Looking for X

by Deborah Ellis

  The walk home was long and cold, and by the time we got there, we were all chilled and miserable. Tammy tossed the boys in a hot bath, while I got out of my wet clothes and into my robe. The soup was hot by the time I finished my bath.

  I didn’t sing the soup song. Tammy didn’t deserve it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

  Mom kept me home from school Monday because I caught a cold in the rain. She was gone practically all day with the twins. She didn’t tell me where she was going.

  I spent most of the day on my bunk, reading and studying for the history test we were having the next day. Outside, the world was gray and drizzly. It was nice to be in my bed with a book and a bowl of soup. I wondered where X was. I hoped she was warm and dry.

  When Mom came back with my brothers, she wouldn’t answer any of my questions, and I soon got tired of asking. I was still mad at her.

  I used my cold as an excuse to go to bed early. I didn’t lift a finger to help her with the twins.

  Maybe because I’d been dozing on and off all day, it took me awhile to get to sleep that night. When I finally did, I was woken up by something patting me in the face. I must have been dreaming, because it scared me, and I slapped out at whatever it was.

  I heard a thud, and then a scream, and then I was wide awake.

  Daniel was lying on the floor below my bunk.

  “Mom! Mom, get up! Daniel’s hurt!” Mom was right there even before I finished yelling for her.

  There was blood pouring from a gash on Daniel’s head. He was screaming from the pain and fear. David woke up, and he started screaming, too.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” I said, and ran to the phone. I punched in 911, but there was no sound. I had forgotten that our phone had been cut off. Tammy had spent the phone money on special vitamins for the boys.

  “Get your coat on, Khyber, and get David’s on, too.”

  “But...”

  “Now!” Tammy was throwing her own coat on over her nightgown. She grabbed my blanket to wrap Daniel in. “Put your boots on, too.”

  I scrambled to get ready. David didn’t want to go out. He plopped down on the floor and kept kicking his boots off and screaming. Mom couldn’t help me. She was busy with Daniel.

  “Grab him and let’s go!” she said.

  I lifted him up and carried him out the door. He kicked his boots off, but I just let them stay there on the hall floor. I couldn’t have carried them anyway. David was heavy enough when he was cooperating. When he was screaming in my ear and hitting me and kicking me, I could barely keep from dropping him.

  “Can’t I stay home with David?” I asked.

  “I’m not leaving you alone here at night. It’s too dangerous. Now, come on.”

  Some of the neighbors opened their doors as we walked past. They were mad at having been woken up.

  “Lady, can’t you shut those kids up?” said one.

  “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids,” said another. I was too busy with David to yell back at them.

  “There’s a cab!” I told Tammy, seeing the taxi’s lit sign heading toward us on Gerrard.

  “Come on, Khyber, let’s catch this light.”

  “Are we taking a streetcar?” The streetcar going west on Gerrard would take us close to the Sick Kids Hospital.

  Tammy didn’t answer me. She kept going past the streetcar stop.

  “Hurry up!” she ordered, then darted out across Parliament Street between two parked cars, something she had told me never to do.

  “I can’t keep going,” I said. David kept hitting me in the head and screaming next to my ear. My jacket hadn’t completely dried out from Sunday, and it was cold and clammy next to my nightgown. To make things even worse, I’d been in such a hurry, I’d put my boots on the wrong feet.

  “Mom!”

  “Khyber, shut up! I’ve got enough to worry about without you complaining. Next time, keep your hands to yourself.”

  That shocked me. “This wasn’t my fault!”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t mine!”

  How could Mom think that I would hurt Daniel on purpose? My disbelief and shame kept me quiet the rest of the way to the hospital.

  The closest hospital to Regent Park is a few blocks north and a few blocks west. As we hurried there, we woke up all the street people sleeping in doorways. We must have been quite a sight.

  The waiting room at the emergency department was full. It always is when we have to take one of the boys in. Usually we go to the Sick Kids Hospital, but that’s a long way to have to walk.

