My dad Greg won't let us talk about Mom. He took all the pictures of her that were around the house away and hid them somewhere. One time we were having lasagna for dinner and I tried asking him if he could remember if Mom's favourite food was lasagna because mine is but my dad's is burgers. I had to get it from somewhere! But he didn't say anything, just kept eating. And when I asked again he gave me a long quiet look that I could tell meant: stop.
TODAY'S WEDNESDAY, April 8. That's the first thing you do when you get to school, write the date in your workbook at the top of the page. You're supposed to do cursive but I print because cursive looks messy and in my printing all the letters are the same size, it looks like a typewriter if I do say so myself. Then I sit for a bit and start to pinch my eyelashes and pull away, and sometimes you get a few little curls of eyelash and you sprinkle those down onto your book. You keep doing that and eventually you have a little pile of black eyelashes, and you organize that into a perfect square on the empty page. But I hide it with my hand when Mrs. Mills comes walking by.
There are some things you just have to keep secret. Like for my birthday last year my dad Greg bought me a diary with a lock and everything, and he told me I could write whatever I wanted in it, about my day or if I was mad or whatever, and I could lock it up and they would be my secrets. But you write things down and they can get found. People can read it and know everything. It's better to keep your thoughts in your own head, you have them there for a second and then they're gone and you're the only person who will ever know what they were. You think things to yourself and they're safe.
So anyway it's the last day before Easter weekend. Because it's the last day I haven't done too much work, just wrote the date in each of my workbooks (le 8 Avril en francais) and did the eyelash stuff and then didn't do anything else because this year I'm going to help hide the eggs. I've been planning all day where I'm going to hide them — places that are easy for Brian but not too easy. This year it's me in charge of the egg hunt because last year SOMEBODY forgot where he put them and then like a month later all this chocolate melted into our TV.
Easter's about Jesus or something? We don't do religion at my school.
Oh — anyone calls Brian a retard, I'll kick their ass.
Another thing we learned in The Human Body was about periods. Girls get their period and blood comes out of their vagina. Not me though, even though it can happen as young as ten. I've been making sure to keep my legs tight together or cross them so nothing's getting out. If I have to pee I hold it to make the muscles stronger so my vagina will never let out any blood. It'll be the toughest vagina in town, not like all those other wimpy vaginas, dripping all over the place like one of Jared Wein's nosebleeds.
You get your period and you also get boobs. Some of the girls in grade six have boobs. Like Kelly Sanchez (she's already twelve, though). They stick out of her shirt, she looks like she's hiding Easter eggs, ha ha ha.
What I remember most about Mom was when she came back from the hospital and only had one boob. They cut off the other one and gave her a special bra to make it look like she had two boobs, but sometimes around the house she didn't wear it and her shirt just sagged on the one side. But that's just what I remember, I was only four. She was tired and they'd shaved her hair off. She just lay in bed and my dad Greg made me be quiet around the house, all the time, right until she went back to the hospital and then it was the end.
FINALLY AT THREE fifteen the bell rings. Everyone goes running out into the hall and it's Easter. I get my bag at the rack and I'm putting on my jacket and Jared Wein comes up and goes, Wanna walk home? Jared's okay, he wears glasses that are always falling down his face and he has to scrunch his nose to move them back up. Igo, Yeah. Also he usually gets a nosebleed.
On the way home from school Jared and I go down to our fort in the woods to check if it's okay. There's a path with trees that grow over from each side and make a tunnel, the branches bend in and touch over top and you have to duck when you're walking along. Then it opens up and that's where our fort is. We call it The Inner Sanctum, and it always needs fixing because teenagers come down and drink beer and light fires and mess everything up.
It's been raining so today The Inner Sanctum is wet and sort of cool, and dark, and it smells like worms. There's a log to sit on so Jared goes and sits there and he pats the log beside him like he wants me to sit down too, but I get a stick and I start whacking the ground until it breaks. It breaks into a smaller piece, and then I whack that on the log, and it breaks even smaller, and I throw that piece into the woods. There's a beer cap on the ground so I pick it up and sniff it: pennies and sugar.
If we stayed late enough it'd get dark and we could lie back and look up at the sky and see the moon up there through the space in the treetops, white as bones, full or half or waxing or waning (part of The Earth was to learn about the moon) and we'd lie back and I'd maybe let Jared put his head on my tummy and we'd both look up at the moon and I might tell him, That's my Mom, Jared, that's Mom looking down. Then I'd wave at the moon: Hello, goodnight! But I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't cry or anything.
But we can't stay that late because I have to get home for Brian. Besides, if Jared Wein gets a nosebleed we don't have any Kleenex.
We fix up The Inner Sanctum and Jared goes to his house and I come home but Brian's not there yet. My dad Greg usually gets in at five thirty from his job at the parking garage. If he's not home for dinner you got to make hot dogs, one for you and one for Brian. Sometimes my dad Greg'11 leave you a note and sometimes he won't.
INGREDIENTS TO MAKE HOT DOGS FOR DINNER:
Okay. You take the hot-dog wieners out of the freezer. You take a paper towel. You put one of the hot dogs on the paper towel and you put it in the microwave and you microwave it for i: io. You take the other hot dog and other paper toweclass="underline" repeat. Then you put the hot dogs in the bread and a piece of cheese on the wieners and you can even do them together at the same time, and you microwave them on a paper towel for forty-five seconds. I put mustard on mine, and ketchup, in two straight even lines. Brian has them plain. If they're too hot make Brian wait because if not he'll just stuff them in his mouth and burn himself and he'll cry and then you have to hug him and rub his hair and stuff.
Oh, I forgot to say to WASH YOUR HANDS. Before and after making hot dogs, with hot water and soap. There are germs everywhere and if you get them in your mouth you could maybe get, I don't know, cancer or leukemia? Not really, I'm not an idiot. But kids get leukemia all the time and then they have to get bones from their brothers or sisters. I'd have to get bones from Brian. Or give him some of mine.
IT'S 4:06 AND I'm washing my hands when the bus pulls up outside. It's always the same: it sounds like Granny when she gets all wheezy, then the doors open and you can hear all the kids screaming inside the bus, and then the doors close and it roars and goes away, and then it's quiet. Brian comes in the front door with his backpack and he sees me and yells, Hi! and he gives me this big hug and yells, Hi! again, and then I tell him to wash his hands.
Sometimes Granny comes by to see if we're okay before my dad Greg gets home. She's his mom and smells like cigarettes and old people. He doesn't have a dad.
But today it's just me and Brian. We play Trouble. We eat Fruit Roll-Ups — me: grape, Brian: orange. Sometimes I let Brian win Trouble, sometimes I don't. I have to help him move his men. He's always red. I'm always blue. Today though he wins by himself.