Why I Write - An Exercise in Imitation

When asked why I love, no matter what my beloved might be, I am hesitant to say. Since the love lives already as the thing chosen and independent, the reluctant reply is always unsatisfying – repulsive almost. In every case, the language inevitably falls short in its task. Unavoidably, the written word as my beloved, expressed through that very medium, also fails to be wholly revealed. Nonetheless…
I write to be honest. I write to confront myself. I write to simplify my anxieties. I write to honour those I love. I write to remember what is real. I write to dry my tears. I write to release them. I write to reprimand myself. I write to forgive. I write to extend myself beyond my mind. I write to practice vulnerability. I write for my father. I write to challenge. I write to anchor my emotions. I write because I cannot paint. I write toward freedom. I write to discover truth. I write to expose contradictions. I write for the Giver of the gift. I write with a stutter. I write for furrowed brows. I write to raise a voice in the silence. I write to ask so many questions. I write because I am weak. I write away from my ambivalence. I write to learn commitment. I write what I know I should say. I write so as not to forget my mistakes. I write to retain perspective. I write to amend my priorities. I write from a weary spirit. I write to have my cup overflow.
I write for the one who inspired those first words for the second time.
I write to someday be the complete half of a complete whole.
I write from beauty to strength.

Nineteen

Nineteen by Kristen Liesch

One hand on the wheel, eyes closed, shouldn’t be closed, but the sunshine weighs on my lashes. My other hand drums a beat as it hangs out my window. It’s cold enough to turn my fingernail blue, and cold enough to chill my toes and set my leg-hairs all a-prickle but there’s the sunshine. Hello sunshine. And they said on the radio that we’re expecting nineteen for the high tomorrow. I open my eyes wide and just in time to brake too hard and say nineteen out loud enough for the guy in the car next to me to turn his head and snicker. Nineteen and now I’m flying high at the red light, parked behind the little yellow bus.
A relic of a woman is crossing the street. She’s bent over as though she spent her whole life watching her feet, and she’s only half the way across when she’s found herself in the middle of impatient morning traffic with a green light. She pauses and reaches out a leathery grey hand to match the leathery grey jacket that casts her thin shadow. I try to will the bee-line of cars next me to Halt! But her hand does the trick and with a hop, skip, and a hobble, she’s across.
I take off just as the light turns yellow and reminds me of the sunshine and that I can expect a high of nineteen tomorrow.
My morning drive makes way for an emerging coincidence: red lights and old ladies. This one might not be old, but it seems as though she’s lived long enough to abandon whatever made her unhappy in life. She’s wearing a bright green bandana, waving Hello sunshine in the breeze. And the baby she balances on her hip lets out a Ma-ma Ma-ma and waves its plastic fingers at the stream of business-casual crazies driving by.
