Going Down Swinging Read online

  She sighed and patted my leg. “It’s almost spring and it’s still winter. Leave it to bloody Toronto.” Mum picked a lint off her sweater and kept talking. “When you were a baby, in Vancouver, we used to take you and Charlie to the beach, and you used to run around in the nude, giggling your little head off. And your dad would chase you and threaten to unscrew your belly button and let your bum fall off. And you’d scream and hold your bum; you were such a funny little bird.”

  Mum always makes it sound like it used to be fluffy heaven when I was a baby. Like we used to have a real family. The pictures make it look like that, but mostly I remember yelling and the house being always dark. Mum looked at my hand. She said I was going to grow into one big dog with hands that size. I tried to think of more stuff to talk about.

  “Will you sing me songs before you leave?”

  “Oh god, sweety, I don’t feel up to it. You’re getting too old for bedtime songs anyway.”

  “Please …?”

  She sighed. “One. I’ll just sing one fast one, and then I have to go, OK?”

  “The piggy song.”

  “Oh god, the piggy song. I haven’t got it in me tonight, honey … just … OK:

  There once was a piggy who lived in a sty and six little piggies had she. She waddled around saying oink oink oink and the little ones said wee wee wee.

  Now six little piggies grew skinny and lean, and skinny and lean grew they from trying so hard to say oink oink oink when they only should say wee wee wee.

  She leaned and kissed me. I grabbed round her neck and held on till she tried to straighten up and still had me hanging off her. She patted my back. “OK, sweety, that’s enough, come on now, give me a kiss and let me go. Grace, enough now, you’re being silly.” She yanked my arms off her neck. “For goodness sake, what’s with you tonight?”

  “Don’t want you to go. Can’t you just stay?”

  “Come on, angel, I’ll be back in no time flat. And Janet and Frank are here, it’s not as if you’ll be all alone.”

  I listened to the quiet when she quit talking. She kissed my cheek and my mouth and told me she’d bring me back a happy. That’s our name for treats, happies. When she got up off the edge of my bed, my mattress sucked back against the wall. The hallway floor creaked and hangers clanged each other in the closet when she got her coat. Her boots came back to my door. “OK, lamby, I’ll see you later, don’t go to sleep too late, OK? You’re OK? Lock the door after I go, but don’t put the chain on.” I stared. She sighed, “OK, I will be back soonly.”

  She kissed the air and waved. Her boots stepped downstairs. I could hear her keys—probably checking to make sure she had everything. She called, “Bye, angel,” and I jumped off the bed and ran down the steps. Tears were coming—I was being a baby.

  “Mummy? Mum?” She had the door open, and she turned. “Can I have a kiss goodbye?” I couldn’t think of anything else. She leaned and squeezed and kissed beside my eye, said “I love you,” and then I started—tears and tears. I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop begging and dragging at her neck and choking on the tears and guck going down my throat.

  She looked mad at me. “Honey, stop now, stop, don’t do this, please. Why are you crying? Honey, this is ridiculous—come on, Grace, I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for going out one night—one night!” I sucked my breath in. She squished off the tears under my eye with her thumb, said, “What’s gotten into you?” and kissed me again. “OK now, everything’s fine. I’ll be back in a few hours.” She stepped backwards, kissed the air and waved, and closed the door behind her.

  It felt like wet Kleenex going through my chest. I ran to the window, saw her coming onto the sidewalk from our path, saw her move her tam down on her forehead, look at me in the window and wave again. My hands went against the glass, and crying noises came out of me like hiccups. I couldn’t stop calling her and begging through the window. She was leaving and she wasn’t coming back.

  She looked up again and frowned and stopped. I could see her mouth moving, making “Stop it” shapes. One boot stomped and her head fell back and she looked at the sky, like she was yelling at God or the angels or someone. She looked at me again and then away, shaking her head. She stomped with both her feet and then her purse hand dropped and her bag bounced against her knees She took two hard stomps away, then she bent forward at me in the window, mouthing, “Grace, stop it-stop it-stop it.” She turned and stomped back up the sidewalk. I was too glad to be scared.