  “Where are David’s boots?” Mom asked, as we waited in line to see the admitting nurse. The boys kept screaming. At least we didn’t have to ring the desk bell to let the nurse know we were there.

  “They fell off in the hall,” I said.

  “They’d better be there when we get back.”

  “What are you mad at me for? He kicked them off!”

  “Take David into the waiting room and get him quiet,” Tammy told me, “and don’t let him run around in his bare feet. The floor is wet and cold and I don’t want him getting sick, although you’ve probably already given him your cold.”

  I did as I was told. At least, I took David into the waiting room. I couldn’t make him quiet, though, and between him and his brother, the screaming sounded like it was on stereo speakers. The other people in the waiting room were not pleased with us. On top of everything else, David’s diaper needed changing.

  There were two empty seats next to each other. I sat down in one and put David in the other, but he wouldn’t stay in it. He kept sliding to the floor and kneeling into his rocking and head-banging position. Tammy was right — the floor was wet. There was an old man near us who smelled even worse than David did. He had wet himself, too. I couldn’t tell if the floor was wet from the rain or from him.

  I was angry and tired, my nose was stuffed up, and I was chilled from my cold and my wet jacket. My arms were sore from carrying David, I was tired of his screams, and my scalp hurt where he had pulled on my hair. Because I felt so lousy, I was rough with him, pulling him back into his chair when he slid out of it, and telling him to shut up. My impatience only made him worse. The boys can understand other people’s emotions even if they can’t understand words. To get David quiet, I’d have to be calm and friendly. I didn’t feel calm and friendly.

  Tammy didn’t make anything better when she and Daniel joined us in the waiting room. She had been given a towel to hold to his head, but he was still screaming.

  “He got blood on my blanket,” I said.

  “It will wash out,” Mom said.

  “Blood doesn’t wash out.”

  “He couldn’t help it.”

  “But it’s my blanket! Why didn’t you wrap him in one of your blankets? Why did you have to use my blanket?” I knew I was acting like a jerk, but I didn’t feel like acting like anything else.

  In other circumstances, this would have been an adventure, being out in the middle of the night. There were lots of strange-looking people in the waiting room. I could have imagined that their wounds had come from exciting battles, and their sicknesses were rare, tropical diseases they’d gotten while searching for lost treasure. But you have to be in a good mood to imagine things.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FIGHT

  The night had turned into day by the time we got home.

  “Can’t we take a taxi?” I pleaded.

  “There’s no money for a taxi,” Tammy replied, “and there’s no money for a streetcar, either, so don’t bother to ask.”

  We walked back.

  David would have walked, but since he was in his bare feet, I had to carry him. Tammy carried Daniel, whose hair had been partly shaved off to make room for a big white bandage. He’d been given stitches. Mom had to be there with him while they did it, to help the doctors hold him down. She said they had frozen the area around the cut, so he didn’t feel any pain, but he
screamed and fought them anyway.

  Both boys hate having their hair washed or cut. Daniel would have really hated having all those people around him, doing things to his face.

  Daniel was asleep in Tammy’s arms, which made him a lot easier to carry than David. David wanted to walk, so he squirmed and fought me all the way home. I wanted to ask Tammy if we could trade boys, but she looked angry at me still, so I didn’t ask.

  David’s boots were still in the hallway, and I kicked them into the apartment ahead of me. I was glad to put him down, and I think he was glad to get away from me, too. I crawled up to my bunk, remembering too late that Tammy had my blanket, and it was covered with blood.

  Mom put the twins in their room, then helped me off with my jacket. I was too tired to do it myself. She got me into a dry nightgown, then covered me up with her own bedspread.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t. But do you see what I mean, about the boys being too much for us?”

  I rolled over in the bunk, turning my back to her. She kissed me goodnight anyway.

