The Sea-Wave Page 2

  Occasionally my dad stands up and whispers to Mom not to say this or that in front of me but it doesn’t matter. I can hear her from the kitchen. I can hear him. He doesn’t talk much about me so I have to listen.

  What are we going to do with her? What will happen to her? What’s . . . going . . . to happen?

  Then I’m swallowing water and sinking. I’m listening and I’m sinking. I’m the whale with the harpoon earrings. Sinking.

  When my parents are suddenly alone I go straight to my room but the elevator doors don’t always close fast enough. Or they open and drop me in the middle of something, a storm cloud I thought was a pillow. I listen and I watch my parents roll out of the kitchen like smoke, looking only at the space exactly above me or beside me. Then I look at them sinking down in the two big couches and I think: What have I done to these people?

  I’ll bet they ask themselves the same thing.

  The Roses

  When I closed my eyes, it was night. When I opened them . . .

  We were going down a dirt road. There were roses growing alongside it, wild ones. I could smell them.

  The sun was shining. The sky. You don’t see much of it, in the city.

  There wasn’t a building of any kind in miles.

  I’ve been to other cities but I’ve never been out of the city. Parks are half cement. They’re busier than streets.

  The old man was quiet for once. The way his beard moved, I could tell he was looking around. Maybe enjoying himself, a little. He slowed down a little.

  I could only smell roses.

  I pictured the skyscrapers behind us, fading away.

  My future was fading away.

  I was still scared, but . . .

  The roses.

  I hadn’t felt that happy or relaxed in a long time.

  The Sea-Wave II

  In such a prison, if a man passed through the hall, and moved the air, it moved on no other occasion. In the warm season . . . I would hear feet, and rush to the grille, as the man in the cell across the hall. Breathing and breathing the wind. Then waiting, till the next man passed.

  I was reading, one book that remained. The light from the grille was sufficient. It should not have been. But I had so grown accustomed, to the missing light. As . . . a fish. Of the deep sea.

  I was slowly reading. One page, and the facing page, perhaps, per hour.

  I finished a page. I raised a finger, to turn it. It turned itself.

  I rose. I closed my hands on the bars of the grille. What man, thinking, moving, could produce this wind? There had never been such wind. Stirring, even, my hair. Blowing down my throat.

  I stood, looking. The man across the hall, through bars, looked also. For the man.

  But there was no one. No man. This blowing seemed to come . . . from above. As a letter. Warm, and feeling. From one beyond the prison. It could not have come from within.

  I breathed in. I had not breathed so deeply for so long. The other man breathed. I could hear him, even, with my own eyes closed, breathing in. Listening. To the wind. And the pages, in the wind. Turning and turning.

  We groaned, both, in sadness. As it passed away.

  Tan

  I’m getting a really good tan.

  Writer

  I’m sad about my future, I worry about it. But a writer is something I could be. It would be a job but also a way of communicating, feeling emotion, being more like people. I don’t mean being like them . . . I just mean feeling real.

  My fear is that, as a writer who’s also a wheeler, a wheelchair person, people would just pat me on my hair and say I was beautiful and way to go. I’d be that heartbreaking kid in the framed article in the Sunday Sun. People wouldn’t judge me or ignore me or laugh, which my cousin says happens constantly and only makes you a better writer.

  The last thing I’d want to be is a mediocre writer.

  There’s already a million of those.

  Autobio

  It’s tough, writing about yourself. Your veins are barbed wire and you’re pulling them out. Or you’re playing a guitar but then thorns grow on the strings and you have to keep playing because everyone’s watching.

  I’m not remembering nice things, I haven’t had a nice life. I’m picking onions out of my salad and just staring at a plate full of onions. I write a bit, then I feel like crying.

  Before I started writing, though . . .

  I don’t ever want to remember what that feels like.

  Disneyland

  I went to Hell but it was Disneyland.

  At a school assembly, the principal called me forward. Someone pushed me forward. Someone in a Mickey Mouse suit came out of the bathroom. As he put his arms around me — I am terrified of mascots, the principal said I’d love it at Disneyland. Then he hugged me, too.

  My parents appeared. They put their arms on the pile. They looked so happy. When a sick kid wins a prize . . . I wondered if I was dying.

  When we finally got to Disneyland, my parents fought the whole way, I couldn’t go on most of the rides because they weren’t “equipped for my needs.”

  We ate corn dogs and took pictures.

  Before I could stop him, Donald Duck squeezed me and as I screamed inside, Dad snapped a photo. It hung on the living room wall for years until I knocked it down with a broom and pushed it deep in the trash. There’s still a blank space on the wall. No one’s said anything.

  We haven’t been on vacation since.

  François’ Cathedral

  We were in a dried up pasture. My legs were getting scratched up pretty bad by cactuses. I saw a brick building in the distance. The old man must’ve noticed it too because he turned me towards it and pushed me as fast as he could.

  It was a house — once. It had three walls and no roof, like a diorama. Teenagers had partied in it. “François’ Cathedral” was spray-painted on the one wall. “Becky is a whore” was spray-painted on the other.

