Born Weird

by Andrew Kaufman

  “How the hell did she do that?”

  “She is the queen …”

  “She is the queen …”

  They nodded their heads, unaware that they did this in unison. None of them could really believe it, yet there it was, right in front of them, towering seven storeys high: an exact, fully realized, life-sized version of Abba’s castle.

  THE RAINYTOWN TOWN COUNCIL Planning Development and Construction Committee met every fourth day it rained. Proposals for new buildings were required to include sketches, approximate dimensions and notes on how the structure would improve life for the citizens of Rainytown on both an economic and social level. All five of the Weird children had a vote and for the first two summers everyone’s proposals were automatically passed and built. Then they ran out of floor space and everything changed, since every proposal for a new building meant that a pre-existing one had to be torn down.

  Debates began to rage. They all wanted to see their own buildings preserved. At the same time they wanted their new proposals to be green-lit. Alliances were made and deals were struck.

  Only Abba, noble of heart, hoping that their better natures would emerge, refused to participate in what she called the corruption of Rainytown. Which meant she had no allies. So they were all shocked when, with only two weeks left of summer vacation and Kent calling for new proposals, Abba moved to the front of the room. Lucy had already agreed to support Angie’s proposal for the Purple Magic Roller Disco Palace, while Richard was putting his vote behind Kent’s Jungle Cat Galaxy, a combination zoo and planetarium. None of them had time for whatever it was that Abba was about to go on about. Her right hand was holding several pieces of lined white paper and it visibly trembled. Kent raised his wrist and pointed to a watch that wasn’t there.

  “Well?” Richard asked.

  “I think what Rainytown needs more than anything else …” Abba said. She looked down. She looked back up. “Is a castle!”

  The rain could be heard hitting the roof. No one moved. Neither Richard nor Abba nor Lucy nor even Angie had ever thought this big before. Some kind of barrier, invisible and self-imposed, had been shattered. Abba passed around her sketches and no one said a single word and then they all spoke at once.

  “Fantastic!”

  “It’ll be, like, twice as high as anything we’ve made.”

  “Three times.”

  “We could use real frosting for the pink walls.”

  “It’s like another level. It’s Rainytown squared!”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Could it have a disco roller rink?” Angie asked.

  “The Purple Magic Roller Disco Palace!” Abba agreed.

  “Can we put it here? Around back?”

  “Sure!”

  “It’s a massive undertaking.”

  “Can we put it to a vote?”

  “I don’t think we need to,” Kent said. Even though it necessitated the demolition of the Tragedy Strikes Bowling Alley, It’s Curtains for You Interior Design and the C.U. Soohn Funeral Home, construction commenced immediately.

  THE QUEEN OF UPLIFFTA SWEPT her waist-length red hair out of her face and tried to make eye contact with her subjects as they parted to let her through. These attempts were unsuccessful. The citizens stared at the ground. On each side of her were four guards in red uniforms. The golden tassels attached to their shoulders fluttered as they walked. When they reached the front of the crowd the guards lifted her up onto a wooden stage.

  Queen Abba raised her arms. The crowd, which had been silent, began to cheer. A red velvet curtain was raised, revealing a large glass aquarium. The tank was the size of a car. Inside it a mass of slönguskinn twisted their dark, limbless bodies and snapped their sharp pointed teeth.

  Abba climbed six steps and stood on a raised platform behind the aquarium. She looked down into the open water. Slönguskinn broke the surface and then dove back down again. Abba rolled up the sleeve of her purple robe. She raised her right hand. She plunged her arm into the putrid brown water.

  The queen smiled; little in the world disgusted her more than slönguskinn. She loathed their slippery bodies. She feared their tooth-filled mouths. A species of saltwater eel, they were the pillar of Upliffta’s economy, but their stink turned Abba’s stomach and their shiny black eyes haunted her sleep. The queen’s smile grew in proportion to her revulsion as she thrust her arm deeper into the tank.

