I do not listen to Madame Bayard explaining how
our grades will be calculated over the semester.
I ignore her ice-breaking explanation
for how to make one’s own chocolatine.
And I don’t even bother copying down the homework
because
Jon is to my right
where Tippi is
not,
and he is hurling questions at me
like I’m on a late night talk show,
sitting in one of those square chairs,
and not on trial,
which is how most people make me feel
when they get inquisitive.
‘Do you both have passports?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I tell him.
‘Not that we use them.’
‘And you never want to punch your sister’s lights out?’
‘Not usually.’
‘So why come to school now?
Why here?’
‘No choice.’
‘Oh, yeah. I get that, Grace.
Totally.’
He gnaws at the end of his pencil,
thrums his fingertips
against the desk.
‘No choice …
I get that.
If I wasn’t here
I’d be on a very slow train
to nowhere.’
The Cafeteria
As we enter the cafeteria,
Yasmeen and Jon
dance around us,
one in front
one behind
so we are not
quite
seen.
Mom, Dad, Dragon, and Grammie
have been doing this for years,
hiding
us
as best they can
from ridicule
and camera phones,
because there’s nothing worse
than a click-click-click
and knowing that in seconds
you’ll be famous via
someone else’s social feed.
We order chipboard pizza,
a Sprite with two straws,
and sit
at a corner table
with Yasmeen and Jon,
talking over
other voices and clinking cutlery,
not about how we live
—the logistics of conjoined pissing—
(which is how I thought the whole day would be)
but about movies
and music
and books
and beer
and the new school year
and the islands of Greece
and coral reefs
and our favourite cereals
and Satan.
We have perfectly silly conversations
and by the time the bell rings
I am starting to wonder—
have we
found ourselves
two friends?
Where?
We have cousins
who tolerate us
and a sister we hang out with sometimes.
But friends?
Where would we have found those?
Touch
Tippi and I are standing at the lockers
switching out our books
when a heavy-set girl from our homeroom
stops by us,
her eyes on the floor.
‘Are we in your way?’ Tippi asks.
The girl pales.
‘No. My locker’s next to yours.
But take your time,’ she whispers.
‘There’s plenty of room,’ Tippi says,
shifting her weight my way.
The girl shakes her head,
steps back a couple of inches.
Oh.
She’s scared to come any closer.
She’s scared that if she puts her hand
into her locker for a textbook,
she might accidently
touch us.
The Invitation
‘You guys planning on going to study hall?’
Yasmeen asks.
We shrug simultaneously.
We don’t even know what study hall is.
‘Cool,’ Yasmeen continues.
‘Let’s skip it and go to church.’
‘Church?’ Tippi says.
‘I don’t think so.
Not really our sort of thing.’
Jon grins.
‘Well let’s give it a try.
We might convert you.’
Baptism
When we were four months old
Mom took us to the vicar
who gulped when he saw us
and said,
‘I’ll …
eh …
have to
check with a higher authority about
whether we can baptise them separately.’
Mom never set foot
in a church again.
And neither did we.
Until today.
The Church is a Beautiful Ruin
It is a collection of stones and rocks tossed around
like children’s building blocks
with a great abandoned bell lying
beneath what was once
its tower.
To get here we creep behind
the science labs,
down broken paths and
through a forest
of flies and brambles.
The Church sits next to
a pond littered with lily pads
and is the sort of place I imagine
fairies lurk,
or serial killers,
though Yasmeen says,
‘Don’t worry,
we won’t get murdered.
We’ve been coming here for years
and no one else knows about it.’
‘We’ll just have a smoke today
and die that way,’ Jon says,
and
takes such a pleasurable drag
from his cigarette you’d think he was
sucking up gold.
And soon they are both puffing away
like old pros.
Yasmeen blows a mouthful of smoke into the sky
then passes me her cigarette.
I shake my head but before I can object,
Tippi has the smouldering cancer-stick
between two fingers and is
inhaling great gulps
of tobacco and tar.
She stops
and coughs
so hard I think she might throw up.
Yasmeen laughs.
Jon scratches his head.
And I gently pat my sister
on the back
when what I really want to do is
let her choke.
Coffee and Cigarettes
I am a peppermint tea sort of person.
Tippi drinks coffee the colour of coal.
She guzzles down around five mugs a day
—not that I get a say—
as the caffeine careens around her body
and has her buzzing like a blender
—and me, too
these days.
It started as a milky latte to help get her going
in the mornings.
Then it was one at lunch
and another later
and before she knew it,
Tippi was a slave to the stuff.
So although
I know it’s
just one
cigarette,
and
one cigarette
never killed a soul,
I also know Tippi.
Perhaps
‘How did your day go?’
Mrs James wants to know
during our
debrief in her office.
‘Do you think you could be happy
at Hornbeacon?’
‘Happy?’
Tippi asks,
her head
tilted to the side
as though
she’s never heard the word before
and is requesting a
translation.
‘Happy,’
Mrs James repeats,
waving jazz hands at us.
‘Do you like it here?
Will you be staying?’
Tippi looks at me and
I smile.
‘Perhaps,’ she says,
and then again,
‘Perhaps.’
We Wait
Long after
the other students
have gone home,
long after Yasmeen has waved goodbye
and promised to meet
us in the common room
tomorrow morning,
we wait.
It’s past four o’clock by the time
Dad’s car appears,
mounting the curb and
skidding to a stop.
We creep out of our hiding spot between a clump of trees
but Dad isn’t at the wheel.
Thank God.