  The old man walked through the door hole, there was no door, and around the house.

  The floor was rotten in places. I was afraid — I thought he might fall through the floor. But instead, he went batshit.

  He picked up a part of a bedframe and hit the walls with it. He kicked them. Whatever he could get his hands on, he threw it. He threw bricks. He threw himself. He knocked down the one wall just by ramming into it.

  The old man didn’t calm down until the last wall had fallen. Then he sat in a rotten armchair with his head in his hands, panting.

  I remember thinking: What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

  Coral

  My fat aunt Coral is a riot and a lousy person. She is just so pink and fat. She laughs too much, and wears too much enormous jewellery. She’s like a pig on a pearl leash sniffing out gossip then trotting up to your table and vomiting. I like her gossip because it’s malicious and it’s nice to know who’s dying. She is shallow and destructive.

  My dad and Coral are siblings but don’t talk much. When she comes over he likes to say hi then take a nap or run errands. Then Coral will put her feet up and talk to my mom for hours.

  I typically avoid my family but with Aunt Coral I don’t mind hanging around and listening. It’s great listening to people gossip because it’s the one time they mean what they’re saying. It has to be a huge relief to people. Aunt Coral likes to kick off her tight shoes — it probably feels like that. She gets so comfortable, it’s like she’s lounging on her skeleton. And then she says the most shocking things about everyone I ever heard of, and never stops smiling.

  I like Aunt Coral. She talks to me without changing her voice, like I’m an everyday person. She even talks to me when other people have left the room. That’s a small thing, but it means a lot.

  One time she told just me that her one daughter wasn’t even her husband’s daughter, but just from some fling with the butcher. I thought: Why ar
e you telling me this? But I guess she needed to tell someone and figured I was a pretty safe bet for discretion.

  The last time I saw Coral she was fifty pounds heavier than the time before. She wheezed just coming up the front steps, and right away sat down. She doesn’t leave her house much now but sits in her armchair with the phone in her hand. “I tell people the truth,” she told my mom once, “but I tell my telephone everything.” All day she sits there soaking up gossip and getting fatter and fatter. She needs a cane now from the knee strain, and will probably be in a wheelchair one day. I’m kind of looking forward to it.

  Shit

  The day I fell down the stairs . . .

  Mom asked me if I was okay staying home by myself for an hour or two while she went to the dentist, and I of course said yes. I was initially supposed to go along but she was running behind. She took me to the bathroom then took off.

  I thought I’d watch a movie. So I wheeled towards the elevator, which is right at the top of the stairs. I pressed down hard on the forward button on the directional pad. Pressing harder doesn’t make me go any faster, it’s just impertinence. Once in a while, though, pressing too hard makes the button stick. Which is just what happened. Sometimes I can unstick the button, but there wasn’t time, there’s maybe two feet between the elevator and the staircase. I didn’t have time to panic even, just to brace myself as that top step got closer and I shot over it.

  I didn’t instantly fly out of my chair or anything, I bumped violently but held on tight. For a while I thought I’d be okay, I’d just thump on down in my chair then cruise across the floor till I stopped. Another possibility: I might stop half-way down on the landing and have to wait there like it was an ice floe till someone rescued me.

  Neither of those things happened. Just before I got to the landing, I flew out of my chair, I couldn’t hold on. I did a hard somersault where my neck almost snapped before my body flew over top of it. Then I slid down on my back, hit my butt hard and became airborne. I landed with a loud click on my face on the hardwood floor. My glasses broke in half. Then my wheelchair landed on my back.

  I lay there in a pile waiting for my mom to come home and put me together again. I could see the clock on the cable box. An hour passed. Two. Three. I held on as long as I could. Then I shit my pants.

  It got dark. Still no Mom. At six, Dad came home from work. He put his coat on the coat rack, and flicked on the light. When he saw me lying there, he said: “Shit.”

  He was right.

  Dandruff

  The old man has dandruff. When he wheels me over a rough patch, it snows. My glasses are blanketed with skin cells.

  “To scratch an itch,” said the narrator of a nature documentary, “is one of nature’s greatest pleasures.” Well, I might feel an itch, a wicked itch on my leg or something, my back, but there’s nothing I can do. When you ignore an itch it only gets more powerful. Like North Korea. Or it floats all over me, this lilypad of itchiness, up and down my body and I scream internally. When it finally passes there’s a kind of mild relief which is probably not even close to as good as you’d feel from scratching.

  I don’t have dandruff. It would be worth having dandruff, though, if I could only scratch it. I can touch my head, but . . .

  Life is quite a bit worse than a nature documentary.

  Major Depression

  Mom has major depression. “I have major depression today,” she’ll say, like it’s a headache, and take Aspirin.

  She goes to Dr. Blignaut twice a week but she goes to me two or three times a day to complain about her major depression. She has no energy, she says, it’s a labour of Hercules to even make toast. “I wish I was dead,” she’ll say, but I have difficulty believing this because if she was dead she’d have no one to complain to.

