Skylark (3 page)

He would forget I was up there too. That's how strong he is. Once, he walked under a rose arbor while I was on his shoulders. My face got cut up from the thorns. He knelt by me saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” And, “stupid Daddy, stupid daydreaming Daddy.” He tore a sleeve off his T-shirt, ran it under a tap and wiped my face so carefully.

Dad got his big shoulders from lifting rock and brick. One of his last jobs in Victoria was laying a path at a friend's house. I visited him there on my way home from school. Dad wasn't in the front, so I followed the path around to the back. The bricks zigzagged, spraying outward and then retreating inward. The path swirled and scrolled in on itself. It swooped this way and that as the bricks wound and unwound, then suddenly crisscrossed and tightened into a Celtic knot. It was magical.

I stood at the very center of the knot. The sun shone on me, piercing the chill of the afternoon. Sometimes, I wish that I had never left that spot.

But I did. Dad was in the backyard, crouching, which isn't unusual for a bricklayer. His head was lowered, and he was shaking. I didn't understand at first. Not until I heard him breathe in, making a sound like a backward laugh. A sob.

“Dad?” I asked, stepping closer.

Dad wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “Hi, honey. Just allergies.”

“Allergies?”

“Yeah.”

His voice was hoarse, raspy. He cleared his throat. He looked at me and smiled, then shoved a brick into the sand. It was the path's last brick. The path was finished. Dad stood, put his hands on his hips and stretched.

“That's that,” he said. “Want a ride home?”

He was all pale, powdered with brick dust. There were lines through the dust beneath his eyes—tear tracks. Dad loaded his tools into his wheelbarrow. “Hop in,” he said. He wheeled me—a trowel sticking into my back—to the road where he'd parked his friend's truck. He'd recently sold our own truck to raise money for food.

As we drove, I played the same question over and over in my head.
Dad,
why were you crying?

At a red light, Dad looked over at me and answered it. “Honey,” he said. “You know that your mom and I are going through a tough time. I'm not making enough money.”

“I know. I
know
.” I wanted him to stop talking. He and Mom had been fighting lately. They had never fought much before—in fact, it was normal to find them hugging in the kitchen or holding hands on the couch and talking. With all the fighting, Clem and I had started going to the BMX track more often or holing up in the closet in his bedroom and playing Skip-Bo. It was hard to tell red from purple in the dark.

“I'm going away, sweetheart,” Dad said.

“No.”

“Just for a while. A friend in Ontario has work for me.”

“
No.
”

“Not for long, honey.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Is that why you were crying?”

“I don't want to leave you, sweetheart.”

“But you
are
leaving me.”

“For work. Only for work.”

After supper, Dad and Clem went for a walk. When they came back, Clem's eyes were red and he went straight to his room, slamming the door behind him. Mom did not move. She stayed in the armchair by the big window overlooking the harbor. As she looked out, rain began to splash against the window. The raindrops rolled down the window, leaving wobbling paths. Mom took a deep breath.

Dad busied himself in the kitchen, whistling loudly. Next morning, he was gone. I could tell as soon as I woke up. The apartment felt like it had too much air. Empty air. On the breakfast table, Dad had left two envelopes, one with Clem's name, the other with mine. Inside my envelope was a goodbye note and fifty dollars. Clem got fifty too, and a note, but he's never shown it to me. I haven't shown him mine either. I feel like I'd ruin its spell if I showed it to anyone else. Spell? The love. Four months later, I still can't read it without crying. But I do. When I get a moment alone in the car, which isn't often, I pull the letter out and read its misspelled words.

     
Angela My Angel,

     
Do not worry about me Kid-o. I love
you in my heart every second of every
minute. Be good to your Mum.

     
See you online, right?

     
Your the best daughter a father could
wish for. I love you.

     
Your dad.

I read the letter over and over, looking for words that say he will be back. But no matter how many times I read it, I never find them.

Pity

My heart drops every time I think about tonight's slam. I can't concentrate in class. I keep running my words through my mind, repeating them over and over. Then, before I know it, Mom's driving Clem and me to the Spiral Café. Clem's not happy about it.

