The Clay Girl

by Heather Tucker

  “I also met Soldier Boy and Existential Love.”

  “Like hell you—”

  Thankfully, on the night of the big game, Mum sports a tight-sweater stretch-pants slut ensemble not the cheerleader mini. I, on the other hand, or leg as it were, am forced out of my sweats and into a slinky little regulation get-up. The Dick has embraced the volleyball thing after all. It doesn’t thrill him like when Ricky played hockey, but having people think he’s the parent of a kid on a sport team makes him kind of goofy—and oblivious to questions rising about the belt bruises on my exposed arms and legs.

  For the most part I’m useless but I do three things really well: jump and block, jump and smash, and serve. I do that with a little jump, too, and those three things turn out to be the best way to get points. So Ari Zajac becomes a member of the junior girls quarter-final winning volleyball team which earns me a get-out-of-crapdom card on a Wednesday night with Chase and Ricky. I glance back at the empty stands. Soon you’ll see Aunties M&N.

  But not Papa.

  He’s here, Ari.

  Life imitates volleyball—every up has a down. The day after the big game some bruise analyst dispatches Mrs. Vandervolt, child protector, to the craphouse. If I play it right, a get-out-of-crapdom card could be mine. The Dick tells her that I fell out the window sneaking out to see a boy.

  “Is that what happened, Ari?”

  Mikey clings to me like a terrified squid. There’s been a wobbly equilibrium in Dickdom the past month or so. Whenever the Dick starts wailing on Mikey, Jasper jumps in and blocks the belt before I can even think. Then Todd, bless his big, fat heart, covers us both. We’re like a set of Russian whacking dolls.

  “Ari?”

  I shrug.

  She writes notes in her book and says she’ll be back next week.

  Mum coils after the door closes. “How could you embarrass your father like that?”

  Her face is skeletal, her voice, shrill like a caught pig and I wonder where the pretty girl who won music medals with Aunt Elsie disappeared to. “How come you stopped singing?”

  Her hand thwacks my cheek like a dead flounder.

  FORTY-THREE

  I wait with the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The school secretary weighs each excuse being schlepped over the counter. “I slept in.” “My dog ran off.” “My mom’s sick and . . .”

  It comes my turn to beg mercy for lateness. I have several options: Traffic was jammed at the intersection of hall and bathroom.

  Wish the Duchess would stick to substances that just make her sleep.

  Me, too, Jasper.

  A big Dick made me find a button that had been beer-launched by his gut and sew it back on his pants.

  While he was still in them.

  Shut it, I’m trying hard to forget the horror.

  I had to drag a puddle to school and urge him to deliver on his part of a negotiated deal: Mikey would read aloud in class today and in return, now get this, he would not have to endure the trauma of Little League this summer.

  The real excuse? A flowering crabapple tree shocked me. Its fragrance made the air too thick to walk through. Then the robin gathering winter grass for a nest tied me to it.

  Mrs. Quinty readies to pardon or sentence. “Well, Miss Appleton?”

  “Cramps, ma’am.”

  I question the wisdom of the poetry section of the curriculum being delivered in the spring. I’m already a nose-in-book/head-in-clouds freak. Add spring to the mix and I’m an embarrassing idiot; and in the meander through the great poets I’m rediscovering many of the lines Uncle Iggy delivered on my lunch bags. Mr. Ellis stands in my path until I smack into him. “Well?”

  He cages a laugh when I sigh, “If only I yield myself and am borrowed by the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world.”

  “Nothing like a little D.H. Lawrence to stir the soul.”

  I travel on to Social Studies knowing that more than Lawrence has me stirred. Chase told me that Nick knocked up Sharon. A slice of me wants to call Mrs. Potter and say, “I never would’ve let him in my pants. Now who’s the good girl?”

  The whole getting in my pants thing has me a little worried. With the nights warming, sometimes Ricky sprawls on the roof outside his window. I climb out and stretch beside him. First, our hands touch, then he turns, asking for a kiss. Everything stirs in me like cream and sugar in a pot working toward being candy. I like his hand on my belly, feel a little crazy when his dirty fingers move under my bra, rolling my nipple like he turns a cigarette, but as soon as his hand strays south or his leg moves over mine, my volleyball-muscled thighs clamp and I feel more five than fifteen. He rolls back, hands-behind-head pissed. I unzip, touch him, pulling on his thing until he comes. He wipes up with what I call the hope rag: the towel, or whatever he brought out with him, hoping he’d have something to mop up. I like the after holding, the whispered, “I love you,” but I don’t think I’ll ever like anything else. I’m scared to have him go to boot camp and leave me in crapdom but I can’t exhale until he does.

  The Dick has his eye on Ricky and me. He shows up all sneaky, coming around corners, growing meaner and meaner, smacking Ricky’s ears. “You messing with your sister?” Smack. “You little pervert.” Whack. “You’re not to be touching her.”

  Ricky takes it, standing nose to nose. “I never touched that skank.”

  The Dick turns pit-bull crazy. “I ain’t talking about Ronnie. You keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Ari’s not my sister.”

