“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.
But that wouldn’t be something he would just admit to.
“Kara, I wouldn’t do that.”
He kissed me. This time he moved down to my neck. All I felt were big wet splotches on my skin, and the sound his mouth made reminded me of a plunger. I didn’t know what to do with my hands; Rochelle and Anita never spoke about that. Once, Brandon had left his apartment to take out the trash, wearing nothing but loose workout shorts. I saw scratch marks behind his shoulder blades. But this didn’t feel like the appropriate moment for that kind of response. Abruptly, Terrence’s lips found a spot that made me want to sigh and a panicked guilt flared in my chest. I bit down on my teeth to stop myself from gasping. When I felt the urge to grip his shirt I pushed him away.
It hadn’t been until the end of the day, when I walked into the first-floor bathroom, that I saw my reflection in the mirror. A dark red splotch marred my neck.
I ran into the library — luckily, no twelfth-graders were hogging the computers at the back of the room. I logged onto MSN and wrote frantically to Rochelle. She had a cellphone now, so she’d get the message right away.
SHIT!!!!
. . .
. . .
Wassup??
I typed out what’d happened, and she told me to stop freaking out, that she and Anita would meet me at the Shoppers Drug Mart by Eglinton and Briar Hill, halfway between our schools. It meant taking a different route, a longer route home.
Just tell ur mom tht traffic waz bad!
I spent the bus ride pulling my braids to the side as a way to cover my neck, ignoring how they chafed against my skin. When I met Rochelle and Anita in the Shoppers Beauty Boutique, I touched the braids to make sure they were still in place.
“Stop messing with it,” said Rochelle, moving my hand away.
Anita leaned against the Dior shelf, her black JanSport knapsack by her feet. A sales associate hovered at the end of the aisle, carefully casual as she glanced over toward us.
“This is the third time someone has come by here,” said Rochelle.
Anita gestured to her bag. “Nothing but textbooks,” she said loudly.
I made an exaggerated sigh and said, equally loudly, “I was thinking about getting a lipstick but there’s something about the service here, it makes me uncomfortable to shop.”
The sales associate left, and Anita rolled her eyes toward me. “Anyway,” she said. “Back on topic: it’s Makeout Session 101, Kara. No teeth.”
“Anita, leave it,” said Rochelle. “You’re supposed to be helping.”
“No but really, what did she think was going to happen?” She turned to me, her eyebrows furrowed in harsh amusement. “You feel the bite, you tell him to back off. Likkle gyal t’ink she bad. Hmph.”
“Well, sorry, Anita,” I said. “Not all of us are as experienced as you.”
“But wait.” Anita started to move toward me, but Rochelle put herself in between us and told her to relax.
Anita raised her hands in surrender, and I stared at the wall of foundation, irritated but not scared. Not of Anita anyway — we all knew she wouldn’t actually lay hands on me. But the lack of brown shades on the shelves made me clench my hands into anxious fists, my nails cutting into my palms. What I did see had prices that would blow half my allowance for the week, and I didn’t even know if the shades would match. I couldn’t describe my own skin tone; people called me yellow. People who were nicer called me caramel. I had no idea what that translated to in powders.
“Here, get this one,” said Anita, groaning slightly. She picked up a bronzing powder. When I stared at her, she sighed. “It’s pretty much your exact skin tone.”
“No, it has to match perfectly,” I said. “It has to fool my mother. And nothing fools Eloise.”
“It’s the closest you’re going to get,” said Rochelle. “It’ll be fine. You should have this anyway. I don’t know how you can show up to school with no makeup on.”
I took the compact from Anita and dragged my feet down the aisle to the checkout counter.
“Why aren’t you doing this with Terrence?” said Anita. “He’s the one who mauled you, he should have to pay for the cover-up.”
“I didn’t tell him about it.”
“You should’ve,” she said. “Guys get proud about their bruising.”
I looked at Rochelle and she shrugged. “Anita’s right. Don’t question it.”
* * *
It was nearly eleven thirty now, and screams of “Brandon! Yes! Brandon!” attacked the walls. I lay awake listening to them while my mother snored next to me on the bed. What excited me about Sheila’s screams also terrified me, that kind of abandon that only seemed to exist when they were having sex, the way they almost begged each other for it because for both of them it was a time, a moment that was the best they could ever get and once it was over, everything would fall to shit. But all sex couldn’t be like that. The way Anita described it, nothing about it seemed that serious. To my mother, everything about it was serious — at least everything that came after. She never spoke about sex itself; just about how when it was over, people saw each other differently. Men left and women turned steel-eyed.
“Like me. Want to end up like me?” she’d say.
I looked at her next to me. Even asleep, her face was stern and active. She hadn’t questioned me when I’d gotten home this time, she just didn’t take her eyes off me, surveyed me so I could stew in the guilt she knew I felt but couldn’t yet prove. I thought about waking her up and confessing about the kiss. Both kisses. I thought about asking her to yell at me later but advise me now, to tell me about boys, to tell me about what life was like for her when she was my age, a year before she became steel-eyed and hard-hearted. I wanted to know about desire: if having it and receiving it meant that your sense of self was gone; if there was anything romantic in melding with another person, like Sheila and Brandon. I knew she had the answers. I knew she’d be able to reach in and sort me out even if I hated her for it.
