by Terry Griggs
“Viv,” ordered Albertha, “call the ambulance.”
“Hey,” said Viv, as she sashayed out of the room. “Guess what? I’ve thought up a great name for a female comedy group.” She stuck her head back in to deliver the punch line. “Titters.”
An outbreak of giggles erupted and was quickly suppressed.
“Viv’s in shock,” someone said, kindly.
Someone else began to whimper, very quietly.
By this time Nile had taken off, pelting away like a hunted man. Soon he’d be tearing through fields, running and running, long grass singing past.
“It’s coming,” said Mother.
“So’s Christmas,” snapped Minnie Evans. A novice to the potency of sarcasm, she promptly fell apart, weeping buckets.
“What is, dear? The ambulance?”
“Already? Alec won’t set out on a run till he’s had a coffee and a smoke.”
“The baby,” Mother whispered. This a mumbled, prayer-faint revelation underlined by Alec’s keening flashing progress down Viv’s street.
“What baby?” demanded Aunt Faith.
Then a single dawning Oh! of recollection was all it took for everyone to fly into action. A dozen pair of hands rescued Mother from Viv’s sofa, bundled her into a shawl warm as a nest, and delivered her with midwifely solicitations and endearments to the ambulance revving its engine at the door.
One thing you have to say for it, the trip to the hospital was cost efficient. Not only did Mother, thrown headlong into wracking convulsive labour, have to share the ambulance with Gramma Young, cooling rapidly and inviting no intimacies, but Alec stopped at the Perdue’s place halfway there to pick up pie-padded Horace and wedge him in, too. Horace had swallowed his pencil stub while working on a crossword. “Women,” he confided to the male-grey upholstery into which his face was pressed. You had to wonder if that was the word he’d choked on filling in the puzzle, or whether he considered his emergency eclipsed by the usual female problems. Women, there was no escaping them.
And to prove it, I added my weight to the world. Nine pounds, fifteen ounces of pure solid self. Mere minutes after they wheeled Mother into the delivery room, some intern had me by the heels. Well. My first bat’s-eye-view of the situation was not consoling. The room swung muzzy, as though rubbed in grease. Mother lay bloody and limp, a brutalized body cast aside. Pain seared my backside (never trust a doctor), and I let go a river of sound, my tongue a flailing, undisciplined instrument. But I must have known even then, grabbing at the air—I had Albertha’s hands!—that the power would eventually be mine to carve that river into the precise and commanding language I needed. For the present, raw underspeech.
I said: Mother, don’t leave me. I said: Nile, get your balls in order, boy. Your Hero’s come to town.
Joie de Viv
When I was only a baby, carried around like a transistor on my father’s shoulder, broadcasting the news—and there was plenty to tell, believe me—my Auntie Viv and I had an adventure. Tuesdays and Thursdays were my mother’s “bridge” days. Everyone said it with the scare quotes attached like mini tattling tongues—or horns. Except Father, it not being in his best interests; to him bridge unadorned was the game she played, no questions asked, unalloyed truth a troublesome and unwanted article at the best of times.
On these days I would be dropped off at Auntie Viv’s or Aunt Faith’s. If the latter was my destination, apparent from the landmarks whipping past the car window, partly visible to me from my eyrie of blankets in the back seat, I’d start to fuss. This a mere prelude to a deafening, full-throated protest. For you see, I was a diva of the diaper set, a tot of a tragedian, and no one was more wronged than me. I could make the most amazing sounds, thereby unlacing the most tidily composed package of nerves, and I made them as the car sped along faster and faster, a grey shroud of dust billowing up behind. If there’s one message that children unheeded deliver repeatedly, it is: unfair, unfair. They do this, speaking their outraged hearts for many years, until finally they give up and start dishing it out themselves. Anyway, somebody had to make Mother feel guilty and I was never, but never, pleased to be dumped at Aunt Faith’s.
The moment Mother left, tearing out of the driveway in her hot haste, Faith would slap a strip of duct tape across my mouth and say, “Don’t think I’m gonna listen to your yammering all day, kid.”