“Everyone's pretentious! Precious! Puffed up. Preening,” he complains.

“No, they aren't.” I laugh. “They're profound! Poetic. Perceptive. Powerful.”

“They
piss
me off.”

“Well, they ins
pire
me.”

“You lose.”

“Whatever.”

“Clem, keep your sister company. Remember, she spent Saturday afternoon at a bike park in Langford for
your
sake.”

“Yeah,” I say. “In the
rain.
And you didn't even win.”

I mean to tease Clem, but he looks wounded.

“I was tired,” he begs.

“I'm sorry—”

“My legs were stiff.”

We go silent. Mom looks ten years older than she did a minute ago. Her mouth is tight, and she clenches the steering wheel. Even her skin looks dull. It's the wear of worry—and guilt.

Because, of course, Clem
is
tired and stiff. What kind of champion sleeps with his knees bent and the soles of his feet pressed against the cold vinyl of a car door? Clem's height is the saddest thing about living in the Skylark. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he'll get out of the car just to stretch. Mom wouldn't let him for the longest time, saying it would draw too much attention. But finally she relented after Clem practically cried, his legs hurt so much. His whole body was hurting, even his underarms, he said. Sometimes, as we're falling asleep, he rolls his window down and sticks his legs out and wiggles his pale toes in the inky night.

When we pull up to the Spiral Café, Mom reaches into her purse and hands us a five.

“See you in two hours,” she says. She has a cleaning job to get to. I hate it when she cleans. I'm afraid she'll hurt herself again.

We've learned to open and close the car doors quickly, so people don't see all the stuff inside. “Going camping?” people have asked. Or, “Moving day?” I'm worried that if people figure it out, they'll call social services and Clem and I will be put in a foster home. Mom says this won't happen—“The police left us alone, remember?” But I've heard stories about kids being taken from their parents just because there isn't a table in the house and the kids eat sitting on the floor. Anyway, it's cozy in the Skylark. The heater works fine. Mostly, we shut the door fast because we don't want the cold getting in.

The sidewalk is dark and empty. But the café is bright, thrumming with the people inside talking and laughing. On any other night, it would be comforting, but tonight my heart drops. It drops and drops, like a penny falling from the top of the Empire State Building, burning against the air. Like a bird, wings tucked in, bombing the surface of the water for a fish. A fish that it will miss.

“I'm nervous,” I tell Clem.

“What about?”

I haven't told him about my poem. I didn't tell Mom either. I don't want to be cheered on. I just want to do it.

“I'm nervous too,” Clem says.

“What are
you
nervous about?”

A clump of girls with pink hair and lip rings push past, laughing over an umbrella that won't close.

“Not really my crowd,” Clem says, offering a quick, apologetic quarter-smile that I've seen cross Dad's face lots of times. “I don't belong in artsy-fartsy places.”

I check him over. He's wearing skater gear from head to toe.

“You should have won that bike race,” I say. “You're a phenom on the track.”

“Whatever.” He shrugs, then mumbles, “I need a coach.”

“When we get that swimming pool.”

It's our joke. It's as close as we come to saying,
Where the hell are we?
Why are we living in a
car
? Without
Dad?
The unspoken theory is this, if we can afford to see our lives inside a joke, then we'll be okay. We'll have a future.

A big guy wearing a bandanna and eyeliner, his sideburns trimmed into spirals, is collecting the entry fee. His T-shirt has a picture of a banana inside a circle.
Bananarchy
, it says.

“Three dollars,” the guy tells us.

My mouth goes dry. Clem shoots me a troubled look.

“Each of us?” I ask.

“Unless you're performing.”

“I'm performing,” I say.

“Then it's free.”

Clem elbows me. He's smirking, but his eyes are wide.
How are you going to
get out of this lie?

I just smile back. The big guy gives me a clipboard. My hand trembles as I add my name to the list. I think of my dream—our family name climbing that list for public housing. But here, it's not Kilpatrick. It's just me, Angie.

