by Susie Taylor
They make out, and I close my eyes and listen to the occasional slurp or slap of ill-timed lips, but mostly I hear the sound of Wanda slapping Nick’s hand away at regular intervals and her cautioning him when his hands travel under her clothes. “Nick. Nick!”
“Weiner’s allowed to use his dad’s car again,” Nick tells Wanda.
“How come he got grounded?”
“He set off a bunch of fireworks behind the Yonge Street Motel. He had this idea the strippers would all come rushing out to see what the noise was. They thought it was gunshots and called the police. No one pressed charges, but his dad had to come pick him up at the station. He’s driving us to Wonderland on the weekend. You want to come? You can come too, if you want, Daisy.”
“Cool,” says Wanda.
“I’ll see,” I say.
“That means no,” says Wanda, and I shrug. She knows Mum won’t let me go without calling Wanda’s parents to see who’s driving.
Nick leaves to go to work, and I gather up his cigarette butts and put them in the garbage.
The day they go to Wonderland, I decide I’m going to dye my hair black. I’m sick of my natural hair colour, mousey brown. I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but I always chicken out at the last minute when I remember that scene in Anne of Green Gables.
I bring the radio into the bathroom and turn it up. I have two of the old towels Mum makes me sleep on when I have my period. I open the package up and peel the gloves off of the paper sheet of instructions. I prop the instructions up behind the taps of the sink. I smear Vaseline along my hairline; Wanda told me to do this. I skip the allergy test and mix the contents of the two vials that came in the packet together and work the thick lotion through my hair. It drips down my face a bit, and I dampen one of the period towels and wipe away the drips. There’s a light grey mark on my face, but it isn’t too noticeable. The dye smells toxic and chemical; I open the window to let some air in. I have to wait for twenty minutes. I take off the plastic gloves and sit on the side of the bath.
I decide to clean up a little while I’m waiting. I pick up the gloves and put them on the beige counter. I wash a clump of hair dye from the sink; the gob of dye goes down the drain, but leaves behind a purple stain on the basin. I scrub at it, but nothing happens. I glance over, and I see the dye on the gloves. The dye is seeping into the counter beneath them. I pick them up and throw them in the bathtub, but they have left a telltale mark. I take the towel I’ve been using to wipe my face and use it to wipe the counter. It turns out there is quite a lot of dye on the towel, and it smears across everything. My scalp feels hot, and when I breathe in, the air is heavy with chemicals. I start to get sweaty; I can feel drips of dye start to run over the Vaseline barrier and onto my face. Not my eyes, I think, and grab the clean white hand towel. I use it to save myself from going blind.
The timer goes, and I decide I need to rinse out my hair first and then try and clean up the mess. The gloves meant to protect my hands from the dye are wet, and there is dye on the inside of them. “Fuck it,” I say out loud, and throw the gloves in the garbage bin. I use my bare hands to try to wash out my hair in the sink.
My hands are turning grey, and drips are spraying up onto the mirror and splattering the white paint above the sink. I feel desperate, and the wind coming in the open window is now making me cold. I take off my clothes and get in the shower, trying to keep the black run-off from my hair away from my body. I regret skipping the allergy test. I dry off using the scratchy old towels. My skin is grey, but doesn’t seem to be inflamed. I try to remove the worst of the dye from my face using some old exfoliant of Elizabeth’s. I rub too hard, and my forehead looks red and raw. Mum gets home while I’m still cleaning the bathroom. I have a drip stain running down one side of my face and what looks like carpet burn on my forehead.
Mum looks at me first, then she surveys the drip stains on the wall and the grey smears in the sink and across the counter.
“What were you thinking?” she says to me. Then she starts digging in the cupboard, getting out rubber gloves and noisily slamming the container of Ajax on to the counter. I retreat to my room.
I hear her laughing on the phone to Olivia. “The worst of it is, she looks ridiculous.”
I’m still in bed when Mum gets home from work the next day.
