Going Down Swinging (21 page)

That did it! She was making this up on account of Josh’s big mouth. Josh was suddenly paying attention now. We yelled at each other at the same time. He said, “I never told!” and I said, “You promised you wouldn’t tell!” Then I started to cry. Josh got scared-faced and sat chewing on his pencil.

Sheryl took my hand across the table. She said, “Sweetheart, Josh did tell me but—”

“Mum! God!”

Sheryl looked at him and said, “Josh, it’s OK. Grace knows you care about her and you were only trying to help.” Josh kept saying, “Oh God,” and he went and sat on the couch in the living room where I couldn’t see him. Sheryl kept holding my hand. “Grace, Josh loves you and I love you and we were concerned. Then I remembered this article and I thought maybe I had an idea what might be causing that stuff with you.” I was getting all weird and nervous and I couldn’t hardly look at her, so Sheryl said, “I don’t think you have to go to the loony bin, you know—I just thought maybe we could fix things if we talked about it.” I nodded. She said, “It seems like you crave a lot of sugar. And according to this article, extreme stress can have the same effect as having too much sugar—and in turn, the stress can make you crave even more sugar as comfort food. And sweety, you’ve been going through a lot lately—just in the last few months—your sister came to live with you and she had some pretty awful stuff going on with her boyfriend, you had to watch her and your mum fight a lot and then Charlie moved out with her boyfriend and had a baby. And now you don’t get as much time alone with her because of the baby. Then George came to stay and you really liked him and things didn’t work out, so now he’s gone too … This stuff is really hard on adults, never mind almost-nine-year-olds.” I didn’t say anything. Just shrugged my shoulders. But it made me kind of depressed, how she was talking about my life. It’d probably make anybody depressed, even if they weren’t a hypoglycemiac.

She asked me how long I’d been having the voices for. I told her not that long. “I’m not sure, like maybe around a couple months or something.”

“Well, what does it sound like when you hear it?”

“Actually, it’s kind of like what you said before about the songs in the head. It’s like when you get a song stuck in your head and it just keeps playing and playing until you want to scream. Or else a commercial. Sometimes I get the words from a commercial stuck in my head, like, ‘Tastes so good, you’ll think it was made from scratch!’” I told her about the rich-English-people dinner I got in my head sometimes and then I said, “And I know that they’re fake. It’s not like I think they’re really in the room or nothing, or like they’re telling me to go murdelize someone, like in
Search for Tomorrow
when that lady killed her boyfriend because a voice told her to. They just argue in my head.” Sheryl said that made sense cuz of how my mum and Charlie and Mum and George would argue lots. It sounded practically normal when she put it that way. So then I said, “And sometimes, usually after school, when I’m coming home, I think I hear someone whisper my name.”

“I bet you that happens when you’ve had a chocolate-bar lunch. I betcha it does. Because you know, Miss Grace, you’re a pretty smart cookie, and it’s only been lately that you’ve had a hard time concentrating and understanding—like when we’ve talked about your math homework, for instance.” So Sheryl started explaining about how hypoglycemia worked and how if you have sugary stuff, your guts started pumping insulin in your blood to bring the blood sugars down and then there’s so much insulins that it makes your blood sugar go really low and that’s when stuff starts happening. And how, when I start shaking after not eating for a while, that means my blood sugar’s on the floor it’s so low. And it’s the same with white flour and coffee and alcohol.

I said I quit drinking, so it couldn’t be that. And then Sheryl started laughing her guts out. I asked her if she was going to tell my mum. She said no, she wouldn’t tell on me about the sandwich stuff but only if I promised to start eating them again—the sandwiches not the chocolate—and she said maybe we should quit drinking all this tea because caffeine is really hard on your system too. I said, “But it’s half milk, Mum said I could have it if it’s half milk.”

“All right, I won’t deprive you of your tea, but just one cup and only if it’s half milk. And only one teaspoon of sugar, not three. And promise promise promise you’ll try going two weeks eating your lunch every day. And no chocolate bars. OK? Let’s just try this little experiment. And if you feel shaky or you get voices in your head that you can’t get out, try eating an orange or an apple. Bring some extra fruit with you to school and keep them with you so if you start getting confused in class you can eat some fruit and balance out your system again.”

So I said, “This sounds a little drastic,” and Sheryl started laughing again and she told me I killed her. So that was good. I don’t know, I guess I didn’t really believe it that much, though. But I promised I’d eat my lunch. So. I’d do that part. At least she didn’t think I was mental or anything.

