Shadow Girl (15 page)

Even so, she had her nightmare often. It was basically the same dream over and over – Jules as a shadow, trapped in a world she couldn’t escape.

J
ules had only one visit with her father in May. And one in June. The days passed, each one feeling longer than the one before it.

But summer finally came. Veronica and Marilyn got summer jobs.

Hallelujah!

Veronica worked as a day camp counselor, and Marilyn was hired as a waitress at her friend Barb’s family restaurant. Jules did her chores – and theirs, too. When she complained, Mr. and Mrs. Chapman said the girls were working and she wasn’t. It was the least she could do, they told her, especially after all they were doing for her.

Veronica and Marilyn banned her from the basement when they had summer parties and from the backyard when they sunbathed and played
badminton with their snooty friends. Jules was sick of feeling like a blob from outer space in that house, stuck in another time warp, while Marilyn’s and Veronica’s lives happened all around her.

Mrs. Chapman spent her time flitting around the house most mornings, or she went out shopping, came back, made lunch, and watched soaps in the afternoon. Jules thought she’d be able to move, stretch out, and relax with the girls working, but Mrs. Chapman wanted her out of sight.

To make matters worse, Patsy went away in early July to her aunt’s cottage for three weeks.

An eternity!

When the emptiness of each day drove Jules crazy, or when she felt like she was the only person left on the planet, she went to the plaza and wandered around. Sometimes she’d stand in front of Zellers, her face against the glass, looking in. Other times, she’d sneak inside. Jules never went right to the toy department and never stood where Mrs. Adamson could see her. Instead, she went to the lipstick-testing counter in cosmetics or to the candy department. She could watch Mrs. Adamson and Frances working or talking to each other from both places.

How come I miss people more than they miss me? How come I carry those feelings right smack in my face – and other people don’t seem to?

Jules didn’t like it that Mrs. Adamson looked
normal. She wanted to be able to look at her and see that there was a part that missed Jules – even if they couldn’t be friends.

I need to know that much
.

I
t was a blistering hot day in early August. Jules and Patsy were running down the street from the Humber Theater at Jane and Bloor, screaming the Beatles’ song “A Hard Day’s Night” at the top of their lungs. The theater had been packed with kids their age or older, who clapped, jumped up and down, laughed, and screamed throughout
A Hard Day’s Night
.

Mrs. Chapman had reluctantly given Jules the money to go. Jules was becoming an expert at getting money out of her – for bus fare, movies, or trips to Cloverdale and the Kingsway. She had a dozen surefire ways to get on Mrs. Chapman’s nerves, like turning on the radio in the kitchen full blast when her soaps started. Mrs. Chapman would do anything to get rid of Jules.

Jules was so glad Patsy was back. They played together every day.

“Don’t your mom and dad get tired of me being at your place?” Jules asked after playing at Patsy’s five days in a row.

“Nah. I don’t complain so much about having to look after Marcus.”

Jules and Patsy knew the words to every Beatles’ song. They listened to Patsy’s records and practiced dancing in Patsy’s bedroom. Jules hoped they weren’t turning into Marilyn and Veronica.

“How great was that movie?” Jules shouted.

“And the music was simply fab! Fab Four fab!”

“But they’re funny, too, and …” Jules sighed, “perfectly perfect!”

“Paul McCartney is dreamy!”

“You mean John Lennon.”

“Paul.”

“John.”

“Paul.”

“John.”

They kept shouting out the names of their favorite Beatle back and forth until Patsy grabbed Jules’s arm just before the bus stop. “I don’t want to get on yet. Let’s go down to the park by the Humber.”

When they got there, they lay on the grass under a gigantic willow tree.

“It’s so fantastic here, almost like a whole other world,” said Jules.

“Yes, indeedy,” Patsy mumbled with her eyes closed. Suddenly she sat up. “Hey! You’ve given me a great idea. Let’s pretend we don’t belong here, or don’t know where we are. We go up to people and ask them ridiculous questions.”

“I don’t know, Patsy. They might get mad.”

“Nah. We’ll act stupid. C’mon, I’ll go first.”

They stood up and walked along the path by the river. An old man with his dog came toward them.

“Excuse me,” Patsy said. “What planet is this?”

The man looked as if he hadn’t heard the question right, and – before he could say anything – Patsy burst out laughing and ran away. Jules stood in front of him for a second more, not knowing what to do, then ran after her.

“Well, you handled that rather well, I must say,” Jules said when she caught up to Patsy.

“Must you?”

“I must. Let’s see if I can do any better.” Jules was never shy when she was playing with Patsy. It was as if she became another person.

They walked along the path again. This time, they came across three teenage girls.

“Here goes,” Jules whispered to Patsy. Then, to the girls, she asked, “Excuse me, I know what time it is, but could you tell me what time it isn’t?”

The girls looked at each other, puzzled.

When one of them actually looked at her watch, Patsy howled.

“What?” another asked.

“What time isn’t it?” Jules repeated.

“Get lost, you little creeps!”

Over the summer, Jules and her father had only one visit. Tracie came, too. It was a beautiful day in August, and they went to High Park. Her dad and Tracie tried not to show it, but Jules could tell they were hungover. All Tracie wanted to do was lie in the shade and sleep it off. Her dad walked with Jules around the park for a while, but she had to play by herself on the kiddie swings for most of the visit.

Early in September, he called to tell her they were going up to Thunder Bay again. “We’ll meet up when I get back. But I’ll be looking for work, too.”

Silence.

“Those dealerships. Too big. Too many bosses.”

The usual sinking, sick feeling came over her.

Another job gone
.

Another hope gone
.