I’m jealous of the plastic handled clear nylon bag clutched in her pudgy fist. Crayons and a newspaper are her must-haves and I want to trade her for my textbook and the responsibility hiding inside my wallet, and the work clothes hanging in the back, and the honk,…the honk. It’s coming from behind and I’m off. Bastard can’t enjoy an extra second of sunshiny silence. He’s got somewhere to be. Has he heard about the expected high? He’s on that wireless, car-friendly phone that makes him self-conscious because he’s well aware that it looks like he’s talking to himself. Him and the man on the corner. They have more in common than either would like to admit. He—Frank, Joe, Sylvestre, Bruce—leans against the lamppost and looks too hot in his too heavy jacket. And I wonder. I wonder what he does with it when the expected high is nineteen. I’ve never heard of a storage unit for the down-and-out who need to downsize for the summer. Here, hold this for me, I’ll be back for it in September. Until then, adios and enjoy the high. Maybe he’ll give it back to Goodwill where he’ll be sure to find it in a few months. Where he’ll be sure to grumble about the need for a better system when he forks over the three-fifty to buy back his jacket in September.
Now my honk count is up to two and I scoot my way down the road and smile at the emphatic gesture coming from the driver passing me. Because it’s too nice outside to begin the day with furrowed brows and bitter complicity.
Learning is where it’s at. Two more weeks of it until the doors burst open and floods of brain-dead students rush toward summer to counteract the academic efforts with sunshine and booze. Brain-dead to brain-damage thanks to the forecast high.
Nothing will ever be the same. I want to believe it because it’s so convincing. Like a full moon or an eclipse or a war or an election—people go funny over sunshine.
A man walking the sidewalk stops in his tracks and sees something that’s been buried under eight months of snow. A rock. A big one. The kind of rock with a plaque on it that tells the history of the building across the street. He puts his booted foot on the rock and becomes Columbus, shading his eyes with his hand, he gazes at the monument of Albertan architecture. Like all historic buildings, they’ll be affordable housing in a hundred years, if they don’t burn down first. Funny. Funny like the bike the bearded man rides. Like he’s leaning back in his race-car. Vroom vroom. I imagine him falling over and bursting into flames. Mother Nature mistook him for a motorist, and for once decided to get her revenge. Oops. Instead, he pedals across while the real motorists beg Big Momma to spare them again, please. At least until after that eight o’clock board meeting.
I’m across the bridge and late for class, but I can’t help but smile because it has just begun. Soon I’m walking with a shimmy in my step, remnants of a belly-dancing class mixed with the Jack Johnson plugged in my ears that makes my world a musical. He sings “banana pancakes,” and “the mess he made.” I smile, smile at everything: water-coloured, once-bright candies in a clump in the dusty-muddy-grassy mush that once was a lawn. Before the snow fell and covered the green and the garbage that comes back now to haunt the littering fool who thought that Jack Frost would take care of the mess. But it’s all part of the expected high that expects rollerbladers, cyclists, skateboarders, then sends out the mini-tractors to kick up dust in the midnight black by the light of two mechanical, electrical eyes.
For now, I kick the rubble and smile. I walk tall, just in case the twigs above me might want to reach down and tangle themselves in my hair. I’d hardly mind. I smile at the few blades of grass peeking out asking the forecast temperature. Nineteen, I’m happy to whisper before flaring my little nostrils and breathing deep all the smells—nasty and otherwise—into my lungs that scream It must be spring.
I sit down beside a friend and realize I’m really late for class, but the view from his window bench makes me forget. I smile and tell him about the old ladies and the man and the drivers and the cyclist and the candies and tell him about the forecast high. Nineteen, he repeats, and slaps his hand on my thigh and we laugh because it’s only begun.