  The alarm clock went off a couple of hours later. Tammy wanted me to stay home from school again, but we were having a history test, so I stumbled, bleary-eyed, into the classroom.

  I walked into class in the middle of the national anthem, which was a crime on two counts. I was late, and we were supposed to stand still, at attention, and sing when “O Canada” was on.

  “We’ll see you in detention this afternoon,” Miss Melon told me, as soon as the last “We stand on guard for thee” had been sung.

  The test was first thing in the morning. That’s one decent thing about Miss Melon. She gets the nasty stuff out of the way early, so we don’t have to sit and stew about it all day. All tests are first thing in the morning. She says our brains are fresher then, and she gets a truer picture of how empty our heads are. If Miss Melon ever said anything nice she’d probably have a stroke.

  The history test was about the building of the national railroad. History is usually pretty interesting, since it’s full of explorers and adventures. I knew the answers to the test questions, but somewhere between writing my name at the top of the paper and morning recess, I fell asleep.

  “Here’s one test paper I can mark in a hurry,” Melonball said, picking up my paper and waving it at the class. Everyone laughed. Everyone but me.

  Out on the schoolyard, things got worse. We were barely five minutes into recess when trouble started.

  Tiffany and her gang were in the schoolyard already. They started yelling insults at me as soon as they saw me walk out of the building.

  “Hey, Sunken Chest! You finally had the guts to show up!” They call me Sunken Chest because I’m flat-chested. It’s supposed to hurt my feelings.

  “She thinks she can just ruin the class play and get away with it.”

  “Who does she think she is?”

  “What kind of a name is Khyber? We should call her Creeper. Hey, Creeper, do you like your new name?”

  “She’s probably on drugs. That’s why she keeps falling asleep in class.”

  I kept walking away from them. They followed me. I walked to the far end of the playground, but they kept walking behind me.

  In her dancing days, when people in the audience got on her nerves, Mom pretended they were cattle. I pretended I was being followed by a herd of big, dumb cows. I could almost hear them moo.

  I’m leading them to the barn, I thought. I’ll put them in the barn, close the door, lock them in, and not let them out until I feel like it.

  It worked until we got to the fence. I pressed my tummy against it and hooked my fingers into the wires. The herd of angry girls pressed in around me. The world outside the schoolyard looked far away.

  They started poking at me.

  Ring, bell, ring, will you? I almost said my pleaout loud. Tammy didn’t like me fighting. If I could hold my temper for just a few more minutes, the bell would ring, and the gang would leave me alone for awhile.

  Then Tiffany spoke up. “Look, here come Creeper’s little brothers.”

  Tammy was coming! She’d get me out of this. I looked eagerly toward where Tiffany was pointing.

  She was pointing at a woman walking two little dogs.

  The other girls started laughing and making barking sounds. I turned and looked at Tiffany. She smiled a mean smile.

  In an instant, she was on the ground with me on top of her. She was bigger than me, but I was angrier. Besides, the only exercise Tiffany ever got was brushing her hair.

  “How dare you insult my brothers!” I yelled. It felt good to punch her. It felt like I was not just fighting her, I was fighting the audience at the play, all the social workers who ever made Tammy feel bad, and everyone on the street who had ever made a sour face around my brothers. That’s a lot of fighting.

  The kids on the playground formed a ring around us, chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Tiffany was punching back, pulling my hair and scratching me with her sharp nails. For a minute she was on top of me, pounding my chest. I had just gotten back on top of her when the teachers broke through the tight ring of kids and pulled me off her.

  I kept swinging. I landed a fist in Miss Melon’s stomach, but only because it was in the way. I felt bad about that later, when I’d calmed down. I didn’t like Miss Melon, but I had no reason to hit her. That was the only part of the fight I felt bad about.

  It took a whole army of teachers to hold me down and get me into the school. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tiffany being gently helped to her feet. She leaned against the vice-principal, limping and crying. Her hair was a mess.

