The Clay Girl Page 9

  “The balance is nine dollars and seventeen cents.”

  “Unless I missed another stock market crash, this is wrong.”

  “The money has been withdrawn, Miss Appleton.”

  “Nick, can you go get Len?”

  College, Expo 67, a trip to Paris to look for June passes before my eyes as the manager produces a stack of cheques. Another teller says, “This isn’t Hariet Appleton. She has blonde hair.” I study the practiced signature. The one I made look so Picassoesque.

  “Can I see some identification?” I produce all that a thirteen-year-old has: my library card. “Have you been in a fight? Is this your signature? Are you Hariet Appleton?”

  The floor turns rubbery. How will Jillianne survive prison? When not acting the Tasmanian devil she’s a wide-eyed doe in the morning mist. I sit hard on the bench contemplating my five years of work up in smoke. I hope it was good shit, Jillianne.

  Len arrives out of breath. “Some trouble, Ari?”

  “Big—Hiroshima big.”

  Officer Irwin does Mum a favour. Two cops nab Jillianne on the street, cuff her, and deliver her home, scared shitless. I sit, picking at the flaky scab on the heel of my hand. Underneath, it’s the colour of bubblegum and I can’t remember ever getting that colour on a T-shirt. Len sighs, lead-heavy. “Theresa, she needs to be charged, held accountable for this.”

  “You make her sound like a murderer.”

  “This was not five dollars from your purse, ten from my wallet. It was fraud and a theft of thousands, stealing that showed no conscience for her sister.”

  “Hariet was careless leaving her chequebook where Jillianne could find it.” My hand stings from a big hunk peeled from my baby finger. “She’s just acting out. Don’t think she doesn’t see how you favour Hariet.”

  “She would get guidance. Learn discipline and rules. She’ll be dealt with as a minor, receive extra help.”

  “That’s what her family is for. Hariet, Jillianne is sorry. She’ll work and pay the money back. It’s settled.”

  Jillianne never says sorry, never really looks at me. She’s sweet, the kind of sweet that comes from summer smoke rising from the pickle room. She’s subdued, the kind of subdued that comes from emptying the whiskey bottles. She’s quiet, the kind of irritable quiet that comes from a TV overdose. And she’s restless. The kind of restless that comes from missing a boy who hurts you hard and bad.

  Tony, the good-for-nothing-boy is not so willing to pass weed through the cellar window without something for him. Mum stashes her pills and booze in the cartons of Christmas decorations. Len’s wallet holds only a note: Jillianne, I love you. Please let me help you. Grandma and her borders are no longer plums for picking and Ari Appleton has nada. Jillianne hits bottom, and the cesspit where everything that has been carefully buried oozes up.

  Miss Standish doesn’t look up. “Did you want something, Ari?”

  “Um . . . you said if I needed help . . .”

  She puts down her pencil but gives me the mercy of looking at her papers.

  “I . . . I have a friend who has some troubles . . . drugs and stealing mostly . . . she . . . this stuff happened . . . and . . .”

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Your sister?”

  I nod, pushing down the Niagara behind my eyes.

  “There’s a treatment centre for women, Springwood, just north of Toronto. If I arranged something could you get her there?”

  “I’ll stuff her in a Hefty bag and tow her if I have to.”

  Jacquie looks like she swallowed a watermelon whole but still she waddles up the stairs and into the tiger’s cage. Len and Franc wait in the hall ready to net Jillianne if she runs. I sit on the stairs, to keep my options open. Jacquie sounds Nia-wise. “Jillianne, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to blast it out, it’s still there. Daddy betrayed you, stole from you. I don’t want to lose you. I want this baby to know his Auntie Jillianne.”

  The squeaky kind of cry that you don’t want to let out but just has a mind of its own, leaks out of the room. From my perch on the stairs I study Len. The wall holds his weight, tears puddle in his eyes, and I can’t remember what my dead father looked like in the light.

  “Franc and I checked out a beautiful place with really good people to talk to. We’re taking you there.”

  Mum comes out of her bedroom, huffing like a train speeding up. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting Jillianne some help.”

  “Do you know what those places are? Making you rip open your guts while everyone stands in judgment.”

  “So let them. They’ll judge Jillianne as heroic for surviving.”

  “I’m so sick of all of you feeling sorry for yourselves. You girls had more than most, and your father . . .” The hesitation is all Jillianne needs to topple Jacquie onto a mountain of clothes, bolt past Len, over me, and scramble out the door. By the time we right Jacquie and reach the sidewalk, there isn’t a hint of which way she went. We head all points on the compass, searching for days until Jacquie goes into labour. Len and I keep looking, but Jillianne doesn’t want to be found.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The street outside the window greens. A robin pair builds a nest in the housing of the burned-out porch light. Mum sits squashed on the sofa, struggling for half an hour to put four beads on a string, the shake in her hand about a five on the Richter. Her voice falls like a spider on a single thread, “I’m going out to look for her.”

  I know exactly where she’s going as she draws her lipstick way off course. First, she’ll check out the Zanzibar. There she’ll find Officer Richard Irwin having a drink after work. Then she’ll search his pants.

