Going Down Swinging (22 page)

They were awake and I could hear them arguing before I knocked: “Josh, turn off the TV and clean that bloody cage … Josh! Jesus, why do you insist on listening to that crap?”

“Cuz it’s funny. Are there real places like this, like nearby we could go to?”

“Josh! Your hamsters are living in filth. And you’re
Jewish!”

“Wait, Mum, look, this guy’s blind, watchthis watchthis—ahh-ha!” Josh’s voice was coming from the living room. Sheryl made a growly noise and slammed a door at the other end of the hall. And then only Josh giggling and a preacher-voice on TV. I knocked quietly. He giggled again. I knocked again. Then he stomped his feet fast to the door. It flew open and he pulled me in by my sleeve. “Hey! Com’ere-com’ere, you gotta see this.”

On TV was a guy with thick grey hair and gold glasses, pounding one of those high church-desk things on a stage. There were tall white flowers in gold vases behind him and a blue fluffy carpet you could see when the camera got far enough away to show the backs of the audience heads. All of them were nodding while the preacher-guy hollered at them. He was more scary than Anus. I was glad for their sake he didn’t have a yardstick. I sat on the couch beside Josh and listened: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!”

Josh whacked me on the forehead with his palm and yelled, “Black and tortured spirit leave thy body” and his hand yanked off, sucking my black spirit with it. I giggled. “You just missed the healings,” he told me. “Next Sunday we have to go find a place where they do this, it’d be a gas—OK, look, see that chick there, she’s—she was all gimpy and now she can walk. Cool, eh? This is way better than wrestling.”

“Where’s your Mum?” I said, for proof I was never listening outside their door.

“She’s in her bedroom, I think. She’s mad at me cuz I’m Jewish.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. She’s weird. She’s mad cuz I’m Jewish and I’m watching preacher guys.”

“I saw this movie with my mum where this lady tries to take this man, who’s Jewish, to a party and he couldn’t go cuz it was restricted.”

Josh peeled his eyes off the TV. “You mean like there were naked people everywhere?”

“Yeah, I thought there was going to be too and nobody was. They all had suits and dresses and then my mum was trying to explain, but it was stupid cuz how would they even know he was Jewish and why would they even care?”

“Well, if Jews had stuff like this, I’d go, though, to synagogue I mean, cuz this is cool. But any Jew stuff my mum ever tells me’s boring; they don’t even get Christmas trees. And plus, ever since my dad left, my mum says we’re going to be more Jewish and we’re not getting a tree any more neither. It’s stupid. Who wants to be Jewish—they don’t eat hot dogs or cheeseburgers, they don’t do nothing. It’s boring.” I listened to him and watched Rhoda crawl up over his shoulder and down his pyjama top. He reached in and picked her out, hamster-noising into her face. “Where’s Carly?” he asked her nose. “You’ve lost Carly. And now she’s pissed off cuz I haven’t cleaned the stupid hamster cage. And cuz she hates this church stuff; she always has a hairy when I put it on.”

I looked at Rhoda and something rustled under my hair. I knew it was Carly but the shiver on my neck made me jump anyway. I turned and cupped her fat fluffy self up before she could crawl between the couch cushions.

Josh watched us. “Carly, you frog!” and his eyes snapped back to the TV. “OK, look, watch this—this is cool, people in the audience start rolling their eyes and stuff and moaning like they’re totally off their rockers.”

The preacher-guy’s face took up the whole screen all the sudden. My nose twitched; it did smell kind of zooish in the room. The preacher-guy tilted his chin up and looked into the lights overhead so that his glasses gave him flashlights for eyes. He pulled off the glasses, tears dripped down onto his cheeks and he said, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”

Josh cackled. “It’s like
Star Trek
, eh? There’s a better guy on later, like around lunchtime, but my mum’ll go mental if I watch this till then … What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t know. What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t know.”

So I helped him clean the hamster cage and then he doubled me down to Riley Park and we rode around long enough to get into a scrap about mink fur and Josh’s paintbrushes and mink farms and animal traps and what was the difference between a mink and Carly and Rhoda and I said forget-it to him doubling me any more and he yelled that I was such a goof he wouldn’t let my stupid ass touch his bike anyway and I stomped home by myself, all pissed off that he said ass again but kind of wishing he’d chase after me and make me not mad so I wouldn’t have to go home yet.

