Rabbit Ears (3 page)

You look up, your lips come together on the
M
in “Mom,” but you stop yourself. You get up and walk away from her. She’s on your heels, so you break into a run. Five minutes later, a police officer’s got you by the arm. An hour later, you’re home.

Beth

I’m glad to see her. Of course I am. But I’m mad too. Furious, to be honest.

When the front door opens at midnight, I’m asleep on the couch. Mom’s a nurse and supposed to be working night shift this week, but she called in sick when Kaya wasn’t home by ten. By now, we’re used to waiting for Kaya to come home. We know she’s skipping school a fair bit. But she usually calls and tells us some story or other. Mom gobbles those lies up like bonbons. The difference today was no phone call. No nice little story.

So, like I said, Mom called in sick and set off in search. I was supposed to call her if Kaya called or turned up. Mom was supposed to call me if she found her. Well, I went to sleep and Mom didn’t bother to call, so neither of us honoured our agreement exactly.

Before I fell asleep, I thought about calling Samantha, just to talk, imagined her kind voice on the phone, but she’s not a secret-keeper, and I couldn’t face talking about all this with Jane at school tomorrow, so I didn’t.

Kaya comes in first, her face chalky with makeup, mascara smeared everywhere, tear tracks from eyes to chin. Mom’s right behind her. Kaya doesn’t even look in my direction. She yanks open the door to the stairs, lets Sybilla barrel past her, and turns on Mom.

“I was just minding my own business, and you set the police on me. The police! Do you know how humiliating that is? It wasn’t even midnight yet. Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she screeches, already halfway up the stairs.

“You’re just a kid,” Mom says after her. “You’re my daughter.” She’s crying too, but at least she has no makeup to smudge. “And I love you.”

But Kaya’s bedroom door has already slammed, shaking the whole house, and she doesn’t hear those last words.

Kaya

After the police turn you over to Mom, it gets still harder to stick around. And with Diana there, school feels impossible. You do try, though, even if Mom and Beth can’t see it. You do. After the holidays, Michelle starts showing up sometimes, but she’s cagey about where she’s been. It’s infuriating after the time you spent together downtown. Anyway, she doesn’t look good. You stay away from her too.

In January, you start a metalwork class. It’s actually kind
of fun for a day or two. You make something that almost looks like a goose, even if it is an odd shape. You like the feel of the metal in your hands, softening it, bending it and soldering the pieces together. And it keeps your mind off things.

Then you come to class in the second week to find a familiar figure at the front talking to the teacher. Diana. At the sight of her, your innards turn liquid. You have glimpsed her most days in the halls, but you haven’t spoken to her since that day at your locker. She’s a year older than you, in Grade Nine, so you shouldn’t be in any of the same classes. Here she is, though, joining Metalwork 101 a week into the winter term.

In the halls, your eyes can flick away without acknowledgement. Here, you don’t stand a chance. Mr. Holbrook gestures across the room, and Diana turns to see where he’s pointing, which happens to be at your station. Not surprising. You’re the only student with a station all to herself. Or you were. Diana’s eyes and yours connect, flick away, and connect again.

Mr. Holbrook follows her across the room. “Kaya,” he says, “Diana is joining the class today. Could you show her how to get started on her project, where to find the materials, et cetera?”

Diana ducks her head, breaking the tortured eye contact between the two of you. And you marshal yourself. You go through the motions that afternoon, but even as you instruct her on the proper safety procedures, you know that this is your last metalwork class. The whole experience is tainted now. It has become something other, something dark and dreadful. Diana has made it so. You have probably had the
same effect on her, you think when it’s over, as you watch her scurry from the classroom ahead of you.

That night, you climb out your bedroom window onto the roof of the foyer, wriggle down the fig tree right outside Mom’s window, which is not easy in tight jeans and high heels, and you are away. It’s later than usual, but surely they’ll still be there, or one of them will. You jump off the bus across from the movie theatre on Granville, your bag slung casually over one shoulder, your jacket collar turned up against the drizzle, but you can see right away that there’s no one there. You should have brought an umbrella. And a warmer coat.

It feels weird being outside in the city so late all by yourself. You can feel the eyes on you. And the danger. You think briefly about your own bed. Warm. Dry. Safe. Then you shake that off and march down the sidewalk. Most nights, they all sleep outside somewhere. You know that. It’s just a matter of finding them.

The street grows darker, scarier. As you wait for the light at the first corner, cars seem to slow as they pass, faces leer.

