Looking for X

by Deborah Ellis

  Valerie’s crazy about the boys. I like people who like my brothers. She’s rude to them, too, but they seem to know when they’re safe and around friends. If anyone in the restaurant complains about the twins’ noises or arm-flapping, she takes their food away and tells them to leave. I love it when she does that.

  I work at the Trojan Horse for one hour every Saturday morning. It’s not a real job, since I’m too young, but it’s still a job. Valerie got it for me. She told the boss that this was the way it was going to be. The boss nodded meekly and disappeared behind the grill.

  I love arriving at the restaurant. It smells of bacon and stale cigarette smoke, grease and old coffee. It’s warm and cheerful.

  “Quit blocking the door,” Valerie snarled when I got to work that morning. I grinned at her and hurried to hang up my jacket.

  “Here, clean this!” Valerie pointed to something greasy and gross. She usually has me clean something like that.

  “Ugh. Did you save this up for me all week?”

  “Less talk and more work!”

  I shut up and got to work.

  When whatever it was was finally clean, my hour was up. I sat down at the back table, the one reserved for the employees, and Valerie brought me my breakfast. I get breakfast in exchange for work. Having breakfast in a restaurant is great. It makes me feel like a big shot.

  I got the Saturday papers from behind the counter, smothered my eggs in ketchup, making them look bloody and messy, and settled down to eat. Valerie gives me extra bacon. I like to dip it in the egg yolk.

  After breakfast I spent some time at the library, and by then it was time for lunch.

  Tammy had chores for me, as always, then David and I walked over to Allan Gardens. We ran outside for awhile, then went into the greenhouse to wait for a wedding.

  Working a wedding was my secret job. Secret from Tammy, that is. She never expressly said I couldn’t do it, but only because she never imagined that I would.

  David, of course, would never tell. Sometimes it’s useful to have autistic brothers.

  David and I sat on the center bench in the greenhouse, the most popular bench for weddings. I gave David a couple of buttons to play with so he wouldn’t be bored.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  A wedding party swarmed into the greenhouse and headed for my bench. Their faces dropped when they saw David and me sitting on that bench like we owned it.

  “Hello,” the photographer nodded to me, all friendly. I recognized the style. It didn’t throw me a bit. Before I got through with him, he’d be tearing out what was left of his hair.

  I nodded hello back, to put him off his guard. He got busy setting up his camera. It was pointed at my bench. He, and everyone else, assumed I would move. As he busied himself with the light meter and other gadgets, the wedding party looked at David and me. They tried to smile pleasantly, because they could see David was special, and they didn’t want anybody to accuse them of being mean to special children. Everything was proceeding as it should.

  “Now, if I could just ask this pretty young lady to step off to the side for a few moments...” The photographer smiled at me again.

  I smiled back. I didn’t move.

  The best man came onto the scene. “Are we ready?”

  The photographer glanced in my direction. The best man (if he was their best man, I’d hate to see their worst one) nodded, as if he knew his duty and would do it. He sauntered over to me, with all the time in the world. He sat his ugly self down beside me.

  “What have you got there, sport,” he asked David. “Some buttons?”

  David made one of his noises and kept playing with his buttons.

  The best man tried me next. “We’re hoping to take some pictures here. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  “Good.” He got off the bench, feeling victorious. “You just have to know how to talk to them,” he said to the photographer.

  I still didn’t move.

  The best man came back to me and said, “Uh, the thing is, we’d like to use the bench.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Well, we’d like you to move.”

  I didn’t.

  The best man looked helplessly at the groom. The groom was even uglier than the best man.

  The groom dug into the pocket of his tuxedo and pulled out a two-dollar coin. “Here you are. Go buy yourself some candy.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I stayed where I was.

  “What’s the hold-up here?” The bride rushed up to the gang around the bench. The rest of the wedding party crowded around.

  “Look, little girl, we’d like to take some photographs here, and you’re in our way, so would you please move?”

  I sat still.

  “She must be retarded,” the bride said to the men. “This is my wedding day,” she said to me, very loudly and slowly. “Do you understand? My wedding day?”

  I stared right back at her.

  “Give the brat some more money,” she snapped at the groom. He handed me another two-dollar coin, and was about to put his change back in his pocket when the bride grabbed it all out of his hand and practically threw it at me.

  “Buy some candy for your brother, too,” he said. I thanked him. I didn’t thank the bride.

  “We’ve asked you nicely. Now will you get out of here?”

  I blinked, the picture of innocence. David turned the volume up on his noise, and started jumping and flapping his arms.

  Next came my favorite part. Someone always lost their temper, and I always enjoyed it. When Tammy loses her temper at me, I hate it, but when strangers do, particularly when I haven’t done anything wrong, I enjoy it immensely.

  This time, it was the bride. Her face got red and her cheeks puffed out, and she started sounding like a pot about to boil over. I didn’t like her. I didn’t like any of them. Sometimes I do, and I leave quite pleasantly after the first bribe, but I didn’t like these people. The bride’s dress must have cost more than Mom spends on rent in a whole year, maybe five years, even.

