“Dad,” she said, “I think that I would like to be a fish.”
“A fish,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Here’s the tail. I could wear a gray shirt and we could make some fins and scutes.”
“Scutes?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, impatient with him. “Now, all I need is a mask. A fish mask.”
Dad let fall the gauzy princess skirt he was holding. “A fish mask?”
Was he going to repeat everything she said?
“We can go to a real costume store, Dad. It’s only four thirty. I’ll bet they’re open late today.”
Dad took a step away from the costume rack. “Sweetie,” he said, but the word was crisp around the edges, “we’re not going to go to a ‘real costume store.’
We’re not going to go to any other store. I left work early to help you with this. It’s suppertime, and I, for one, am starving. You need to pick a costume here. Now.”
Martha stared at her father. Last year, Mom would have found a way to buy her a fish mask, or make her one, no matter how close to Halloween it was. Now Mom was lying down at home, and Dad was bossing her around. She felt her whole face contract. Then she thought of her mother at the sewing machine trying to find a way to make her daughter look like a fish. Martha had been an English queen, a Japanese princess, a Bollywood dancer. But turn her into a fish? Mom liked to make Martha look pretty, not like some creature of the deeps. It would never happen. She almost smiled. She looked at her father again. He was positively scowling. She squared her shoulders.
“I want to be a fish. I don’t see why we can’t go to another store.” She paused. Then she lied. “Mom would take me,” she said.
Half an hour later, she was running from the garage into the house, letting the door slam behind her. Who cared if Mom was resting and it woke her up? She dashed through the kitchen, up the stairs and into her room, where she slammed another door.
Ariel. Dad had bought the Ariel costume. He had positively refused to take her anywhere else. He had told her not to act so spoiled, to think about somebody else for a change. He had even taken hold of her upper arm, hard, when she shouted back at him. She bet there were marks.
She threw herself down on her bed. How had everything changed so fast?
Dad’s meanness turned out to be a blessing when Chance turned up at school on Friday morning decked out as a really weird sturgeon. He had no fish mask, but he wore a gray ski mask, gray pants and a gray sweatshirt. He had used a whole lot of duct tape to stick rows of scutes made from white Bristol board down his back and sides. And four barbels made from thin rubber tubing dangled from the wool above his upper lip. Martha peered at them from a distance.
Dozens of staples held them there. He had taped fins on in all the right places, but they flopped about oddly as he walked. The one blessing was that he had not tried to make one of those gross hose-like mouths that sturgeon had.
Martha shuddered. Didn’t Chance have a mirror in his house? How could Doug and Angie let him out like that?
Imagine if she had turned up dressed like a sturgeon too! It was bad enough that her costume had a fish’s tail. She was glad that she had come to school costumeless, leaving Ariel in a heap on her bedroom floor, even though the sprightly mermaid would have fit right in with Preeti’s and Sam’s and Hailey’s costumes, all straight off the rack.
By the time Halloween night was over, Martha already wished that she could forget her whole grade-four trick-or-treating experience.
To begin with, she had the most pathetic costume of her life.
Then, as they were eating an astonishing dinner of boiled hot dogs and carrot sticks, Mom put her hand over her mouth and stood.
“Excuse me,” she said and rushed to the bathroom.
Martha could hear her throwing up all the way from the table. Dad almost knocked over his chair in his hurry to be at her side.
Mom had thrown up lots in the summer, but it had almost stopped by the time school started. Something was not right.
The doorbell rang. Martha could hear the giggles from the front step. The first trick-or-treaters were outside. She looked at the bathroom door, firmly closed.
“Can you answer it?” Dad shouted.
Martha ran to the front door and opened it. A small robot looked up at her. “Waaall-ee,” it said and held out a big sack. Martha almost smiled. She turned to the hall table, where the bowl of candy should have been. Nothing.
“Hold on a minute,” she said to the friendly little robot. She knew that the candy was in the house. They had bought bags and bags last night, along with the mermaid costume. Seconds later, she was back at the door, ripping open a bag of mini chocolate bars and shoving three of them into the gaping sack.
“Thank you,” Wall-E said.
When Martha turned away from the door, there were Mom and Dad, side by side. Mom looked gray. Dad looked worried.
“I can’t leave your mother to take you out, honey,” he said. “Dr. Storey said to keep an eye—”
Mom managed a small smile as she interrupted. “Dr. Storey’s a worrywart,” she said, “and Peter, so are you.” She turned to Martha. “But do you think you could you call a friend?” Her voice was strained, as if vomit might leak out with the words.
“How about Preeti?” Dad said.
Martha tried not to let panic show on her face. “Preeti’s busy,” she said abruptly. She couldn’t call Preeti. She just couldn’t.
“Peter,” Mom said, her voice a bit stronger. “Give Doug and Angie a call.”
It took Martha a moment, even once she heard the names, to understand what her mother was up to. And when she did get it, she couldn’t believe it. Her mother was trying to send her out into the street, into public, with the weirdest boy in class. And, just to top it off, that weird boy would be dressed in old clothes, duct tape, Bristol board and staples…with rubber tubes hanging off his face.