Word Waves

I ran toward my father, spraying sand in the air, to find him slouched in a plastic folding chair. Bending over him and flicking my salty brown hair across his neck, I examined the bright white page of his open book. I asked him what he was reading. His explanation was complex and poly-syllabic, but that didn’t stop me from smiling and nodding. You want to read some? he asked me. Taking the book into my small, gritty hands, I peered at the page, searching for a period and a capital—an appropriate place to begin. Some of the words were familiar, like the, like, and because, but the rest were long and stretched out like lumpy worms. I tackled each one with an eye on the book and an eye on my father. He smiled, twitched his moustache, and crossed his sun-burned arms across his chest.
I read until I was out of breath from reading the sentences which were much longer than those in my Thoroughbred series. And soon my legs itched with the drying salt water and sand clinging to my fine hairs. That was enough. Smirking, I handed the book back to my dad—told him it was interesting—and ran back to the cool of oceansplash, past my mother who lay on her towel reading the Christian version of Danielle Steele.
In a fleeting moment illuminated by the pulsing sun and waves, I thought to myself, I am my father’s daughter.

Let's Try Again

I have often tried to write about my mother. She is remarkable in the ways every mother should be, dull in the ways every woman wishes she weren’t. And it’s her story I want to tell, which is as unique as the smell of her bread and the sound of her laugh. But she’s sensitive. When I ring her up and ask for permission (again) to write about this or that, the sharp, short inhale that comes before the I guess reminds me of this. Also, I’m not the only writer in the family. And the other one doesn’t wait or ask for permission before publishing part of her life. So I’ve tried to be gentle. Yet everything I’ve tried has remained just that, an attempt, an effort incomplete.
Now, I find myself older than she was when first she met, then married, my father—when she ventured into womanhood with her faith and her companion. And I’m afraid, that as I age beyond her echo, she—along with her uniquely ordinary journey—will be left un-celebrated. So she’s given me permission, once again, to try to tell part of her story.

