“For what?” Chauncey asks.
“Stuff.”
“Like new clothes and makeup and things?” Heather says.
“Maybe a vacation. In the summer.”
“What will you sell?” Chauncey asks.
“My mother’s old jewellery, her clothes . . .”
“Won’t you miss that stuff?” Heather says.
“I’ll keep the important stuff.”
“It’s kind of creepy though,” Chauncey adds. “To know that someone is walking around in your mother’s clothes.”
“She didn’t wear any of it when she was sick. She mostly wore a sheet.”
“Oh yeah.” And from her head: I remember from television. Mom thought she was crazy.
“Heather, I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Say what?”
I put the garage sale sign at the end of my driveway. It is a piece of cardboard nailed to a piece of wood I found in my father’s workshop. I wedge it into the snow. On the day of the sale I pile on layers of clothing — sweaters, ski pants, wool socks — and sit on a lawn chair in our garage, my boots resting on the concrete floor. I have taken all my mother’s jewellery out of her cabinet: her pearls, a broach with a lady’s profile on it, a gold chain that links with a heart, a silver chain. I’ve laid it all out on a small patio table with a sign that says, “Let’s negotiate.” I had to look up the word “negotiate” in the dictionary to make sure I got it right but am pretty sure it will help me get more money.
I am not worried about getting rid of the jewellery; my mother hardly wore it and I think most of it was given to her by my grandmother when she was younger — family heirlooms maybe. My mother was not the jewellery type, and if my grandmother had gotten to know her better, maybe she would have known that.
My mother’s clothes — blouses, skirts, slacks — are hung up around the garage on metal hangers. Their presence gives me the distinct sense that my mother is watching me, maybe even standing around me. Other than that, I put a few of my father’s old suits up for sale, and some of his ties that had fallen to the bottom of his closet.
Heather is the first to knock on the closed garage door. She wears a one-piece ski suit that does up in the centre with a fat zipper, her head is hidden under a toque, and she carries a thermos and a blue box under her arm.
“I brought hot chocolate!” she says when I open the door. “And a Trivial Pursuit game my dad bought my mom as a present. She never plays it, so I thought we could have a game before we sell it.”
“Thanks, Heather.” The cold air whips against the garage door as I slide it closed again, scraping metal as I go.
“Maya, this is so cool that you get to stay alone when your father is out of town. I can’t even imagine my mom giving me this kind of freedom. You really do have it all.” Her tiny body is leaning up against the patio table and I think how small and delicate she looks, like she could freeze or fall over if put in the right circumstances.
Chauncey is next to arrive. “Maya, I really don’t know how much business you’re going to get, what with the cold temperature and all. A yard sale in November? Really?”
“It’s important, okay?” I say. “I need the extra money.”
He nods and the three of us sit down to play Trivial Pursuit. A small space heater chugs out warmth from its place by the wall beside us and we cover our hands with our mittens to keep warm. After we have chosen our colours — me orange, Heather pink, and Chauncey blue, Heather rolls the dice and lands on the pink square.
Chauncey reads the card: “Heather, who was the first singer to put three consecutive releases on the top of the British charts?”
“How should I know?”
“Just think about it, Heath.”
“The Beatles.”
“That’s a group, not a person.”
“Elton John.”
“No.”
“David Bowie.”
“No.”
“I give up.”
“You suck at this game, Heather. You really do.”
“Just give me the answer, Chauncey.”
“Elvis Presley.” Chauncey puts the card back into the blue box.
“Who knew?”
“Maya, your turn to roll.” I pick up the dice while still looking at the garage door. I move forward four spaces and land on a green box. Heather reads: “What colour was the rain that fell on Hiroshima for two hours after the bombing?”
“Black,” I say.
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
A knock on the garage door.
“The people are here!” Heather says in a loud voice. I grab the rope attached to the door and slide it upwards. There in front of me, in a heavy parka and Eskimo jacket with fur trim, are Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Parchewski, two of the women who used to come with Mrs. Roughen to visit with my mother in her teepee.
“Maya,” Mrs. Bell says. “We saw your sign outside and thought we would come to say hello. How have you been?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“And your father?”
“He’s out of town on business.”
“I see. Well, let’s take a look.” She rubs her boots across the cement of the garage floor until she peers over the table of merchandise. Mrs. Parchewski follows, saying nothing. “Looks like you have some of your mother’s things here.”
“Yes.”
“Her chains? A brooch. And some of her old dresses.”
“Make me an offer.”
“Maya, don’t you want to keep these things? To remember your mother.”
“I remember her just fine.”
“But these things were a part of her.”
“She never wore them. I asked my father and he said it would be all right to get rid of them.”
“I see.” Mrs. Bell holds an old teacup in her hands, while Mrs. Parchewski is taking off her scarf to fasten a pearl necklace around her neck. “I guess it doesn’t hurt to look then,” Mrs. Bell says. “You know how we felt about your mother.” And from Mrs. Bell’s mind: Mari never really did anything for me. I sigh and look at the ceiling while they sift through everything with their chubby fingers. Picking things up, dropping them, trying on, comparing, running their palms over smooth fabric. Over their white faces, huge blobs of cherry light are forming, opening and closing like giant hands, interweaving with each other, momentarily blocking out their sympathetic grins.
