Number 8 (19 page)

Valerie
could
be singing that song right now.

Maybe I could leap out this window right now. Maybe I could smash the glass and leave home. Then I'd be on the missing persons list at the Homeland Police Station. Mom would have to go there every day after the bank, sobbing into her handkerchief. She'd hang onto the detective's sleeve.
If I could just have that day again, I'd let her go,
she'd sob,
if I could just have my daughter back, I'd let her fly …

Yeah, if I ran away, then she'd be sorry. Maybe I could write a song about it. I could call it “Let Me Go to the Pub!” Well, maybe I should cut out the pub bit. What rhymes with “go?” Sew, low, show…

Patti Smith says people screaming at each other sounds like doves crying. That line makes
me
cry.

Valerie burned that CD for me. But I could never play it at home because one of the songs is called “Pissing in the River” and the f-word is all over the place. Mom would have a fit.

I guess it doesn't matter anymore what Mom thinks because I'll probably never talk to her again. She sure doesn't want to talk to
me
. She called me a “mindless airhead,” which is actually a tautology, the English teacher said. A tautology is when two things are saying the same thing, so that makes one of them repetitive and useless. Like most of the things my mother says. I tried to tell her this, about the tautology business I mean, because I wanted her to notice that I've actually been paying attention in English, which is a subject that some people think is just as important as banking but she just went on screaming at me. We really screamed at each other. It's never been quite like that before. Daniel went and hid behind the sofa. Dad went for his two mile jog. Tonight was just about the worst night of my life.

She was really, really mean. Called me names like a little kid. She called me a “singing canary” as well as a “mindless airhead.” I told her the singing canary bit couldn't be true because that was the term used to describe Kylie Minogue and I don't even
like
Kylie Minogue. Patti Smith to Kylie is like red meat to fake cream. But Mom couldn't care less what kind of music I like. She has no idea. She just looked at me with that horrible sneer on her face. You could tell my words weren't going in, in between her ears. Her face was so hard, it looked like it was made of concrete.

But her words went into me. They're still in here, pricking just under my skin. They're like little arrowheads. I
wouldn't tell her, but they really hurt. I can feel them starting to sink into the deeper part of me. Maybe they'll bury themselves in my
bowels.
I hope not, I don't want those mean little arrows to become part of me. Why do parents only love you when you do what they want? When you act like little models of them? And then you're supposed to be grateful for all the time they put into helping you grow into a banker.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I'm not allowed out on a week night anymore because there's always extra math to finish. So I planned it all really thoroughly. I decided to tackle Mom on her own. Parents together are like a brick wall—there are no footholds or ways through.

So I picked five o'clock when Dad was getting ready for his run and Mom was in the kitchen about to start dinner.
I
planned to have dinner out at the pub. After dinner (fish and chips or maybe that new special, curried lamb chops), I was going to hear “When Doves Cry,” “Respect,” “A Natural Woman,” “Say a Little Prayer for Me,” “I Feel Good,” “River Deep Mountain High,” “Send Me,” oh, anything Valerie chose to sing in her black sparkly dress. She even said I might do a song with her. Imagine
that
…

“No,” said Mom, and started peeling the potatoes.

“What?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“For what?”

“Say, I beg your pardon. ‘What' is rude.”

“Well, I beg your pardon then.” See I didn't answer back even though I wanted to run that potato peeler over her fingers.

“I said no. It's midweek and you have to catch that early bus tomorrow for your exam.”

“I'll put my alarm on. So what if for one day I don't have the required nine hours sleep or whatever.”

“Have you forgotten what day tomorrow is?”

“Friday. It will be the day after Valerie Ford sang at the pub to a standing ovation. The day after her young friend, Esmerelda Marx sang—”

“No, it is the day you have a second chance at the scholarship exam for Hammond House.”

“So what? We're talking about tonight, not tomorrow. I won't be at the pub to
morrow
for Christ's sake.”