“Are you okay, Daisy? Is it that time of the month?” she asks me.
“Maybe,” I reply.
“I’ll get you a towel to lie on,” she says.
She brings me a cup of tea. I lie on the hard towel, which gets bunched up beneath me, and tears form in my eyes.
The next day in the shower, I wash my hair and more grey water swirls down the drain. I return to bed.
Mum comes and sits on my bed after work.
“I’m not that mad about the bathroom,” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why don’t we go out for dinner?”
“No thank you,” I say, and lie back down.
She brings me a sandwich and a Mars bar. I eat the Mars bar.
Wanda calls and tells me about Wonderland. She says it was boring and that Nick won her an enormous pink hippopotamus that she doesn’t know what to do with. Also, she almost puked on one of the roller coasters. I’ve never been on a roller coaster; I’ve always been too scared. She asks me to come over, but I say I am not feeling well. She asks me about the hair dyeing.
“Don’t ask,” I say.
Two days later Wanda walks into my room and opens the curtains. “Your mom let me in,” she says.
She sits on the edge of the bed. “Are you mad at me?” she asks.
“No.”
“Let me see your hair.”
I sit up.
“It looks cool,” she says.
“My mum says it looks ridiculous. I’m so ugly.” I ooze self-pity.
“Nick dumped me,” says Wanda. “He found out I was only fourteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t like him that much.”
Mum knocks on the door, and we dissolve into giggles.
I wash my hair. Wanda tells me not to brush it, just to run my hands through it. Instead of clinging all staticky to my face it actually has some life. Wanda uses Mum’s hair spray and back combs it into a black crazy mess. She makes up my face with pale concealer covering the grey streaks from the dye. Holding my face delicately with the fingers from one hand, she uses her other hand to carefully make up my eyes.
“At least you’re up,” Mum says, surveying Wanda’s handiwork.
At the donut shop in the plaza I drink coffee with one sugar. Wanda drinks a Coke. When the cashier goes to the back room, Wanda pushes coins into the cigarette vending machine. Up on the pedestrian bridge that crosses over the highway, Wanda teaches me how to inhale. On the third cigarette, I am inhaling without coughing, but I feel a little nauseous. “That goes away after some practice,” Wanda assures me.
The nicotine and the caffeine have pumped me up, and I need to move. Instinctively, we head to the park, laughing our heads off at nothing, and then we play on the swings. Some younger kids avoid us and the families act like we don’t exist, and this makes us laugh even more.
We lie together on top of a picnic table, staring up at the trees.
“We’re going to have fun in high school,” says Wanda.
“Are we?” I ask.
“We’re going to blow everyone’s minds,” she says. I almost believe her.
nine
I can’t open the lock on my locker. I turn it left, then right, then all the way around again. I forget the combination and pull out the piece of paper I have it written on.
“Move over.” Wanda does it for me. She takes a pen and writes my combination on my palm, along with a series of circular arrows that indicate how to turn the lock. We are in the same homeroom, and Wanda leads the way as I follow behind her.
“How do you know where Room 204 is?” I ask her, looking
wildly around at the room numbers.
“It will be on the second floor for a start,” she says, heading towards the staircase.
My next class is English. It’s only four doors down from where we were and easy to find. I stand by the door and watch Wanda walk away from me. She is swallowed up by the crowd of kids rushing to get to classes. When the teacher comes to unlock the door, I’m the only one who has arrived. I go in and find a desk, and feel self-conscious sitting alone waiting to see if I know anyone. The teacher does that thing where she stands writing stuff on the board and pretends we’re invisible to each other until the class starts. Students trickle in, each one looking around for faces to latch onto. The only person I know is Damon. I think for a minute he might sit with me, and he does smile at me when he walks in. His rat tail is gone, and he has Sun In skater bangs. His skateboard is tucked under his arm. He doesn’t sit with me. He sits with a blonde girl, not bleached but natural. She’s skinny, the kind of girl who never has to lie on the bed to do up her jeans. “How’s it going, Crystal?” he says, sitting beside her. They must have met over the summer because she didn’t go to our school.
