Kit's Law (16 page)

“Hey! Just asking,” Sid said, holding up his hands in mock fear.

“Over my eyes.”

“Your eyes!”

“Yes. It made things look different.”

“Different? How different?”

“Different colours.”

He thought for a minute.

“That’s a right smart thing to do,” he said, his brow puckering seriously. “See the world through different colours. It’s when everyone starts thinking that theirs is the only colour that things start getting hairy.”

“I didn’t do it because it was smart,” I snapped, suddenly tired of Sid’s always trying to make things all right. “I did it because it made things look pretty.” Spotting Josie’s red head further down the shore, I picked up my step and followed after her. Sid hurried along besides me, blissfully quiet for the first time since he started coming to the gully.

M
AY
E
VELEIGH’S
T
HREAT

I
T WAS A WEEK BEFORE GRADUATION
and I was rambling through the alder bushes picking pussy willows, when I spotted Mr. Haynes’s car parked at the turnaround at the end of the road. His window was down and his head was resting on the door, rolling from side to side, and strange snorting sounds were coming out of him. Thinking he was having a heart attack, I crept closer and peered in. His legs were sprawled across the seat and Josie was scrunched up on the floor with her head in his lap and her hair spread out over his hips like a rusty shawl. He was bucking up and down and her head was bucking up and down, and then I seen his thing go in her mouth and she started snorting again, and turning her head from side to side like she didn’t want his thing in her mouth, but he had his hands on the back of her head, and his fingers clutched through her hair and pushed her down as he was bucking up, and his breathing was coming faster and faster, and then, just when I was about to yell out that he let her go, his body stopped bucking and his eyes jerked wide open and strange strangling sounds started coming from his throat, like he had a swile bone caught in his gullet. And then he stopped strangling and Josie stopped snorting, and he was still except for his hard breathing. And then Josie raised her head up from his lap, wiping at her mouth and laughing that loud barking laugh that told she had just pulled something over on someone and had come out on top.

I never really understood what screwing was, but I could tell from the way the older boys ran off snickering and Margaret Eveleigh and her best friends went off shocked whenever someone yelled at me that first year in school that Josie was screwing all of the men in White Bay that it was something that I didn’t want to know about, leastways, not as long as my mother was doing it. That evening, staring through the window of Mr. Haynes’s car, with the smell of rotting dogberries whiffing out through, I still wasn’t sure what screwing looked like. I only knew that Josie was still doing it.

Backing away from the car, I ran home, and dumping the pussy willows at Aunt Drucie’s feet as she came yawning to the door, I ran full tilt down the gully, not really caring which rocks my feet landed on, or whether or not I ever made it to the beach without falling and cracking my skull. I was nestled amongst the boulders at Crooked Feeder, listening hard to the waves rolling upon the beach and trying to imagine worlds of gold, when Sid came.

“Drucie said you looked like you’d seen a ghost,” he said, edging down amongst rocks besides me.

I kept my eyes closed.

“What’s wrong, Kit?”

“Nothin’.”

“You saw Haynes’s car, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer and he stretched out full besides me, parts of him touching parts of me and giving warmth, and the smell of soap and warm skin feeding my nostrils. I opened my eyes. He was leaning on his elbow, looking down at me, his fair-skinned face tanned from his days of splitting wood, and his eyes the colour of ten skies. A shiver caught fire in my belly and I stared back at him, astonished. That such a feeling could ever be ignited inside of me left me emptied of thought, and that it should come whilst my eyes were still burning with the horrid stenching sight of Josie screwing Mr. Haynes was another profundity of God.

I shut tight my eyes and tried to turn away from Sid, but he gripped my shoulder, holding me besides him.

“Kit,” his voice sounded a groan as he dropped his head to my shoulder. “Kit, you shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“She’s a whore,” I whispered.

“No! No!
She
isn’t the whore,” he said harshly, holding his face over mine. “I told you before,
he’s
the whore. Don’t you see that? She’s just a big kid, she don’t know how else to play.”

His breath fanned over my face, warm, and smelling like sweet pickles. I turned away, struggling to overcome the nearness of him and to absorb the rightness of his words.

“He was puttin’ it in her mouth,” I blurted.

“Huh?”

“His—thing. He was puttin’ it in her mouth.”

“Oh, Lord,” Sid groaned.

“Is that … how you screw?” I asked, looking up at him at last.

