by Fran Kimmel
THE SHORE GIRL
A NOVEL
FRAN KIMMEL
NEWEST PRESS
COPYRIGHT FRAN KIMMEL 2012
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Kimmel, Fran, 1955–
The shore girl / Fran Kimmel.
ISBN 978-1-927063-17-0
I. Title.
PS8621.I548S56 2012 C813’.6 C2012-902345-0
Editor for the Board: Anne Nothof
Cover and interior design: Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design
Author photo: Marlene Palamarek
NeWest Press acknowledges the financial support of the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund and the Edmonton Arts Council for our publishing program. We further acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
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Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6
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No bison were harmed in the making of this book.
printed and bound in Canada 1 2 3 4 5 13 12
To my girls, Bre and Megs
REBEE
AUNT VIC
MISS BEL
REBEE
JAKE
REBEE
JOEY
REBEE
REBEE
STAY ON THE BED, REBEE. AND YOU ARE NOT TO CRY.
My eyes are wet. I don’t like this blanket. It’s scratchy and green and I like blue. My nightie is blue with stars and the yellow moon.
Mommy went out the door. On the outside is a blinking pink light with letters and I stare at the blinking through the flower curtains but my eyes are blurry. I rub with my arm but the blurs get bigger.
I can wiggle my finger in the pillow hole and pull out the feathers and I got a pile in my hand and they feel soft like bunny’s ear. I want bunny. Bunny’s beside my backpack on top of the hangers. Bunny’s too high. I’m not sposint get off the bed.
There are noises on the other side of the wall and they are in a party and making funny sounds with their mouth and jumping on the bed and it goes thump, thump. I want to jump up and down and make the thump, thump but I stay on the bad blanket and make the aah, aah, aah noises with my mouth. But quiet. My mouth needs a drink. Mommy says, No more, Rebee, you’ll pee the bed, but I’m a big girl now. I go in the toilet.
The girl and the puppet went away. Now we sing pound puppy one and only puppy love. Blue is my best colour but not where you pee. I already did a pee but I didn’t like the blue in the hole. It’s only coloured water, Rebee, to keep the toilet bowl clean. And there are Kleenexes that come out of the wall and I stuck my finger in and brung a Kleenex to bed but now I can’t find it in my mixed-up green blanket. I’m thirsty and I want a different Kleenex.
I don’t want to sing. The world looks mighty good to me, cause Tootsie Rolls are all I see.
The rug is pink and some brown spills and I can see the toilet but not the blue water and not the glass with a white hat beside the soap. I can run, run, run and take off the hat and make a drink.
You do not move off this bed. You stay on the bed and wait. I’ll be back soon.
I’m not sposint get off the bed. My teeth are thirsty. I can stay quiet and stop my snivelling and run, run, run, and make my drink and go back on the bed.
I don’t like the scratchy blanket. I want Mommy to put me in my car seat with bunny. I want to drive on the highway with Mommy and see stars and cows. Where is she? I want to see Auntie Vic. I want to put barrettes in Auntie’s hair, black like Snow White.
My legs don’t want to run. But I got to have a drink really bad. It’s a prickly rug and I don’t want to step on the brown spills with my toes. Mommy forgot to turn on the light in the bathroom. I don’t like the dark. It’s dark in the bathroom. I want my drink. I cover my eyes. The little table with the telephone on it bangs my tummy and my feathers are lost. My eyes are blurry and my nose too and my tummy hurts. Mommy, Mommy. You are not to cry. You have to stay quiet. But I can’t make my snivelling stop.
I crawl on the rug and it smells like poo and I cough and my nose tickles. I’m a big girl and can get a drink by myself. My hands are on the bathroom floor, cold and sticky, and there is a black crack and a spider in the corner sleeping. Spiders are our friends. I’m a big girl and I climb on the toilet and I climb on the counter and I can see my yellow moon in the mirror. Hello, Rebee. Hurry, hurry, Mommy will be mad. I take the hat off and I turn the tap and it’s too hard, Try harder, Rebee, and the water squirts out, not blue. Faster and faster. Use two hands, Rebee, so you don’t spill. I use two hands. I want cold to drink but it’s not. It’s hot. It’s too hot. It hurts my fingers. I don’t want to let go or it will spill. I want my drink. I can’t make it cold.