She's Twelve

I have to keep reminding myself that she’s twelve. Twelve. Outside my classroom, there’s a little girl, her hand probably shaking as she completes her quiz. Not because she’s cold, or the test hard. Because of what I’ve got in my hand.
I thought she was going to cheat. The paper was stuffed inside her palm, but I could see it. I’d given her a few chances to get rid of the note before finally taking it from her. The previous year, a skinny girl with tired eyes had stuffed her cheat notes in her mouth, chewing furiously before I made her spit it in the garbage. This one acted dumb. You only need a pencil, I told her. Oh, she said, and hurried to her desk and back to me, but the paper was still there. Deanna, I said, give me what you have in your hand. Confused, she looked around, hoping something would come to mind. I shot my hand out and waited. Gently, she placed the paper in my hand before I sent her to the hall to write her quiz.
The rest of the students were waiting. They’d watched me and watched her, and were hoping I’d reveal the contents of the confiscated note. (Some teachers do that—read the notes out loud to the class to embarrass the students engaged in the elicit classroom communication.)
They know that’s not my style, but they called out read it anyways. I frowned and shook my head disapprovingly and told them to get back to work.
I unfolded the clammy note behind my desk and the evidence of a two-sided correspondence was evident. The bubbly cursive writing in the blue pen was Deanna’s, but the sharp, light pencil strokes were unfamiliar. Certain words started to leap from the page: pleasure, cock, orgasm, with diagrams to support. They were commenting on the size of their boyfriend’s genitalia and its affect, or lack of, on them, complete with more rich description than I thought Deanna was capable of.
At first, I’m feeling sick at the thought of a pre-pubescent penis, erect or otherwise, being surveyed by Deanna. Then my stomach turns because she’s twelve. And having sex.

When I was twelve, it would still be five years before my first kiss, and I was daydreaming about the ultimate first love. None of the boys around me looked anything like the man in my dreams. They were skinny, for the most part, and had less hair on their arms than I did. Their idea of romance was sticking their head out of a yellow bus window and yelling, Wanna go to the dance with me? In that case, I reluctantly yelled back, without turning back, yes. My first foray into the land of junior-high love was a dangerous one, bloody, in fact, and one I wouldn’t soon forget.
My date’s name was Greg Smith and he had red hair—his first fault. As I walked to the school through the mid-evening haze, I asked myself again and again what I was doing. I didn’t like red hair, I didn’t like spending more time at school than I had to, and I didn’t like to dance. Then, like now, I couldn’t dance. The only part of me that could keep a beat was my toe. Or shoulder. Throwing my feet into the mix was disastrous. But I’d decided that it was about time I take part in a school social. After all, worse come to worse, Greg would want to slow-dance and I’d have to say yes. In that case, I knew what to do: stick my arms out to his shoulders, locking my elbows zombie-style and rock from one foot to the other, careful to make eye contact with everyone except Greg.
As fate would have it, I wouldn’t be so lucky. I’d gotten my first period earlier that year, and now it was my fifth “time of the month.” I was still trying to convince my mom to let me use tampons, so I’d walked to school with an extra pad in my back pocket and what felt like a PB&J between my legs. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t tell the difference between my anxious sweat and the blood trickling from my uterus. Partway through the dance, when I went to survey the situation, I found that I’d leaked right through my dad’s jeans and spotted my limited edition Beatles t-shirt with blood. Needless to say, I left the dance without bothering to explain to Greg. So, the next day, and until I set him straight in grade eleven, Greg told everyone I left the dance because I was angry that he danced with Janice Lam.

Now, twelve years later, I have to supervise the junior high dances. And I’m still reticent. Not because I can’t dance, because I can’t stand watching them dance. Gone are the days of zombie-like swaying and the chicken dance. They still play the odd YMCA, but more often than not, our small gym is pulsing with R&B and hip-hop. I spend my time shaking my head at the pelvic thrusting and the not-so-subtle grinding. Of course, I do what I can to break up the action, but there’s something arresting about catching two girls pawing each other to the pounding beat while a dozen boys stand around, mouths gaping, and their hands hiding their crotch.
I’m sure I could find a dark corner somewhere, away from the prying teacher eyes, where a young girl takes to her knees for the pleasure of a boy. He thinks he’s entitled, she thinks she’s the lucky one.
And it makes me want to scream, because they still giggle at the word hormone, their mommies make their lunch, and they ask me what a coincidence is. Meanwhile, the boys are sticking things in places they can’t name, let alone spell, and the girls are giving fallacio and spitting it out so they don’t get pregnant. And they’re only twelve.