A man approaches from one side, his gait slightly unsteady. “You all right, sweetheart?” he says, coming to a halt just as the light changes and you can cross.

“Yes,” you say, stepping off the curb. “I’m fine.” You look at your watch. It’s past one. And you have no idea where to go. They could be anywhere. And the thought of these streets in the middle of the night, almost empty with who-knows-who watching out windows, out of alleys, frightens you.

“You don’t look fine,” a voice says, and you jump. The man is still there, right on your heels. All concern for your welfare, apparently.

A bus appears in the distance and you seize the chance, taking off at a high-heeled, tight-jeaned trot.

Climbing up fig trees is not as easy as slithering down. And Beth’s window is too out of reach. The sliding door into the dining room opens easily enough, though. Sybilla swarms your legs, but her whines are quiet and Mom does not wake up.

Your own bed brings with it your own world. And that’s the last place you want to be.

Kaya

In the morning, you wait for Michelle on the front steps of the school.
Come to school
, you beam out to her.
Come to school
. And she does.

As she approaches, you tell her, right off, “I need to get out of here.”

Michelle draws close, her eyes round, hands running through her unwashed hair. Her eyes spark slightly. You aren’t sure if that is fear or anger or what. And you don’t care.

You repeat yourself. “I need to get out of here.” You know that Michelle will want to help you; you also know that she’ll know how.

If she is surprised, she does not show it. She glances from your small backpack to your even smaller purse to your eyes. “Now?” she says.

She doesn’t ask why you don’t go on your own. She seems to know that you want more this time, not just a bunch of lost kids hanging out on the street.

“This minute,” you say. “I’m not walking into that school one more time.”

“Do you have enough bus fare for me too?” she asks.

You nod. And she walks away from the school, obviously expecting you to follow. You do.

As the bus starts up the ramp onto the Granville Bridge, your heart picks up its pace, excitement zips through your jaw, your scalp, your gut.

On the other side, you press your face to the window and gaze at the kids leaning against the theatre wall, the dogs, the vendors’ set-ups. You watch for the girl with the cat. If you see her, maybe you’ll get off the bus right here. But you don’t see her and the bus passes on. When it turns onto Hastings, your excitement is heightened by dread. You feel slightly sick. Are you really truly doing this?

Michelle chatters nervously, surprising you, but she doesn’t say a word about where you are headed, and you don’t ask. That might stop what you are doing somehow, and it seems like the only option, the only thing that will clear your head.

Even at ten thirty in the morning, Main and Hastings is a busy place. Busy on the sidewalk, that is. You try to look casual as you step off the bus, to swagger into the small crowd—mostly men—not cower close to the curb, but it’s different here. Not like Granville at all. The people are older, mostly. They seem rougher, tougher. And there are more of them. Way more. And not mixed with the shoppers and the business people and the movie-goers. Despite your best efforts to appear calm, you feel yourself veer away from the bodies, arms close to your sides, purse clutched tight.

Michelle does not swagger or cower or clutch. She walks with a purpose that feels separate from yours. You have to trot to keep up at times, and you wonder if she even remembers that you are here.

“Michelle,” you call out, but you don’t want to draw attention to yourself and your voice does not reach her ears.

You walk faster, eyes on the ground, only to stumble into her where she waits outside a door between two buildings. On one side is a store, barred windows stacked with packages, on the other a hotel with grubby windows in which several faded plastic plants gather dust.

Michelle presses a buzzer, waits for an answering buzz and gives the door a good shove. It swings open onto a flight of stairs leading straight up. You look to the top and see a man peering down at you.

“Who’s there?” he shouts.

“It’s me,” Michelle shouts back, her foot on the first step. “Michelle.”

It takes him a moment to answer, and you wonder how she ever ended up here. Did someone bring her here just like she’s bringing you, or did she find it all by herself?

At last he calls, “Come on up. Bring your friend.”

He watches as you trudge your way up and looks you over as you get closer. He’s a big guy—not old, you think—with scruffy black hair and a smile that eases your nerves, just a little. He holds out a hand and you take it; his grasp is warm and strong, and lingers just a bit longer than you like.

Michelle pushes past you and stops. “Is Marcos here?” she asks.

He shrugs, letting go of your hand. “That’s all the hello
I get,” he says. “Yes, he’s here. Not in a great mood, I’d say, but here.”

Michelle clatters off down the long hallway and through a door. The man turns back to you.

“I’m Jim, by the way. We’ll just hang out here and give them a minute.”

