Belinda's Rings (23 page)

But as mean as that is, I still think the meanest thing I ever did in my life was spank Squid. Spank is the word that Mum uses, but if spanking is a little whap on the bum like the ones Mum and Jess both gave him, then what I did was something else altogether.

He was two years old, terrible twos as they say. I used to call it tornado twos in Squid's case. Even when we put up his baby gate in the door to the kitchen so he couldn't run too far, one of us would be trailing behind him pretty much everywhere he went with a wad of paper towels and a garbage bag. I was only eleven but I felt old. When I followed him around I dragged my feet like they weighed a hundred pounds, and when I scrubbed the jam or spilled juice or soft-boiled egg off the floor I grunted and groaned like an old maid. And that was just on a regular day. That particular day he'd eaten a huge bowl of macaroni-and-cheese that had little pieces of hot dog mixed into it, and he had the orange sauce all around his mouth like someone had tried to paint a sun on his face. He saw me coming with the dishcloth and scooted off into the living room, and he ran around and around in circles trying to sing “U Can't Touch This” by MC Hammer. He was obsessed with that song at the time. Since he was only two he couldn't quite say it right. Cantukis! Cantukis! he kept yelling. I was so tired of running after him that I was just shuffling around, swatting at him like a sloth and trying to get his arm. Of course, as soon as I caught him he puked his lunch out on the carpet, pure KD orange smoothie with rubbery red floaties.

It was a Saturday, and Mum and Jess had gone out shopping for the whole day. That was back when Wiley still taught piano lessons, and since Saturday was always his busiest day he wasn't around either. I like to tell myself I was set up. It was common knowledge that anyone who was stuck in the house watching tornado Squid for more than a few hours at a time would be ready to have a conniption by the end of it. Truth is, no one else would have handled it the way I did. I know it's just an excuse.

So anyway, I looked at the puke and this big gasp came out of my mouth. Squid thought that was pretty funny. But I kept my cool, for the most part. I picked him right up, carried him to the bathroom and started filling the tub. While the water was running full-blast I yanked off his clothes so hard that I ripped one of the buttons off his overalls. You might think it was pretty harsh of me not to be worried when he just puked up his lunch, but he was still giggling away and his arms were flapping so much I could barely get his shirt off. See, Squid has always had this problem where he doesn't get it when people are mad. It's like he doesn't know the difference between kinda ticked off and ready to explode; you could be foaming at the mouth and he'd still think it was some kind of game. Besides, there I was getting him ready for a bath and he always loved baths. It was like I was rewarding him.

As soon as the tub was full I shut it off and gave him a look. A warning look. It was the look I always gave him before putting him in the bath, and both of us knew it meant
don't even
think about splashing
. For a second we stared at each other and everything seemed eerily silent and intense. A drop of water dripped from the tap with an echoey
bloop,
as if it were the exclamation mark on the end of my warning.

And so I plonked him into the tub. He sat quietly while I added some soap to the water and swished it around. I thought he had calmed down by then, so I knelt down and cupped some water over his shoulders. But he'd only been waiting for the bubbles. I saw that huge cheeky smile of his and it looked even huger than usual with the orange sauce all around it.

