Going Down Swinging
Page 29
I must have had ESP for a second cuz I was right then thinking he needed a nap time. He got up and bumped into the wall on his way to the bedroom. It wasn’t even that funny, really. It was how Mum was a lot of times when she used to come home from being out with him. And then I felt sick cuz of suddenly remembering Mrs. Hood hating my guts and probably sending the police out looking for me. And Todd Baker would hate me too, and they’d be looking for me in police cars and stuff and we couldn’t go to any of our normal places or they’d find us. Stewart’s was our only secret place.
I think Mum got ESP then too—she picked up the phone and put it in her lap. Mrs. Hood—she was reading my mind and she wanted to call Mrs. Hood and I’d have to tell her the number or she’d hate my guts too. I looked at my last hunk of sandwich and ate it. Chew each bite twenty times—I kept thinking that in my head, over and over—chew each bite twenty times, twenty times, twenty times. Mrs. Hood told me that once after I got another stomach ache.
Mum reached over and flipped my hair behind my ear. Her hands smelled all clean and like bread. “I think I better call and let Mrs. Hood know you’re all right.”
Fifteen chews, sixteen, seventeen—my mouthful was like goo, so I just swallowed before twenty. Except my teeth kept clacking together looking for stuff and biting inside on my cheeks. What if Mum went like a tornado and yelled and screamed at Mrs. Hood, and screamed and yelled and swore, and then they traced the call? And stupid Wendy would say I told you so—and the lion will lay down with the lamb. You can’t have a tiger for a pet.
I squeezed everything tight, my toes and teeth and armpits and bum, until it hurt as much as possible, and then I let go. Mum said, “Would you feel better if I let you dial?” No. Nope. And the lion will lie down with the lamb. “OK, how about if you tell me the number, and I’ll dial.” No. No way. You can’t have a tiger for a pet. Mum touched my cheek again and I jumped. Her hand jumped back a little and she came in close and put her arm around me. “It’s OK, honey, I just want to let her know you’re OK, that’s all. She’s probably worried.”
“No, she won’t care. Let’s just go.”
“Go where? Sweety, listen, we have to call and come clean so they don’t think you’ve been kidnapped or something.”
“Yeah. Yah. ’K.”
“Do you know the number?” She was talking to me like I was even younger than Stewart.
“Yeah.” Just say it, and the lion will lay down with the lamb. And Jesus will take back the keys to the world. “OK. It’s eight-seven-six.” Their numbers—You cannot give out this number! Numbers, Deuteronomy and Matthew and Joshua. I missed Josh. Why couldn’t we’ve just stayed with Josh? “I can’t re—I’m not allowed,” and my plate has to go in the sink. I got up and went in the kitchen and sat on the floor behind the counter. I forgot my plate. Just rest for a while. Like nap time when you’re little. What will happen to little children at Armageddon?
Mum came in the kitchen with the phone and a long snake-cord dragging behind. She sat down on the floor beside me, then she put the phone beside her and held my hand and kissed it. She said, “I just don’t want her to worry.”
“I’m not allowed.”
“I know. But you’re with me now, you’re safe.”
“Yeah. Don’t tell, ’K? OK. Eight-seven-six. Um—” Mum looked at me like I was the best thing in the whole world. “Eight-seven-six, five-three-seven-four.”
She started dialling. I watched the circle of the dial float back around after each number. Then, “Hello!” Loud, too loud. “Is that Mrs. Hood? … Hi, this is Eilleen Hoffman.” And quiet. Then, “Oh yes. I, well, Grace dialled the number so I could let you know that she’s here with me and you wouldn’t worry.” My chest went tight when she said my name. I turned my back away and put my forehead on my knees, squished my eyeballs hard. Then Mum said, “Pardon? No, I’m not—she’s fine, she was just a little homesick and wanted to stay with her mum for a while and I wanted you to know.” Then there was a big pause and Mum took a breath like she got punched too, and she stuttered all flabbergasted and went, “Wha—just a second here, a child like what?—Grace is not a child like anything—she’s terrific, she’s here because I want her here, because I love her, and as a matter of fact, I told her to come home … No, listen, I don’t appreciate your tone or what you’re saying or, furthermore, what you’ve put my child through. Grace is what keeps me alive. You may believe in death, but I happen to believe in life!” And then she said “Merry Christmas” and slammed the phone down. Quiet.
My chest hurt, so I breathed and Mum said, “Gee, hon, she’s lovely. Why have you been keeping her from me?” She was trying to be funny, so I smiled a bit and asked what Mrs. Hood said. Mrs. Hood told Mum she shouldn’t have to deal with a child like me in her condition. That’s why Mum got so mad. Then Mum said to me, “Well, may’s well keep going while we’re on a roll,” and started dialling Todd Baker. It was kind of the same, except she didn’t get as mad when she got to the mad part. She just said, “Look, she was afraid to go home. What did you expect me to do, send her away?” And then she told him to never-mind and hung up on him too.
I felt sort of smiley butterflies a bit after she hung up on Todd Baker. Now he could just see how it feels, getting told off when you’re upset. Plus, he shouldn’t even have got upset; she was my mum. Then I asked her what he said. And she said he told her she was going to get charged with kidnapping and to send me right back where I came from.