After a moment you say, “Kaya.”

You hate standing on that scrappy carpet under a bald light bulb, while Michelle is in an unknown room with an unknown man. Jim rolls a cigarette on the spot and takes a few drags, his hacking, wet cough surrounding you with smoke. He doesn’t question you, but he does look you over once or twice, his face blank.

Eventually he grunts and sets off and you follow him down the hall and through the door. The place is awful: not an apartment like you were expecting, but only a room with a sink in the corner. The stained mattress has no sheets on it, just a tangle of dirty quilts. The one small table is adrift in empty bottles and other garbage. The grubby window is open, but the air in the room stinks of cigarette smoke and dirty clothes and bodies and stale beer. It takes a few moments to take in all of this, however, because there is your friend, hunched on the bed, a boy at her side, and he’s right in the middle of sticking a needle in her arm.

“Michelle, what are you …?” You stop as you feel Jim behind you, hands on your shoulders. Michelle looks up, the spark in her eyes all gone.

You hear Jim take a breath to speak, but Michelle speaks first. “Hey, I got you here, didn’t I? This is what you wanted, right?”

“Easy, kid,” Jim says to you. “She’s fine. Marcos is taking good care of her. He’s known her for a long time.”

Michelle lowers herself back onto the bed, and Marcos turns his attention to his own arm, showing no interest in you. Jim grasps your elbow. Hard.

“Let’s grab a coffee,” he says. “We’ll talk.”

You pull away from him and take two steps toward the bed. “No. I can’t leave her. It’s my fault she’s …”

“She doesn’t need you right now, honey. Can’t you see how happy she is?”

You look down at her, lying across the bed now, head rolled to one side.
Happy
doesn’t seem like the right word, but clearly she has done this before. And she was eager to bring you downtown because she wanted this. She wants to get high. She wants to escape her life. Well, you understand that. Though you’ll never do what she’s doing, no matter how much you want to forget.

You turn and look at Jim now and the word
pimp
leaps into your mind. Pimps and drugs go together, right? If you leave Michelle alone now, will men rape her? Is Jim going to take you somewhere all on your own where men can give him money for you? You feel frightened but also curiously detached at the thought. Kind of floaty. The instinct to protect Michelle is strong. The horror at what Michelle is doing is real. But the nervousness that clung to you all the way downtown on the bus is gone.

You smile. “Let’s go!” you say to Jim.

The street is still filled with a milling-around crowd that confuses you. Jim keeps you close, though. He doesn’t march off ahead like Michelle did. He turns in at a pair of windowless
doors, pushes one open and stands aside to let you pass. The light inside is dim, but warm; the space is big and mostly empty. A woman calls hello from behind the bar. Two guys look up from a long table, a jug of beer between them.

Once you are seated, Jim leans back in his rickety plastic chair and signals to the waitress.

You squirm in your seat, breathing the smell of stale cigarettes and spilled beer, staring at the stained table. When you glance up, Jim’s eyes are on you, and you look back down. He is nothing like any man you have ever met before. Not even … but you nix that thought quick.

The waitress runs a dirty cloth over the table and plunks down a jug and two big hard-plastic cups. Jim pours and drinks.

At last he speaks, slow, with a drawl. “So, did the girl bring you or did you bring her?”

You open your mouth. “I …”

He waits a moment, then says, “Not much of a talker, are you.”

Your mouth snaps shut. You look at him, proving him right.

The answer to his question sits in your mind, heavy and sticky.
You
brought
her
and the reason for that is … The reason for that is …

Without planning it, you say, “My dad died.”

He looks at you, brows raised. “Your dad died.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me that because …?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just really messed up.”

Jim smiles briefly.

“Well,” he says as he lifts his glass to his mouth, “I can help you out, if you want.”

Your eyes stay on his face, trying to read it, to figure out what kind of help he is offering you. The same kind of
help
he gives Michelle, most likely. That isn’t what you came here for. Is it?

The door to the bar opens and bodies and voices swirl in together. “Hey, Jim.”

“Hey, kiddo.”

“I’ve told you not to call me that. Who’s this you’ve got here?”

The woman speaking is young and pretty. That’s what you see first. Her hair is curly black and she has lots of it—it’s kind of like yours. Her skin isn’t far off your colour either, but everything else about her is different: her dress, skin-tight; her makeup and nails, perfect. She has broken away from her group to speak to Jim, and now she turns her attention on you.