She opened her mouth to express her resistance. She sent messages to her legs to carry her up the stairs to her room—she would slam the door and never ever come out. But her mouth stayed shut, and her legs stayed still as she tried to take in what was going on.
Her mother was throwing up all of a sudden. And Mom and Dad had been keeping a secret: the doctor had told them to watch for something. That was why Dad had almost knocked his chair over following Mom to the bathroom. They hadn’t even bothered to tell their own daughter that there was something to worry about. Self-pity washed through her, right down to her toes, self-pity mixed with a little bit of fear.
At last her legs released her, and she headed off to dress herself up as a silly little mermaid. She took the stairs one at a time and turned her eyes away from the loving family of three that smiled down from photo after photo after photo up the stairwell. Behind her, Dad picked up the phone. She heard his end of the conversation—short, friendly. He said goodbye before she was even halfway to her room.
“Doug and Chance will be by in a few minutes,” Dad said to her back, not even seeming to care that she didn’t turn around.
Dad was at the door handing out candy to two fairies and a Shrek when she came back down. Doug and Chance the Homemade Sturgeon were already there, right outside on the sidewalk. Martha passed her father without a glance and joined the enemy. What else could she do?
Worry about her mother had found a spot inside her, and she left it there, all tucked away. It was hard to think about all that stuff anyway in the face of Chance’s chatter, which brought on annoyance, and in the face of the Halloween atmosphere that filled the streets, which brought on a kind of begrudging joy.
So when Martha was brought up short by the sound of her own name, she was actually gasping with pleasure at the sight of a front yard done up exactly like a cemetery.
“Look, it’s Martha…and Chance. A girl with a fish tail and…a fish!”
It was Sam who had spoken. Preeti, Sam and Hailey had stopped mid-cemetery, and Hailey’s face was wide-open in laug
hter. Preeti was behind the other two, frozen in mid-step.
Pleasure departed. Shame took its place.
“Hi, girls,” Doug said. “Would you like to join us?”
“No,” Martha said before Sam could speak another word. “No, it’s okay.” And she fixed her eyes on the cement walkway, shoved past Chance and barreled right between the other girls, casting them to both sides as she made for the front door of the cemetery house. “Trick or treat!” she shouted as she knocked.
At least it was Friday. Maybe by Monday, they would have forgotten.
An angry tear spurted onto her right cheek. I’m supposed to be out with them, she thought. I’m supposed to be one of the popular ones.
chapter 6
A Girl?
The next Monday afternoon, Mom was not lying on the couch when Martha got home from school. She was at the kitchen table, staring at something. She looked up when Martha came in. Her face was shining as if she had a great big lightbulb stuffed inside her head.
Martha tried to smile back.
“Oh, sweetheart, come here.” Her mother was holding out her hands. Martha had no choice but to walk over and submit her own hands to her mother’s.
“Your dad and I went to the doctor today,” she said. She waited as if she thought Martha might say something. At last she went on. “For the ultrasound.”
Martha knew what that was. Mom and Dad had told her. They had even offered to take her along, but she had said that she shouldn’t miss school.
An ultrasound was when the doctor rubbed something like a camera on the mother’s stomach so you could see the baby inside her. You could tell if there was something wrong, and sometimes you could see if it was a boy or a girl.
Mom held out the thing she had been looking at. It was a weird, swirly black-and-white picture. “Look,” Mom said. “There she is.”
Martha just stared. She could see the baby now, or fetus, or whatever it was. It didn’t look like a person exactly, but she could see its head and its body. A girl. That was what Mom was saying. Mom was going to have a girl baby.
At last, Martha managed to pull her eyes away from the picture and up to her mother’s shining face. “That’s nice,” she said.
Mom looked at her. “There’s something else,” she said.
Martha looked back. Her mother’s face was not all joy now. “The baby’s doing well,” she said slowly, “and so am I…”
Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong. The fear that had stayed tucked away over the weekend slithered out and made a mad dash into Martha’s belly.
“You know how I got sick on Friday, and your dad stayed home with me? I said he was a worrywart.” She smiled. “And he is. You know it. And I know it.”
Come on, Martha thought. Tell me what’s wrong.
“Well, the doctor says that Peter is right to worry a little bit. I need to take it easy. She’s not putting me on bed rest, but I need to slow down, keep my feet up as much as I can. There are still almost three more months to go before the baby’s due. Dr. Storey doesn’t want her to come early. And neither do I.”
Martha opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t know what to say. The fear had slithered back into its hiding place while Mom talked. Rest didn’t sound so bad. She had already been resting half the time anyway. “Okay, Mom,” Martha said finally. “I have to go to my room. I have lots of homework.”
She saw Mom’s face fall, but it was the best she could do. It really was.
On Thursday, Mom wasn’t on the couch, and she wasn’t at the kitchen table. Surely she wouldn’t be out when Martha got home. Martha had seen the car in the garage.