“Don't swear or you can go to your room. And don't take that know-it-all tone with me, thank you. You've got all your life to sit around in some pub listening to amateurs—”

“Valerie Ford is not an amateur! She's sung in—”

“But only one day to take an exam that could decide your whole future. Do you want to be tired and not thinking clearly on that very important day?”

“I don't even want to go to that pushy private school, I told you that. And as
if
. As if I'd get in with
my
math. You're just kidding yourself. I'll just have to sit there in some freak-out cold hall for four hours staring at questions that make me feel stupid. I'm only doing the exam because you want me to. I don't want to change schools. But what
I
want doesn't count. It's only
my
life, I suppose.”

“Bye!” called Dad from the porch. “Be back in forty-five!”

“Do you know how much all this tutoring is costing your father and me?” Mom goes on. “A fortune, that's what. And all the thanks we get is you swanning around singing low-life songs and trying to get away with as little work as possible. What I want to know is, what's in your head, Esmerelda?
Air?
”

That's when I got really angry and told her
she
should go to the private school if she was so crazy about it and she said the thing about mindless airhead. I said, well I'm your daughter, so what does that make you? She ended up throwing the potato peeler at me and bursting into tears. Her face went all scrunched and collapsed like the wet dishcloth I had in my hand. I threw it on the floor at her feet and she just about went crazy. Her eyes went all wide as if she couldn't believe what was happening and she actually screamed, like some wounded jungle animal.

I ran out of the kitchen but she came after me.

“Go away!” I yelled, slamming the door against her.

“Don't you shut me out, young lady. I'm your mother. When you're eighteen you can do what you like but while you're in this house you'll do as I say. I'm only doing what's best, you're just too young to understand it now. One day you'll know all about it!”

I opened the door wide and yelled at her angry back disappearing up the corridor. “One day I'll leave this house and you'll never hear me sing again. I'll be
out
of here!”

Mom came flying back down the hall then with her mashed potato thingy in her hand so I shut the door quick as lightning. She banged on the door, telling me she didn't know how she'd got a daughter like me and I said well there must have been a mistake at the hospital and she said she would never have dared to speak to her mother like that, so I said maybe her mother was much nicer than her and that really got her because she kicked the door with her foot, it was a low savage
futt
sound and then she started going on about her mother and how much she missed her and
she
would have known what to do. I was starting to melt a little hearing the break in her voice and all this stuff about
her childhood but then she said the thing about mindless airhead again so I yelled, “Leave me alone!” and pushed over the chair at my desk and it made a great crack as it fell against the bookcase. A chunk of wood fell out of the leg.

I didn't have any dinner. I stayed in my room, watching the light dying outside. Asim would have gone to the pub with Jackson. He said he was going to ask his father.
His
dad would have let him go, for sure. Asim says his dad just wants him to be happy. But then Asim gets good grades in math without even trying. I guess when your kid is really smart it must be easier to let them be happy.

I hate it when they say, “We're so disappointed in you.” That's worse than anger. Mom gets this sorrowful tone in her voice as if she's at a funeral; you can see all her hopes for her daughter's bright future flashing before her eyes, R.I.P.

I creep out of the room about nine o'clock to pee. I tiptoe into the kitchen to get a glass of water. The television in the living room is blaring away and the Treasurer is talking about interest rates going up. Is that all anyone talks about in this country? Dad is shaking his head, groaning, and Mom is holding his hand. You'd think war had just been declared on Australia, the kind of grief they're in.

On the way back to my room, Daniel bumps into me coming out of his room. He's carrying a plate.

“We had hamburgers. I said I wanted two but I only ate one. Here,” and he shoved the plate into my hands. “I can't sleep when I'm hungry, can you?”

Daniel's always the one that tips me over the edge. Little kids, they've got such big hearts. If grown-ups only knew it, they could learn so much from them. Little kids only want the people they love to be happy. You don't have to be rich or smart or anything for Daniel. Just happy.