Mum swooped over and went “Nap!” when she hugged me. We got snorty giggles and I grabbed her back. “Nap!” We kept napping each other on the kitchen floor. Then she pulled me onto her lap and said, “Kidnapping my own kid—huh! Draft-dodging little turd.” And I started laughing like crazy. Mum always had good words like turd to call people—and she said it some more, only like The Queen—“Yes, a turd, I say, a turd without a country! Poor goof, probably scared they’ll ship him back to Ohio or wherever the hell he’s from.” I told her he was from Oregon. And Mum went, “Ew—an Oregonian turd. They’re the worst!” Mum’s hilarious when she’s being funny. “Well, screw ’em all; it’s just you and me, kid. Come sit and watch TV with your old Tigress ma,” and she growled and we went and laid down on the couch together.
Grace Fifteen
DECEMBER 1974
MUM WANTED US to keep moving. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. She didn’t say that and I never saw the movie, but I heard that’s what they did. And plus, I really wanted to be called The Sundance Kid.
Stewart’s head hurt and he was sad that we were leaving. He seemed kind of bugged that Mum wouldn’t say where we were going. I figured she couldn’t tell him cuz then he’d know too much, until we were sitting, all set to go, in the back of the taxi—turned out she didn’t even know. All she could think of for telling the driver was downtown.
We were in the taxi for around ten minutes’ worth of driving when he finally said into the rear-view mirror again, “So, where d’you wanna go? Do you know where you wanna go?”
Mum kept looking out the window. There was rain again and it made everything blue—the trees and people and streets. “No, just go downtown … somewhere cheap.”
“OK, you mean a hotel or something; now were gettin somewhere. Whereabouts? Like downtown downtown? or Broadway and Main? or—I mean, we’ll be downtown in another seven, eight minutes, eh … so, uh—” He wiped the back of his hand across his nose and sniffled. I looked at his black hair curling down on his shoulders, then in the rear-view mirror at his eyes, blue and shiny and right in this little clean space between the curls on his forehead and the beard creeping up his face. He opened his mouth and closed it again, then went, “A cheap hotel.”
“Yeah, nothing fancy, just a cheap clean place to stay the night.”
He was quiet a second. “Well, hey, y’know, the Child Protection’s got a place where y—”
“No!” bursted out of Mum and me at the same time. We giggled at each other and fidgeted.
“Cheap!” We said it together again like we were the chicken sisters.
“Right.” He nodded, “Cheap.” Well, we’ll be coming up on the Ivanho Hotel on Main. Shitty area, but it’s somethin’ around ten, twelve bucks a night.”
“Sold!” She held my hand and said, “Just think, you can look back at this someday when you have kids and tell them we ran away and stayed at the Ivan-ho-ho-ho Hotel.”
I looked up at the place as we stopped. Mum leaned over the seat and paid the driver with some of the money Stewart gave her, saying, “Umm, just the bills, please—I’m sorry, that’s not much of a tip, we’re in sort of a tight spot right now.”
“Hey, I understand, completely, eh—I know the scene. You guys take care,” and he patted the back of the seat.
We got out and Mum took me by the hand under humongous neon letters that ran up and down over the doors. “IVAN O,” it said, with the burned-out “H.”
The lobby smelled like cigarettes and beer. We could hear yelling and glass clinking in the bar behind us through the swinging doors, like the kind of doors in a western movie except for made of metal. The carpet was black with giant red flowers, and had a dirty crusty part right outside the bar doors and a worn-out-carpet path going from the outside door to the front desk.
I looked around while Mum did the talking at the front desk. The bar doors smashed open and a skinny guy, kind of like the guy who sold me the Christmas tree, tripped out and sloshed his beer, yelling over his shoulder at the bar, “Oh yeah, eh, well fuck you too, buddy, and your fuckin’ cat, y’fuckin’ …” He laughed himself into a cough and said, “Shit, I got beer up my nose,” and swung his head around, whacking it into the door. “Ah shit, man, my fuckin’ head!” He looked at me. “Good thing I’m pissed or it’d hurt like hell,” and he cough-laughed again, and rubbed his cheek and looked around the lobby. “This isn’t the fuckin’ can—hey man, where’s the can?”
The desk-guy looked up from where Mum was filling out a card. “Look. Don’t come out here with your beer, it’s illegal. Go back in the bar,” and he took the card and handed Mum the room key. He changed his voice to nicer when he said, “It’s number two-twenty-three and the doors lock automatically. You can take those stairs up.”
The drunk guy was still standing in the door with his hand inside his rumply shirt. “Hey Asshole, I didn’t come out here t’ drink, for fucksake—I wanna take a piss and you’re talkin’ about drinkin’! Well, s’cuse me in front of the kid, but fuck you,” and he giggled and shook his head and took an imaginary hat off at Mum and me and backed into the bar.
We went up the stairs, down the hall. The wallpaper was glued tight on the walls, no coming-loose parts, just yellow and brown splotches. The carpet was green; there was a dresser and a bed covered with a gold bedspread that looked like it used to be some drapes.