  “You need to stay here,” I say, “in case she comes home. I’ll go look in the Village.”

  “I have to get some air.”

  “Then go over and see the baby.”

  “I will.” She focuses on the vase of flowers behind me. “I should have made her go with Jacquie.”

  Every trip to Yorkville, I see more people losing and finding themselves. People know me here. I’m the Riverboat waitress who will sell you the shirt off her back. It’s not a slutty thing like Jory, just a marketing strategy. Weekend hippies have parental cash in their pockets and I always have a tank top under the merchandise.

  I navigate between tables and ripe bodies. “Hey, Bernie. Have you seen Jillianne around?”

  He hands two mugs over the counter, nodding me to the table in the corner. “Lose another sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Haven’t seen Jillianne. But Malik is back. He ran into June somewhere out west.”

  “Really?” I button my coat. “Thanks. See you Friday.”

  “Bring more goods.”

  “Count on it. I’ve had a major financial setback.”

  Two doors down and two flights up I find Malik in his usual crash pad. He resembles a half-dead sheepdog. “Hey, kid.” He opens his arms from his mattress on the floor.

  I like dogs so I fall in. “Bernie said you saw June.”

  His yawn sends hair-curdling breath across my cheek. “Yeah. In a commune in Coombs. Hardly recognized her. She’s a blonde.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “If you call eating granola and living with some organic tree-hugger okay. She has a kid.”

  “She does? What?”

  “Girl, I’d guess with a name like Spring.”

  “Did she ask about me? Did she send a letter?”

  “Don’t remember much. They grow grade-A shit.” He lights up, inhaling deep, exhaling memories of June. “Her hair looked like melted butter.” He holds the joint to my lips and I take the edge off Ari Appleton.

  The baby snorts like a pig at Jacquie’s breast. I snivel at the end of her bed.

  “It sounds l
ike she’s found a good place, Ari.”

  “Why doesn’t she write, send me a postcard, a call . . .”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to walk away into something brand new? Leave everything Appleton behind, like it never happened? Daddy wrecked June bad. He coaxed her to the river that day. ‘Please, Junebug. Don’t you betray me, too.’”

  “Daddy thought you betrayed him?”

  “I told Dr. Herbert it was him even though I promised I wouldn’t. I had to. I saw the way he looked at Jillianne, and . . . at you.”

  “Junie thought Daddy didn’t love her.”

  “He didn’t love any of us. He stayed away from June because she pushed back. But that day she told me that he begged her to go with you to the river.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his game was over, he was caught, and he wanted to gut someone. Why not her and Jennah and you. She said he smiled right at her, pulled out the gun and bam! Her T-shirt, her hair . . . all spattered red.”

  “Jennah said her . . . Icee exploded.”

  “He . . . rained blood on beautiful June on purpose.”

  “I’m unplanting his tree.”

  “Don’t. Plant five more for the six sisters that grew up strong.” There’s light around Jacquie, lightness, too. She isn’t pretty anymore. She’s beautiful, like a dolphin leap. “Dry your tears. He doesn’t deserve them.”

  “They’re for June.”

  “You know why we called the baby Arielle? She’s the Angel of new beginnings, and somehow you manage to do that no matter what.”

  “You’ve done that more than any of us.” I crawl up to her side to finger Arielle’s velvety head. “I hope she has June’s hair, not mine. Did Mum come over to visit?”

  “No. But Nick called looking for you.”

  “Yeah, it’s prayer meeting night.” The only night his parental units aren’t hovering.

  I walk to Nick’s after closing. I’d skip it, but I really need the hug. We’re only moderately bad. He has the fear of God in him and I don’t want anyone in my pants. He’s an okay kisser and he touches my boobs like they’re eggs he’s scared will break. The first time I slid my hand under his jeans he came faster than the watered-down catsup at the diner. Now, he moans low and sweet for five, maybe ten minutes.

  Tonight is one of those holding and hugging nights, it takes him longer to de-stress, six forty-five to seven ten. He flushes the toilet paper. I do up my bra. The rec room is cold so he gives me a sweater and pulls a fat fisherman knit over his head. While he makes hot chocolate, I find My Favorite Martian on TV and get out our math books. And that’s how his parents find us, summing not cumming. It’s an hour and a half before their usual return time. “Uh . . . Mom? Dad? What are you doing home?”

  “Your mother had a headache. Nick, what are the rules about having friends over when we’re not home?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Potter. With all the grandma trouble I got behind in math.”

  “How is she?”

  I pack up my books. “Last time I saw her she called me Ethel and whapped me for stealing her purse.”

  “No need to go now. I’ll make some popcorn.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve got a ton to do. Don’t be mad at Nick. He was just too nice to say no when I asked for help.”

  “I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Our springtime poem is due. Walking helps me write it in my head.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The words, “Ari, wait,” strain my thin nerves. “Where’s your spring poem?”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  Mr. West extends his palm. “It’s due today.” More and more he has this way of crawling in through my eyes. Most days I feel older than him. Today, things teeter a little more equal.

  “Words that make you or anyone else uncomfortable shouldn’t be rewritten for pleasantness.”

  “You haven’t even read it.”

