Words That Start With B

by Vikki VanSickle

  Tony the Tiger keeps smiling his big, dumb smile.

  “I believe Miss Ross is on sabbatical,” he says.

  I don’t know what that means, but it sounds serious and disturbingly permanent.

  “Will she be coming back?”

  “I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask that question of, Clarissa.”

  “Well, then who is?”

  “I believe your question falls under the jurisdiction of personal information.”

  “So you don’t know?”

  “No, I don’t know. But I do know we are going to have a grrrrreat year!”

  I seriously doubt that.

  I feel like a zombie; I sleepwalk through first period. Mr. Campbell passes out textbooks and workbooks and talks about the year ahead, but I can’t concentrate. Benji keeps trying to catch my eye but I pretend not to notice. I’m so disappointed I might cry or hit something, and neither of those things are a good way to start grade seven.

  All of the colour has been drained from the room. Gone is the huge painting of the tree behind the desk. Instead, Mr. Campbell has posted a big map stuck all over with pushpins. At the top the title Where in the World Has 7B Been? is spelled out in green and blue letters cut from construction paper. The window ledges have been cleared of all plants. Gone are the little red bookshelves bursting with Miss Ross’s own personal collection of books. I’d imagined myself reading through them on the brightly striped beanbag chairs that she’d kept at the back of the room. These have been replaced by a long table and plastic chairs. Worst of all, there are no birds anywhere. Try as I might, I can’t find even the slightest trace of Miss Ross.

  I don’t know anything about this Mr. Campbell. Does he like whales? Does he write his own skits with parts for every student for the Christmas assembly? Does he play the guitar and hold singalongs in class? Does he know that everyone at Ferndale Public School counts down the days till grade seven, when they get to be in Miss Ross’s class, and that he has gone and ruined that?

  ***

  At lunchtime everyone discusses Mr. Campbell and whether or not he is married with kids. Well, not everyone. Mostly Mattie Cohen and her friends, but they’re so loud it feels like the whole room is talking about it.

  “He’s pretty cute. Don’t you think he’s cute?”

  “For a teacher.”

  “Well, I think he’s cute. I bet he has a nice wife and a baby.”

  I could care less about stupid Mr. Campbell and his stupid wife and baby. He is not Miss Ross and that is all that counts.

  ***

  When the world’s longest school day is finally over, I practically run through the halls and out the door. Ah, freedom. I take a deep breath. It still smells like summer.

  “Wait up!” Benji gets caught behind a group of grade eight boys. They move together forming a wall of solid jerk and laugh as he tries to find a way around them.

  “What’s the rush?” one of them jeers.

  “Yeah, where’s the fire?”

  They push him around a bit and one of them horks loudly, aiming dangerously close to Benji’s shoe. Finally he manages to squeeze through them and runs to catch up. His cheeks are pink and he’s breathing pretty hard.

  “Jerks,” I mutter. “Come on, I need a Slurpee.”

  We walk in silence to the 7-Eleven. I’m afraid I might cry if I open my mouth, and Benji knows better than to bring it up, but we’re both thinking the same thing. It’s going to be a long year. Other kids go by, laughing and shouting, but I can’t bring myself to join in. I can’t stop thinking of the year I had planned, all the awards and gold stars I was going to receive.

  Not even an extra-large blue raspberry Slurpee makes me feel any better. I gulp down as much as I can before the brain freeze kicks in and I have to stop because it hurts too much.

  “Nerds?” Benji offers.

  I put out my hand and he taps the box: a pile of neon green candy falls into my palm. I dump it into my Slurpee and watch as the neon green stains the Slurpee a dark, muddy colour.

  “Gross,” Benji says.

  “It looks almost as bad as I feel,” I say.

  We keep walking in silence until Benji says, “If we hurry we can still watch Full House.” I snort. Like that will make me feel better.

