Not having Josie to talk to about what had happened with Bruce sucked all the thrill out of it. I trudged home in a bad mood. It was Sunday, so my mom was home. I found her in the living room, hunched over the coffee table with more forms. She was forever filling out immigration papers to bring her mother from Hong Kong. Mom was always saying, “Any day now!” but she’d been saying it for years. I plopped down beside her and turned on the television. The Love Boat was on. It seemed to be a climactic moment during one of Captain Stubing’s dinners, but I couldn’t figure out what was happening, so I clicked it off. “What’s for lunch, Mom?”
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” She didn’t even look up from her forms.
“What the heck does that even mean?” I was already annoyed, and she was not helping by offering up more of her riddles.
She paused. “I don’t know. But it sounds good,” she said brightly. She got up and went to the kitchen. I rolled my eyes. I didn’t understand anybody.
That summer, in the evenings after the sun had gone down and I’d had to go home, Bruce regularly hopped my fence to bring me milkshakes from McDonald’s. We would sit in my backyard, whispering so my parents wouldn’t know that I had sneaked outside. He held my hand, sweaty from his. I didn’t like the wetness, but I never said anything, and he didn’t either. I wondered if he felt the same way as me. One minute, I would feel cold, and the next, I would be hot. I started to believe that being in love was like being sick. I wished he would kiss me, but he never did. I would stare at his lips, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
In the moments between seeing him on the street or talking to him on the phone, all I could think about was him. I replayed our conversations a million times in my head and saved things to tell him the next time I saw him. I wasn’t sure if I was doing this right, this girlfriend thing. I began to understand the word heartache because I physically ached from the burden of this relationship. I started becoming scared that at any moment Bruce would stop coming with his milkshakes and his hand to hold. Why he came at all was still a mystery to me, and I couldn’t figure out what it was I did that kept him coming. I was worried that if I didn’t know, I would stop doing it, and he would vanish.
In the cool of Josie’s basement one day in early August, a bunch of us were playing Truth or Dare. Darren dared Bruce to kiss me. I was mortified until I glanced at Bruce, and he was smiling and a little red. It was obvious he wanted to. We went onto our knees in the middle of the circle while everybody started chanting, “Kiss! Kiss!”
He took my hands and ducked his face down to mine. I closed my eyes, imagining we’d hold our lips together until the kids counted to thirty. That it would be soft and sweet and prove my relationship with Bruce would last forever.
But it wasn’t like that, or even close. There were a lot of teeth involved and he darted his tongue all around. The others deliberately drew each number out, pausing to giggle and wolf whistle. It was all a little too public and wet to be in any way romantic, but I tried to focus; this was my first kiss, after all. I wanted to remember it always.
When they finally got to thirty, clapping and whooping, my face was wet from below my nose to my chin, and I couldn’t look at Bruce. I felt woozy, like I had drunk chocolate milk then turned around and did a hundred somersaults in a row.
I tried to talk to Josie about the shaky-to-the-point-of-wanting-to-vomit feeling that I had all the time. It wasn’t necessarily bad or good, and I didn’t hate it or like it. But it was something, and I needed to get to the bottom of what that something was. It made me feel scared, to the point where I began to clam up when Bruce came to my backyard. Increasingly, while he tried to keep our conversations going, I said less and less.
Something was going on with Josie too. Every time I tried to bring up Bruce, she changed the topic and told me she had to go do something. The things she said she had to do were stupid things, like go to the store for her mom to buy chicken legs for dinner or clean the bathroom. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about Bruce at all. When I finally asked her point blank why she didn’t want to talk to me, she said it was because her aunt was very ill. I’d known her aunt had c-a-n-c-e-r, so I backed off, trying to believe that her pushing me away was because of that and had nothing to do with me at all. I didn’t want to be a spoiled brat, which Josie sometimes said I was on account of my being an only child.
I tried to talk to Nav and Darren, but they weren’t any help. As soon as I mentioned Bruce’s name, Darren would throw his hands in the air and say, “Ew. Not your boy problems again, June,” and walk away. Nav would shrug and give his standard reply, “I dunno.” I missed Josie, but I was also mad at her. C-a-n-c-e-r was serious, but she’d been fine up until it was official with Bruce, and I wasn’t buying it. This was what we had talked about forever—having a boyfriend—and now that I finally had one, not only was it not giving me the gushy feeling we’d thought it would, but she’d removed herself, leaving me alone.
Bruce didn’t seem to share any of the same squirrelly feelings. He was going more and more public with our relationship. When school started, he would come to my house to walk me to school. I would make him wait for Josie to show up, but when she did come out her door and see us, she’d ignore us and stride ahead. On these walks, I didn’t want to talk to Bruce anymore. Once, he even tried to take my hand. It was getting to be too much. I wanted to vomit all the time. I still liked him so, so much, but I couldn’t stop the barfy feelings. He still seemed too bright to me, and I couldn’t see for all the light. I would walk silently beside him, staring at Josie’s back.
