It was knocking on all those doors that made Halloween thrilling. Some people muttered and shoved Tootsie rolls into our hands, just to fob us off the porch. But other doors meant glimpses into warm strangers' lives, peering at the ornaments in their lighted hallways, while they fiissed to make sure we got one of everything from the bowls of boxed candy they had lined up ready.
'What cute little monsters!' Older ladies had a fondness for our faces and our sweet English accents, they declared, when Laurie and I lifted our masks to say thank you.
'Here, take these, honeybunch.' We let them pat our heads and press extra candy into our hands while'we drank in the paintings off their walls.
After promising for weeks, the sky let go of its snow. We broke up from school and waved goodbye to our friends, knowing we wouldn't see them until the holidays were over and it was a whole new year.
Christmas came. The tree wobbled under tinsel and glittery globes, Bing Crosby and Val Doonican spinning in the background. The fireplace was crowded with cards sending Season's Greetings Across the Miles. I tore into silvery wrapping paper, smiling and smiling so that my mother would never guess I had no tingles of excitement.
Only when we went out into the night and passed other people's windows decked in red and green lights did I feel Christmas go through me. And later, when our stepfather took us sliding in the snow, my heart jumped out of my anorak on top of a white hill.
He fixed me between his knees on a battered tin tray and whooshed me into the night.
'Bombs away!' I smelt whisky laughing into my neck, car oil worked into the jeans clamped about my face.
'Bombs away!' I shouted with him.
We flew for a moment, on the tin tray. Then we hit a rock and skidded off. My head landed on something sharp under the snow, digging in while the weight of my stepfather crushed my arm.
'Dad.' I sat up, dazed, and saw blood dripping black in the snow in the night.
'Bloody hell!' My stepfather eased himself up and stopped laughing.
'Bloody hell.' He made a fistful of snow and pressed it over the cut. 'How's that?'
Blood kept coming. My stepfather was terrified I might cry.
'It doesn't hurt.' My head was numb with packed ice, and with the thrill of blood spilled by accident, laughing, in the snow.
My stepfather put a kiss over the cut - hot whisky, with nothing nasty in it. My insides warmed and turned over. But afi:erwards, when we piled into the car and he wailed with his whisky, 'Show me the way to go home,' my throat packed up in the back, having to sing along.
We went back to school and a new decade was declared along with the new year.
Mr Farrell scraped ip8o on the board. I looked at the white chalk numbers looping against the black and my head began to throb where it had hit the rock.
What's happening?
I had been forgetting to breathe on the way to school. Sometimes I had to stop on the sidewalk to remember which way was forward, which back. It was dread in both directions: stifling up the house, waiting for me at school.
'Okay, people.' Mr Farrell was ready to roll. 'Start of the week — news quiz.'
He pinned down the blinds and we sat at our desks in the dark, all eyes on the huge school-sized TV wheeled in to enlighten us.
Earthquake-missiles-coldwar-crisis-bombs-secession-Quebec-floods-famine-exchange-rates slapped across the screen: flashing pictures with words too fast to fit.
The blinds shot up. Lights blinked back on.
'Okay, people ...'
I swallowed frantically. I thought I might be sick if anyone asked me how the world worked.
While Monday mornings made me queasy, Friday afternoons came close to heaven.
Ice-skating. It meant blisters on my heels, but it was worth it for cold speed: gliding like a bullet. I flew in circles, breathing hard, chuckling in my chest, until the speed got too much and I had to crash into the barrier and start again. I imagined the cold smack of a fall, when the wobbling came on, and the schwink of someone's boot-blade slicing off my fingers as they looped on by while I lay on the ice.
It was giddy hot and cold, shooting.
Then it was weekend.
'What've you got there, love?' My mother showed a glimmer of interest when I came through the door lugging a huge atlas under my arm.
' 'Mr Farrell lent it to me.' I opened it on the kitchen table, flicking straight to Europe.
'Look.' I put my finger on England.
