Queen of the Toilet Bowl
Frieda Wishinsky
orca currents
Copyright © 2005 Frieda Wishinsky
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wishinsky, Frieda
Queen of the toilet bowl / Frieda Wishinsky.
(Orca currents)
Electronic Monograph
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 9781551437538(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554696925 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8595.I834Q43 2005 jC813’.54 C2005-900788-5
Summary: Renata learns to be proud of who she is.
First published in the United States, 2005
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005921305
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.
Cover design: Lynn O’Rourke
Cover photography: Getty Images
In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Station B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4
In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
08 07 06 05 • 5 4 3 2 1
For my friends, Anne, Lynn,
Ronnie and Sydell.
And with thanks to
Tauane Machado.
chapter one
Why was I worried? Liz and I hung around together at school but going to her house made everything different. Going to her house made us real friends.
“Sit down,” said Liz. “That is if you can find a place.”
I looked around Liz’s room. There were mounds of clothes on her bed, a pile of shoes on her floor and books piled on her desk.
“Where?” I asked.
Liz shoved some clothes off her bed. “Here,” she said.
I plunked myself down on her pink and red flowered quilt. “Great quilt,” I said.
Liz pushed another pile of clothes off her bed and flopped down beside me. “My aunt made it when I was ten.” Liz patted her quilt like an old friend. “It has a couple of holes and a mustard stain near the top, but I love it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“If you could see it,” said Liz laughing. “I always plan to clean my room, but things get in the way. It drives my mom crazy. She’s a neat freak.”
It was true. The rest of Liz’s house looked like a movie set. There were sparkling mahogany antique tables, glass lamps and a marble coffee table with four perfectly lined-up glossy magazines on top. It looked like no one ever sat on or touched anything.
“I bet your room is neat,” said Liz. “You’re so organized.”
My tiny bedroom was more like a closet than a room. Liz’s bedroom was as big as our living room and kitchen put together. She had space to sprawl out. She had room to be messy, but even the smallest pile of clutter would make my room crowded.
“I’m not that neat,” I said.
I didn’t want Liz to think I was a neat freak too. Liz and I had known each other for four years, but we’d only become friends since we’d both started grade nine at High Road High. I didn’t want anything to spoil that.
“Let’s listen to music,” said Liz, pulling a CD player out from under her bed.
She popped in a CD and soon she was singing along with the music. She was also laughing and apologizing. “I know my voice stinks,” she said. “I can’t keep a tune to save my life.”
“It’s not so bad,” I said.
“You don’t have to be nice,” said Liz. “I don’t care if I have a lousy voice. I love to sing.”
I used to love to sing too, but I hadn’t sung in a long time. To my surprise, I belted out a song like Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow.” Liz stopped singing and stared at me. “I didn’t know you could sing,” she said.
“I don’t usually,” I told her.
“But you should. Your voice is amazing. You should try out for the school play.”
“I couldn’t sing in front of a whole room full of kids and teachers.”
“Yes you could. Try,” said Liz.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t want anyone pointing at me, noticing me, talking about me. It was hard enough being from Brazil in a school where almost no one else came from a foreign country. I wanted to be invisible.
I used to sing all the time in Sao Paolo, where I lived until I was nine. But here it was different. I couldn’t sing in public here.
“Liz,” called her mom. “I have to go out for an hour. Who was that singing on the radio?”
“That wasn’t the radio. It was Renata,” said Liz. “Isn’t her voice amazing?”
“It’s beautiful, Renata,” said Liz’s mom, standing at the door. Liz’s mom smiled warmly at me. She had a small, round face like Liz and short brown hair. Her black pants and white shirt didn’t have a single crease or wrinkle.
“I wish you’d clean this room up,” she told Liz. “I don’t know how you can stand all this clutter.”
“It’s not clutter,” insisted Liz. “Everything in here is special. I’m a collector, Mom. I can’t get rid of my stuff. I need all of it.”
“There’s a fine line between a collection and a pile of junk,” said her mother.
“How can you call my stuff junk? It’s unique and I love it. Every bit of it.”
Liz’s mom sighed. You could tell they’d had this discussion before.
“Anyway,” said Liz curling her arms around a pillow. “Clutter is my style.”
“I wish you’d get a new style,” said her mom. Then she turned to go. “See you later, girls. And Renata, you really do have a lovely voice. You should do something with it.”
“See,” said Liz. “I told you your voice was amazing. Now you have to try out for the school show.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t sing in front of anyone else.”
“Guess what?” said Liz. “You just did.”
chapter two
“Ohmygod! Her mother’s a cleaning lady?”
I heard the words first, then the laughter.
I stared into my opened locker. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t let them find out I was here. I wanted to melt into the darkness inside my locker. I wanted to curl up in the soft cotton of the sweater sprawled across the locker’s bottom and stay there until they left. Stay there forever.
