Lemon

by Cordelia Strube

  I don’t hear anything in the bathroom. I try to remember if there are razors in there. ‘Ross … ?’

  ‘What’s your point?’ she says.

  ‘Just that you don’t have to care what people say. People always talk. Words are wind, Ross, one big fart.’

  ‘I’m not like you. You don’t care about anything.’

  I don’t argue. Like I said, the only time I’ve been heartbroken was when my hamster died.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Rossi asks.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mary what’s-her-face.’

  ‘Oh, well, she met some painter she had the hots for but he was already married. She asked his wife if she could move in with them but the missus wasn’t too wild about that idea so Mary took off to France thinking there’d be some radicals there. She wanted to educate French women about how they didn’t have to be doormats. The hitch was, the French Revolution was getting going and they didn’t like freethinking women there either. Pretty soon those French Revolutionaries were talking about sending her to the guillotine. Fortunately she met some American adventurer she went nuts over and he told her to go to Scandinavia to educate women because the Swedes wouldn’t cut her head off. So off she goes on her good mission, spreading the equality word. When she gets back to London she finds out that the adventurer’s been banging boots with some tart. Mary got so depressed she walked around in the rain, figuring if her clothes were soaked she’d sink in the Thames. She didn’t, though, a boatman pulled her out.’

  This doesn’t seem too smart, actually. If you want to sink, use rocks. Maybe Mary Wollstonecraft didn’t want to drown. Maybe her dunk in the Thames was a cry for help.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Rossi asks.

  ‘She left him and met some other guy she respected and trusted and who respected and trusted her. They got married, even though neither of them believed in marriage, and they had a baby.’

  ‘And they lived happily ever after,’ Tora contributes.

  ‘No, actually. The placenta got stuck in her uterus and some doctor shoved his arm up her and tried to yank it out but it broke into pieces and got infected. She died two weeks later.’

  ‘That is a horrible story,’ Rossi says, flinging open the door. ‘Why would you tell me such a sick story?’ She looks really annoyed, which is a healthy sign.

  ‘It’s a true story.’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ old Tora says. ‘She was this feminist type but she got married.’

  ‘Being a feminist doesn’t mean you don’t marry.’

  Rossi grabs the Triscuits from me and starts chewing. ‘They’ve started a virtual sex network.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kirsten and Nicole. They told me I could join, then they go spreading this smut about me.’

  ‘You want to masturbate in front of your cell so some football player can masturbate in front of his cell?’

  ‘Don’t use that word.’

  ‘Think it through, Ross. What do you think Kirsten and Nicole are going to do with recordings of you fingering yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know how you can not care that nobody likes you.’

  I don’t actually think it’s that nobody likes me. I’m just this bump on the road they step around.

  ‘You’re a fucking freak, Lemon! Nobody can stand you.’

  This hurts. Not the fucking freak part but the fact that she’s using it against me. I know she’s been humiliated and all that but I still don’t think I deserve to be her hostility sponge. I grab my backpack and slam the door behind me hoping she’ll come running out to apologize.

  Maybe I won’t make her the star of my play.

  I convince Kadylak to go to the playroom to build a Lego house. She’s not talking much and her mouth sores are worse. A boy I don’t recognize keeps slamming things around. His mother’s there but it’s pretty obvious she’s one of those types who let their kids rule once they get cancer. When I ask him to keep it down, he looks at me like I’m some kind of serf. That’s the way it’s going to go, I figure. Back to serfdom. Once people get wiped out by debt and have to surrender their techno-gizmos. The upside is that it might mean revolution. Although it’s hard to think of a revolution that ended up helping anybody in the long term, what with absolute power corrupting absolutely and all that. You just have to think of old Stalin, Mr. Genocide. They always say he was a ladies’ man which is hard to compute. Imagine banging old Joe while famine victims are eating babies.

  ‘We forgot to put in a door,’ Kadylak says.

  ‘Do we need one? If we just use windows we wouldn’t have to answer the door.’

  She stops building and looks at me. ‘Why don’t you want to answer the door?’

