by Kim Hood
‘You should be. No self-respecting thirteen-year-old wears pyjamas with teddy bears on them.’ I took off my own hoodie and unhooked her drip, manoeuvring the line through arm holes until she was wearing the hoodie instead. I had to roll the sleeves up for her.
‘Do you think Mom will let me go to the high school when I’m done here?’ she had asked out of the blue. Sometimes I hate that Emma is so optimistic. Sometimes I think it should be me lying in that bed.
I’m not though, and Dad still had to eat, so I opened a can of tomato soup and even managed to find some ham and cheese to make him a sandwich as well. When I took it out to him, he hadn’t changed positions at all.
‘Dad.’ I gave him a shake. And then another, until he finally opened his eyes and sat up.
‘I did it again, didn’t I? Fell asleep before I could make dinner,’ he said. ‘I think it must be this chair that puts me to sleep.’
‘Definitely the chair,’ I said, ‘because it couldn’t have anything to do with working sixteen hours straight.’
Dad would have smiled at that once, but now his expression never wavered from weariness. He just heaved himself out of the chair and padded to the table, like he was a five-year-old, and I was his mother, just waking him from his nap. Where Mom had become nicer, in a weird absent way, Dad had just become a cardboard cut-out of himself. It’s like he hardly existed anymore. Sometimes I felt like doing more than shaking him awake; sometimes I wanted to scream at him, just to see if he would scream back.
It kind of just took too much energy though, so instead I went back in to get myself some soup as well, even though I wasn’t even hungry. And then we ate in silence, like we always do these days. We’d given up on the small talk a while ago.
‘Well, I better get to my homework,’ I said, when my bowl was empty.
Dad didn’t ask why it wasn’t done yet. He didn’t ask where I’d been all evening. For all I knew he hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t there before he collapsed in a heap in his chair.
I’m not sure exactly when I decided to make school an optional part of my day. I’m not sure exactly why I made this decision either. If I am totally honest, then I didn’t decide at all. It just started to happen.
Emma started to get sick the same month I started secondary school, but it didn’t really interfere with my life for a while. I wasn’t even around enough to notice. Obviously in a village of 423 there aren’t enough kids to populate a whole secondary school, so I took the bus, with everyone else in Verwood, to Kendal – forty-five minutes away. This is another fantastic thing about living in a backwoods village – donating an hour and a half of your life to sitting on a bus every day for your entire high school life.
So it didn’t matter that Mom and Emma were spending all of their days in Red River, a further half hour away, while doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with her. I mean, I am not a complete callous bitch, of course it mattered that Emma was not well, but it wasn’t like all of a sudden I was the left out child, pining for my mother’s attention or anything. I was in school or on the bus the whole time these appointments were happening – nothing to do with me. Hell, once in a while the appointments even worked out so that Mom could pick me up from school.
It just happened that things were changing in our family at the same time things were changing for me as a person. It was coincidence, that’s all. I was almost thirteen. I’d say things would have changed even without Em’s diagnosis.
I’m rambling, I know. What I mean is – I didn’t start skipping school because Emma was sick. I wasn’t in some sort of emotional upheaval; it wasn’t a cry for help or anything. I just started to not want to go. Simple.
I guess somewhere in there Grandad got sick too, and even though he wasn’t really sick yet, Mom kind of hinted a lot that it would be nice for me to go up the hill to his house on some of my lunch hours, just to say hello. Sometimes taking a class off before lunch, to get up the courage for an awkward hour with him, seemed like a good idea. Sometimes, taking a class off to recover from an awkward hour with him also seemed like a good idea.
I say all of this because in the early days of missing school I had this ridiculously nice school counsellor try to say that the two things – Emma’s illness and me skipping school – were related.
I guess I’d been leaving school early for a couple of weeks, not every day, but quite a few days, before I got pulled out of my first class. Even the way she came to the door of my English class was nice.
