‘Yeah think you’re better than me Candace and you may be top of the class but I’m right behind you and I will mow you down you bitch so you may be queen of the heap right now with your legally blonde act but I got brains and you honey will always be a bimbo yeah you heard me you bitch so don’t mess with me and think I don’t know how you got that job at the mall that I shoulda got your daddy phoned up head office while I was standing there I had the job in my pocket but when Ron Simpson put the phone down he said the job was already taken I needed that job bitch …’
‘No, no, no,’ Maggie Dawn said to herself. ‘Be kind, think good thoughts. Don’t let Candace Reynolds ruin your day. It’s going to be a good day.’
‘But you’re still pissed that you didn’t get that job at the mall eh go on admit that you wanted to smash Candace Reynolds’ head in.’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Maggie Dawn muttered to the voice in her head. Quickly, she plugged herself into her iPod. Into her ears went her earphones and, hey presto, zombieland. Blissed out, she joined the other living dead spasming and jerking around the park.
Mum’s place was a state house on Pleasant Drive. Call living here pleasant? Ha ha funny ha ha. The street mainly comprised women like Evelyn on some benefit or another, saddled with kids and no dads. If there was somebody around who fitted that kind of description, well, he wasn’t exactly getting ahead in his life.
As Maggie Dawn went around the back something lunged at her from the house next door: Granite, a big brown pitbull cross. She hated the dog, but at least it kept away bad muthafuckas who might want to do Evelyn and the kids over.
‘Are you home, Mum?’ Maggie Dawn yelled as she opened the back door and went in. Stupid question: of course Mum was home. All the mums round here were home unless — hey the sun does sometimes shine on (Un) Pleasant Drive — they scored the occasional job like Evelyn’s at Pak’n’Save.
Maggie Dawn heard gunshots coming from the living room. There she found Chantelle, Roxanne Adorata and Zoltan all sitting on the sofa in front of the TV. ‘Hey,’ she called.
‘Hey.’ Their eyes were wide with fear as they watched the werewolf rip off a poor girl’s head, chomp, chomp, chomp. They were dressed and all ready to be taken out for the day.
‘Mum?’ Maggie Dawn yelled up the stairs.
As Evelyn appeared Maggie Dawn felt her heart catch with love. Mum must have been on late shift. Her eyes were dazed but she smiled when she saw her eldest daughter. She pushed back her hair and fumbled in her dressing gown for her smokes. Lit one. Puffed. Sprinkled ash on the stairs.
‘Honey,’ she said, ‘Dave’s coming around this afternoon.’
Dave was the new boyfriend. He belonged to a gang. Worse, he sold dope. ‘I thought you threw him out.’ Maggie Dawn was angry. ‘He’s such a loser, Mum.’
‘Yeah … well …’ Evelyn continued, ‘I’m giving him one more chance.’ Pause. ‘Could you … uh … keep the kids with you all day? Give me and him some space?’
‘Mum, don’t do this to yourself,’ Maggie Dawn pleaded. ‘He really isn’t into you. He’s a user.’
Evelyn started to cry. ‘Baby, you just don’t understand …’
Understand? Why didn’t people credit Maggie Dawn with some intelligence? All her life she had been told that she would never be able to escape the limitations of her life, blah blah blah … Well, she refused to be a statistic. People put her down, but she was on her way up. She studied hard — sure, she was just average, but she tried. She did her homework on a kitchen table in Gran’s flat and presented it to Mr Hawkins whenever he called for it. But did she get credit for it from her classmates? No way.
Just last week when she returned to her desk she overheard Candace Reynolds trying to put her down. ‘Who does she think she is? Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, dontcha, Maggie Dawn?’ Mr Hawkins was in the middle of his lesson when Maggie Dawn, mad as hell at Candace’s remark, stood up and sashayed to the front of the class. ‘Yes, Maggie Dawn?’ Mr Hawkins was startled that she had interrupted his teaching.
‘Sir, there’s something I want to say to everyone.’ Then she turned to her goggle-eyed classmates and began: ‘I know what some of you think about me, but if I do my homework and you don’t do yours, don’t blame me for you all sitting on your arses and letting your lives go down the shithole. I’m trying my best here for myself. And all your talking behind my back’s not going to stop me, Candace Reynolds. You’ll probably have three kids by the time you’re twenty, but that’s not gonna be my world. So don’t you or any of you other bitches stand in my way cause I’m coming through. Stuff the lot of you. And Mr Hawkins, you have a nice day.’
Baby, you just don’t understand?
Not only was Maggie Dawn doing her best at school, she was also trying to educate herself. Most of her friends, like Tawhi, avoided the public library but she knew that college would only get her so far. If she wanted to go further she’d have to help herself up the ladder.
When she felt the urge, she sashayed into the library for an hour or so. Every week she liked to deploy a new word and a new phrase picked up from her reading. This week’s new word and new phrase were: ‘autocratic’ and ‘taking everything into consideration’.
She’d lost quite a few opportunities already this morning to put them both into practice. Better make up for lost time.
Maggie Dawn had also discovered that the library had some really cool self-help shit. Books about how to improve your self-esteem, your confidence, your career prospects. Some weren’t so great: about breaking the food cycle so that you would not get f-a-t.
And as for Evelyn, well, she was in a cycle too. Like the other mothers on Pleasant Drive, she was waiting for a man to take her away from all this.
Oh, Maggie Dawn understood all right.
‘Come on, kids.’ Maggie Dawn blew a kiss to Evelyn. ‘Love you, Mum.’
‘Do you need any dollars?’ Mum asked. ‘Here …’ She threw a few miserable bucks down the stairs.
Gee, do people think I’m a bank? Maggie Dawn thought to herself. Ah well, more money was required from her own savings. Maybe she could ask Mr Singh for extra hours.
It wasn’t until she and the kids were on the pavement that she realised that they hadn’t come ay-lone. Zoltan had brought a pair of wicked-looking scissors. ‘Don’t you think you should leave those at home?’ Maggie Dawn asked. He was busy cutting up the sky and snipping the sun in two. He shook his head.
Suddenly Dave turned up in his car, roaring up the road as if he owned it. He had two mates along with him. They started to take crates of beer out of the boot. ‘Wotcha starin’ at, bitch?’ Dave asked Maggie Dawn.
‘You’re such a cliché,’ she answered. Let him try to work that one out. ‘And so auto-cratic,’ she added.
‘You always like to use big words, dontcha, bitch? You bettah watch yuself or I’ll make that lip of yours even bigger.’
Maggie Dawn gave him the stare. She would have answered him back but, taking everything into consideration, she had the kids with her. She pulled them after her. Zoltan looked back, took aim and snip, off came Dave’s head.
AT THE MALL
Midday and all was well. The kids were skipping and yelling in front of Maggie Dawn, glad to have escaped the werewolf; he was still hungry and wanted to bite their heads off.
‘Where are you taking us, Maggie Dawn?’ asked Chantelle.
‘There’s a movie we can go and see at the multiplex,’ Maggie Dawn answered. ‘Would you like that?’