  ‘It’s usually somebody selling something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Religion, natural gas.’

  She thinks about this, scratching under her head scarf. Her mother makes her wear Ukrainian headscarves, sending the message that she can’t stand to look at her bald. Kadylak hates the scarves because they itch and are always sliding off her head.

  ‘I think we should have a door,’ she says. ‘Someone nice might visit.’

  And who might that be? I can’t remember the last time someone nice visited. Drew had this boyfriend for about ten minutes who had a motorboat. He got her water-skiing, which she seemed to think held meaning. She’d come home pink from sun and beer. He used to refer to her as his ‘smart lady.’ When he dumped her, she said she knew all along he was an idiot.

  ‘If someone nice wanted to visit,’ I say, ‘we could throw down a rope from one of the windows and they could climb it. It would be a kind of test. Only the people who were really determined to see us could come up.’

  Kadylak fondles Lego pieces, trying to work this out. She doesn’t like disagreeing with anybody. She’s one of those people who’ll say it doesn’t hurt while you’re stepping on her fingers. Meanwhile Wacko Boy flings Nerf balls around. His mother sits on a kiddie chair with her arms tightly crossed, holding herself together, while her eyes recede into her head. This happens to parents whose kids have cancer. They stop seeing anything except the cancer. They don’t even see the kid.

  ‘I think we should have a door,’ Kadylak declares and starts to pull down a wall. I want to hug and kiss her, because she’s so brave, so willing to believe that someone nice might visit. I don’t hug and kiss her because I’m afraid it might freak her out. Her family isn’t very demonstrative. I help her take down the wall. Her father shows up just as she’s fitting in the door. She doesn’t see him because she’s busy constructing. He stands watching her, his white T-shirt and pants smeared with paint. He’s pretty stoic so I can only imagine what’s going on in there. When she sees him, she lights up like a firefly and flits toward him. He lifts her up and holds her to him, hard. They don’t move. I can see her knuckles whitening where she’s clinging to him. Both of them have their eyes closed tight, shutting out the pain.

  9

  Another sparrow has been mauled by the cats. Drew was holding it in her hands to keep it warm because she’d read somewhere that you have to keep them warm after they’ve been traumatized. This meant Drew couldn’t do anything but sit around holding the oiseau for a few hours. She told me to mash banana for it, and offer it sunflower seeds. It wouldn’t eat anything. I put water in a bottle cap but it wouldn’t drink. It just stared at us with tiny tortured eyes. At one point it chirped and even hopped around the kitchen for two seconds but it was obvious it couldn’t fly. I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to handle birds because their bones are so fragile they break. I didn’t mention this because Drew had already handled it and I didn’t want her thinking she’d hastened its demise. I started thinking about what I wanted to do to the cats, burn them or club them to death or shove them in a box and drop them in the lake. Drew kept holding her finger against her lips to remind me that we had to be quiet around the bird. That’s when I left. I couldn’t stand watching it die.
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  For this reason I am up a tree minding my own beeswax. To my dismay, Larry Bone and a few other cretins have shown up for a fist fight. Ever since they saw some movie with Brad or somebody forming a club where guys go at it bare-knuckled, Bone and company have been doing it. The more blood the better. They video the squirmishes and post them on YouTube with Bonehead giving a play-by-play like some sportscaster. The school knows about it but there’s nothing they can do because it’s off the school premises. Normally I wouldn’t sweat witnessing the dullards playing gladiators. But it’s a little different now that I’ve kicked Bone in the face. If he sees the ‘fucking freak’ he might just haul me down by my boots and swing at me. So I do my stick-insect impression while some kind of cyclone is whipping around inside me. Slade the blow-job freak seems to be top dog at the moment, dancing around, flashing his paws. I don’t know how long these dolts can keep at it. A couple of them already have bleeding faces. The majority clutch their hands after a few jabs, no doubt trying to compute why it hurts when it looks like such a blast in the movie. My mind’s not actually scared of these halfwits but my body’s telling a different story. Some kind of animal thing. It wants to take off but my mind advises it that they’ll swarm me on sight. And of course I need to whiz.