  Dad works twelve hours a day and when he’s not working he’s running long errands. He could be having an affair. When he is home, he opens a newspaper and holds still for two or three hours. Mom looks for him but it’s too late because his skin has changed to the colour of newsprint. So she hunts me down, instead.

  It’s depressing.

  Bacon Bones

  The only kid I ever identified with was Bacon Bones. His head was too big. He went from being a shy, big-headed kid to a total shithead. He got bullied so much about his big head that he hurt too much for just one kid and needed to hurt other kids. But he never hurt me. He even once defended me from people. I guess I was the one kid he identified with.

  Too bad he’s in prison.

  The Sea-Wave III

  It was not a dream.

  The wave came in. I was sleeping. I leaped up. My hands. I felt the cold water, pouring.

  I felt on the wall, for the hole. It was only very small. I thought to grab something . . . but there was nothing. So cold, the water, on my throat.

  I folded my hands. I pressed them on the hole. But still, it poured water. Stop. God. My hands pressed together, as in prayer.

  I could hold no more.

  I cried out.

  Someone opened the door.

  Odour Coat

  I miss the smell of people. The old man has a smell but it’s just the one smell and not a good one. If you put maybe ten people together, there’s just instantly this smell, sort of like how whatever’s in garbage smells like garbage. I miss that people smell where there’s sweat and perfume and whatever and it gets painted on your skin and taken with you like an odour coat. I tried smelling my sleeve to see if I still smelled like my house, like people, but I didn’t. I smelled cold, and strange. Which is pretty much how I felt.

  Bickersteeth

  There was an ancient guy at the public library, maybe eighty-nine, ninety. He worked for the library, barely. He gathered stray books from cubicles and slept in them. The squealing book cart was his walker.

  His name was Bickersteeth.

  I heard this conversation a lot:

  “Who is that?” someone would ask the reference lady, nodding in Bickersteeth’s direction.

  “Bickersteeth,” she’d say, without even looking.

  “Bickersteeth, eh? Like something out of Dickens?”

  The reference lady would grimace or grin, depending on the time of day.

  “Why doesn’t he retire?”

  The reference lady would either grit her teeth or grimace and say:

  “We can’t make him.”

  Apparently Bickersteeth was hired by the library when it was still being built. The contracts back then said you couldn’t be forced to retire but when the time came most people were overjoyed to get out of the public library. Not Bickersteeth.

  I was reading one day in the cubicle no one walks by. I heard a squealing and a diapery sound and looked up. Bickersteeth was standing over me.

  “Are these your books?” he said in the shyest voice, pointing at a stack at my elbow. They were contemporary poetry so I emphatically shook my head.

  Bickersteeth kept one palm on the cart for support and picked the books up one by one with his other trembling hand. Then he grabbed hold of the cart with both hands again reverently.

  He breathed deeply.

  He closed his eyes.

  He shit himself. No doubt about it.

  Once he finished, he kept moving. The diapery sound and the squealing got quieter and quieter.

  I wheeled to the bathroom as quick as I could and threw up.

  On my way out, passing the reference desk . . .

  “Bickersteeth, eh? Almost Dickensian.”

  The reference lady grimaced.

  Bickersteeth does sound Dickensian. But no one in Dickens shits themselves, not even Mrs. Clennam. A real Victorian holds it. Even if it kills you.

  Maybe a month later, at my cubicle, I saw a new teen with a shiny cart. Then I looked and saw Bickersteeth’s empty cart against the wall, like Tiny Tim’s crutch.

  I
don’t know why. But I felt like crying.

  Library

  I got tired of waiting for Dad, so I tried getting a book out of my backpack. When people see me struggling, it offends me if they try to help because I’m not a vegetable. It offends me even more if they walk past without offering.

  If I’m bored enough, I picture a younger woman in a skirt who walks up with a mildly concerned face but then stops just short of me, smiles in a “boy, did I underestimate her” kind of way, then turns and walks off, smoothing her skirt and smiling in a way that can only mean pride and kindness.

  That’s the best case scenario.

  It hasn’t happened yet.

  Chad

  When the teachers want a longer smoke break, they drag in a motivational speaker. Last year we were in the gym waiting, there was a squealing like a wheelchair and this tiny smiling woman wheeled up to the lowest setting on the mic stand. When a hundred kids gasp, it’s an ocean. She waited for it to die down then she said, smiling:

  “I do not feel ashamed or isolate myself. I live in my own apartment and drive an adapted van. I am physically active. I’m on a rowing team. I steer the boat.”

  She went on talking, I wanted to get away, I couldn’t stop staring. She looked like she was missing half her bones. She had Brittle Bone Disease. I couldn’t breathe. It was so depressing listening to her. I felt so pathetic. When she got to the part about her boyfriend . . . The history teacher started crying. She could’ve been teaching me about evil Germans but instead she was letting me sit there and be emotionally cut to pieces.