'Mmm.' My mother saw green blobs in blue space, through the veil of her cigarette. 'Lovely.'
I carried the book to our room and laid it on my bed, tracing the shapes and crayoning them in purples and yellows to make a map of my own that I folded under my vest. Then I hid the atlas under the mattress, where no one could find it to ruin it before I carried it back on Monday.
Also under my mattress was a book I should not have had, because it came from the twelve-year-olds' shelf in the school library. I zipped through the books for ten-year-olds, scribbling
reviews of them on yellow slips, almost always winning a gold star. I would lick each star and add it to my reading chart in the corridor, hoping the librarian might notice the cluster of gold and decide it was time for me to start on the books for older kids. But she just sailed on by the charts and never said a thing. I was too afraid to ask, because she wore specs with fiery red frames and lenses tinted dark, so I couldn't see her eyes.
I knew I was two years too young for the book I wanted, but I slipped it, sweating, under my coat: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, by a lady writer called Judy Blume. About the terrors and triumphs of being a teenager, it said on the back. At home, I locked myself in the toilet and read great chunks at a time, learning about breasts and blood between the legs and how to pray to bring them on. If I could develop some breasts, I calculated, they might reduce my risk of being picked out as a freak at school, where the grade system had thrown me two years ahead of my age. In with the big kids: while I sat puny, gathering my gold stars and winning the spelling bee each week, the older ones loomed over me, with fiilly formed boobs, underarm hair, and weeping cheeks of acne.
'Milk-fed,' my mother called Canadian kids. *I swear they put something in the milk that makes them grow so bloody fast.'
Anyway, she believed, my period was on its way and boobs would come with that. Spotting blood on the toilet tissue one bedtime, when the bowl failed to flush, my mother had perched me on the side of the bath and locked my hands in hers to pass on ladies' stuff behind the closed door. Once a month, she told me, in time with the moon, women get menses: the eggs that might have been babies leave their wombs and come out with a bit of blood, just a teaspoon, though it might seem like much more. Once a month and just a teaspoon
and when it happens, she told me, you put this in your knickers and come straight to me.
'Thank you, Mum.' I prized the huge white pad, stuffed with something light like tissue, smelling heavenly, of women.
'I'll come,' I told her, 'when it happens.' I»kept the sanitary towel in the drawer with my knickers, knowing my period was not about to happen. I hadn't the heart to tell my mother that the blood on the tissue was coming out of my nose, night after night, from nowhere.
It was not my lack of breasts, but the boy next door who finally branded me as a freak in the schoolyard. One stormy afternoon, the boys in my grade launched into their taunts at him:
'Michael de Monkey! Michael de Monkey!' His real name was Michael de Mano, but his lips stuck out rubbery and thick so that bigger boys could use them against him.
While the other kids taunted him, he turned on me -standing to one side, watching and saying nothing.
'What about you?' the boy next door shouted. 'Your dad's a drunk and an outta work bum, ain't he? We hear him shoutin' at night, way over in our house. Your mom screamin' too, so we don't get no sleep.'
A slap out of the sky. I stood behind the smile caught on my lips, waiting for my feet to unstick, to run me home throug
h the thundering rain.
That evening the mother of Michael de Mano knocked on our door, carrying a huge cardboard box in her arms.
'For you and the litde ones,' she said to our mother. 'Mr de Mano, he gets them free from his work boss.'
Inside the box were thirty-six packets of macaroni cheese.
'Kraft!' My eyes widened at the famous blue and yellow boxes after the cheap no-name labels our mother had to stick to at the superstore.
'No, no, I couldn't,' our mother protested, while we crowded around her skirt, willing her to say yes.
Mrs de Mano pressed the box on her: 'For the litde ones.'
She had a straggly, black moustache, but she smelled miraculous, of meat simmering in peppers and tomatoes. I stood at the window after she left and watched her bottom swaying wide, from side to side, before disappearing back into the de Mano house for dinner.