“Great, we've got two dollars for a night of fun,” Clem hisses as we find a table at the back. “And how are you going to get your name off that list?”

“I'm not. I'm performing.”

“No way.”

“Wait and watch,” I say. “And clap when I'm done.”

Clem rolls his eyes. “I don't believe you.”

“I'll just have water,” I say.

“We could share a tea,” Clem says, scanning the menu. “Wait, here's something…I'll be right back.”

Clem heads to the counter to order. His jeans are baggy, and his band T-shirt—something overblown from Walmart—hangs from his shoulders in a way that makes me hurt. It's as if it's hanging from a hanger. Clem has gotten bony. Maybe he's going through a growth spurt. Stretching out.

I rehearse my piece in my head for the hundred-thousandth time. Last week, only one performer read from the page. The rest had their stories in their brains—whole paragraphs, whole pages. A few times, people got stuck. They forgot their words. They'd look up at the ceiling, then at the audience, and smile sheepishly. After ten seconds or so, the people in the audience would start snapping their fingers. It was a way to offer support—they were holding the beat of the piece. It's neat to hear a dozen people snapping their fingers. It's warm and low, like rocks knocking under the waves at the beach. Or maybe it's the sound moths make to themselves when they bat their furry little wings. The finger snapping really seemed to help—the performers came around. They'd break into smiles and raise a finger—
Right, got it!
—and they'd dive back in. The snapping would fade away.

If I forget my words, I don't think I'll find my way again. It took me three days to write my poem or whatever it is. The next three days, I recited it over and over, fixing little mistakes here and there, cutting a word or choosing a better one. I was mostly laying the track though, burning it into my brain so it wouldn't fall apart while I slept. I wanted to get to a point where the words were all mine, forgettable as my own fingers, forgettable as my tongue, so I could then
perform
them—bend them, whisper or shout them without getting muddled.

I didn't imagine that I'd be feeling this fevered with nerves. I'll have to take my cheat sheet up to the stage with me after all. I wish Clem would hurry back. I need him to hide me a little. Twig Girl approaches the mic. The café goes quiet.

“Good evening,” Twig says. “A full house. New names on the sign-up list too. We're trending, I guess. Going viral. Contagion of the spoken word. And there ain't no vaccination. No shot, no potion, no pill, no serum. No cure. You'll be stained, you'll be spoiled. You'll also be cleansed, mended, glorified, even blessed. Yes! You will be freed.”

Twig smiles mischievously. She dips her head, and the crowd applauds. The first performer is an older guy in his twenties with a goatee. I don't hate a lot of things, but goatees look like pubic hair. Pubic hair on a person's face is not a good thing.

“Remember these?”

Clem's finally back. He's carrying two little cups of hot chocolate.

“Kid size. A dollar each. You don't have to be a kid to order them.”

Clem doesn't seem embarrassed at all. But then he raises an eyebrow at me, quick and light, and his smile turns sad. I know what he's saying. He's asking me,
Is this going to end? How long can
we live on kid-size hot chocolate?

I force a smile. Force it into my eyes.
We'll be fine.

Goatee Man's performance piece is more a story than a poem. It's about a rat that chews through the walls of the White House and becomes Barack Obama's pet. At night, when everyone in the White House is asleep, the rat climbs up to Obama's pillow and gives him pro-rat advice like “Make farmers plant more corn” and “Rats aren't to blame for the bubonic plague—change the history books” and “Make rat catchers pay higher taxes.” It's pretty funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but people chuckle and Goatee Man gets a good round of applause.

The next reader is old, with a white beard and glasses. He hasn't memorized his piece and fidgets with his pages, losing his place a bunch of times. It's about how family is important and how you've got to hold them close. But he just blurts it out. Even though it's an important idea, the way he tells it is boring. It's like a lecture, a big message that everyone got ages ago. As the old guy reads, Clem slides down in his chair. That's my cue. I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the chocolate bar I bought this morning with some of the money Dad left. Snickers, Clem's favorite. Clem sits up.