  “Listen, kid, I’ve spent a long time planning for this day, and so far, everything has been perfect, and I am not going to let you ruin it!” Her voice screeched like the crows and gulls that hang around the garbage bin. She was as ugly as the groom. In fact, everyone in the wedding party was ugly. You’d think that, with all that money, they’d invest in plastic surgery.

  “Get off that bench and take your defective brother with you, before I throw you off myself!” The Bride of Frankenstein was spitting, she was so angry.

  I usually don’t make nasty comments when I’m working a wedding, but because she insulted my brother, I let one fly.

  “Your bridesmaids’ dresses are the color of puke,” I said.

  The bridesmaids looked at themselves, and I saw from their faces that they realized I was right. Even if they liked the dresses before, they never would again.

  Happy to have the last word, I took David’s hand, and we walked calmly out of the greenhouse.

  I liked having money in my pocket. I was saving for something big, so I couldn’t spend much of it, but I splurged and bought some gummi feet for David and me. I knew that eating gummi feet wouldn’t really increase my chances of becoming an explorer of faraway places, but it couldn’t hurt, either.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TROUBLED WATERS

  We went to church Sunday morning, as usual. The twins went to the nursery, I went to Sunday school, and Mom got a quiet hour without kids.

  I haven’t decided about God, but I do like Sunday school. My class was small, and the teacher and I spent a lot of time looking at an old atlas of the Bible, and talking about camels. I know a lot about camels.

  “The weather doesn’t look very good,” Tammy said, as we were walking home.

  “Oh, Mom, it’s all right, and anyway, you promised!”

  Tammy laughed at my pleading face. “Okay, stop begging. We’ll go.”
r />   Tammy had been saying for weeks that we would go to the Toronto Islands one Sunday, and had put aside enough money for the ferry tickets. We would have to walk to the ferry, which is a long way from Regent Park, but that was fine with me, since we would go down Yonge Street.

  Yonge Street is Toronto’s busiest street. Tammy didn’t allow me to go there on my own, because of the rough people who hang out there.

  On the way, I dragged Tammy into the army surplus store. I dragged her in there every time we went to Yonge Street.

  “Not again, Khyber,” she protested. “All that canvas and camping equipment. Why don’t we go try on dresses instead?” She was kidding me. She knew I’d rather spend an hour with Miss Melon than ten minutes trying on dresses.

  The greatest backpack in the world was in the army surplus store. I’d been looking at it for months. It cost sixty dollars. Although I had fourteen dollars saved, I’d have to work a lot more weddings before I could buy it.

  “This is the one?” Tammy asked, lifting it down off the wall hook so I could hold it. The twins were restless, so I knew I’d only have a moment with it.

  “This is it,” I replied. It had lots of pockets, including secret pockets, deep inside the pack. I showed them to Tammy. “I could do some great exploring with this!”

  “You certainly could,” Tammy said, putting it back. “Maybe one day we can get it for you.” David started screeching, so we had to leave without looking at all the gadgets in the glass cases, but at least I got to see the pack.

  Tammy didn’t know about the wedding money, of course. I kept it in a little bag under my mattress.

  All the way down to the lake I yakked about the backpack and what I’d put in each pocket. Tammy probably wasn’t listening — even though the boys were on their harnesses, it still takes a lot of work to move them through the crowds — but I didn’t care. I was happy to have her within hearing range of my voice.

  It was cold on the ferry, but we stood on the upper deck, enjoying the fresh wind on our faces.

  “Happy,” said David.

  “You feel happy. That’s very good talking, David,” Mom said. It was important to encourage the boys every time they said something or made eye contact. Mom spent an hour a day with each of them, trying to get them to talk or look her in the eye. Each time they did, they got a little piece of marshmallow. It was a program Tammy had read about in one of her autism books. She taught me to do it, too.

  For awhile I couldn’t understand what the big deal was about eye contact. Then Tammy spent a whole day without making eye contact with me. After that, I understood.

  “The boys are growing fast,” Tammy said.

  “They’re getting heavy, too.”

  “They take after their father,” Tammy said. “He was tall. Do you remember?”

  “How could I forget. He was ugly, too. But the boys aren’t ugly.”

  “No, they’re very handsome.”

  “We should try to get them in the movies. I hear they use a lot of twins when they’re making movies. Would you like that, Daniel? Would you like to be a movie star?” Daniel hooted and jumped up and down, but he does that all the time, anyway, so I had no way of knowing if he was agreeing with me.

  We landed at Ward’s Island and walked around there for awhile, looking at the little houses, picking out the ones we’d like to live in. Then we walked along the boardwalk beside the lake to Centre Island, where the amusement park was. It was shut down for the season, but I liked it better then. Besides, we never had money to go on any of the rides when they were open.

  Centreville had a closed-up look, like its body was there but its spirit was some place else.

  “Centreville is like the twins,” I said to Tammy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we know there’s something great inside those boarded-up places, but we just don’t know how to get to it.”

  Tammy put a hand on my head to show she liked what I said. “Your ears are cold. I should have made you wear a hat.” She pulled the boys’ hats down lower over their ears. “We should head back soon.”

