Rabbit Ears (2 page)

“Where are you going?” Justin asks more than once.

“You don’t have to come,” you reply.

You wrung out your annoying quantities of hair before you put on your sweater, but it still sends a river down your back. Your dress clings to your skin. The beach goes on forever. This afternoon the guys with the tokes were at the far end. That’s where they should be now, but it’s hard to tell who’s who in the dark. You don’t want to walk up and peer right into faces.

“Hey, babe,” a voice shouts from one of the fires, “come have a beer.”

“No, thanks,” you call back, and walk on.

As you approach another fire, a figure turns, looks for a moment and stumbles toward the water. “Hey, babe,” he says as he falls into lumbering step beside you.

What is it with these guys? Is that the only phrase they know? Fear thickens your limbs, dulls the prickles.

The guy stops dead, half blocking your path. “You’re wet,” he slurs.

“Yeah,” you say. “And I’m with him.” You grab Justin’s arm and pull him to your side. He looks at you in surprise.

As soon as you’ve put those guys behind you, you drop Justin’s arm and pick up your pace.

“We’re, uh … we’re going to head back,” he says when the cliffs at the north end of the beach loom close. The other guy, the gruff one, does not meet your eyes before they turn.

Well, at least you’re rid of them.

Feet back on dry sand, you look up the beach toward the last in the long line of fires. It lights a wooden shelter, massive and intricate—a shelter you recognize. You sat there this afternoon, talking to a bunch of hippies while your bikini dried. The sight of the familiar driftwood construction lit by an enormous blaze sends that wild, free feeling through you again, much stronger now. Your whole body tingles.

You walk closer. “Adam?” you call.

A man steps away from the group, backlit by the fire, frontlit by the moon.

“You’re wet,” he says.

“I went for a swim.”

“Hey, guys,” he calls over his shoulder, “uh …”

“Kaya,” you say.

“Kaya is back.”

Another guy jumps up and offers you a spot on a log near the fire. Adam puts a beer into your hand and a girl with dreadlocks passes you a fat joint. You take a swig and a toke and hold out your legs toward the flames. Energy courses around the fire, bottles clank and a log collapses, sending a whoosh of flames and sparks into the dark. You breathe the smell of woodsmoke and soak in the warmth. Your face and your shoulders relax.

Adam sits down beside you and puts his hand on your knee. He lives on the big island and comes over here as much as he can in the summer. He doesn’t really work or go to school; he was a bit vague this afternoon on what he actually does, but so were you. He’s tall and slim but not skinny. His skin is so smooth and kind of gleaming that in the heat of the afternoon, you wanted to run your finger down the centre
of his bare chest. He’s clean-shaven and his thick, dark hair is pulled back into a stubby ponytail.

“You came a long way to find us tonight,” he says, “all by yourself.”

You let your shoulder rise and fall against his. “I was bored at home,” you say.

Beth

A gasp wakes me, followed by a single word—“Beth?”—and a soft bark shushed.

I sit up, confused, and stare into the black. I smell woodsmoke.

“What are you doing in my bed?” Kaya says.

“What were you doing
out
of it?” I hiss. I’m in Kaya’s bed, that’s where I am.

“It’s none of your business,” Kaya says. “Get out of here.”

Not so fast, I think, as I reach out and flip on the lamp. It takes her only a second to flip it off again, but a second is long enough. Her hair hangs in heavy damp clumps around her face and a big black sooty smear runs up one side of her dress. Her legs and arms are covered in long red scratches. She doesn’t look like someone who was just partying with other kids. Sybilla is weaving back and forth against those marked-up legs, whining with delight.

“You’re hurt,” I say, reaching again for the switch.

Kaya blinks hard at the bright light, closes her eyes and leans against the wall.

“I’m not hurt, Beth. I just need to sleep,” she says.
“Please, can you leave me alone?” Then she surprises me. She straightens and stands by the bed, does a little twirl, tops it with a curtsy. “See? It’s all good. Now. Go. Back. To. Bed.”

