Almost Eden (12 page)

D
ad gave Tommy away.

I didn’t find out even until this morning, after Tommy had been gone four days already. I might not have found out at all except I told Dad I wasn’t going to paint that morning so I could look for Tommy instead.

Dad looked confused. “I told you already, you don’t need to worry about that old tom anymore. He’s living the high life with a farmer north of town.”

Only he hadn’t told us already. Four days, and this was the first he’d said about it. He’d forgot. It wasn’t like he was trying to keep it a secret or anything. He’d just forgot.

Honest to God, I think he was surprised when Lena started to cry.

“
Nah meyahles
, simmer down. There’s no reason to get yourselves all worked up over it. Tommy’s better off in a
barn with other cats. There are plenty of mice to chase. It’s warm in the winter.”

My whole body was shaking, I was so mad. I couldn’t speak, I was so mad.

“Jumping Jehoshaphat! Would someone please tell me what all the fuss is about?” Dad said. “Most days you can’t even remember to feed it!”

“His name is Tommy!” I said. Lena crawled under the table to cry her eyes out.

“It’s not like I took it out and shot it. I was doing the damn cat a favor, giving it to Nickel Enns.” Dad shook his head. “I’m going to work.”

Figures, I thought. The kitchen was pretty quiet after he left. Beth handed Lena a bowl of cereal and let her eat it under the table.

“Dad’s right,
schnigglefritz
” she said. “Tommy’s better off on a farm. He was filthy and probably full of fleas and worms and who knows what else?”

“As if.” I gave her a withering glare as I shoved my chair back from the table. “You knew. You’re just as much to blame.”

“
Vite dee!
” she snapped. She had to be pretty pissed off to talk Plautdietsch. “I’ve had it to here with your lousy attitude. You’re the one who couldn’t be bothered to put out a bowl of milk half the time.”

I stomped outside. I went into the garden and there were no ripe tomatoes yet but I yanked a green tomato off and threw it as hard as I could against a hydro pole.
And all the time I was swearing under my breath, calling Dad every dirty name I could think of in both English and Plautdietsch.

The worst thing was, Dad and Beth were right. I’d done a lousy job of looking out for Tommy and now he was gone and it was mostly my fault. What would Mom say when she got home? It wasn’t enough that I’d got her all upset in the first place so she had to go to Eden, now I’d messed up the one thing she’d asked me to do yet.

I tried painting for awhile, even though it was going to be too devilish hot again to paint for long and my heart really wasn’t in it.

So I painted Tommy’s name over and over again with the creamy siding paint, smoothing it over each time before moving on to the next board. Every time I smoothed it out it hurt, like he was gone all over again.

Lena came outside and hung around, watching me. I could feel her eyes on my back while I painted, which bugged me and made me want to turn around and slap her.

“Can I do that, too?” she whined.

“No. You’re too little.”

“Please? I want to paint Tommy’s name, too.”

“Go play next door.”

“No one’s home. Pretty please? With sugar on it?”

I gritted my teeth. “I said no. Why don’t you just get lost once?”

“I hate you.”

“I don’t give a care.”

She threw something at me, a clump of dirt from the garden. She missed by a mile, but the dirt hit the siding that I’d just finished painting.

“Now look what you’ve done!” I pounced, grabbing her shirt before she could escape. “Clean it up.”

“Make me.”

That did it. I wrestled her to the ground and sat on her, pinning her arms with my knees. I didn’t plan to hurt her or anything. There was a better way to teach her a lesson. “Just remember, you asked for it.”

Flicking my middle finger against my thumb, I
knippsed
her nose, like I was playing
knippsbrat
only hitting her nose instead of a disc. Not hard. Just enough to sting a bit. Just enough to drive her crazy.
Knippse, knippse, knippse.

She shook her head from side to side, but then I just squeezed my knees against her head so she couldn’t move.

“Let go!” she screamed.

Knippse, knippse, knippse.

“
Pppleaase
” she started to sob. “I’ll clean it up already.”

Knippse, knippse, knippse.
Only I was more gentle now, because I was starting to feel sorry for her. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

I let her go, keeping a good grip on one arm in case she tried to run away. But she took the rag I gave her and started to wipe off the mess on the siding, still sniffling.

“You missed a spot,” I pointed with my paintbrush.

Lena turned her head to see where I was pointing and
my paintbrush dabbed the tip of her nose. It was an accident, but I half-expected her to throw a spaz anyways. Instead she started to laugh. “That tickled. Do it again.”

Why not? I dabbed polka dots on both her cheeks. Then I painted a triangle on her forehead and two lines across her chin.

“Do more!” she squealed. “Let me do you!”

In no time we’d decorated our faces, arms, and legs with polka dots, stripes, and anything else we could think of, laughing ourselves silly the whole time.

When Beth came outside to see what was going on, we were sitting on the grass painting our toenails and laughing ourselves nearly dead.

That was the end of that.

While we were cleaning up, Lena out of the blue said, “I know what we could do.”

She had a paint smudge still across one cheek. I found a clean spot on the rag and scrubbed it off for her. “What’s that?”

“We could go get Tommy back.” She was dead serious.

“We don’t know where the farm is,” I reminded her.

She looked so terrible sad I couldn’t bear it. “It would be a good idea though,” I added, “if we knew.”

Lena tried to smile. “Yeah.”

