Looking for X

by Deborah Ellis

  “There’s a social worker sitting at our kitchen table,” I said. “She’s got three heads, and claws, and she smells bad.”

  X nodded as she pulled her sandwich apart and looked at it closely. She trusted me, but she liked to be careful.

  “I hate social workers,” I continued. “They talk to Tammy as if she were a bad mother.”

  “It’s not just me,” Tammy once told me. “They talk to all people on welfare that way. It’s because we take money from the government.”

  That may be true, but some things are just for Tammy. I’ve heard social workers say, “I see from your file that you used to be a stripper. Hmmm.” Then they sneer at Tammy as if they were waiting for her to apologize. She never does, though.

  X stopped eating, and I realized I had stopped talking. She feels more comfortable if I talk while she eats. I think it helps her feel invisible, because while I’m talking, I’m paying attention to other things, not to her. If you’re being chased by the secret police, invisibility is useful.

  I started talking again. Since we were sitting under a tree from Brazil, I told her about some of the strange animals found in the Amazon jungle. I exaggerated a bit — there isn’t really a five-hundred-pound frog — but X didn’t seem to mind.

  X and I left the greenhouse separately, as always. I headed toward the library. I don’t know where X went.

  It felt funny being out on my own on a weekday. I always had one of the boys with me, their harness strapped to my wrist, their hand in mine. It felt weird to be alone, but it felt good, too. I felt free.

  On the way to the library, I stopped by an Italian restaurant. It had a menu posted outside. I stood and read the menu. I was hungry. I’m always hungry. Tammy feeds me, of course, and I get food at the lunch-and-breakfast club at school, but I’m always hungry anyway. Sometimes my hunger is so big I feel that I can eat everything I see — dogs, cars, park benches, newspaper boxes — just swallow them whole.

  I read over the menu and decided on a ravioli dinner, with a side order of chicken and a double dessert. It would cost as much for one meal as it cost us to buy groceries for a whole week.

  Someday I’m going to have enough money to be able to walk into any restaurant in town and order whatever I want, and keep ordering and eating until I can’t eat anything more.

  In the library I spent an hour looking at the big atlas. I never go into the library when one of my brothers is with me. They make too much noise, and they bother other people. The librarian asked me not to bring them. I wanted Tammy to complain, but she said she has too many other things to worry about.

  Through the library window I saw the social worker leave my building. Social workers always look like they’re dying to wash their hands when they leave our neighborhood.

  I went home.

  Mom was sitting in the living room with the twins. Our living room has no regular furniture, just mattresses along the walls, covered with blankets and lots of colorful pillows. Making pillows is a hobby of Tammy’s. She gets clothes from the second-hand store on dollar-a-pound days, and cuts them up into shapes and sews them back together to make pillows. They’re really pretty.

  We don’t have a television. We used to, but Mom had to sell it to get money for a treatment for the boys. I don’t really mind. It didn’t work very well, anyway.

  The twins were curled up with Tammy, making their little noises and playing with their fingers.

  “If they’re quiet now, they won’t sleep tonight,” I said.

  Mom smiled me a hello smile. “We’ll worry about that tonight. Right now, I want all my babies close to me.”

  I like it when she calls us her babies. It’s kind of a dopey thing to say, since we’re not babies, but I like it anyway.

  I joined them on the mattress and we all snuggled in. We might have stayed like that all night, but my stomach let out a huge rumble, so Tammy decided it was time to light the fire under the soup. She meant turn the stove burner on. There’s no actual fire. We have an electric stove.

  We almost always have soup. Even if we don’t have it for dinner, it’s always around. Tammy makes it herself and puts everything in it, but lets me pick out any lima beans I find. Sometimes we have soup and bread, sometimes soup and sandwiches, sometimes soup poured over mashed potatoes. On this night, we were having soup poured over little squares of toasted stale bread.

  While Tammy made the toast and cut it into squares, I stirred the soup and sang the soup song:

  “Beautiful soup, so rich and green,

  Waiting in a hot tureen!

  Who for such dainties would not stoop?

  Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

  Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!”

  It’s the Mock Turtle’s song from Alice in Wonderland. We made up the tune. Sometimes we make up other words to it.

  “Horrible soup, so slimy and foul

  Made with the head of a wormy owl!

  Who for such maggots would not stoop?

  Soup of the graveyard, horrible soup!

  Soup of the graveyard, horrible soup!”

  When I was younger, Tammy sometimes put joke eyeballs and big rubber insects in my bowl of soup, but I’ve mostly outgrown that now.

  Later that night, we took the twins out to the baseball field in the middle of Regent Park. We all ran around until they were tired out and ready for sleep. We were all alone out there, just us. The air was clean and cold. Tammy and I played tag, and the twins ran with us. It felt great. It felt like we were the most powerful people in the world.

  I could see other people looking down on us from their windows and their balconies. They could hear us laughing and having a good time. I wanted to wave to them all, so I did. Tammy saw what I was doing, and she laughed and waved, too. Some of the people waved back. I think our good time gave them a good time, too.

  Back at home, I did my homework while Tammy put the boys to bed. When she didn’t come back into the kitchen, I went into the boys’ room. They have mattresses on the floor, like we have in the living room.

