Y: A Novel (11 page)

He moves out of her grasp, annoyed, and picks bits of lint from his long braid. “Everyone
has their cross to bear,” he says.

After it gets dark, they sit on their porch under a scratchy blanket and look at the
stars. Harrison tells her he longs to have money and to live on the Queen Charlotte
Islands. There is no sound except Eugene talking in his sleep, no light except from
their matches. The air is so damp the blanket feels wet. Their hands are clammy. Harrison
pushes three Chips Ahoy cookies into his mouth and tries to chew, does it again once
he swallows the big mess. He pushes two cookies into Yula’s mouth and makes her swallow.
He laughs so hard he roars, and cookie crumbs shoot into the air as though from a
whale’s spout.

In four days my mother will abandon me, but tonight my parents are childlike and laughing.
He lights a joint and they go inside to watch TV. Harrison puts his head on Yula’s
pregnant lap and roars when a commercial tries to sell them something about sex or
pimples. He likes to flop around when he laughs. He likes to roll off the couch. He
rolls and crashes into the coffee table and roars so hard he weeps, throws his head
to high heaven, and paws the air as if he is drowning.

V.

i
am a noisy and demanding six-year-old. At dinner, I babble in every direction. Even
the salt shaker sets me off. I ask where salt comes from. Then, who built the ocean
and do French children think in English and who invented Cheerios. I will not eat
peas unless there’s sugar on top, and I get angry if Miranda’s outfits aren’t color
coordinated. She tells me I’m overly sensitive. She says I need to learn the art of
conversation.

“Conversation,” she says, “is when we all talk about the same thing. Pick a topic,
Shannon.” A new rule is invented: I have to leave the table if I ask too many questions.
Miranda says that if she wanted to be interviewed, it would be by Mike Wallace, not
me. I discover that if I pinch the skin on the back of my knee I can stop myself from
blurting out. Kicking my ankles together works, too, but then I’m sent to bed without
supper so I don’t do it again. My nails dig in; I scab and bleed.

While Lydia-Rose does the dishes, I take Winkie for walks in the evening and try to
talk it all out with her. Lydia-Rose made her a little raincoat out of an old anorak,
and Winkie and I walk with our heads down in the rain. I tell Winkie everything: how
hard I have to pinch myself to keep from blurting out; how I hate all the kids at
school; how I think I’d be happier if I could live in outer space. I tell her that
I stole the Polaroid of Lydia-Rose’s father out of our sock drawer and ground it into
a puddle
with my gum boot. I tell her that I hate myself for having done this. I tell her that
the town house doesn’t feel like home.

We have to walk slowly because of Winkie’s back legs. When they’re really bad, I hold
a towel under her belly and walk with my legs on either side of her while she ambles
along. The vet says it’s arthritis from badly broken bones. Who knows what happened
to her before Miranda found her. Car accident? It makes my stomach hurt to think about
it. We only walk on our side of the street, because I refuse to cross the road. It’s
too frightening. The cars come out of nowhere; they peel around the corner so fast
they go up on two wheels. I can’t gauge how fast they’re moving or how long I have
to get across the street. I don’t understand how anyone can find the courage to do
this sort of thing. Lydia-Rose darts into traffic as if she’s parting the Red Sea.

Once a month, Miranda and Lydia-Rose have a special mother-daughter lunch at the Dutch
Bakery. They split a turkey sandwich and a vanilla slice. Lydia-Rose sometimes gets
a marzipan strawberry to eat on the bus ride home. Miranda puts her hand on my head
and tells me that I am her daughter, too, but that she needs to have “alone time”
with Lydia-Rose every once in a while. Sometimes she sends me over to the neighbors’
house and then I think she and Lydia-Rose watch a movie and make popcorn, Winkie at
their feet. At Christmas we each get the same thing, but then I’ll find something
in our bedroom, later, slid under Lydia-Rose’s pillow or tucked into her backpack.
A little something extra. A little something to show her that she is number one. At
night I am so lonely that my heart aches. I lie in bed, Lydia-Rose already asleep,
and listen to her breathing. Miranda spends a few minutes with us every night, but
then she’s gone, into her private room upstairs, and I’m left alone in my bed.