“What’s the matter with you?” he once asked me on the phone.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t talk to me much when we’re out on the street.”
I didn’t really have a reason. Also, if I were to be honest and say that I felt like throwing up when I was around him, I figured he would be hurt. I wanted to throw up because there was a lump in my throat. That lump made me want to blurt out “I love you!” Would that have made me too easy? Would that have made me barf for real or make me stop wanting to barf? Was that love? Whatever feeling I was having had moved into me with all kinds of luggage, and I didn’t have enough room for everything. I was bursting, and I needed some space. So it might have been love, but it wasn’t what I had expected.
I started to wish that things were like they were before that day Bruce rode by me on his ten-speed. I wanted to rewind life back to that moment when I saw his face, and my heart could stay intact forever instead of feeling like it was placed on the edge of a shelf and ready to fall off.
It wasn’t long before Bruce stopped phoning and showing up in front of my door in the mornings. He didn’t even come out to Winifred after school as much, and when he did, he didn’t say hi. I heard from his sister that he was seeing this other Chinese girl, someone named Linda from way past Mac’s on the other side of Samuel. He brought her over once when the leaves were falling off the stunted fruit trees. She was pretty, I thought. She looked very clean. Her whites were white and her darks were dark. She wore a plaid skirt and grey tights under tall red rain boots even though it wasn’t raining. Josie and I were corduroy-and-jeans people and never wore skirts. Pretty Linda didn’t even play street hockey with us. She sat on the curb and clapped every time Bruce made a goal. He smiled like an idiot at her. Meanwhile, Nav sent sad-eyed looks of sympathy in my direction. I ignored him and pretended I didn’t care, playing harder than ever to block Bruce’s goals. I dove faster, snarled and leaped on the ball. What I wanted to do was go over to pretty Linda and pull each strand of hair out of her pretty head. How much I hated her surprised me.
At one point, Josie made a slapshot, but instead of aiming it at the goal, she angled her blade, and the muddy tennis ball shot directly into Linda’s face. “Ouch!” she screamed. A dirt stain the exact shape of a circle bloomed on her cheek. Linda’s hands flew up. Her nails were painted creamy pink, like the inside of a seashell. In a s
econd, Bruce was beside her, asking if she was okay.
I glanced over at Josie, and we shared a look before she yelled over to Linda, “Sorry!” I smiled and then quickly pretended to look concerned. Josie was still the best.
By late fall, things seemed almost back to normal. Instead of Bruce at my door, it was Josie who was there again. We never spoke about Bruce except once, sort of.
“So, I had my first kiss,” Josie said while we were walking on Samuel on one of the first days of snowfall. We were trying to catch the flakes on our tongues while we walked.
“What? Who was it?”
Josie shook her head. She wasn’t going to tell. I understood that something had changed between us permanently. Where before there was nothing but open space, and I couldn’t tell where she began and I ended, there was now a low-lying wall.
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“Hmmm.” She wasn’t going to answer.
“Teeth, right?”
Josie stopped walking and looked at me without comprehension. I faked a laugh until I really was laughing, and still, Josie stood there looking at me as if I was crazy, and the snow, like giant wads of cotton, kept coming down on us.
Kiss
Josie loved work. Making her own money made her feel like an adult even though she was just twelve. It began with the paper route she inherited from her brother, Tim. He realized after a week on the job that he wasn’t cut out for getting up in the pre-dawn dark to deliver the morning paper, and every day he hit the snooze button. Phone calls started to come in from people on the sister streets complaining that they had nothing to read with their morning coffee. When he asked Josie if she’d take the route off his hands, she jumped around like he had given her a new bike.
In the evenings, she laid all her clothes out on the floor, spreading them out so that they resembled a cartoon character who been steamrolled. When she woke up, she only had to leap into them and run out the door.
In the mornings, a Toronto Star van dropped the papers onto her driveway in three large clumps tied in plastic rope. If it was raining or snowing, the piles would come wrapped in clear plastic bags. Josie would pull her wagon from the garage and set to untying and arranging the papers in the order of her route. Tuesdays were coupon days, and it took extra time for her to insert the colourful flyers inside the papers. She would glance at the flyers and take note of the sales at Loblaws, so she could tell her mother later. Her fingers were always stained black from the ink. Since she had a habit of rubbing her face to keep herself awake, Josie would come home from the deliveries and see in the mirror that her cheeks were often smudged black too.
Josie loved her routine and the sense of purpose her job gave her. She loved collecting the money at the end of the week from the neighbours, who often slipped her cookies, candy or even a tip. She saved up her earnings to buy a pair of North Star sneakers that June coveted. A couple of times, June had even come out to help, and there was some talk of expanding the route and splitting the money, but Josie knew it was only a matter of time before June would wuss out. June was more the brains of the pair, and Josie the machine. While June was quick with the numbers—like the papers they needed for the south side of Maud, or the change to give back from five bucks when the total owed was $2.25—June was also a whiner. She would whine about how heavy the papers were to carry, how cold her feet were in the winter, how sleepy she was from waking up so early. Finally, Josie told her she was a one-woman show, and to the relief of them both, June never came out to help again.