  They stuck me in one of the little guidance offices and locked the door. I banged around in there for awhile, throwing the chairs against the walls, until I got tired. I was bleeding from being scratched by Tiffany’s nails, and my chest hurt, but the nurse didn’t come to see me.

  After awhile, they opened the door and let me out.

  Mom was there. “Hasn’t this child seen a nurse?”

  “The nurse is busy with young Tiffany,” the vice-principal said.

  “What’s the matter with the rest of you? Don’t you know how to open a bandage? Get me your first-aid kit.”

  No one moved. Tammy banged her way behind the office counter. “Get me a first-aid kit right now,” she said into the vice-principal’s face. She used her quiet voice. I knew that voice. It was her don’t-even-think-about-messing-with-me voice.

  “Get her the first-aid kit,” he said to one of the secretaries. He tried to make it sound like it was all his idea. It was kind of funny.

  Tammy grabbed the kit without saying thank you. Then she grabbed me and headed out of the office.

  “Wait a minute,” Miss Melon said. “I don’t think you understand the seriousness...”

  “Clean up first, lecture second,” Mom said, and pulled me through the office door.

  I was impressed with the sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. Tiffany had put deep scratches on my head. My face was covered with streams of dried blood. I looked wonderfully gory.

  Tammy wet some paper towels and started cleaning me up.

  “I’ve told you and told you and told you that I don’t want you fighting.” She bandaged the worst cuts and tidied my hair. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  I told her about my chest. She felt me all over and said she thought I was in one piece.

  “All right, now, quickly, before we go back to the office. What happened?”

  I thought about telling her the truth, but if she knew I was fighting because of the boys, she might send them away faster. I looked at a piece of chewed-up pink gum on the bathroom floor and mumbled, “She just annoyed me, that’s all.”

  “She annoyed you.”

  I don’t like lying to Tammy. I hardly ever do it. When I have to lie, I make my lies as true as possible. Tiffany had annoyed me, so it was partly true.

  Tammy always sticks up for me w
ith the teachers. She’ll bawl me out when we’re alone, but never in front of anybody. Some parents like to suck up to the teachers by yelling at their kids in front of them. They think the teachers will think they’re good parents if they do that. Tammy doesn’t care what teachers think of her.

  We went back to the principal’s office. Everyone was looking very solemn and stern. Tiffany’s mother was there. Tiffany was still in the nurse’s office, probably having over-acted hysterics.

  I sat through a long list of complaints about my behavior.

  When they ran out of complaints about my attitude and temper, Miss Melon piped up, “Plus, she was late again this morning, and she fell asleep during the history test.”

  “She fell asleep during the history test because she was up all night in the hospital emergency room with her brothers,” Tammy replied. The other adults looked uncomfortable for a moment and stared down at the floor, embarrassed.

  The vice-principal recovered first. “She can be excused for being late and falling asleep, but she cannot be excused for fighting.”

  I stopped listening at that point.

  While the adults went on and on about my crime, and Tammy reminded them that I was the brightest kid in the school, and it was their job to give me confidence instead of making me feel bad, I pretended I was far away, crossing the Australian Outback, all on my own.

  They suspended me for the rest of the week and I’d be on probation when I returned, plus I’d have to apologize to Tiffany. Before we could leave, we had to go back to the classroom and get the school work that I would miss.

  “Whatever she gives you, I will double it,” Mom said, bending down close to my ear so that no one else would hear her.

  We didn’t talk on the way home. Tammy was unhappy with me, especially since she didn’t know the real reason I’d been fighting.

  I wasn’t unhappy with me, though. Anybody insults my brothers, they’re going to get it.

  “You could at least pretend to be ashamed of yourself,” Tammy said. I did not reply.

  Mom had to get back to the boys at the play group, but before she left, she wrote down a list of chores for me to get started on. “I’ll give you more work this afternoon. You won’t have a moment to breathe until you go back to school.”