She blushes, the guys laugh hard. I wish I could take the words back. “Are you sure?” she says.
Tony nudges my arm. “Why don’t you introduce us to your girlfriend,” he says. “Maybe she’d like—”
“Shut up,” I say. Mrs. Smythe has no expression now.
“I’ll talk to you later, then,” she says, and turns around and walks out without looking back. If I could, I’d follow her.
Billy claps me on the shoulder. “Stay away from them,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”
It doesn’t matter. She practically said she didn’t want to see me again. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to see me again either.
She’ll get into her car now and go home. She’ll honk when she pulls into the driveway so Mr. Smythe will come out and help her with the groceries. She always gets groceries today. The basics and sardines. Peanut butter. I lick my lips. Diamante frozen pizzas. Oodles of Noodles. Waffles. Blueberry Mueslix.
Mr. Smythe will come out of the house, wave, come down the driveway. They’ll take the groceries into the house after they kiss. They’ll kick the snow off their shoes and throw something in the microwave. Watch Cheers reruns on Channel 8. Mr. Smythe will tell her what happened in his day. Maybe she will say happened in hers.
We catch a ride home. Billy yabbers about Christmas in Vancouver, and how great it’s going to be, the two of us, no one to boss us around, no one to bother us, going anywhere we want. I turn away from him. Watch the trees blur past. I guess anything’ll be better than sitting around, listening to Tony and Craig gripe.
Aunt Genna’s poodle, Picnic, greeted people by humping their legs. He had an incredible grip. A new postman once dragged Picnic six blocks. Picnic bumped and ground as they went; the postman swore and whacked at the poodle with his mailbag.
Picnic humped the wrong leg, however, when he burst out of our lilac bushes and attached himself to one of Officer Wilkenson’s calves. I was lounging on the porch swing, watching hummingbirds buzz around the feeder. On that quiet, lazy summer afternoon, traffic on the nearby highway was pleasantly muted.
“Whose fucking dog is this?” A man’s yell broke the silence.
I sat up. A policeman was trying to pry Picnic off his leg. Picnic was going at it steady as a jackhammer.
“Frank! Get this thing off me!” the policeman said to his partner, who was unhelpfully snapping Polaroids.
The policeman lifted his leg and shook it hard. Picnic hopped off and attacked the other leg. The officer gave Picnic a kick that would have disabled a lesser dog. Not Picnic. I brought them the broom from the porch, but not even a sharp rap with a broom handle could quell Picnic’s passion.
“Oh my,” Aunt Genna said, arriving on the porch with a tray of lemonade. She had rushed inside when she saw the police officers coming because she wanted to get refreshments. I didn’t know it at the time, but they kept returning to ask if Mama had contacted me since her jailbreak. I just thought they really liked Aunt Genna’s cookies. She was always hospitable, the very picture of a grand Victorian lady, with her hair up in a big salt-and-pepper bun on top of her head. The lace on her dress fluttered as she put the tray down and rushed to the walkway where the policemen stood.
“Is—this—your—dog?” the policeman hissed.
“Why, yes, Officer Wilkenson.” She knelt to help them pry Picnic from the policeman’s foot. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”
“Can you just hold it for a moment?” Officer Wilkenson’s partner said to Aunt Genna, holding up his Polaroid. “I want to get you all in.”
There is a lake I go to in my dreams. Mama took me there when I got my period for the first time.
In the dream, she and I are sitting on the shore playing kazoos. Mama has a blue kazoo; mine is pink. We play something classical. Crickets are chirping. The sun is rising slowly over the mountains. The lake is cool and dark and flat as glass.
A moose crashes through the underbrush. It lumbers to the edge of the lake, then raises its head and bellows.
Mama puts her kazoo down quietly. She reaches behind her and pulls a shotgun from the duffle bag. She hands me the gun. We have trained for this moment. I steady the gun on my shoulder, take aim, then gently squeeze the trigger.
The sound of the shot explodes in my ear. A hole appears between the moose’s eyes. I don’t know what I expected, maybe the moose’s head to explode like a dropped pumpkin, but not the tidy red hole. The moose collapses forward, headfirst into the water.
