“A trick,” I replied as I fanned the cards out in front of him. “Pick a card.”
His smile grew. His eyebrows crinkled together. He reached for the remote and silenced the man on the deck of that ship. “Don’t I get to cut the deck first?” he said.
My next breath filled my lungs right up, and I realized that I hadn’t been breathing. I let him cut the deck; I fanned the cards. He picked one. And my story sprang out of me then, long and joyous: the trick, the deal, the test, the eleven check marks down the side of the page, the Grade Four math book, the magic lesson. While I talked, I was reviewing the next steps of the trick in my mind. The story, I realized, was the perfect distraction, and distraction was the key.
“Are you holding the jack of clubs?” I said at last, tying the question to the story, making it the grand finale.
He was.
Kaya slipped into the room not long after that, and Mom followed soon after to find the three of us sharing milk and cookies. I watched my mother look for something wrong with the scene, and I saw her tiny huff of acceptance when she realized that Dad was fine. Better than fine.
Then, “Show them, Beth,” Dad said.
“I’ve got groceries to put away,” Mom said.
“Come on, Margaret. Five minutes.”
I flinched. I hated those exchanges between Mom and Dad, all sharp edges.
“Yes, show us!” Kaya said, spraying bits of cookie as she spoke.
And I did. I let Kaya pick the card. I prattled on a bit about how I had learned the trick, but I was nervous now, and it didn’t come out right. I tried to follow the steps as I talked, but in the end I knew I was guessing when I said, “Is it the six of clubs?”
Kaya’s face got sad, and my stomach turned over as I looked at the card face up in Kaya’s hand: the queen of hearts.
“Hmm,” Mom said. “More practice, I guess.” She was heading for the kitchen as she said it.
“You’ll get it, Beth,” Dad said quietly, tipping Kaya off his lap. “You only just learned it today.” He reached for the remote.
I shoved the cards into my pocket and went to my room, followed by my little sister. “Show me again,” Kaya said. “I’ll bet it works this time.”
“No,” I said shortly. “I’ve got homework.”
It wasn’t just the cards that showed up the holes in my life. The other kids shying away from me at school, Dad buried in his big chair, Mom, her whole body so tense she could have been made of stone, Kaya with her sad, crumpled face. It seemed as if Dad’s cancer swirled everyone off somewhere far, far away, leaving me alone at the centre of a vortex.
For an hour or two I had thought that the magic would close the gap. But soon, off they went, swirling away again. I was discouraged, but I still hoped. I still imagined. In fact, I loved the cards, even though I couldn’t make the trick work more than that one time.
Two weeks later, Mr. Duncan did another trick for the class. And the next day, he offered me another deal, science this time. I knew by then that Mr. Duncan was singling me out because of Dad. Or I was pretty sure. I didn’t like that idea much, but I did want to learn the new trick. I had practised the first one quite a bit since the failed attempt with Mom and Kaya, but it was hard to work the kinks out all alone, with no one to try the trick out on.
I passed the test and learned the trick (sort of), but it turned out that Mr. Duncan only knew two. There wouldn’t be a third. And the second trick was a lot harder than the first. I didn’t have the guts to try it out on anyone, not even Dad.
Slowly, hope faded. What was a magic trick or two in the face of the C word anyway? I put the cards away in a drawer, and didn’t shuffle another deck for a long, long time.
Dad lived for another five years, and the gaps and the hollows in our household grew and grew, even though he was in remission for a big part of that and he went back to work and everything.
He got sick again just as I started Grade Eight. Right around then, the girl who had told me about Dad’s cancer in Grade Four marched up to me one day in the hall. Another girl was behind her, almost shadowing her.
“My mom says your dad’s sick again,” Jane said. I knew her name by then, of course. We’d been in school together for four years. “Want to sit with us at lunch?”
“I’m Samantha,” the other girl said.
Samantha was new to the school and Jane had taken her on, like a pet. I was pet number two, I guess, a poor downtrodden creature who’d been rotting away all alone at the Humane Society.