His face was reddening and he sat up with another groan, then started laughing in short snorts.

“What’s so damn funny?” I gritted, scrabbling to my feet.

“For Christ’s sake,” he half yelled, pulling me back besides him. “You’re always running off.”

I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around my knees and stared out to sea. Finally, he leaned forward besides me, nudging me with his shoulder.

“It’s like this,” he murmured. I watched, my face growing hot as he scratched out lines in the grey, rocky sand with a stick, and showed where a man’s thing is supposed to go, and where he puts it other times, instead.

“It makes more sense when you’re doing it,” he said, after he’d done with the scratching and looked up to encounter my blank stare.

Feeling my stomach starting to heave, I got up and started walking along the beach towards the gully.

“Hey, what are you running off for now?” he called out.

“May Eveleigh is bringin’ over groceries.”

He swore and chased after me.

“Look, Haynes is gone,” he said, catching up from behind and taking my arm. “You don’t have to worry. Come on, let’s go sit down for a while.”

I shrugged him off and kept walking.

“Supposin’ the reverend finds out she’s doin’ it again?” I asked.

“Who’s going to tell? Haynes?”

“It’s not just Haynes she’s screwin’.”

“Kit, listen to me.” He grabbed hold of my arm again, his hand warm against my bare skin. “We don’t know that she’s screwing any other men right now. This could be a onetime thing. Can you not worry about it? I don’t want you to be worried.”

He spoke so earnestly, and his eyes were so blue. I looked away and saw the blue of the sky, the sea and the far distant hills. Could there be such a world where everything was blue, as blue as the blue of Sid’s eyes? I closed my eyes and held my head down, conscious only of the warmth now, of his hand upon my cool skin, and wondered, why on earth, on this day of all days, when I had just caught my mother screwin’ my teacher, that I would become so conscious of Sid Ropson’s eyes and his touch upon my skin.

“I want to be there when May Eveleigh comes,” I finally said.

He slackened his grip, his hand sliding down the length of my arm, his fingers twirling around my wrist before letting it go, and started walking besides me back up the beach to the gully. Josie was hiding in her room when we got back, with her bed jammed up against the door, as she always did whenever May Eveleigh came to visit—a habit she had taken up ever since the day May had come out on the stoop with my box of coloured glass. Aunt Drucie was sitting at the kitchen table, supping on a cup of tea and chatting as May packed away the groceries.

“I can do this,” I said, reaching for the bag of peas in May’s hand.

“I can manage,” May said, holding the bag of peas out of my reach. “How else can I know what you needs, if I don’t check out what got eaten last week. Now then, young lady, you were supposed to come in the store and get measured for your graduation dress. How come you never, and I told Margaret a dozen times to remind you at school?”

She smiled as Sid appeared in the doorway, begging a glass of water from Aunt Drucie.

“For sure you’re doin’ a fine job of cuttin’ down that wood pile and keepin’ the door place clean,” she said as she pulled a blue polka-dot dress out of the grocery box. “Here you are, Kit. Seein’ how you never come in and got measured, you’ll have to wear one of Margaret’s dresses.”

“My, now isn’t that pretty,” Aunt Drucie said, handing Sid his glass of water, and reaching out to finger the starched cotton.

“It’s one of her good ones,” May said. “Maisie’ll have to make another one for Margaret out of that new material I ordered for Kit’s. Here,” she looked at me accusingly. “Go try it on.”

“I’m not goin’ to the graduation,” I said, as surprised as May at my decision.

“You’re not goin’,” May repeated. “Why aren’t you goin’?”

I shrugged, wishing upon wishing that Sid was out chopping wood where he was supposed to be, and not standing in the kitchen taking in everything that was being said, like an old fishwife.

“Then for sure you’re goin’ to the graduation,” May Eveleigh said in a no-nonsense voice.

“Aye, won’t you be wantin’ to wear such a pretty dress, Kit?” Aunt Drucie coaxed, lifting the garment from May’s hands and holding it out to me. “Here, go try it on now. Like a good girl.”

“I’m not goin’,” I said stubbornly.

“Don’t be foolish, girl,” May said irritably. “Now, hurry up and go put on the dress. And you can look a little more pleased, seein’ how Margaret was good enough to lend you one of her good ones.”

“My, my, Lizzy’d be proud to see you wearin’ such a fine dress.” Pressing the garment in my hands, Aunt Drucie give me a coaxing grin. “Go on, now, Kittens, try it on.”