Really, for a little sister, half the time she wasn’t so bad.

First thing when we got to the pool, Lena dragged me out of the change room. “You have to watch if I can swim my widths,” she said. “You have been practicing lots.”

“All right already. I’m coming.” Anyways, I wasn’t in any hurry to watch Sadie and Aaron make goo-goo eyes at each other all afternoon. And Lena was all excited.

“Today I’m going to make it all the way,” she announced. “You watch.”

“Better hurry up before it gets too crowded.”

Lena jumped in and swam beside the rope between the shallow end and the deep end. Her behind wiggled like a little fish. Not exactly a smooth swimmer, but she got the job done. The lifeguard was standing close by, which gave me an idea. I went over and asked if he would watch my little sister.

See, to get into the deep end and use the diving boards, you first had to show a lifeguard that you could swim across the pool four times without stopping or anything.

Lena swam four widths no problem. When the lifeguard told her she could go in the deep end, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. First thing she wanted to do was jump off the high diving board.

The lineup was long. Half the kids in town were in the water. On a scorcher like today the pool was the only place to go.

When it was her turn, Lena walked to the end of the board and looked down. Big mistake. She just stood there like a duck on a stump, not knowing which way to turn. I
hoped she was going to be okay because the worst thing was if a person got up there and then lost their nerve, and had to make everyone else in line back off the ladder so they could come down. I didn’t want that to happen to my sister.

“Go ahead.” I hung onto the top of the ladder behind her. The kids farther down were starting to make noises. “You can do it.”

And she did, too. She didn’t hold her nose even like some kids do. I watched to make sure she was all right before I jumped, but she swam to the side, hauled herself out of the pool, and was back in line before I came up for air.

The lineup was longer than before, all the way around the board and along the edge of the pool, but it never made a diff to Lena. She couldn’t wipe the grin off her face.

“This time I’m going to run and jump,” she said.

“Do it.” I spotted my friends playing keep away–guys against girls. Of course, every time Aaron had the ball, Sadie was all over him. And vice versa. Even though I was trying to forget about him and be happy for Sadie, it still hurt to watch. So I turned away–and stepped right on Mark Giesbrecht’s foot. He was standing there behind me, grinning like an idiot.

“What’re you doing here?” I blurted. I was too surprised to hide the fact I wasn’t happy to see him.

Mark’s grin disappeared. He even looked a little hurt maybe. “It’s a free country, last time I looked.”

Like always with Mark, I wished I had a good comeback handy. Like always, I didn’t.

“Shouldn’t you be out in a beet field somewhere?” I couldn’t help but notice how tanned he was and how great his hair looked, all bleached by the sun.

“We finished a field this morning. It was so hot they sent us home early.”

“Everyone’s over there,” I pointed. Hint, hint.

“I know. I want to go off the board first.” Mark dipped a toe in the water. “Anyways, how come you’re not playing?”

The line hadn’t even reached the ladder yet. We shuffled forward slowly along the edge of the pool.

“It’s my sister’s first time in the deep end.” I nodded at Lena, glad to have an excuse handy.

“Way to go,” Mark congratulated her.

Lena grinned. “It was a cinch.”

“Hey,” Mark said, turning to me. “Is your mom home already from the hospital?”

Talk about out of left field. Just when I was thinking Mark maybe wasn’t so bad, that
glommskopp
started talking about how his mom had gone to the hospital to visit my mom because she was on the sick list at church. Only he said his mom had come home again right away because my mom wasn’t there.

“So is she in the hospital or what?”

Lena opened her mouth. She was going to tell Mark our life story right there if I didn’t stop her. I poked her in the ribs with my elbow.

“What was that for?” she whined.

I hissed at her to shut up before turning to answer Mark. “Yeah,” I said, “she’s in the hospital.”

“What’s wrong with her? How come my mom couldn’t find her room?”

“She’s–” What was I supposed to say? She’s not in the regular hospital? She’s in the loony bin? “She’s fine. Let’s not talk about it right now.”

“She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned my back on him. Only Mark Giesbrecht must be missing a few leaves off his tree because he still wouldn’t leave it alone.

“Hey, suit yourself. I was just asking because my mom wanted to visit and–”

“She’s not in the hospital hospital,” Lena butted in, totally ignoring my angry glare. “If you want to go see her, you have–”

Before she could finish talking, I shoved her in the pool. Not just a little nudge either. I body checked her a good one. It was the only thing I could think of to shut her up.

Just my luck. There were three kids doing cannonballs off the high board, one after the other–bang, bang, bang–like they do sometimes where the first one goes off to the left, the second one goes straight ahead and the third one goes off to the right. They’re not supposed to do that, but they sometimes do anyways. The first kid almost landed on Lena’s head. Almost.

Uy uy uy.

Mark’s jaw dropped. He was too stunned to even close his mouth. A whistle blasted. The lifeguard was there already before Lena came up for air. She was okay and everything, the lifeguard could see that right away. But she made a big deal of it, making everyone in line move over by the fence and then tearing a strip off me. “Any more of that and you’re out of the pool! Is that clear?”

“Yeah.” I glared at Mark. I glared at Lena. Inside my chest my heart had turned into a rock or something, so hard I couldn’t hardly breathe. Lena looked up at me from the water, her eyes full of hurt feelings. But I couldn’t get a sorry out past the rock in my chest.