I closed the apartment door behind me and looked down the hall to the living room. Nobody was there. Then chuckles in the bedroom. I went to the door and poked my head in. Mum was sitting up in bed, sipping a beer, and the two guys were on the floor, one cross-legged, one lying sideways, passing a joint around. She looked up and smiled. “There she is,” and she introduced her friends. They both grunted hello through holding their breath, and one of them passed the joint to my mother. I couldn’t stand watching her with that stuff. I’d seen her do it with Sadie’s mum and dad and listened to them giggle and talk and try to hold smoke in their stomachs at the same time. I waited a minute anyway, watching the droopy moustache of the guy who was sleeping on the couch earlier. They were talking about swimming and dying and being buried at sea and then something about
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
. I read that one last month, while I was waiting for
Go Ask Alice
, and part of me wanted to tell them that, that I knew all about it, but more of me didn’t want to say I read anything they read. The droopy-moustache guy my mother called Gary asked if I ever heard of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
. Mum watched me with a smirk that I figured was a proud-thing, wanting me to show them what kinda kid she had.

“Yup, I read it ages ago,” I told him. He asked if I knew what it was about. “Reincarnation,” I said. I saw a guy on
The Mike Douglas Show
once talking about reincarnation, so I knew the whole scoop on that. “Getting smarter and braver and flying higher until you get higher and higher in heaven.”

“Whoa,” he said, nodding. He looked at Mum and then back at me and back at my mum. “She’s kind of a trippy kid, eh?”

Mum kept smiling. “Yup, she’s a funny bird.” They all burst out laughing. I left and heard Mum mumble, “Uh oh—Honey, we weren’t laughing at you, you know. We’re just being silly. Hon? you mad?”

“No, I’m just—doing something.” I went to the living room and sat on the couch. The air was kind of like that smell that gets in your nose before you barf. There were glasses and empty beer bottles and wine on the coffee table and floor. Cigarette butts were floating in a glass of beer beside a pickle jar of ashes and butts. Dead matches and grey flakes were all over the place. Henry climbed up on the couch and yowled until I remembered to give him cat food.

I decided to go over to Sadie and Eddy’s.

When I got there, Eddy was on the porch, leaning over a piece of paper, concentrating like crazy. Sadie stood against the railing eating a piece of watermelon. She spat seeds and watched me get near the house. Eddy didn’t look up until I got to their bottom step. Then they “hi”ed at me together. Sadie sneered at whatever Eddy was looking at. Nobody said anything. It was kind of a long time since I even saw them and I thought they’d be more happy or something. But they were just their crabby old selves. So I said, “What’re you guys doing?”

“Nothin’.” Sadie took a bite off her melon and scratched some paint off the porch with her shoe heel.

Eddy poked at his paper and said, “I saw you swallow a seed, y’know, you’re gonna grow a watermelon tree in your stomach, y’know.” And she spat a black gooey one at his head.

“Achgg, frig off!” he screamed. Eddy balled up some spit as if he was going to gob it at her.

Sadie stared at him. “Try it, y’ little turd, and you’re dead.” Eddy swallowed and went back to his paper.

When I got to the top step, I looked at the pieces of grass and twiggy things Eddy had glued on yellow construction paper. Sadie chucked the melon skin into a bush. “I hope one of ’em bites ya!” she said and went into the house, banging the screen door behind her. I was Sunday-sad again and I even had it worse because Sadie and Eddy were my only friends now if Josh wasn’t around and they didn’t even act like they liked me. Eddy stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth while he added more glue. They were legs he was gluing, not grass: spiders, flies, earwigs and one moth. Around half of them were still alive; most of them were stuck by their backs and wiggling their other stuff.

“Go get me a spider.” He always tried to boss me when Sadie wasn’t around to do it.

“Get it yourself.”

He glared and threw the page at me. I “eww” ed and wiggled out of the way. It landed on the welcome mat.

“What’s your beef, jerky?” That was my new comeback I picked up off Josh’s mum. Eddy didn’t think it was so great. “Why do I cast my pearls before swine?” I asked the air. I got that one off my mum.

“You and Sadie, you think you’re so big and Sadie super-even-more now she’s friends with dork-head Sarah.”