The Lock-Down

Over the intercom, we heard the voice of our assistant principle. Why was she interrupting us again? We’d just had a fire drill, a ridiculous circus of teens jumping into each others’ sweaters and running around the school grounds. After all, they were missing class. They were thrilled.
Now she told us, Teachers, please commence lock-down mode. Lock-down? I didn’t remember getting the memo. We still hadn’t gone over the procedure for a lock-down. I realized that I didn’t really know what to do. Lock down. Then I remembered that I had an emergency folder hanging from my closet door and ideas came to me one by one—things I’d read or heard about. First, I told my small class to go sit with their backs against the wall and be quiet. I chose the green card from my emergency pack that said, ALL ACCOUNTED FOR – NO INJURIES, and slid it under the door after locking it.
We turned the lights off and I joined my students against the wall. We sat there quietly for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes my students were happy to lose. They’d been doing crossword puzzles about the Renaissance, our Social Studies topic, and were tired of figuring out what 2,down meant and how to spell feudal. So they sat tight beside me in a row along the back wall.
One was straining to read the words in his anime graphic novel. I still smiled at seeing the book in his hand. I hate to read, he’d yelled at me the year before. With tears in his eyes, he lowered his voice and, lips quivering, I heard the words I can’t do it. So I set to work, finding high-interest books about sky-diving and SWAT teams that he’d throw back at me. I tried short stories from the elementary school across the street. There were a lot of pictures, but he told me they were for babies. And then I’d found a graphic novel series and he couldn’t put the books down. He was like a glutton. The book was so close to his eyes it became his face for a week, and then he asked me for another, and another, and another. He started reading in Math and in Science, and I laughed a little when I asked him to please put the book down. Just one more page, he pleaded. What could I say? I let him do it, and the rest of us went on to sentence structure—capitals and periods. I smiled at him now as he read the book, back to front, page after page, absorbed in the black and white world of text and image.
Another was counting the pieces of chewed gum stuck to the desk he was hiding under. His lips moved silently—one, two, three, four…Sandro, I named him a few weeks before. I’d given them all new names. He was no longer the boy with FASD, with a record, already at thirteen, with fuzzy memories of a forgetting family, lost across a field, toward the mountain—a bear waiting to devour him. That’s how he described it. Now he was Alessandro Botticelli, famous Renaissance artist. I painted that? he’d asked, when I’d shown the class a print of Primavera, then the Venus. Hey, he’d called out, I did that! I smiled then as I did now.
The rest of them gloated the same way when we learned about their lives in Renaissance Italy and France. We had Mona Lisa and Catherine de Medici and Niccolo Machiavelli and King Francis I and Leonardo Fibonacci who, when he learned about his famous math skills, laughed. Who’d have thought, he mused, and I thought I sucked at math. We all laughed and he winked at no one in particular. It was something he’d been practicing. It’s to impress the ladies, he’d said. Now he asked me if he was allowed to climb out the window. I told him, no. Why not? he asked. Because there might be bad guys waiting outside. He puffed up his little chest and told me he could take them. Of course you could, Fibonacci.
He hangs his head and let’s me know that he’s disappointed. Fibonacci would sacrifice himself for us. I know he would. Like Dally Winston incarnate, he defends his friends with his fists one minute and graciously gives his blessing to a friend who wants to date his crush.
One hundred pounds with a ton of confidence. At twelve, he’s a gentleman of sorts. A little Clarke Gable with pants hanging below his butt and with black hair like curtains across his face.
I could hear Mona and Catherine whispering to each other in the darkness. I often wondered what they talked about. Sometimes I would catch them giggling behind their hands, fingers painted purple and pink and blue. Eyes lit up. They were best friends—inseparable. They started out and should’ve stayed in the special employability school. At thirteen, neither could read or write or do math beyond the second-grade level. Sometimes, they would stand at my desk and smile, but wouldn’t or couldn’t say anything. They didn’t know how to start the dance of conversation. That was my job. I’d look up from my work and fold my hands. Looking her in the eyes, I’d ask, How are you, today, Mona? I’m good, she’d say. And that was as far as she’d get, but she’d keep smiling and waiting for her mind to send something to her lips, something to say, to express her ideas. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to smile back at the vacancy without wanting to cry.
The buzzer goes and breaks through our stuffy, sleepy silence. The period’s over. I get up slowly, my knees ache and I wonder if I’m getting old. I turn the lights on and am about to tell my lovelies to get their things together when my phone rings. It’s the secretary. Mrs. Goodkey, she says, do not dismiss your students. This is not a drill. And she hangs up. I look at my kids. They’re all watching me, their eyes glued to mine. I make myself breathe and force the muscles in my face to soften. It’s okay, I tell them. Just a little longer. But I need to use the washroom! It’s Catherine de Medici. I tell her I’m sorry, but she can’t go. She’s afraid—I can see her eyes glaze over and she pinches her lips closed. She would never argue with me, but I can see in her face, in the way she sits back down, that she’s worried what might happen. It’s happened before. I shut the lights off again and as I do, someone tries the door. Not a sound. Not a sigh. Not a blink from my children who usually can’t stop themselves from moving. And I’m holding my breath, then hear heavy footsteps walk away.
All of a sudden, they’re mine and I’m theirs—especially for those who have no one. And melting away are my plans for the next class and my work piled high on my desk and the weekend only hours away. I walk slowly and quietly to the wall where they’re waiting for me, watching me. I make sure I breathe.
The air is heavy and I’m not sure it’s getting to my lungs. I lean against the wall and slide to the floor between them. They’re watching me and waiting. I look around at them and tell them that we’re going to be fine and I tell myself that they can’t tell I’m bluffing.
I hear a whimper farther down the wall. It’s Mona. Her words tremble as she asks if she can come sit by me. Of course, I tell her, and she crawls over on quivering hands and knees with Catherine close behind.
We’re all beside each other now, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee and no one moves and I hope they know I love them. I’d laughed with them over my embarrassing moments so they can know they aren’t alone. I shared my memories of failure and success so they can feel good too. I tell them they’re my favorites and that my day wouldn’t be complete without them. I whisper now that I’m glad to be there with them. Fibonacci puts his arm around my shoulder. Sandro smiles, slowly. Mona puts her hand in mine. And we wait.