And I do. I climb the stairs, collapse on my bed and pull the thin sheet over my head to keep the mosquitoes at bay. I fall asleep quickly in the gentle breeze, relieved that my sister, whatever she may have got into tonight, is tucked away now in her own bed.

Kaya

“How old did you say you were?” Adam asks after a while.

You tilt your head and grin. “Sixteen.” You don’t need to ask him his age. He told you back in the afternoon. He’s nineteen. All grown up.

“And where are you from?”

“Vancouver,” you say, puzzled. He ought to remember that.

“No, I mean where are you really from?”

It takes you a minute to understand what he means. Then you see him looking at your brown skin and you get it. Annoying, but you decide to let it go.

“I was actually born right in Vancouver,” you say. “I was adopted. My family is white.”

“Oh,” he says. He wraps his arm around your shoulder, pulls you close and kisses your forehead. Your body nestles itself against him and he responds, lowering his lips to yours.

“You want to go for a walk?” he says in your ear.

He pulls you to your feet. The two of you start off down the beach.

Dreadlock girl calls after him. “Hey. Where you going?”

“Just a walk,” Adam shouts back.

The tide has receded a bit, and you walk at the water’s edge, stopping now and then to kiss in the moonlight. As if from a distance, you watch yourself standing ankle-deep in the ocean, with a gorgeous guy’s arm hooked around you, his lips soft as whispers, his tongue sleek in your mouth.

This is how it’s supposed to be, you think. This is perfect. You walk with your hand on his bare waist, feeling his muscles flex as he walks, feeling how strong he is.

You are so caught up in your vision that you hardly notice that you’re leaving the beach, walking through the band of trees, coming out on the road. Before you take in that that’s where he’s leading you, he’s unlocking his car.

You don’t even hesitate. You get in, but you watch yourself doing it, nervous anticipation thick in your limbs.

When he gathers you into his arms, your stomach flips right over and electricity shoots straight into your crotch. You tense and squirm away a bit. He sits back and grasps your shoulders.

“Let’s go to my place,” he says, his voice the tenderest thing.

“I … I can’t,” you say. “I have to get home.”

Abruptly, he lets go of you and starts the car, pulls out. “Which way?” he says when he reaches the main road. He follows your instructions and makes the left turn. He doesn’t go far, though, before he turns down a dirt road, pulls over and turns off the car.

“No need to go home this instant,” he says, and kisses you again, with a lot more tongue than before. His hand grasps your breast for a moment, through your dress, and drops to your thigh. It feels heavy now, tentacled, and it starts to crawl up your skirt.

All the electricity is gone. Your body is on lockdown.

You manage a muffled but insistent “no” around his tongue. His hand retreats.

Relief, of a sort, washes through you—until you hear his zipper. Your right arm drifts for the door handle. He pulls his face away from yours and looks down, and you follow his gaze to his crotch. At the sight of his erect penis, you snap your lids shut.

“Come on,” he says, his voice thick. “You don’t want to leave me like this, do you?”

You open your eyes, and he reaches out, works his fingers into your hair and pulls at your head. You push back against his hand and turn your face toward that door.

“Tease,” he says.

That’s it. That’s all he has to say. You let him pull your head down and you do what he wants.

You watch yourself performing the act, and something clicks into place inside you. The romance in the shallows, the moonlit kisses, none of that is you. It never has been.

Anyway, “the act” doesn’t take long at all. He lets go of your head right away and you rear up and stare straight ahead, filled with a kind of tarry darkness, a miserable calm.

“I’ll drive you home now,” he says then, and you turn to look at him. The moonlight is still streaming into the car, flooding him now with cold white light. He reaches for the
keys. You wipe your face with your sleeve. Loathing leaks into that big calm space inside you.

“No,” you say. “I’ll walk.”