Sarah was the girl from ballet. I almost never saw Sadie lately, not since starting at the new school. I brought Josh over a couple times in the summer but the three of them seemed different together. The last time, Josh said we should all play doctor up in Sadie’s room. He explained how it worked and I never brought him again. No one was taking out or touching or looking at any of my underclothes stuff.

Sadie came back out and walked down the steps. She was carrying a purse.

“What’s in your purse, lady? Kotex?” and Eddy laughed the way he usually did just before he broke something.

Sadie sucked in an
ahhh
and said, “That’s it! Say you’re sorry or I’m tellin’,” and she ran back up the steps and caught him before he could get away, slammed him down with her knee in his back and twisted his arm till his elbow went to his backbone and he yelled, “Mawwwwwwm!” She twisted harder till he squeaked, “Sorry,” and their mum hollered from inside the house. Sadie let him go and yapped, “Yeah, you better run,” when he dived for the screen door.

I asked her if she wanted to go play or something.

“Play?” she said, as if it was the most babyish thing she ever heard. “Nope. Can’t. I’m going to Sarah’s. Her mum’s out and she’s got tons of makeup. So. I’ll see y’around.” She started down the steps.

“Um, hey, are you still gonna take swimming lessons at Riley Park?” I said. I didn’t want her to just go and me be alone with only Eddy. I kept having the sour beer smell in my nose and it made my mouth taste like sick.

“Yup, Sarah and me are starting
Intermediate
together.”

“Oh.”

Eddy came up to the screen door, still bawling his head off. “You’re in trouble, y’know. You’re getting grounded for sure.”

“Get lost!” and she practically waltzed down the block. I heard Alice call her and Sadie kept going like nothing happened. By the time her mum was on the porch, Sadie was a block away and Alice mumbled and slammed back inside. Why didn’t Sarah want
me
to be her friend and put on her mum’s makeup? and swim with her. Sadie wasn’t going to get grounded for practically breaking Eddy’s arm. She’d just go around being cool and everyone would do what she said. Including me.

Eddy didn’t even look mad any more. He kneeled over his paper; there was hardly a bug leg wiggling any more. “Wanna help me get more bugs?” he asked. So I did until it started to rain and it seemed even worse to be stuck with Eddy in his house than to go back to mine. He went inside and I started down their steps and tripped when my name got whispered in my ear. I got up off the ground getting ready to be laughed at for being accident-prone. I tried to laugh before anyone else did, but there was no one there. Then a Grace-whisper came over my other shoulder, but I didn’t turn this time. My knee was banging from the pain and I scrunched my mouth and tongue tight to keep from crying. I figured maybe I should go home and have an orange.

The apartment smelled even worse after being outside. It was quiet, though. There was no one in the living room. And in the bedroom, my mum was curled up under her blanket with a bucket beside her bed. I went down the hall to the living room and my chest jumped when the droopy-moustache guy came around the corner from the kitchen. His shirt was all unbuttoned and he had these shiny-from-dirt ripped jeans on. A cigarette hung out under his moustache and he scratched his sideburn, took his cigarette and held it lazy in his fingers. He was the skinniest man I ever saw. “Hi,” he said, kind of shaky, and flicked ashes on the floor. “How y’doin’? Grace? Is that right?”

“Yup.”

“Right.” He said it like
ry-eeet
. “Your mum’s still sleepin’,” and he nodded and chuckled. “Rough night I guess, eh?”

“Yup.” I sat down on the couch. The TV was on with no sound. I stared at another preacher-guy waving like crazy on the screen. He looked like he should be glued to a piece of construction paper.

Moustache-guy wandered over and sat on the couch beside me. “So,” he said. “Mine’s Gary. My name, eh?” and he chuckled again. I looked at the TV. He took a drag and I watched him blow smoke without turning my head. “So. You’re not a real talker, eh? Shy?” I shrugged and kept watching the preacher. “What’s this? mm, September? School’s in, right? What grade ‘re you in?”

“Four.”

“Right. Huh. So uh … so you got a boyfriend?” I shook my head and got up off the couch. Went to the window where Henry was on an end table, resting his front paws on the sill, staring out at Main Street traffic. I ran my hand down his fur, watching what he was watching. Gary stood up, so I looked back and saw him stick his cigarette back under his moustache so he could give his arm a good scratch on his way over to Henry and me. Henry and me looked out the window. Gary did too. “Nice pussy,” he said, then giggled at himself. “Oops, I mean pussy
cat
, kitty cat. What’s her name?”