  “No, she’s your meal ticket, the way you see it. Ain’t she, you greedy little shit?”

  Things hurry toward closed fists. I yank the Dick’s collar hard. “You big goon.” The Dick lets go, rubbing his bristly head. “Don’t you have enough trouble without making trouble?”

  “I see the two of you prowling around.”

  “You wouldn’t know a friend if it bit your fat, ugly nose.”

  Wham! His backhand smashes across my right cheek. Ricky charges in, intercepting the next one. He explodes, backing his father against the wall. “Fucking pathetic loser.”

  Dick flips Ricky’s arm around his back, hoofing him toward the door. “Get your fucking ass outa my house.”

  Ricky was itching for a fight to make his exit. In two days he will report to Camp Borden. His duffle is stashed at Sabina’s. He grabs his pack, jumps over the porch rail, and whips out an empty manila envelope. “You hurt Ari and this goes to the Chief, names, places, dates—pictures, too.”

  If Dick’s gun was handy he’d start shooting. “Ungrateful fucking bastard.”

  I collect ice for my cheek and sit among the weeds in the backyard, thinking about fathers. My DNA father never much raised his voice or hand to me. Maybe “little princess” is to a girl what “fucking bastard” is to a boy.

  I don’t care if Chase doesn’t mess with me because he has no hormones or likes boys or because he’s Rumi reincarnate continuing his quest for divine love. All I know is he feels like the luckiest break of my life and he says the same about me.

  Up in the nest, a full moon slices through the top of the window dripping white on his skin. It’s only May end but the attic is hot from a three-day heat wave. Our smoke-soaked clothes lie heaped on the floor. A fan lures cool air from the open window. Poetry comes easy when it’s lying beside you.

  Third Sunday, Mr. West finds me at the water’s edge throwing blue wooden beads into the waves. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s Father’s Day. Flowers didn’t seem right for Len.”

  I open my hand to share and he whips them far.

  I ask, “How’s Zodiac?”

  “As happy as a dog without you can possibly be.”

  “I hope he’s happier than I am without him.”

  He looks past the fading bruise
. “Things okay?”

  “No. But only eight days left, then I can go home.” I fold onto the quilt and open a paper bag. “Sabina and I baked yesterday.”

  “Paczki?”

  “Raspberry and apple. Did you call your father today?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “He’s an easy man to love.”

  “So was my dad, always singing and telling me ’round-the-world adventure stories. It’d be so much easier if he was like the Dick.”

  “Why?”

  “Icing on the fake. Love and hate get so jumbled, it’s near impossible to sort out. Do you think we have a chance of becoming something different than our parents?”

  “My grandmother says I’m a copy of my Uncle Peter. If I had to choose a person to be like it would be him.” He taps up my chin. “And seems to me you have an aunt that’s your heart’s double.”

  “How do you become a heart’s double of someone when a thief steals your soul?”

  “I believe we possess ourselves.”

  “You’re lucky if it turns out that way but sometimes people just help themselves to what’s yours. Look at Jacquie.”

  He swallows, never even thinking of talking with his mouth full. “Exactly, look at Jacquie. Is she anything like your parents? Doesn’t she possess her own self despite everything?”

  “You know if you’re a virgin or not, don’t you.”

  “Ari!”

  “Oh, don’t get all Amish-teacher on me. I didn’t ask if you were, I asked whether you knew you were or not.”

  “You get Mennonite-teacher from me, and yes, I know.”

  “I don’t remember much of my father. Can’t even bring up his face anymore. I know he made me touch him and—stuff, but I’m not sure how much of me he took.”

  “Geezus. Do you have anyone to talk to about it?”

  “Most turn the greeny-purple of your face just now. Jennah tells me to just let it go. At least my sisters know what to let go of.” Sand slips from one hand to the other as he squints at the horizon. I turn from the tears pooling in his eyes and follow the distant line. “I’m sorry. Talking about this isn’t fair.”

  “Don’t be. You’re the only person I know who talks honestly about anything. I’m just not sure I’m the person that could help you in any way with this.”

  “Give me an honest thought you’d like someone to know.”

  “Hmm . . . how about, I don’t want to go home. Every time I imagine myself back there I feel like I’m drowning.”

  “Where would you rather be?”

  “I want to teach where teaching really means something.”

  “Your teaching really meant something to me.”

  “I mean something wild like an orphanage in Peru or a mission in Colombia.”

  “Will you write to me when you go?”

  “I don’t have the guts to do it.”

  I smack his head, which might be the moment things really switch from teacher to friend between us. “Did you not feel your animal self jump up when you said you wanted to go? It’s exactly what you should do.”

  I exhaled when Ricky left. Now, I can’t get a breath in. I smile for the photo of the Junior Girls Championship Volleyball team but it’s a pretend smile. In English, I keep my face closed. Judy spears the air with her hand. “Sir, have you marked our poems?”

  “Not quite through the pile yet, Judy. By Friday for sure.”

  He reads “Sunset” by Rilke and “To Autumn” by Keats and then he reads “Chasing Dreams.”

