Several crows and even more seagulls were bearing down upon her.
Unease overtook wonder, and she retreated toward the building, scattering the rest of the cookie as far from her as she could. Well out of the way, she watched the birds battle over the crumbs, screeching and cawing and pecking.
A voice at her shoulder made her jump again.
“Ah. You fed them, didn’t you?” Doug said.
She looked up at him. “There was only one crow, and I gave him just a bit,” she said. She was mad at Doug, she reminded herself. But then, she had no one else to tell.
The birds were leaving now. They had finished the food and could see that Martha’s hands were empty except for a juice box.
“Food brings them out in droves,” he said. “Try eating fish and chips at the beach!”
Martha shrugged. She knew better than to eat fish and chips at the beach. Too much sand and dirt, her mother said.
She turned back to watch the crows—who had been scrabbling at her feet a moment ago—flying together over the river.
“They stick together,” she said. “The crows.”
“Yes,” Doug said. “They’re pretty bright, those birds.” He looked at her. “You know the rules, Martha.
Stay with the group. Anyway, the break’s over. Chance will be looking for his partner!”
Together, they went back inside. Chance was upon them immediately, looking from one to the other. He settled on Martha.
“Where were you? It’s time to get started. We have a lot of questions left to go.”
Martha looked down at the paper, but she had to blink twice before she could read the words. She had to clear from her mind the image of that hungry, feathered creature. What went on behind that beady eye? Without thinking, she wrote crow and claw and eye in the margin of the work sheet.
“Hey, you’re wrecking it!” said Chance, who had never handed in a tidy work sheet in his life.
In the days following the field trip, Preeti and Sam and Hailey did not speak to Martha again. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. Who cared about them anyway? But she knew who cared. She did. She had always been the one they flocked around, and now she was the one they shunned.
She knew that she had brought it on herself, that she had hurt their feelings way back on the day of the nightgown, but she shoved that feeling aside whenever it arose.
They were mean. That was all.
CHAPTER 4
One on One
Two weeks later, Martha looked up from her applecinnamon oatmeal. Dad was sitting down at the kitchen table.
“Don’t you have to go?” she said.
“Are you so eager to be rid of me?” he replied, smiling.
“No. I…You never sit down in the morning.”
“Well, I want to talk to you. “ Martha put down her spoon. The oatmeal felt a bit rumbly in her stomach.
“Where did Mom go?”
“She’s upstairs lying down. I’m going to see you off to school this morning.”
“But she was right here a minute ago.”
Dad’s mouth tightened. He took a breath. Martha’s breakfast rolled over inside her.
“She needs her rest right now,” Dad said. “And today’s the day that you see Linda after school, isn’t it?”
Martha nodded, not quite meeting his eyes. He knew what day it was. For almost a year now, she had been seeing her birth mother on the last Tuesday of every second month during school. That meant October and December. Why was he asking?
“Well, I just spoke to her, and she has agreed to meet you at school this time. The two of you are going to go out from there.”
Now Martha did meet his eyes. “The two of us?”
“I think you’re old enough, honey. And Linda’s doing really well. You don’t need Mom or me along on every outing anymore.”
Martha’s eyes widened. Dad looked right back at her, calm as calm. Mom was in bed when she should have been helping Martha get ready for school. Mom, who had never let her be alone with her birth mother for one minute in her whole entire life (not even when Martha was being born), was suddenly sending her off on her own and not even coming downstairs to tell her about it. And no one was asking Martha what she wanted. They obviously didn’t care. Neither of them.
They were getting a baby of their own. Martha did not matter anymore.
She wanted to shout, to scream up the stairs at her mother, to confront her father. What if Linda was using drugs again? What if she crashed the car? What if she refused to bring Martha home? But Martha did not scream. She did not shout out her fears.
Instead she held her father’s gaze and nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll be fine on my own.” Then she ate every last bit of her oatmeal, grabbed her bag and went to wait for him in the car.