And then he started splashing. Arms thrashing and legs kicking, water flying out of the tub and landing
splatsplatsplat
all over me and the floor. Our tub had sliding glass doors and I flung them shut. There were pools of water on the floor, soaking into my socks and the bath mat. A clenching feeling lodged itself in my belly, pulling tight like my insides were turning to rock. My jeans were sopped and my hair was dripping. And still Squid kept splashing away. Usually he would stop splashing when I closed the doors 'cause it wasn't fun for him anymore when I wasn't watching him. But that day he kept on going. He was squealing and laughing and I was screaming STOP! STOP NOW! STOP IT! at the top of my lungs. If anyone else were listening they would have thought I was being murdered the way I was screaming. But Squid's laughter was piercing, like a devilish little song that was mocking me, humiliating me. He was splashing so hard that foam and water were coming over the glass door like rain. I may have been on the outside, but I felt trapped. I was trapped in a bathysphere, far below the surface, the water rushing in through punctures, fissures in the glass. I started sobbing but it didn't make a difference. The water kept pummeling the glass doors and trickling back down into the tub. STOP IT! PLEASE! I screamed, and Squid only laughed and splashed more. I stood there holding out my hands and crying while more water came splattering down and little rivers spilled out the cracks at the bottom of the door, and all of a sudden I wished I would die. I imagined the room filling up with soapy water, my head going under and the water filling my nose and throat. Thick, lukewarm hands of water ramming fists down into my lungs. Squid's thrashing became the sound of my own arms fighting and the water pulling me down, sucking all the air out of my body. And then I saw myself floating on an ocean, so small you could mistake me for a dead fish. My skin was the grey of a dirty tin can.

At that point I wasn't even mad at Squid anymore. I was mad that he was so much stronger than me. He was two years old and I felt completely helpless.

Next thing I knew I reached in and pulled him out of the tub by his wrist. His skin was wet so he slipped a bit and one of his legs hit the edge of the tub on the way out. It made a big thunk but Squid didn't even cry. I dragged him into his bedroom and threw him on his bed, and he lay there, naked and skinny and shivering, looking at me like I was a meteor about to land right on top of him. And when I flipped him over and my hand came down on his wet bum, it sounded like a big fat encyclopedia being clapped shut. I felt him hold his breath. And then I hit him again. And again. Somehow, it didn't feel like I was hitting my brother. He was just a thing I hated, like Jess's mole. When I was done I left him lying on the bed and slammed the door. By the time I got to my room I was shaking so bad I couldn't stand. I had to sit on the edge of my bed and put my head between my knees, and my legs were bouncing up and down uncontrollably like marionettes. Squid was bawling but I didn't even hear him. All I could think about was the day in the supermarket with Mum, his evil little grin, when I was a stranger and he was not my brother. It seemed like eons had passed since then.

That was about the time that Mum and Jess got home. I heard Mum's feet racing up the stairs and Jess's going up after her, two steps at a time. What happened? Mum kept yelling. Where's Grace? Instead of feeling worried I felt relieved. Now that Mum was home I knew Squid would be safe.

But in the end it turned out that the worst part of the whole thing was the way Mum acted. She didn't ask me if I enjoyed making people miserable. She didn't yell at me. She didn't even look at me. Instead, she came into my room and told me in a very quiet voice that I wasn't allowed to look after Squid by myself anymore.

I nodded and my eyes filled up with tears. Mum turned around like she was going to leave, but then she came towards me and tried to slap me on the face. I cringed and she ended up slapping my forehead, where my hair was sticking to the sweat.

If you ever hit my child again, she said, pointing a finger at my nose. But she didn't finish. Instead, she said, That's called abuse, Grace. You are an abusive person. There was spit flying out of her mouth and it landed on my face.

The bruise on Squid's leg where he hit the tub was green and black the next day. I didn't even try to look at his bum, but Jess told me you could see the marks of my fingers. I don't know if Mum told everyone to keep it a secret, but nobody ever talked about it again or asked me about what happened. I didn't even have to say sorry to Squid. I guess it would have been stupid to say sorry. Sorry is what people say when they hurt someone's feelings or use a swear word. It doesn't really mean anything.

It's funny: ever since then I've felt like if anything really awful ever happened to Squid, it would be my fault. When Mum first told us she was going on a trip to England without us, I felt like I'd eaten a sackful of gravel. I didn't know it then, but looking back I think it was 'cause deep down I knew something bad was going to happen.