Taking the dress, I dashed down the hall to my room and thankfully shut the door. Leaning against it for a minute, I looked at the despicable blue polka dots and kicked the thing under the bed. After a few minutes had passed by and I heard Sid back out chopping wood, I picked the dress up, shook it off, and went back out to the kitchen.

“It don’t fit,” I said, laying it back on the table.

“Well, blessed Saviour,” May sighed. “And how am I supposed to know that when you took it off before givin’ me a chance to see it on you? Now, go put it back on,” she ordered, leaning her long, reedy body towards me, and what with her wisps of brown hair framing her face, and the brown widow’s spots dotting her face, she minded me of a bulrush in the wind.

“I got a dress,” I said.

She exchanged an impatient look with Aunt Drucie.

“Let me see it.”

I went into my room and brought out the plain red shift I’d worn to Nan’s funeral.

“That’s too short,” May said.

I shook my head.

“It was too short on you at the funeral, it’s too short on you now. Now go put that dress back on.”

Sid’s face appeared in the window behind May, nodding furiously. Whether he was urging me to put the dress on, or not to put the dress on, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to put that damn dress on and I wasn’t going to no damn graduation dance.

“Are you goin’ to listen?” May Eveleigh demanded.

I shook my head.

“Well!” She looked sourly at Aunt Drucie, then back to me. “I allows if the reverend finds out you’re not going to the graduation dance, he might have a thing or two to say about that. After all, it’s fittin’ in with the rest of the girls that’s part of growin’ up, and if you’re not fittin’ in, then perhaps there should be another meetin’, now that you’re so high and mighty you’re not willin’ to take our help. And it’s been a while since I’ve seen you in church, not since Lizzy’s funeral, I believe.”

I listened, watching a fly crawling up the window in front of Sid’s face. When May had finished her talk and I still had nothing to say, she snatched the dress off the table and stalked out the door.

“Go catch her, Kit,” Aunt Drucie begged. “It was a pretty dress, heh, why wouldn’t you want to wear a pretty dress like that, and to your graduation, too? My, my, Lizzy’d turn over in her grave if you never went to your graduation and you gettin’ such high grades.”

The door pushed open and Sid stalked to where I was standing.

“I was telling you to put the dress on,” he said loudly.

“And I was tellin’ her the same,” Aunt Drucie cried.

“And I’m tellin’ you both that I ain’t going to no graduation dance,” I shouted and ran down the hall with Sid at my heels.

“You heard what the old bat said, Kit,” he pleaded. “She can cause trouble.”

A loud scraping sounded from Josie’s room as she shoved her bed away from the door.

“Who caused trouble?” she barked at Sid, pushing open her room door the second I slammed mine. “May Eveleigh caused trouble. I don’t like May Eveleigh.”

“Kit!” Sid rapped on my door. “Kit, come out.”

“Go away!” I yelled.

“Who go away? You go away!” Josie yelled back.

“You go away!” Sid yelled to Josie. “Kit, please … ” His words were cut off by what must’ve been a whump to his stomach, because I heard the wind whoosh out of him in a soft moan. Loud thumps sounded off the walls as they wrestled their way back down the hall, with Sid pleading with Josie to give over, and she barking at him to give over. Then, Aunt Drucie was fussing irritably with them for carrying on in the house, and ushering them out the door. And then there was blessed silence.

Diving across the bed, I buried my face in the pillow.

“Kit!”

I bolted upright.

“Kit! I’ll take you to the dance.”

I stared in horror at Sid’s face peering in through my bedroom window as I lay sprawled across my bed. Reaching over, I snapped the curtain shut and rolled onto my back, hugging the pillow across my face. The minutes ticked by. I listened. Nothing but ear-ringing silence. Sitting up, I lifted the end of the curtain and peeked out. He was nowhere to be seen.

For the rest of the week I stayed in my room whenever I could, not wanting to see Josie, and not wanting to see Sid. At school I showed up just as the bell rang, and raced off the second we were let out for the day. And lunchtime I snuck down behind Old Joe’s brother’s stagehead and ate my lunch in peace. I imagine he could’ve caught up with me if he had wanted to. I figured perhaps he understood better than I did as to why I didn’t want to see him, and was content to leave me alone with it, which said a lot for Sid, because damned if I could figure out why I didn’t want to see him any more.