  Mom was sound asleep, half of her on David’s bed, half of her on the floor. It didn’t surprise me to see her there. She often fell asleep when she was putting them to bed. She’s almost always tired.

  I covered Mom up with David’s blanket and kissed her goodnight.

  Our apartment has a tiny bedroom for Tammy and a bigger one for the twins. I have an alcove. It has a narrow bed built up high beside a window, with a ladder beside it. A curtain can be pulled across it, like the upper berth of a train. Underneath it is my bookshelf and a place to keep my clothes. My real treasures are on shelves by my bed. I keep the important stuff up high to keep my brothers out of it.

  When I lie on my bunk and look out the window, I sometimes pretend I’m on a train trip through the Gobi Desert, or in a bunk on a freighter ship, heading for the Cape of Storms.

  This night, I didn’t pretend to be anywhere but on the northeast corner of Regent Park, with my belly full of soup and my mom and little brothers asleep nearby.

  It would be a while before I had such a good night again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING

  “Are you sure you want to come?” I asked Mom. “It’s a really dumb play. I look like a fool in it.”

  “Of course I want to come. It will make a good story to embarrass you with to my grandchildren.” She buttoned David into his jacket.

  Every year, in late October, my school holds an open house to show the parents what their miserable brats will be up to in the coming year. Most of it’s a lie, of course, but everyone pretends it isn’t. Last year, one of the parents complained that his kid was in seventh grade and still couldn’t read, and what was the teacher going to do about it? The teacher peered over her glasses at him and asked him what was wrong at home.

  If the kid’s a success, it’s because of the school. If the kid’s a failure, it’s because of the home.

  Not all the teache
rs at my school are like that, just most of them. Good teachers don’t want to teach at poor schools. People think poor kids are automatically failures, so why bother with us?

  I’m not a failure. I’ve just turned eleven and I’m in grade eight. They bumped me ahead a couple of grades. Every year, though, the teachers warn Tammy that I’ll come to a bad end. They think that because we’re poor and my brothers are autistic and my mother used to be a stripper that I’m doomed to a life of crime and failure.

  The eighth grade play is the highlight of the evening.

  “If our play is the highlight, everyone’s in for a big disappointment,” I grumbled as I buckled Daniel into his harness.

  “‘The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,’” Tammy quoted. She used to do a dance to Elizabethan music. She quoted bits of Shakespeare while she was stripping. She said she enjoyed doing it, but the quotations went right over her audience’s head. “That’s from Hamlet,” she said.

  “Have you ever read the whole play?”

  “Don’t need to. That’s the best line.”

  “I thought the best line was ‘To be or not to be’?”

  “Overrated.”

  We keep the twins on harnesses when we’re out walking with them. The harnesses keep them from running into the street. They don’t understand about traffic.

  I moaned and groaned some more about my part on the way over to the school.

  “There are no dumb parts, just dumb players,” Tammy said.

  “Oh, knock it off. Let me enjoy being grumpy.” Tammy just laughed.

  Tiffany, one of my classmates, and her gang of girls who follow her around like sheep were grouped just outside the school entrance.

  They’ll make good teenagers, I thought.

  I headed for the backstage part of the auditorium. Mom was going to walk around with the twins until the play started. “I’ll try to tire them out so they’ll sit through it,” she said.

  The play was really dumb. It was written by a girl in our class who thought she was a great writer because teachers had told her so for years. They only told her that because she writes things they like.

  In this play, a girl is nervous about starting grade eight. She has a dream the night before school starts, where a fairy godmother leads her through all the wonderful things she’ll learn in the coming year. The girl wakes up in the morning looking forward to school. I was sure it would have the whole audience puking before it was halfway through.

  I played an equilateral triangle. I wore a huge cardboard triangle around my neck, and I had one line. “My sides are equal, and my corners are equal, so everything about me is equal.” Really deep.

  Backstage, everything was chaos. Our teacher, Miss Melon — we called her the Watermelon or Melonball behind her back — was fluttering around, checking a million unimportant details. “You’d think this was opening night on Broadway,” I mumbled. Before I could duck away, she spotted me.

  “Good, you’re finally here. Hurry and put on your costume.” She pushed me toward my fellow geometric shapes.

  Tiffany and her gang arrived, and they were giggling as I walked past them toward the costume table.

  “What’s the joke?” I asked. “I could use a laugh.”

  “You’re too young,” one of them said.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t understand. You don’t even wear a bra yet.”

  “You don’t think with your breasts, idiot,” I said back to them, “or maybe you do.”

  “Did you just call me an idiot?”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you understand what it means? Ask the Watermelon for a dictionary. Let me know if you need help with the alphabet.”

  “You little...” Tiffany pushed me, hard, and I fell to the floor. My triangle got bent, which cheered me up considerably. I sprang up from the floor and started to push her back, when I felt a restraining hand on my shoulder.

  The Watermelon had me in her grip. “Khyber! Stop that! Look what you’ve done to your costume!”

  “It looks better this way,” I muttered, although not loud enough for her to hear.