Lydia-Rose wakes and torments me.
When you were a baby, your mom left you in a closet to die. Your mother was a hooker.
We found you in a shoe box outside our door. We found you in a dumpster.

I lie in my bed until my nose starts to tingle as if it’s carbonated, and
then I feel the hot sting of tears. No one knows how hard I can make myself cry. I
can cry until I’m almost choking. I can cry until I’m gasping for breath. When no
one is home, I cry so hard and loud that I am screaming. I tuck myself into a corner
of the room and feel the swell of pain in my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut to drain
them of their tears, wait for them to refill, do it again. Over and over. Do other
people do this? Lydia-Rose cries in the bathroom, talking to herself. She says
I hate my mom. I hate my mom. No. I don’t hate her. But. But. But.
And then she whispers so softly and quickly that I can’t keep up. I don’t think she
cries like me.

The night before we start grade one, Miranda tries to tell us things about herself
while we eat corn on the cob. She wipes the butter from her chin and laughs. It’s
a warm evening in early September. We have our backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils,
and first-day outfits spread out all over our beds. We have new white runners for
P.E.

“In the summers, my sisters and I would spend the evenings on the front porch, shucking
corn,” Miranda says. She is at the head of the table with her back to the open window.
Outside, we can see Grant Street. “We hated it.” She looks at Lydia-Rose, but her
daughter is pushing bits of her cut-up hot dog around on her plate. Lydia-Rose has
even more trouble sitting still than I do.

Miranda spreads some more butter on her corn. “We lived in the Interior at the time.
It was hot in the summers, not like it is here. We had to be outside; it was too punishing
to be indoors. And so many bugs—had to have screens on all the windows.” She presses
on, keeps talking about the wind and the hot sun and her father calling them in to
boil the corn, the awful steam heating up the already hot kitchen. She looks at Lydia-Rose,
but her daughter hasn’t heard a word. She’s wiggling in her seat, desperate for her
mother to excuse us and let us play, but I could sit here all night listening to Miranda.
I could sit here forever, trying to postpone tomorrow morning. Except there’s something
else, too—I don’t like that I can see how hard Miranda is trying. I don’t like that
I can tell she’s lonely. I don’t like that I can see her trying to reach her daughter
from across the
table. Why should I notice these things when Lydia-Rose doesn’t? I try to be more
like her, and I stop looking at Miranda’s face. Instead, I bang my heel against the
chair. And, finally, Miranda says we’re excused.

That night I dreamt that I was still living with Moira and Julian, except in some
weird wood-paneled motel room, and there was a big spider on the wall, and I asked
Julian to kill it, which he was always very good at doing, and just as he was about
to hit it with his shoe, its whole body glowed fluorescent green, and I said,
Did you see that, Dada?
but he had not. At 6:40 a.m. I woke from the dream, looked up at the ceiling, and
there was a huge spider over my head.

And I thought there should be a word for this sort of thing—when your last dream mimics
your first waking moment. Shouldn’t there be a beautiful word for that?

The first day of school, Lydia-Rose and I stand side by side, our arms folded across
our chests, daring the bigger kids to hit us. We are seasoned fighters from our days
at Blue Jay. Lydia-Rose has laced a set of keys between her delicate fingers, but
I’m ready to go without armor or adornment. I have toughened my hands. For the past
year, I’ve been punching the wall in the laundry room as hard as I can every time
I walk by it. I can’t say why I do this, but my hands are callused and numb.

And I’m ready. I’ve got on my new pink backpack, pink shorts, and a red V-neck T-shirt.
Red flip-flops. Toenails done French-manicure style with Wite-Out. I’m the shortest
person in grade one and probably the weirdest looking person, too. My mom or dad must
have had really curly hair because I’ve got white-blond curls so tight they could
hold a pop can. My bum eye is off to the side, sleeping in the corner by my temple,
and people don’t know where to look when they’re talking to me. They stand there,
bounce back and forth between my eyes, and try to figure out which is the good one.
And I don’t know who I inherited it from but I’ve got a turned-up nose like a little
pig. My best feature is my mouth: a perfect
puffy pout. I’m not hideous, but I’m definitely a cross between Shirley Temple and
a pug.