Thirteen Shells

by Nadia Bozak

  “No!” Shell whispers that she and Dad will drive it out to the country so it can run off and be happy.

  “But what if its family is here? Shell? If it has a nest of little ones?”

  Shell shrugs. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway — they just keep coming back. See that?” She points a finger at the white-tipped tail. “We call this one Susan, after some smart lady writer Mum likes.” Dad and Shell don’t know how many times they’ve caught her and driven her out, and in a few days she’s back eating the tomatoes.

  “She is clever, Soo-san,” Mamoon whispers. “Soo-san.” Mamoon leans in. “Look how she is shaking, so scared…Soo-san.” Mamoon sticks his right pointer finger into the cage, gives it a wriggle. Whistling low, he makes a nattering noise. “Soo-san.” That’s when the squirrel goes crazy, rushing Mamoon’s finger. Mamoon pulls back. He falls hard, landing against the fence. Caught in the thick nest of brambles, he looks at Shell and they don’t know if they should laugh. Shell smiles, and Mamoon is getting there too, but the dogs break out barking and the squirrel starts flinging its body against the sides of the cage. Shell throws the blanket over the cage. Finding Mamoon’s hand, she yanks him up.

  Thorns tear their skin and clothes as they clamber back along the shed. Mamoon’s mum is at the top of the driveway. Then she is jogging into the back. Dad steps out from the studio and dumps a bucket of murky water into a planter of rosemary. He waves hello at Mamoon’s mum. His beard is white with dust, clogs broken down, and he’s wearing his overalls without a shirt, chest hair matted.

  But Mamoon’s mum isn’t looking at Dad. Before Shell can wipe the blood from the scratches on Mamoon’s face or tell him the squirrel cage is a secret, he’s got his arms around his mum, her long hair draped over him like a curtain.

  Shell pulls leaves from her hair. Mamoon’s mum pinches her eyes at Shell and turns away. By the time they walk back to their apartment, she will know that Shell and Mum and Dad are hillbillies.

  It’s Saturday, so Clarke’s two-door is in the driveway, still sleek and reflective from the wash he gave it earlier. With “Start Me Up” blaring from a ghetto blaster, Clarke, in cut-off jean shorts, had soaped the car, concentrating on the front grille. Shell, crouched behind the honeysuckle on the porch, prayed to God that the stubby cigarette clamped between his lips would set his moustache on fire. In a frilled bikini Shell had never seen before, Vicki grooved on the front lawn, squealing each time Clarke turned the hose on her.

  Shell sucks in her breath and knocks on the aluminum frame of Vicki’s screen door. She’s got her quilted purse and the shell pasta necklace is draped around her neck. The shoebox is tucked under her arm like a football. Inside the bungalow, the TV is so loud Shell has to wait for a pause before knocking again.

  Five Labatt’s Blue bottles are lined up on the sill beneath the living room window and the crayons in the Cool Whip tub have dried into a lump. Garbage cans line the boulevards up and down Cashel Street. There are two cans in front of Vicki’s, plus a kitchen chair without a seat. Down the block, Dad is putting out a bundle of cracked two-by-fours. He leans the bundle next to a rubber bin; a pair of dead squirrels are buried inside, concealed in black garbage bags. Mamoon’s mum had said Mamoon was busy today, so Shell gardened with Dad. She dug up a crystal medicine bottle and gave it to Mum, and when Mum went to work at the co-op, Shell and Dad took care of the squirrels. But they don’t drive them out to the country anymore. The first to go was Susan, who’d found her way back from Wild Oat’s and took out so much of Dad’s basil bed Mum can’t make pesto.

  Shell had held the garbage bag while Dad slid the trap inside. Then he tied the bag’s opening around the Dart’s muffler, tight so no fumes would get out. The Dart was pulled right up to the top of the driveway, and while Dad idled the car, it was Shell’s job to signal when the squirrel in the bag stopped making that horrible banging sound.

  “Bye, Soo-san,” Shell had whispered.

  Vicki’s front window strobes blue. The TV is so loud with shouts and gunfire that one of the beer bottles topples off the sill, landing with a thud in the dirt patch where some petunias have wilted. Then all is quiet. Vicki’s voice comes first, then her mum’s. There is talk of Doritos and a new container of dip.