If my cousin Nile was home and not out somewhere in the world fine-tuning his delinquency, it wasn’t so bad. He’d carry me into the back bedroom, undress me, and free of charge give me his complete attention. I remain firm in my belief that his reasons for doing so weighed more on the side of information than perversion. I was his first naked girl and set the standard, being anatomically perfect—a perfect babe, a postnatal stunner, and I had great legs, if not yet ambulatory ones. Besides, my family was not much for touching, which is a failing in a family and in a pervert. The inspection complete, he’d dress me again, all ass-backwards, and we’d return to the kitchen, where he would station me in his old highchair. First, he eased off the duct tape—unlike Aunt Faith, who snatched it off like a Band-Aid ripped off a wound as soon as Mother reappeared at the door—and then, positioning himself at the other side of the table, he’d begin to fire Corn Pops into my mouth. Or tried to—most of them bounced off my forehead or went wild. Once, he did manage to score with such inadvertent precision that I gagged and choked. We laughed uproariously at this, until I choked again. Well, that’s the sort of stuff we did. It passed the time.
If on one of these bridge days we were clearly heading for Auntie Viv’s place, I tried not to gurgle and babble overmuch on the way. The danger being that Mother might become jealous of my anticipatory happiness and turn back home, which had actually happened a few times. It’s curious, but jealousy could accomplish what nothing else did—not maternal feeling, nor wifely duty, nor shame. If I hadn’t been such an innocent, with the corresponding ration of lily-white brain cells, I might have used this insight to my advantage. I might have feigned the excessive delight for Faith’s company that I only felt for Viv’s, and spared myself much tedium and indignity. Conversely, as we headed to Viv’s, Mother driving slower and slower and casting suspicious glances at me via the rear-view mirror, I should have performed one of my terror solos instead of waving my arms in excitement and beaming like an idiot. She could have used the reassurance of some heartfelt separation anxiety.
And Viv? Many years and a linguistic gap lay between us, but we spanned these distances effortlessly. Viv and I were mates and intimates, two gals together whooping it up. Talk? You’ve no idea. She stuck her duct tape where it belonged. I’d tell her my troubles, passionate in pre-speech, and she’d tell me hers. She filled me up like a bank with the coinage of her eventful and endlessly fascinating life. Fights with Uncle Clyde, grocery shopping, gossip with the neighbours, making-up with Uncle Clyde, psychiatric assessment of the neighbours (“That Mrs. Perdue is a friggin’ nutcake”), not to mention detailed accounts of the health, well-being, and maintenance of her female equipment. If ‘A is for Apple’ and ‘B is for Boy,’ by the time you get to the X-rated end of the alphabet, let me tell you things get a whole lot more interesting. Not that I comprehended it all, but Viv’s language had substance and shimmer and I caught the drift.
At home I was completely misunderstood. I could talk until I was blue in the face, and did, to no avail. My mother’s friends circled around me, staring in fascination as though I were an accident (which, in fact, I was).
“Isn’t she sweet,” they said, interrogatively. “Does she ever stop talking?”
“No,” said Mother. “Never.”
If Father was within hearing range, he’d pipe up, “She’s got brains, that one. Gonna be a lawyer. Real estate, law suits.… ”
“Divorce,” Mother said.
Father himself was a man of few words, but the ones he chose did the work of many, damming
up whole flowing conversations, creating wary and fraught silences.
On the day of the adventure, I was miserable with teething and Mother was glad to be shot of me. She handed me over to Viv like a parcel to be posted ASAP. Her instructions were the usual ones, and were followed by the usual fiction concerning her whereabouts.
“Hey,” said Viv, “we’ll be fine. Enjoy yourself.”
She meant it, too, being all for extracurricular activity. Why shouldn’t a woman get what she needs elsewhere, when what she needs isn’t a household item? Auntie did find it difficult to resist a dig, though, and added, “I suppose it gets real hard, eh? Bridge, I mean.”
She snickered lightly like a bad fairy and held me closer. Then, with Mother a mere shadow in the door, good as gone, she whispered in my ear, “Hero, you and me doll, we’re gonna have some kind of fun.”
And didn’t I know it, for Viv’s was a trust never broken.
