“What’s the diff?” she asked, still on the topic of hate.
George stood up. “You’ll be okay here watching?”
“’Course.”
“Just being mad at her might only last for a little while,” George said, “and then go away.”
He began to walk slowly backwards as he spoke, in the direction of outer field, but he stopped now.
“Hate seems more long-standing somehow, and deep, as though it would be bad to carry around inside of you.” His thoughts on it turning around to bite you in the ass he kept to himself.
“Come on, George!” Frank shouted again.
She watched her brother take his place in the field. She wished she could be as clever as he was. Sometimes she felt she almost was, like she understood what he just said about hate and being mad and all. She just hadn’t come up with it herself.
Her smartness seemed to come and go like wind or rain. She often forgot things that she had just recently learned even if they pelted her on the side of the head.
A few days later she and George were walking home from the bus stop. She had gone to meet him. Although it was late September, very few leaves had fallen. It felt like summer still but with an underlying cool. No one was fooled by the extension of warm weather.
“Do you think I’m stupid, Georgie?” Morven asked on the short trek home.
“No. I think you’re smart. Do you think you’re stupid?”
“I guess I think I’m medium.”
“Did someone make you feel stupid?” George asked.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Who?”
“Miss Horning.”
“Oh. Her again.”
“Yeah. I hate her.”
“No, you don’t!”
George stopped on the sidewalk to look at her.
“Oh, sorry. No. I mean I’m mad at her. I forgot.”
She stamped her foot.
“I hate forgetting! No, I don’t. I’m mad at forgetting. No. I’m mad at myself for forgetting. Oh, Georgie. Help me.”
She sat down where they stood right in the middle of the sidewalk on the corner of Monck and Highfield and started to cry.
George had never seen her stamp her foot before and he didn’t know if it was good or bad. The crying was good; he was pretty sure of that, just not here beside the Haywards’ house. He sat down with her and put his arm around her.
“What did she say to you, Mor?” he asked.
“She said it in front of the whole class. In fact, she yelled it in front of the whole class.”
“Yelled what?”
“‘You stupid girl!’”
Morven shouted it out so loud that George jumped and Mr. Hayward peeked at them from behind the caragana hedge that he was trimming.
“Hello, Mr. Hayward,” said George. “Sorry.”
“Hi there, George. May I help in any way?”
“No, thanks, sir. We’ll just be moving along.”
He helped Morven to her feet and they stumbled off down Monck to the river, where they could sit in peace.
“Why did she say that?” George asked when her tears had dried in pale streaks down her face.
She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Neither of them had Kleenexes in their pockets.
“I asked what you should do with your eyeball if it were to pop out. I asked if you should save it or if it would be no good after becoming disattached from your head.
“First she said, ‘I’m sure that will never happen,’ and then I said, ‘Yes, but what if it does?’ and then she said, ‘It won’t,’ and I said, ‘But what if it does?’ and then she screamed it. ‘You stupid, stupid girl,’ she said. ‘Don’t waste my time with this.’ She said stupid twice in a row.”
George stared at the slow-moving river.
“She shouldn’t have said that.”
He stood up and secured his books under his arm.
“I’m going to head over to the school and see if she’s still there.”
“Please don’t.”
“Why not? She’s way too mean to you.”
“I think she’ll be even meaner to me if you go to see her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because.”
“Why because?”
“Because she’s the type of person who would be, Georgie. She’s very nasty. She made Grant Wilson’s ear bleed when he wouldn’t sing by himself.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s all the more reason to go and see her or maybe go and see the principal.”
“What would you do?”
“If what?”
“If your eye popped out.”
“Hold it gently up to the socket till you get to the hospital. If it comes completely detached, put it in a clean plastic bag and transport it carefully with you. First and foremost, get to the hospital.”
“Thanks, Georgie.”
“You’re welcome, Mor.”
As it turned out, George didn’t go see either Miss Horning or Mr. Alley, the principal. His anger dissipated when he and his sister arrived home and out of the blue Lila Strathmore sauntered up and paused to visit with him in the yard. He couldn’t think where she could be going to or coming from. She lived three streets over on Lawndale. Anything accessible from Monck was also accessible from her street. He chose to believe she had come just for him and it temporarily drove all thoughts of his sister’s troubles from his mind.
George had been keen on Lila since she moved to the neighbourhood two years earlier from Lethbridge, Alberta. She was still at Nelson Mac, one or two years behind him. George had been in the “smart” room and Lila was in “commercial.” That meant that George took Latin and Lila took things like typing, shorthand, and business machines.
Morven had gone into the house. George figured it was too much to hope for that Lila didn’t know about her (and berated himself for the thought). But he didn’t think it was unreasonable to assume that she was unaware that his sister ruled his life — that every day was taken up with her, if not in practical ways like making her breakfast porridge and seeing that she got to school on time, then in his worried head. She couldn’t know about all that.