Money's Worth

My hands were disgusting. Teacher hands usually are. There were scabs on my knuckles from faulty binder rings, paper-cuts between my fingers, and fine black dust from the whiteboard around my nails that no amount of scrubbing could clean away. Time for a manicure.
It was late on a Friday night when I made the decision. I knew I had little chance of booking an appointment on such late notice, but I was determined to try. Before I went to bed that night, I’d called and left messages at half a dozen salons. My filthy fingers were crossed.
The next morning, as I wiped the sleep from my eyes, my phone rang. Hem hem. I cleared my throat to make sure my voice worked before answering. It was a woman from one of the salons I’d called the night before. They wanted me in at ten. Excuse me? Ten. I had twenty minutes to get there—my morning pee would have to wait.
When I finally found the salon, after snaking my way through an industrial neighborhood, I was one minute late. I pushed open the front door and was greeted by the sound of a vacuum cleaner. Then a woman in her fifties rounded the corner, You made it. I nodded. How about a mani/pedi, it’s only thirty dollars. I remembered breaking a toe-nail earlier in the week. Sure, I answered. She handed me a questionnaire to fill out and left the room. Meanwhile, I answered the questions and kept reminding myself how lucky I was to get an appointment.
A few minutes later, a woman in white scrubs introduced herself as Merinder and led me down a long hallway. The décor wasn’t quite what I expected. (As I had pulled into the parking lot, I learned that the salon was actually a hair and esthetics academy called Beauty-Tech. I’d been to academies before, so I prepared myself to suffer a close-cut cuticle or some rough filing, but I hadn’t prepared myself for this.)
Merinder led me to a large room with high ceilings and concrete floors. The fluorescent lights hadn’t been turned on yet, and the light from the windows illuminated billions of tiny specs of dust flying in the air. Merinder pointed to a raised white chair with a footstool that reminded me of an old-fashioned foot-polishing chair. Across the room, there was a long bench covered with purple vinyl and bejeweled around the edges. In some spots, the vinyl had torn and, like the seats in my little brother’s beater, the foam was spilling out. I crinkled my nose, but reminded myself again that I was about to be treated to a manicure and a pedicure—for cheap!
Merinder gently placed my feet in a tub of warm soapy water then turned the lights on. They flickered then shone with a steady buzz. Then the older woman, who had greeted me when I’d first arrived, entered the room and announced she’d be giving me my manicure. She introduced herself as Betty and proudly announced that she was the founder of the academy. At that, I was somewhat relieved; any thoughts of suffering a Paula Abdul-esque thumb-fungus incident flew out the window. So, while Merinder worked away on my feet, Betty brought me two trays of warm water for my hands and placed them on a table to my right. There you go, dear, she said, soak away, and walked away. I had to twist around to reach the trays, and it wasn’t long before my already bad back was screaming. A few minutes later, Betty returned to press play on the CD-player in the corner of the room. An instrumental of Pachelbel’s Canon drifted toward me then halted abruptly—the silence was followed by a brief screeching sound. Merinder looked up at me, Betty always plays that CD, and it always does the same thing—I apologize. I told her it was alright. Really, all I could think about was my back and the fact that the water my fingers were in was tepid and sending chills up my bare arms.
Finally, Betty returned. She dried my hands and started to file my nails. I sighed and finally relaxed. So, Betty started, have I got a story for you. I didn’t want to talk, I didn’t want to listen, but it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice in the matter. As she filed away, Betty told me how she’d been married and divorced three times, but had recently re-connected with her second husband. I never should have let him go, she said, sighing. She stopped filing and looked at me, This time I won’t let him go. Apparently their kids, whom they’d had in previous marriages, didn’t get along and that put stress on their marriage. But now, she said, his kids are grown, and so are mine, so thing are perfect. That’s nice, I replied. I wasn’t trying to hide my disinterest, but Betty didn’t catch on. Sure, he’s still got a girlfriend, but you know how men are, he doesn’t want to hurt her. Oh my. He’s assured me he’ll leave her in June after he makes her a shelf—he’s promised her the shelf, and he’s not the type to break his promises. June, I thought, wow. It was only September.
I started to shift in my seat. My legs were falling asleep, so I knew that if I made a break for it, I wouldn’t make it far. But I was thinking about it, because Betty hadn’t stopped talking.
Sure, she stays over at his place on weekends, but he’s promised me they don’t sleep together. I rolled my eyes. It didn’t take long for this fifty-something motherly-type to start looking like my twenty-something girlfriend who’s always explaining away her slimy boyfriends extra-curricular activities. Needless to say, I was ready to go. And finally, after hearing about her ten thousand dollar wedding ring, the one he’d asked her to wear again, and the way he makes her feel, just, so special, I found myself at the cashier’s desk, vibrating, as I wrestled the fight and flight response that had been building for the last forty-five minutes. I paid, gave Merinder an exorbitant tip—somehow, I felt guilty that she had to sit through that as well—and skipped out the door.
As I turned the corner out of the parking lot, I caught a glimpse of my fingers. I screeched to a halt. There it was, the dirt that had been there an hour ago, a day ago, all week. And my cuticles shone with poorly applied clear polish. And my thumb and pinky were filed square, while the rest were curved. I frowned and planned to stop at a drug-store for a new file and some nail polish remover. Needless to say, I got more than I paid for, and paid far too much.

