Mud Girl (6 page)

S
ummer settles in. You might forget for a minute and think it's never going to rain again. Abi fixes the screen door with a few small nails to hold it in place, then leaves the front door open, the back door, the windows. She's glad for the noise of rushing water and engines, the roar of trucks to the mill. Time passes slowly, unmarked by bells and lunch announcements. She misses the school library and is glad she took out a few books before the end of the year.

Open the dictionary. Past B and C. Now it's D.

Da capo
. A musical word.
Repeat from the beginning.
The dictionary shows the little sign that composers use for da capo. You look through the music for that sign – a swirly little thing, and you start from there. Where would Abi put a da
capo in her life? Late last summer, just before Mum left? What would she do differently? Or would she put the da capo earlier?

She looks across the table to Dad. Where would she put the da capo for him?

Life Before the Chair.

“Look!” She remembers Mum saying. “Look what I found!” Mum had brought the chair home on the old wagon, from a garage sale over a mile away.

Dad took hold of it and together they brought it into the living room. Dad had laughed aloud. “I've been needing one of these.” He'd flopped into the dark green plush and patted the wide armrests.

“I thought you'd like it!” She'd grinned, pleased with herself.

How could it have been like that? Mum doing and giving, and Dad laughing? And now, Dad not laughing and Mum gone. Even with all this trying to put pieces together, it doesn't make sense.

There'd been other good times, too. But there'd also been the times – maybe twice a year – when Mum would get a letter from “home” as she called it. During the cold months, she'd go into her bedroom to read these, and in the warm months, she'd sit on the car seat out front, with the thin piece of airmail paper in her hand, staring at it, and then staring out
at the road. She never sat in the greenhouse to read those, and she never shared them. So just how did the pieces fit?

Always so back to back, Mum and Dad were: he looking to the river, and she to the road.

Home
. It had always bothered Abi that Mum called another place home. Why wasn't this home? When would it be? How long did you need to stay in a place for it to become home?
What
exactly made a place home?

In the place Mum called home – Kent, Abi thought it was – there was no one there for her. Mum's parents had been dead since before Abi was born. So
home
? How could it be? When Abi asked who the letters came from, her mother would only say that they were from one of her cousins. There were a few, apparently, still living somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. No one with enough money to travel to the far coast of Canada, it seemed. “Not a travelling people,” Mum had said once.

Back to da capo. How about putting it before Dad lost his job? Or before they moved from the old house? Abi can hardly remember it. Might even have been an apartment. When was that? After old Uncle Bernard died, he left the place to them. Abi could barely swim then. Spent the first year in this house wearing a lifejacket “just in case.”

All right – put the da capo before she was born…
No
. Abi's never thought like that before and she's not going to
start now.
If I hadn't been born to these parents, I'd have come out somewhere, somehow. I've never not wanted to be. I'd just rather not be here.

She closes the dictionary. On second thought, she opens it again, then
SLAMS
it shut. Dad's face does appear around the wing of his chair. He says nothing, but she's grateful for his look of annoyance. If he can still be annoyed, there's hope.

There's a mumble from him. “Why aren't you in school?”

So maybe there isn't hope. “Summer holidays.”

He grunts.

She fights a sudden urge to throw the television out the window. Another D word: defenestration.
To throw something
(or someone?)
out the window
. And they think kids watch too much television. Try all the mind rot adults watch; takes their thoughts, like soda crackers, and grinds them into a soup of mindlessness. They don't even need teeth to eat it.

When was the last time she saw Dad outside the house? Really outside – not just on the dock? Can't imagine what it would take to get him out of that chair. He could put his glasses on for a start, and see where he was going.

Maybe she'll have to start a fire. No. Foster home for sure, and that would be after a while of wherever they stow Young Arsonists.

Ping!
She turns to look at the east window. Again a pebble hits the glass. Dad starts, but doesn't move from his chair.

“Abi!” It's Jude, waving his lunch bag, a newspaper rolled up under his arm. She grabs a box of crackers and a chunk of cheddar, an apple with just a couple of bad spots, pulls the old car blanket from the chesterfield.

Outside, a wind has come up, and the river moves with caps of dirty white foam. The warm summer wind raises the downy hair on her arms. She sets out the blanket and sits in the middle.

“Hey!” Jude nudges her bum with the toe of his shoe. “You think you're alone here?”

She scoots over.

“You spend a lot of time alone?” he asks as he unwraps a sandwich. He checks between the slices of bread.

She doesn't answer.

“Your mum makes your lunch?” is her question.

He nods and bites into the sandwich. She can smell the heavy fragrance of a cheese Mum used to like.
Maybe still does.
She opens her box of crackers.

“Your mum doesn't mind taking care of your son?”

Jude looks surprised. “No, of course not.”

“What's he like?”

“Who?”

“Your son,” she says. “Dyl.”

Jude looks at her. Just how she's not sure. As if he wants to read her mind?

“It's just a question,” she says.

“Well,” he begins, and finishes chewing his bite of sandwich. Then he grins. “He's two,” he says, and promptly takes another bite.

She waits for more.

“Haven't you heard of the terrible twos?”

“I guess so, but I don't really know anything about it.”

“You've never babysat kids?”

“Not too many kids in the neighbourhood,” she says, pointing with her chin in the direction of the road. “Or anyone, for that matter.”

“Hmm.” His eyes become slits as he scrutinizes her. “Well, he says the word ‘no' a lot, and he's kind of like a piece of Velcro: stuck on my pant leg all the time, you know?”