Further on the subject of my teeth. Getting the buggers through would be worth it, I knew. Cut me a whole shiny set and the universe would be mine… but the procedure caused me much distress. If I could have articulated it, I would have used some of the foul language that Nile had been coaching me in for months, training me like a parrot. Given the pathetic reach of his aspirations, his one burning desire of the moment? That an obscenity would be the very first ‘real’ word I uttered. A blighted and bratty surprise for the parents. Thus far uck, uck , uck was the best I could do as a trash-talking infant, and I now strung these syllables out on a slick strand of spittle that bejewelled the fingers I had been so industriously gnawing upon.
One thing I admired about Auntie Viv: if you had a problem, she made a beeline for the most obvious solution. Cut the crap was a favourite expression of hers and pretty much summed up her approach to the unnecessarily complicated, be it a recipe for beef stroganoff, the emotional fallout from family strife, or theories of child-rearing. She instantly assessed my teething predicament, dipped her fingers into one of the flower vases where she kept a ready supply of gin, and rubbed this medicinal substance gently on my gums until I awarded her with one of my corporate, lawyer-to-be smiles. She dipped her fingers in again, crossed herself, then raised the vase and took a swig.
“Honey,” she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, “we’re going for a ride!”
A ride? Great! We’d miss our soap operas, but no big deal, for the plot of Viv’s life was equally engrossing and far less predictable. So when she said ride, I knew we weren’t talking about a trip to the store to buy strained prunes.
In readiness we did the girl thing. Auntie Viv brushed my fawn wisps of hair up into a tiny scoop, teased it, and balanced it on top of my head like a dustball (more about dustballs to come). She attacked her own with a metal comb and a can of hair spray and in no time had crafted a do as beautiful as a Christmas ornament, golden and stiff, so hard that the wind glanced right off it when we hit the road, which we were shortly to do in Viv’s old shit-coloured bomb. (“Dijon, sweetheart, we’re two classy broads.”) She dabbed my lips with crimson lipstick and smudged some on my chubby cheeks with her thumb.
“Cripes, what I wouldn’t give for your skin, Hero. Faith got the good skin in our family, smoother than a baby’s bum. No offence, eh. Course her face looks like a bum.”
Next, alarmingly, Viv began to gouge at her eyes with a puny pair of tongs, which made her eyelashes stand up at a wonky and surprised angle, as though she’d faced a blast of considerable force. As she continued primping and painting—blue eyeshadow, mascara, the works—I had to wonder as I sometimes did if life wouldn’t be better lived as a boy. But then, as Nile remained my only example to date of that particular state of being, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of existential options. The human condition appeared to be as constricting a fit as a size small sleeper, a painful revelation.
Up to this point I had been philosophizing contentedly, but must confess that a complaint now escaped my unnaturally reddened lips.
“There, there honeybun, it’s your old pal, Auntie Viv,” she said, assuming that the bent eyelashes and makeup had made her unrecognizable to me. And, briefly, it was true, but not in the simple-minded way she thought. It wasn’t me making strange, but life itself sticking its ancient, unknowable face menacingly in mine.
But like I said, Viv was direct, and directly she stuck a huge gobstopper in my mouth. “Here Mighty Mite, this’ll fix you up.” How right she was. She’d replaced unpalatable food for thought with an entirely sweet subject, one that caused me an immediate rush of elation.
Mighty Mite. That was a new one! I liked the names Auntie Viv gave me—some hilarious, some goofy, and all affectionately bestowed. They did somehow expand my play area and made more room for me to be. At home, Mother called me The Baby. As in, The Dog, The TV, The Toaster, and all the other sibling objects and creatures with which I co-existed. Morland, The Baby needs a bottle. The Baby needs a change.…
Yeah, right, a change of address.
