“I…I don’t…”
“Just apologize before we have to hurt you,” Madison said.
“On your knees,” Beth said.
I looked around the room. No one was going to help me; no one even cared.
“And I’ll tell you another thing, Tamar. The only reason Ms. Jane gave you a part in the play is because she feels sorry for you because your slutty little sisters went and got themselves killed.”
“Beth,” someone near the showers said.
“Shut up. I’m talking now. You’d better get down on your knees and apologize to me right now or I swear to God I will make your life a living hell.”
“Too late for that,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“I don’t want to,” I said in a small voice.
“Look, Tamar. I’m doing you a favor. You need to learn a few things before you get to grade twelve. Like who gets respect and who has to bow down. You, and all the people like you, bow down.” She laughed a horrible, high-pitched laugh, and some other girls laughed too. Then she leaned over and hissed, “You’ll never be good enough for Roy, so don’t even try.”
I felt the blood burning my face scarlet, but I didn’t care. My hands balled themselves into fists and trembled at my sides. I took a deep breath, held it in and started counting to ten.
“I’m waiting for my apology.” She crossed her arms over her massive chest and twisted up her lips. She tapped her foot twice.
And then something inside me exploded.
I didn’t even think about doing it. Something took over my body and made it move. I punched Beth Dewitt right square in her little button nose. It immediately began to ooze blood. She yelped and covered her face with her hands. Some of the girls in the change room started chanting “Fight, fight, fight” and formed a circle around us. Everything was happening in slow motion. Beth slapped me across the face, and I smacked her right back. “You ugly little bitch,” she said. Then it was on. The girls chanted louder. “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!” I elbowed Beth in the breasts and she hit me in the ribs. I kneed her in the stomach and she kicked me in the shins and punched me in the mouth. I dragged my fingernails across her face. She screamed and grabbed my throat. I sacked her in the jaw and then she grabbed a chunk of my hair. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I apologize!” I said, clawing at her wrist. But it was too late. She ripped my wig off and there I was, exposed, bald as a bowling ball, in front of everyone. The girls stopped chanting. Everyone was silent. You could have heard a tampon drop.
Then Beth laughed. Her laughter echoed off the tile floor and walls and still echoes now in my mind. “She’s a freak!” she said, holding up my wig like a trophy. “She’s a fucking freak!” Then the other girls started saying “Oh my god” and “Holy shit” or just gaping openly, for a couple of minutes or a thousand years, while I stood there with the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth, looking at the floor, letting it all happen.
Eventually the bell rang, and everyone packed up their bags and left as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Everyone but Beth, who still stood in front of me, staring. I closed my eyes and held out my hand. She let her breath out through her teeth and dropped the wig into my open palm. I heard her runners squeak as she turned away and pushed through the change-room door, laughing to herself. I opened my eyes a crack to be sure I was alone, and then I sank to the floor and wept. I cried so hard I threw up. I turned off the lights and curled up on one of the hard wooden benches. I stayed there all period and didn’t even think about going to English class. At the beginning of the next period, my name was called over the PA with instructions to report to the principal’s office. I splashed my face with water and dabbed at my bloody lip with a paper towel. I put my wig back on and looked in the mirror. I looked like shit. I pulled my sunglasses out of my purse and put them on, then walked slowly to the office.
Beth had told the principal that I lost it on her after gym class for no good reason. She had brought in witnesses to confirm that I had hit her first and that she only acted in self-defense.
“Is it true what Beth has told me, Tamar?” Mr. Ivers asked.
I stared at the flecks of blue and brown in the carpet as I sat slumped over in a chair beside Beth.
“Tamar?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“You know that there is zero tolerance for violence at this school?”
“Yeah.”
Mr. Ivers sighed. “Well, I’m sorry to have to do this, but school policy dictates that you must be suspended for no less than one week.”
“Fine.”
“That means you’re not permitted on school property for any reason for seven days.”
“What about for play rehearsal, after school hours?”
“Not for any reason.”
I looked sideways at Beth. She sat up straight, looking smug, with her legs crossed and her humongous boobs jutting out the top of her sweater. I hated her.
“Fine.”
“I hope you understand that this will go down on your permanent record.”
I didn’t say anything. I stared at the carpet and decided it was ugly.
“Now, I think you owe Beth an apology.”
I couldn’t believe it.
He cleared his throat and tapped a pen against his desk.
I turned to her. “Sorry,” I said through clenched teeth.
She looked away.
“You’re to gather your things now and leave school property. Your teachers will be informed of the reason for your absence, and any assignments or tests you miss this week must be made up when you return. I’ll be phoning home and letting your parents know about the situation. You’re both dismissed.”
As I walked down the hall to my locker, I heard people whispering and saw them nodding toward me and staring and talking behind their hands.
They already knew.
Everyone already knew.
