Girl in Shades

by Allison Baggio

  “Shinesse shampoo makes me look like an ugly dogface,” Jackie cracks. Every student looks at me and spits out chuckles, guffaws, giggles that end in hiccups, and smiles that want to explode.

  “Very smart, Jackie, you’re hired,” I stab back and hear hesitant laughter from the group.

  “Shinesse shampoo makes my eyes look like piss-balls.” Brain Bellamy adds this without warning. He’s not smiling or laughing. I am stunned. From his thoughts I hear, Jackie was right, she is kind of a nerd. I don’t know what I was thinking. No one will like me if I’m nice to her. Is it mean, though? Considering her mom died.

  It was only yesterday I thought I caught Brain looking at me as I combed my hair in front of my locker, five to the left from his own. I decided then I would go out with him on a date if he asked. I don’t respond to his comment about the shampoo. Jackie doubles herself over in response to Brian’s comment. She has a crush on him, I know it. She coughs out her laughs through her nose, making her sound like a pig (fitting).

  “Brian, that is the funniest thing I have heard all month,” she says finally, flopping her hand at him. He grins with one side of his mouth and plays with a loose thread along the bottom of his sweatshirt.

  Willy Hisscock has taken off his socks, tied them in a ball, and is hitting Doreen Parchewski on the shoulder.

  “Grody!” she screams. “Get this barf bag away from me!” Jackie’s laughing continues.

  “What’s so funny?” Mr. Wigman says returning to the room, grabbing his guitar and squatting, knees spread to either side, in the one spot in the circle that used to be vacant.

  “Nothing,” Jackie responds, leftover chuckles still rocking her stomach.

  “Willy touched me with his socks!” Doreen says.

  “Willy, put your socks back on your feet,” Mr. Wigman says settling his guitar in his lap.

  “I was just saying how lucky we are to have a celebrity in our class,” Jackie says. She looks at me. I tilt my head and wave my eyelashes in sarcastic thanks.

  “Yes, we are very proud of you, Maya,” Mr. Wigman says pointing the neck of his guitar in my direction. His tiny fingers are already positioned for the first cord of the camp song he is going to make us sing. “Why, the first time I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.” He winks at me, wraps his leather guitar strap around his slight shoulders, and brings a hand through his spiky hair that looks soft enough to fall asleep in. I close my eyes and pretend that Corey Hart is the one playing the guitar.

  The commercial has aired for one week, and by now, everyone in my class has seen it. Me on camera, pretending to be beautiful while puke gurgles in my stomach — what was my father thinking? I am plotting my revenge when Mr. Wigman begins to sing.

  “Hang down your head, Tom Dooooley, hang down your head and cry, hang down your head, Tom Dooooley, poor boy you’re bound to die.” At first no one sings except for Mr. Wigman, who remains oblivious to any significance of the word “die” in the song. An awkwardness hangs over the circle — everyone in the class knows about my mother. They saw it on the news.

  Jackie doesn’t care. She sings every word and continues to glare at me. That’ll teach her for throwing banana bread in my face, I hear her think. I was only trying to be nice to her because her crazy mother was sick. I was being a good person. Was she trying to say I wasn’t a good person? To hell with her.

  I look her way and let out an exhausted sigh. Why do people always think it’s about them? I stare at the spot between her eyes until her whole face seems to be swallowed by a yellow light. “Stop it,” she mouths, like she can feel it.

  “Met her on a mountain, and there I took her life. Met her on a mountain, and stabbed her with my knife.” A few more kids have started singing. We’ve sung this one before, in another music class last year. Before.

  “This time tomorrow, reckon where I’ll be. Down in some lonesome valley hangin’ from a white oak treeee.” As Mr. Wigman takes in more air for the chorus, she says it, straight to my face. Her mouth opens wide so that the words form shapes that float into the split second silence. She says it for no good reason at all: “Your mother was a psycho.”

