and I don’t like any foods that start with d, okay?”

  At the very least, Frances wanted to get a look at the poor woman who had squeezed that impossible skull out of her body. But the lot emptied and there was no sign of Derek.

  In her car she fixed a modest bowl. Pulling out, Frances watched the community centre get small in her rearview mirror, liking the feeling of leaving a place having done something there. Things were changing, it felt like. Finish this class and she could finish any goddamned thing. If Frances could get control of her life metaphorically, then handling the real meat of it shouldn’t pose a problem.

  “You know a gal can’t live on metaphor alone,” one of the teenagers from Bad Service had warned Frances the night of her party. But Frances wasn’t so sure. She had lived alone for a while now.

  She passed him sitting on the curb by the bus stop. Her Honda’s one working brake light turned Derek an evil red. As she backed up, Frances tapped her pipe into an empty coffee cup. “Need a lift?” she called out, leaning across the front seat.

  Frances’s logic explained to her that because she was a woman, and a woman in the same art class as this kid, bringing Derek into her car was not inappropriate and in no way pedophiley.

  After looking down the street for any hint of the bus, Derek stood up like he had no other choice, like he’d been caught running away from home.

  “I know that smell,” Derek said at the open window. He stared cruelly at Frances, half in the dark of the night, half in the light of her car, that same head-exploding intensity from class. Finally he said, “You don’t need those to see.”

  Frances took off her glasses and handed them across the seat to Derek, who put them on and looked around, then took them off and looked around, then put them back on and burned at her through them.

  “I could tell the way you looked through them in class that you didn’t need them. People who need glasses don’t like wearing them. That’s how you can tell. If they didn’t have to then they wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe I like the look of them,” Frances said.

  “So say I think wheelchairs looked really cool,” Derek started, sounding out his idea, “and what if I just started going around in a wheelchair because I liked the look of it? Because I liked how it looked on me?”

  “I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

  “I don’t know if it is,” he said, getting into the car. He looked at himself in the side mirror, then handed the glasses back to Frances. Opening the glove compartment to stow the glasses, her knuckles brushed Derek’s crotch. Frances flinched, but the boy didn’t seem to notice. His thighs were soft and white in a way that made her want to slap them raw and purple.

  “Sorry about the state,” she said when Derek began to collect the mess of library books from around his feet, piling them on his lap. The books were at various stages of overdue, from really to extremely to shockingly, but Frances kept paying the fines. Her interest in astrophysics, or the Bolshevik Revolution, or post-colonialism, or masonry would be repiqued every time the library phone
d asking for their books. “I know it would be cheaper to just buy them,” Frances sassed back when the librarians phoned. “Don’t you think I don’t know that?”

  “You’ve read all these?” Derek asked.

  “You betcha.” Frances pulled away into a red light.

  He opened a book and leafed through. He settled on a page.

  “Okay,” he said. “I am a small songbird. I have a pale brown back, a black face patch, a black chest patch, and a yellow or pale throat. I have small horns on the top of my head and the sound I make goes ‘su-weet.’ What bird am I?”

  “I don’t know.” The light greened and Frances was off. Coming down one side of the street was a girl she worried might be Betsy, but she couldn’t tell any of these kids apart. They all had tight jeans and dock shoes and moved with the same sort of offended insouciance. “Are you a Patchy Sweeter?”

  “I thought you said you read this book.” Derek scowled at Frances.

  “I’ve started,” Frances said. “I just haven’t got to that part yet.”

  “A right here,” he said, turning away and looking out the window. Frances stifled an urge to knock on his skull, test his ripeness.

  From then on the only talking Derek did was calling out the turns, until he had directed Frances into an end of town she didn’t know had houses. “So, what are your parents up to tonight?” she wanted to ask, but resisted.

  Murder flitted to mind. She had this kid. Really had him. Do people murder people because they really mean to, she wondered, or because the opportunity’s there? When she was little she would marvel at her cat, Althea, how frail and trusting she was. She would pet the cat’s skull, place her palm over the cat’s whole head, and wonder how easy ending the thing could be.

  “Take this left and just drop me off at the corner,” Derek ordered. “I don’t want you to know exactly where I live.”