  Shell sets the shoebox next to the crayons. When Vicki finds the box in the morning, she will bring Shell her antiques. Mamoon can have his pick from Shell’s treasures, and everything will be fair and square again.

  Shell’s already down the steps when the screen door squeaks open. She smells cigarette. “Hey.” Behind her, Clarke steps onto the porch, a Silverhorn T-shirt tucked into beltless jean shorts. Timmy the dog pants at his side. “What’re ya snooping after now?”

  “Is Vicki home?”

  “She’s busy,” Clarke tells her. “And it’s late to be coming to play.”

  Shell’s not there to play. She only wants to trade Vicki some stuff back. “Vicki had asked for it.”

  “That it?” Clarke glances down at the shoebox.

  Shell nods.

  “Just leave it there, then.” With his arm holding out the screen door and one foot still on the porch, he calls for Vicki. “Your hillbilly friend is here.”

  The television sounds again, but with the volume lower. In the window, Vicki’s mum’s boobs and chins are sharply outlined. Vicki’s Garfield T-shirt hangs to her knees. Once, she wore it on the tire swing and had no underwear on beneath. She peeks out from behind Clarke. The knots in her hair have grown into tumbleweeds and she’s blinking like crazy. When Clarke tells her to, she steps onto the porch and checks that everything is inside the box.

  “Yes,” she answers, replacing the lid.

  “Now,” Clarke says to Vicki, “you tell her where she can find her junk.”

  Vicki hugs the box into her Garfield chest and looks down. Together, she and Shell watch her toes curling up tight against the concrete porch, chipped nails of candy-apple red.

  “Go on,” Clarke says again. “I don’t have all day.” He stares hard at the back of Vicki’s head.

  Vicki closes her eyes and takes a breath. She points past Shell.

  “In the garbage,” she whispers.

  Then Clarke grabs Vicki under the arm and pulls her inside. The screen door slams and Timmy yelps as Vicki backs onto the dog’s lovely soft tail.

  The television starts up even louder. Shell stays rooted at the bottom of the steps, swallowing visions of kicking the crayons across the porch or smashing the beer bottles over Clarke’s head.

  There are hot tears in her eyes as Shell lifts the lid from the first garbage can. The smell of sour milk hits the back of her throat as does the warm ferment of rotting fruit, because Vicki’s family’s never even heard of compost. With a dirty chopstick, Shell pokes among sacks of dirty Kleenex, pizza boxes, and about fifty spaghetti cans. The street lights are coming on. Soon Dad will let loose one of his famous whistles that can he heard three blocks away at least.

  Shell lifts the lid from the second can. Under a crumby Purina sack and a stack of Rolling Stone, Shell finds her lost treasures. One by one, she picks them out, wipes them on her pants, and tucks them into her purse. What doesn’t fit she sets on the dewy grass. When everything is accounted for — teacup, coins, glass bottles, the little crocheted pouch with the brass ring inside — Shell replaces the lid, bundles the trades in her T-shirt, and walks home. Clarke is in the window, the bamboo shades pushed back.

  Shell’s under the mountain ash reading Asterix from the library. Mamoon said that’s his favourite comic. And he’s right, it’s about a million times better than Archie. Across the street, a grey squirrel chases a brown squirrel around the base of a shady maple. The brown one clutches a flower bulb in its mouth. The grey one natters at the brown, backing it into the tree trunk, tail twitching like it’s electric. Only when the brown drops the flower bulb does the grey let it dash away. The bulb
is probably one of Dad’s. They’re going for the irises now. All week Shell prayed for God to make the squirrels go away so she wouldn’t have to help kill them anymore. Usually she falls asleep after such long prayers, but last night Shell tiptoed downstairs. Mum was listening to the radio in the sweaty kitchen, the counter lined with jars of gooseberry jam. The lights in the studio were bright through the back window. The top of Dad’s head moved from window to window. Shell missed Mamoon. He understood about Mum and Dad without even knowing it.

  Mum gave Shell milk and a muffin with warm jam.

  When Shell said, “Mum, are we hillbillies?” Mum didn’t laugh. Mum’s glasses had clay on them and her lips were sticky from licking the spatula.

  “Dad’s from a farm, Shell. That’s why he’s always digging holes and collecting old wood and saving things.”

  “Like he’s a squirrel? Kind of?”