I cry as big as I can. The party lady bangs on the wall and yells shut up in there. People do bad things, Rebee. I scream louder and that’s all I can hear. The water hurts. Use two hands, so you don’t spill. But my glass falls down, down and I can’t make it stop. Water splashes my moon. It’s hot on my tummy. I squeeze my eyes shut so I won’t see it broke.
Rattling. The door under the blinking light with letters. Mommy. I hold my breath to stop my noises but now I got hiccups. I’m not sposint get off the bed. Mommy has a key with a red board. And now the pee comes in a gush and it’s hot on my legs. I pee in my nightie. And I can’t breathe. My stars are all wet and there’s sparkly glass, all broke, and I’m sposint stay on the bed.
And I hear her shoes coming and feel myself go up, up, and my legs drip and Mommy says, Shuuush, baby, it’s all right, I’m here. Mommy’s not mad. She turns on the light.
Mommy holds me like a baby and I’m all wet.
It’s all right, Rebee.
And I lift my head off Mommy’s shoulder and see her face in the mirror and she’s crying. I cry some more cause Mommy’s crying. Blood’s coming out of her cheek. Her cheek is too big. It’s blue, but not the pretty blue. Mommy looks scared.
We have to go, baby. Now.
Mommy rushes around. Clean up, clean up. She carries me to the bed and I climb out of my nightie and I smell like pee and I wrap myself up in the green blanket. I feel itchy on my belly button. Mommy sticks her candles and her black shirt and her panties in the bag with the secret pocket and she opens my backpack and pulls out my frog pyjamas and throws them at me and they land on my head. I laugh but then I see Mommy’s blue cheek. Put these on, Rebee. Hurry now. Frog pyjamas have green feet and I can’t curl my toes. I want a drink but I don’t tell. Mommy drops my toothbrush in the pocket and the zipper gets stuck. Mommy is mad. Bad backpack. Rebee, put on your pyjamas. Now. I want my blue baby-dolls, but Mommy lifts my arms and frogs go over my head and she lifts my bum and my toes get stuck in the green feet.
A baby feather is on the green blanket. I put it in my hand. I want to tell Mommy, but she bends down and picks up the bags and a red drop from her face falls on the pink rug and she looks at that drop and a sound comes out of her mouth. She yanks on my hand too hard and I fall off the bed. I want to cry but I’m a big girl. Mommy lifts me up and we go outside under the blinky light. She throws the red key and it hits the TV and bounces on the pink rug and the door cl
oses all by itself.
The van’s got a big bash. It’s all crumpled at the front like a Kleenex box when you kick it. My car seat smells like apple juice. I want a drink. I want a drink but I don’t tell. Big girls can wait.
How did the van get broke? Mommy won’t talk. Mommy is quiet. We go bump, bump, bump. There are bad noises under the van. Shaking my car seat. The trees whoosh. Then the trees go away. Fences. A big barn, maybe for chickens. Mommy’s teeth chatter. Mommy’s cold. I give Mommy my yellow blanket but she says no.
Turn on the lights. I can’t see the cows. Mommy, turn on the lights.
The headlights are broken, Rebee. We’re invisible. Lay back and close your eyes.
Mommy is sad. Are you sad, Mommy? How did the headlights get broke? How did your face get blood on it?
Go to sleep now, Rebee. Be a big girl. Close your eyes and dream about cows.
I have a feather in my hand. It’s soft like bunny’s ear. Bunny. Where’s bunny?
Shit, shit, shit.
Can I have bunny please?
Sorry, baby, bunny’s gone. We left him at the motel.
Go back. Go back. I want BUNNY!
We can’t go back, Rebee. We can’t ever go back.
