Rabbit Ears (8 page)

I took a step forward, stopped and swayed, almost weak-kneed. Jealousy snaked through my legs and my skull and met and tangled in my chest. First a dog, now a kitten.

“Kaya came with me to get groceries and look what we got instead!” Mom said.

Now, at the lodge, I dream of magic tricks and dying fathers, with Sybilla and Coco, Jane and Samantha, thrown in.

On Sunday morning, Mom heads off to her last workshop and I make my way to the lodge’s gift shop in search of a deck of cards. Back in our room, with our bags sitting side by side on the bed, I pull out the chair at the small round table under the window and set down the brand new deck
precisely in the middle of the black surface. I look at it and breathe.

Excitement burbles inside me, small, like the tiniest brook, enticing. I pick the deck up again—it’s red with one of those patterns that serious cards have, no pretty paintings or lush landscapes, just simple geometry in red and white—and run my fingers over the smooth cellophane, find the thin blue line that encircles the deck. I take the tiny tab between my thumb and forefinger, and pull. In one smooth motion, the clear wrapping comes away from the top of the box. I have only to slide the bottom part off, and I’m in.

The cards are slick in my hands, and after my first attempt at a shuffle I have to scrabble on the carpet to salvage a fallen queen and a three and a seven. They are beautiful, though, and, slippery though they may be, I love them, every one. I try another shuffle. And another. I start up a patter in the empty room, engaging an imaginary audience, and slide a card out of the deck, almost convincing myself that my own hand is someone else’s.

For a moment I wish I had a subject, an audience, but it’s too soon. Way too soon. Still, the morning passes in a flash. I almost forget to watch the clock. But not quite. When Mom comes back from her session just before noon, I’m sitting on my unmade bed, reading
Sundry’s Book
, cards tucked out of sight.

Beth

Apparently Mom’s morning was not as much fun as mine. She’s clutching a fistful of pamphlets and business cards; her shoulders are slouched, her face dark. “Let’s go,” she says, hefting her bag over her shoulder. “We’ve got a long drive.”

In the car she doesn’t say much, and I’m pretty much oblivious to her misery, or I try to be, playing out in my mind the two card tricks I know, fingers caressing the deck in my pocket.

“Abuse, abuse, abuse,” Mom says at one point, and the harsh word wrenches me to attention. “It’s all they talk about with runaways.”

She isn’t talking to me. And she doesn’t say anything else for a while. I sit there, magic tricks forgotten, as prickles run down my arms and into my fingers. Mom is chewing on her lower lip and staring so intently at the highway, it’s a wonder her eyes don’t pop out of their sockets.

I know we’re both thinking and wondering the same things. Dad died. Yes. Our family was kind of messed up by it. But would Kaya run away because of that? Why?

Mom glances over at me sitting stiffly in my seat. “Are you all right, sweetheart?” she says.

Normally, I could be hanging out the car door ready to throw myself into the canyon before she would take notice.

“Oh, nothing,” I say. “I think I’m just tired.”

Mom huffs and is quiet again. After a bit, “Kaya’s the exception to the rule,” she says. “I wish they wouldn’t generalize like that, as if kids are all the same.”

Then she starts in about homework. The moment passes, but not the word that has brought it about. I have only to let my mind brush up against it—
abuse
—and there are those prickles, all over again.

Mom goes silent again once we pass Hope. Magic tricks and questions about the past fade from my mind as we enter the heavy back-to-the-city-on-Sunday-afternoon traffic. My thoughts turn to my sister right now, today. I’m sure Mom is thinking about Kaya too.

Will the house be empty? And if it is empty, which kind of empty? Empty ever-since-Friday, or empty someone-came-and-went-on-Saturday? I can’t quite bring myself to hope that Kaya will actually be there. I’m not sure I want to set eyes on her right now.

It starts to rain as we approach the bridge, and traffic slows to a crawl. Mom’s fingers tap the steering wheel. I turn up the volume on my Walkman and try not to grit my teeth. I finger the cards in my pocket again, but it does no good at all.

As soon as I walk through the front door, I see the light blinking like crazy on the phone. Messages.

Mom is behind me, unloading the car.

“Just put that down and come back and help,” she shouts, but I ignore her.

The dash to get the receiver into my hand is instinctive, but once I’m holding it, I freeze. It will be about Kaya. I know that. But what? Who?

The front door bangs against the wall as Mom comes through laden and angry. “Couldn’t you do what I—?”

She sees the phone in my hand and stops speaking, her eyes fixed on the blinking light. In a moment her bags are on the ground and she is at my side, holding out her hand.

“I checked for messages just this morning,” she mumbles.

She’s brisk as she pushes the buttons, and her face is businesslike as she listens. She presses the “off” button and looks at me.

“Well, she’s not dead,” she says, “or hurt.” She pauses. “Apparently, she’s in jail.”

