Looking for X (7 page)

Once Mom was soundly packed off to Siberia, I turned out the light and settled down into bed, feeling very pleased with myself.

Minutes later, I got down from my bunk, went into the kitchen and kissed Mom goodnight. She
hugged me tightly and kissed me, too. Then I went back to bed.

It wouldn't be right to go to sleep without a goodnight kiss from Mom. I'm not even sure the sun would rise the next morning.

After that, I couldn't leave her in Siberia. I brought her back, so that she'd be here when I woke up.

CHAPTER TEN

Of course, I did go to Juba's after my job at the Trojan Horse. I tried complaining to her about Tammy, but she wouldn't let me.

Juba tried her best to make me feel better. She took me to Riverdale Farm, even though she says her legs aren't what they used to be. We played hours of cribbage, drank tea from her special china cups, and she let me stay up, watching television, far later than Tammy would have allowed me to. Juba made a bed for me on her living-room couch so I could watch TV in bed, “just like a rich lady.”

It was fun, but I kept thinking of Mom and the boys. I had a hard time imagining what sort of place the group home was.

Mom had said it was like a boarding school, but the only boarding schools I knew about were in British school stories. I couldn't picture the boys in
one of those places, although they would look cute in school uniforms.

Then I thought they were going to a work house, like in
Oliver Twist
, but Mom wouldn't put them in a place like that.

I was eager for them to get back, but if I showed any interest in the place, Mom might think I was okay with her plan.

I wasn't okay with it.

Mom and the boys returned around eight o'clock Sunday night, just before Juba and I got back to our apartment.

The social worker with the slime dripping from her fangs was just leaving as we arrived.

“Hello, Khyber,” she said. She'd obviously been coached by Mom. “How are you?”

I started to walk past her.

“Khyber,” Mom said in her warning voice.

“Fine, thank you,” I mumbled. I wasn't fine, but that was none of her business.

“I'll see you soon,” she said to Mom, then left. I took the boys into the living room. We played with their button collection.

“How did it go?” Mom asked Juba. She meant, “Did my daughter behave herself?”

I didn't have to listen to the answer. Juba doesn't believe in double punishment. If I had acted like jerk, Juba would have dealt with me
herself, and been done with it.

When Mom kissed me goodnight, she didn't say anything about her weekend with the boys, and I didn't ask her.

The next day was Monday. My suspension was over. I went back to school.

I timed my walk so I'd arrive at school just before the bell rang. That way I wouldn't have to talk to anybody in the school yard.

Miss Melon practically licked her lips with delight when I walked into class. She kept me at the front with her during the singing of “O, Canada.”

When that was over, the class sat down. Most were tittering and smirking. A few looked like they felt sorry for me. They were the ones who had their own difficulties with Tiffany.

Tiffany had been told I'd have to apologize, and she, of course, had spread that around.

“Tiffany, will you come up here, please,” Miss Melon said. “Khyber has something she'd like to say to you.”

Tiffany's nose was so high in the air it almost scraped the paint off the ceiling.

“Keep it simple and keep it dignified,” Tammy had told me. She had practiced it with me, pretending to be Tiffany. “Think of it as a character-building exercise.”

I've got enough character, I thought, as I
straightened my back, but I said my apology just as I'd rehearsed it with Tammy.

Everyone seemed disappointed I didn't slug her again.

Miss Melon followed it up with a lecture on the importance of good citizenship, using me as an example of how not to behave. I knew nobody was listening to her, but it made me feel lousy just the same.

When I got home Wednesday afternoon, Mom and the boys were out. Mom had told me at breakfast they had an appointment at Sick Kids, but I'd forgotten. I was already grumpy, and having them gone made me even grumpier.

“Come right home after school and stay here,” Tammy had told me. She didn't like me going out when she wasn't around.

The apartment felt empty and lonely. It was raining outside, off and on. There wasn't any sun to shine in through the windows, and the apartment was as dark and gray as the day outside.

I put one of Mom's Monkees records on, just for company.

Tammy had left out some potatoes for me to peel for supper, but I was too grumpy to do them.