“Hello, George,” she said.
She stood at the end of the sidewalk. He realized that she was waiting for him to approach her. Without knowing how he managed it, he found himself standing next to her. A little waft of scent rose off her, like freshly ironed clothes.
“Hi, Lila,” he said.
“Nice afternoon.”
“Yeah, beautiful.”
“Would you like to walk with me?” she asked. “I’m just on my way home.”
George glanced at the house, feeling something like panic welling up inside of him. His sister and mother were in there. His dad was somewhere else.
“Uh…”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
“No. No, I want to. I want to a lot.”
He ran to the front door and shouted, “I’m just going for a short walk. I won’t be long.”
Not waiting for an answer, he flew down the steps and joined Lila at the end of the walk.
He admired her in so many ways, many of them physical, but especially because she had been brave enough to ask him to accompany her.
They walked quickly; George set the pace. He was terrified that Morven would come wailing down the street after them and all his secrets would be laid out on the ground in front of beautiful, brave, good-smelling Lila Strathmore.
It was awkward trying to look at her as they walked side by side. It was well known that she had substantial breasts and George wanted to get an up-close glimpse of them without being obvious. She was wearing a sweater set, peach in colour. All he could get from his surreptitious glances was that, yes, they were big. But beneath her sweaters she wore a very sturdy brassiere that prevented him from getting any idea of their true shape. There was no give whatsoever.
Georg
e hadn’t touched any breasts yet and worried about his lack of experience. He knew that you got started overtop a girl’s clothes, but in this case there were so darned many layers to get through. He doubted his hands could penetrate the corsetry enough for any satisfaction on either side. Never mind when you had to get started on the gadgetry underneath.
That was the least of his worries at the moment, though, and he set it aside.
They made it to her house. It was large and newly painted with smooth green grass and low, evenly trimmed hedges. Maybe she’s rich, he thought; maybe they have a gardener. Maybe I could marry her and move to California.
“Thanks for walking with me, George,” Lila said.
A woman’s face appeared at the living room window. George backed up.
“It was my pleasure, Lila. I’d like to do it again.”
“I’d like that too.” She smiled.
George gave a little wave, unsure whether to include the face at the window, and walked briskly off down the street. He was glad he was wearing a fairly clean shirt. He wondered if there was any chance that he ever smelled like newly ironed clothes and he doubted it very much. The best he could hope for, he supposed, was to smell like nothing.
I’d like that too, she had said.
“I’d like that too,” George said out loud and then he broke into a run and shouted it. “I’d like that too!”
He slowed his pace as he turned onto Highfield.
“Like what too, Georgie?”
His heart stopped inside his chest. He knew it did.
She had crept up behind him from nowhere. She must have followed him all the way there and all this way back to turn up the way she did now, from behind. And she did it without being seen, under the cover of…what?
“Where did you come from?”
His voice quavered.
“Not telling,” she said.
He wanted to scream at her; he wanted to shake her till her head flew off her neck; he wanted to run back to the tidy house and the woman behind the lace curtains with the beautiful daughter who would save him.
“I’m working at becoming invisible,” Morven said.
She sounded so much like herself that George was quick to let go of his anger and his fear. For it had been fear that he felt in the presence of his sister, a two-pronged fear. One prong he was used to: it told him that she was his responsibility and would be for as long as they both were alive.
But the second prong held a fear he hadn’t felt before in connection to her, one that lived in a shadowy place in his mind where he chose never to go, like the dank corner of the cellar past the furnace and the coal bin. He didn’t know if this second prong of fear was for her or of her. He didn’t want to go near it.
8
“What do you think about God?” Morven asked.
She and George were in the kitchen the following afternoon, waiting for the tea to steep. They were making iced tea and they liked it good and strong.
George had been thinking about Lila Strathmore and her bound breasts and was taken by surprise, as he so often was by his sister’s words.
“Well, not much really,” he said.
“You mean, not much in that you don’t think very highly of Him or not much in that you don’t think about Him much?”
Morven opened the teapot and peered inside. She picked up a spoon.
“Leave it alone,” said George.
“God or the tea?” said Morven.
“The tea.”
George took the lid from her hand and placed it back on the pot.
“As for God, I guess it’s the latter, that I don’t really think about Him much.”
“Does He exist, do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either, but I kind of doubt it.”
She poured a large amount of sugar into a fat pitcher for the tea.
“Easy there,” said George. “We don’t want to lose all our teeth.”
“It occurred to me that I might give God a try,” Morven said. “For a little while, at least, to see if I can come up with anything.”
“How are you going to do that?” George asked.
He sliced the lemons now and set them aside.
“By praying,” she said. “I think I had enough of Sunday school and church and that sort of thing when we were kids.”