  “Knowing you, in one way or another it’ll be messy.” He takes it from my hand, adding it to the pile. “Can I ask what the trouble is with Sharon?”

  “Nick is going around with me. So that makes me the enemy. I’ve been called worse.”

  “Can’t imagine what.”

  “Try Hariet, a misspelled Hariet.”

  “Unique and gifted people always get picked on. Take it as a compliment.”

  “Yeah, I’m all aflutter.”

  I admit, I didn’t like seeing Ari is a Slut painted on the front door of the school. Though, because of it I may have found my first girlfriend since coming to Toronto, Rhonda Pace: the don’t-mess-with-me Westside Story kind of girl, with a boyfriend who owns a car, a father with money, and a dead mother. A year older than everyone else because she travelled in the Far East. An exceptional story if nothing else.

  When the principal walked into class this morning, steel-face pissed, asking, “Does anyone know anything about the slander defacing our school?” Rhonda spoke up.

  It may have been kindness, bravery, or the fact that she needed a smoke and we’d been told we’d all have to sit through recess. “Sharon Wilson did it.” All heads swiveled to Rhonda. Sharon protested innocence with Scarlett O’Hara flare but Rhonda yanked down the velvet drapes. “Don’t believe me. Ask Mrs. King at the variety. She saw, too.” With that, Sharon dissolved into a confessing heap and the wheels of grade eight justice were set in motion.

  Now, on my walk to work, in one side of my head I’m designing a fringed bag with a silver cobra and green bead eyes as a thank you. In the other brain-half, I imagine Mr. West sitting in a leather chair in his apartment by the lake reading my poem and I want to disappear.

  Black June Yellow June

  Before Spring

  He

  forced summer,

  saturating early June

  dark August green.

  Then, disgraceful fall

  turned June

  October red.

  She bled,

  leaves dropping

  like monthly courses.

  Acid winter

  snowed deep on

  the last day of June.

  After Winter,

  it looked like death,

  those long black branches

  of a winter wood.

  But roots dug deep into black earth,

  where she found the sun, weeping yellow leaf,

  giving birth to

  Spring.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The shore ice cracks, shifting into open-mouthed leviathans. Len lifts his eyes from the grey lake to the thread-thin sun. “Quite the week.”

  Nia provides a top-up of coffee. “Aye.”

  I link my arm through Len’s. “I sure get all the lucky breaks.”

  Mary snugs a little closer against the March cold. “Lucky?”

  “You’re here and Nick left for Myrtle Beach before he could see the ambulance haul Mum off.”

  Mum downed all her pills with a whiskey chaser. It seemed a reasonable option after the police called to say that Jillianne had been arrested for break, enter, and assault.

  Nia checks the time. “Len, we should go.”

  I watch their lean frames begin to wade away through the slush. “I don’t want Jillianne to go to prison.”

  “This is serious. She’s going to be prosecuted.” Mary sighs, “Maybe this is what she needs to turn her life around. Sam Lukeman is the best. He’ll help.”

  Where did Jillianne go? Sweet, silent, pleasing Jillianne, broke into a house with her horrible boyfriend Tony. It isn’t so much that she stole, but she also kicked an old lady and put her in the hospital.

  “I want to come home with you.”

  “Your mother is in no state to reason.”

  “But that’s how I got shipped out all the other times.”

  �
��Maybe if Len could get custody we could take you.”

  Jasper pipes up before I can shut him. Len would come, too, right, Ari?

  “It’s enough you’re here right now. Can we go break Grandma out of Sunny Crest? You should hear her roommate, Gladys, reliving her bingo days. I swear, twenty-four seven it’s B-6, O-74, N-37, G-52. It’s enough to drive me squirrelly.”

  Grandma has a four-day vacation from hell. Sometimes she knows us, sometimes she doesn’t, but she has a smile on her face and her purse in her hand.

  Lucky for Jillianne, Officer Irwin kept previous troubles off the books. Tony is going to the big house but Nia’s friend Mr. Lukeman holds some hope for Jillianne. He sits at the table downing Babcia’s baking. “She’ll be tried as a juvenile. Given it’s a first offence I’m confident we can negotiate treatment, probation, and restitution. But she’s going to have to deliver a no-bullshit promise to straighten out.”

  Auntie Mary asks, “Can I talk to her?”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  “Me, too?”

  “You’re too young, Ari. But Jacquie, I think it would really help if you saw her. And Mr. Zajac, she’s convinced you hate her but if—”

  “I’ll be there. Whatever she needs.”

  Mr. Lukeman is keeping his expenses to bare bones but Len still forked over seven hundred dollars.

  “Will you smuggle in a letter from me? In a cake or something?”

  “How about we try it in a chocolate bar.”

  Miss Standish has a sunburn and passes out oranges to the class. “What did you do on March break, Ari?”

  Sister arrested. Mum netted and hauled. Covert Aunt visit. Sprung a granny from hell. Changed diapers on a new bum and a very old bum. Made a hundred and fifty bucks tossing shirts at the Riverboat . . . “Nothing.”

  “Ari Appleton, you’re never up to nothing.”

  “I learned a new batik technique.”