Martha, who never dawdled, was dawdling. Mr. Jewett stood and watched her from his desk. Everyone else was gone.
“Is something wrong, Martha?” he asked.
She flinched. “No. I…I just…” She looked around the room. “I wanted to check on our fish,” she said.
“All right,” Mr. Jewett said. “Take your time.”
The enormous fish was spread out all the way across the floor at the back of the room. Martha had helped Chance a bit with the painting, but he was so messy when he was working that most of the time she just left him to it. And often when he should have been doing math or silent reading, he was back there, banging around, trying to get the paint just the right shade of gray, or fussing over scutes and barbels. Martha could now identify both, thanks to him. Scutes were the rows of sharp white points that ran along the fish’s back and sides. Barbels were the four dangly things that hung down in front of the creature’s mouth and helped it sense its food. And Mr. Jewett let Chance paint away, just like he let him do everything else. Still, the pointy scutes and the dangly barbels were perfect, Martha thought. She touched the painted surface and tried for a moment to imagine that it was real.
Then she turned to the back wall, where the sturgeon display was. One poster showed the early stages: eggs, larvae, young-of-the-year. She looked at the young-of-the-year for a long time. It was a strange, small, spiky creature.
“Time to go,” Mr. Jewett said.
Martha reached out a finger and touched the image. Then she straightened up. Yes, it was time to go.
Martha stood on the school’s cement steps and watched Linda suck on a cigarette. When Linda saw Martha, she stubbed the cigarette out with her foot and started across the grass in Martha’s direction. Martha glanced to both sides. Had she stayed inside long enough? The whole area was deserted.
Martha breathed in a mixture of relief and misery and darted right past Linda and straight into the backseat of the car, which reeked of stale smoke. Martha had never been inside Linda’s car before. She had never been inside any car that smelled of smoke.
Linda was behind her, leaning right in the door. “Hey, you don’t have to sit in the backseat, kiddo!”
Linda didn’t know one single thing.
“Yes, I do,” Martha said stiffly. “Children aren’t supposed to sit in the front. It’s not safe.”
Linda looked puzzled for a moment. “Well, all right then,” she said, turning on a great big smile. “You’d best stay put. I want a hug though. Say hello to your mom!” And she pulled Martha into a stinky embrace.
You’re not my mom. You’re not my mom.
Martha held herself taut in Linda’s bony arms. Linda had never called herself Martha’s mom before. She would not do that if Mom were here.
“I’m so excited that we get to spend time together, just the two of us,” Linda was saying as she withdrew from the backseat. Her words tumbled over themselves. “Your dad said that we can stay out until nine. If you don’t have any homework, that is. Do you?”
Martha opened her mouth to say that she had lots of homework and would certainly need to be home by seven, but Linda wasn’t done. “Even if you do have homewo
rk, that’s okay. We could go to my place right now. You could do it before supper. It would be just like…just like…” She stopped then, but Martha knew what she was thinking, and she did not like it.
“I got all my work done at school,” she said, keeping her voice firm. I will never, ever go to her house, she thought. The mere idea of it brought fear creeping from where it lurked inside her, right to the center of her belly. She swallowed hard, hunkered down in the backseat and fastened her seatbelt.
She had never felt afraid like this with Linda before, because Mom or Dad had always been there. And Linda always sat up in front with the driver. And Mom or Dad always answered the hard questions. Martha didn’t like the hugs, but she had been curious about her birth mother and she had liked telling her about school and stuff. Mom and Dad had helped with that too. Without Mom or Dad there, the woman in the front seat seemed much more real somehow, and much more scary.
They went to Denny’s. Martha hated Denny’s. She never went there with Mom and Dad. Mom had called it “grungy” the one time Dad suggested it. She had never been there with Linda either, because Mom had always been with them. They had gone to White Spot the first time, last December, and to a Chinese restaurant twice since. Once Mom had suggested Japanese food, but Linda said that she didn’t like raw fish.