Heather pours hot chocolate into the lid of her thermos and starts to sip. Chauncey shakes the plastic bag of Trivial Pursuit pies.
They buy most of it: two chains, the pearl necklace, three old dresses and a pair of dress pumps, the teacup, a pair of red leg warmers.
“How about one hundred?” I say to them.
“Maya dear, don’t you think that is a bit outrageous? We’ll give you fifty dollars.”
“This is expensive stuff. Nothing under one hundred.”
Mrs. Bell pulls four twenties from her wallet and Mrs. Parchewski hands me a twenty dollar bill from her pocket. They put everything into purses, under their jackets, and over their arms. I open the door to let them out.
“Maya, good job!” Heather says when they are gone. “You totally negotiated like an expert.”
“You have to do what you have to do,” I say.
“What are you going to do with the money?” Chauncey asks.
“Buy stuff I need, I guess.” I think about warm dinners, lunches from the cafeteria, and maybe a new pair of winter boots.
“Yeah, like the new Corey Hart record,” Heather says. “We know you love him.”
“Not even!” I say. “Other stuff.”
The garage door goes up and down three more times with people from my street. By the end of the day, almost all of my mother’s stuff is gone, as well as my
father’s snowblower and his power drill, which I let go for $50 each — he’ll never miss them. Altogether, I have made $325. When Chauncey and Heather are gone, I put all the money inside my pillowcase and fall asleep on it. The garage is empty again, and even more of my mother is gone. I dream that my skin is melting off, leaving me nothing but muscle and bones. And that I take all my skin, pack it into baggies, and sell it at a road-side stand to unsuspecting people who think it is chicken. My sleep passes like a choppy collection of false starts, never letting up, never letting me relax.
Soon, I start feeling dizzy and stop going to school. First one day, then another. My house begins to feel like a safe place — the only place where I can hide myself. On day five away, I lie on my mother and father’s bed looking up at a white ceiling that occasionally drops to graze the top of my face. The sun goes down and soon Chauncey and Heather are outside the window of my parents’ bedroom. I hear stones being thrown against the glass and their voices, tiny and far away, calling my name.
“Maya, are you in there? Maya, come down,” they say in unison. I stand up and throw myself against the window, using the crank by my waist to open it.
“I’m here,” I say, my eyes half closed by the pain in my forehead.
“Why weren’t you at school?” Chauncey asks, holding his dark arm out like he is carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
“I’m sick,” I say weakly. “I need to sleep.”
“Let us up,” Heather says. “We want to talk with you about something. People are talking about you.”
“I can’t right now. I’m too dizzy. I need to sleep.”
Chauncey: “Maya, are you alone in there?”
“I might be alone for now.”
“What?” they both say.
“We don’t understand,” says Heather. “Come down now!”
“I’m closing this window up now. It’s so cold in here. Bye, bye now.” I fall to the floor. I hear them pounding on the front door with their fists. They are trying to break the lock. They are trying to open the front windows. They are trying to get in. But soon, the silence returns.
The walls of my house are melting. Shrinking and dripping like candle wax. The TV set in my parents’ bedroom is shrivelling up and taking the dresser with it. Falling into nothing. The floor is getting smaller but I am still at the centre of it. Lamps are tipping onto the floor and then burning up into themselves. The second floor of my house is lowering me down to the earth, until nothing is left around me. Nothing but dark earth and grass, and the tree that used to be outside my bedroom window, now reaching down to cover me.
I lie on my back looking up at the stars. I think I see the Big Dipper, carved out on top of the dark sky. I close my eyes and feel the sun come out behind my eyelids. Blue sky being overtaken by clouds heavy with rain, rain that lands on my face, coating me with wet. A grumble of thunder, then nothing but sky again. A faded moon I can see in the light. Heaven?
I can smell the skin behind my mother’s ear when I hug her, sweet like a puppy’s paws.
The air above is getting closer, like a fog coming down. My body is sinking into the earth, back in. Back into nothing. The worms slither over me now, wrapping me up like a present. They are comforting, not gross like I would have expected. I turn my head from inside the dirt and see my mother’s face, lifeless, pale, bony, eyes open, lips parted. I scream and the earth fills my mouth. And then, only open space and a brightness that engulfs me.
I land back in my house. My whole house as it was. In my parent’s bed with the sheets wrapped around me like I’m a suffocating baby. I open my eyes to my name being spoken.
“Maya.” A man’s voice. My father’s voice.
“Maya.” My name being sung this time, from downstairs. My name from my mother’s warm lips. “Maya, we’re down here! We’re back.”
I sit up and open my eyes, moving my numb body to the edge of the bed. There are no sounds from outside, only silence and my feet pounding on the carpet, and down the stairs, to find them standing in front of the door. Side by side, my parents, with smiles, holding hands, with pitying eyes. I stand in front of them and they stroke my hair and my face.