  Time as I know it stops and I can no longer hear any singing. From my seat, I fly across the circle, screaming, “You witch!” and land on top of Jackie with my nails digging into her cheeks.

  “Get her off me!” Jackie shrieks. Mr. Wigman stops strumming the guitar and the circle collapses, all twenty-five of my classmates reacting by tackling me. I struggle with them, grabbing fists full of hair and shirt collars. “Get her off me!” I hear again and then I am pinned — two hands on my shoulders and another two hands holding my feet.

  “Maya, for Pete’s sake.” Brian Bellamy has my shoulders.

  “Okay, everyone, it’s all right. We’ve got it under control. Sit back down,” says Mr. Wigman, only I can’t sit because I am lying on my back. Even when Brian and the people holding my feet step back, I remain motionless. I can hear Jackie crying.

  “She just freaked,” she says through her tears. I bring my hand to my nose and see the blood. My eye socket feels like it is inflating.

  “Maya, get up and let’s get you to the nurse.” I look to see Mr. Wigman standing over me, his pointy chin almost touching his long neck. He looks disappointed. I sit up and feel a weakness in my hands and feet, like little cries that don’t know how to make it to the surface. “You’re bleeding, Maya, take a Kleenex.” I reach out to take the wad of white that Mr. Wigman has fished from his pocket. No one is laughing, only staring. The cries in my body start to get louder, and soon they are at my lips, escaping in sobs. “There’s no need to cry about it, Maya. You’re okay, you just got a little upset is all.” Mr. Wigman takes my arm and pulls me up so I stand on my feet. “I’m sure you’re just feeling under pressure with all that has gone on in your life. Come with me.” I take a step closer to him and share in the soft lime-coloured light that makes him up. “Jackie, go to the washroom and put some cold water on your face,” he says, and for the first time since I pounced, I see Jackie’s face. A strand of her blond hair has come loose from her ponytail, her cheeks are streaked with tears and red scratches, raised like welts.

  “You’re crazy too, I don’t know how we were ever friends.” She says this as she walks by me and for a moment I think, she may be right. Crazy. Maya, you’re crazy, I think, and the words seem to be driving me there.

  They leave me alone in the nurse’s office for a couple minutes, with my head tilted back to stop the bleeding and a blue gel cold pack on my eye. Who knew that shampoo could cause so many problems? What would my mother say? I can’t even think of anything. All the things she actually said are jamming up my head, “You may not believe this, Maya, but it’s almost a relief to know how you’re going to die. If it wasn’t for you, I’d almost be ready to go.”

  If it wasn’t for me. If it wasn’t for me.

  Am I a cause of suffering? Did Mother deserve it? Why isn’t she here to help me now? She left me all alone. I almost hate her.

  “How’s that eye doing?” the nurse, a chubby woman I have never seen before, asks when she returns.

  “Fine, I guess,” I say, lifting the cold pack.

  “You’re gonna have a shiner, that’s for sure!” she says, laughing.

  “So what?” I am tired of being laughed at today. She tells me that I will be okay and should go back to class — if I feel up to it. Instead, I meet Mr. Wigman in the hall. His arms are crossed so that his hands grab at his elbows, creasing his white dress shirt.

  “All done?” he says.

  “I guess so. Do I have to go back in there?”

  “It’s up to you. Jackie went home for the rest of the day. What do you feel like doing?”

  “Digging a hole and going to live in it for the rest of my life,” I say to him.

  “It would be so dark down there.”

&n
bsp; “I would bring a flashlight or something.”

  “Bet it feels pretty dark up here these days too,” Mr. Wigman says, and I suddenly feel itchy all over my body.

  “I guess.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother, Maya.”

  “Why? Did you give her cancer?”

  “No.” The bell buzzes to signal the end of class.

  Of course not, I think. She gave it to herself.

  I decide not to go back to class, only they won’t let me go home until my father comes in to meet with Mr. Wigman and talk about what they now refer to as “The Incident.” By the time my father arrives, called from his office on account of what they must have told him was some sort of emergency, my eye has swelled as far as it is going to go and is starting its way back down. Blood swims to the spot like a magnet.

