Words That Start With B

by Vikki VanSickle

  “You wouldn’t believe the day I had,” Denise says. “I’m on my third coffee and I’m not sure if I’ll make it to eight o’clock.”

  “What’s at eight o’clock?” I ask.

  “Dinner with the Monster.”

  The Monster is Denise’s sister Linda. Every few months they get together to brag about their lives. Linda is a travel agent with two kids, a dog and a husband. Denise calls her the Monster, but she sounds more boring than monstrous to me. Then again, she is related to Denise, so there must be something wrong with her.

  “How was your day, baby?” Mom asks. Finally.

  “Awful. I got hit in the head with a basketball.”

  “Let me see.” Mom pushes back my hair and squints at my forehead. “It can’t be too serious. I don’t see anything.”

  “Well it hurts!” I say.

  “I’m sure it does, but it’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  Ugh. It’s like she doesn’t even care.

  “And Mr. Campbell is trying to ruin grade seven for me.”

  “Not Tony Campbell,” says Denise. “I met him last week at the grocery store. He’s a real cutie, if you like red hair.”

  “You have red hair,” I point out.

  “Thanks to your mama,” Denise winks and pops another doughnut into her mouth. The powdered sugar sticks to her lipstick. “He seemed like a decent guy to me.”

  “Well, he’s not, and he’s married, anyway,” I say savagely.

  Denise shrugs. “Want a doughnut?” she asks.

  “No,” I sigh, eyeing their mugs. “What I really could use is a coffee.”

  Mom shakes her head and holds her coffee cup close to her chest.

  “Nuh-uh. Coffee stunts your growth and ruins your teeth.”

  “You drink it.”

  “I have no choice; I’m addicted.”

  “Denise drinks it.”

  “Denise is an adult. She can choose to ruin her teeth if she wants to.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Life’s not fair, baby. But at least you’ll have good teeth.”

  She reaches out to straighten a curl, but I duck away before she can get her powdery fingers in my hair.

  “Mom, gross. There’s sugar all over your fingers.”

  She looks down at them and licks the sugar off, one finger at a time.

  “So there is. What would I do without you?”

  Since it is clear to me that no one in this room cares about my day or how I’m going to survive an entire year with Tony the Tiger, I stomp up the stairs and leave them to their coffee and their highlighting.

  The Blues

  In addition to being next-door neighbours, Benji and I are right next to each other on the class list because Denton comes right after Delaney in roll call. This means that every time we are split up alphabetically, which is a lot, we are put in the same group. It also means we end up sitting near each other in class. But not this year, the year of Mr. Campbell. He thinks it would be fun to “mix it up.” Every week he arranges us by something different: birth date, height, even zodiac sign. I told him I don’t go in for all that zodiac hocus-pocus.

  “Astrology has a fascinating history, Clarissa. Whether or not you believe in it, people have done some very interesting things based upon their star sign.”

  “Like seating arrangements?” I ask.

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “Well, it seems like a load of you-know-what, if you’ll excuse my language.”

  “What is it about astrology that bothers you, Clarissa?”

  “Well, it’s a lot like stereotyping, and we learned last year in Mrs. Miller’s class that it is wrong to judge individual people based on group assumptions. That is how things like racism and sexism get started. Are you telling us to be prejudiced, Mr. Campbell?”

  “No, I am telling you where to sit.”

  “Fine. But I want you to know that I think basing a seating arrangement on zodiac signs is inappropriate.”

  “Spoken like a true Aries. Now please take your seat.”

  ***

  More proof that Mr. Campbell is the worst thing to happen to Ferndale Public School: his idea of a school project is a radio station. Just before lunch he announces that he’s starting a radio club for anyone who’s interested in helping out. Poor Mr. Campbell. Doesn’t he know that no one listens to the radio anymore? I almost feel sorry for him.

  “We’ll have two programs,” he explains. “A daily lunchtime program with music, school news and interest stories, and a ten minute special we’ll do once a month on a topic of our choice.”