I looked at them and considered Jane’s question. I couldn’t see any reason to say no.
“Sure,” I said.
That’s how I got to have friends.
I didn’t like Jane’s bossy ways, and often wished Samantha would stand up for herself, but it was kind of nice to have people to eat lunch with, and hang out with sometimes after school. Jane was always asking how Dad was doing. I didn’t tell her much, even though he did worse and worse all through Grade Eight. He died at the start of Grade Nine.
Within days of Dad’s death, Mom brought home a great big gangly collie puppy that she had bought all on her own without saying a word to Kaya or me first. Kaya fell in love with Sybilla instantly. They were always all wrapped up together on the couch or in her room. I couldn’t help feeling hurt that Mom went off and bought that dog all by herself, and that Sybilla loved Kaya so very, very much.
Another day, perhaps a month after Sybilla came home, I was on my way down the stairs, all dopey from a nap, when Mom and Kaya came in the front door. Kaya was alight in a way that I hadn’t seen for a long, long time. A kitten. She had a kitten in her arms. Behind her, Mom grinned.
I took a step forward, stopped and swayed, almost weak-kneed. Jealousy snaked through my legs and my skull and met and tangled in my chest. First a dog, now a kitten.
“Kaya came with me to get groceries and look what we got instead!” Mom said.
Now, at the lodge, I dream of magic tricks and dying fathers, with Sybilla and Coco, Jane and Samantha, thrown in.
On Sunday morning, Mom heads off to her last workshop and I make my way to the lodge’s gift shop in search of a deck of cards. Back in our room, with our bags sitting side by side on the bed, I pull out the chair at the small round table under the window and set down the brand new deck precisely in the middle of the black surface. I look at it and breathe.
Excitement burbles inside me, small, like the tiniest brook, enticing. I pick the deck up again—it’s red with one of those patterns that serious cards have, no pretty paintings or lush landscapes, just simple geometry in red and white—and run my fingers over the smooth cellophane, find the thin blue line that encircles the deck. I take the tiny tab between my thumb and forefinger, and pull. In one smooth motion, the clear wrapping comes away from the top of the box. I have only to slide the bottom part off, and I’m in.
The cards are slick in my hands, and after my first attempt at a shuffle I have to scrabble on the carpet to salvage a fallen queen and a three and a seven. They are beautiful, though, and, slippery though they may be, I love them, every one. I try another shuffle. And another. I start up a patter in the empty room, engaging an imaginary audience, and slide a card out of the deck, almost convincing myself that my own hand is someone else’s.
For a moment I wish I had a subject, an audience, but it’s too soon. Way too soon. Still, the morning passes in a flash. I almost forget to watch the clock. But not quite. When Mom comes back from her session just before noon, I’m sitting on my unmade bed, reading Sundry’s Book, cards tucked out of sight.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beth
Apparently Mom’s morning was not as much fun as mine. She’s clutching a fistful of pamphlets and business cards; her shoulders are slouched, her face dark. “Let’s go,” she says, hefting her bag over her shoulder. “We’ve got a long drive.”
In the car she doesn’t say much, and I’m pretty much oblivious to her misery, or I try to be, playing out in my m
ind the two card tricks I know, fingers caressing the deck in my pocket.
“Abuse, abuse, abuse,” Mom says at one point, and the harsh word wrenches me to attention. “It’s all they talk about with runaways.”
She isn’t talking to me. And she doesn’t say anything else for a while. I sit there, magic tricks forgotten, as prickles run down my arms and into my fingers. Mom is chewing on her lower lip and staring so intently at the highway, it’s a wonder her eyes don’t pop out of their sockets.
I know we’re both thinking and wondering the same things. Dad died. Yes. Our family was kind of messed up by it. But would Kaya run away because of that? Why?
Mom glances over at me sitting stiffly in my seat. “Are you all right, sweetheart?” she says.
Normally, I could be hanging out the car door ready to throw myself into the canyon before she would take notice.
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “I think I’m just tired.”