You thrust the door open and tumble straight into the ditch, which is full of brambles. Up the other side you go, scrapes and scratches burning, trying to keep your breathing quiet, trying to muster a shred of pride.

He gets out of the car and walks along the ditch. “Hey,” he calls. “Come on. I’m just going to drive you home.”

“I said I’ll walk,” you call back.

“What’s the matter with you?” he shouts. Then, a long silence.

At last he gets back in his car and drives along slowly. Eventually, he’s off the gravel, onto the pavement, and gone. You wait a bit longer in the silent night; then you creep back onto the road and start the long walk home.

Other girls don’t do that, you’re guessing. They don’t take rides with strangers who want to have sex with them. They don’t exchange oral sex for taxi service. Well, you didn’t do that either, you think, as you put one sore foot in front of the other.

As you walk, ignoring blisters and scratches, you think back briefly to the moon shining through the water, reaching its light into the depths to touch you. You don’t deserve that clean beauty, you think.

And with the thought comes a sort of black satisfaction. You are, you really are,
that
girl.

Beth

Mom is turning the fridge inside out, no sign of breakfast, when I come down at eight thirty with my arms full of sheets. She has a big mug of coffee on the go, almost certainly cold. And she’s in a state.

So much to do. Ferry leaves in two hours.

We won’t be catching that one, I think. Mom always sets her sights on the impossible and then is furious when the impossible is just that.

“I’m capable of helping, Mom,” I say as I head for the washing machine in the pantry. It’s already running, so I dump my armload on the floor and head back to the kitchen. “I’m always helping.” I know I sound whiny, but I can’t help it. “Do you think I could have some breakfast first?”

Mom gestures broadly. “Help yourself,” she says.

And I look around at the chaos. Ah, granola. And there’s the milk on the counter.

First few bites consumed. “Kaya’s the one who really should be helping,” I say, tempted, oh so tempted, to tell Mom about my early morning vigil. It was two o’clock when I crept back into bed. Two!

“Shall I go wake her?” I ask, but Mom doesn’t even glance in my direction.

“Kaya’s not much good in the morning,” she says, as if I don’t already know that.

I finish my breakfast and go upstairs to pack my own room, feet banging on the stairs. I shove Kaya’s door open as I pass. A grunt from her tangled bed rewards me. What did happen to her out there? How did she get those scratches?

I don’t care, I tell myself. But not caring is hard work.

I’m quick with my own stuff, and with the broom and dustpan on the wide wooden planks. Bag and broom thump down the stairs behind me. Back to Kaya’s door.

She sits up as I walk in. Sybilla is up on the bed with her, her huge collie bulk nestled against Kaya’s legs. Kaya isn’t supposed to let her up there, but she does, every night, and Mom knows it. How did it happen that that dog became all Kaya’s anyway?

“Leave me alone,” Kaya says. “I’m up.”

“What happened to you last night?” I say. It’s a direct question, and my mouth stays open, lips pulled back on the
t
, surprised at itself.

Her eyes meet mine for an instant. “Nothing happened. I went out. I came back. And found you where you shouldn’t have been.”

I look at her, hair knotted, skin grey instead of brown, eyes squinting. Unlike me, Kaya is a beauty, but you’d never know it to look at her now.

“I was worried,” I say. Or whisper.

That beaten-down face fixes itself into a sneer. “What?” she says.

I back down, as usual. “Nothing,” I say. “Just get ready. Mom wants to catch the noon boat off the island.”

Kaya glances at her wrist and shrugs. “Mom always wants things she can’t get,” she says.

I leave then, anger and shame battling each other deep in my belly, and turn my attention to sweeping and scrubbing the bathroom, which is spotless by the time I’m done.

Beth

Back home. September. Kaya’s first day of high school. I keep an eye out. Who’s she going to talk to? Where’s she going to go between classes?

I see her at the start of lunch, her head up and back, that little self-satisfied sneer plastered all over her face, strutting—like, actually strutting—her way out to the breezeway. Ten minutes later, I catch a glimpse of her through a window and she’s all by herself, kind of shrunken up against the wall.