B
eing separate, alienated, doesn’t mean falling off the earth, not being part of it. It’s being in the world – breathing, eating, moving about – and only that. With no spark, no atom of anything else. Time is measured by clocks and days. The sun rises and sets. And people like me are forced to be a part. Forced to be apart
.

Mrs. Chapman took Marilyn and Veronica on a big shopping spree just before high school started. The girls said they used their summer wages to pay for all the clothes, but Jules knew that Veronica was putting every penny she earned toward buying a car and Marilyn was saving up to go to Europe with her class. Mrs. Chapman told Jules that when she started working, she could buy her own clothes, too.

The only thing Jules wanted was a pair of skates.
Hers were a couple of sizes too small. And when winter set in, she’d be out of luck if she wanted to go to Teresa’s or the indoor rink at Montgomery. She asked her new social worker, Suzanne, if she could get a pair.

Eileen had left Children’s Aid in June to go back to school. There had been a fill-in, Linda, for a few weeks, but Jules never met her. An invisible social worker would have been better than Suzanne. Eileen kept in touch, even when the news she had for Jules was not what Jules wanted to hear – that her dad didn’t always show up for court, that the temporary custody order was being renewed.

Jules could never reach Suzanne by phone at the Children’s Aid office. And if Jules left a message, Suzanne never called back right away.

“You’re not the only family on my caseload, Jules,” Suzanne would say when they finally did connect.

I’d have to be pretty stupid to think that
.

Suzanne informed Jules that there was a process to go through if Jules wanted “extras” and that Jules had to be patient. So Jules tried being patient – and ended up with nothing.

The only good thing about September was that Jules would be starting school again, which meant seeing friends every day and being out of the Chapman house.

“Here we come! In the whole wide world, you will not find two more fabulous Grade 8-ers!” Patsy shouted as both she and Jules entered the schoolyard on the first day of school.

Katie Adamson was now proudly in Grade 1 at Our Lady of Peace. When Jules bumped into her, she was as bubbly and excited about everything as Jules remembered her to be. She attached herself to Jules like a magnet, acting like a big shot whenever Jules played with her and her friends. Jules still saw Jeff and John around the school, but because of Katie, she didn’t go out of her way to avoid them like she used to.

My dad can’t get mad at me for it. Mrs. Adamson’s kids are innocent bystanders
.

Jules often walked home with them, or – if Mr. Adamson was home – she went as far as their street. The Chapmans lived in the opposite direction. Because the kids dawdled a lot on the way, it took hours for Jules to get “home,” where she promptly got into trouble.

“Jules Doherty and Marta Kowalsky, to the front!”

Lunch period had ended, and they’d just taken their seats.

“Think you can play tag in the school hallways? Think you can do whatever you want because you’re in Grade 8?”

“No, Sister,” Jules and Marta replied in unison.

Marta had chased Jules into the school through the side doors, and their squeals of laughter must have annoyed the teachers who were trying to eat their lunch.

Sister Emily, the former principal, would’ve given them a short lecture and made them stay after class or pick up garbage in the schoolyard. But the new principal, Sister Martha Jane, was something else again. She taught Jules’s Grade 8 class, and – in the short time since school started – not one kind word had come out of her mouth.

Sister Martha Jane pulled out the strap from her desk drawer – in slow motion. “Right hand out, Jules.” Sister stood as far back from Jules as she could.

Wham! The full weight of Sister’s body went into every blow.

Jules wanted to cry out – and would have if she’d hurt herself in the playground.

Then it was Marta’s turn.

By the time Sister finished giving them both the strap, Marta looked like she was going to throw up. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Back to your seats.”

Sister swapped the strap for her second-favorite weapon, a yardstick, and started patrolling the aisles, talking about “The Highwayman,” a poem they were studying. She liked to tap the yardstick against her palm as she walked, then – pow! – whack it down
on a kid’s arm or leg when they least expected it.

Jules held herself in. She wasn’t going to cry – especially because Sister was looking over at her every now and then, expecting tears to fall. There were some people you didn’t show pain to.

If you think your knife-blade eyes can cut into me, you’re wrong. You have no idea how tough I am
.

Jules got the strap often after that. She’d find out what rules she was supposed to follow and try to obey them – only to find out Sister had made up a new rule and didn’t tell anybody about it until someone had broken it. Sister marched down the school hallways like a football player, her hands in fists, ready to whack anybody who got in her way. The white starchy thing under her veil pinched her face, making the fat in her cheeks bulge out. Maybe it made her uncomfortable. Maybe being a nun made her uncomfortable. She was the first nun Jules met who wasn’t trying to please God.

“I hate my class. I need to get out of it and go to Miss Davies’s Grade 8 class – the one Patsy’s in,” Jules told Mrs. Chapman one afternoon after school. Asking for something important from Mrs. Chapman was usually a waste of time, but by the beginning of October, Jules felt as if her stomach were being put through a wringer washer when she thought about Sister. She’d already pretended to be sick, though Mrs. Chapman hadn’t believed her.

“What a crazy thing to say.”

“I’m not going to school then.”

“Is that so? Well, Miss High and Mighty, I’m sure you’re in that class for a reason. The school decides who goes where, not you or me. So the answer is no. I’m not asking Sister to switch you. Definitely not.”

I
    must …

Will my father back to me
.

Will him to let me see Mrs. Adamson
.

Will Sister to another planet
.

Will the Chapmans to the Twilight Zone
.

Will myself to grow up so I don’t have to be bossed around all the time
.

If Sister wasn’t strapping, punching, or hitting someone, she was getting at them in other ways. Every time she talked about families, mothers, or fathers, she’d look at Jules, stand near her, or ask her a question.