Instead of shouting, she climbed the stairs, one at a time, stopping to look at each photo on the wall as she went. Mom had put them up just last year, so they showed almost the whole of Martha’s life and one picture from before. That one, the one at the very top of the stairs, was Martha’s favorite. It was Mom and Dad’s wedding photo, from years before Martha came along, and she knew every detail by heart. The photograph was black and white, taken on a beach. Dad looked like a movie star in his fancy suit—a tuxedo. And Mom looked more beautiful than anyone Martha had ever seen. She was barefoot, holding her long white skirt up off the sand, so that her legs showed. She had pearls around her neck, and her hair was kind of blown around. She was looking into the camera and laughing. Dad was looking at her.
Martha stopped and gazed at it for a long time before she took the last step to the upstairs and went to see if her mom was in bed. She wasn’t. Martha shut the bedroom door and stood still for a moment. The house was silent. She felt a hint of panic.
But no. There were still more places to look.
Mom was not in Martha’s bedroom. She wasn’t in the spare room. That left one more place. The door to the baby-to-be’s room was ajar. Martha put her hand on the white wooden surface and pushed. There was Mom, sitting in the new rocking chair, fast asleep. Martha stepped inside the baby-to-be’s room for the first time since Mom and Dad had dragged her in there right after announcing the pregnancy.
“Come help us decide what to do with the room,” Dad had said.
Martha had wanted to say, No, that’s okay. You decide. But she hated to hurt their feelings. She had gone, and she had nodded at their ideas and looked thoughtful when they asked her questions. But she had been glad that she happened to be at summer camp when they were getting the room all cleared up. And she had managed to miss out on both shopping trips so far.
Now it looked as if Mom had been on another one. Of course she had. Now she knew the baby was a girl! Paint chips and bits of fabric were scattered on the new change table, and Mom had draped a fuzzy pink baby blanket over her chest. She had a piece of paper in her hand. Martha moved farther into the room.
It was the swirly baby picture. The new daughter: her sister. Martha tried out the word, but it just didn’t fit. Before Mom could wake up and catch her there, Martha left the room and went down to the kitchen to get a snack. All by herself.
After supper the following Wednesday, Dad motioned Martha to join him on the couch. Mom was upstairs lying down.
“She needs lots of rest,” Dad said. “The doctor says it’s best for the baby and it’s best for her.”
“I know,” Martha said. “Mom told me.” She tilted her head slightly and let her brows pull together just a bit: that was her listening face.
“Your mom is forty-four years old,” Dad said.
Martha nodded. She knew that too.
“That’s older than most women who have babies,” he went on, “so she has to be a little bit more careful. She has to rest a lot.”
Martha nodded again, even though she was sure there was more to it than that. Preeti’s mother had a baby last year, and she had to be just as old as Mom. She had gray hair! And even when her stomach stuck out way farther than Mom’s, she had gone to work and picked Preeti up from school and done all sorts of things.
“This means that we are going to need your help, Martha,” Dad said.
This time Martha didn’t nod. Her tongue came loose from her teeth.
“I do help,” she said, her voice rising. “I get my own breakfast every day now. I make my bed. I get my own snacks.” She paused to draw breath. “I help and I help and I help.”
Dad’s breath made a little whooshing noise. “Well,” he said, “I think that you could to do a bit more than that. I think that it’s time you started making your own school lunches. And tonight you could help Mom unload the dishwasher.”
Martha opened her mouth to ask why he couldn’t help Mom or just unload the dishwasher himself, but something in his face stopped her. He looked determined, but more than that. He almost looked a little bit scared.
“Okay, Dad,” she said.
CHAPTER 7
Stupid Fish
The drive went on and on and on, but Martha was too wrapped up in her thoughts to take it in. On Wednesday, Dad had instructed her to make her own lunches an
d unload the dishwasher. On Friday, he had told her that she was spending the next day with Angie and Doug.
He was shipping her out.
Now, in the car, Chance talked excitedly and endlessly to his foster parents. Well, at the beginning he tried to talk to Martha, but she showed him her still, silent face. He stared at her for a long moment, shrugged and directed his next words to the front seat.
How old were the sturgeon they were going to see? Why did sturgeon live at a salmon hatchery? What went on at a hatchery anyway? Was this a good time to go? November?
Doug and Angie took turns answering as best they could. Chance knew a lot of the answers already. Angie had a bundle of papers on her lap, printed from a government website. She had spent the first hour in the car reading all that stuff out loud.
“Who cares?” Martha had wanted to scream at them then. And “Who cares?” she wanted to scream at them now.
Stupid fish.
She fixed her gaze on the Fraser River, the occasional tugboat, the endless logging operations, the flat land on the other side and the hills in the distance. Then they left the river and drove beside a railroad track that ran on raised ground higher up than the car. She wished she would see a train. She wished she were on a train.
Without warning, the car stopped, just stopped, right in the middle of the road.
“Look up,” Doug said.
Martha looked. And gasped. The trees ahead of them were huge, craggy, leafless. And full of eagles. She pushed the button and the window slid down. Cool air and the scent of pine trees washed over her as she craned her neck outside. Eagles. The closest one was so big that she couldn’t even take all of it in. She could see its sharp beak and its eyes. She could swear that it was staring right at her. She stared back.
Somebody's Girl (Orca Young Readers) Page 4