I want to go out there and yell at the other kids, order them to be nice to my sister. Or yell at her,
Smile! Knock that rock off your shoulder. You look like a stuck-up little …
My mind draws back from that word and all words like it. I wander off and leave her on her own.

I can’t believe that my thirteen-year-old sister actually got caught shoplifting. And not something small like a chocolate bar or a sparkly barrette, but jeans. She got caught stealing a pair of jeans. And not when she was out with a pack of girls.
Or on her own, even. She was shopping with Mom. She got caught shoplifting when she was out with
her mother
.

Sometimes I wonder if we know everything that went on with Kaya last year. Grade Seven. The jeans incident was the first bad thing we knew about, but what if there’s more? Sometimes I get this sick feeling, like when Kaya came back all scratched up. I’m pretty sure that we don’t know the half of it.

The trip to Hornby was meant to be the big cure, but I’m kind of afraid that it didn’t do a thing to help. Not one thing. It’s like Kaya is on a quick tumble—down, down, down—not on the
road
to hell, more like one of those “death drop” slides they have at water parks.

The other kids aren’t all that nice to me either. It’s not like I’m one of the ones who gets listened to. Except for Jane and Samantha, that is, or “the bully and the waif,” as I call them in my imaginings. My friends.

I get my lunch out of my locker and finger the change in my pocket, searching for paper. There should be a five-dollar bill left over from Saturday. Jane and Samantha will be waiting at the end of the next hall, in our lunch spot. It’s the first day of school, and we’ve barely had a chance to talk to each other all morning. Jane will want to know all about how it went on Hornby with the delinquent. Samantha will be sweetly soothing. My fingers find the bill, clutch it, and I head for the nearest door.

My jeans are pinching at my waist. I know that rolls show through my shirt, even though I picked my loosest one this morning. But I can feel my teeth sinking through chewy candy—Fuzzy Peach, I’m thinking—the burst of sweet
and sour together and the soothing lumps of gelatin sliding down my throat. I don’t need my weird friends and their fake sympathy right now. I need the real thing, and it comes in a package from the corner store just down the street.

Kaya

You’re standing there outside, all hunched over, when you see Michelle for the first time. She’s coming round the corner into the open, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket, even though you’re not allowed to smoke out here. Her hair is long, black and as bone-straight as yours is curly. Her body is kind of thick, her shoulders curved forward, but in an “I’m ready to mow you down” kind of a way.

She’s standing there, alone, not looking at anyone, when the girls come up to you in a little cluster. Three of them. Probably Grade Nine, but you really have no idea.

“What’s your name?” one of them, tall, pale, big teeth, says.

“Kaya.”

“Hey, Kaya.” Slightly too much emphasis on the first syllable. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

You nod, just barely, nervous now.

“Let’s go for a walk. We’ll show you around.”

No one ever approached you at school all the way through Grade Seven, and here in Grade Eight it’s happening on your first day. Maybe kids are friendlier here. You look at the other two girls. Neither is especially pretty. One is tallish, thin and white, in a skirt and knee socks; the other is average height,
thicker, Asian maybe, in jeans. All three look like they got new outfits for back-to-school.

“Come on,” the toothy girl says. “It’s so pretty!”

Toothy girl leads the four of you around the corner of the building you were leaning against, away from the entrance. And there are the woods; a reddish brown trail meanders off into the shadows. It
is
pretty. A girl on either side of you, you walk into the trees.

Then, “Ugly bitch.” The words are hissed and come with a shove. You hit the ground hard, and scrabble off the path instinctively, even before your mind catches up with what is happening.

They stand over you, poking at you with their feet, blocking any escape, pelting you with words. “You were standing in our spot, back there,” the jeaned girl says. “We don’t let dirty Blacks like you in our space.”

You shrink into a ball, arms around your head. Your inside self just curls up on the ground, gives in instantly. Shame curdles your blood.

