Rabbit Ears (5 page)

You feel the skin pull back from your teeth; your eye sockets clench.

Beth stands for a long moment looking at you. Then she turns and runs back upstairs.

In the kitchen, you stand in front of the fridge, rip the plastic wrap off a bloody hunk of grilled steak and devour it, almost without chewing. You find a bag of cookies in the cupboard and take it upstairs, but the meat in your belly is all you need.

Sleep comes then, easy.

Kaya

The next morning, you get up and get ready for school. Mom bustles in the kitchen, while Beth sits at the table, hair in her face, eating an oversized bowl of bran flakes and granola. After a bit, Mom goes to wait in the car. The drive to school is silent. You can feel Mom wanting to speak, to find the words that will keep you in school this day, and the next.

You feel sorry for her, almost, and when she pulls over in front of the school, you lean into the front seat and kiss her on her soft pink cheek. Her breath flies out of her in a whoosh, and her hand comes back around and grasps your head. You pull away, and the moment is over.

Beth is already standing outside the car by the time you get out, waving kind of awkwardly at Jane and Samantha, who are waiting on the school steps. She turns back to you before she waddles off. “You be here today at three,” she says. And if Beth can be fierce at all, she’s fierce now.

You grin. “When have I ever let you down?” you say, your voice bright and crisp.

She stares. You know she wants to say,
Every day of your life, since the day you came
. You imagine the tip of her tongue all bloody from where she’s biting it. She just can’t say something like that, no matter how much she longs to.

You drop the act. “I’ll be here,” you say. And you will be. You can’t go back downtown today anyway. Not without a bit of cash.

The day is long, though, and so is the next one. Michelle does not show up at school and you wonder about that. Has she gone back down there? If she has, is that all your fault?

Diana does show up at school, of course. Even though you have dropped the metalwork class, the two of you keep running into each other. And every time, acid swirls right up your throat. She seems to have the same reaction, because she turns away as fast as you do. The two of you dart all over the place to avoid each other.

The third night, you steal forty dollars from Mom’s wallet and twenty from Beth’s babysitting stash in her underwear drawer. She doesn’t babysit a whole lot, but she’s not good about getting her money into the bank, so she usually has some tucked away. You may have done some shoplifting last year, but you’ve never stolen from your family before. You’ve only ever taken a bit of change from Mom’s purse for the bus. And you have permission to do that.

After supper, you slip out the front door and run all the way to Tenth. This time, the bus cooperates. It ought to: you have the schedule all figured out. You’ll be at Sarah’s door at about seven. Who, you wonder, will be on its other side?

It turns out that you don’t have to go to her door at all. She’s getting out of a big white car as you get off the bus.
It turns the corner and drives right past you, so you see the man behind the wheel. You see his tidy hair, his suit jacket. You see the child seat in the back. You feel sick.

You stand back and wait until after she turns down Princess Avenue. You don’t want her to know that you saw her get out of that car. You want to un-know it yourself.

“Sarah!” you say, jogging to catch up to her, hoping your voice sounds confident and grown-up.

She turns and looks at you. Her eyes seem a bit vacant somehow. It takes her a moment to focus. “You look familiar,” she says, “but I don’t …”

“I’m Kaya,” you say. “Remember?”

“Oh, yes. You’re that kid,” she says. She has come to a halt on the sidewalk. “I told you to go home and stay there.” She looks you over, pushes a hand back through her hair. “Come on. We’re going for a walk.”

She walks strong and tall, even though she’s actually pretty short. She seems oblivious to the fact that she’s wearing thigh-high boots with spike heels and a short skirt that shows some skin way up at the top of those boots. Everyone looks as you pass; even people slumped in doorways look. Often they call out hello. Sometimes the hello isn’t nice, but mostly it is. You wrestle with a mix of embarrassment and pride as you follow her. She takes you over a viaduct, eventually, a bridge over a railway that circles around and leads right into a great big park on the water. Street lights brighten the path ahead. Huge cranes tower in the harbour. Even in the dark, the slight drizzle, the water sparkles on your right. Downtown, all lit up, straight ahead.

Sarah leads you to the swings in the playground. No
street lights here, so the playground equipment, dimly lit, feels lonely, abandoned.