Mom huffs and is quiet again. After a bit, “Kaya’s the exception to the rule,” she says. “I wish they wouldn’t generalize like that, as if kids are all the same.”
Then she starts in about homework. The moment passes, but not the word that has brought it about. I have only to let my mind brush up against it—abuse—and there are those prickles, all over again.
Mom goes silent again once we pass Hope. Magic tricks and questions about the past fade from my mind as we enter the heavy back-to-the-city-on-Sunday-afternoon traffic. My thoughts turn to my sister right now, today. I’m sure Mom is thinking about Kaya too.
Will the house be empty? And if it is empty, which kind of empty? Empty ever-since-Friday, or empty someone-came-and-went-on-Saturday? I can’t quite bring myself to hope that Kaya will actually be there. I’m not sure I want to set eyes on her right now.
It starts to rain as we approach the bridge, and traffic slows to a crawl. Mom’s fingers tap the steering wheel. I turn up the volume on my Walkman and try not to grit my teeth. I finger the cards in my pocket again, but it does no good at all.
As soon as I walk through the front door, I see the light blinking like crazy on the phone. Messages.
Mom is behind me, unloading the car.
“Just put that down and come back and help,” she shouts, but I ignore her.
The dash to get the receiver into my hand is instinctive, but once I’m holding it, I freeze. It will be about Kaya. I know that. But what? Who?
The front door bangs against the wall as Mom comes through laden and angry. “Couldn’t you do what I—?”
She sees the phone in my hand and stops speaking, her eyes fixed on the blinking light. In a moment her bags are on the ground and she is at my side, holding out her hand.
“I checked for messages just this morning,” she mumbles.
She’s brisk as she pushes the buttons, and her face is businesslike as she listens. She presses the “off” button and looks at me.
“Well, she’s not dead,” she says, “or hurt.” She pauses. “Apparently, she’s in jail.”
“Jail?” I say blankly. “But she’s …”
“All right, the youth detention centre.”
It isn’t quite that something has happened to Kaya, as it turns out. Kaya has done something to someone else. And now she’s in custody. And they’re going to hold her overnight. At least.
“Get your coat, Beth. We’re going to see her. Oh, and could you get her toothbrush and some clean clothes from upstairs?”
I stare at Mom. “Where are we going? Where is this place?” I hear my voice rising as I speak, but I can’t help it.
Mom’s face tenses. She breathes, tries to calm herself, but it doesn’t work.
“Burnaby,” she says. “Willingdon Youth Detention Centre, it’s called. Now will you go fetch her things?”
I don’t know how I can go from scared to angry so fast, but I do.
“So Kaya punches someone, and now I have to visit her in some kind of jail?”
Mom’s whole face contracts. “Yes,” she says. “That’s precisely correct. If you can’t get her things, go wait in the car. I’ll get them.”
“I’m doing it,” I say. Angry. Angry. Angry. “I can’t believe this.”
Upstairs, I shove a toothbrush in a bag and root around in Kaya’s nightmare bedroom for pants and a shirt. Won’t she be wearing striped pyjamas anyway?
On the way out, I grab my own bag, with my Walkman, my book and the leftover jelly beans from the Chilliwack gas station. I shove those deep in my coat pocket. Mom has already started the car by the time I get there.
We drive most of the way in silence.
“Be kind,” Mom says as we wind our way up to the youth detention centre.
I stare out the window at the high wire fences that keep the world safe from kids like my sister. Kind. I let my teeth sink through the jelly bean in my mouth and swallow the two resulting lumps of gelatin, feeling them all the way down my throat. Then I wrestle another candy out of my pocket and sneak it into my mouth. Kind. I will be kind.
I sit alone in a waiting room while Mom meets with some people. Despite my best efforts I feel two tears escape, one from each eye. I slip yet another jelly bean into my mouth and swipe at my eyes. Then we both have to put all our possessions, jelly beans included, in a locker. A guard upends the bag that I threw together and rifles through it with gloved hands.
“She won’t need any of this,” she says shortly. “We supply toiletries and clothes.”