Our stepfather reftised to touch the macaroni.
'Bloody nosing-in charity!' he ftimed when he spotted the boxes' blue and yellow. 'Tell them to bloody well shove it.'
Our mother hid the boxes on the cupboard's top shelf, where we had to scrape up a chair to reach them.
'Not under his nose,' she said, and we knew what she meant.
One evening, before our mother had finished her nap, Laurie and I had decided to take care of ourselves and our Sarah by creating a marvellous macaroni cheese tea. Laurie snipped the corners off the cheesy powder packets; I balanced a pan of water on to boil; the front door ratded and in he strolled.
'What's all this bloody nonsense?' Our stepfather found us alone at the stove, with Sarah perched on the counter to watch.
'Lorraine!' he bellowed. Our mother came flapping down the hall, fiimbling where her housecoat flashed open on shy, dull-pale skin.
'What's up, love?' Her eyes were red and watery with sleep.
'What's all this shit?' he wanted to know. 'Where in Christ's me dinner?'
'I'll make it now,' our mother trembled, rolling up her sleeves. 'You're back early, love.'
'I bloody well am, aren't I?' Our stepfathei smashed the heel of his hand into the table. 'Got the kids cooking behind me back now, have we?'
Just out of bed, our mother's creased face screwed into a pale question mark. It jumped, frightened, from the great pan of water gurgling on the stove, then back to Laurie and me.
'We were meaning it as a surprise, Dad,' I said. 'Mum didn't know.'
'Shut it,' he said. 'And don't you be defending this slag -she's a bad mother, she is, lazing on her arse when she should be up and cooking.'
Our mother stiffened her shoulders. 'That's bloody evil,' she gritted. 'What've you done for them lately, you greedy sod, except guzzle the food money so's I can't feed them like I should?'
He lunged to slap her.
'Cheeky bitch!' He missed her face, but tore the silver butterfly earring out of our mother's lobe.
She winced and put her hand over the rip.
'Get to your bedroom, girls.' She spoke without looking at us, eyes fixed on our stepfather.
They stood facing one another, anger simmering in each of their faces, like a mirror.
Our mother was flaming livid. Our stepfather was flaming livid.
'Get to your bedroom,' she said again, in a strange, mannish voice.
Thinking of punches and slaps and the beef-knife flashing in our mother's face, my stomach churned to leave them alone. My voice cracked when I dared, 'But we've not eaten yet.'
'Get into your room and lock the door!' Our mother screamed when our stepfather grabbed tl"ie pan of boUing macaroni off the stove, swinging around to face her. I stood frozen, gripping Laurie and Sarah by the hands, until my mother shoved me.
'Get to your room. Call Auntie Penny, then lock the door,' she said.
We stood our ground. The pan was bubbling and spitting in his fist. Our mother looked naked in the face of it.
'No, Mum,' I found myself crying. 'Please, Dad, you're frightening us.'
Laurie and Sarah took on my tears: we had all three of us seen our mother's face smacked scarlet, punched blue-purple, but the water was something else.
Simmering. Scalding.
Our stepfather looked at us, then turned away.
'Oh, Jesus!' He flung the boiling water and macaroni behind him into the window, letting the pan clang into the sink. Pasta slithered slowly down the pane and over the sill.
'Christ, what am I doing?' Our stepfather grabbed his hair in his fists and scrunched his face tight red. His eyes were wet slits. He opened them and looked at us all, crying.
'I'm sorry. Jesus, I'm sorry.'
In the light of next morning, our kitchen window looked sorry for itself Macaroni tubes had congealed on the panes in the night, the flowery sashed curtains were stained cheesy yellow. Our stepfather sat with his head in his hands over the toast and eggs our mother had fried in lard as usual, to soak up his hangover.
'What you goggling at?' He looked up, bloodshot, to catch Laurie, Sarah and me staring across the table while he lobbed salsa into his yolks. He tutted when our mother let a glass slip
through her shaky fingers while she was washing it, so that it spHntered against the tap. 'Pathetic bloody cow: pull yourself together!'