A girl comes in just as Ms. Chandra is about to shut the door of the class. There are only a few free seats left, three at the front of the class and one in between a couple of big guys. One is wearing a Black Hawks cap and sits with sprawling legs, and the other has a picture of Claudia Schiffer in a bathing suit stuck on the inside flap of his binder. I watch as he shows it to the guy in the ball cap. The girl is wearing a Smiths T-shirt. She glances around, sees me in my black outfit with my messed-up hair, and comes and sits beside me.
“Jude,” she says, formally sticking her hand out.
“Daisy,” I respond, shaking her hand.
Ms. Chandra does roll call. When she calls out Richard, the Claudia Schiffer guy says “right here,” and when she looks down at her attendance sheet, he grabs his crotch and thrusts it towards her. The ball-cap guy shakes with mirth.
“Dumbasses,” Jude whispers to me.
“Dicks,” I whisper back.
“Probably dickless,” Jude says, and when Ms. Chandra turns around, I’m giggling. Ms. Chandra smiles at me. When class ends Jude asks what’s in my Walkman, and I show her the Sinead O’Connor tape inside. “I love her. I wish I was brave enough to shave my head,” she says.
“Me too.”
Richard overhears us. “Dykes!” he says to his friend, who glances over at us, and when we both stare at him, he does a repeat performance of his crotch grab and thrust.
Jude’s locker is just down from mine and Wanda’s. It is a shrine to Morrissey. She’s obsessed. Wanda and I admire her collage of magazine pictures and the inserts from Smiths tapes, then we all head out and sit on the ledge that runs round the front of the school. From here I can see the parking lot, and I watch Damon’s sister sitting on the hood of her car smoking. It’s like she senses my eyes on her; she glances up, sees me, and tilts her chin up in greeting. Then she turns and continues to talk to the girl lying on the hood of the car beside her. Wanda drinks a Coke. Jude pulls out a sandwich and follows this up with an apple. I feel hungry seeing Jude’s lunch, but I didn’t pack anything. A packed lunch seemed not quite right for high school. I let hunger overwhelm me in almost pleasurable waves of light-headedness.
Jude’s combat boots shine so much I can see my reflection in them.
“I can see myself in your boots,” I tell her.
“It’s because of Cadets. I had a meeting last night, and I always have to polish them beforehand.”
“What’s Cadets?” I ask Wanda when Jude goes to throw her apple core in a garbage bin.
“It’s like fake army.”
Cathy and I walk home together and talk about all the homework we have and what we wished we’d done during the summer. Cathy is joining the Sunshine Club, which helps raise money for kids without arms and legs, and she wants me to come with her. I hate saying no, so I tell her I’ll think about it, which we both know is a lie. I just can’t be the girl who spends every Wednesday after school counting pop-can tabs.
“It comes to this, how much is twenty years of marriage worth?” I’m not supposed to overhear this, but I am coming through the door and Mum is on the phone; Olivia, I presume. I can tell Mum has been crying; there is the telltale red around her eyes. I know she had a meeting with her lawyer after work.
The dining-room table is littered with old bills and lists. There is a sheet of paper where Mum has tried to add up the cost of our life with the help of my old calculator.
“The lawyer says I should get the house, because of Daisy. There’s no question of her living with him.” She sees me now.
“Olivia, Daisy just got home. Talk tomorrow.”
“How did it go?” I ask her.
“Not great. I’ve been thinking about something,” she says to me.
“Umm,” I shut the cupboard door that I just opened; my appetite is gone.
“It would be nice for you to have money, of your own,” Mum says, when I face her.
“Umm hmmm.”
“Carmen, who I work with, I’ve told you about her. We have lunch together sometimes.”
“Yes, I remember. She’s the one you like who helped you figure out parking permits.”