Mum threw her purse and our tote bag on the floor and looked around. I went to the blinds and banged and clanged them to the side so I could look down at the street.
“Grace, get out of there! Don’t stand in the window like that, OK.”
I banged back out. “Why?”
“Just—It’s better not to.” She was standing by the door, trying to wiggle the back of a chair under the doorknob. It was too short. Her eyes went around until they stopped on something bigger. “Here, come help me with the dresser.” She pushed our stuff on the floor and started nudging the dresser out from the wall.
“Why? What are we doing?”
“Putting it in front of the door—give me a hand.”
“Why?”
“Because. Because-because-because, because of the wonderful things he does.”
“What?” I figured so Child Protection couldn’t break in, so I pushed the dresser hard as I could.
“Because this is what you do in an eleven-dollar-a-night hotel.”
I remembered about the drunk guy downstairs and looked for more furniture.
When all the chairs and end tables and stuff were piled on, I asked if we were going to move the bed.
“Uh, no. I think that’s enough.”
“’K. Now what? There’s no TV.”
“I don’t know. Let’s get ready for bed and play Twenty Questions or I Spy or something.”
Eilleen Thirteen
DECEMBER 1974
ALMOST SEVEN A.M., according to your watch. Still dark out. Grace is sleeping. You’re not. Not that you did at any point, just lay on your back listening for footsteps of cops, social workers or rapists, because that’s what you do when you and your baby are holed up in an eleven-dollar fleabag.
All night you’ve been running scenarios. You’ve pondered the interior, running to Kamloops or Penticton. But what’s the coast for, if not stowing away on ships, floating to Hawaiian islands, floating … Tried to fall asleep floating on breath last night. No dice. Imagined them banging on the door of your apartment. Mrs. Hoffman, we know you’re in there. Same words, different faces.
Is this rock bottom? The one they yammer on about, the one you hit and float from, ears popping, lungs exploding, busting a new glassy surface, a new woman crashing out of the water towards the light, the sun that finally came up?
Must be. Must be, because it makes no sense to keep running. Makes no goddamn sense unless you plan to go through this again, run again to hear about yet another door they’ve banged their heads against looking for you and your kid. Keep running and they’ll grab her in mid-stride when you’re least expecting.
You’ve broken the surface, now get back to shore. Go and get your feet planted; you need roots; you need roots so deep, they can yank till their teeth ache.
Your daughter’s kid-plump mouth takes air in and out. Her baby skin looks like a word could pierce it. If you don’t give her this, if you don’t give you this, what good’s it all, anyway?
Sit up. Breathe. Breathe deep and feel your lungs explode, feel the sun make your cheeks rise like dough. Swim for it.
You get dressed and Grace lifts her head, mumbling at you. Go back to sleep, angel, I’m just going to the store to get us some juice.
She looks to the furniture piled against the door and at the ceiling, asks the time, rolls over, rolls back, asks, Can I ’ave orange juice? and, um … But she can’t think through the haze.
I’ll get us something. I’ll be right back, and you start taking down the barricade.
The next thing you know, you are in front of a pay phone, the dime has dropped and someone groggy picks up on the second ring.
Hi. It’s Eilleen Hoffman. OK. I’ve given this some thought and were going home. Grace stays with me, that’s the deal. You’re not taking her back there. You can send social workers every day if you want, to monitor the situation, I don’t care, but she stays with me. If anything happens, if you try to take her, we’ll just run and you’ll never hear from us again. So. There. That’s my offer.
There’s a sleep breath on the other end. A tongue cluck. Todd Baker says, OK, Eilleen.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my eternal gratitude to the wonderful women who, as both friends and editors, believed in me from the start, encouraged me, pushed me along, and without whom I would have been lost. In order of their appearance: Susan Musgrave (for your philanthropy and jolt of courage), Rhea Tregebov (for your endless generosity and continued status as Deadeye Tregebov), Maya Mavjee (for helping me cut to the chase), Sarah Davies (for your provocation and nurturing hand) and Anne Collins (for taking a chance).
To Irene Livingston and Lenore Wildeman for your inspiration, love and experience, I thank you. To Ken Kirzinger for your all-encompassing love and your generous heart.
Thanks also to Melinda Menkley at the Ministry of Social Services, the staff at the Addiction Research F
oundation in Toronto, the staff at the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library and the Vancouver Public Library, David Franco for touring me through Vancouver General Hospital, the congregation at the Tsawwassen Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the members of various Alcoholics Anonymous centres who graciously shared their knowledge, literature and memories with me.
For their support, I am grateful and indebted to the Banff Centre for the Arts, the UCROSS Foundation, the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts for both the now-defunct Explorations Program and the Grants to Professional Writers Program. And, finally, thanks to the Writers Union of Canada for its Mentorship Program and commitment to fostering novice writers. Were it not for the Union I would not have had the privilege of working with my mentor, Sandra Birdsell, who not only gave me encouraging critique, but took the time to teach me about the business of being a writer.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2000
Copyright © 1999 by Billie Livingston
All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.