The Sea-Wave (10 page)

O
nce upon a time, I split in half. I tipped over and split in half. Then my mom picked up the half of me she didn't like and threw it down the well. The other half-kid's still up there looking down at me sometimes. Sometimes she goes away. I'm scared she might not ever come back. I'm lonely and I'm scared down here. When I see her for even a bit I'm so relieved. I stop having panic attacks. She looks at me sadly and I'm almost happy. But I want to scream be careful. And stay the fuck away from the edge.

L
ike most kids with no friends I've had imaginary friends. I used to have a cat and a friendly octopus but now I just have Mrs. Ramshaw. She's an old lady with swollen legs who I imagine lying in the guest bedroom, which is the next room down from mine. I've never really pictured her face, just her swollen legs projecting over the edge of the bed. I guess she's that tall.

I can't fall asleep without first thinking of Mrs. Ramshaw in the other room. I think of how old and sick she is, and how her fat legs stick out. It doesn't make sense but I only feel comfortable and okay if I know she's there. She doesn't say anything or do anything, just lies there breathing. My mom takes pink tranquillizers. Mrs. Ramshaw's legs are my pink tranquillizers. I just think of them sticking out and I drift to sleep.

I guess I try not to think about Mrs. Ramshaw's face because . . . it might be my face. In the morning, when I wheel past the guest bedroom, I always check. I can't go by without checking. But I know if I ever really saw Mrs. Ramshaw lying there with my face I'd flop over dead. It's unhealthy, but . . . That's always how I imagined I'd die.

E
very year to help me feel normal, my mom dresses me up as a cat or a lobster, and wheels me around the neighbourhood. She used to put on scarier costumes but I just wasn't into it. When you open the door and there's this sad kid kitten sitting there . . . It's sort of cute and sad, like a puppy with three legs. But when it's a zombie in a chair, I watch their eyes, they are just genuinely horrified and sorry. They drop the licorice in the pail without smiling. Then slowly shut the door.

Last year I decided I didn't want to bother anymore, it was too much drama. I can't even eat hard candy. But my mom said she was worried I might become a shut-in and wrestled me into the lobster suit. She never dresses up as anything, she dresses as a neurotic mother. To express my disgust, I upset the candy pail skull, but then she put a string on the handle and around my back so I couldn't. So I put up with it. I just pretended to sleep. My hope was that people would think she was abusing me to get candy. Which wasn't too far from the truth.

I
like Charles Dickens, I like Agatha Christie, I like Arthur Conan Doyle. I don't like Shakespeare yet but I think that I will. I like Lewis Carroll a lot, thought NOT
Sylvie and Bruno
. I like some things by Robert Lewis Stevenson, but not the early things. I like Ray Bradbury, but only the early things. There aren't many children's things I like. Children's writers write like they're desperate to be your friend, and you're wearing sunglasses that can't see desperation.

If I find time, I'd like to fall in love with poetry.

U
sually at night the old man stopped pushing me, but some nights he just kept on going. Looking up at the stars and not really watching where he was going. Sometimes as he was looking up he'd say Sirius or Vega or Polaris. He was actually pretty knowledgeable. I wondered if he'd been an astronomer or something. And why an astronomer would steal a wheelchair kid.

Normally when it got dark, though, he'd stop. He'd wheel me behind a bush or something and lie down beside me. If it was raining — well one time he took his jacket off and draped it over my head like I was a parakeet. I appreciated it but the odour was malevolent.

Only one time did he take me out of my chair and lay me on the ground. I was both nervous and refreshed. Because there were parts of my body, from sitting, that now felt like produce. But when a really strange person who stole you lays you down in the bushes, if you don't get nervous, you're demented. He just lay me down, though, and lay down beside me. He didn't do anything or say anything. Then he pointed up.

It was a meteor shower. I'd never seen one. It was basically streaks of dust. The dust glowed brightly for a bit, then disappeared. There was maybe one meteor every thirty seconds. They would've been high in the atmosphere, but it seemed like if you reached out, you could feel the dust on your fingers. I had to stop myself from trying.

After about a half hour, the old man lifted me back into my chair. Then he lay down in the dirt and went to sleep.

It really wasn't much of a meteor shower. More of a meteor dew.

Pretty much everything is disappointing.

I
t happened.

The sound of thunder, of water. Before I could rise from my bed, it lifted. It was taken, by the wave.

With so much violence, I was thrown. Striking the door of my prison. I cried out, then, rising in water, trying the door. My eye level with the grille. I looked through it, and a man looked through, wildly. Water poured over him, and flowed now, through the grille. He rushed away. I thrust . . . my fingers . . . through the grille. Through it, I could see, dimly, men. Running.

I did not know how fast the water rose. My head touched the stone ceiling. There was nothing, onto which to hold. Only my life. For a moment, only, of more life, I would hold my breath. I would wait, until it reached . . . the scar, on my ear. My final breath, would be the film of air, on the water. I would draw it off, the film, and hold it, holding closed my eyes.

More thunder. The
door
. It broke open. Crashing against the wall. There was a rushing, a suction. It pulled me deep underwater, through the door. Into the hall.

I struck my head, on the wall. Men were running. I rose, choking. I rose and fell again. I had breathed in water, and burned. As I stood burning, the wave came against me, again, and broke me. I struck the wall again. I was pinned, by water, on stone. It was very nearly to my knees, the water. It was rushing from the door. It was cold, and burning.

At the end of the hall was a staircase, of stone. Everywhere, men were running. Men . . . were beating, the sealed doors. Terrible, their rhythm, in my ears.

Candles, in their iron stands, were lifting and . . . extinguishing.

Men were running.

There was somewhere, a staircase.

I pulled away from the wave. I somehow . . . escaped it. I felt along the wall. My head in pain. The water reached my knees.

I could see nothing.

W
hen Tay-Lin went to India, we looked after her eclectus Paw-Paw.

Mom put the cage in the living room so the bird could observe our dysfunction.

Dad tried coaxing Paw-Paw to talk. She still just squawked after a week but he didn't give up. I'm not sure . . . I don't remember him ever spending that much time with me.

Feeding Paw-Paw was my job. Pineapple, strawberries. Grapefruit, she spat back out. We had that in common.

I hadn't realized I could be nurturing.

One morning between bites of pineapple, Paw-Paw said: “I love you.”

I'd underestimated her.

Paw-Paw cocked her head. She looked at me like she expected a reply.

She'd overestimated me.

“I love you,” she said again.

My parents love me. They used to tell me. I have a good memory.

I don't know why but I opened the cage and Paw-Paw flew around the living room, shitting everywhere and squawking.

When Mom came out of the kitchen with more fruit, she swore. Paw-Paw kept repeating: “Shit.”

Mom grounded me for a week — a meaningless gesture.

After dinner, Dad went to the living room. Mom gave me sorbet and complained about her depression. “Life is medieval,” she said.

When I wheeled through the living room, after, Dad was feeding Paw-Paw. So I didn't have to. I went into the elevator.

“I love you,” I heard him say, over and over, as the door closed.