  The first one she grasped squirmed away. The second bit her and she let it go. She plunged her other hand into the tank and, using both hands, Abba clutched one and held it firmly. Brackish water splashed onto her face as she pulled it out of the water. The eel twisted and bucked. Its mouth snapped open and closed. Its unblinking black eyes stared down. Abba tightened her grip and raised the fish over her head. The crowd cheered. She slammed the wiggling length of it onto a butcher’s block.

  Putting her hand behind its neck, Abba pinned the creature down. The slönguskinn twisted its head as it tried to bite her. Abba tightened her grip. She held out her right hand. A guard rushed to place the handle of a wooden mallet in her palm. Abba raised her arm. She brought the mallet down. She hit the slönguskinn’s head and the creature stopped moving.

  This is where the ceremony normally would have ended. Yet Abba raised her arm once more. She brought the mallet down with even greater force. She swung it a third time. She swung it a fourth. She swung again and again and again. She continued striking the slönguskinn until there was very little of it left to hit.

  Raising her head the queen looked over the crowd. It was smaller than last year’s. It was the smallest in memory. She thrust her arms over her head anyway. “Rrl hunyinh drsdon id slönguskinn noe oggivislly oprn!” she yelled. By uttering this phrase she had officially declared the slönguskinn fishing season open.

  “May it be my last,” Abba whispered.

  The mallet fell from her hand and the guards carried her down into the crowd, which had already begun to part for her.

  THE FENCE THAT SURROUNDED Abba’s castle was wrought iron and elaborate but not very tall, not even seven feet high. Angie, Richard and Lucy stood in front of it. They looked through the black bars at the pink castle. “It must be electrified,” Lucy said.

  “You think?” Richard asked. He reached out his hands and grabbed it. His body shook. His eyes rolled back in his head. Spittle flew from his lips.

  “Oh my God!” Lucy yelled.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Angie yelled.

  “Sorry,” Richard said. He stopped the shaking and the eye-rolling. He took his hands off the bars. “Couldn’t resist.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Not cool.”

  “I said I’m sorry. But look,” Richard said. He grabbed the bars and let go. He did this several times. “It’s just a fence. There’s no charge.”

  Richard looked at Lucy. They both put their hands on the bars and began to climb. “Um, hello?” Angie called. Neither of her siblings stopped. Richard swung his legs over the top. Lucy did the same. They both jumped, landing directly in front of Angie on the other side of the fence.

  “Just wait here,” Richard said.

  “Wow. When’s the last time I heard that? Grade Seven? Grade Eight?”

  “We’ll be right back. I promise.”

  “Nice. Really nice, guys.”

  “Don’t stray,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not twelve.”

  “Then stop acting like you are,” Lucy said. She put her hand through the bars; Angie didn’t take it, and Lucy took it away.

  “I hope there’s dogs,” Angie yelled. Lucy and Richard ran towards the castle. They did not look back. As they disappeared behind a stand of trees Angie forgave them. She sat down on their luggage. She stared up at Abba’s castle. The longer Angie looked the more she felt like she’d shrunk. As if she were actually inside Rainytown. She had an urge to pick at the grass and see if there was cardboard underneath. The castle was perfect in every detail. So perfect that Angie
began to wonder about the Purple Magic Roller Disco Palace.

  Against Lucy’s advice Angie began to stray. She followed the black fence. At the rear of the castle she found a gate. Angie pushed it. The gate swung open. “Doesn’t anybody lock anything around here?” she said out loud and then she stepped inside the grounds. No one tried to stop her. She followed a path of purple stones. At the top of a small hill she could see it. For several moments Angie stood and stared at it. The building was instantly recognizable for three reasons; it was oval, it was purple, and there was a giant pair of roller skates on the roof.

  “No way,” Angie said and then she ran towards it.