You hesitate. How old does she think you are? But she plunks herself down on the middle swing. “Here,” she says, kicking a leg up toward you. “Pull. These things are killing me.”

You stare and then obey, pulling one long shiny boot from a leg, then the other, and dropping them on the grass beside her purse. She pumps back and forth, her legs strong, her body reaching for the sky.

“Come on,” she shouts. “It’s amazing!”

And you do, shaking the small puddle off the strip of rubber. You push off, lean back, straighten your legs, and forget the left-behind damp seeping through your jeans as you aim your face at the dark wet above. The two of you look at each other when you are both as high as you can go, flying. And you laugh, loud, together. Your chest expands with joy. Then she starts to slow herself down. Soon the two of you are weaving your swings back and forth, scuffing your feet in the damp sand.

“Why are you here?” she asks, her gaze intent on the ground.

“I can’t be at home,” you say, not pausing, just saying.

“Why not?”

“It’s horrible there,” you say, and your mind flashes to Mom’s loving hand in your hair, to Sybilla’s big furry body. Horrible?

She looks at you then, and you feel her see right inside you; you shrink under her gaze.

“I don’t belong there,” you say, too fast. “I belong here.”

“No, you don’t,” she says, and adds after a moment, “This is not a good place to be.”

“You’re here,” you say.

She is silent for a long, long time. Then she says, “Something bad happened to me. When I was little. And I never told my mom and dad. I should have. I really, really should have told. I should have stayed.”

“That’s not me,” you say, big and strong, and you stop scuffing the ground, start swinging again. You need to move. “That’s not me.”

“I don’t believe you,” she says. Then, “Look. Look at the cats.”

They are coming up from the beach: three, no, four, no, five cats, heading across the grass in the dark. They are silent, stealthy, like ghosts. Sarah laughs softly.

“Here, kitties,” she calls. “Here, kitties.”

You grunt and start pumping, driving yourself up into the air again, watching. Sarah goes quiet, watching too. You let yourself slow and come to a stop beside her.

The cats circle, not coming close enough to touch. Even in the dark, you can see the matted fur and bald patches on one, the jagged ear on another. A third meows, big and demanding—hungry—like no sound Coco has ever made in her life.

“We’ve got nothing for you, cats,” Sarah says. “On your way now.”

They obey, wandering away, across the park, and Sarah leans over to pull her boots back on. “Let’s go,” she says. “I’m putting you on a bus. Again.”

She leads the way back to the path, and stops in front of
a big stone surrounded by bushes, lit by a tall lamp opposite. First you notice the candles and the flowers gathered in the wet dirt in front. Then your gaze travels upward to the words engraved in the stone.

THE HEART HAS

IN HONOR OF THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE
MURDERED IN THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE.
MANY WERE WOMEN AND MANY WERE NATIVE
ABORIGINAL WOMEN. MANY OF THESE CASES
REMAIN UNSOLVED. ALL MY RELATIONS.

ITS OWN MEMORY

DEDICATED JULY
29, 1997

You read the words twice. A third time. Anger flutters inside you, along with fear and confusion. “Why are you showing me this?” you ask.

Sarah shrugs, gestures toward the words again.

You read them one more time.

At last she speaks. “Those women. They could be you. They could be me.” She digs around in her tiny purse, pulls out a lighter, leans down and lights one of the candles, positioning it under a plastic flower to protect it from the damp. Then she turns and leads the way up the path onto the viaduct. She doesn’t say much on the walk back to Princess. And neither do you.

With Hastings in sight, you pass the little grey house that Sarah pointed out to you. A man comes barrelling down
the narrow path between that house and the next. He’s big, hunched over, kind of. And mad. Mad at Sarah.

“Where the hell you been?” he shouts as he approaches. He pauses, as if at a loss for other words. “Where the hell you been?” he repeats, and his hand shoots out and grabs Sarah around the upper arm.

“Hey!” she says sharply, and you pick up your pace, putting a few strides between yourself and the pair of them. “Let go of me, Charlie. I’ve just got one thing to do and I’ll be …”

He wrenches at her then, and she turns on him, yanking her arm free. “I said, I’ve just got one thing to do.” She strides after you, ignoring his repeated orders to “Get back here.”

“Who’s he?” you say, though you guess, of course.

“That’s just Charlie. He goes off the deep end now and again. Pay attention. We are going to get you on a bus. You’re going to go home, and you’re going to stay there. Do you understand?”