“Almost ready.” Viv grabbed her purse off the counter, a big old pussel-gutted sack of which I was extremely fond. A bag of wonders. When she flicked open the gold clasp and started rooting around inside, it exuded an intoxicating, powdery smell, like the fragrance that sometimes gusted up, warm and soothing, from Viv’s low-necked blouse. Lined with a black silky material, watery-soft to the touch, its contents were a bouillabaisse of ingredients that clattered and clacked as Viv dug down deep and stirred everything around. Among the items from this dragon hoard that I’d been allowed on past occasions to handle and mouth and shake were a compact, a bottle of Aspirins, a nail file (en garde!—she swiped that one back), a box of breath mints, a change purse, a hoop earring big as a bracelet, a lighter, a rosary, a green rabbit’s foot, Tampax concealed in a mauve plastic case, a spare can of hairspray, mirror sunglasses, a mickey of vodka, a whistle, and a plastic troll with buggy eyes and hair like a furry red flame… amazements all. This day, after digging around for some time, making a cheerful racket and muttering under her breath, Viv triumphantly yanked out her car keys and jangled them in front of my face.
I laughed. Keys are funny, by the way. The ability to perceive the humour in them is, sadly, something you lose as you age… like your principles, and your marbles.
All a woman really wants to know about a car—her identity not having bonded with a hunk of metal on wheels—is where are the keys. Since we clearly had those, and the tank full of gas, and the muffler more or less firmly attached (hockey tape), we were set. Because the radio was broken, there’d be no “Chug-a-Lug” or “Big Girls Don’t Cry” or “Wild Thing,” but as neither of us were shy nor untalented, we could belt it out without background assistance from people in the biz.
Grooovy, baby.
Viv tossed a couple of beers and an extra bottle of formula into my diaper bag, slung her purse over her shoulder, and carried me out to the car. She settled me in front on a makeshift seat (bushel basket, pillows), hopped into the driver’s side, gunned the engine, and we were away!
We streaked past the usual landmarks: the hydra-branched maple in the Perdue’s yard that Nile would one day wrap his first car around; Parks’ Variety, where a bounty of tooth-rotting delicacies awaited the arrival of my newly minted nippers; and the playground in which, abandoned in a buggy while Mother was off in the bushes, I often had to cool my heels and my temper while watching geriatric, three- and four-year-olds dashing around, acting mentally challenged, and having a ball.
As we headed into less familiar territory, I comprehended more fully the profound significance of this, my virginal voyage out into the wider world. Into the unknown. Thrilled and apprehensive, I could sense the bonds of home stretching as we zoomed along, and I speculated about how far one might go before they snapped altogether. Generally, members of my family were not travellers—their feet did not itch, except for medical reasons. The word ‘wanderlust’ made th
em blush, and to them the phrase ‘the open road’ only meant that the snowplow had been through and they could drive to town.
While I gaped at the sights like a slack-jawed rube—A dog with spots!—Auntie Viv yakked up a storm, part tour-guide, part teacher.
“Rock, Hero, over there, see the big rock. Can you say it, rock, rock? Tree. Tree, that’s a tough one, eh? How about bird, bird… bird.”
How charming! No one else ever put any effort into pointing out such things to me, or encouraging the development of my oral skills. (Mind you, Father thought that I’d been born not only fully formed, but fully informed to boot.) The feeling was, I gather, that if I got hold of the language everyone else spoke there would be no peace at all, and that my discontent given voice would break us all asunder.
“Policeman, Hero! Po-lice-man. Doughnut. Dough-nut.”
After the fuzz disappeared from view, Viv slowed down. She drew up to a guy standing on the side of the road who had one thumb hitched in the belt loop of his jeans, and the other stuck out, pointing in the direction we were headed. The clothing he wore must have been uncomfortably tight, his white T-shirt stretched like a sheath across his muscled chest, and he bulged elsewhere, too. When he spotted Viv behind the wheel, he smirked and gave her a cocky wave. In return, she gave him a squint-eyed and mirthless look. “And that, Hero, is an asshole. Ass hole. A genuine, one hundred percent prick.”
Ah, I thought, now this is more like it, more nuanced, and with a bit of math thrown in for extra educational value.
Viv had slowed almost to a stop and the guy swaggered over, mitt extended to the car handle. Then she hit the gas and we shot off down the road leaving Mr. Codpiece to duck a fusillade of tire-fired gravel. Viv seemed pleased about this gag and chuckled to herself, but didn’t say anything until we arrived at a huge metal structure that spanned the channel. “Bridge, Hero. Bridge. We can play that game, too.”