  A wannabe steps into the action. I’ve seen him before, genuflecting in front of King Jake - the rap-addicted future insurance salesman - who is not actually fighting himself but allowing his majestic presence to heighten the stakes. ‘You can do it, man,’ he tells the wannabe, I think his name is Walter, who looks ready to crap his pants. He hops around Slade who lets him flail for a few minutes before he starts slugging him. The actual sound of flesh hitting flesh is different from the movies, messier with more tone modulation depending on which part of the anatomy’s getting pounded. Obviously the head sounds sharper, bone to bone, but the torso, particularly the gut, sounds dull. In movies they slam baseball bats into sides of beef for the fight effects. Most of these boys are more flab than meat.

  Walter buckles and Slade slams the side of his head. Walter keels over and lies there.

  ‘Get up, man,’ King Jake commands but the boy doesn’t move.

  ‘Fuck,’ the ever-articulate Slade comments. ‘Get the fuck up.’ He nudges Walter with his Nike. The other geniuses crowd around and I consider making a break for it but the cyclone in my body has cooked me to the point that I feel ready to pass out, to drop from the tree like some kind of overheated iguana.

  ‘Fuck this shit,’ Slade announces. He and his close companion, who always wears a dog collar, leave the scene of the crime in disgust. The other cretins, led by King Jake, also disperse, muttering fucking this and fucking that. Only Walter the wannabe remains, inert on the grass. I have pissed my pants, can feel the wet spreading. I try to picture myself rushing to Walter’s rescue. Maybe he has a cell and I can call 911. The cops will appear and applaud my good deed, despite the piss stains and odour. The boy will live because of my self-possession in an emergency situation. Even Blecher will be impressed and will get off my case regarding my lack of enthusiasm. ‘You saved a life, Limone, that’s more than most people do in a lifetime.’

  Walter still hasn’t moved. It could just be a concussion. One of the supremo girl jocks gets concussions on a regular basis. When the teachers ask her questions she says, ‘I don’t know, miss, I’ve got a concussion.’ The hitch is, if I help the boy out, word will spread that I witnessed the event and Bonehead and company will have another reason to tan my hide. Best to remain invisible until some good Samaritan notices the fallen boy. But they don’t. They scoop their dogs’ shit but they don’t see Walter. Or if they do they assume he’s drugged out, passed out, homeless. Just another body to ignore in the jewelled city.

  The tree branch has numbed my ass. I no longer feel hot, only cold, stone cold. I shake a chilled leg and command it to reach down for a limb. Slowly, iguana-style, I crawl down the tree. With both feet on the ground I look at the fallen boy. Then I walk away.

  Avoiding base camp due to my deranged, plant-killing stepmother, and hoping dried piss doesn’t stink, I wait while a Tim Horton serf stiffs me on butter again. ‘You forgot the butter,’ I say. Usually I’m nice about it, say please and all that, but I’m tired of this game. ‘Butter!’ I almost shout, pointing at my mini-baguette. The skinny-assed one slaps a packet on the counter without looking at me. What happened to ‘Have a nice day’?

  I try not to think about Walter growing cold on the grass among the goose turds. I try to think about the play. Old Lund, my drama teacher, stopped me after class to ask about it. I told him I’d started writing it.

  ‘What’s it about?’ He always stands with his gut sticking out and his fingers and thumbs touching each other. He’s got one of those skinny beards that follow his jawline. He’s an amateur actor and shows up in Shakespeare plays in church basements.

  I didn’t want to tell him that my play is about people faking it so I said it was about this downsized teller who makes hats and watches soap operas. He looked disappointed. I think he was hoping for a musical.

  ‘You need conflict,’ he said. ‘Conflict is the essence of drama.’

  ‘Oh, she’s conflicted,’ I told him.

  ‘Are there other characters?’

  ‘There’s her boyfriend who’s already married and wants nooky all the time. And her girlfriend who’s always buying stuff.’

  I could see old Lund was getting worried. He started feeling his beard.