Mom looks sad as she takes the bag from the guard and stows it in the locker along with everything else. “Can we see her now?” she asks.
“This way, please,” the guard says.
She leads us to a metal detector, but Mom stops halfway, her hands flying to her face. “I should have brought her a book. Or something to eat.”
I stand and watch Mom cry. The guard watches too. My hand rises from my side just a little, as if I were thinking of resting it on Mom’s heaving back, but some powerful force holds us apart. My arm falls back.
“I have some jelly beans,” I say at last. “We could give her those.”
The guard nods and turns back toward the lockers. “You could,” she says, “if you like.”
I think about Sandry’s Book, tucked away in my bag. I’m halfway through, loving it, and it’s part of a series. I press my lips together as I reach into the bottom of the locker and slide the slightly sticky, half-empty bag of candy from my jacket pocket. I leave my bag alone, book safely stored for later on, when I am safe at home in my own bed. I am not giving up that book.
Mom has managed to stop crying, and the negative force field between us doesn’t seem to affect her, because she yanks me to her in a quick hug. “You’re a sweetheart,” she says with a loud sniffle.
I square my shoulders as I walk through the metal detector. Mom’s hug drops off me like water off butter.
And there is Kaya, sitting on a couch alone, eyes on us as we enter the room. “Sweetheart,” Mom practically shouts, and I flinch.
“I’ll be right here,” the guard says. “You have half an hour.”
Kaya speaks fast, so fast that I only understand about two-thirds. Her tone is angry and self-righteous. The other girl deserved it. She’d been making everyone miserable for a long, long time. One of the girls was going to talk to her pimp, and that would have been the end of it.
Pimp. I see Mom’s back tense. Myself, I push the word away. I’ll think about it another time, not here, while I listen to my baby sister rattle on about her crimes. In a jail.
“So I taught her a lesson.” She grins. “I never punched someone before, you know? But she went down. And I said, ‘Listen. You got to stop this stuff, else you’re really going to get hurt.’ And those red-cap guys were right there. A guy and a girl. They heard me threaten her. That’s what they said when they were arresting me. A citizen’s arrest … What bullshit! I didn’t threaten her. I warned her. I was helping her.”
My mouth opens. I hear the sarcasm pac
ked around my words, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. “I see. You helped her by punching her in the face.”
Kaya’s eyes have been fixed on Mom’s face until now. She glances at me, but turns right back to Mom. “Beth’s just like them. She doesn’t get it.” She pauses. “I didn’t totally mean to punch her in the face.”
Mom has been nodding throughout Kaya’s speech, one hand on Kaya’s knee. Now she speaks. “Well, Kaya. We just want you home. And if you go around attacking people, you’re not going to get to come home. It’s not safe for you …”
I watch Kaya’s eyes drop as she takes in what Mom is saying.
“Mom,” I say, “she shouldn’t punch people, because it’s wrong. She deserved to be arrested.”
Mom reaches behind her with a silencing hand. “Shush, Beth. We’re here to support your sister.”
In the same moment, Kaya’s eyes come back up, filled now with betrayal. “Guard,” she says, “I want to go.”
“Kaya,” Mom says, her voice breaking on the word, becoming a wail.
It ends then, the visit. On the way out, I shove my hand in my pocket and find the jelly beans, stickier now, but still mine.
The drive home is awful. Mom cries for half the journey and yells at me the other half. I clench my teeth. Curl my fists. Tighten every muscle in my body. But despite my best efforts, those high fences creep back into my mind, along with an image of my little sister huddled all alone on that couch, staring at us with eyes that seem hungry now, though they seemed fierce then.
As I replay Kaya’s frenzied speech, the bravado is obvious. I didn’t totally mean to punch her in the face.
Kaya’s misery floods through me; I can’t keep it away. I tip my head against the car window and shrink at the thought of her alone in a cell, or worse, crammed into one with girls who happily punch others in the face, or stick knives in their guts if they smile wrong.
Home. I use my jelly beans and my book to soothe myself. It works nicely until I remember that Kaya is supposed to be enjoying the candy right now.
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