I might as well get on the PA and make an announcement: “Hello, Canyon Meadows High. This is Tamar Robinson speaking. Yes, the sister of the evil twins, now deceased. If you haven’t already heard, I am actually completely bald. Not just on my head, but on my entire body. Yes, even down there. And I will probably be hairless for the rest of my life. Thank you for ostracizing me, and have a nice day.”
I trudged home in a daze. The sun was way too bright, glittering off all the snow and burning into my retinas. The sky was a brilliant, piercing blue. A blue so pure and perfect it hurt to look at it.
I was sore all over. My whole body felt like it had been slapped, and I could feel my lips growing puffy and fat. I had an urge to stick my head in the snowbank, but I didn’t.
I sighed as I stepped into the warmth of my house. It was quiet, without the TV blaring.
“Dad!”
No answer.
I peeked into the kitchen. He wasn’t there. I realized this was the first time I had been alone in my house in a very long time. I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the fridge. The sound reminded me of my mom doing her yoga chanting. I had a deep and sudden ache inside my chest. I leaned against the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. Then my dad came through the garage door on his crutches. He reeked of cigarettes.
“Dad!”
“Hi, T. What happened there?” He pointed to my lip.
“I’m not ready to talk about that.”
“Roger that.”
I waited to see if he would say anything about Mr. Ivers calling. He didn’t. I checked the answering machine. No messages. I went upstairs, changed my clothes and took off my wig. I put it on its stand, then shoved it to the back of my closet. What was the point of wearing it now that everyone knew I was bald? It would be posing. And I hated posers.
I went to the mirror and examined my face. My lip looked
like a baseball glove and had flakes of dried blood on it. I felt around inside my mouth with my fingers. No teeth loose or missing—that was lucky. It could have been worse, I thought. “No, it couldn’t have,” I heard Alia say in my head. I was glad my mom was gone, because I would have been too ashamed to tell her what had happened in the locker room that day.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth and put on my blue flannel pajamas. I pulled down my blinds, got into bed and closed my eyes. When I closed my eyes, I saw the girls’ faces in the change room at the moment my wig had been ripped off. At first, their soft pink mouths had formed little Os of shock and surprise, and then they had contorted into such ugly shapes of vicious, scathing laughter that it was hard to believe any one of those girls had a kind heart. I tried to squeeze the whole savage scene out of my head, but it was there to stay, maybe forever.
I stayed in bed for the rest of the afternoon and all night. It had been the single-most humiliating day of my entire life, and I didn’t want to come out until it was over.
eleven
I woke up in a sweaty panic in the soft gray light of dawn. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. I looked down at myself. My blue pajama top fell across my body like a piece of the sky. I put my hands over my belly, tried to slow my breathing, my heart rate. And gradually I remembered that I was Tamar, I was at home in my bed, my sisters were dead, my mom was gone, my dad was crazy, and I was bald and the whole world knew it. I closed my eyes and willed myself back to sleep, because sometimes even bad dreams are better than real life.
When I got up hours later, I called Cruisy Chicken and told Don I could work any day that week if he needed me. Figured I might as well make some money if I wasn’t going to school.
“Fantastic. Why don’t you come in tomorrow at eleven?” he said.
I drank a glass of orange juice and stood in the kitchen, listening to the eerie quiet of the house around me. Dad wouldn’t be up for another few hours, Mom was gone, and I was still getting used to not hearing the sounds of my sisters.
There was a blanket of new snow insulating everything. I could hear creaks and groans coming from the walls and the floors and the furnace, but other than that it was silent. First period would just be starting. My biology class would be taking a test on the parasympathetic nervous system. I was glad I wasn’t at school. I wrapped the silence of the morning around me like a scarf. I made a cup of tea and drank it as I gazed outside.
The snow sparkled like a hundred billion diamonds piled up in our backyard. I put on my coat and slippers, slid the back door open and crunched down to the lawn.
When I found the right spot, I fell back into the snow and moved my arms and legs into the shape of an angel. It was something my sisters and I always used to do when there was a fresh snowfall. I stopped moving and lay still for a while. Snow fell noiselessly around me. I let the sun shine down in my face as I stared up at the white sky. I could almost smell the sky, that’s how close it was. The snow beneath me was like a soft fluffy blanket; it felt cool against the bare skin of my head. I watched the crystalline clouds of my breath float away, and I blinked snowflakes out of my eyes. And then suddenly there was so much light, it was as if the world had cracked open. It got brighter and brighter, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to close my eyes. But the light didn’t go away. It was dazzling. I stayed absolutely still and tried to focus on the insides of my eyelids. My whole body got warm and I felt like I was melting into the snow. After a minute or two, I slowly opened one eye, then the other. Then I stood up carefully so as not to ruin my angel and stepped back to look at her. She was beautiful.
You would never be able to tell from a snow angel if someone was bald or not. I thought she looked a little lonely in the middle of all that stark white snow, so I made two other angels, one on either side of her. And as I was doing it, I was smiling.