After
Rockford Files
and
Night Stalker
were over, I went back upstairs. I was really wanting some of that chocolate cake that I made a couple days ago, but I already finished it. I didn’t eat it all, I brought a piece to school for Josh. And plus I brought a piece for Mrs. Annis, my new homeroom teacher, but she was still a big pig-head so she wasn’t getting any more cakes from me, that was for sure.

I made myself a brown sugar sandwich instead, like Mum used to make me for a treat when I was little, with the light-brown kind of brown sugar and lots of butter. I thought about what Sheryl said, but it was just a sandwich, not a chocolate bar, and plus I made it with whole wheat bread.

I took it to bed with a glass of milk for extra protein. Since George went away, I was sleeping in Mum’s bed again. I laid awake after my sandwich for a long time cuz I kept wondering about my birthday and Mum getting too sick before it, but I fell asleep counting how much money I was going to have by Christmas and thinking how, for now, it was a pretty good deal cuz Mum got to go out and be with adults and I was getting super-rich. Until I woke up from hearing different feet in the house and then a guy’s voice that wasn’t George’s and my heart started going like crazy.

It was like she wrecked the bargain.

He sounded drunk the way he laughed all slow. Like Stewart maybe. After George left, my mum’s friend Stewart started calling again, wanting to take her for lunch or a coffee or whatever. And I had to listen to his crunchy dumb voice when I picked up the phone. He always sounded like he was retarded or something, he tried so hard to make kid conversation.

I kept still, listening. And then it sounded like two guys. My arms went hot and I got butterflies in my ribs. I tried to make out some words, but they were all warbly and foggy. Almost like cow noises. Then Mum did that laugh like she used to do when she drank, the more-deeper, throaty kind.

Adults need adult company the same way kids need kid company. I kept hearing Mum say that in my head.

I squeezed my eyes shut and they flapped back open—I couldn’t tell what time it was—stupid clock was supposed to be glow-in-the-dark but it always stopped glowing hardly any time after the lights went out. My toes and my teeth clenched and then I started sliding them back and forth over each other—toes with toes and teeth with teeth, I mean. Then I pretended that the clock was really crickets and I was in the country. Then there was more cow noises. Not Stewart. And they weren’t George, they didn’t give a care about her, they were going to make her drink and get her to do stuff. Same as how it used to be, until she got too sick to move. Same way as Toronto. I got a picture in my head of them out there trying to dump booze right down her throat. And then “Shutt Upp!”—and knives clanging plates, a skinny high laugh, mean English ladies, fork sounds on teeth, and spoons, and “Shutt Upp!” until I couldn’t hear anything down the hall. Not even Mum’s voice any more; I couldn’t tell how many people were really there. I tried to hear through the rich-people dinner in my brain, treat it like a spaghetti strainer that would let through words I wanted, but it worked the opposite and all the voices got stuck in a tangled-up mess.

I squeezed my arms in hard against my sides until my pits hurt, clenching so my body wouldn’t fly off the bed and bang down the hall and scream “Shutt Upp!” in all their faces. I forced myself heavy, until my arms went deep in the mattress and I fell asleep, going in and out, sitting at the long table, seeing the hands of the Shutt Upp Lady, her throat, and all the silverware clinking, and bottles clinking and Mum’s voice and laughing and my bed, and a man’s voice and then Josh’s voice and Kolchak from
Night Stalker
on TV. I was sitting with Kolchak and Josh in Riley Park. And glue sniffers were there, but I wouldn’t look at them; Kolchak and Josh’s shoulders and chest were big and thick and then they were horses and they curved their whole selves around me like walls.

The clock said just past seven when I woke up. There was still voices in the living room, low jumbles like rolling clumps of dirt. Mum never came to bed. I sat up and dumped my feet on the floor and balled up the extra cloth of my flannel nightie in my fists. My nanna’d sent it to me last Christmas and I was still a bit short for it. I tipped my feet up and grabbed the hem-part in my toes and then it sounded like my mother said, “The cat’s shoulders squirm in God’s head.” I went down the hall to the living room.

Mum and a guy were sprawled on the couch, another guy was passed out in the armchair. She raised her head up and her face turned slowly when I came in the room; her lids were sinking halfway down her eyes and she said, “Hiya. What’re you doing up to, darlin’? mm?” Her blouse was slipped to one side and you could see her black bra-strap showing on her shoulder. She had one foot curled underneath her and one sticking out straight with a high heel hanging half off. Her other shoe was on the coffee table. The way her legs were bent yanked up her skirt and made it so you could see her garter belt and stockings and everything. I suddenly got super-pissed-off with her for looking that way, right in front of people, and I wanted to kick her: for the lipstick on her chin and mascara and blue stuff all smeary around her eyes.