  “Well, maybe. But don’t tell him that.”

  Shell said no, she wouldn’t tell. And she won’t tell Mum about the gassed squirrels either. “I don’t have to be like Dad, do I?”

  “No,” Mum said, surprised. “You don’t have to be like either of us, but you still have to obey our rules.”

  The mountain ash produces a deep dark shade. Lying beneath it in the long grass, Shell dozes off. Cars go past, swooshing in and out of waking dreams. And then there comes the flip-flipping of thong sandals — near, but not quite loud enough to be on Shell’s side of the street.

  With knotted head lifted high and Shell’s old shoebox under her arm, Vicki walks down Cashel Street in the direction of the church.

  Shell follows, well back, but never far enough away she can’t hear Vicki’s shoes snapping up and down or see her sharp back bones poking out above her tube top. Vicki passes Cashel Street United, trots up to Mamoon’s apartment building, finds the right buzzer, and rings the bell. Mamoon’s mum opens the door. She smiles at Vicki, who looks up, shading her eyes. She holds out Shell’s shoebox. Mamoon’s mum nods and retreats. Then Mamoon comes to the door. The church steps where Shell huddles are warm from the morning sun. Mamoon smiles at Vicki but keeps looking back to where his mum has gone. Vicki grabs his hand and leads him over to the apartment steps. They sit, knees falling open. Vicki holds out the shoebox like it is Pot of Gold chocolates. Mamoon selects a bottle of polish. Then Vicki rummages around and takes out a nail file. She picks up Mamoon’s hand and places it on her knee. One by one, she cleans and files his fingernails. Mamoon closes his eyes. His shoulders relax.

  Vicki and Mamoon are laughing. Shell’s legs cramp from crouching, and her stomach feels sick. It’s not right that Vicki does up Mamoon’s nails pretending like Clarke didn’t call him Baboon. Mamoon needs to know what Clarke said and so does his mum.

  Shell finds her balance and steps away from the church. She goes slow, pretending to read her comic. At the bottom of the apartment steps, she lifts her eyes.

  “Hi, Shell,” Mamoon says, waving with his free hand.

  Shell uses Asterix to shade her eyes. Vicki and Mamoon smile down at her.

  Vicki says: “Come up.” She says: “My mum gave me some nail files and stuff, so now I can give a real manicure. Want one?”

  Shell looks down at her dirty nails and scratched fingers, the palms calloused from shovelling. “Okay.”

  Mamoon and Vicki move over and Mamoon pats the spot between them. While Vicki picks up Shell’s right hand and puts it on her knee, Mamoon does the same with Shell’s left. Then Vicki gives Mamoon a nail file and scrounges in the shoebox for a second. They go to work cleaning the dirt from beneath Shell’s nails and filing down the snagged edges. Shell chooses the same purple polish that Mamoon has on. She shivers with calm as her friends coat her nails with thick globs of colour, one finger at a time.

  Dad’s in the back putting in more basil. A cup of coffee is getting hotter on an old black walnut stump.

  “Look, Dad,” Shell says, holding out her fingernails.

  Dad’s eyes behind his glasses are blanked by the sun. He drops his shovel instead of jabbing it upright into the ground. Dad takes both of Shell’s hands in one of his and, without looking at the purple polish, squeezes her fingers together.

  Mum comes out of the studio and walks down the path towards the house. She doesn’t look over at Shell because then she would have to look at Dad.

  Behind the studio, the neighbour’s dogs bark, chains rattling. Then comes the clatter and snap of the animal trap.

  Dad smiles. Shell smiles.

  “We got another squirrel.”

  Frozen Fish

  The summer before Dad and Mum get separated, Dad digs Shell a fish pond for her eleventh birthday. Dad picks just the right spot out back — in the shade of the overgrown gooseberry bush, where Mum’s rotten thyme planter used to be. They start early, right after porridge and scrambled eggs. Dad takes a final sip of coffee, tucks in his T-shirt, and jabs his pitchfork into the yard’s one remaining plot of grass. Shell uses the pointy red spade with the short handle because it’s not too heavy. As the sun creeps high beside them, they rip away at the squeaky sod, hunks of which they toss — underhand, like scruffed cats — towards a mound by the compost. And then, when the grass is finally out — all of it — Dad pushes his foggy glasses up his nose and says Monday the lawn mower is going in the Penny Saver. Twenty bucks or best offer.