  “Maya, my God! Are you in pain?” my father asks at first sight of me. He wears a blue suit with tiny lines and a thin, red paisley tie.

  “You should see the other girl,” Mr. Wigman says, and I am not sure if he is joking because, really, Jackie looks fine. Those scratches weren’t deep enough to turn into anything. Mr. Wigman coughs into his fist. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Devine.”

  “Nobody punched me,” I tell my father. “Must have been an elbow or something when they were trying to get me off her.”

  “I have to say, Mr. Wigman, this is very unlike Maya.”

  Mr. Wigman answers my father like I have spread my body with a mysterious substance that turns me invisible.

  “I don’t think she has quite been herself lately. Some of the girls were bugging her about the shampoo commercial.”

  “They’re just jealous,” my father says. “She beat out a lot of other girls for that spot.” I see that droplets of sweat are growing along my father’s hairline.

  From inside Mr. Wigman’s head: Is this guy pushing her too much? And I feel thankful to have Mr. Wigman sticking up for me — even if he’s only thinking it.

  “She had it coming,” I say into empty space. “Jackie. She made a crack about Mother. She said she was a psycho.” My father scrapes at his bottom lip with his upper teeth while Mr. Wigman looks towards the black and white clock above the door.

  The next words are my father’s. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to call the office. I forgot to tell them something important.”

  “Of course, Mr. Devine. You can use my phone.” Mr. Wigman pushes a black rotary phone towards my father, who dials and waits for the pick-up.

  “Connie, hi. I’m still at the school. I forgot to tell you that the contracts we were looking at this afternoon need to be faxed back to the client. By five if possible. Call you later.” The click my father makes when hanging up the phone seems to last for a full minute. A click that ends something and begins something else. A click that covers up.

  “So Maya, what were you saying? She made a comment about your mother?” Mr. Wigman seems to be the only one who wants to talk about it.

  “Never mind,” I say to them both.

  “Mr. Wigman,” my father’s voice turns deeper, like when he talks business or tells the door-to-door salesman that he is not interested in a set of encyclopedias that will “show him the world.” “You will surely be able to understand the difficult circumstances that Maya and I have recently found ourselves in as a result of my wife’s passing.”

  “From what I’ve heard, she was a wonderful lady,” Mr. Wigman says politely. “Why else would so many have been drawn to her in her final days?”

  “Yes, well.” My father’s turn to pretend he has a cough. “We miss her, but I can assure you that Maya has all the support she needs. Today was merely a hiccup in her recovery. I will deal with this at home.”

  “We are only concerned about her well-being, Mr. Devine.”

  “I realize that. But she is fine.” Again, I have faded from view for both of them. Like I now hover on the ceiling and my body has wilted to the ground, not to be seen by anyone. I am looking down at their straight bodies, engulfed in swirls of maroon and tangerine.

  Outside the school my father makes another phone call on the pay phone in the parking lot — Connie again — while I wait with my back leaning against the tailgate of his car. I watch his head bobbing as he yaks into the phone. He talks so quickly I can almost see the syllables dropping from his mouth. If I wasn’t busy holding an icepack on my eye socket, I could catch and collect them into my school bag and carry his words around with me everywhere.

  Even though she is only a lady he works with, Connie makes him happy. I can tell by the way his eyebrows raise when he talks to her, even over the phone, and how he rubs his hand down the side of his pants. My mother never made him do those things. With her, his eyebrows sometimes rose up, but for different reasons.

  With my mother gone, it has become quiet enough for me to hear the whispers and murmurings running over my own thoughts. They tell me things to do, like a kindly old teacher with wrinkled palms and a fuzzy sweater. Then, other times they turn on me and tell me I should be ashamed — that I don’t fit in. Like a bully, they ask me to repeat after them, “I, Maya Devine, am not good enough to be in this classroom, in this family, in this city, in this commercial, in this world.”