  Hands go up and Mr. Campbell answers all sorts of questions. Yes, the club will be open to the whole school; yes, there could be an all-request lunch hour; yes, they could interview outside people. Mr. Campbell is so excited about his club he forgets to assign us math homework. I guess there is a silver lining in every cloud.

  ***

  We’re almost out the door when Mattie calls after us.

  “Hi, Benji! Hi, Clarissa! Are you going to join the radio club?”

  I snort.“No way.”

  Benji shrugs. “I don’t like public speaking,” he says.

  “It’s not like that at all, silly. You talk into a microphone in a room with no audience,” Mattie says brightly.

  Benji is not convinced. “Still—”

  “Well, I am,” Mattie breezes on. “I think it’s a great idea. I don’t know if you remember, but I did morning announcements last year.”

  I roll my eyes.“We remember.”

  “So, I already have experience.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Can I walk with you?”

  Benji and I exchange glances.

  “If you want to,” I say.

  “Great! So what do you think about having a Guess That Song contest?”

  Mattie talks about contests and giveaways all the way to the corner of Blair Avenue and Chestnut Street. Benji suggests getting gift certificates from local businesses.

  “That’s a great idea!” Mattie says. “Are you sure you don’t want to join the radio club?”

  “Well, maybe behind-the-scenes stuff,” he says.

  “Do you think your mom might donate a gift certificate for the salon?” Mattie asks me.

  I shrug. “Maybe. Well, this is where we turn,” I say.

  Mattie stops.

  “Oh,” she says. Something about the way she stands there fiddling with her skirt makes me think she’s waiting for me to ask her over, but that doesn’t make any sense. Mattie has lots of friends who are much more interested in things like clothes and the radio club than I am. Maybe she just has to go to the bathroom.

  “So, see you tomorrow?”

  “Okay! Don’t forget to bring your newspaper article for current events!”

  “I won’t.”

  “And ask your mom about the gift certificate!”

  “I’ll think about it. Bye, Mattie.”

  “Bye, Clarissa! Bye, Benji!”

  We watch her turn and go.

  “Is she skipping?” I ask.

  “No, she’s just a bouncy walker,” Benji says.

  Cripes.

  ***

  “We ordered pizza,” Mom says. I don’t feel like talking. I grunt instead.

  “Pardon me?”

  I grunt a little bit louder.

  “We don’t speak caveman,” Mom says sweetly. Denise slaps her thigh and explodes into her big honking laugh.

  Anger crackles underneath my skin. I swear, if someone touched me right now they’d get such a big electrical shock they’d probably fall down dead.

  “Not hungry,” I say shortly.

  Mom reaches out and grabs my wrist as I squeeze by.

  “Where are you going? Tell us about your day,” she says with her you-can-talk-to-me-I’m-a-good-mother smile. It makes me even angrier.

  I yank my arm back.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Mom sighs dramatically
. “I can’t wait till we’re through the angsty period.”

  She’s talking to Denise, but she makes sure to say it loud enough so that I can hear. When I get to my room, I am sure to slam the door hard enough to make the pictures on the wall in the living room rattle.

  ***

  A little bit later there is a knock at the door. I consider pretending to be asleep, but I can smell the pizza from here and it’s making my stomach growl.

  “Clarissa? The pizza is here.”

  My hunger melts away any bit of resolve I had left. When I open the door Mom is standing there with the pizza and an armful of movies and I forget to be mad at her.

  “I thought maybe you needed some Julia Roberts,” she says.

  Mom has seen every Julia Roberts movie about seven hundred times. Her favourites are Steel Magnolias, because it’s about a hair salon, and Pretty Woman, because every stylist loves a makeover story. She knows all the words to both and gets choked up at the same parts every time. It’s one thing for Benji and me to obsess over movies, but my mother is a grown woman. After a particularly bad day she’ll say, “That was a Julia Roberts kind of day,” and then I know we’re in for popcorn and manis and pedis. My job is to pop two bags of microwave popcorn while my mother sets up a mini nail salon.