“Let’s get breakfast,” Mama says.
Wearing my blue dress, I walk calmly into the lake. The pebbles on the shore are all rose quartz, round and smooth as Ping-Pong balls. As I go deeper into the lake, my dress floats up around me. When I am in up to my waist, I see the moose surfacing. It rises out of the water, its coat dripping, its eyes filled with dirt. It towers over me, whispering, mud dribbling from its mouth like saliva. I lean toward it, but no matter how hard I try, I can never understand what the moose is saying.
Paul and Janet are the parents I’ve always wanted. Sometimes I feel like I’ve stepped into a storybook or into a TV set. The day we were introduced, I don’t know what the counselors had told them, but they were trying not to look apprehensive. Janet was wearing a navy dress with a white Peter Pan collar. Light makeup, pearls, white shoes. Her blond hair was bobbed and tucked behind her ears. She looked like the elementary school teacher that she was. Paul had on stiff, clean jeans and an expensive-looking shirt.
“Hello, Lisa,” Janet said, tentatively holding out her hands.
I stayed where I was. At thirteen, I felt gawky and awkward in clothes that didn’t quite fit me and weren’t in fashion. Paul and Janet looked like a couple out of a Disney movie. I couldn’t believe my luck. I didn’t trust it. “Are you my new parents?”
Janet nodded.
We went to McDonald’s and I had a Happy Meal. It was my first time at a McDonald’s. Mama didn’t like restaurants of any kind. The Happy Meal came with a free toy—a plastic Garfield riding a motor scooter. I still have it on my bookshelf.
Paul and Janet talked cautiously about my new school, my room, meeting their parents. I couldn’t get over how perfect they looked, how normal they seemed. I didn’t want to say anything to them about Mama. If I did, they might send me back like a defective toaster.
The first time I saw Aunt Genna, the sun was high and blinding. She came out to the porch with lemonade and told her poodle Picnic to leave me alone. Picnic jumped up on me, licking my face when I bent to pet her. I ran across the yard, squealing and half afraid, half delighted. Aunt Genna tucked her dogs up with quilts embroidered with their names. She served them breakfast and dinner on porcelain plates. Aunt Genna took me in when Mama went to jail that first time, took me in like another stray dog, embroidered my pillow with my name, served me lemonade and cookies in miniature tea sets. One of her dogs—Jenjen, Coco, or Picnic—was always following her. Although she was born in Bended River, Manitoba, she liked to believe she was an English lady.
We had tea parties every Sunday after church. Aunt Genna brought out her plastic dishes and sat the dogs on cushions. Jenjen and Coco loved teatime. I would serve them doggie biscuits from plates decorated with blue bears and red balloons. Picnic didn’t like to sit at the table and would whine until Aunt Genna let him go to his hallway chair.
Since I wasn’t allowed to have real tea, Aunt Genna filled the silver teapot with grape juice.
“How are you today, Lady Lisa?” she would ask, in her best English accent.
“Oh, I am quite fine,” I would say. “And yourself?”
“Quite well, except that I have gout.”
“Oh, how awful! Is it very painful?”
“It makes my nose itchy.”
“Would you like a scone?”
“I’d adore one.”
It was at one of these tea parties that I first asked about my parents. Jenjen was gnawing at her biscuit, spreading crumbs on the table. Coco and Picnic were
howling. I poured grape juice for both of us, then said, “Are my parents dead?”
“No,” Aunt Genna said. “They are in Africa.”
I put down my cup and crawled into Aunt Genna’s lap. “What are they doing in Africa?”
“They are both doctors and great explorers. They wanted so very much to take you with them, but there are too many snakes and tigers in Africa. They were afraid you’d be eaten.”
“But why did they go?”
“They went because they were needed there. There are very few doctors in Africa, you see, and every single one counts.”
“But why did they go?”
“Lady Lisa,” Aunt Genna said, kissing the top of my head. “My Lady Lisa, they didn’t want to leave you. Your mother cried and cried when they took you out of her arms. Oh, how she cried. She was so very sad.”
“Then why did she go?”
“She had no choice. Duty called. She was called to Africa.”