And then the whole group flies apart. The words
whirling dervish
spring into your mind as you raise your head to see the cement-faced, cigarette-wielding girl crashing right into the bunch of you, shouting, “Leave her alone!”

There’s something about her attitude, something about her fury, that stops those girls instantly. They wander off grumbling, with only a few angry glances and weak parting shots.

She stands over you for a moment before she holds out a hand to help you up. “I’m Michelle,” she says, leaning against a tree and taking a drag of her cigarette, which has survived her attack on the girls.

And that’s how you and Michelle get to be friends, sort of. She’s mostly silent, a loner, but she tolerates your company, you tolerate hers, and as long as the two of you are together, those girls don’t bother either of you, and neither does anybody else. You attend classes sometimes. Sometimes you don’t. Michelle is away sometimes. And sometimes she’s there.

One Monday at the end of September.

“What would you like for breakfast, honey?” Mom says. “Quick, quick, else you’ll be late for school.”

She hasn’t crashed yet, just home from twelve straight hours at the hospital. There’s food in the house and the dishes are washed for a change. It’s been kind of depressing at home since Hornby. Mom hates night shift.

“You know I don’t eat breakfast,” you say. “And I’m always on time for school.”

Beth looks up from her massive bowl of granola—everyone knows you’re only supposed to eat a little bit of that stuff. “Liar,” she says.

Your gut clenches. If you eat, you’ll throw up on the spot.

“I’m not a liar,” you scream at them both. “I am not!” And you’re running for the door, and Mom is running after you.

This doesn’t make any sense, you think as you run. Not to them. Not even to you. And you keep right on running.

Mom follows you all the way out onto the sidewalk, so
you turn and scream again. “Can’t you see I’m going? I’m going to school like you want me to. Leave me alone!” You’re screaming so loud it might make your throat bleed. You wish it would. You’d love to spit great gobs of blood onto the pavement right about now.

Mom turns and heads back into the house. Her slumped shoulders send a river of pain through you, but you grit your teeth and flush it away. You’re going to school. That’s what she wanted. Right?

Please, please, please let Michelle be there today.

And she is. You find her out in the breezeway, just minutes to go before the first bell. The two of you head into the woods.

“Can I bum a cigarette?” you say. The first cigarette of your life.

She looks at you, slight puzzlement wrinkling that cement brow of hers. “What’s up?” she says.

“My family’s shit,” you say.

The wrinkles smooth. Almost. And she hands you a cigarette, lights it for you.

You pull the smoke into your body, fill yourself up with it, hack, cough, blow out, and marvel at the smooth cloud of smoke that flows from your lungs. Wow!

Michelle smiles a small smile.

“Let’s take off for the day,” you say, hoping your voice sounds eager instead of desperate. “Right now. Let’s go downtown!”

That first afternoon, you take the bus to Granville, which is hopping. Half a dozen kids are strung out along the wall of a movie theatre, cap set out on top of a cardboard sign,
collecting coins while they talk among themselves, pretty much ignoring the passersby. One has a collared cat on her shoulder, a bit of string standing in for a leash, but it’s the dog that draws you in.

He’s a mutt, scruffy, with a long nose and ears that neither stand up nor flop over. His tail is skinny and wags like anything when you hunker down beside him. With your fingers buried in his fur, it’s easy to let Michelle introduce you, to smile, and slowly, slowly, to enter into the chatter.

You are home in time for supper (such as it is).

Another time, you say you are staying over at Michelle’s and the two of you go downtown together at night. You sneak into her basement room late, late, still fizzing with excitement, giggling when you trip over something in the dark.

Then Michelle goes off on her own one day and doesn’t come back for a week. Her parents call, but you don’t tell them anything. You have nothing to tell. You look for her yourself along Granville, but no one’s seen her in days.

At last she shows up at school one afternoon, but she’s gone kind of glassy and weird.

“Where were you?” you say. “I went looking.”