  Dad switches to the coal shovel. Between high school and art college he worked a year in a gold mine up in Yellowknife. Head down, elbows in, Dad’s shoulder blades pump in concentrated rhythm, torso twisting at the hips. Shell, ducking his spray, carries spadefuls of dirt over to the compost pile, careful not to spill. By the time Shell gets Mum to make some lemonade, there’s a pair of nickel-sized blisters rubbed into her palm and she’s sweated right through her once-good Mexican blouse with puffed sleeves and bluebell embroidery. Dad’s tape measure sizes the hole at two feet down and four across: they can stop. While Shell stamps the bottom down so it’s level — picking out two long nails, crumbly with rust — Dad wrestles the sun-bleached wading pool out of the shed. They brush the pool of dead bees and sticky webs, line it with black plastic, and sink it into the hole.

  “How’s that, kiddo?” says Dad of the perfect fit.

  To hide the pool’s ugly edge, Dad makes a collar of smooth, flat-topped slate; Shell seeds the cracks with creeping thyme. Before turning on the hose, they make a tower of rocks in the middle of the pool, which Dad crowns with a pot of tiny blue water irises that he and Kremski scooped from a bog in the north end of town. Shell crouches as the cool water gushes from the hose; when the rim of the iris pot vanishes, she calls out and Dad shuts off the tap.

  “We finished the pond,” Shell says, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. Mum is coring slender Cubanelle peppers; stems and pods overflow the compost bucket. Dad picked almost two full bushels — before the glossy green skin gets too red. The big spaghetti pot is steaming on the stove, lid dancing, and Mason jars crowd the countertop.

  Mum glances at the back-door window. Under the walnut tree, Dad’s going at the lawn mower with the oil can. She turns down the boiling water and sniffs up the droplet of sweat clinging to the tip of her nose. “Don’t go anywhere,” she says to Shell. “I need a hand with all this bloody canning.”

  After supper it’s too hot to stay in the house, so Dad and Shell drive down to the coves while Mum’s jellying the gooseberries the birds didn’t get. The lot is empty. They fill their buckets with water plants. In only a few weeks lily pads crowd the pond’s still surface, as do bulbous water hyacinths, each morning spawning new pods of crisp, waxy leaves. And then on a Saturday when Mum doesn’t need the car, they take Highway 7 out to Gord’s Water Garden. Dad drives home in the slow lane; all colours and sizes of Japanese carp and goldfish slosh wide-eyed inside ballooned plastic bags on the back seat. Like comets in a night sky — red and silver, yellow and black — Shell�
�s new pets, her first, dart through the pond’s silver water. She crouches at the water’s edge with food flakes, tapped from a cylinder like Mum with the salt, and at dusk covers the pond with the mesh dome Dad made; the heavy rock that goes on top keeps the raccoons out. School starts up. The leaves turn, and when they start to fall, Dad begins to toss handfuls of dirt into the pond. The mud will settle at the bottom and keep the fish warm. “So they can survive the winter,” he says. It’s going to be a hard one.

  Dad moves out before the first frost. The Dodge Dart — with smoky engine and dragging tailpipe — stays in the driveway, and he doesn’t take much more than a suitcase because the room he’s rented in Toronto is already furnished. But he does take the wool rug his grandmother wove and which has always — always — hung behind the couch in the living room. He wraps it in a garbage bag, fading borscht stains and all. The ghost of its shape stands out crisp and white against the wall’s yellowed paint. In its place Shell helps Mum hang up a pen-and-ink drawing of two men boxing. Mum and Dad’s friend from art school did it. He’s gotten pretty big now and Mum thinks she’s going to have to sell it.

  The snow comes early and hard. Overnight, six inches fall, blanketing the backyard before Shell can dig up Dad’s iris bulbs or pick the last of the squash or throw more dirt in the pond. The freezer and cold storage are almost empty, and Shell failed her math test at school, and for weeks in a row she can’t sleep without a light on even though Mum says isn’t she too old for that and it’s a shameful waste, just wait until they get the bill.

  Then Mum finds a cooking job at a nursing home that specializes in the disease Dad used to joke of as Old-Timers’. But the place really is called Memory Lane, no kidding.

  “We can keep the pen-and-ink now,” Mum says.