He’s slumped in the passenger seat,
his face as purple as a pickled beetroot.
Grammie is driving.
‘He’s hammered, isn’t he?’ Tippi says
as we slide into the backseat.
‘Blotto!’ Grammie says.
She stabs Dad
with her fake fingernails
and turns on the windshield wipers
though it isn’t raining.
‘He didn’t get the job
he interviewed for
yesterday,’ she says,
like that’s an explanation,
like Dad deserves our sympathy,
like lately he’s needed an excuse
to be drunk.
Tippi and I are fidgety,
desperate to tell someone
about our first day,
that it wasn’t perfect but
no one called us devil’s spawn
or asked how many vaginas we have.
But we stay silent in the back seat
because if Dad wakes up
we’ll have to listen
to his drivel
instead.
And no one,
no one,
wants
that.
Other Reasons
Grammie puts Dad to bed,
turns on the TV,
and settles in for the night,
a whole menu of prerecorded
programs ahead of her.
Dragon is in her room
dressed in a leotard and ballet slippers
staring at herself in a full-length mirror.
She dips and dives,
her body a fountain.
‘He’s always wasted,’ she says,
stopping to sip
at a glass of water.
He is.
It’s true.
But what can we do
except try to be perfect
and hope it’ll keep him happy
and sober—
which it never does.
‘So …’ Dragon says,
‘How did it go?’
‘It was great,’ I say aloud,
finally.
Tippi and I
flop down on to Dragon’s bed
even though we should be
getting started on the dinner.
‘We’re definitely staying,’ Tippi says
and I nod.
Jon creeps
into my mind—
his nut-coloured eyes and star-lined hands.
I shake him away,
this boy I just met,
this boy I hardly know
because
he can’t be why I like Hornbeacon.
I need other reasons.
I need other reasons
or I’ll go mad with
longing.
No One Mentions
We eat baked potatoes for dinner,
crunchy shells with fluffy innards
that we smother in butter, grated cheese and tuna.
Mom asks about school but she
isn’t as interested as we’d expected—
or hoped.
She eats slowly and
stares at the tiny bubbles tiptoeing their way
to the top of her sparkling water
while Dad lies in bed,
stinking up their white sheets,
sleeping off the whiskey.
No one mentions the spare baked
potato getting cold in the oven.
No one mentions the stench of vomit
wafting up the hall.
We keep our voices low,
our mouths full,
and hope that tomorrow will be
different.
Selfish
‘We have to talk about The Church,’ I say
as Tippi and I lie
side by side
in bed.
‘You’re upset about the cigarette.
God, Grace.’
She sighs
and I feel
for a moment
so much
younger than her.
‘I think we should have discussed it,’ I say,
not needing to remind her
that
this shoddy body
never split like it should
and that if she dies,
so do I.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘So can I smoke?’
curl away from her
as best I can.
It isn’t really a question:
When Tippi wants something
she takes it with
two hands
and
with a body that belongs to
us both.
I know this should make me
angry,
but
all I feel is envy
because I so wish
I
could be more selfish
sometimes
too.
Naked
I shampoo my hair and
leave conditioner on the dry ends
for a few minutes
while Tippi scrubs herself down with a sponge
and wild lavender
body wash.
I lean away from the strong smell
so she won’t get any suds on my arms or face
then
step under the water jet
and use a fresh bar of almond soap
to rub myself clean.
‘Isn’t it weird to see each other naked?’
our twelve-year-old
cousin Helen asked
last year
over Thanksgiving turkey,
which made Grammie
gag on a roast potato.
Tippi and I shrugged,
shook our heads
while everyone waited for an answer,
pretending they weren’t,
and Tippi said,
‘When you share a life,
seeing your sister’s boobs
doesn’t really feel like a
big deal.’
The First Fall
We are rushing to get ready,
brushing our teeth,
me with my right hand,
Tippi with her left,
our spare arms wrapped around each other’s waists
like fishhooks.
And suddenly the mirror
disappears and
so does Tippi.
When I Wake Up
I am on the bathroom floor listening to the sound of
screeching,
Tippi shaking me back into the world.
She sighs
when I blink
and squeezes me.
‘I’m OK,’
I manage
as
pounding feet beat against the hardwood floor
in the hall.
Dragon is at the door,
a blusher brush in hand,
which she is waving like a wand
and shouting,
‘What the hell happened?’
‘I slipped,’ I whisper.
‘Really?’ Dragon asks,
hands on hips,
looking like Mom.
‘Yes,’ I lie, ‘I slipped,’
and hanging on to the sink,
drag myself and Tippi up from the cold,
beige
bathroom floor.
Dragon is frowning.
‘She slipped,’ Tippi says.
Looking for Dragon
Dragon douses herself in candy-scented perfume
and has started wearing lipstick.
‘You have a boyfriend, don’t you?’
I say,
teasing her,
wondering,
hoping.
‘Sort of,’ Dragon says.
Tippi stops spreading cream cheese on a bagel
and gives Dragon serious
side-eye.
‘It’s cool if you don’t want him to meet us.’
Dragon is wrapping a silky scarf tightly around her neck.
She pauses.
‘It’s not what you think.’
Tippi snorts.
‘It’s OK, really.
We get it.
We get what we are.’
Every feature of Dragon’s face pinches together tightly.
‘Yeah, I know who you are, too.
But who am I apart from your sister?
Can you tell me that?’
She ties the scarf in place
and waits.
We watch her.
‘No, I didn’t think so,’ she says,
and storms out
slamming every door
behind her.