  She clears the TV guides and junk mail off the coffee table and lays out what Denise refers to as Annie’s Arsenal. All Mary Kay, all supplied by Denise. My mom keeps her nail supplies in a plastic case under the bathroom sink. It’s full of Q-tips, cotton swabs and all kinds of nail polish. There are emery boards, cuticle pushers, nail clippers and even a buffer pad. The emery boards look like Popsicle sticks covered in pink sandpaper. Usually I get to pick my nail polish, but tonight Denise has all sorts of opinions.

  “Nothing too pink, Clarissa, that’s a summer shade. And nothing too red, it’ll stain your nails.”

  My favourite colour is called Ocean Pearl, and it goes on light pink with white swirls in it. It makes my fingernails look like the insides of tiny seashells.

  Usually it’s just me, Mom and Julia Roberts, but tonight Denise is overstaying her welcome.

  “I just love that Richard Gere,” she says. “How come I can’t find a man like that around here? You know they say he’s a Buddhist.”

  “Mmmm.” Mom paints my nails one stroke at a time. I love the way the polish feels on my nails, cool and silky. It takes almost the whole movie to finish. First you have to put on a base coat, let it dry for ten minutes, then follow up with two thin coats of colour. After that sits, you finish with a top coat, which takes at least ten minutes to dry. The bottle says quick-dry, but Denise says you never can trust a label. She would know; she sells the stuff. We start with our toes and finish with our fingernails.

  “Aren’t we a sight? All spiffed up and nowhere to go.”

  I want to tell Denise that she is welcome to leave anytime, but my beautiful nails are putting me in such a good mood that I don’t bother.

  Bully

  “Hey, where are you goin’?”

  Terry DiCarlo steps out from his group of low-life grade eight thugs and stands between Benji and the door to the boy’s bathroom. His friends laugh like they’ve never heard anything funnier in their lives and turn to watch, arms crossed, tough guy looks on all their faces.

  “I’m just going to the bathroom,” Benji mutters, keeping his head down.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” Terry says, and he grabs Benji’s shoulder and slams him into the girls’ bathroom so hard that Benji falls through the door and into the bathroom. Inside, someone who sounds a lot like Mattie Cohen shrieks, “Benji! This is the girls’ bathroom!”

  Benji stumbles back out, rubbing his elbow, which is almost as red as his face. He keeps his back to the wall and inches away from Terry, like a dog who knows it’s about to be kicked. Anger fills me up and before I can stop myself, words are coming out of my mouth.

  “I guess it’s true,” I say, nice and loud, so everyone who wasn’t already watching turns to look at us.

  Terry narrows his mean eyes. “What? That your little boyfriend would rather do your hair than take you out on a date like a real man?”

  “No, it must be true that they’re keeping you back a year because you’re too dumb to read. Only an idiot can’t tell the difference between the words ‘girl’ and ‘boy.’”

  “You think you’re funny? You little—”

  But I don’t hear the rest of what he says. I’m too busy walking away. Behind me some people are laughing and others are egging Terry on, but I hold my head high and march over to my locker. He can’t hurt me, I’m a girl. Plus, I don’t care what Terry DiCarlo thinks.

  When I get to my locker my hands are shaking so badly I can’t make the dial move where I want it to go. I feel angry and nervous and exhilarated, like I could take on a whole room full of Terrys or jump off a ten-storey building and land on my feet. Suddenly Benji is beside me, taking the lock from my jittery hands.

  “Here, I’ll do it,” he says. His voice is wobbly, like it’s full of tears.

  “That Terry DiCarlo makes me so mad,” I say. “What a jerk.”

  Benji nods and pulls off the lock. I grab my books and coat and pretend to be busy shoving them into my backpack so he can wipe his eyes, which have started to get teary. Then I slam the door and we boot it out of there, as fast as we can without running. School is the last place you want to be when you’re upset because nothing is ever private. There’s always someone staring at you, ready to run off and tell everyone that you picked your nose at lunch or were crying at your locker.