  When chasing dreams

  the curve of him

  shoulder to hip

  hip to knee

  knee to heel

  Atlantic in my bed

  He pulls from the moon to me

  to—we

  Open we lie and fear less

  without longing

  for longing or wanting

  want

  empty and full in the same beat of two hearts

  not coupling

  doubling

  leg vining around young ancient oak

  a seaweed tangle in his strong branches

  not fairy tale

  a myth lived

  while chasing dreams.

  Judy asks, “Who wrote that, sir?”

  “An up-and-coming new writer. Remember, tomorrow bring a favourite poem to share.”

  I rarely skip class but after hearing my words read by him I can’t face numbers. I sit on the grass under the maple. Mr. Ellis follows me out, his knees crackling when he crouches. “Did I betray you by reading that, Ari?”

  “No, sir, it was nice hearing you speak how it sounded in my head.”

  “You’ve been awfully quiet this week. Are you okay?”

  I shrug.

  “I near pissed myself when I read your poem. Mina did wet her pants. Do you have a poem for tomorrow?”

  “‘In Silence.’”

  “I don’t think I know it.”

  “. . . Do not

  think of what you are

  still less of

  what you might may one day be.

  rather

  be what you are (but who?) be

  the unthinkable one

  you do not know . . .”

  “Author?”

  “Merton.”

  He straightens and I look up to a man, sun-rimmed gold.

  “Sir, would Mina be someone I could talk to? About messy things?”

  “She’s been waiting for you to ask.”

  They live in a tumble-jumble of books, travel totems, and comfy cushions. Messy laundry, even a no underwears situation doesn’t make Mina skittish.

  An exquisitely woven Moroccan rug is our island floating on my disquieted sea. “Jennah says compared to what some people live with we have nothing to complain about.”

  “Whining and mining have nothing to do with the other. You’re sitting on a friggin’ platinum mine.” She heaps a plate with pizza that has peculiar things on top like goat cheese and asparagus. “Write it, sculpt it, paint it. But first, a review. Perspective. What wounds deeper? A mother and father’s betrayal or brutality at the hand of a stranger?” She sprinkles hot sauce over her slice. “You’re allowed to feel wounded by this. But, girl, chiaroscuro. Are you going to burden the piece with too much shadow or diminish it with too much light?” I pick off something resembling a pond leech. She slides her plate across the coffee table, which is really an old door from an apothecary store in London, and receives the wiggler. “Now, by order of the Goddess Athena, you get a clean palette from whatever your parents did to you.”

  “Athena?”

  “She’s smart and artsy. Clean palette is the operative here.”

  “What artist worth her salt has a clean palette?”

  She thumps me with a pillow. “Metaphor. Met-a-phor. Work with me here. Clean canvas. Okay?”

  “Sometimes I look at my yellow sisters and I see . . . my father, lying on top of them, crushing their light.”

  “I’m not saying you don’t have colours to choose from, you have a spectrum wider than anyone should. You also know shadowlight at its penultimate. Girl, the goddess here is you. You and you alone get to choose what you create on your canvas.”

  “What if someone throws shit on it?”

  “Then it becomes their canvas, so you get a fresh one, put it on the easel, and start again.” She raises her coke. “Good for you for looking straight at this and asking, ‘What am I supposed to do with this fucking mess?’ I mean that literally.”

  “Sex has to be the messiest mess there is and it’s all most boys think about.”

  “It’s important to both sides. It just takes some wisdom to navigate.”

  “Auntie Elsie told m
e my dad had a genius IQ, and look how stupid it made him. He sacrificed his jewels—and his life, for a friggin’ orgasm. How fucked up is that? And my mum pitched a diamond for dung. And Mary and Nia are the devil’s spawn because they love each other.” My pizza now resembles Shredded Wheat. “I’m so scared.”

  “You know what I like about Jasper? Most kids from fucked-up families have voices that tell them hurtful lies on a loop over and over. Yours is the most fair-tempered, sane little fellow I’ve ever come across. I’m not worried about you at all.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Your voice tells you the truth and smacks you when you start spinning lies. The truth here is, sex is exquisite. The thing, the big thing is where you let it take you. It can be astronomically good or it can be devastating.”

  Ellis comes in shaking an umbrella.

  “Pizza’s on the counter, love. Come join us after you make tea.” Her toe touches my knee under the table. “Ari, Jasper knows who you are, listen to him. You are not your father. You are not your mother. You are . . .”

  “Who?”

  “You tell me who.”

  “—A lioneagle.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Mum’s cells had been organizing this breakdown just for spite. I don’t care she’s in hospital for dry-cleaning. Saturday, I’m on the train out of crapdom.

  The Dick shovels in meatloaf and spits out a lemon. “Laura’s in rehab again so you can’t leave until she gets out.”

  “No . . . I . . . Todd, can you take care of Mikey?”

  Peas roll from Mikey’s mouth into his milk.

  “No can do. I got that job at the vet’s.”

  I’d be proud of him if I didn’t hate him so much right now. A stuffed lizard couldn’t be entrusted to Ronnie’s care but staying is not an option.

  The Dick slurps his coffee. “Laura will be out ten days max.”

  “No, sir. I have a court order. Mikey will just have to come with me.”