There was a jerk, and my mother kicked her foot out. Maybe she was falling in her dream. She opened her mouth and her heavy breathing turned harsh and deep. It was just a noise.
I rolled onto my side so the snoring wouldn’t be so loud.
Standoff
The day after Nana found out my grandfather still saw his girlfriend there was no extra food in her house. Any leftover broccoli pie or curry chicken and rice and peas had been packed away in plastic containers and marched down to Faith Community Baptist Church: she’d given it all to Pastor to serve at his soup kitchen on Friday afternoon. After her first trip — she couldn’t carry it all in one — Nana called my mother to unburden her frustrations. That was how I knew things were different this time. Nana had ignored months’ worth of their agreed-upon silence in order to make that phone call.
My mother flipped through HOMES magazine the entire time they were talking. I’d rifled through it myself once, when I was bored and our cable was disconnected again. In the middle sections I’d discovered calculations and budgets she’d scrawled in the margins and instantly felt like I’d violated a secret, intruded on a private dream. Now I pretended not to notice those blue scribbles as my mother turned the page, peeling it behind the magazine’s spine, absently nodding her head to Nana’s complaints. I was sitting on the sofa bed across the room but could still hear every word of Nana’s garbled ranting through the receiver. She was yelling about the money my grandfather had been lending “that skettle gyal,” about the church ladies seeing the two of them walk down the street together, his arm snaked around her waist.
“That man have some nerve, Eloise! Hear me say, him have some nerve! Yuh know him always say how him have no money, how him canna give me one, two, t’ree hundred dollar for the mortgage or for the grocery them. But him have money for that woman? Eh-eh, him must thank
God me a Christian woman, that is all me ah say!”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Sister Ida and Sister Rose look ’pon him and that woman too, yuh know! I canna even show my face around the church! Oh my God, that man is selfish, him nuh think about anyone but himself. What they must be saying about me!”
My mother didn’t tell her to kick his sorry ass out like I’ve heard her counsel her friends more than once, but instead fixed her eyes on a particular page in the magazine. When Nana ended the call half an hour later, my mother joined me on the mattress, handing me a takeout menu.
“I think I feel for Chinese,” she said.
I didn’t open the Ho-Lee-Chow pamphlet. “You could’ve told her to leave him.”
“I have told her to leave him. I’ve told her since I was your age, maybe a year older.”
I could see the scene in my mind too: Nana at the kitchen counter, furiously chopping some thyme or some pepper, pretending not to hear my mother’s conviction, pretending not to see the swollen belly on her seventeen-year-old daughter.
“It’s depressing that she won’t leave him,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s depressing?”
“Maybe I would,” said my mother. “If it wasn’t so familiar.”
* * *
Saturday afternoon I was at the mall. Yorkdale, not the Eaton Centre; one was ten minutes away from home, the other was forty-five, and I had to stay close to the apartment in case my mother wanted me home before four o’clock. I spent my time soliciting stores, handing managers resumés that took up half a page.
I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. According to my mother, school was my only job. It was why she’d sent me to high school and grade school downtown, with junior high in our neighbourhood as a kind of truce in between. But most of my friends had jobs now. Aishani worked at the McDonald’s at Lawrence Square, and after she’d spent two cheques on a cellphone, Rochelle and Anita started doing concession at the SilverCity. Only Jordan and I were unemployed. My mother had already bought me a phone, a way to keep tabs, so I didn’t know what I would buy if I ever got a job. I didn’t know how I would even work a job I wasn’t supposed to have. I just liked the idea of money. My money. Of having something I could control.
I only stayed at the mall for an hour. It’d been two weeks since I’d seen Aishani or anyone else, and we said we’d meet up today around one. That was the plan.
I headed toward the subway at noon, but the train stalled on the outdoor track between Lawrence West and Glencairn stations. I was in a window seat and through the glass I looked at the fences atop small, yellowing hills — barrier walls between the houses and the trains. They’d been there forever. It was all cleaned up now but there used to be graffiti on the panels — mostly fuck yous or crew symbols, but occasionally I’d see an asymmetrical heart or a love tag: Tess & Ryan. Josh + Jessica. As a kid I’d make up stories about those couples. In my mind they were always grunge: all ripped jeans and flannel shirts and loose cargo pants. Sometimes Tess and Ryan snuck out of their bedrooms and hopped the fence; they’d whisper to each other about their love, about their plans, and then they’d spray-paint their names in commemoration. Other times Josh fucked up — maybe he was caught with another girl, maybe he’d said some things in a fight, and he would tag the fence to get Jessica’s attention.
I nearly missed my stop and quickly walked onto the platform before the doors slid shut, staring at the Eglinton West pasted onto the brown-tiled wall in white letters. I’d planned to make my way to Fairbank Park, maybe twirl idly on the tire swing until everyone came — but I found myself outside of Nana’s bungalow instead. She answered the door in a floral housedress with a magenta bra strap sliding off her shoulder.
