I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, Mom,’ I say,
trying to be kind,
trying not to blame her for
losing her job,
or sending us
to school in the first place
and making us fall in love with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeats.
‘We’ll sell the apartment and buy
something
more affordable in Vermont.
You have cousins there and
I’m sure the state
will find funding to send you
to another great school.’
‘It won’t be Hornbeacon,’
Tippi says,
unable to console our mother
or concede.
And this time I don’t
really blame her because
she’s right.
It won’t be Hornbeacon.
It won’t be Jon and Yasmeen.
Dragon’s head appears around the door.
‘It sucks,’ she says,
‘But we’ll be OK.’
She is slouching,
her shoulders hunched
her head dipped
so she looks completely unlike herself
and not even half convinced
by what she’s saying.
‘You’ll have to give up your ballet studio,’ I say.
‘You might not find one you like in Vermont.’
Dragon shrugs.
Her eyes fill with water.
‘I’ll cope,’ she says.
‘I’ll dance on the ski slopes.’
I pinch Tippi’s knee and she looks at me.
‘No,’ she says firmly,
and after a pause,
‘Maybe.’
Finally
Staring at our shoes
Tippi says, ‘Call the reporter.’
Her voice is wispy
like laundry drying on a line.
‘Call her,’ she repeats,
‘and let’s get this fucking freak show started.’
Double Standards
‘Are you sure about this?’
Dragon asks.
‘I mean, you’d be paid for idiots to gawk at you.
Is that what you want?’
Gorgeous people strut down catwalks
in dresses made of string,
loll half naked on sandy beaches
and no one seems to mind
that they do this for money—
no one finds it
distasteful
at all.
But when Tippi and I consider cashing in on our bodies,
everyone frowns.
Why is that?
Caroline Henley
She sips at the tea Mom’s made
and chats about such ordinary things
you’d never know she’d been hounding
us for years
—calls, emails, texts—
begging to be allowed
behind-the-scenes access to
our conjoined lives
so she can make
a full-length documentary.
‘Bumpy landing,’ she says,
sticking to the safe subject of her journey.
I’ve never heard a voice so
richly British and politely prim,
like she’s travelled from the 1940s
and not just climbed off a flight from London.
‘Hit the runway with such a
thwack
I thought the wheels would
fly off.
And the traffic on the highway.
Just dreadful!’
She drinks more tea.
‘Hotel’s lovely. View of the river,
Statue of Liberty.
I’ve never been to New York before.
So much to see.’
Mom offers Caroline another cookie.
‘How many days are you staying?’
she asks.
Caroline coughs.
‘You mean months,’ she says.
She conjures up a contract
from inside her blazer,
slapping it down on the side table
like a ransom note.
‘I’d want complete access the whole time.
Everything’s here in black and white
for you to read and sign.
I’ve a pen,’
she says,
and supernaturally
produces one of those.
Her eyes are suddenly hard and
brimming with ambition.
‘People will want to see you at home,
school, shopping for clothes.’
She breaks a cookie in two
and pops one of the pieces into her mouth.
‘I’m so glad to be here.’
Dad is sitting straight-backed and jiggling one foot.
He’s promised to be good
while Caroline films our lives,
although that was before we knew
she’d be here so long.
He snaps up the contract,
scans it with bloodshot eyes.
‘Wanna see them take a leak, too?’ he asks.
‘How about showering?
People might be curious.’
Caroline doesn’t giggle like the rest of us,
as we try to smooth over the crinkles
in Dad’s bad temper by pretending
he’s joking.
She knows he isn’t.
‘Bathrooms are out of bounds,’ Caroline says.
‘But I’ll follow them everywhere else.
And you’ll all be on film.
There’s another daughter
I believe,’ she says, talking about Dragon
like she’s a dog we own
and not our sister.
But we’ve already thought
of a way to get Dragon
out of the picture,
because no one’s going to
make a mockery of her life.
Dad flicks through the contract,
pages and pages of clauses and disclaimers
none of us will ever decipher.
Mom is silent.
She does not want this.
She has always kept us
hidden
and safe
and I can tell she’s ashamed,
like she feels
she is selling us.
‘When do they get their money?’ Grammie asks,
not a jot of decorum
anywhere in sight.
Caroline’s eyes shine.
‘As soon as the contract’s signed,’
she says,
handing everyone except Grammie
plastic pens
that seem way too
flimsy for such a task.
We sign.
And we hand back the contract.
‘Fifty thousand dollars on the nose,’ Caroline says,
‘and how would you like that?
Cheque or bank transfer?’
Grammie almost spits out her dentures.
Dad’s frown dissolves.
‘Cheque,’ he says.
‘They’ll take a cheque.’
Preamble
Caroline spends an eternity interviewing us
off camera:
questions and questions and questions,
all of which we’ve heard a thousand
times before.
We could be rude,
yawn or feign offence
but the money hasn’t cleared in our account
yet.
The Crew
Caroline returns
with two men
in their twenties.
‘This is Paul,’ she says,
pointing at the guy in the baseball cap.
Turning to the other one
with a red beard, she says,
‘And this is Shane.