“Jail?” I say blankly. “But she’s …”

“All right, the youth detention centre.”

It isn’t quite that something has happened
to
Kaya, as it turns out. Kaya has done something to someone else. And now she’s in custody. And they’re going to hold her overnight. At least.

“Get your coat, Beth. We’re going to see her. Oh, and could you get her toothbrush and some clean clothes from upstairs?”

I stare at Mom. “Where are we going? Where is this place?” I hear my voice rising as I speak, but I can’t help it.

Mom’s face tenses. She breathes, tries to calm herself, but it doesn’t work.

“Burnaby,” she says. “Willingdon Youth Detention Centre, it’s called. Now will you go fetch her things?”

I don’t know how I can go from scared to angry so fast, but I do.

“So Kaya punches someone, and now I have to visit her in some kind of jail?”

Mom’s whole face contracts. “Yes,” she says. “That’s precisely correct. If you can’t get her things, go wait in the car. I’ll get them.”

“I’m doing it,” I say. Angry. Angry. Angry. “I can’t believe this.”

Upstairs, I shove a toothbrush in a bag and root around in Kaya’s nightmare bedroom for pants and a shirt. Won’t she be wearing striped pyjamas anyway?

On the way out, I grab my own bag, with my Walkman, my book and the leftover jelly beans from the Chilliwack gas station. I shove those deep in my coat pocket. Mom has already started the car by the time I get there.

We drive most of the way in silence.

“Be kind,” Mom says as we wind our way up to the youth detention centre.

I stare out the window at the high wire fences that keep the world safe from kids like my sister.
Kind
. I let my teeth sink through the jelly bean in my mouth and swallow the two resulting lumps of gelatin, feeling them all the way down my throat. Then I wrestle another candy out of my pocket and sneak it into my mouth.
Kind
. I will be kind.

I sit alone in a waiting room while Mom meets with some people. Despite my best efforts I feel two tears escape, one from each eye. I slip yet another jelly bean into my mouth and swipe at my eyes. Then we both have to put all our possessions, jelly beans included, in a locker. A guard upends the bag that I threw together and rifles through it with gloved hands.

“She won’t need any of this,” she says shortly. “We supply toiletries and clothes.”

Mom looks sad as she takes the bag from the guard and stows it in the locker along with everything else. “Can we see her now?” she asks.

“This way, please,” the guard says.

She leads us to a metal detector, but Mom stops halfway, her hands flying to her face. “I should have brought her a book. Or something to eat.”

I stand and watch Mom cry. The guard watches too. My hand rises from my side just a little, as if I were thinking of resting it on Mom’s heaving back, but some powerful force holds us apart. My arm falls back.

“I have some jelly beans,” I say at last. “We could give her those.”

The guard nods and turns back toward the lockers. “You could,” she says, “if you like.”

I think about
Sandry’s Book
, tucked away in my bag. I’m halfway through, loving it, and it’s part of a series. I press my lips together as I reach into the bottom of the locker and slide the slightly sticky, half-empty bag of candy from my jacket pocket. I leave my bag alone, book safely stored for
later on, when I am safe at home in my own bed. I am not giving up that book.

Mom has managed to stop crying, and the negative force field between us doesn’t seem to affect her, because she yanks me to her in a quick hug. “You’re a sweetheart,” she says with a loud sniffle.

I square my shoulders as I walk through the metal detector. Mom’s hug drops off me like water off butter.

And there is Kaya, sitting on a couch alone, eyes on us as we enter the room. “Sweetheart,” Mom practically shouts, and I flinch.

“I’ll be right here,” the guard says. “You have half an hour.”

Kaya speaks fast, so fast that I only understand about two-thirds. Her tone is angry and self-righteous. The other girl deserved it. She’d been making everyone miserable for a long, long time. One of the girls was going to talk to her pimp, and that would have been the end of it.

Pimp
. I see Mom’s back tense. Myself, I push the word away. I’ll think about it another time, not here, while I listen to my baby sister rattle on about her crimes. In a
jail
.

“So I taught her a lesson.” She grins. “I never punched someone before, you know? But she went down. And I said, ‘Listen. You got to stop this stuff, else you’re really going to get hurt.’ And those red-cap guys were right there. A guy and a girl. They heard me threaten her. That’s what they said when they were arresting me. A citizen’s arrest … What bullshit! I didn’t threaten her. I warned her. I was helping her.”

My mouth opens. I hear the sarcasm packed around my words, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. “I see. You
helped
her by punching her in the face.”

Kaya’s eyes have been fixed on Mom’s face until now. She glances at me, but turns right back to Mom. “Beth’s just like them. She doesn’t get it.” She pauses. “I didn’t totally mean to punch her in the face.”