But I stopped smiling when chunks of the sky were hurled down upon me. I yelled, throwing them off as if they were on fire, and jumped to my feet. Then I realized they weren’t slabs of the sky at all—they were shingles. Our roof was being torn apart.
“Oh, sorry,” said a tall man wearing a baseball cap, squinting down at me from the roof. “Didn’t see you there.”
I pulled my hood up over my head and went inside, banging the glass door closed behind me.
Roy called at 3:47 PM.
“Tamar, I heard what happened. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“I got your assignments. Do you want me to bring them over?”
“Um, sure. That would be fine.”
“I’m on my way.” He hung up.
I went upstairs and put on my purple toque. I wasn’t wearing my wig anymore. I was mad at my wig. For not sticking to its adhesive. For letting Beth Dewitt rip it off me in front of thirty-six girls. My wig sucked shit. My wig was not worth $769 if it couldn’t even stay on my head during a stupid fight. I put my false eyelashes on and carefully drew on my eyebrows. I put down the pencil and stared back at my reflection. I wasn’t the ugliest person alive. “You’re a whole lot prettier than Beth Dewitt,” I heard Abby say. “Even without boobs.” And then Alia was singing, “U.G.L.Y. She ain’t got no alibi! She’s ugly!” I smiled into the mirror.
Roy arrived; his kaleidoscope eyes looked big and worried and beautiful. He gave me a hug, and I let myself be hugged. He smelled like fresh ginger.
“You okay?” he said in my ear.
“Yeah.”
We kept hugging. I heard Dad turn the TV down so he could eavesdrop. We went into the kitchen and I put the kettle on for tea.
“Here’s your work.” Roy placed a small stack of papers on the table.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Ms. Jane said it’s okay that you have to miss this week of rehearsals because there are extenuating circumstances. She said they’ll get someone to stand in for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nice to know I’m so easily replaceable.”
“You’re not and you know it.”
“Whatever.”
“I can’t believe Beth did that.”
“Believe it.”
“So, what are you gonna do?”
“What can I do?” I shrugged. “Life will go on, with or without my hair.”
He nodded and bowed his head as I handed him a steaming cup of green tea.
We sat there in silence for a minute, blowing on our tea.
“She should be kicked out of the play,” Roy said.
“I don’t know, maybe just a role change…she’d make a pretty mean Munchkin.”
Then Roy started laughing and so did I, and we sat there at my kitchen table laughing and laughing until tears rolled down our cheeks and fell into our tea.
The next morning I took the bus to Cruisy Chicken. I wore a black bandana, no wig. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything. Don sat in his office on the computer all day, probably looking at greasy porn. Mike started at 3:45 PM, and I was glad when he got there. I didn’t know if he had heard about the fight and my wig and everything, but if he had, he didn’t seem to care. We made fun of customers and made up dead-baby jokes together.
“What do you call a dead baby, a rat, a six-week-old bun and a pickle?”
“What?”
“Cruisy Combo number three, hold the fries.”
“What do you get when you put a dead baby and a cup of Tabasco in the blender?”
“What?”
“Cruisy’s secret sauce.”
“Why did the dead baby cross the road?”
“Why?”
“Because it was stapled to the chicken.”
We doubled over with laughter.
“Okay, what am I? What am I?” Mike turned away from me and then spun back around hissing, two french fries stuck up his nose and his eyeballs roll
ed back in his head.
“An epileptic walrus!” I guessed.
“No! A dead baby that fell into the deep fryer!”
“Ohhhhh,” I groaned.
“Thanks for playing. Here’s your consolation prize!” He picked a fry out of his nostril and presented it to me.
I took it from him and held it up for the fake studio audience to see. Then Don walked out of his office. I pretended like I was just throwing the fry in the garbage and gave Mike, whose back was to Don, a warning look. He got it and took the other fry out of his nose and put it back in a bag of fries.
“Order up!” Don barked.
I tried to keep a straight face while I bagged the order and took it to the window for a blond lady in a yellow Jeep. There was a fluffy white dog in the passenger seat, and I had a hunch the chicken was for him.
“Tam, step into my office.”
Mike made a face behind Don’s back like he’d just eaten something disgusting.
Once I was standing in Don’s office, he closed the door and pulled out the plastic lawn chair for me.
“Have a seat, Tam.”
When I was sitting, he placed his thick hands on my shoulders. He began massaging my shoulders, lightly at first, then harder.
I cleared my throat and squirmed a bit in the chair. He didn’t stop.
“You like working here?”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Yeah?” He pressed his thumbs deep into my upper back.
“Yeah.”
He began to rub my neck, and then he ran his hands several times from my shoulders down the length of my arms to my wrists. “You’re very tense,” he whispered, his lips close to my earlobe.
“Um, I need to use the washroom.” I stood up fast, nearly knocking the chair over.
Don sighed. “Here’s your paycheck,” he said, handing me a brown envelope from a stack on his desk.
“Thanks. Did you want me to work again tomorrow?”
The New Normal Page 9