  ‘She can’t figure out why people don’t act like the hard-bodied crowd on TV,’ I said. I was thinking about the part I wrote where the podgy, married boyfriend starts feeling Lillian up. She says she doesn’t want nooky because she’s having her period and he says, ‘Not again,’ and starts laughing like this is hilarious.

  ‘It’ll probably have a wedding at the end,’ I said, ‘or a bloodbath.’ I didn’t tell him Lillian starts faking it so hard she doesn’t know she’s faking it because I knew this would be too complex for the old duffer. He looked at his watch. It was after three-thirty and he wasn’t getting overtime.

  ‘Keep me posted,’ he said, grabbing his fanny pack and hustling me out of there.

  I keep telling myself Walter can’t be dead. I’m starting to feel like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, waiting for the coppers to come for me. ‘I’m ready,’ she said when they showed up. What a sick puppy Thomas Hardy must have been, all those victimized, idealized women sitting around waiting for some guy to show up. Old Tess condemning herself for being aroused before the libertine raped her.

  Beside me two wizards are saying rotten things about their ex-wives.

  ‘Women want to change you,’ the one with hippo nostrils says.

  ‘You got that right,’ the one with Donald Trump hair agrees.

  ‘They won’t take the whole package,’ the hippo-nostriled one says.

  ‘No kiddin’.’

  The first wizard starts talking about how corrupt our government is and how he’s going to get rich because he’s got a theory like Einstein’s except that nobody’s listening to him because they’re all corrupt just like the government.

  The bird’s still alive. Drew’s made a nest with a dishtowel in a bowl. The bird’s lying in it, breathing fast.

  ‘I wish it would close its eyes,’ she says.

  ‘It’s too scared.’

  ‘Please don’t leave without telling me where you’re going.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d notice, what with the bird and everything.’

  ‘It’s dying.’ Her skin’s pasty from being inside all the time and her lips are shrinking. It’s the first time we’ve talked half-normally for weeks and I wouldn’t mind asking her what she really thinks of me, if she even wants me in her house. It’s not like she’s legally bound to look after me. But she’s stroking the bird’s head again. The fact is if I mention Damian and the divorce and his lousy settlement, it’ll blow our cover. We’ve been pretending it’s normal for the betrayed wife to shel
ter the swain’s adoptee.

  I hide in my room, turn on the radio and listen to the all-news station. No mention of a murder in a park. I start working on the play. I get Lillian to watch one of those motivational speakers who proclaim that you can do anything if you think positively. I make her chant things like ‘Change Means a New Beginning,’ ‘God Never Closes One Door But He Opens Another,’ ‘Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining.’ The kind of bunk that Zippy used to prattle before she figured out that nobody gave a fuck. In my experience it’s the positive people who rip your guts out, smiling of course. I figure they get burned out being positive and have to lash out. I had this functions teacher, Mrs. Rathburn, who was ultra-positive and never let on that most of us were morons. She even made me think I wasn’t a moron, told me about my potential and that all I needed was ‘to develop good study habits.’ Then she went and told Drew that I was a hopeless case, that she’d never taught anyone so ‘learning-resistant.’ Drew passed this on because she wanted me to start ‘playing’ to my ‘strengths’ instead of my ‘weaknesses.’ Anyway, next day old Rathburn was all smiles as usual and I almost got sucked in again. Those positive people can dupe you. You sit there knowing they despise you but they’re smiling and telling you how special you are, and so you want to believe them. Especially since nobody else is telling you you’re special. What should have tipped me off about old Rathburn is that she’s nice to everybody, everybody is special. So that hurt for a few days, thinking I’d had a relationship with this teacher who’d understood me and would help me blossom into a brain surgeon. But I got over it. You don’t have to be a math genius to make soap.

  So that’s how Lillian’s feeling about the bank layoff. She thought she knew her boss and that he valued her for her hard work. She figured her job was secure because she wasn’t one of those types who grumbled when the bank started charging monthly premiums for health benefits. Even when a petition goes around, Lillian refuses to sign it. If you look at history, the people who accept shittier conditions, less pay and all that, always get shafted in the end anyway. The company store always wins.