  The front door was made of glass. Angie cupped her hands over her eyes and looked inside. The walls were covered with fake purple fur. Behind a long counter rose row after row of roller skates. On the floor, tiled in handwriting that looked suspiciously like hers were the words:

  PURPLE MAGIC ROLLER DISCO PALACE

  Angie tried the door. She found it unlocked. She opened it and went inside. It took a while to discover the switch underneath the left end of the counter. When she flicked it everything turned on all at once. Red and green lights shone from the ceiling. Disco music played through hidden speakers, filling the air with the sounds of KC and the Sunshine Band. A mirror ball turned in the middle of the rink and tiny squares of light drifted across the walls and the floor.

  Angie searched the shelves until she found a pair of size six roller skates. She laced them on, tightly. She took slow careful steps to the edge of the rink. “Listen,” she said, looking down at her belly, “if you’re gonna stay with me, these are the types of risks we’re gonna have to take.”

  She stepped onto the rink. Taking tiny strides Angie moved slowly. She held her stomach with both of her hands. She sang along with the music. She made three full revolutions. The song ended and another one followed. She couldn’t remember the name of the singer, it was something Spanish, but she knew the song was called Born to Be Alive.

  Angie sang along to this song too. It wasn’t hard. The lyrics consisted mainly of repeating the phrase, “born to be alive.” Her arms fell to her sides. Her strides became longer. By the second chorus she was snapping her fingers to the beat and wiggling her hips.

  Her confidence returned. She started doing cross-steps around the corners. At the far end of the rink she took six long strides and gathered speed. She closed her eyes, held out her arms and glided. The wind blew back her hair. She sailed the length of the rink. When she opened her eyes she saw Abba standing against the boards.

  Using the toe brake Angie stopped, quickly. She turned and skated back to where Abba stood. The toes of Angie’s roller skates touched the bottom of the boards. Her stomach touched her sister’s.

  “Are you real?” Abba asked. She reached out her hand and touched Angie’s face and then they both began to cry.

  MANY THINGS SURPRISED RICHARD and Lucy as the red-uniformed guards marched them into the dining room. They didn’t expect the cathedral ceiling, the suits of armour or the family crests. Angie wanted to believe that the biggest shock to her siblings would be seeing her beside the massive stone fireplace. It wasn’t. What threw them was Abba. She stood perfectly still and said nothing, yet some sort of grace radiated from her. Their tomboyish sister had been transformed into a queen.

  The guards stopped, forcing Richard and Lucy to stop too. The log in the fireplace popped. The room was otherwise silent. Having failed to convince the royal guards that they were siblings of the queen, Lucy and Richard had spent several hours locked in a small windowless room. Lucy was upset, but not about that.

  “Eight years?” Lucy yelled.

  “That’s your greeting?’ Abba replied.

  “You don’t call once in eight years?”

  “Hello? You’re not surprised that I’m here? That I strayed and by straying I found her before you did?” Angie asked. All three of them ignored her.

  “If I remember correctly,” Abba said, calmly, “the phones in Canada dial out.”

  “You missed birthdays and Christmases and Mom going nuts!”

  “Well, happy belated birthdays. You always said you hated Christmas. Mom was always nuts.”

  “You didn’t even invite us to your wedding! Were you embarrassed of us or were you just ashamed of your … your … provincial origins?”

  “I was under the impression that you were all dead,” Abba said. She said this in a cold matter-of-fact way, which made even Lucy pause. The fire popped again. “Apparently I was misinformed.”

  “Why did you think we were dead?” Lucy asked.

  “Let’s just leave that for now,” Abba said.

  “It’s great to see you,” Richard said, “but I agree that you have some explaining to do.”

  “Explain yourself!”

  “Don’t act so righteous with me, Lucy Weird,” Abba said. Her voice became solid and firm and sad. “When Dad died you disappeared into yourself and left me on my own. You were my big sister. You should have been there for me. You too, Richard. But neither of you were, so I took care of myself. Don’t blame me if I left you behind. I did what I had to do.”

  Abba continued to stare straight ahead. Lucy and Richard looked at the floor.