Still Something More

In a town not far from mine, there lived a brother and a sister—a handsome little boy and a pretty little girl. Every Sunday of every month, the little boy and the little girl would skip across the street to visit their Aunt Hilda. One such Sunday, the little girl and the little boy asked their Aunt Hilda if they might take a trip to see the giraffes at the zoo. Their dear old Aunt hummed and hawed and clicked her knitting needles together three times. So you want to see the giraffes at the zoo? she asked. The little girl and the little boy nodded and their cheeks glowed with anticipation. Well, she said, first of all, you both need to wash inside your ears and bellybutton every day, then we’ll see about the zoo. The little girl and the little boy vowed to wash inside their ears and bellybuttons, and wash they did until their ears and bellybuttons shone like the sun and smelled like lilacs.
The next Sunday, the little boy and the little girl skipped across the street to visit their old Aunt Hilda. Auntie, they exclaimed, all week we scrubbed and lathered inside our ears and bellybuttons. May we go see the giraffe’s at the zoo today? Their dear Aunt Hilda wrinkled her nose and tapped her little chin. Well, she said, I’m so happy you’re clean, but there’s one more thing—the leaves are falling off the tree in your backyard, and you must sweep them up. Everyday, before you wash inside your ears and bellybutton, you must rake those leaves into a pile. Then we’ll see about the zoo. The little girl and little boy each took a deep breath. Of course, Auntie Hilda, we’ll rake the leaves. So everyday, the little boy and little girl raked the leaves in their backyard and then washed inside their ears and bellybuttons.
The next Sunday, the children hoped it would be finally time to visit the giraffes at the zoo, but their Aunt Hilda found another thing for them to do. Children, whenever you come across an insect crawling on the sidewalk, you must pick him up and place him safely in the grass. The next week, Paint a flower on every page of your homework. Each Sunday, their Aunt Hilda’s requests became sillier and sillier. The next Sunday, she asked them to Tie a bright green ribbon around the neck of every fence-post in the neighborhood. Finally, after the little boy and the little girl were so exhausted from washing inside their ears and bellybuttons, and raking the leaves in their backyard, and rescuing little bugs, and painting flowers on their homework, and tying bright green ribbons on the fence-posts that they trudged to their Aunt Hilda’s house the next Sunday and flopped onto her chesterfield. Auntie Hilda, the little girl said, I’m so tired from doing everything you’ve asked, I don’t think I want to visit the giraffes at the zoo anymore. The little boy nodded his head and leaned against his sister. Well, their Aunt Hilda began, you simply cannot stop doing all the things you’ve done. Why, you’ll grow mould in your ears and bellybutton. The leaves will rot in your backyard. The little bugs will be smashed on the sidewalk. Your homework will be dull and ugly. And the fence-posts in the neighborhood will look chipped and faded. But Auntie! the children exclaimed. Their Aunt Hilda clicked her tongue and would hear nothing of their complaints.
So the little boy and the little girl sulked home, dragging their feet all the way.
The next Sunday, old Aunt Hilda waited and waited and waited, but her little niece and little nephew never arrived. So she shook her head in disappointment and waited for the following Sunday. When again, the little boy and little girl didn’t arrive, the Aunt donned her shawl and strolled across the street to the children’s home. She wrinkled her nose at the squished bugs on the sidewalk, the crooked fence-post, and the leaves strewn across the yard. At the door, her shaking hand tapped the knocker and she waited. Finally, the little girl and little boy’s mother, crying, answered the door. Whatever’s the matter? asked old Hilda. Between sobs, the mother pointed to the backyard and explained, We found them… from the tree in the backyard… with the beautiful bright green ribbons.