  She slammed the door shut behind her. “All right, OK, I’m staying. There, OK? I’m not going anywhere! Happy?” I ran to the hall, shoved my face in her belly and held. She ran her hand over the back of my head and called me “Weird little creature.”

  After Mum called her friend to cancel their plan, we sat at the kitchen table, me with hot milk and honey and two pieces of cinnamon toast, Mum just taking bites off mine. She played with one of my feet in her lap, and after a while said, “Let’s take a trip. Let’s go see your nanna and grandad in New Brunswick.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. In a couple weeks.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, and slurped and held some hot milk on my tongue until my throat had to have the sweet honey-pain against its back.

  Eilleen Two

  MAY 1973

  IT’S GOING ON MORNING and you are on a Greyhound to Saint John, New Brunswick—well, Montreal actually, and then from there you’ll connect with one back home, the womb. Is that what you’re doing, bussing it back to the womb? Grace is passed out in the seat beside you—bare feet and you’re hardly out of April—filthy feet, dirty nails. No wonder she’s got kids at school calling her stinky, telling her she’s got cooties. Why is it so hard to keep one kid clean? Why will you never hear the phrase, Mummy, where are some clean socks?

  S’pose it doesn’t matter, you touch her bangs, the angry bit springing off to the side, watch violet colour her skin through the window, street lights and trees, high beams and clouds, shadow then strobe. She’s the one thing that keeps you from saying I wish I’d never laid eyes on that prick in the first place—son of a bitch wouldn’t even give you money to go visit your parents. Tried to tell him, This may be the last time I see them, but he didn’t believe you, or didn’t give a damn. One day you’re not going to wake up, they’ve told you that, doctors have. Take another drink and you’re dead.

  Just have to get out of godforsaken Toronto; just have to get the cash together, that’s all. You can do that—got bus fare together for this trip, didn’t you?

  The bus is pulling into a depot. Six-thirty in the morning. It’s supposed to be Montreal but it looks like nowhere. A gravel lot just off the highway. Christ. You wake Grace, her face is winced but she’s still pliable; lead her off the bus and into the station.

  Place is deserted. Now, sit her down with the suitcase on a bench, go to the ticket guy and ask about the next bus to Saint John.

  Newfoundland? he asks. Saint John not St. Johns, you bark. He says not till 10:07 A.M. 10:07? You say you were told 7:15. He looks at you, his French is better than his English and he’s disgusted with both of yours. He says he don know who gived dat time at you, uh? but it not de true one—dix heures sept. Screw dix heures sept—how ’bout sept heures quinze? You flop down beside your kid, tell her the story. Now what, she wants to know, can we sleep here for a while? Forget it. Liable to have some thief grab your bag or your kid—terrible things happen in bus stations. You stomp back to the ticket wicket, ask which way’s east. He raises his lids, just enough to get you in his pupils, then points.

  The two of you start out, up the gravel hill to the road, you dragging the suitcase, Grace hobbling barefoot over the rocks carrying an overnighter. Where’re your shoes? She doesn’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? She thought you brought them. You thought I brought them? What kind of cockamamie excuse is that? You can’t keep track of everything, can’t even handle travel arrangements let alone someone else’s footwear. You thou
ght, you say, you thought. Well, you know what Thought did … It’s the family retort to all assumptions made, and the family reply when an answer is requested: He planted an egg and thought he’d grow a chicken. Grace asks, What?

  He shit his pants, you tell her and she nearly busts a gut. Ah, dirty jokes, they make it all a little brighter. She’s giggling and hopping and wincing over sharp rocks, and you kneel down and offer her a piggyback; her and her bag and your suitcase all dragging off your sickly pack-mule self as you lumber up the hill. Nearly twist your ankle again in those asinine boots. You’ll have to change before you get to your parents’. No point walking in looking like the Jezebel who ate New Brunswick.

  At the highway, you drop your bag, let her slide down your back and off your bum. She wants to know, What’re we doing?