And I cry and cry and cry.
AUNT
VIC
REBEE HATES WATER. Lakes, bathtubs, alley puddles. They all scare the crap out of her. If she blames me, her dear old auntie, she’s never said a word. She was only four years old and God knows what she remembers. It was supposed to be a nice surprise for the missing mommy. Look at the big girl who could float in the water. Look at the auntie who let them all drown.
Funny, the details that stick. I remember having blood in my shoe. Eddy whistling through his nose in my bed. Rebee slept on the couch in her panties and undershirt, curled into the letter C, hands over her knees. Her tiny mouth opened and closed like a little fish, like she was fighting for air in a dirty bowl.
It had been slow as a wet week at the Lucky Dollar, mostly just regulars, but the end of my left foot looked like it’d been worked over by a man with a bat. I kept telling my boss the patrons prefer a quick drink over a hobbling waitress in five-inch heels, but Dennis, he says I couldn’t go changing the uniform. I could have written the book about what Georges want, what brings a good tip, how to smell a stiff, but Dennis liked to keep his girls down, keep morale about as high as the belly of a snake.
The apartment felt sticky hot when I got home from the night shift, but I covered Rebee anyway with the old yellowed sheet she’d kicked into the couch fold. The place was a war zone. Pizza crusts and cardboard boxes, dirty napkin piles, overflowing ashtrays, a scuzzy green cup with crusties up the sides. She must have got wired pretty good. Coke float most likely, one of Eddy’s two specialties, the other being pancakes with whipped topping from a can. But he’d found the book from the closet I bought for her last time. It was on the glass coffee table beside Eddy’s crumpled “Skydivers, Good to the Last Drop” T-shirt, opened to Rebee’s favourite, the page where Willie loses his mittens and his mother has to come rescue him. Eddy could surprise me with the things he did.
I slumped down in the chair beside Rebee’s damp mop, threw my legs on the coffee table, lit a cigarette, and waited for her to wake up. Eddy was an early riser most days, too. Get him liquored up, he could miss a whole day, sleep right through and then couldn’t figure out why the bank was closed, why there was no baseball from four to six like the TV Guide said. But there were no empties scattered about. And Eddy promised.
Eddy thought I looked like Cher and kept asking me to sing “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves.” I should have crawled into bed with him but I was too damn tired. I just sat with my feet on the pizza box and watched the blood drain from my swollen toes.
“Just a few days,” Elizabeth whispered when she handed Rebee to Eddy in the middle of the night. This was a few nights before. I was doing last call at the Lucky Dollar so I missed the drop-off. But what Elizabeth said meant nothing anyway. The time before, a few days stretched to three weeks, then to three months, and when she came at last and took Rebee back, I felt a slash through my centre so deep the doctors woulda shook their heads and covered me with a plastic sheet.
Rebee whimpered. Strange little mewing sounds, like a newborn kitten crying for her mother’s tit. I thought, whimper all you want, Rebee, she’s not here, and even if she was, she’s all dried up.
* * *
“So, how ’bout it?” Eddy asked again, pouring the bacon grease from the frying pan into his empty coffee cup.
“I can’t just take off. I’ll get canned.”
“Not if you get a doctor’s note. You get a doctor’s note, they can’t touch you.”
“And who’s going to give me a doctor’s note?”
“A Doc Tor.”
“For what? They give notes these days to ladies with cracked sisters who show up in the middle of the night? Leave their babies on your doorstep?”
“For your feet, that’s what. You limping around like you do, they’ll give you a note. Short-term disability. You and Rebee can come with me to the cabin. You can recover. Have some fun, relax.”
“You live in a dump, Eddy. What are we supposed to do while you’re at work?” I’d been to Eddy’s. Only once. He lived on a mountain in a shack about as big as a prison cell.
“You’ll be sleeping, that’s what. I’ll be home for breakfast and we’ll have pancakes. I’ll lay down a couple hours, then we’ve got the whole day. We can explore the woods, do a bit a climbing.”