This Other One

One step in was all it took for me to know I wanted to get out. I could hear a football game in the background and there were MotorTrend magazines splayed on the floor. This was a man’s space. The bald head bent over a hungry-man confirmed my suspicion, and I’d had enough.
I don’t want to do it, I whispered to my husband. I’d already tried to avoid the dealership. Oh, closed on Sundays? What a shame. But today was Monday and the frown on my husband’s face told me I’d better get in there and do it, or I would be walking home. So I peeked around the corner into the office and tried not to wrinkle my nose at the fake-meaty smell coming off his cardboard dish.
Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me out. A garbled noise followed, coming from his full mouth. He swallowed the kind of swallow where you can pretty much see the lump of half-masticated food squeeze slowly down the esophagus. Sure, he said, what can I help you with?
I’d decided on the Toyota Matrix. My mother-in-law would ask me later why I didn’t try a Mercedes convertible, or a BMW or something. It wasn’t easy for me to explain how I was afraid I’d crash. Into a meridian. Into a light-post. Into a person. I’m not known for doing these things, it’s just that, under pressure, I wasn’t sure what I might do. Like when there’s a police cruiser behind me. I can feel them staring me down, checking my license plate – is my registration current? – waiting for me to suddenly jerk above the speed-limit. It’s at times like these, when I hyperventilate ever so slightly, that I turn my signal light on when I’m not turning or accidentally run a stop sign. So I wasn’t about to drive a car that I’d spend the rest of my life paying off. Thus, the Matrix.
He asked me what color I was interested in. I told him anything but red. He wiped the corner of his mouth with a Kleenex and led me out of the office. Well, he continued, I’ve got silver and blue and black and citron. Citron? Not just yellow—citron?
Here she is, and she won’t last long, he said, circling a cute sporty model. I told him I liked the color. He grinned a half-mouth grin and I knew what he was thinking—women, color’s all they care about. So I cleared my throat and asked about gas mileage, the tires and noted with disappointment how there was no sun-roof.
Now it was my turn to circle the car, looking at everything and nothing in particular. He told me the price--$15 900. I nodded, avoiding eye-contact, trying not to let on that was half my student loan and could only afford a fraction of the price. My husband commented on the sporty front-end and that’s when the dealer, whose name I would learn later was John, opened his mouth, revealing a row of farmer’s-fence-post crooked teeth, but didn’t say anything for a minute. You know what, he said, this is the wrong car. I was confused. I watched him shuffle further along the aisle of cars, looking out over them like a kid searching for his mom in a department store. He still didn’t know where it was. He had shown me the wrong vehicle. This one was twenty-two thousand. And he still didn’t know where the other one was, so we referred to the mythical vehicle as “this other one.” So, this other one, what color is it, I asked before I could stop myself. Blue, he said.
The moment was awkward. He could probably sense I thought he was an idiot. So he excused himself to run inside for the specs of “this other one.” Meanwhile, I was planning my escape. I wasn’t about to drive “this other one,” if it really did exist, and John wasn’t inspiring much confidence. So when he got back with the news that it had sold, I lied and told him we’d be back tomorrow night because I was quite interested. Well, he said, I won’t be here tomorrow, but my partner will be—his name is Brennen, er, Rennen, actually. Right, I thought, this other one probably doesn’t exist either.

Classroom Throw-Up II

Back in grade two, it was Mme Sorsdahl who had to quietly get out of her big teacher seat and calmly ask Chris to please go to the washroom. She didn't flinch when he threw up again in the doorway. I'm glad I watched her closely that day because yesterday I needed that memory of her - strong and clear.
Brittney wasn't reading like she was supposed to. All the others were quietly absorbed in their paperback pre-teen novels, but Brittney's head was lying on her arms. I tapped her gently and asked her how her book was. No response. I mentioned that it would be pretty hard for her to read with her eyes shut. She groaned. She was sick. I wanted to roll my eyes - another hygienically deficient teen who was, at that very moment, breathing and sweating her germs all over her desk and me. I was about to ask her to phone home when I noticed the sheen of saliva on her hand. That was my cue. I walked to my teacher desk and found a garbage bag left behind from the first day of school. Ellie, I said to her friend, will you take this bag and Brittney to the office, please? Ellie didn't have time to stand up before Brittney leaned toward me and threw up in the bag I held in front of her face. I remembered Mme Sorsdahl and I kept my cool. Other students were watching, their mouths gaping. There's nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen, I said. They reluctantly returned to their books, but not before Brittney threw up a second and third time.
When I realised I was holding a bag of someone else's kid's steaming vomit, I thought I was going to be sick. But I knew my job was to rub her back, breathe steadily, and be someone else's Mme Sorsdahl.

Classroom Throw-Up

In grade two, Mme Sorsdahl's class, Chris Boucher threw up in his desk behind me. He had skin you could almost see through. All the time. Not just when he was sick. When he stuck a flashlight in his mouth, he lit up like the glow-worm I was still sleeping with. And under his G.I. Joe t-shirt and cuorduroy pants were all kinds of angles where his bones were. During kindergarten, he wore a patch over his left eye and it made his seem tough. That didn't last long. He was a twin and his brother Nick was also in my class. Nick had cheeks the kind of red I make mine now with a cream and powder blush. He had thick lips that he couldn't quite harness, and he was always sucking back his saliva. Needless to say, he was Chris' antithesis and his nemesis. And as Chris groaned after up-chucking his lunch all over his desk, he knew he'd lost again to the one who was exactly one minute, sixteen seconds younger than he.