He starts to pat my shoulder, which is a bit awkward seeing he's so much smaller than me. We stand there in the hall with the hamburger balanced between us, and he's making this kind of cooing sound he's heard Marge do for little Maggie on the Simpsons. “Don't cry,” he mumbles.

“Go on, you get back to bed,” I say softly. “I'm all right. I'll go to sleep now. Thanks for the hamburger.”

Sleep. As
if
. Hunger isn't good for getting to sleep, but anger is worse. There was this boy from France in our class last year and he used to get “unger” mixed up with anger. He had trouble with his “H's,” never putting them where they should be. “Et ez almost ze time for lernch?” he'd ask. “I ham very angry.” Everyone laughed but I remember thinking that maybe the two things
are
connected. When you're really, really angry, there's a kind of emptiness in your stomach, a hole that feels as if it will never be filled.

After I ate the hamburger (
it's your own fault it's cold, if you'd come to the table when you were supposed to it would have been much nicer
), I tried getting into bed and closing my eyes. But behind my lids there was Valerie at the mike in her black dress. The drummer sitting behind her, the electric guitarist on her left. There'd be a sax, too, and a keyboard. By now Valerie would be really loose, she'd be getting wild. There'd be sweat running down her neck and dark patches under her arms. She said she always bought dresses for performing that wouldn't stain under the arms because if you didn't get hot on stage, then you weren't really singing. Once, in America, when she went to a Tina Turner concert she got front row tickets and got hit by flying sweat when Tina did a shimmy way down low like a wet dog shaking.

It's no use, this sleeping business. I'm not hungry anymore but I'm angry. Will I be angry all my life? I won't live very
long in that case because Jackson said just six minutes of anger and your immune system is disabled for five hours. Or was it the other way around? Numbers just don't stick in my no-brain. Why doesn't my mother get that? Why doesn't she know her own daughter? Hi, I'm Esmerelda Marx, I've lived here for thirteen years and I like hard rock, soul, a bit of jazz, some heavy metal, fish and chips, my brother, catching waves. I hate math and tautologies. How do you do?

Sometimes when you can't sleep you get so hot under the covers you feel like you might start melting into the bed. I'm sure sticking to the sheets. So I give up for a bit and trudge over to the window. I open the window wider and lean on the sill, my face in the breeze. Except there is no breeze. It's a hot, still night, like a pot of glue. Everything looks stuck on out there, even the white circle of light beneath the street lamp. It lies on the road like a big paper moon some kindergartner might have cut out and pasted on.

I look across at number seventy-three. You can't see the number very clearly, not like our sixty-eight that Mom polishes with Brasso. Valerie has let Chinese jasmine grow all over it. There's no outside light on. The house is so deserted it looks as if no one's lived there for the last century practically. They're all out far away, dancing in the light. I'm stuck here in the dark looking at the last signs of life like some usherette after a movie.

I pinch my arm to make sure I still feel. How does that song by The Rasmus go? It's from their album
Dead Letters.
Something about watching and waiting in the shadows, waiting for the right time…

There are snatches of song, melodies in my head all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I've ever had an original thought (as my mother suggests) or if everything I think
is some line from a song. It's a frightening idea. But music takes you over, takes you somewhere else. It's like Valerie said that day after the beach—about kids dancing to rock 'n' roll. Listening to a good song is a bit like going into a trance: you forget the outside rules and go inside, into this space of your own. How good will it be one day when I have a boyfriend? We'll dance with our arms around each other, in that space together. My head will be on his shoulder and we'll feel so close. We'll listen to our favorite songs, over and over. I can't wait to be older.

Valerie showed us a video of those Motown singers, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye. They practiced their hip wiggles and grapevine dances six hours a day. Marvin Gaye did this song, “Sexual Healing.” That's a bit gross but he just wanted people to love each other. Jackson rolled his eyes when his mother put on the song. Make love not war, Marvin Gaye said.