You do not. Understand, that is. Even as Sarah is saying it, you are thinking about the money in your pocket. You are thinking about how soon you can come back. After all, you know where to come to now. You know where she lives. Charlie is a bit scary, but she seems to know how to handle him.

Less than a week passes before you get off another bus right at the corner of Princess and Hastings. You stand on the sidewalk for a moment in front of the house: 396 Princess Avenue. You gaze up at the boards on the windows, down at
the dead weeds that crawl across the cracked cement steps, at the icy remnants of snow.

Uncertain, you creep round to the back, up half a dozen wooden steps onto a falling-down landing. Once again, it is seven o’clock. Dark. Everything sodden. Bits of grey snow cling to patches of earth and to the railing, but the snow doesn’t stick to the wet rotted boards beneath. Melt drips off the edge of the roof and collects in puddles on the expanse of gravel between the pair of small grey houses and the lane.

You stand on the landing, your hands at your sides. Eventually, you will raise one hand and knock. Eventually, you will. And when you do, maybe Sarah will answer. Maybe she will invite you in and be kind to you again.

Maybe she will not answer. Maybe that man will. That big crumbling man who grabbed her arm.

You raise your hand and knock. Three knocks. Silence. Four knocks. More silence. You force your fist to pound instead of knock. “Hello?” you call. “Hello!” you shout.

“Who’s there?” comes a voice through the wood. A man’s voice.

You could still run now, but you don’t. “It’s me, Kaya. Sarah’s friend,” you call back. Then you remember. “Blackie,” you add.

The door opens a crack, revealing a strip of face; an eye peers out, squinting into the dark. You can’t tell if the eye recognizes you, but the door opens, revealing the body attached to the eye. It’s that man, the one who grabbed.

You see no sign of Sarah, but you can’t very well turn and run now.

“Come on in,” he says. And you do.

“I’m, uh, I’m looking for Blackie,” you say.

“Yeah?”

It’s hard to know what to reply to that. You nod. And look around. You’re standing in what passes for a kitchen and you don’t like what you see. This mess, this brokenness, this dirt are not what you imagined for Sarah, the strong Sarah, the together Sarah. A mixing bowl lies on its side on the counter dribbling something that might be chocolate pudding onto the cracked linoleum. The window above the sink is boarded over, and the sink is half full of dishes not quite covered in scummy water. A scrawny kitten rubs itself against your leg. You start, and bend over in relief to run your hand along its bony spine.

“You can wait in there,” the man, whose name you can’t remember, says. He’s pointing into a room off the kitchen.

You look hopefully toward the other doorway, which must lead into the living room, but he is sending you into a bedroom instead.

“No,” you say, hating how weak your voice sounds. “I’ll …”

His voice grows stern, impatient. “You’ll wait in there or you’ll get out,” he says.

The better of the two choices is obvious, but you don’t take it. In the room, a man sprawls in a broken easy chair, head back, apparently unconscious. High, you guess. And a woman sits at a small desk, intent on what she’s doing. She does not look up. When you see what she has on the desk in front of her, something runs through you, skull to toes. It’s horror, you tell yourself, but you know it’s excitement, really.

The man—you remember his name now: it’s Charlie—is right behind you. “Sit. There,” he says, his hands pressing on
your arms. And he plunks you on the edge of the bed, where you perch, rigid, and watch the woman’s every movement.

After a while, she looks up and meets Charlie’s eyes. He nods. “Hold out your arm,” she says to you.

You look out into the kitchen, where the door you came through remains closed. Still no sign of Sarah. You look up at Charlie, but he is fiddling with some things on the desk and does not glance your way. And you look at the woman. She waits, her hand extended.

“Your arm,” she says again.

The excitement takes you over then. Anticipation. Your arm and what she is about to do with it are keys to this place, this life, these people. Michelle couldn’t handle it, but you are stronger than she was. Sarah seems to manage just fine with this stuff. And you need it, whatever it is, not just to belong here, but to get away from there. Mom and Beth don’t understand you. Diana lurks at school, tainting the place. Michelle just makes you feel guilty. And everywhere at home, everywhere, are those memories. These people, here, have memories too. Here, pasts are understood with hardly a word spoken.

Besides, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again.