“Was my father called too?”
“Yes. Your mother took him with her. They went together.”
“When are they coming back?”
“Not for a long, long time.”
I put my arms around her and cried.
“But I will always be here for you,” she said, patting my back. “I will always be here, my Lady Lisa.”
Aunt Genna told me other things. She told me there were monsters and bogeymen in the world, but all you had to do was be a good girl and they wouldn’t get you. I always believed Aunt Genna until Mama killed her.
Janet liked these weird art movies that never made it to the Rupert theaters. She was always renting stuff with subtitles, dark lighting, talking heads, and bad special effects. This one was called Street Angel, and I secretly hoped it would have some sex, but when the movie opened in a squalid hut, I wondered if Janet would believe me if I said I wanted to do homework. For the first few minutes nothing happened, except this grimy, skinny kid scrounged through garbage heaps for food. In the backround there were all these dogs getting kicked and shot and run over. Then the kid was in an alley and it began to snow. I stayed very still, not really paying attention to the end, my mind stuck on the scene where this old dog collapsed and the rest of the pack circled, sniffing its body. A skinny brown mutt nipped at the old dog’s leg. The dog growled deep in its throat and staggered to its feet. I knew what was coming. I knew and I couldn’t stop watching. The mutt ripped into its stomach. The scene went on and on until the dog stopped yelping and jerking on the ground, its eyes flat as the mutt dragged its intestines away from the feeding frenzy. The boy kicked the pack aside and stood over the body. He picked up a cigarette butt and stuck it in the dead dog’s mouth.
I saw Mama on a talk show one day.
She was hooked in from her cell via satellite. Another woman, one who had murdered her mother and her grandmother, sat in front of the studio audience, handcuffed to the chair. Next to her was a girl who had drowned her baby in a toilet, thinking it had been sent to her by the devil.
Mama wore no makeup. Her hair was pulled back and gray streaks showed through the brown. She looked wan. Sometimes, when she gestured, I could see the belly shackle that bound her wrists to her waist.
The talk-show host gave the microphone to a man from the audience who asked, “When was the first time you killed?”
For a long time Mama said nothing. She stared straight into the camera, as if she could see the audience.
“I lost my virginity when I was twenty-seven,” Mama said.
“That wasn’t the question,” the talk-show host said impatiently.
Mama smiled, as if they hadn’t got the punch line. “I know what the question was.”
I shut the TV off.
How old was I the first time I saw Mama kill? I can’t remember. I was small. Not tall enough to see over our neighbor’s fence. Our neighbor, Mr. Watley, built a fence to keep kids from raiding his apple orchard. It was flat cedar planks all the way round to the back, where he’d put up chicken wire. When the fence didn’t keep them out, he bought a Pit Bull, a squat black-and-brown dog with bowlegs.
I had to pass Mr. Watley’s house on the way home from school. I could hear the dog pacing me, panting loud. Once, I stopped by the fence to see what would happen. The dog growled long and low. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and on my arms and legs.
“Who’s there?” Mr. Watley called out. “Sic ’em, Ginger.”
Ginger hit the fence. It wobbled and creaked. I shrieked and ran home.
After that I walked home on the other side of the street, but I could still hear Ginger. I could hear her when she growled. I could sense her pacing me.
None of the kids liked to play at my house. No one wanted to go near Ginger.
A carload of teenagers drove by Mr. Watley’s house the morning Mama killed. They hung out the windows, and one of them came up and pounded on the fence until Ginger howled in frustration. When Mr. Watley opened his door, they threw beer bottles. He swore at them. I heard him from my bedroom. Down in the yard, Ginger kept ramming into the fence. She’d run up to it and try to jump and hit it. The fence shuddered.
“Stay away from that man,” Mama said to me before I left for school. “He’s crazy.”
All day long at school I’d been dreading the walk home. I waited on the other side of the street, just before Mr. Watley’s house. My thermos rattled in my lunch box as my hands shook.
Ginger barked.