  Benji’s all-time favourite TV show is this old series he discovered in reruns called Full House. He loves the idea of all those people living together. Not me. I’d go crazy with all those uncles and sisters around. Especially that Michelle Tanner. She is my least favourite character. People are always forgiving her because she’s so cute. If you ask me, that Michelle Tanner knows she is cute and uses it to get away with things. They show a full hour of Full House at four o’clock. I would rather watch one of those real-life rescue shows, but Benji says they give him nightmares and my mother says the sound of all the sirens and screaming upsets her clients. So, I lose. At least Uncle Jesse is pretty funny.

  ***

  “We’re home!”

  Mom says something back, but I can tell she’s with a client. Benji and I drop our backpacks in the kitchen, grab some cookies and head down to the basement. Down the stairs and immediately to the left is the Hair Emporium. Straight ahead is the den. Mom usually schedules ten minutes between clients, so there’s rarely a time when someone has to wait, but just in case, she lugged two of our dining room chairs downstairs to create a waiting area outside the salon. Between the chairs is a coffee table stacked high with magazines; most of them are hair magazines, but we also get subscriptions to People and Hello! Canada so clients can check out the celebrity hairstyles, too. One of my jobs is to make sure the new magazines are put out every week.

  “No one wants to go to a hair salon and read last year’s magazines,” Mom says. “They’ll think we’re out of date.”

  When I was little I used to like hanging out in the waiting room and chatting with Mom’s clients. But now I’d rather be left alone with Benji and the TV. Last year Mom put up three Japanese dressing screens to divide the waiting area from the rest of the den. Even with the screens, when Mom has a client I have to keep the TV on low, which is sort of unfair, since it’s my house, too. But Mom says that television doesn’t set the right sort of atmosphere for a salon. Instead, she has a radio tuned to the country station. She says country songs are full of people pouring their hearts out, “just like hair salons. People come in for a cut and colour, but they also come in to chat about what’s bothering them. So when they leave, their heads and their hearts are just a little bit lighter.”

  Benji and I stare at the TV, but he’s the only one watching. I keep imagining the year as it should have been, and I start feeling worse and worse. I’m impatient for Benji and Mom’s clients to leave so I can have her all to myself, just for a little while.

  ***

  At the end of the day Mom walks her last client up the stairs, says goodbye at the door and then comes back down to the salon and cranks up the radio. This is my signal to grab the cleaning bucket from under the kitchen sink and make my way to the salon for Power Hour.

  The name Power Hour comes from a churchy TV show that’s on Sunday mornings; it’s for people who can’t make it out to real church. In our house, Power Hour is an hour of intense cleaning, so named because of two things. One, my mother is a furious cleaner who likes to get the job done fast, and two, she is a firm believer in the saying, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Even though the joke is a little bit lame, in a mom-joke kind of way, I love Power Hour.

  One of the few things I have inherited from my mother is a love of cleaning. I hate mess of any kind and one of my favourite smells is my Mom’s homemade cleaning solution, which Denise calls Annie-Off. Annie-Off smells like lemons and vinegar and something else I can’t put my finger on. It’s kind of sharp and spicy, like something you might smell in an Indian restaurant. You can use Annie-Off on any surface and it never leaves a residue or feels greasy. Plus, it’s made of all-natural ingredients, which is better for the e
nvironment. The recipe for Annie-Off is top secret, and if there’s one thing my mom is better at than cleaning, it’s keeping a secret. She mixes up a big batch once a month while I’m at school, and I come home to find a row of spray bottles from the dollar store lined up under the kitchen sink. It’s maddening. I have suggested many times that we sell Annie-Off and make tons of money, but Mom says some things she’d rather keep in the family. Fine for her, but when she dies and leaves me the recipe, I am going to sell Annie-Off and make a million dollars.

  During Power Hour Mom looks after the individual stations, the sink, the dryers and all the combs and brushes. My job is to sweep and mop the floors, clean the mirrors and change the garbage. I also vacuum the waiting area, primp the magazines and dust the figurines. We make a good team, Mom and I. It normally takes us less than an hour, except for the times Denise stops by, plops herself down in one of the swirly chairs, kicks her shoes off and yells over the music while we clean. She never offers to pick up a broom or help disinfect the combs and scissors. It’s like she doesn’t notice we’re in the middle of something. Typical Denise.