  “What about the picnic?”

  We sat on a bench outside the Haunted Barrel Factory, had our sandwiches and made up names for other scary rides.

  “How about the Haunted Beauty Parlor,” Tammy suggested. “When you come out of it you’ve got a bad perm.”

  “Or the Haunted Subway Tunnel. That would be a good one. You’d get on this subway car and go through a tunnel full of ghosts and body parts.”

  “How about a Haunted Welfare Office?”

  “With social workers all over the place! No, that would be too scary. How about a Haunted Eighth Grade Homeroom? Miss Melon could be there, as herself!”

  “You’ve got Miss Melon on the brain.”

  “Melon brain — ha-ha!”

  We arrived at the Centre Island ferry docks just as the ferry was pulling away.

  “Let’s walk back to Ward’s and catch the ferry there,” Mom said. “The walk will keep us warm.”

  We trudged back toward Ward’s Island. “The boys will sleep tonight with all this exercise and fresh air,” I said. “Sometimes it seems like everything we do with the twins during the day is to help them sleep at night.”

  We walked through Far Enough Farm again. “We’d better not stop this time,” Mom said. “I don’t like the look of that sky.” We had to stop a little bit, though. We were the only people at the farm. The animals were probably lonely.

  “Khyber,” Mom began, “there’s something important I have to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “It’s about the boys. They are beginning to need more care than we can give them. They need to go to school. They need to go to a special school.”

  This was important, all right, but I didn’t understand what the big deal was, unless she wanted me to take them there every morning and pick them up every afternoon. “Is the school near our place? Can they walk there?”

  “No, the school is not near our place. There are no schools for autistic children near our place.”

  “They’ll have to take a streetcar, then. They won’t like that during rush hour, but maybe the school will teach them not to mind it.”

  “It’s not just the school, it’s...I don’t know how to say this to you. The boys need to be someplace where there are trained people to look after them.”

  “Look after them?”

  “I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe if I were not on my own...”

  “You’re not on your own. You have me.”

  “But you’re not an adult, and even if you were, I wouldn’t expect you to spend your life caring for your brothers. I wouldn’t let you.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “What I’m saying is this.” Mom took a deep breath. “I’ve found a group home that will take Daniel and David. It’s out in the country. They have a school on the grounds, and some animals, and they’ll take both boys. I won’t have to split them up.”

  “A group home? You mean they’re not going to live with us anymore?”

  “Think of it as a boarding school, darling.”

  I clutched Daniel’s hand more tightly. “No. I don’t want them to go.”

  “Neither do I, but we’ve got to think about what’s best for them. They need people taking care of them who have energy, who have skills. I have neither of those things.”

  “So you’re just going to give them away.”

  “Don’t overdramatize. I’m not giving them away. Boy, Khyber, you know just what to say to get me mad!”

  “Maybe you should give me away, too, as long as you’re handing out children. In fact, why give them away? Why not sell them? You can use the money to buy more Monkees records.”

  Tammy took the boys’ hands and walked away from me.

  I followed her, saying nasty, vile things all the way across Ward’s Island.

  “You’re probably doing this so you can be
come a stripper again,” I said. “First you put your sons in a home, then you’ll put me in a home, then you’ll have the apartment all to yourself. You’ll sell us, then you’ll have lots of other children, and you’ll sell them, too.”

  All the way to the ferry docks, I kept it up. Tammy didn’t say a word. If Tammy had been a hitting kind of a mother, I would have been hit a thousand times. Tammy’s never hit me or the boys, though. I don’t think she knows how.

  Rain started to come down, first in light spats, then it really started to pour. We ran, but we were still pretty wet by the time we reached the small shelter near the ferry docks.

  Inside the shelter, Mom spoke. “This is not your decision to make, Khyber. This is mine. David and Daniel need to be around people who are trained, who can teach them.”

  I listened to the rain pattering down around us.

  “Khyber, I’m tired. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m not able to give the boys what they need, and I’m not able to give you what you need. Every cent we have goes to treatment for the boys, and none of those treatments have helped one bit. All those people with brilliant ideas who take advantage of someone like me...” Tammy started to cry, but stopped herself.

  “Maybe I’ve been wrong in not talking to you about this before,” Tammy said. “It wouldn’t have come as such a shock. I’ve been trying to get them into a home for some time.”

  I stood up. “I thought they were in a home,” I said, and stomped out into the rain.

  Living without my brothers? Not tucking them into bed at night, all warm from their baths? Not taking them out every day after school? Not dancing with them to Tammy’s Monkees records? Singing the soup song without them there?

  By the time the ferry came, I was soaked through to the skin. My teeth were chattering. I didn’t try to stop shivering. I wanted Tammy to feel guilty for making me get cold and wet.

  We sat in the downstairs part of the ferry. I grabbed David and Daniel’s hands and took them to a seat a fair bit away from Tammy. The boys will usually go with me anywhere, but they must have felt my anger. They screamed and yanked themselves away from me — they were growing strong as well as tall and heavy — and stood off by themselves.