“Well, that oughta cure my feet.”
“Or whatever. I only got three more shifts anyway. Then I can pull for some time off. We can go anywhere we want, have ourselves a holiday.”
“You a family man all of a sudden?”
Eddy looked wounded, but he was right. I needed some kind of plan for the kid. I couldn’t just leave her alone after Eddy headed out.
So I got myself a doctor’s note and fought with Dennis for a few weeks off. When I got back to the truck, Rebee was asleep, doubled over at the waist. I sidled in beside her, closed the door quietly and told Eddy it was done. I should have told him I was grateful, too, but I couldn’t stand confessing to a man. So I asked him instead why I should pack up for Exshaw when my problem was fixed, for two weeks at least, and when Rebee and I could just hang out in the apartment and wait for Elizabeth to show.
Eddy didn’t answer for the longest while, blowing smoke rings out his window. Rebee started to snore.
“I suppose I can’t come up with a reason to suit you. ’Cause I want you to is not enough?”
“That’s it? That’s your big reason?”
“Whatever, Vic.”
* * *
It was a dump all right. Just like I remembered.
Rebee rode up with Eddy while I followed behind in my car. No way I wanted to be stuck in Exshaw without an escape vehicle. Eddy loved listening to the big ten-fours and roger-dodgers. Rebee probably stared at the box the whole way, waiting for the voices, hugging her knees, and sucking on her finger.
The drive took forever. Eddy wouldn’t give it more gas when going up a hill, and Exshaw sat on top of a mountain, the last stop. I wanted to ram into the back of him to move us along. How could she just dump her kid off with Eddy like that, a stranger to her, a guy who could be worse than the last one for all she knew?
“This is where we sleep and this is where we eat and that’s where the bathroom is in case you have to go.” You’d think we were in a palace or something, the way he carried on.
Rebee twirled around. “Do you got a bathtub?”
“Of course.”
Eddy’s place was like one of those holiday cottages that starts with a promise of good times ahead, a getaway place from the rest of your life. Only then you can’t find the oomph to fix the place up, and you’re left with a dump. Sure you got a mountain out your back door. But it’s still a dump.
“Will you help me with the tree?” I asked
him, wanting to be outside more than in.
“Don’t figure we have to rush it, do you?”
“I want to get it done.”
So we traipsed back out, Rebee on our heels, and headed to the truck. The mosquitoes were so thick I couldn’t slap them off fast enough. Blood smears and bug guts coated my arms and legs. Eddy hopped in the back of the truck and started digging through the box. He hauled the tattered hockey flag from the bag and passed it down to me, then rooted around some more for the bungee cords and jumped back over the side.
We shuffled through the gravel, single file, to the turnoff from the highway that marked the end of Eddy’s property. The highway dead-ended just up ahead. If you needed to get away from this shit piece of land, apparently you had to back out the way you came in.
“How about this one?” Eddy pointed to the tree closest to the turnoff, the tallest, its leaves choking on silver layers of filth. The cement plant chimney loomed in the distance, spewing great clouds of the stuff day and night over everything in sight.
“What you doing with the blanket?” Rebee squatted in the gravelly dip between the highway and the tree line, burying her fingers in grimy stones.
“It’s not a blanket, it’s a flag,” I told her.
Eddy strung the bungee through the hole in the flag corner, looping it through the tree branch and pulling it tight so the flag shot up and over our heads.
Rebee watched him closely, squinting into the sun. “How come you’re putting it on that tree?”
“So your mom will know where to find us,” Eddy said, grunting as he hooked the bungee ends together. Then he stepped back and stood beside me, and we both looked up at the drab tattered flag, dangling lifelessly, like there was a dead body hidden beneath it.
“Mommy’s coming? This morning?” Rebee sprung up out of the dirt, a load of pebbles falling from her fingers. Mosquitoes swarmed around her, chomping on her soft, pink skin.
“It’s not morning, Rebee,” I told her. “It’s almost suppertime. Eddy’s going to work pretty soon.”