“I’m, uh, I’m Kaya,” you say, hating the catch in your voice. Here is somebody female who knows how to live in this world. You can’t imagine this woman living in a nasty hotel room like Jim’s, or knuckling under to a guy like him either.

“I’m Sarah,” she says, pulling out a chair.

“Hey!” one of the women in the group calls out. She’s tall, skinny, teetering on heels, gesturing broadly with long arms. “You’re with us, Blackie.”

You tense, but Sarah seems relaxed.

“Hang on to yourself,” she calls back, grinning at her friend before she turns again to you.

“We don’t need another hang-about,” the woman in the group says, scowling now. She slings herself onto a chair and leans in to her companions. You can’t hear what she says after that.

Jim puts his hand on your back, and Sarah looks down her nose at him.

“How long have you known Jim here?” she asks you.

You look at your watch, and she laughs. “Hands off, Jim,” she says, her voice light, playful. “She’s just a kid.”

You straighten. “I am not. I’m … I’m …” But you can’t bring yourself to lie to her. You
are
just a kid.

“See ya, Jim,” Sarah says, and to you, “Come on, uh … what did you say your name was?”

“Kaya.”

“Come on, Kaya.”

You’re happy to blow off Jim, but you balk at joining the others at their table.

“It’s all right,” Sarah says. “They won’t bite.” She laughs. “Right, guys? At least, they won’t draw blood.”

The scowler lets her eyes pass over you—scratchy, her gaze feels, while it lasts, which is only for a moment. Neither of the others looks up. You have to force yourself to sit.

After that, they ignore you for a while, and you start to relax and enjoy the energy. Cigarette smoke, raunchy jokes (
really
raunchy jokes), laughter, all of it swirls around you, warm and somehow comforting. You sip at a glass of beer and study them, one at a time. One is wearing worn-out sweats and runners with a T-shirt knotted at her waist; one is wearing boots with stiletto heels and a short skirt over bare legs and a low-cut top with ruffles around the neck. The
scowler is wearing skinny jeans with those heels and a baggy tank top, her tattered leather jacket slung over her chair-back. Then there’s Sarah in her stretchy dress.

Are they high? You have no clue. You don’t think so. Are they prostitutes? You don’t know that either, but you guess that the stilettos mean they are. Well, maybe not the one in the sweats.

As the glasses empty, the scowler turns her attention back to you. “So what’s up with the kid?” she says to Sarah. “Is she your new little trainee? You going to raise her up? Be her grand protector?”

“Shut up, can’t you?” Sarah says, looking sideways across the room at Jim, who moved tables when you abandoned him, joining the pair of guys who looked up when you entered the bar. “I was just getting her away from him. You know he chews them up and spits them out.”

“He got me up and running,” the woman with the ruffled blouse says. “And look at me.”

You do, and you can’t tell if she is being sarcastic or dead serious. She doesn’t look great. She looks worn out. Worn through.

“He’s no worse than anyone else,” she adds.

The knotted T-shirt woman speaks then, but so quietly that all of you could have missed it if her words hadn’t fallen into a moment of quiet between songs. “What about your Charlie?” That’s what she says.

Sarah stands, pushing back her chair so fast it almost clatters to the floor. Jim and his friends look up, obviously eager for some drama, but “Fuck you” is all Sarah says as she grabs her coat and strides for the door. “Fuck you.” She has to turn back when she’s halfway there. “What’s the matter
with you, kid? Are you going to stay with
them
?” Then she’s gone and you have to run to catch her in the morning drizzle.

“I’m worried about my friend,” you say as you half jog along at her side down Hastings. “I left her in a hotel room with this young guy, Marcos. A friend of Jim’s. She was shooting up.”

Sarah stops. “Jesus,” she says. “Well, that’s what happens in Jim’s hotel room. That’s what happens in a lot of hotel rooms. That and other stuff.” She stands still then, sheltering herself from the rain under an overhang, and asks you a few questions. At last she starts walking again, and you go back to jogging along at her side.

“I’m not sure if you can help her right this minute, Kaya,” she says. “It sounds like she knows what she’s doing. She took you there, right?”

You nod, thinking about that, about people leading other people into danger. Today wasn’t the first time someone did that to you.

For a moment you are angry with Michelle, and it feels kind of good, this cloak of anger. But Michelle was perfectly safe at school just this morning, far from drugs and needles and all the other nameless dangers. You knew that she had been in trouble downtown. And you used that knowledge to get what you wanted. You might as well have walked right up to her at school and jabbed a needle into her yourself.