Although they were best friends, Josie was often irritated with June. June’s parents were fancy, with their Ford station wagon and clothes they took to the dry cleaners. It seemed they had an outfit for every occasion: work clothes, after-work clothes, Sunday clothes, yardwork clothes. June showed Josie her mother’s shoe closet once, and Josie marvelled at the sheer number of pairs, and that they were organized according to heel height. Still, June complained about her parents, saying how they were never home and only cared about their jobs. Josie thought at least they had extra money for things like going to the car wash and good after-school snacks.
Josie’s parents worked just as much, but they worked with their hands and probably earned half of what June’s parents did. Her dad was a mechanic, and her mom worked in a hospital, where she spent all day putting sheets into washers and taking them out to fold. She wore sensible shoes with thick rubber soles, and even with arch supports, her feet ached constantly. Most nights after her mother came home, she made Josie rub her insteps. Josie hated her mother’s feet, which were callused and rough, like how Josie’s hands were getting.
Josie felt that everything came too easy to June, and June didn’t appreciate it. The teachers and even their friends made a fuss about how pretty June was with her dead-straight, shiny hair and tiny-ness, like a China doll, the white neighbours always said. June always got straight As on her report card although she was lazy about studying. And the worst for Josie was that everybody was always going on about how sweet June was. Even though Josie was the one who never complained and sucked it up all the time, she would never be the one who got called sweet. Not when her mother made her wash the toilet bowl with a toothbrush or get dinner ready for the whole family when she was working late. Things were expected from her. If she didn’t do what she was told, Josie would get whacked with the side of a knife across her bum and scolded that this was the way life was.
So, of course, it figured that June was the one who got a boyfriend first. Josie had always had an eye out for Bruce Wong, her brother’s best friend. But Bruce treated Josie like a kid sister, shoving her out of the way as he walked by or cussing her out if she missed a football pass. While Josie gave it right back to him, there was a tiny part of her that wished he was nicer, maybe bringing her a McDonald’s milkshake once in a while like he did for June. But what was hardest once he and June started going together was how different Bruce and June acted, like they had secret new personalities. Bruce wore a stupid grin around June, while June became a giggly airhead around Bruce. Josie decided it was best to avoid being around them when they were together. Otherwise, she might have said something mean about them looking dopey, and June would have gotten mad and sad like she did whenever Josie wasn’t over-the-top nice to her.
Even with all of this, though, Josie loved June. June was fiercely loyal. There was that time when Josie found out Mr. Papadakis was beating up his wife. From her bedroom window, she could see into the living room of the Papadakises’ house across the street. She’d been woken up by their angry voices shouting on many nights, and she told June about how when she looked out, she’d often see Mr. Papadakis hitting Mrs. Papadakis or gesturing like he might. She figured if he was hitting her in the living room in the middle of the night, he was probably hitting her in other rooms at other times too. The beatings weren’t long, a few minutes. She could hear Mr. Papadakis’s voice but never Mrs. Papadakis, and Josie sometimes imagined that she was dead. When she told June about it, June had snuck out of her house that same night and stood vigil at Josie’s bedroom window, like Wonder Woman. June kept asking Josie if she was okay, sensing how distraught she was even though Josie never said so. They had discussed whether they should tell any of the adults, but when it came down to it, who could they tell? The suicides had rocked their already shaky faith that their parents would know what to do. They knew or were learning fast that the adults were as clueless as the kids. They only had each other.
From then on, June insisted that they let Stephanie Papadakis hang out with them even though Stephanie was annoying because she was always trying too hard to be friends with everybody and sucked at sports. Josie had tried to protest—she didn’t see why they had to treat the girl differently because her parents had problems—but June was stubborn about it.
Even though June was a bit of a lazy bum and useless at most things because her parents never made her do any chores, she tried to help Josie do the mountain of housework her mother made
her do. On spaghetti nights, June would come over, put on Tim’s swim goggles and mince onions for the sauce. She cut herself plenty of times, and Josie had to be the one who sorted through the bloodied bits while June used up all manner of their Band-Aids in the bathroom, but Josie could never get mad at June’s sorry, pinched-up face. The girl tried.
But Josie could see the difference in them: June helped out at Josie’s house because it was fun to be useful and do the tasks. June didn’t have brothers and sisters, and her parents had money to spend on her, and had a cleaning lady come every Friday so their house always smelled like a department store. They didn’t want her to babysit or walk dogs because they said studying was the most important thing for her to spend her time on.
For Josie, work was both freedom and a prison. Yet whenever the offer to take on even more work came around, Josie jumped at the chance, considering the money. June would shrug in exasperation. “What’s going on, Jos? You planning on making a million by the time you turn fifteen?”
That Time I Loved You Page 8