‘You wouldn’t mind if I borrowed Jane for a few minutes, would you Mr Smith?’ she’d asked, after knocking softly and opening the door. And then all of the way down the hall to her sort-of office she had kept turning around and smiling at me, as I trailed behind her, wondering what my punishment was going to be. It had been a bit of a buzz actually. I’d never been in trouble at school in my life before. Could they kick me out?
But she was still smiling when we got to her sort-of office. I say sort-of office, because even though it had her name on the door ‘Eva Hartigan – Counsellor’, like it was an office, inside it was more like she had moved her living room into the school. There was a little couch and a matching chair—all poufy, so you sunk right down when you sat. And it was like the place had been professionally decorated – with accents that were all lime green and that blue that isn’t quite turquoise. I can tell you, that decorating definitely didn’t come out the publically funded budget. Eva had spent her own money on kitting the place out.
Instead of being inviting though, it pretty much screamed ‘desperate to be taken seriously as a professional’. As soon as she opened her mouth I knew why she needed the decor.
‘So, welcome, Jane,’ she started. ‘I want you to feel at home. Do you know why I’ve asked you here?’ Somehow, when she said anything, it seemed like she was reading it from a script.
‘I don’t suppose it’s because I’ve won a prize for ‘Best Hair of the Week’ is it?’ I told you, I was feeling a bit bold, and this woman evoked rebellion. She just kept going though.
‘So we both know that things have been slipping a little for you, haven’t they, Jane?’ She was still smiling, that kind of smile you save for people you don’t know, but who you really need to like you. Like maybe a dentist that is about to perform dental surgery, while you are asleep, so you definitely want him to like you, so he remembers you are more than just a surgery candidate.
Only I was just a twelve-year-old kid at the time. I should have been afraid of her, not the other way around.
‘Slip sliding away.’ The lyrics to the song had popped into my head, and I hadn’t been able to resist speaking them aloud.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing, sorry, never mind.’ It occurred to me, a little too late mind you, that I had better respond to her as if she was in control, even if it wasn’t true.
‘Jane, you’ve had an awful tragedy at home, and it’s perfectly normal to want help, but not know how to ask for it.’
‘Have I had an awful tragedy? I wasn’t aware that anyone had died.’
She went a little red at that.
‘No, no, of course not,’ she said. ‘But I am sure it must be difficult. Your Mom is very busy with your sister, just when you are entering a new period in your life.’
That had struck me as kind of funny – only because I had just started my period that day. Not for the first time of course; it wasn’t that coincidental, but it was still funny. I don’t think I actually laughed, but I definitely smiled. Poor Eva; she didn’t know what to do with that. She kind of sputtered. I think she had been prepared for me to burst into tears. There was even a big box of tissues (one with blue and green swirls adorning it, though not quite the right shade of blue to match the room) in a very prominent place, at the ready.
I tried to help her out then. I don’t exactly like to make people upset, even though sometimes I say things, or react in ways, that does just that. I adopted a more sombre expression, concentrating on feeling sad.
‘It isn’t the most cheerful time in my house.’ I would give her that; there had been this weird tension at home for weeks, with everyone doing exactly what they usually did, only with plastic grins and ending sentences in an inflection that was just a little too high to be natural. ‘But hey, every dancer goes through some injury time, don’t they?’
See, at the time when Emma got diagnosed with cancer, when she finally did, after weeks of tests – nobody told me. Everyone knew except me. Even Emma knew. When I asked what was going on, I got vague answers about the strain of excessive training on young ligaments. But of course I did know. The plastic grins made it pretty obvious that something more was going on.
So I suppose I wanted someone to tell me directly.
But this counsellor was not going there. She was a ‘play-it-safe’ kind of professional, and she had learned her catch phrases well.
‘Sometimes when we suffer an upset, instead of talking about it, we start withdrawing from things, even activities we enjoy.’
‘Uh huh? Like what activities? Flower arranging?’ I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t just going to name it – that I was skipping classes.