I knew the voices. Darleen and Karin. Karin with an i instead of an e, and a smile as tight as a fist. Karin with her straight blond hair and her ring-covered hands. And Darleen, who never left Karin’s side, tall and gangly with long, pointy nails.
They were so different from me with my thick bundle of curly black hair and bitten-down nails.
“Where did you hear that?” asked Darleen.
“From my aunt. Renata’s mother cleans her house,” said Liz.
“How can her mother stand cleaning other people’s dirty toilets? I’d rather be shot dead than clean my brother’s bathroom. It’s not fit for pigs.”
“I know,” said Liz. “It’s disgusting.”
Their locker doors slammed shut with a sharp twang.
“Let’s go
. My mom’s picking me up for a dentist appointment,” said Karin. “You have no idea how much I hate the dentist.”
I listened as their footsteps echoed down the linoleum floor.
Silence.
I peeked from behind my locker. They were gone. The hall was empty.
I leaned against my locker door and tried to stop shaking. But the shaking wouldn’t go away. Not on the bus ride home. Not until I reached our apartment. I’d never told anyone at school what my mom did for a living, and now everyone would know.
Mom was home from her job uptown. I could smell rice and beans simmering on the stove. She was in the kitchen slicing tomatoes.
“Renata, I need you to call one of my ladies for me,” she said in Portuguese.
I had to phone people for Mom. Her English was still rusty.
“Who do you want me to call?” I asked.
“Ms. Powell. I can’t clean her house this Friday. I have to take your brother to the doctor for his shot.”
I didn’t understand why Mom called the women she worked for her “ladies.” They weren’t “her” ladies. They didn’t care about her. She wasn’t important to them except to sweep, dust and wash their floors and sinks. Maybe her favorite, Ms. Lucy, cared a little, but the rest didn’t. If Mom disappeared off the face of the earth, all they’d worry about was finding another cleaning lady, especially Karin’s aunt, Ms. Powell.
I knew before I dialed that Ms. Powell would hate having her schedule changed. “Well,” she said, her annoyance crackling through the phone. “If she really has to, I guess I’ll just have to manage, but I hope this isn’t a regular occurrence.”
I imagined her face scrunched up like a prune. Mom said she wasn’t so bad, but Mom always said that. That’s what made me so angry. Mom never complained.
“We’re lucky to be here,” she always told me.
I knew we were, but sometimes I missed Sao Paolo. True we had lived in two small, dark rooms and the streets were always crowded with beggars and little kids without shoes. I hated the smell of rotting garbage. Sometimes it hung in the air for days and made me feel sick.
But there was also excitement on festival days. The city buzzed with people singing, dancing and laughing. People helped each other in Sao Paolo. After my father died in a car accident, people I hardly knew came over with food and comforting words.
I missed the sunshine. The sun shone all the time in Sao Paolo. So many days in this new country were dark, dreary and cold. But Mom said there were more opportunities here. We could get a better education here, so I decided to go to High Road High.
I’d had a choice. I could have gone to another high school, the one that was like a little UN with kids from Portugal, Jamaica, Haiti, Pakistan, India and countries I’d never even heard of before. There were a few immigrant kids at High Road High, but they were sprinkled around like raisins in cereal.
I chose this high school because it was better, because there were no gangs roaming the halls. And it was true, there were no gangs of girls with “Go to Hell” tattooed across their backs or snarling guys with knives. But there were gangs of girls with eyes that shut you out and voices that sneered and laughed at you. They didn’t beat you up or steal your money, but their looks felt like hard punches to your stomach.
I couldn’t tell Mom what I’d overheard at the lockers today. She had enough to deal with. My little brother, Lucas, was a whiny pain. And Mom was always tired.
“I’m going to my room to do homework,” I told her.
“Good,” said Mom.
But I didn’t start on my homework. I flopped down on my bed and stared at a picture of a butterfly I had snapped for photography class.
I’d seen the butterfly perched on a rose last spring. After I snapped the picture, it flew away.
I wished I was that butterfly. I wished I could fly away.
chapter three
Even though it’s a crazy language with weird expressions and insane spellings, I’d learned English quickly.
When I first heard the expression “she laughed her head off” in grade four, I looked around the classroom expecting some bloody head to bounce along the floor. Of course it didn’t, and I soon learned to repeat English expressions as if I’d grown up with them.
I’d even lost most of my accent. Whatever I hear, I absorb as if I swallowed it.
Mom was proud of how I’d learned English so quickly. She mentioned it often.
“Sometimes you sound like you were never born in Sao Paolo,” she said the next morning at breakfast. “It’s because you have a musical ear. I wish you would sing again like you used to in Sao Paolo. I miss your singing.”