  “That doesn’t make it right,” Lucy said. Her eyes watched her hands.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Abba said. “But once I got used to doing it that way there was no going back.”

  “It was a stressful time,” Lucy said.

  “For all of us,” Angie said.

  “As it always is for the Weirds,” Richard said. The guards released him. Pulling out a chair, he sat at the long wooden table. He plucked a red linen napkin off a bone white plate. He spread it over his lap. He did these things with such calmness and confidence that the rest of his siblings had no choice but to follow his lead. This made Angie love him just a little bit more.

  “Can we get these candles lit?” Richard asked.

  Abba looked at a guard. He lit the candles. Waiting until her siblings were in their chairs, Abba sat at the head of the table. Her posture was breathtaking. “How is Kent?” she asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “We think he’s still living on Palmerston.”

  “Mother?”

  “Living in a nursing home, convinced she’s a hairdresser, but otherwise the same.”

  “Lucy and I just saw her in Winnipeg. She cut our hair! Claimed not to recognize either of us.”

  “That explains how you look.”

  “When do we get to meet the king?” Richard asked.

  “I’m afraid that he’s dead,” she said. Her shoulders slouched.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We didn’t know.”

  “How about your husband?” Abba asked Angie. The guards began filling their glasses with red wine.

  “She doesn’t have one,” Richard said.

  “Our sister seems to have become a woman of easy virtue,” Lucy said.

  “Look who’s talking,” Abba said.

  “Thank you,” Angie said. “Do you have any children?”

  “Not yet,” Abba said. She exhaled. Her posture straightened. “Should I wait until after dinner to ask why you’ve come?”

  “That,” Richard said, “is an idea as good as this wine.”

  The meal was roast beef, overdone, with scalloped potatoes. Angie didn’t have any coffee, of course, but no one who did asked for a second cup. The plainness of the meal was more than dwarfed by Angie’s joy at being in a country where they didn’t refuse to fill a pregnant woman’s wineglass. She let it be refilled three times. This was a fraction of what her siblings drank.

  “Velll?” Abba asked. It was long after the plates had been cleared.

  “Is that an accent or are you shlurring?”

  “What is shlurring?”

  “What’s the story? What’s brought you here?”

  “Let me this time!” Lucy shouted.

/>   “Angie went to see the Shark!” Richard shouted, louder.

  “Good God why?”

  “That’s exactly what I said!”

  “The Shark claims,” Lucy said, “that at the moment of our births she blessed each of us with a supernatural power that has since cursed us and ruined our lives. I call them blursings.”

  “Blessing plus curse equals blursing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Thank you. The Shark also claims that she will die on her birthday and that all five of us must be in her hospital room so she can lift the blursings at the moment she expires.”

  “Well done,” Richard said. He raised his glass. “That was much more succinct than Angie’s version.”

  “How very Sharky,” Abba said.

  “Don’t you wanna know the powers?” Angie asked.

  “Can I guess?”

  “Please.”

  “Lucy. Well it’s obviously the directions thing. Angie, also easy, you forgive everyone.”

  “Two for two.”

  “Richard … you can predict the future? Sense impending doom?”

  “Self-preservation.”

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s a sword, double-edged.”

  “Don’t you wanna know what she gave to you?”

  “Oh, I already know.”

  “Do you?”

  Abba’s glass was half empty. She drank what remained. She stood up. “It’s hope,” she said. “I never seem able to give up hope.” She threw her glass into the fireplace. It shattered. She fell back into her chair. Her shoulders slumped and she stared at the middle of the table, seeming to forget that any of them were there.

  SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT ANGIE, Richard and Lucy were each assigned a member of the Royal Guard, who escorted them to their rooms. The guard who went with Lucy was by far the best looking. On the fifth floor he opened the door to her room. Lucy leaned forwards. She looked inside. There was a large four-poster bed, opulent purple drapes and a crystal chandelier. Extending her right foot Lucy tapped her toe on the marble floor inside her room. Then she took two steps closer to the guard.