That did get her though. She gave a little sigh before saying, ‘Jane, not going to classes is not going to help the situation with your sister. It isn’t going to make you feel better. It’s just avoidance.’
‘Okay.’ There had been nothing else to say. It had felt like we were having two different conversations at the same time, or like she was talking to someone else who wasn’t me. I didn’t see how not going to math class, for an example, because we were going to be learning about quadratic equations say, that didn’t interest me at all, had anything to do with Emma.
‘So you will come to talk to me, instead of just leaving school?’ There had been a hopeful look to her then. Maybe counsellors get paid on commission or something – the more kids they convince to listen to their ‘wisdom’, the more money they make. ‘My door is always open, and you are welcome to just come in to hang about if you want.’
‘Sure, Eva.’ She hadn’t introduced herself; I could have been overstepping the mark by not using her last name, but I wasn’t; she smiled like I had just given her a present.
That was over three years ago and I hadn’t seen Eva in over two of those years. At first I had popped in once in a while. I hadn’t stopped skipping classes, but there isn’t a lot to do in Kendal, and people would kind of look at me suspiciously if I hung around any one store for too long. Then it got cold of course, so having a place to hang out that wasn’t in the snow was a bonus. Plus, she had those really comfortable chairs. She wasn’t even such bad company once she stopped trying to counsel me.
But then, for some reason I just stopped going. I think it was around the time that Grandad got sicker, and probably it was the time when Emma started having to stay in the hospital for weeks instead of days. I’d probably had legitimate reasons to be out of school, checking on Grandad or going to the hospital to see Emma. To be honest, it seems like a long time ago.
I just know she didn’t last the year without being chewed up and spat out by some tougher cases than me. She started to need some of those tissues on her desk after one of the tenth grade boys started spreading a rumour about what she had gotten up to on her sofa with him. And then one day she wasn’t there anymore. And there wasn’t a replacement councillor. So maybe she did use public funds to decorate her office after all, and the money was all gone when they went to hire a new one.
So now, I get called into the principal’s office every month or so. For a chat. You would not believe it, but I have never so much as gotten a suspension for skipping. I know Mom and Dad have received a few letters, and I think Mom has even managed to go in to talk to the school the odd time, but I’ve never received any real grief.
I guess I keep my head down just enough. I haven’t failed anything yet, put it that way. Teachers have more than me to worry about. I’m getting by.
Besides, with Emma in the hospital so much of the time, I usually have the excuse of not being in school because I could be there with her, which technically, is very feasible. The 1pm bus to Red River is way more direct than the one at 3:30. The one at 3:30 takes nearly forty-five minutes and so I only have about an hour and a half at the hospital before I have to catch the 6 o’clock bus back home on the days that Mom stays overnight with Emma, which seems like all of the time lately.
But the truth is, I don’t take the earlier bus most days. An hour of time at the hospital is almost too much for me to stand. More and more I feel like a stranger when I am there anyway. Emma and Mom seem to have this routine and way of not even talking and yet knowing what the other is thinking. And I am just … there in the corner. Sometimes I sit there not saying or doing anything to see when they will notice. They don’t.
I sometimes wonder if things would have been different if Emma hadn’t have gotten sick. When we were kids I never thought of Emma as being a friend; she was just my little sister. But now, with her not home most of the time, it feels like I’m missing something. Not exactly a friend, but the potential for a friend. I’m missing closeness that we haven’t had a chance to find.
Mostly though, I think things would have been the same as now. Not the same as in hanging out in the corner of a hospital room, but Mom-and-Emma-being-a-closed-unit kind of the same. Honestly though, as much as I used to complain about everything being about Emma’s dancing, I know she was really good – like professional-potential good, that was heading toward way more than a couple of lessons a week and a recital twice a year. That kind of good that requires everyone else to come second. I never said it, but I was so proud of her that it seemed worth it, being on the outside of that.
But this? This never-ending survival, with no end date? This feels so pointless.