  “Now, smarten up and no more nonsense. I’ll put this down to backstage jitters, but if it happens again, you’ll be in trouble.” Miss Melon didn’t say anything to Tiffany. Tiffany’s pretty. Adults never think pretty kids can do anything wrong.

  I’m not pretty. I’m scrawny and my hair is always messy because I can’t be bothered to comb it.

  Tiffany had the starring role in the play, of course. She played the moronic girl who was afraid of grade eight. One of her gang members played the fairy godmother. They were strutting around backstage like a couple of peacocks. I felt kind of sorry for them. They didn’t seem to realize what a joke the play was.

  I watched the play from the side of the stage. It was as dopey as I’d remembered it from rehearsal. We were coming up to my entrance. I could hear the twins, way in the back. They were getting restless.

  I entered the stage with the other shapes. Daniel was really starting to fuss, and as Tammy tried to calm him down, David slipped off his chair. He started walking around, touching other people and their things, making his special noises.

  Good for you, David, I thought. Maybe there will be something fun about this evening after all. Daniel raised his noise level, too, adding to the fun. Tiffany had to raise her voice to be heard.

  Then I saw the faces on the people in the audience. They turned their heads, trying to show their disapproval to this woman who couldn’t control her children. The people David touched withdrew from him like he had a bad smell.

  “Why don’t you put those dumb brothers of yours in a zoo, where they belong?” Tiffany growled at me.

  That did it. I marched off the stage, adding to the twins’ noise by stamping my feet. The play halted as I went down into the audience.

  “Come with me, David,” I said. I picked him up. He put his warm little arms around my neck and let me carry him to the front of the auditorium. It was a bit hard going up the steps to the stage. David was getting heavy.

  Up on stage, I glared at my classmates and at the audience. I belted out my stupid line, not knowing or caring whether it was my turn or not.

  “My damn sides are equal, my damn corners are equal, so every damn thing about me is damn equal!”

  I tore off my cardboard triangle, flung it to the floor, then stomped back off the stage.

  Tammy and Daniel were waiting for me at the door. I got into my jacket, and we left the school.

  “Come here, you,” Tammy said, once we were out in the cool night air.

  She wrapped me in a huge hug. We put the boys between us, and we hugged them, too. It sure felt great.

  I thought she’d bawl me out for swearing, but she didn’t even mention it.

  I went to bed happy that night, but I woke up a couple of hours later. I could hear Mom in the kitchen. She was crying.

  I started to get out of my bed, but then I heard Juba’s voice, soft and soothing. Juba is Mom’s best friend. She lives in a tall apartment building at the other end of Regent Park.

  Juba will take care of Mom, I thought, then drifted back to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A WOMAN IN WHITE TURNS RED

  One of my friends is the waitress in the Trojan Horse Restaurant. She’s the meanest waitress in Toronto.

  That sounds rude, but it isn’t. It’s true. She was even written up in a magazine. They keep the article posted in the window. The owner says its good for business. He says it quietly, though. He’s a little afraid of her, even though he’s her boss.

  “I don’t know how she’s managed it, but she makes more than I do,” he whispered to me one Saturday when I was scrubbing pots. “Plus, she gets tips!”

  Her name is Valerie, and she must make a small fortune in tips. If she doesn’t like the amount a customer has left, she’ll call him back and make him leave more. I’ve even seen her run out of the restaurant after a customer.
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  “This is what you’re leaving me?” she’ll bark, and usually the customer is so startled — and so scared — he’ll cough up more money right then and there.

  She only does that to rich people — well, people richer than us. There are rich people living all around the outside of Regent Park.

  When people go into the Trojan Horse in need of a good meal but can’t afford one, Valerie loads them up with extras of whatever they order. She’s rude while she’s doing it, though, like she’s worried somebody might accuse her of being nice. Fat chance.

  Valerie does have one weakness — babies. Whenever a baby comes into the Trojan Horse, she goes all gooey and gushy. The boss and I get a kick out of watching her. She’ll take complete charge of the baby, and if the parent objects, or someone complains that she should put the baby down and get them their food, she growls at them like a dog protecting its bone. Parents who go to the Trojan Horse a lot wise up and let her take the baby, and then they enjoy a meal in peace. Babies never cry when Valerie is holding them. Maybe they feel how well she would protect them. Or maybe the sight of her mass of fiery red hair stuns them into silence.

  Valerie is twice as grumpy after there’s been a baby in the restaurant, to make up for being so gooey with the baby.

  Valerie is rude with Tammy and me, too, but we’re not afraid of her. She was Mom’s friend before I was born. They met during Tammy’s dancing days. Tammy would roll in for breakfast at two in the afternoon, three hours after the breakfast menu had ended. Valerie would growl at her, and Tammy would growl right back, so naturally they became good friends.

  Valerie was gooey with me for the first year of my life, bringing me a teddy bear the day I was born. I still have it. She was Mom’s labor coach, too. She practically ordered Mom to hurry up and give birth and stop fooling around.

  She stopped being gooey with me and started being grumpy when I was about a year old. I grew up with her rudeness. I like it. When I’m an adult, I’m going to be just as rude as Valerie. I just wish Tammy would let me practice more now.