Her eyes skim past yours. “Nowhere,” she says. And the next day she’s gone again. This time you don’t go looking. You have no idea where to look.

Eventually you go downtown on your own, just to be there, not to look for Michelle.

You can’t find the kids. It’s probably too early. So you wander along Granville, feeling your “real” life on the other side of town loosen its grip bit by bit, finger by finger, till it can be whisked away by the breeze, burnt off by the sunshine, cancelled out by all the strangers’ lives, each dark untold story.

Farther down the street, people are setting up their stalls, jewellery mostly, and along the walls of the big white department store, Eaton’s, the ones who don’t have stalls are laying out their stuff on blankets on the ground. Only one is all set up already, and there you stop. You stand and watch for a bit without drawing attention to yourself. The woman is thin, hair braided back and wound round with stones. Her jeans are worn, her sandals ancient, her collarbone jagged. She’s wearing one three-stoned pendant and several chunky rings.

You turn your attention from her to her work. She uses a sheet of burlap wrapped around a board and laid on the ground as backing. Pinned to it are dozens of earrings, bracelets and necklaces, all made with heavy string and semi-precious stones.

Beth would love this, you think, but the truth is, you love it yourself.

A year ago, you would have been planning how to get a pair of earrings into your pocket without her noticing, but the jeans incident seems to have cured you of shoplifting. Besides, you have a philosophy: stealing from corporations is one thing; stealing from battered-up people on the street is another.

You wander back down Granville, hoping that the kid with the scruffy mutt will be there. Or maybe Michelle. You’ve been trying not to think about her, but it’s hard. You don’t find the kid, or the mutt, or Michelle, but you end up toking up in a back alley with the girl with the cat. After that, you head home.

On the bus, you pull a crumpled wad of paper and a stubby pencil from your purse, sketch the girl with the cat on her shoulder and put down a few words about what that cat might see from up there. You look around at one point and see a man smiling at you from across the way. Whatever expression you had on your face while you were writing drops away. You toss the man your best scowl and shove paper and pencil out of sight.

It’s November, wet and cold, and dark by five o’clock. And the “buy, buy, buy” of Christmas is taking over the city streets with its bundled-up throngs and a lot of damp sparkle.

The cold can’t stop you. You go back twice more, skipping school, looking for Michelle. When you do go to school, you can hardly stand it for a minute. At home, you bite Mom’s and Beth’s heads off, crunch their bones between your teeth.

Michelle stays away.

Then, one day in early December, you are standing at your locker after lunch gearing up for math, when someone taps you on the shoulder. You jump, turn and freeze.

It’s Diana.

Diana
at school
.

You’re not sure what you do on the outside, but inside everything contracts. To give Diana credit, she looks scared. Petrified. Like a rabbit confronted with a weasel. But she is here. At your school. Looking you in the eye. And she has
touched
you.

“I just switched schools,” she says, as if she thinks you might want to exchange words, you might want an explanation.

And how could she do that? How could she walk right into your school and make herself at home here? You stand, almost teetering. She is the weasel, not you. She is the weasel.

Except instead of sinking her teeth into your throat, she sucks memories up out of the mire.

You want to slap her or vomit. You feel your face contort and watch her recoil. How can she possibly expect anything else? What does she want? The questions tumble about in your head, but the answers don’t matter. Escape does.

You click your locker shut, grit your teeth and push past her. “I’ve got class,” you say. As you walk away, you shove the memories back down until the sludge slops over them, and they’re gone. For now.

As you pass, you hear her draw breath to reply, but you get straight onto the next bus downtown. In your mind, that’s the first time that counts as running away.

You’re furious when they find you. Track you down like a common criminal.

You’re just hanging out on the street with the cat girl and a bunch of other kids.

And sure, you might be passing around a bit of pot. But nothing else. Nothing else at all.

Then, right in front of you, there’s Mom. “Kaya?” she says, as if you can’t possibly be her precious daughter.