I picked up my homework, then put it down again. I wandered around the apartment and into my brothers' room.

Mom had packed their clothes and toys into boxes.

I didn't stop to think about it. I went right to work, unpacked all the boxes, hung up their shirts, put their toys back on the shelves, folded sweaters and T-shirts into drawers. I gathered up all the empty boxes and carried them out to the balcony.

Looking down from the balcony, I saw X standing in the park, waiting for me. She hadn't been around all week. It was good to see her.

Halfway through making X a sandwich, I remembered that I wasn't supposed to leave the apartment. Could I be back before Mom returned? Yes, probably, and if not, Mom wouldn't mind me dashing out to give X something to eat. At least, I hoped she wouldn't.

By the time I got down to the street, X had gone. It was getting even darker out. Putting the boys' things away must have taken more time than I'd thought. I could see X a block or so away on Gerrard, heading toward Allan Gardens, and I hurried after her.

If I'd known her real name, I could have yelled it out, and maybe she would have stopped. I could have handed her the sandwich and rushed back home before Tammy found that I'd left. The whole mess that followed could have been avoided.

But I didn't know X's real name, and even if I
had, I couldn't have yelled it out. She would have thought it was the secret police calling her.

So, once I'd decided to take X the sandwich, there was no way to avoid The Trouble. Of course, if I hadn't taken the empty boxes out to the balcony, I wouldn't have seen X, and therefore would have been obediently at home when Mom got there. If Mom hadn't packed away my brothers' things, I wouldn't have had to unpack them, and wouldn't have been carrying the empty boxes onto the balcony, from where I saw X. So, in a way, the whole mess that happened was Tammy's fault.

How's that for passing the buck?

I caught up with X at Allan Gardens. She was on a bench inside the park a little ways. I sat down at the other end of the bench and passed her the sandwich.

“I can't stay very long,” I said. “In fact, I have to get back home right away.”

X pushed her blue suitcase a bit under the bench with her feet. She didn't reach for the sandwich. I pushed it toward her a bit more.

“Here — here's a sandwich. I've got to go!” I stood up. X still hadn't moved. I started to walk away, then turned back and looked at her. She was hunched down into her trench coat. She looked very sad and very lonely.

I sat back down. What else could I do? She
probably wouldn't have eaten if I'd gone away, and who knew when she'd eaten last? Maybe not since the last time we'd seen each other.

Tammy would understand. If she didn't, I'd be doing chores and extra arithmetic again, but I'd deal with that when the time came.

I took some deep breaths to calm down, to help X feel comfortable, the way I do with the boys sometimes. I'm never in a hurry when I see her. She probably thought at first that I was someone from the secret police, just pretending to be Khyber.

I relaxed, then she relaxed, and once I started talking, she started eating.

“Mom's got this idea in her head to send my brothers away. How can she do that? Parents don't send their kids away!”

I changed the subject then, and rattled on about the best places to find snakes in India, which I'd been reading about lately. By the time I ran out of things to say about snakes, X was almost finished her sandwich.

“Have you ever heard the soup song?” X didn't answer, of course, so I started singing it. As I was taking a deep breath before the final line, X spoke, so softly that I didn't hear her at first.

“I used to be a folk singer.”

The deep breath I'd taken drained quietly out of my body.

“I used to sing folk songs in Yorkville.” Yorkville is the part of Toronto where the hippies used to hang out in the sixties. I tried to imagine X as a hippie, with love beads around her neck and a guitar over her shoulder. I couldn't picture it.

“Is that when the secret police started following you?”

X didn't answer me. As I waited for her to say something more, I realized how late it had gotten. The afternoon had gone. Night time had come. By now, Mom and the boys would be back. I wished I'd left a note.

X started singing. Her voice was raspy and tuneless, as though her brain could remember singing, but the memory hadn't gotten down as far as her voice yet.

“Where have all the flowers gone?” she sang. I knew the song. I sang it with her. We sat on that park bench in the growing darkness, with bits of rain dripping down on us, and we softly sang to the park. We went from one song to another. I forgot the rest of the world existed.