Mom has been nodding throughout Kaya’s speech, one hand on Kaya’s knee. Now she speaks. “Well, Kaya. We just want you home. And if you go around attacking people, you’re not going to get to come home. It’s not safe for you …”

I watch Kaya’s eyes drop as she takes in what Mom is saying.

“Mom,” I say, “she shouldn’t punch people, because it’s wrong. She deserved to be arrested.”

Mom reaches behind her with a silencing hand. “Shush, Beth. We’re here to support your sister.”

In the same moment, Kaya’s eyes come back up, filled now with betrayal. “Guard,” she says, “I want to go.”

“Kaya,” Mom says, her voice breaking on the word, becoming a wail.

It ends then, the visit. On the way out, I shove my hand in my pocket and find the jelly beans, stickier now, but still mine.

The drive home is awful. Mom cries for half the journey and yells at me the other half. I clench my teeth. Curl my fists. Tighten every muscle in my body. But despite my best
efforts, those high fences creep back into my mind, along with an image of my little sister huddled all alone on that couch, staring at us with eyes that seem hungry now, though they seemed fierce then.

As I replay Kaya’s frenzied speech, the bravado is obvious.
I didn’t totally mean to punch her in the face
.

Kaya’s misery floods through me; I can’t keep it away. I tip my head against the car window and shrink at the thought of her alone in a cell, or worse, crammed into one with girls who happily punch others in the face, or stick knives in their guts if they smile wrong.

Home. I use my jelly beans and my book to soothe myself. It works nicely until I remember that Kaya is supposed to be enjoying the candy right now.

The night that follows is long.

Kaya

You tell them you were teaching her a lesson, but really it wasn’t like that at all. It all just kind of happened. The other girl was so frustrating. Amber, her name was. She was young, though not as young as you. Skinny, but pretty, with a really round face and huge eyes. And she just showed up one day, kind of muscled in on things.

One of the pimped girls, Gemini, was furious when she found Amber standing on her corner. “Waggling her hips like a crazy person” was how Gemini put it.

You’d had a chance to talk to Amber earlier, heard a bit of her story. She came from Calgary; she’d been on the street
there a little bit. She couldn’t go home ’cause her dad beat her up. Then they stuck her in a group home and that was it for her. She’d heard Vancouver was a good place to be.

“If this doesn’t work out for me, there’s always Victoria,” she said, grinning.

She had to be scared, but she didn’t show it, and you admired that. You liked her, really. But she had not one single clue. When Gemini found Amber on her corner, she was ready to go straight to her pimp, which wasn’t fair.

“Why don’t you talk to her?” you said to Gemini. “You talked to me.”

“You were ready to listen,” she said.

“And she isn’t?”

“She’ll listen to him.”

It made you sick to your stomach when she said that. You remembered Jim’s weight on you in that filthy bed, the way he just expected that, like you owed it to him or something. He’d never hit you, but you’d seen other girls with big hand-shaped bruises on their arms.

Just last week, a girl had her head shaved by this same guy Gemini was talking about. The story went round, putting fear into all of them, and you saw the girl, or you were pretty sure you did. She was running with a scarf kind of falling off her head, and you saw a flash of bare scalp, with a big bloody patch. They didn’t shave gently. You were lucky to have escaped it yourself, you knew. And Gemini would give someone over to that?

“I gotta go,” you said.

And ten minutes later, you were being arrested by a couple of do-gooders in red caps, while Amber pulled herself
to a sitting position and held her jaw. “You punched me,” she said slowly.

They wouldn’t even let you answer.

Well, in a way she did deserve it. And maybe it would make her pay attention. She sure hadn’t listened before. “I’ll work where I want,” she’d said. “You can’t own a corner!” You took hold of her arm to pull her away from there, and she wrenched herself free, and when you reached out again, she shoved you, and next thing you knew, your fist was connecting with her face.

Fourteen days have already passed.

They don’t call it jail, but it might as well be. When you stood up in the courtroom and heard the judge say
ninety days
, your knees actually went weak. Mom was crying in the background, but you didn’t look at her. Beth was at school, apparently.

And fourteen nasty days they have been. Withdrawal hit you hard, and the folks sure don’t ease you through it here, though you’ve heard there are ways to do that. Endless fits of puking, mostly bile, liquid shit, whole body burning and freezing, aching joints. Sometimes all at the same time. You would have given anything for a fix. Or death. You didn’t really care which. You got through it, though.

Back when you got here, they offered to let you go home until court, but Mom looked really nervous when they said that, and you just said, “Hey. No. I’ll stay here, thanks.” Anyway, it’s a good thing, because you can’t imagine withdrawing at home with Mom and Beth.

The first dozen or so of your remaining seventy-six days pass, one by one. And you settle down after a bit. At first, it’s hard not to mouth people off because it’s all so ridiculous, and there are those high fences, and you were only trying to help that girl.