On Monday morning, almost a week after Mum had left, I woke up late for school. I'd jolted awake, the way you do when your body suddenly realizes you were supposed to be up a long time ago. My alarm clock was blinking 12:00. The sun was already pouring through the cracks in my blinds and I jumped out of bed and had my toothbrush in my mouth before I could even open my eyes.

Squi? I called out, my mouth full of toothpaste. Squi, ge uh, Squi! I bent down and spit in the sink, and when I came back up Jess was standing in the hallway looking at me. She had the bottom of her pajama shirt all balled up in her fists.

Suddenly I realized that Wiley's big green travel trunk — the one that had been sitting in the hall outside my room since he'd tried to break it open — had disappeared.

Wiley's gone, Jess said. And he took Squid with him.

XIII

WHEN BELINDA WAS PREGNANT
with Sebastian, Wiley had a pet potato. The potato had been the last one in the bag, and it had been sitting in a dark corner of the pantry for weeks because someone had shoved a new bag in front of it — one of Belinda's pet peeves. Wiley had found it one day rummaging around for snack food. The lone potato had flourished in its dark hiding place. A sheaf of long, bone-coloured arms sprouted from one end, gnarled like twigs. Wiley placed it on a saucer in a pool of tepid water and gave it a spot above the fireplace, alongside the African violet and a framed wedding photo.

By the time Belinda arrived home from work that day, Wiley had gotten Grace fascinated by the potato as well. Grace presented the saucer to her mother like a birthday cake.

We named it Squid, Grace had said. Doesn't it look like one?

Mmmhmm, Belinda agreed. She felt herself recoiling as though it were indeed a slimy, writhing sea creature. The sprouts did look like tentacles, the way they furled from the end of the potato, their curled ends reaching out as if poised to cinch unsuspecting prey. The knobs along them were bulbous and vaguely purple, reminiscent of a squid's suction cups. Just looking at the potato, monstrous with its maladroit limbs, sent shivers up the back of her neck.

Belinda had protested at first. That thing is hideous, she told them. It's going to rot. But Wiley begged and whined to keep it just a little longer, to see how long the sprouts would grow. Of course Grace had joined in, jumping up and down and pulling on Belinda's sleeves. She was eight years old at the time, and Wiley's biggest fan. Belinda found it difficult to reject anything that supported their bonding. And so the potato lived. The arms grew and grew, longer, whiter, stiffer. They dangled off the mantel, small green leaves blossoming from their knobs. The growth of Belinda's rounding belly was barely noticeable in comparison. And even though Wiley continued to ignore the other house plants, he fussed over his potato, kept it watered and noted its progress, moved it around to shadowed regions of the house if it didn't seem happy enough. Belinda reckoned it was his way of nesting. While she painted the baby's nursery and folded tiny sleepers into drawers, Wiley practiced his nurturing instinct on the potato. She joked about it, first in a lighthearted way, but later with a tinge of jealousy.

How's
your
baby doing? she'd ask him when she caught him peering at the mantel. He'd joke along, attend to the potato and stroke its sprouts, cooing
You happy there, little Squid?
For some reason, this drove her wild. As the potato grew, she found it more and more grotesque. The sight of Wiley poking the skin or fingering the stiff sprouts repulsed her. It was as though he were touching something vile and diseased, like the innards of a dead animal. She told herself it was hormones.

But when she went on maternity leave she'd had to spend full days alone with the potato, and the first three had been too much. On the fourth day she snatched it from the wet saucer and the grip of her hand squashed the supple flesh. She'd had to snap off the sprouts to fit them in the garbage. The sound was crisp, like snap peas cracking between teeth. The thought of the severed sprouts, bunched and bent into a warped loop inside the garbage bin, made Belinda shudder.

This was the first thought that came to Belinda's mind as she stood on the shallow incline at the edge of the field and gazed over the long, curving chain of circles laid in the wheat before her. A coiling arm, each circle like a razor-edged suction cup. A tentacle. Its length stretched hundreds of feet into the horizon, beyond the furthest point they could see.