  I am just starting to feel a bit better, all that cleaning clearing my head, when I hear the back door slam and Denise is clomping down the stairs, already yammering on about some “idiot” at the Shoppers Drug Mart in Leasdale who “wouldn’t know a lipstick from a crayon.”

  Mom listens and nods and makes supportive noises.

  “Mmm, hmm … He didn’t! Oh, poor DeeDee.”

  Poor DeeDee? So she spent a few bad hours with a real jerk. After today she’ll never have to deal with him, whereas I am stuck with Tony the Tiger for an entire school year. I wait for a break in Denise’s tirade but there doesn’t appear to be one. I can’t get a word in edgewise.

  Since no one seems to care about my day, I am sure to make as much noise as possible in my cleaning, sighing occasionally, until finally Denise picks upon it.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asks.

  “Well, school was terrible, thanks for asking,” I say.

  “It’s just the first day,” Mom says. “I’m sure things will get better.”

  That’s it? “It’s just the first day?” “I’m sure things will get better?” I wait for the supportive noises and the “Poor Clarissa,” but they don’t come. Unbelievable.

  “You shouldn’t frown like that, it’ll give you wrinkles,” Denise says, “and then you’ll really have something to frown about.” She tries to run her fingers through my hair but I am too fast for her.

  “You were such a cutie pie when you were a kid. Blond as blond can be. Perfect little curls. The longest god-given eyelashes I ever saw. Your mom could have put you in commercials.”

  “Now Denise, you know how I feel about mothers who push their kids into the business,” Mom says.

  Denise sighs and for once I agree with her. What is so bad about being on TV?

  “Not even one Little Miss competition,” Denise says. “And you with your mother’s genes. It’s a crying shame.”

  Mom catches my eye in the mirror and winks. “Clarissa here would have thrown a fit and you know it,” she says.

  “Well, that time has passed,” she says, giving me the once over and frowning. “At least you’ve still got those long lashes.”

  What I would like to do is kick Denise as hard as I can. Instead, I happen to “trip” while emptying the dust pan into the garbage, and a pile of hair clippings lands all over her feet. Denise jumps up, shaking her legs.

  “Lord Almighty, you should be more careful, Clarissa!”

  “Sorry, Denise. I guess I had trouble seeing through my long lashes.”

  Before she can respond I dash out of the salon and run up the stairs two at a time, locking myself in my bedroom. Even from there, beneath the sounds of Denise ranting about what a horrible child I am, I can hear my mother laughing.

  Basketball

  I don’t see the ball coming. One second I’m walking out of the school, and the next I’m on my hands and knees on the pavement and there are yellow spots dancing in front of my eyes. I hear yelling, and my name, and then someone is kneeling beside me.

  “Are you okay, Clarissa?”

  The yellow spots are quickly being replaced by tears. I blink to keep them back and grit my teeth to stop myself from whimpering like a baby. My head is throbbing where the ball smacked it and my hands hurt. When I hold them up for inspection they’re pink and scraped. I rub them gently against my T-shirt to get rid of the gravelly pieces.

  “We didn’t see you, I swear. Are you okay? Do you want me to get a teacher?”

  Michael Greenblat is holding a dirty basketball under one arm and looking guilty. As he should.

  “You should be more careful!” I manage to shout. “I could have a concussion!”

  Michael’s ears turn pink and he looks like he might cry, although he isn’t the one who was viciously attacked by a bunch of moronic basketball players.

  “I’m sorry, I really am. We were just tossing it around and then all of a sudden you were in the way. I mean, you weren’t in the way, but you weren’t there, and then you were and so was the ball …” Michael trails off lamely and I glare at him, pressing my hand against my forehead to try and stop the throbbing. It doesn’t seem to be working. In fact I think it’s getting worse.

  “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  “No, I’m waiting for Benji.”

  “I’m really, really sorry.”