  I think about this as I wait for my father to finish with Connie.

  Heather Hickle, a girl I have seen in the library during lunch, walks up to where we stand. My father still spits into the black phone that carries bits of other people’s lunches in its small holes, and I wait with my face hidden behind the icepack. Beside her sidles up Chauncey Mercer, the only black kid in our school — skinny, frail, with an afro that covers more space than his own face. They are both in the other seventh grade class, with Mrs. Lewis.

  “Did it hurt’cha?” Heather asks me.

  “What do you think?” I say lifting the pack to show my puffy eye.

  “I heard she clocked you good!” Chauncey says, raising his tiny fist towards the sky, his eyes growing wide so that his brown pupils seem small compared to the white parts.

  “No one clocked anyone,” I say, putting the pack back in place and wincing again as the ice pinches at my wound. “We just had a disagreement that got out of hand is all.” I act diplomatic despite the parts inside me that are still smoldering.

  “We just wanted to tell you that we support you. That Jackie is a b-i-t-c-h,” Heather says, tugging at a strand of her sandy brown hair. Her face is pale and even more so beside Chauncey.

  “Heather and I want to know if you want to eat subs with us tomorrow, to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” I ask. My father has hung up the phone and is walking towards us.

  “That you stood up to her. She thinks she owns this school,” Heather says.

  “And we all know that the school board owns the school, not snobby bitches,” Chauncey adds in a nerdy but brave way, for him anyway.

  “Maya, I’m ready. Now let’s get you home and talk about this,” my father tells me when he reaches us. “You’ll excuse us?” he says to Heather and Chauncey, and I know that his businessman suit and slicked hair has intimidated them.

  “Sorry . . . we didn’t know. . . .” Chauncey says through the spit that has formed in front of his teeth.

  “He’s my father,” I say, getting into the car. “See you tomorrow,” which is weird to say because I haven’t even really seen them today, or any other day before this. Wherever they were isolating themselves. must have been really different from where I was.

  As we drive away, I turn to see their salt and pepper faces getting smaller and smaller.

  Chapter Seven

  My mother refused all treatment for her cancer. She said she didn’t need radiation or drugs. She said it was too late for her anyway.

  She even told some people she needed her strength to look after me. The real reason, as I see it now, was that she had made a sec
ret decision to give up on her life. Destiny had given her a way to escape what she had created for herself. And nothing my father or I could say could make her change her mind.

  A few weeks after we all sat in the doctor’s office, I walked in on her in the bathroom with my father’s electric razor in her hand and a mushroom-coloured towel wrapped around her shoulders. “You can watch if you want,” she said to me when I saw her. I turned away, but then back. She put her hand on my bare arm then, her fingertips making five indents in my skin.

  “I know this might be hard for you, Maya, to watch me lose my hair.” Did she mean it? “But I really have this strong sense that I don’t need it anymore.”

  I nodded like a puppet, even though I was screaming and swearing at her from inside my head, and sat on the toilet while she separated the hair on her head into sections in preparation for the slaughter. And with the razor buzzing in her hand and into the air, she began the cutback. Each long ringlet, confronted at the root and removed, until her head was a patchwork of leftover beauty that she then trimmed all down to bald. Zip, zip, zip — and soon, her hair lay abandoned on the floor around her like auburn snow. She ran her hand over the new stubble as if trying to decode a secret message in Braille.

  When I had all her hair scooped into the bag, I reached in and combed my hands through it. Each strand was reaching up to me, trying to hold on for one last chance, but instead I turned on them all, knotted the ends of the bag, and put it outside on the back deck. When I got back inside, my father was standing looking at my mother. I only saw the back of him. The bluish light around my mother’s head was fuzzier and moving faster than I had seen it before. It made me dizzy to follow it. I noticed then that my father’s head was lowered and his suit-jacketed shoulders seemed to be shaking a bit.