  We’re going to hitch ourselves a ride and blow this joint, than what. She gets a sly smile on her face. She likes doing bad stuff sometimes, no telling when. You’ve got her missing school for this trip: today, Monday and Tuesday. And that was OK with her. Maybe because her teacher’s got her in with a little batch of geniuses, reading ahead of the others into grade 3—maybe she’s getting a swelled head, thinks a few days away from the dumbos won’t set her back much. You tell her not to tell her dad when she sees him.

  Now stand there like this, hip out—provocative but not too sexy, or maybe the other way around; and hold your wee child’s hand. Who could say no? Thumb out … Whoosh, a single car careens on by, not even a glance—what was he, a child-hating queer?

  Don’t despair, look pleasant but with a touch of ennui … Not another car in sight, not going in this direction. Grace’s smile is fading, she looks blue again. Sing me a song, old thing, you tell her. She says she doesn’t know what to sing. May as well go for the cheap laugh again. I know one. Wanna hear a dirty one? Us kids used to sing this when we were about your age. You tap your toe and take up with a Southern twang:

  Once knew a lady lived out west,

  she had mountains on her chest,

  she had a bird’s nest ’tween her legs,

  where a cowboy laid his eggs.

  She giggles, then What eggs? she says. An-n-n-d presto! Shhh-oo, crunch, car slows onto the gravel a little ways down, a male silhouette glances over his shoulder. There now, this is travelling.

  This first guy says, in bare English, that he’s going to Levis then over to Quebec City, and he sits with a hand on his gearshift, gripping with gusto while he fixes on your thighs. Well, that’s the French for you, no harm in looking. Thank god for your baby, though, she puts her head up over the back seat every few minutes, every time a French version of a familiar song comes on, and now and then an English one, like now, that one she likes, “I got a brand new pair of roller skates;” she’s half-crawled over the seat, trying to get closer to that wiggly girlish voice on the radio. The driver is frowning at her, guess she’s making him nervous hanging over his shoulder like that. You mimic the shudder in Melanies voice: “I ride my bike, I roller skate, don’t drive no car, don’t go too fast but I go pretty far. For somebody who don’t drive I bin all around the world; some people say I done all right for a girl. Ba ba ba ba yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah-h-h-h.” He smiles out of the corner of his eye.

  By nine in the morning you’re driving toward St. Léonard with an older man. He finds Grace’s bare feet quite charming and striking to the funny bone. His English is good. He offers to stop in Edmundston and fix her up with some shoes. Now that’s charming.

  He waits in the car outside the shoe store; you were hoping he’d offer to pay. He does at breakfast, though, takes the two of you to some family dining place and picks up the check. Just outside St. Léonard, he invites you to stay with him for the day, before travelling on. Or come back with him to St-Jean-Port-Joli, where he lives—you’d like it there, he says, lots of artists, says he’ll buy you a woodcarving and laughs softly. He’s got heavy gentle hands and his hair is silver fluttering into black just at the nape. Part of you wonders if he takes you seriously. Or if he just wants to fuck you. Maybe either way would be OK, though, feel loved for a few years or a few hours. Feel like someone wants you bad, what does it matter why? But you stand with him outside his car and say goodbye. Seems wrong leaving a woman on the highway like this, he says. And you laugh and shrug and he does too and there’s a long silence before he kisses either cheek and touches at the outer corner of your eye, the curve of bone before your temple. Looks in deep as if he’s soul-hunting; feel like telling him it’s at the shop. He smiles at the pavement, puts a card with his number and address in your palm, folds your fingers and kisses them shut. Gives your hand a final squeeze for punctuation.

  The next guy is young. Good-looking and he knows it. Tries to be even louder and more jocular into the back seat at your cowlicked girl. Tries to show he’s fun for the whole family. She’s not buying it, though; her laugh’s a little phony. She takes her hands off the front seat and relaxes into the back, closes her eyes. He’s English, anglophone, he says, says he speaks French but not that great. I hate trying to practise in Quebec, these guys can be such assholes. He’s in sporting goods, the rep for about half of Southern Ontario. Says something about being young and how it’s a positive thing in this business, given the market. He’s not working now, just sort of a vacation to see some buddies in Fredericton. You went to teachers’ college in Fredericton, you tell him. He thinks that’s interesting. Seems to think your boobs are pretty interesting too.