“Hey, what is this? A bloody Girl Guide meeting?”

The rude voice jolted me back to reality.

A pack of skinheads had crept up behind us, and we were now surrounded.

Tammy hadn't needed to warn me to stay away
from skinheads. Everything about these folks smelled of trouble. (In fact, everything about them smelled.) They wore heavy black boots and military coats with Nazi symbols and skulls on them. They had shaved heads. They didn't even have hair to cover up part of their ugly faces.

At one time, they must have all been little pink babies, cute and gurgly, but that was as hard for me to imagine as X being a hippie.

“Never judge people as a group,” Tammy was always saying to me. “Judge them as individuals.” But it's hard to judge people as individuals when they travel in packs and all act the same.

“X, let's get going,” I said quietly, slowly standing up. These people are wild animals, I thought. I'll keep calm, and move slowly, and they won't attack.

X had disappeared into her trench coat, like a turtle into its shell. She wasn't moving.

“They shouldn't allow trash like this in the park,” one of them said, kicking at X's leg.

“X, come on, let's go,” I pleaded, but X acted as if she didn't hear me.

“X? What kind of a name is that? X? Short for Extra-defective?” The guy who said that was fat, bald and ugly. He looked like he swallowed beer cans whole. He thought he had made a joke, and he laughed. The other skinheads laughed with him.

“What's in the bag, Defect?” One of them grabbed for X's suitcase. X was frozen.

“Leave her alone!” I yelled, giving him a push. He laughed and pushed me back. I fell into the mud. I bounced up again and rushed at him, but the big one got in my way.

“What are you so excited about?”

I punched him hard in his blubbery stomach. He doubled over, clutching himself. I jumped around him and saw the others punching and pulling at X. One of them had her suitcase.

Maybe they weren't real skinheads at all. Maybe they were with the secret police.

I leapt at them with a shriek that David and Daniel would have been proud to make. I don't know which one I landed on. I wasn't aiming for any jerk in particular.

At that point, I lost track of what was happening. I know I was being kicked, punched and shoved, and I also know that I got in a few good kicks and punches of my own.

The fight was broken up by a police siren. The cops hadn't come for us — they kept driving right on by the park — but it was enough to send the skinheads back into the cover of the trees.

X and I were sprawled out on the ground. I crawled over to her. “X, are you okay?” I put my
head down close to hers. She was moaning a bit. “Can you get up?”

Rain was starting to come down for real. I shook X again. “Let me help you up.”

Her suitcase had been yanked open. There was nothing inside. I scrambled around on the ground, looking for any jewels or secret papers the skinheads might have dropped when they made their getaway. I couldn't find anything.

Leaning against the bench, X struggled to her feet. I closed the suitcase and handed it to her. She looked all hunched in and ashamed.

“You should see a doctor. Do you want me to go with you to the hospital?”

X turned away from me, as if she didn't want me to see her. I asked her again, but she just shrugged down into herself and walked away.

I headed home, wondering what to tell Tammy. She'd forbidden me to fight, so I couldn't tell her the truth. The best lie I could come up with was that I'd slipped and fell, and that's how I got my clothes dirty. It was a pretty lame lie. Not even I believed it.

The skinheads were still in the park, right at the corner I'd have to pass. I was sure they were waiting for me.

Forgetting all the rules of Elmer the Safety Elephant — who never had to deal with skinheads — I
dashed into the street, narrowly avoiding several cars that honked angrily. I headed south, then east, through the schoolyard, and up into Regent Park. I entered my building the back way.

Mom was home. She was furious. First she hugged me, because she was glad I was safe. Then she glared at me with a face of stone and ice.

“Well?”

I told her as much truth as I could, without getting myself into more trouble. “I'm sorry about the potatoes, Mom. I was just about to do them when I saw X outside waiting for me, so I took her a sandwich, and tried to leave right away, but then she started talking and...singing. We sang together for a bit, then she went her way, and I headed home, only I slipped and fell in the mud. That's why I'm all dirty.” I stopped for a breath, and to see how well my lie was going over. Tammy's expression hadn't changed. I could tell she knew I was lying.