“Well, I can’t see as praying would hurt anything,” George said. “As long as you keep it a private thing.”
She sighed. It was an exaggerated sigh.
“Oh, Georgie.” she said. “Of course I’ll keep it private.”
George had known that this obvious piece of advice would get on her nerves but he felt he was well within his rights. He wasn’t going to stop doling it out. She had made a spectacle of herself as recently as yesterday afternoon on the sidewalk by Mr. Hayward’s house.
And Lila could have seen her creeping along after them. For all he knew she had seen Morven even though he hadn’t. He felt himself flush at the thought. He wanted so badly to come across as normal to Lila: a typical boy from a typical family.
“You’ve turned red,” said Morven. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” said George and gave the tea bags a poke.
“You might get disappointed,” he warned her now on the prospect of praying.
He was determined this would be the last advice he would give her on this particular subject, as he was almost totally unversed in it. Of course, there had been the usual prayers that any Scottish Canadian boy might toss off in his early years: please, God, may I hit a homer at baseball this evening; thank you, God, for the pleasant feeling that you have granted me when I touch my penis and also, if possible, don’t smite me for making it happen so often; sorry, God, for the mean thoughts I have about my sister when she embarrasses me the way she does.
There were more prayers. They had to do with his lost mother, the one that he couldn’t remember except for the held-close feeling. These were prayers that he felt impelled to pray; he was afraid to deny them for fear of being cut loose from the safe harbour where his first mother had moored him.
It didn’t seem possible to explain any of these prayers to his sister.
“I’m prepared for disappointment,” said Morven.
She removed the tea bags from the pot and poured the hot tea into the pitcher where it mixed with the sugar. George squeezed in a couple of lemons — they both liked lemons — and stirred till the sugar was dissolved. Then came the ice cubes and the glasses with straws and the floating lemon slices.
George put one of the glasses on a little tray and took it upstairs to his mother. He came right back down again and went to the liquor cabinet where he took out a big bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum with only an inch or so left in the bottom.
“She thinks it’s too lemony,” he said. “She wants a little rum to soften it.”
“Soften it, my eye,” muttered Morven. “Soften her, more likely. Soften her in the head.”
“Don’t say nasty things about our mother,” George said as he started back up the stairs.
“Sorry.”
So Morven started to pray. She prayed whenever she got the chance, whenever there wasn’t something else taking up her thoughts, like walking or eating or listening to people talk. She always prayed silently so she wouldn’t embarrass George, except when she was alone in her bedroom or at the river. If people turned up at the river she would stop moving her lips and go quiet. But she wouldn’t stop praying.
She kept it up for five weeks. At first it had felt good, like she had a friend she could talk to, and then it started to give her an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach and throat. When she tried to figure this out she couldn’t, but she knew it had something to do with feeling as though she had to report everything — every little thing. It became a strain. Nothing was real unless she related it to God in her prayers. By Thanksgiving she had to say it all out loud. If she was interrupted at the river, for instance, she had
to remember that prayer till she was alone again so she could recite it out loud to make it valid.
Watch over George, watch over George, watch over George. She had to repeat it five times over five times a day or it wouldn’t work. Her brother would die or worse, of his own accord, go away without her.
It was way too hard. It seemed to her that life shouldn’t be this hard unless somebody else was organizing it to make it so, like maybe Adolf Hitler or Mussolini, the men she had learned about in history class who had ruined the lives of millions.
She figured she must be doing it wrong. This couldn’t be what praying was. She had heard it was supposed to give comfort, not cause sleeplessness and an upset stomach and a tight feeling in her jaw and throat.
Morven gave up on prayer; she couldn’t get the hang of it. The first snowfall and the cold winds of November, the way they came all at once, helped her push the idea clear out of her head.
9
“I hate the parts of me between my legs, Georgie.”
She shouted it out.
They were hitting balls in the flood bowl. George was batting for now and Morven was catching some, running after others. It was early April of the year that the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show. There were still small piles of dirty snow here and there but not where they were playing.
“Shh!” said George as loudly as he could and ran toward her.
She bent over to pick up a missed grounder and was surprised to see her brother’s face when she stood up. It had a complicated look on it that she couldn’t figure out at first.
“You can’t shout stuff like that,” he said. “Especially not that loud and especially not to me. Not to anybody, really.”
“Why not?”
George sat down on the little rise where the ball had landed. This was the most difficult conversation he had ever had to deal with, and he’d had his share. He couldn’t imagine what his next sentences would be until he heard himself say them. And as soon as he did, he knew they made no sense, especially the second one.
“Maybe you could mention it quietly to a doctor, if you ever find one you like. Or if you ever have a girlfriend that you trust you could talk to her about it.”
The Girl in the Wall Page 4