That was stupid, because you don’t have to eat raw fish in a Japanese restaurant. There are lots of other things, like prawn tempura and chicken teriyaki.
Martha flipped through the Denny’s menu.
“Hey, it’s free for kids under ten today,” Linda said. “Here’s the kids’ menu.” She reached across and turned Martha’s menu over to the back. Martha was to choose between fish sticks, chicken fingers or a cheeseburger, all with fries. She knew what Mom would say about that. “Do you want to get a milkshake instead of pop?” Linda asked. “I love their milkshakes.”
“No, thank you,” Martha said.
Linda’s smile froze for a moment. Then her eyes crinkled. “Hey,” she said, “Halloween comes on a Friday this year!”
“Yeah,” Martha said.
“What are you going to be?” Linda asked.
Martha’s stomach tightened. She did not want to think about Halloween, and she certainly did not want to talk to Linda about it.
Last year she had been Queen Elizabeth I. Other kids were just ordinary princesses or witches, but she had been a real historical figure, with a heavy wig on her head, white paint on her face and a dress that swept the ground and rose in a big white ruff around her neck. Mom had bought some parts of the costume and made others. At lots of the houses, everyone had come to the door to see, and Dad had come out of the shadows, camera at the ready. Mom had stayed home, in her own scary costume, and handed out candy at the door.
This year, no one had said a word about Halloween. Not one word. On the weekend, Martha had snuck into the storage closet and dug out last year’s dress, but she only had to hold it up against herself to see that she had grown too much to wear it again.
Not for a second did she consider telling Linda any of that.
“Dad’s taking me shopping tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going to pick a brand-new costume.”
Linda grinned at her. “That’s exciting,” she said. “What would you like to be?”
“A princess,” Martha said, even though last year she had been a queen. Everyone expected girls to want to be princesses.
They placed their orders then, and silence fell. Linda picked at her paper napkin, reducing part of it to shreds. Martha looked on, disapproving. Her own napkin was on her lap, where it belonged. After a while, Linda smoothed out what was left of her napkin, arranged her knife and fork neatly on top of it and looked up.
There was that grin again, maybe a little shaky at the corners.
“Hey,” she said, “you know what?”
Silence.
At last Martha realized what was required of her. “What?” she said.
“I met a guy!”
Martha stared at the skinny, jittery, smokysmelling woman opposite her. Linda was acting different without Mom there to answer her questions or to tell her things about Martha. Martha wondered for a moment if Linda really was using drugs again. How would Martha even be able to tell?
She collected herself. “That’s nice,” she said.
“He’s so sweet, you know. He’s taken me out, what, five times now…and to nice restaurants. He’s really interested in me. In me, you know. He’s in construction.”
Martha thought and thought. What could she say to all of this? Then she had an idea. “What’s his name?” she said.
Linda beamed. “Brad,” she said. “Brad Simmons.” She gazed at Martha across the table. “How does Linda Simmons sound to you?”
Martha stared back. Something dark and furious slithered through her. This woman had given Martha away when she was a little tiny baby. And now Martha was supposed to smile and say how pleased she was for her. Well, she wasn’t pleased. She wasn’t pleased at all.
“We’re studying sturgeon at school,” she said.
Linda looked confused. A slight qualm made Martha hesitate for a moment. Then another thought occurred to her. “Sturgeon spawn every twelve years.”
Linda’s brows knit.
“They lay thousands and thousands and thousands of eggs. And then they swim away. Forever,” she added. That was the key word.
Forever.
“That’s very interesting,” Linda said, but her brows stayed knit.
Nervous, Martha thought. She looks nervous.
The food came, and Martha put on her brightest smile. “Oh, the fish sticks look delicious,” she said. “Yummy.”
It helped to have something to do. Martha ate slowly, smiling over her knife and fork at Linda, who was working away on a burger and fries. Linda smiled back.
“I’m glad that you’re learning so much in science,” Linda said at one point.