It was almost worse when our mother pulled herself together and acted like everything was fine and dandy while scabs streaked her cheekbones, bleeding when she caught them with her hairbrush. We missed having her cry in our hair - holding our heads, kissing and moaning into our crowns.
'Go on and play.' She brushed us off when we tried stroking her hands or kissing her on the temples. 'Take your Sarah and go on.'
We left: her lost in her cigarette and went to our bedroom, baffled.
Fluttering, tissue-thin letters were as close as we could get to Gran and Auntie Pauline and anyone else on the other side, since the price of a transatlantic call was astro-bloody-nomical. Our mother lingered over the telephone, then resolved to sit down and write - boiling the kettle, stubbing her cigarette, shoving the dirty ashtray out of the way. We had to leave her be while she gnawed the end of her biro, writing and ruminating for hours. At the end we were allowed to sign our names and crayon fast flowers, before licking the bitter edge of the envelope to seal it with all our love. Then our mother hid the letter like a magician, until she could get out to post it.
'There'll be fireworks if he gets his hands on it.' She crinkled her forehead, in search of the safest hiding-place.
There were fireworks when our stepfather discovered a bit of blue tissue lurking in among his dirty underpants and socks. The envelope was addressed to our Gran - Mildred Chadfield, in Manchester, England - but he tore straight in to see just
what our mother had to say about him. Our mother was too careful to write anything bloody, but the letter gave out how homesick she felt - enough to sell up and go home.
'What do you think you'll sell, smart-arse?' our stepfather demanded. 'We've got nothing, so you keep telling me.'
I looked at my mother, wondering where on earth the money might come from to get us back over the Adantic, home.
'It's just pie in the sky, Pete,' she sighed. 'Wishful thinking's all it was. We're not going anywhere.'
'Dead right you're not.' Our stepfather grabbed our mother's face between his fingers and thumb, twisting the skin the wrong way and ruining the Cupid's bow of her lips. His grip was so tight she could only speak with her eyes through his fingers.
'You're not going anywhere without me.' He slid the words, with bits of spittle, straight into her ear. 'Don't get any fancy ideas, Lorraine. You're not leaving me, bitch!'
Our mother snuffed out the light in her eyes and, when our stepfather let her face go, she said in a dead flat voice, 'Don't worry, Peter, I've got no fancy ideas.'
But the snuffed look in her eyes let on differendy. Behind them were some very fancy ideas that no shouting or beating were about to wrench out of her.
Our stepfather drew back his hand and brought it
slamming into her cheek. The skin gave a quick shout then turned a deep, slow red, but our mother's face stood still.
He booted a hole straight into the wall and stormed out.
I ran a facecloth under the cold tap; my mother let me press it against her cheek.
I touched her hair. 'Don't you want to cry. Mum?'
A tear welled and ran from her left eye, but it came from the slap, not from inside.
'No.' She stopped my patting hand and held it still in hers. 'There's nothing to cry for now, Andy. Nothing at all.'
My mother gripped my hand hard and I went to bed. Jammy Dodgers and iced Bakewell tarts sifted into my dreams. Custard creams, teapots and drizzly days.
Every night I got jammed in the same dream, finding a path that led to a bridge that looped high over the water to Manchester. If morning hadn't come, I could have walked all the way back to Gran's flat, direct to the eighth floor. Fluffy scones crouched in her oven: hot raisins hiding, juicy black, in their moist hearts.
My ears would burn when I woke up and realized I was still in my bedroom in Canada. They heated up just as painfijlly whenever I thought of telling my mother where I was going in my sleep. She and I would spend ages, just the two of us, whispering about wishes and dreams, even sharing our fears about my stepfather. But we always steered away from the subject of England, which set off^ a little tic between her nose and her left: dimple.
Once in a house on fire Page 7