  You’ve been in the car about forty-five minutes when he says, You look tired. I was thinking I wouldn’t mind stopping at a motel and resting for a couple hours. You smile and look out the window. Feels nice, all this good old-fashioned lust. He lets loose a grin and asks what you do for a living, anyway. You tell him this and that. He asks if you’re strapped for cash right now. Huh, that was pretty bold. You could use the money, to get back or put toward getting out of Toronto for good—rather swallow your teeth than ask your father for money. I mean, we could just sleep, I could just stretch out along the bottom of the bed. How cute—your pause for thought nearly scared his preppy little pants back on.

  Grace’s head and shoulders come hurtling over the front seat. OK, no funny business! What does she mean? Well, you know what she meant, but how could she know what she meant?

  The guy looks startled. You both giggle. You pat her cheek and smooth fingers over her forehead, say, Out of the mouths of babes … and the subject is dropped.

  Some family-man sort drove you the last jaunt from Fredericton to Saint John. Wanted to take you right to the door; you had him let you out down the road. No point leaving yourself open to a lot of questions. It’s almost dark and you’ve got Grace by the hand, hopefully by the ear. We took the bus here and then a taxi from the bus station, OK? Don’t forget that. I’m serious, sweety, don’t slip up.

  But aren’t they gonna see us walking? There’s not gonna be a taxi car, they’re gonna know.

  They won’t even ask. It would never even occur to them.

  Yes they will, they’ll think it’s weird, they’re gonna know. They’re older than you.

  Oh, pipe down, Grace, you’re making me nervous. You let go your daughter’s sweaty little mitt and bring the back of your hand to your lips, dab at them for an overabundance of red, glance down your blouse, do up another button, avoid another stumble, this time over grass growing out of the sidewalk, say out loud, Step on a crack, break your mothers back.

  What do you mean?

  Nothing. Haven’t you ever heard that expression?

  No. It’s kind of mean.

  Not if you don’t step on any cracks, it’s not.

  She begins making wide strides across all pavement connections before your parents’ house. Your eyes coast from her feet to their door and see a face, see Grace’s woolly eyebrows on an old face. Oh shit—shoot—heart’s going love and terror; a smile splits your face. Mumma!

  The screen door opens and she rushes down three steps to the sidewalk.
The space she leaves makes room for Dad. Drop your suitcase and run to the ohs and my goodnesses and How was your trip, did you take a taxi from the station? We could’ve come and picked you up. How did you get here? Grace checks her shoes for crack evidence, then smiles politely at an old lady, an even older man. God they’re old—how did they get so old, everything’s white and lined like school paper.

  Your father moves with prepared stiff strides toward you. Greets you with that firm pat of his, his gaze eased with a nod that you try to make pass for Baby girl, let me look at you, is this my granddaughter—she’s adorable! or something like that, something human and loving as opposed to the stoic face of an old British schoolteacher. As opposed to a mouth that you can’t recall ever saying you were so much as interesting. Oh Christ, run, just run before you get in that house and every cruddy, insensitive, stingy remark he ever made hits brick-deep in the back of your head. He takes your suitcase—What! What is wrong with the way you look? Didn’t say anything but he looked you up and down, and you’re not imagining it. Oh god, it’s like falling down a hole. Down some muddy fucking rabbit hole. You can’t go home again.

  You’re sitting up straight, trying to be well-mannered by memory: the prodigal daughter. Haven’t seen them in seven years, not since after Grace was born, and you don’t remember how to do this, be with them. It’s suppertime and the four of you are at the kitchen table, just you, Grace and them. Tomorrow night’ll be the big family dinner in the dining room.

  Scooping a dollop of mashed potatoes onto your plate, you look over at Grace’s. Mum’s just put a kid-size portion from every serving dish on the table in front of your child—House Rule Number 1: At mealtimes, you must try a little bit of everything. Grace is gawking down at the mashed potatoes, fiddleheads and broccoli beside her roast beef. She’s already announced she doesn’t like the first three and her grandfather refers her to House Rule Number 1. Her jaws start working and she twirls a lock of hair round and round.