  I sniff and wait for him to slink back to his dumb basketball-playing friends, who keep calling after him, but Michael just stands there, staring at me. Where is Benji? I don’t know how much longer I can stand here without crying and I refuse to let Michael Greenblat see me cry. My head is really starting to hurt. I think I can feel a goose-egg swelling under my hands.

  Wonderful.

  Finally, Benji appears.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “They hit me with their stupid basketball,” I explain.

  “By accident!” Michael insists. “It was an accident.”

  “I think I have a concussion,” I continue.

  I don’t know who looks more worried, Benji or Michael.

  “You should put ice on it,” Michael says.

  “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have to put ice on anything,” I say. “Come on, Benji, let’s go. See you tomorrow, Michael.”

  I turn to leave but look back over my shoulder and add, “If I’m not in a coma, that is.”

  ***

  Benji knows not to pester me about my head injury. I have to keep sniffing to stop myself from crying. When we get home, Mom doesn’t even acknowledge us. She’s too busy with a client.

  Benji roots around in the freezer until he finds a package of frozen peas for me to hold against my head, while I go search for the children’s Tylenol, the chewable kind that tastes like grape Sweetarts. I think about telling Mom what happened but decide not to. She can’t even take two seconds to ask me about school. I’ll probably end up in the hospital with massive brain trauma. Serves her right for not caring enough to ask me how my day was.

  We slink down the stairs and crash in front of the TV, homework spread out in front of us. It’s only the second day of school and already we have lists of projects and assignments. As if my head didn’t hurt enough. Benji flips half-heartedly through the channels.

  “What do you want to watch?” he asks.

  “Put in the Wizard,” I say.

  My all-time favourite movie is The Wizard of Oz. I could watch that movie every day for the rest of my life and never get sick of it. I even tried to once when I was little. I would come home from daycare, put the tape in and settle down inches from the TV. Mom would holler at me to move back before I went cross-eyed, but I couldn’t move. I was too mesmerized. Finally she’d hook her hands under my armpits and yank me back until I was a safe distance away from the screen, muttering about lazy eyes and glasses.

  Benji’s favourite part of the movi
e was when Glinda came down in the pink bubble.

  “How do you think they did that?” he’d ask.

  “Shhh,” I’d say.

  We used to play Oz, pretending that the mat at the bottom of the stairs was the Deadly Desert — like in the books, which were way more exciting than the movie. You had to jump over the mat to get to safety. I was always Dorothy and used one of mom’s beaded belts as Dorothy’s magic belt. Benji would be all sorts of different characters, but his favourite was Glinda the Good, even though she was a girl.

  We haven’t played Oz in a long time. It’s not the same anymore. We’re getting too old for that kind of make believe. Instead, we plop ourselves down in front of the TV and eat as many cookies as we can before six o’clock, when Mr. Denton bangs on the screen door and hollers down the stairs for Benjamin. The sound of his big fist rattling the window panes makes me jump right out of my skin every time. And it’s not just me overreacting, because under her breath, I hear my mother swear, “Jesus H. Christ.”

  Now Benji is the kind of kid who has the sad look down pat, but I never see him look sadder than when his dad comes banging on the back door. He dunks his Oreo one last time before practically swallowing it whole.

  “Cripes, Benji. Doesn’t your dad feed you?”

  He takes his own sweet time getting up, sweeping the crumbs off the table, putting his glass on the counter and saying his goodbyes to Mom.

  “Thank you, Miss Delaney.”

  “Call me Annie, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you, Miss Annie.”

  “Close enough. You’re welcome, Benji. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Miss Annie. Well, goodbye again. Bye, Clarissa.”

  Then he creeps up the stairs in that annoying way he has, where he can’t move onto the next step until both feet are on the stair before. It’s amazing he gets anywhere on time.

  “Poor little thing. You be nice to him, Clarissa.”

  “I am nice to him!”

  “Not everyone is as lucky as you.”

  Lucky? Who said anything about lucky?

  ***

  Denise arrives just after six to get her roots done. So much for Power Hour. She sits with her feet up on the counter, drinking coffee and eating her way through a pack of powdered doughnuts.