No, I don't know
. But she says nothing, and begins to eat. Jude's touch on her arm is light, and he draws from one freckle to the next. “Connect the dots,” he says, “and what do you have?”

She hope he doesn't notice that her skin is suddenly goose-pimpled.

“You'll have dots with lines,” she says. How can she feel so comfortable with Jude one minute, and the next so uncomfortable and with stupid words coming out of her mouth?

He pulls away slowly, sits back with his eyes on the house. “Can you hear the water under the house at night?”

His question comes from left field. Or at least, from some place she's not at all sure she wants to go with him.

“I used to like the sound,” she begins. “When I was a little kid.”
Before Mum left
. She doesn't want to add the other thoughts that push into her mind: how now the sound keeps her awake, and it's a sound that never stops, won't let her rest. On windy nights she can hear the greenhouse bumping up against the dock as if fighting to escape, and she lies awake listening for when the sound ends and for when that broken-down frame and bits of glass that Mum loved is gone too, away down the river.

When Mum first left, Abi had nightmares that pieces of the house would fall away, a section of floor, a bit of lower wall, and Dad and his chair would also fall away, moving with the current until out of sight, Dad never realizing where he was, remote control still in hand, head resting on one shoulder, sound asleep, feet bobbing in and out of the water, the chair turning, turning in the eddies of mud. But the dreams ended when she began to cover him at night. Now with warm evenings she doesn't have to remember to tuck a blanket around him.

Would Jude understand all this?
The urge to say something is strong in her. Just for a moment.

A rattle of newspaper calls to her. Jude is holding the comics to her. He spreads out the front-page section for himself.
“I always read the Sports at breakfast,” he says. “Whew!” He taps the paper. “Look at this!”

She leans over for a look. The headline's enough: foster
PARENTS CHARGED WITH
… She doesn't want to know what. Jude is shaking his head in disbelief.

“How about this?” she says, and points to the Family Circus in the corner of her piece of news. She hasn't had a chance to look at the comic herself yet, but Jude gives a laugh and forgets to say more about the front-page piece.

“I'd better get going.” He begins to pack up his lunch. He breaks a chocolate bar in two and gives her half. His lips brush the top of her head as he stands. “Gotta go.”

She watches him leave. A blackberry stringer catches his overalls and he has to stop to loosen the barb. He turns back and smiles. “Soon,” he says.

Not soon enough.

She stays on her side of the blanket and draws her knees to her chest. She huddles, looks at the house, and tells herself, “This is the house I live in, and this is my life,” but she likes it here in the field. Maybe she'll move here and live in the open air.

She falls asleep.

When Abi wakens she can hardly move, she's so badly burned. The sun is low, the river louder than the traffic. Cooler air tries to tickle her, but her skin is hot and her head dizzy. That's how Rhodes finds her.

Underwear to Fill a Drawer

“O
h my,” Rhodes says. Of course. She helps Abi to her feet. “Oh my,” again, and then, “you haven't been…been…” She can't even say it.

“Drinking?” Abi asks. She motions around. “What do you think?” She takes the arm Rhodes offers. “I could've used a bottle though – a bottle of sunscreen.”

“That's what I thought was your affliction!” There's relief in the woman's voice. So. This Little Sister business can still be pretty straightforward.

She helps Abi into the house. Abi has to keep her head down, looking at her feet. If she raises it at all, she feels as if she's going to keel over. The edges of her vision have a threatening darkness to them. “I feel as if I'm going to go blind.” Abi's voice has a whine to it.

“Sit here,” says Rhodes abruptly, and gently she pushes her down on the car seat. “Put your head between your knees. Breathe deeply.” Rhodes wedges the screen door open with a rock, so it won't slam on her, and then goes into the house.

Abi can hear her holler. “William!”

Who calls Dad William? He's only ever been Bill or Will, or Billy. “William!” Rhodes shouts even louder. Dad must have written
William
on the form for Big Sisters.

“Try resuscitation!” Abi yells, and the effort is hardly worth it. She begins to feel as if she's going to throw up.

“Where are your aspirin?”

He finally does speak up, but only to say, “Ask Abi.”

“Do you have
GINGER ALE
?” But now Rhodesy's question seems not to be directed at anyone, and she's opening the fridge as she speaks. She slams through a few cupboards, then her heeled steps are returning, faster and faster. “I'll have to take you with me. We need to go to the drugstore.” She takes Abi's hand, pulls her up. Amazing: the gentleness of Rhodes's movement coupled with the heat in her voice.

“Lie down in the back seat. Don't worry about the seat belt.”

She's in the drugstore for five minutes only, then she's back, bags rustling, the big old '70s car swaying with her bustle.

She hands a bottle to Abi – full of ginger ale, fizzing and spitting up her nose – and drops pills into her hand.

“Take two aspirin and go to bed,” Abi murmurs.

“Exactly,” Rhodes says briskly.

You can tell she enjoys this, taking care of somebody. It's a bit like a game to her – on the next go-round she'll pick up her two hundred dollars, take a ride on the Reading Railroad…

Back at the house, she tries to help Abi to the chesterfield.

“No, not that piece of crap,” Abi tells her, still keeping her head down. She sinks to the floor, back to the wall. “There're springs coming out of the cushions. They coil right up your butt.” She feels pleased when Rhodes chuckles – a girlish jinglebell sound. A sound Abi would like to hear more often.

“Can't have
that
,” she says, and goes to get a cool cloth for Abi's forehead, then another to drape over the nape of her neck. Makes her feel a little less like passing out.