I waited until I saw Mama peeking out the kitchen. I felt a bit safer, but not much. I ran. Maybe it was stupid, but I wanted to be inside. I wanted to be with Mama. I remember looking both ways before crossing the street, the way I’d been taught. I ran across the street with my thermos clunking against the apple that I hadn’t eaten and hadn’t been able to trade. Running, reaching our lawn, and thinking, I’m safe, like playing tag and getting to a safety zone where you can’t be touched. I remember the sound of wood breaking and I turned.
Ginger bounded toward me and I couldn’t move, I just couldn’t move. She stopped two feet away and snarled and I couldn’t make any muscle in my body move. Ginger’s teeth were very white and her lips were pulled back way up over her gums.
I found my voice and I screamed.
The dog leapt and I banged my lunch box against the side of her head and her jaws snapped shut on my wrist. There was no pain, but I screamed again when I saw the blood. I dropped the lunch box and Ginger let go because Mama was running toward us. Mama was coming and she was shrieking.
It was as unreal then as it is now. Mama and Ginger running toward each other. They ran in slow motion, like lovers bounding across a sunlit field. Mama’s arm pulled back before they met and years later I would be in art class and see a picture of a peasant woman in a field with a curved knife, a scythe, cutting wheat. Her pose, the lines of her body would be so like Mama’s that I would leave the class, run down the hallway to the bathroom, and heave until I vomited.
Mama slid the knife across Ginger’s scalp, lopping off the skin above her eyebrows. Ginger yelped. Mama brought her knife up and down. Ginger squealed, snapped her jaws at Mama, and crawled backward. Up and down. Mama’s rapt face. Up and down. The blood making patterns on her dress like the ink blots on a Rorschach test.
The moose’s short neck makes her unsuited for grazing; consequently, she is a browser. Her preference runs to willow, fir, aspen, and birch, as well as the aquatic plants found at the bottoms of lakes. The moose is quite able to defend herself; even grizzly bears and wolf packs think twice before attempting to kill the largest member of the deer family. Much of the moose’s time is spent in the water. She is an excellent swimmer, easily covering fifteen or twenty miles. She is a powerful traveler on land, too, trotting uphill or jumping fallen branches for hour after hour.
During the rutting season, her mate, the bull moose, is one of the most dangerous animals, frenzied enough to inflict death or dismemberment on those who stand between him and her and incapable of distinguis
hing between friend and enemy.
A man and a woman came into our backyard. The woman knelt beside me as I lay back in my lawn chair feeling the drizzle on my face. She touched my hand and said, “Your mother’s been asking for you.”
Her hair and skin were tinged blue by the diffused light through her umbrella. She showed me a card. I didn’t bother reading it, knew just by looking at her perfectly groomed face that she was someone’s hound dog.
“Janet’s in the house,” I said, deciding to play dense. It never worked.
Her hand squeezed my arm. “Your real mother.”
I wondered what she did when she wasn’t trying to convince people to visit serial killers in jail. Sometimes they were writers or tabloid reporters, grad students, the merely morbid, or even a couple of psychics. I wondered why they always came in pairs, and what her partner was thinking as he stood behind her, silent. Only the sleaziest ones came after me like this, not asking Paul or Janet’s permission, waiting for a time when I was alone.
Mama kept sending these people to talk to me, to persuade me to come visit her. I suspected that what she really wanted was a good look at my face so she’d know whom to come after if she ever got out.
“She misses you.”
I turned my face up to the sky. “Tell her I miss Aunt Genna.”
“You don’t really want me to tell her that, do you?”
I closed my eyes. “You’re taping this, aren’t you?”
“Lisa,” the woman held onto my arm when I tried to sit up. “Lisa, listen—it would only take a day, just one day out of your life. She only wants to see you—”
I jerked my arm away and ran for the house just as Janet came out.
“Who are they?”
The man and the woman were already leaving. They could try all they liked. I wasn’t ready to see Mama and maybe never would be. But I didn’t want any questions either. “Just Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
I saw the woman waiting outside school the next day but pretended not to notice her. Eventually she went away.
I was fourteen when I first tried to commit suicide. I remember it clearly because it was New Year’s Eve. Paul and Janet were at a costume ball and thought I was with a friend. Paul was a pirate and Janet was a princess.
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