Her mouth was dry and she twitched it sideways, made a pout-face and looked around. She sat up straighter on the edge of the couch, trying to push hair back out of her eyes. “Christ,” crawled out her throat like a bug, “I gotta lie down.” She stuffed both her fists in the couch cushions, but nothing happened; her body didn’t notice. She wobbled her head side to side and gave our ceiling “the look” as if it was keeping her down. Then a breath and a sigh, and she looked at the guy beside her and shoved herself up. He watched her limp past me to the hallway, then shut his eyes and she scraped along the wall, limping till she kicked her one shoe off along the way. I followed after her.

She fell on the bed and dragged herself up to a pillow. I said, “Mummy,” at her like maybe it might make her shake her head and say, “Holy cow, what am I doing?” She didn’t answer.

“Mum!”

“Shhhh … what. Lemme sleep, OK, sweety.”

I went up near her face and whispered in case it’d get her attention more. “But those guys are still there, you know. Those guys are in the living room … Mummy. Mum!”

“What.”

“T
hose guys.”

“Mmhmm. They’ll go,” and she fell asleep. I sat beside her a minute, chewing the inside of my cheek, then crawled in beside her. At least she wasn’t moaning and groaning because of her head hurting.

The room stank like cigarettes and sour wine. I stared at the ceiling, let it go dark and then bright, gave it stripes, then leaves, then clouds, and hoped for footsteps and a door slam. Mum snored.

I wished it wasn’t Sunday, I wished it was tomorrow so I could be getting ready for school. I started grade 4 almost a month before that. The kids were nicer at General Wolfe, but my homeroom teacher was a mean bag: Mrs. Annis. The whole class was scared of her. The harder she whacked yardsticks on desks, hucked chalk at loud kids and told us how unsufferable we were, the more crazy the room went when she left it: fighting, screaming, swearing, chalk-chucking, desk-dancing—and always, we put a kid to be lookout at the door who’d yell “Anus” when he could see her or hear her shoes coming around the corner. She was also the music teacher, and music was the only thing she made as big a deal about as us keeping our yaps shut; she did both at the same time sometimes. Like on Friday, when she gathered us all around her piano, handed out papers with the song notes and words and told us not to sing just listen. Only listen. She put her fingers on the piano keys and warned us over her shoulder one more time, “No singing now, just follow along on your sheet music.” So we did. Then she played the piano and then, sticking her chest up the way she made us do, yelled out the lyrics to “Here Comes the Sun.” She sounded like when Eddy pretended to be Ethel Merman and she kept watching our lips and eyes the whole time. I watched my pages but, cuz of how I have buck teeth and an overbite, my mouth comes open a bit and the next thing I knew, Anus smashed her fists down on the piano and screamed, “I said no singing!” All the kids’ eyes flicked around like they were scared for whoever went and did it. “Grace! Look at me when I’m speaking to you. Did you hear me, were you listening? Do not sing! Now, put your music away and go sit down.” I was going to explain but I just said forget-it in my head, and sat down.

I listened to Mum breathe, glad at least there wasn’t Anus on Sunday. The only friend I had at school now was Josh, anyway, and he was downstairs. And I hated Gabrielle for not being my friend any more and Mum too for phoning their mum to tell her that Gabrielle’s sister was fired because of smoking in our place. I was getting more lonely-feeling and I couldn’t sleep, so I gave up and left Mum to snore her head off. I went as quietly as I could through the kitchen so I could see if those guys were still there. They were dead asleep now, right where I left them: one on the couch and one in the armchair. Both of them had long stringy arms and matching hair. The one in the chair lolled his head back and his mouth fell open with a snort. He had whiter teeth than I expected to be in that whiskery face and the parts around his mouth and eyes were bluish. The other guy laid on the couch with his face squished in the cushions, one arm behind his back, one dangling on the floor. He had an unsmoked cigarette lying in his floor hand. I backed into the kitchen and made a bowl of Shreddies and sat on the counter not swinging my legs and not banging the spoon against the side of the bowl, just listening to a wheezy sound from one of the noses in the living room. A few minutes later, I put the bowl in the sink, changed and went to find Sheryl Sugarman and Josh.