Martha nodded.
“Brad loves fishing,” Linda went on. “I think he even caught a sturgeon once. And released it,” she added quickly in response to Martha’s shocked stare. “You’d like him, you know.”
Martha looked down at her plate and took another bite. She would not.
“I thought I’d talk to Denise, and maybe, you know, when we see each other at Christmas, maybe Brad could come too, or maybe you could even come to my place,” Linda said, her words tripping over each other.
Martha lowered her head a little farther. Linda was calling Martha’s mom Denise. It had been all right when Linda had done that when she was talking directly to Martha’s mom. What else was she supposed to call her? But to Martha she had always said “your mom” this and “your mom” that. And every time Martha had heard “I am not your mom. She is,” and she had felt safe. More or less. Now she was alone with Linda, and everything had changed.
How could Mom and Dad make her come out all by herself? All this stuff was their job, not hers. She did not want to meet boyfriends and visit houses. They couldn’t make her. Could they?
She grit her teeth and reared her head, bringing her eyes up to Linda’s. There: Martha’s smile, though small perhaps, was in place. There: her mouth was opening. And words were coming out.
“I don’t know,” she was saying. “I’d have to ask my mom and dad.” She put a little extra emphasis on the word mom, but Linda didn’t seem to notice.
Her grin widened. “Oh, they’ll be fine with it,” she said, and Martha’s gut twisted.
Linda went right on. “I just know you’ll love him,” she gushed. “He’s so sweet, and he loves kids. You know, he…If we ever got married, I’d be his first wife, you know, his first real partner. And he wants… Well, the wedding first, right? And you would be the sweetest little flower girl!”
Martha’s smile stayed in place somehow. She managed to say “Mmhmm” in all the right spots, but after that she counted off the seconds until Linda was steering the car to the curb outside Martha’s house. She jumped fr
om the car and had to will her body to stay in place long enough to let Linda hug her goodbye. The hug ended, at last, and Linda got back in her car.
Moments later, Martha shut the front door gently behind her. Dad was on the couch. Mom was nowhere to be seen. Martha stood in the living room entrance.
“Dad,” she said, “I don’t have a costume for Halloween.”
CHAPTER 5
The Scariest Night of the Year
Some of the kids wore their costumes to school on Friday, Chance included. He had obviously made his costume all by himself.
Martha had only just got her costume the night before.
“I’ll be taking care of that!” Dad had said brightly when Martha confronted him after her awful dinner.
“How?” Martha had shot back. “Halloween’s in three days.”
“That’s lots of time for a shopping expedition,” he said, beaming at her and whipping his wallet out of his back pocket.
Martha did not beam. She did not like the idea of shopping for a costume so close to Halloween, or with her father, who did not care about things the same way her mother did. And she was worried about Halloween itself. Last year, she and Preeti had talked about trick-or-treating together this year. They were going to be in grade four; Halloween should no longer be only a family affair. “Maybe your dad could take us,” Preeti had said.
Last year, when Martha had worn her Queen Elizabeth I costume to school, everyone had oohed and aahed over it in a highly satisfactory way. Martha had glowed with pride. Now Preeti was not speaking to her, and Martha knew that any costume her father bought her two days before the big day was not likely to impress.
It turned out that there would be no shopping two days before. Dad had a meeting after work on Wednesday. The shopping took place on Thursday, the day before Halloween, and Dad took her to a department store, not a costume shop. The racks were almost bare. Martha considered going without a costume and hiding away in her room all evening, but her dad was smiling as he pawed through the racks, showing her a ratty witch’s cape and hat and, of all things, a ghost costume. He held up a few old Disney things too, but all the ones from recent movies were gone, probably long gone… Then she saw, behind the rack, in a heap on the floor, what looked like a fish’s tail. She reached down and picked it up. A mermaid. Ariel. She gazed at it, trying to imagine.
Somebody's Girl (Orca Young Readers) Page 3