“Maybe one day I will,” I said. It had felt good to sing at Liz’s house. It especially felt good when Liz and her mom said they liked my voice.
Liz mentioned it again at lunch.
“You really have a terrific voice,” she said. “My mother couldn’t stop talking about it last night. Which was great because she stopped talking about my room for an hour.”
“Hey. I like your hair,” I said, changing the subject. Liz had cut her long curly hair and it circled her face like a frame.
“Thanks,” she said. “I hated how short it was yesterday, but now I kind of like it too.”
“Fries any good?” I asked.
“Disgusting but the ketchup’s good.”
Liz and I laughed.
“I keep promising myself to bring something edible from home, but I’m always in such a rush in the morning. Not like you.”
“I’m not crazy about the caf food either,” I said. It was true, but the real reason I didn’t buy my lunch was money. I couldn’t afford to buy lunch, even with my new job at the convenience store.
“Hiya Liz,” squealed a voice.
Liz and I both looked up. Karin was standing over us with Darleen and Niki beside her.
“Hi Re-na-ta,” said Karin, shooting out each syllable like a bullet.
Karin turned to Liz.
“Are you trying out for the play?” she asked. “They’re doing The Sound of Music.”
“I can’t sing to save my life,” said Liz, “but Renata has a great voice. You should hear her.”
“Really?” said Karin, never looking at me. “You know you have to spend a lot of time at rehearsals. Don’t you have to help your mother clean people’s houses?”
“Not usually,” I mumbled.
“Are you trying out, Karin?” asked Liz.
“Yes. I’m taking singing lessons with a well-known vocal teacher. My lessons cost a fortune, but my mother feels it’s worth every penny. My teacher works at the conservatory, and she absolutely insists I try out for the play. So I guess I’ll have to. See you, Liz,” said Karin, ignoring me.
Karin and her friends walked off.
“You really should try out,” Liz encouraged me. “Just to show Karin, if nothing else.”
“She keeps telling people my mom’s a cleaning lady. It’s as if she was the queen or something,” I said.
“Karin has delusions of grandeur,” said Liz. “Ignore her. She’s just talk.”
I wanted to believe Liz, but I hated the way Karin treated me.
“Maybe I will try out for the play,” I said. “It might be fun.” The words spilled out before I realized what I was saying.
“I’ll go with you,” Liz offered. “I might even volunteer to work on the set. I can’t sing, but I can paint. And that cute guy, Doug, always works on school plays.”
“When are the tryouts, anyway?” I asked.
“Tomorrow after school,” Liz answered.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I immediately regretted my decision. Did I really want to try out? Did I really want to expose myself to everyone’s comments?
All day in class, I kept imagining myself on stage while Karin and her gang sat in the seats below. What if my voice cracked, or I froze and couldn’t remember the words to the song? Karin would elbow her friends and
laugh. “Look at the cleaning lady’s daughter. She’s so pathetic.” No, I thought. I can’t let that happen. I’ll tell Liz I’ve changed my mind first thing in the morning.
When I got home, Mom was lying on the couch with a pillow over her eyes.
“A migraine,” she groaned. “I thought I’d never get through the day. Could you bring me a cold glass of water, Renata?”
“Sure, but where’s Lucas?” I asked.
“At a friend’s till nine. Thank goodness.”
I knew what Mom meant. The apartment was blissfully quiet without Lucas’s booming voice. Lucas was the kind of kid you heard all the time. If he wasn’t asking Mom or me a million questions, he was bouncing a ball against his wall or blasting the TV. Sometimes he gave me a headache. And I don’t get headaches like Mom does.
After I brought Mom a glass of water, I sat at the kitchen table with my history assignment and an apple, but I couldn’t concentrate on either. All I could think about was why I’d agreed to try out for the play. I felt like I was about to walk on a tightrope with no net beneath me.
I knew Karin wanted to be Maria, the lead. But why was she so worried about me? After all, she was taking professional singing lessons. Her teacher said she was good. But I knew my voice was strong. I had a chance against Karin. I wished Liz hadn’t told her about my voice. Then she would have left me alone.
I took a bite of my apple. It was sharp and crisp. Maybe I could be like this apple, crisp with bite. Then Karin wouldn’t bother me. She wouldn’t dare. I’d bite her head off. I laughed as I thought of the words, “bite her head off.” What a crazy expression that was!
I wrote a sentence down for my assignment on the reasons for the French Revolution. I knew how the French people felt.
“The French people felt oppressed by the wealthy who cared only for themselves,” I wrote.
The French aristocrats were like Karin — confident, only thinking of themselves and looking down on the poor. Maybe they didn’t deserve to be guillotined, but they deserved something. After all, poor people were just as important as rich people.
Yes! I decided. I am going to try out for the play. I’ll show Karin that I’m just as important as she is.
Queen of the Toilet Bowl Page 1