  ***

  Benji is even quieter than usual on the way home. I do impressions of Amanda and Min’s oral presentation on some ridiculous book about horses, complete with hair-chewing (Amanda) and baby-talk (Min), but his cheek doesn’t even twitch. I buy him the king-size Mars bar at the 7-Eleven but he just stashes it in his backpack. Normally he’d have it polished off before we got home.

  Even Mom, Benji’s favourite person in the whole world, can’t seem to wipe the gloom off his face. When she pops her head around the screen and asks how our days were, he just shrugs. Mom’s eyebrows go up and she looks at me as if maybe I did something. I shrug. I don’t want to embarrass Benji any more by going into the details.

  “Did someone’s dog die?” she asks.

  No one says anything. She runs a hand through Benji’s hair, rubbing the ends between her fingers.

  “You need a trim, Benji,” she says. “I’ve got fifteen minutes before Tracey arrives and she’s always late anyways.”

  Benji gets up wordlessly and follows her into the Hair Emporium like a sad puppy. After five minutes she has massaged the words out of his head and Benji is blubbering about Terry. Mom is all honey and sweetness and understanding, but later, after he’s left and Power Hour has begun, she cleans like a maniac, shining the stations so hard I worry that she’ll take all the gloss right off.

  “How long has this thing with Terry been going on?” she asks.

  “I don’t know, awhile, I guess.”

  The truth is Benji has always been the butt of people’s jokes, but after awhile people just got used to him and left him alone. This thing with Terry was new. Terry was so much bigger and meaner.

  “Does your teacher know?”

  I roll my eyes. “No, he’s too dumb to pick up on it. He’d probably just lock them in a room together and make them talk it out anyway.”

  Mom frowns. “I still think he should know,” she says. “What about David?”

  I snort. “Yeah, right. He’d just tell him to fight back.”

  Benji’s dad was something of a hockey star in high school, always getting into fights, which is how he got his nickname, the Dentonator.

  According to Mom, “Just about the only thing David Denton was good at was hockey, but he got himself a bum knee just out of high school. No NHL for him. It’s too bad, because he could have been great.”

  Benji never says
much about it. He’s heard the stories from his dad a million times, and he’s seen the trophy case and the newspaper cuttings. Front and centre on the Dentons’ fridge is the newspaper article from when his dad’s hockey team won the junior championships almost fifteen years ago. It’s so old the paper is discoloured, like milk gone sour.

  Any idiot could see that Benji was not going to follow in his father’s footsteps. My mother calls him “a delicate child.” He’s short for his age, scrawny, with little wrists, bony shoulders and skin so pale you can see the blue veins underneath. Not exactly hockey material.

  Benji doesn’t even like to watch hockey, let alone play it. One year the Dentonator signed him up for peewee hockey, hoping to toughen him up. He only lasted one year, most of which he spent on the bench watching the other boys slamming into the boards, the net and each other. After a practice or a game he’d come over to our house bruised and crying because his toes were so cold they hurt. Mom would make us hot chocolate while Benji sat huddled on the floor with his feet on the air vents, defrosting. If it was really bad, she’d crank the heat up and drape a blanket over his knees so the hot air came rushing on and puffed out the blanket like a hot-air balloon.

  At the end of the season, the coach told the Dentonator that Benji just didn’t have what it takes to be a hockey player. Boy was he mad. He called the coach all sorts of names and raged about finding a better team with a better coach. But in the end he never bothered. Even Benji’s thick-headed, hockey-crazed father had to admit that his son was never going to play in the NHL. And so Benji’s hockey career came to an end.

  “As thick as he may be, I still think David should know about Terry,” Mom says. “And your teacher, too.”

  Oh, right. I know exactly what the school will do. They’ll make Terry and Benji sit down with a mediator and talk it out. Then after school Terry will hunt Benji down and cream him anyway. I pretend not to hear her over the hum of the DustBuster.

  “Clarissa! I’m talking to you.”

  Mom stops rubbing the finish off the countertops and stares at me, hands on her hips, cheeks rosy from her maniacal scrubbing. Figures — my cheeks get all splotchy and shiny when I’m working hard, but she still looks beautiful.