“Maya, it was all a dream. It’s all over,” my father says. “You shouldn’t have believed we would let that happen to you.”
“I was all alone,” I say to them and my mother tells me to “shooosh,” that it’s all okay now. We can make it through this all together. That it never happened. They are hugging me, with my mother on the bottom layer and my father on the top. I can’t feel their arms around me and then they start to go right through me, like I am made up of nothing. They are hugging me, but I am not really there. Then they vanish too.
“It’s all about different levels,” a voice says from behind me. I sob and turn.
“They’re gone,” I say to him. It’s Elijah, smiling, casual, relaxed, dressed in white, which he would never wear.
“What if you are the one who’s gone?”
“I would never leave, Elijah. You know that.”
“I guess you’re right.” And we both start to laugh, chuckles that send us to the floor, giggles that rise and fall like waves. Then, poof.
I’m awake for real. My nose is leaking onto my cheeks. What day is it? How long have I been sleeping? A few days perhaps? I’m hungry. Every muscle holding my skeleton together feels like it has been stretched out and shoved back into place. My temples are burning, aching. My jaw wedged closed, I struggle to open it. I think I have been crying because my eyes are crusted up. It must be night time because the air outside the window is black and cold. I drag myself into the washroom, hike up my nightgown, and sit on the toilet to release the pee I have been holding — a long steady stream that goes on for almost a minute. I shiver at the end of it.
I hobble back to my parents’ bedroom and open my mother’s closet to find a sweater. The closet is almost empty because I have sold most things. There is one sweatshirt folded and placed up top, a green one. It has the word “Trent” written on the front of it. It reminds me that my parents were both going to university there when they met. Maybe she was wearing this when they first kissed — when they fell in love. The thought of it makes me smile, despite my sickness.
I pick the sweatshirt up by the shoulder and put my head through the neck hole, sliding my arms into each of its sleeves. That’s when I notice it. There is a small picnic basket on the shelf near the back. Was it always there? Why am I only seeing it now?
I pull it down, rest it on the floor and open the lid. Inside the picnic basket is a blue plaid blanket folded up, just a thin one for sitting on, I imagine. But I lift it up and underneath there are several thin metal bracelets with dangling butterflies, and a small black notebook. I run my palm over all these things and feel a jolt. I slide the bracelets over my fingers and shake my arm so they dance. I pick up the notebook. My mother’s name is written on the front cover along with the words “Privacy Please.” I smooth my thumbs over the cover and inhale deeply.
I open the notebook and begin to read the words my mother had written.
Chapter Fifteen
October 18, 1972
I saw him again today. He sat beside me by the river — me reading Pride and Prejudice, him only looking out onto the water. I must have been staring, something about his eyes — dark and calm. And the way his raven hair falls to his shoulders. He looked tired as he sat there, with sandalled feet tucked up under him and his loose clothing fluttering a bit with the wind. He looked lonely. I slid closer, towards him on the bench.
And that’s when he told me his name — Amar Ghosh. He looked down to my feet and up to my boobs. And then I told him mine, Marigold, I said. Marigold McCann.
After a while of me reading and him sitting, he walked away without saying anything else. Now I’m wondering, who is this strange guy besides his name? He’s older that’s for sure, maybe even thirt
y. It’s been two years since I’ve noticed any man besides Steven. Two years since I’ve come up for air. Shit.
This guy is so unlike anyone I’ve ever met that I thought I’d keep a record of when I see him — almost like he won’t be real otherwise. I don’t know what it means. It’s not like I’m leading up to something. I’m not. I know how good I have it with Steven — and that can be enough, for now anyway.
October 23, 1972
Went to the park today to find Amar — under a tree, cross-legged like Gandhi — with a bunch of wasp kids sitting at a picnic table, eating lunch and pointing. And laughing.
Shut the hell up! I yelled at them, though I regretted it afterwards. He didn’t flinch. I sat in the grass nearby. I wasn’t trying to come on to him or anything. Besides, I told Steven to meet me there. I had to get out of the house, away from Mother and her I-expect-to-see-you-at-church-this-Sunday bullshit. So I was only waiting for Steven in the grass, and reading.
Steven greeted me by kissing me on the top of my head and rubbing his hands over the back of my neck. So gentle, but I jumped.
Do you have to sneak up on me like that? I said to him, real mean like. I regret that too, because he didn’t get angry, only dropped to the grass, stretched his corduroy legs out in front of him, and used his straight arms as a backrest.
Who’s that freak? he asked when he saw Amar.
I don’t know, I said and I was telling the truth. I don’t know who he is and I also don’t know he’s a freak.
He looks a little out of place, don’t you think? Steven said.
He seems all right. I myself was freaking inside, hoping Amar didn’t decide to talk to me at that moment.
We might as well get going then, honey.
Steven and I stood up. Amar didn’t move — but I saw him turn his head and glare at us when we walked away (a good sign!). There’s something about this guy. He could definitely be a model if he tried . . . in the Sears catalogue at least. He’s got an electricity about him that none of the other guys around here have.
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