“Yes, that’s her. She needs a babysitter for her youngest, she’s six, and it isn’t very far from here. She has other kids, but she wants someone for when they’re not around. What do you think?”
“Okay,” I agree.
“I’m sorry it’s been so tight round here.”
“That’s okay, Mum. It’s not your fault.”
“Daisy…” she says, but doesn’t finish her sentence, and all the things that are uncertain in our lives swirl in the air between us.
Carmen’s house is on Mill Street. The street name means nothing to me, but when we pull up to the house I recognize it. This is Damon’s house.
The world tilts left, and someone is breathing in and out very quickly. I worry if I stop thinking about breathing I might forget to breathe altogether. My knees feel like jelly, and I test the weight on my foot before standing, in case it has stopped working.
“Are you okay, Daisy?” Mum asks.
“I’m just nervous.”
“I’ll be home and you can call if there’s a crisis. I’ll come in and introduce you.”
“No. Please, no. I’ll look like an idiot.”
Cora answers the door. “Hey, you must be here to look after Millicent. I wondered if you were the same Daisy,” she says, as a small spectacled child emerges from behind her.
I wave back at Mum, who finally starts to pull away.
“Come play with my Barbies,” Millie says to me, and I follow her into the living room. I don’t have any experience looking after little kids, but I know how to play with Barbies. Elizabeth cut the hair off one of ours, and we used it as a substitute Ken and smushed her face, and sometimes body, against the other long-haired dolls.
It’s not Barbies that Millie has, but Holograms dolls. “You can be Pizzazz. Cora is usually Pizzazz.” I sit on the floor, and Millie hands me my doll. Her left eye has been markered over with a black eyepatch.
“Sometimes I play pirates with her,” Millie explains.
Cora bends over and kisses Millie on the cheek. “Be good, Millicent,” she says, as Millie pulls a face. Cora says to me, “Mom will be out soon; she’s still getting ready. Damon is around somewhere.”
“Is he going out with your mom?” I ask.
“He’s not allowed to look after me,” says Millie solemnly.
“He can’t possibly do it. He’s a boy,” Cora tells me, rolling her eyes. Then she’s gone.
I get my instructions from Mrs. Jones and hear the door close behind her. Millie and I play band battle on the living-room floor. For my song in the battle of the bands, I sing the chorus of “Metal Queen” a few times, and I get the Pizzazz doll to rock out on an imaginary guitar.
Damon co
mes in when Millie is singing. She is making up the words to a song that goes on for a considerably long time and ends on an impressively long, high note. We both applaud when she finishes.
“So, who won?” asks Damon.
“Well, Pizzazz was good,” says Millie, “but Jem sang the best.” She says this very seriously, then she makes Jem and Pizzazz stiffly shake hands.
“Daisy?” It’s the first time she has used my name, and she tries it out. “I don’t have to brush my teeth because it’s Friday. But you can read to me.” Millie drags me off to her room, and I feel simultaneously relieved and disappointed to leave Damon behind.
When I come out of the bedroom, four long stories later, Damon is watching TV.
“Want some chips?” he says, handing me a bowl. The chip in my mouth seems unwieldy, and I can’t seem to eat it without making loud crunching sounds. I try leaving it whole and letting the moisture in my mouth soften it. But then I’m aware that I keep swallowing as my mouth fills with saliva. I don’t reach for another once it is finally gone.
Damon shoves handfuls into his mouth and then wipes grease and salt away with the long sleeve of his shirt pulled down over the back of his hand. He watches MuchMusic until a video he doesn’t like comes on, then he groans and flips through the other channels until it is over. When “Papa Don’t Preach” comes on, he starts to groan, but I say, “Hey, I like this one!”
“You and my sisters.” But he doesn’t change the channel. “Cora says it’s romantic, but I just think it’s stupid.”
“How did it go?” Mr. Jones comes into the living room.
“Fine. Millie was really good,” I tell him.