“This how yuh wear yuh hair now, eh?” she said, eyeing the tight curls spiralling out of my printed head wrap. “I suppose that’s the fashion. Natural like, nuh true?”
Her own hair was clipped up and swirled around pink spongy rollers. She had on no lipstick or foundation. I’d only ever seen her like this first thing in the morning, before the sun had made its introduction and the house was still cloaked in sleepy darkness. After nine o’clock, Nana always had to look presentable.
She led me into the foyer. The sound was what I noticed first. Everything was turned off. No scripture from the radio. No whirring of the air conditioner. There was only the stiff ticking of the anniversary clock in the living room. I could hear the creak of my footsteps on the wood of the floor. The smell I noticed second: briny-infused air. Freshly fried saltfish. Nana had cooked recently. She kept walking straight, through the small foyer to the kitchen, as I slipped out of my running shoes, putting my hand against the wall to steady myself. My palm pressed against the full-length mirror Nana had hung by the door, the one I’d kept forgetting was there even when we’d lived with her. She didn’t remind me to line up my sneakers on the shoe mat. She didn’t scold me for smudging the mirror with my fingertips. My body hummed with unease.
I turned left, into the living room, and then stopped on the spot. My grandfather was sitting, slouched, on the plastic-covered sofa directly across from me. I hadn’t expected him to be here after Nana had called my mother to cuss him stink. But here he was, his hands atop his long legs, facing forward. It wasn’t a casual position; it was more like a pose. When I took another step into the room, I saw that he was watching a movie on mute. Dirty Harry. I stood there for a while, gawking at the scene in front of me before saying something.
“Hi, Grandpa.”
His eyes moved from the screen to my face in acknowledgement and then they stared at the television again.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The clock was next to the stereo in the media cabinet. It was gold and encased in a glass dome. I shifted my weight. Nana puttered around in the kitchen, quieter than normal — but the noise was enough to make me flinch.
“I haven’t heard from you guys in a while, so . . .”
This time my grandfather didn’t look away from the TV.
“Kara.” Nana waved me over.
The dining table separated the kitchen and the living room. I pushed a chair even farther beneath the table, then squeezed past the rounded edge and joined her in front of the sink. All of the counters were empty. There were no silver bowls of bananas or mangoes or plums. Nana usually arranged cereal boxes on top of the fridge but there was no Raisin Bran or Special K; even the Frosted Flakes she always bought on the off-chance I made an overnight visit was nowhere to be seen. There were a few freshly washed dishes in the dish rack: one frying pan, one plate, one fork, and one knife.
“I just stopped by to see how you were.”
Nana harrumphed and then lowered her voice. “He nuh move from that seat all day, yuh know. All day. He nah even watch that TV.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Nana, you own the house. Can’t you just tell him to leave?”
“Eh-eh and speak to him?” She shook her head. “Kara, listen when I tell you say, I would rather die than talk to that man.”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t find anything to say. Each stroke of the living room clock set my teeth on edge and I glared at it. Nana followed my gaze but her eyes landed on my grandfather. He still sat looking straight ahead, as if he was the only one in the house. Nana turned toward the dish rack but not before crinkling her nose into a sneer, her lips furled. I realized then that it wasn’t sorrow that kept her from dressing like she normally did: it was spite.
“Nana, if you just — ”
“What you want fi eat?” She opened a drawer and put the cutlery away. “Nuh have any food in the house but I can pick up a patty for yuh at the store.”
“That isn’t why I came.”
“Wait here and me gwine fi get.”
“Fine.”
She put the frying pan away and then took a step closer to me, leaning in to whisper into my ear. “He’s stealing my t
hings, yuh know.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I know him hide my blow-dryer and my purple Sunday shoes. Him move all my furniture around. Him ah try fi drive me crazy,” she hissed.
“Wait, are you serious?”
But she was already walking out of the kitchen, heading to her bedroom at the back of the house to get changed. The living room looked fine. Everything seemed in place. Nothing was missing: not the British teacups in the cabinet or the painted figurines arranged on the coffee table or the Royal Standard of Jamaica pinned above the china cabinet. But I sat down next to my grandfather anyway, the plastic crinkling beneath my weight. I didn’t say anything for a while because that had always been our routine whenever we did see each other. We’d sit together in silence, and if we were in front of the television, he would hand me the remote without saying anything, offering me the chance to change the channel from one of his Westerns to one of my sitcoms. I’d usually let him finish the movie before turning to something else. Even now, the longer I sat next to him, the looser my body felt, which was always how it was with me and him. Comfortable. I cleared my throat and took the remote out of his hand and turned the television off.
“So, Nana thinks that you’re stealing from her.” I didn’t feel the need to be careful with my words. Not with him. “Not money or anything, just, you know, everyday stuff.”
He shrugged. It was a slow and heavy motion. My grandfather was a tall and thin man but he wasn’t nimble. Nana was the opposite of all he was. She was short and loud, stout in both personality and frame, but she was quick-footed, always appearing to be in more than one place at once. My grandfather never seemed to move.
“Just tell me,” I said. “You wouldn’t do that, right? You wouldn’t steal her blow-dryer or move the furniture . . .”
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