All of this explanation is to say that even as I was getting on the bus in the morning, I’d decided that it was going to be a two-class day. I divided up my school days into zero-class days, two-class days – where I left at the first break, three-class days – until lunch, and five-class days. Basically, at this point, five-class days were mostly those that ended in a class that didn’t require much from me, or days when either I forgot to leave or where the weather was too bad for me to want to bother going out into it. Any day that I was going to the hospital was never more than a three-class day.
Nobody else seems to know my system though.
‘Hey, stranger,’ Tracey greeted as I slid into the seat beside her. ‘Are you around for lunch?’
Tracey is kind of my best friend. She is getting a bit of a bad deal lately though. She has to ask this every day, even though she doesn’t always get an honest answer, because she is the most loyal person I know. Even though I basically am never there for her when she needs me, she always, always puts me first, which means that if I am around for lunch, she’ll hang out with me; if I’m not, she defaults to her second choice of hanging out with Brenda and Aishling. They don’t want much to do with me since I inadvertently insulted everything they hold dear. It really was not intended; I’d thought we had all been talking tongue-in-cheek. Apparently it was only me that had been.
It was at lunch time. We’d been sitting around nursing our fries, which is what we always bought at Joe’s Café down the road from the school. It was the cheapest thing on the menu, and they would let us in even if we only had enough change between us to buy a couple of baskets.
‘So seriously, what is up with Mr K?’ Aishling had started.
‘Yeah, he went off on a total rant didn’t he?’ Brenda had joined.
Mr K was the principal, and the rant he had gone off on was that almost nobody had signed up for the career day he had arranged for the following Saturday. So he had taken nearly twenty minutes to tell us we were all going to hell in a handbag if we didn’t commit to what we were going to do for the rest of our lives.
‘Give him a bit of a break,’ I’d said, reaching for the dwindling fries before Tracey fini
shed them off. ‘He’s new. Still has city-ideas, like the idea that people should pursue careers.’
Everyone had just blinked at me until I followed with, ‘He has no idea that we all have our sights set on the high paying jobs at The Auburn Lodge.’
‘Exactly!’ Brenda had said.
So that had started it. How could I have known that she was serious? OK, The Auburn is a very nice hotel – very nice if you happened to be one of the V.I.P. guests being helicoptered in for the pleasure of experiencing our ‘rural, rustic charm’, including our garbage-can-destroying bears and lock-picking-racoons. But waiting tables for the rest of my life, panting like a dog waiting for a big tip from some guy who is loaded enough to waste his money coming to our neck of the woods, is not my idea of a career. Apparently it was Brenda’s though, and Aishling’s as well.
‘He doesn’t understand that we cannot possibly leave our boyfriends to attend university in a city eight hours away.’ Again, the nods. ‘If we did, then one of the other bimbos in town might snap him up from under our noses.’ Thinking about it now, I sort of knew I was crossing a line. Brenda and Aishling had very quizzical expressions on their faces, and Brenda was turning her promise ring between her fingers. Tracey was very busy reading the menu, desperate not to catch anyone’s eye.
Here was my signal to stop. But that ring on Brenda’s finger bothered me. What the hell is a promise ring supposed to mean anyway? If I could throw away my entire future for you now I would, but I will have to promise to do it when I am old enough to vote – but barely. Don’t worry, I’ll be all yours before I am nineteen.
So I kept talking, and dug myself a deeper grave.
‘We can’t take the risk. Four years away at university, and it will be someone else living in our dream bungalows, with our increasingly fat and lazy husbands who are slowly killing themselves working in a black hole that keeps them happy with big, fat overtime cheques.’
This was a particularly personal blow to Brenda because, being in the grade above us, she was closer to this reality than the rest of us. She had been boring us for the last six months with constant references to her boyfriend, and the future she imagined. Stan was two years older than Brenda, so he was already working at the mine and saving for the bungalow. It was something Brenda was quite excited about. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Stan and Brenda’s wedding would be the first we’d all attend.