We’
ll all be around for a while
so we better try to get
along.’
I wait a second for
Tippi to speak, but she doesn’t.
‘Of course,’ I say.
‘I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.’
And when I look at Tippi
she is blushing
deep puce.
‘You like one of the camera guys,’
I say later
when we are alone.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she says,
far too passionately
for me to be wrong.
To Russia with Love
We pay for Dragon’s dance trip to Russia
and
she leaves on a bus stuffed full of other dancers
for the airport.
We wave and blow kisses as
she presses her fingertips against the window
and then her lips.
She’s taken
every tutu and
pair of ballet slippers she owns,
plus all our woolly hats and gloves
because we read about the
burly Russian cold,
where snow settles to the height
of mountains in places.
‘Don’t forget to come back,’ Tippi told
her,
zipping up the suitcase.
Dragon laughed
without looking at either of us,
because if she got the chance to stay in Russia
and dance forever
I’m sure
that’s exactly what she would do.
And I wouldn’t blame her.
Caroline Is Not Happy
‘Your sister was meant to be in the documentary.
This wasn’t part of our deal,’
Caroline says.
‘So quit,’ Tippi tells her,
‘and we’ll give you back the money.’
Tippi holds on to her poker face
like a top table player
in Las Vegas.
Caroline can’t compete.
‘Fine, but no more surprises.’
Whiskey Before Noon
When Dad gets home
he scuttles straight down the hallway
trying to avoid the cameras.
But Grammie’s left her bowling bag in the way and
he ends up
splattered across the floor like a
joke.
Caroline laughs.
‘Don’t tell us you’ve been on the whiskey before noon,’
she says.
She sees his face
riddled with guilt
and must smell the alcohol.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh, right.’
And her smile vanishes.
Behind the Bedroom Door
It takes five hours of
talking
shouting
and crying
behind
the bedroom door
for Mom and Dad
to come to an
agreement.
A Family Meeting
We gather at the kitchen table to hear the news:
Dad is moving out.
He can’t stay sober
and Mom won’t let the world
watch him drink.
‘I’ll be back when Caroline’s finished,’
he says,
like this is the most sensible of solutions
and Caroline is the problem.
‘How about you give up the booze?’
Tippi suggests.
Dad blinks and clings to a cushion.
We wait and watch
as his face
becomes an open
plate
of despair.
‘I can’t,’ he says.
‘I don’t know how.’
We nod.
It’s the most truthful thing
he’s said in months.
Gone
Dad doesn’t
dig out a bulky black suitcase from the cellar
like the one Dragon packed for Russia,
a suitcase with wheels and tags
and the promise of going
somewhere far away,
far better.
He manages to fit everything he’s taking
into a red sports bag.
If you didn’t know he was leaving
you’d think he was off to the gym
to pound away on a treadmill—
run for miles and miles
without getting anywhere
until finally coming home,
sweaty and smiling.
But Dad is going somewhere.
He is leaving us
to live with his brother in New Brunswick.
Maybe I should be crying,
but as Dad closes the front door
behind him,
my tears don’t come—
only a deep breath
and a very warm feeling of relief.
For the Best
‘Your dad’s gone, too?’ Caroline asks.
She throws her hands into the air.
‘Seriously?’
We shrug.
Paul and Shane blink.
Caroline
scratches her head.
Then she puts her hands into her pockets.
‘Oh well.
It’s probably for the best.’
Paul
Tippi drops her backpack
and Paul,
the cameraman,
picks it up for her.
She doesn’t look at him
when she says,
Laughter
On Hudson Street
a toddler kicks his mom and runs off
at a sprint,
her chasing and screaming.
I’m not sure why, but it makes me laugh hard
and
it isn’t long before Tippi is giggling, too.
Paul’s camera is trained right at us,
sunbeams reflecting off the lens.
Caroline says,
‘You laugh a lot. It’s inspiring.
Even in your condition, you embrace life.’
But I’m not sure
what I’m supposed to do with life
other than embrace it.
Should I reject it?
I don’t.
Instead I laugh.
And Caroline is inspired.
The Hiltons
We often get compared to Daisy and Violet Hilton,
‘Because you’re both so pretty,’
Caroline says,
and sighs.
But nothing good ever came of
Daisy and Violet’s beauty
except for a few slimy suitors
sniffing around and hoping to bed them both
—two for the price of one—
let-me-get-a-look-at-you-with-no-panties-on
kind of proposals.
They were born in 1908 and sold like slaves
to a midwife called Mary who
sent them touring across the world,
amazing the crowds with their singing
and saxophone playing
and being cheerful and charming
despite their disability.
By our age Daisy and Violet were among
the wealthiest
performers of their time
and maybe we should learn from them,
be more brazen about selling our wares and
showcasing our abnormalities:
‘Step up, step up,
see the two-headed girl
play badminton!’
But like most conjoined twins in history,
the Hiltons’ story ends in tragedy
when the public lost interest
and they were left broke,
spending seven long years
working behind a shop counter
and dying s
ide by side
of Hong Kong flu.
They were found by a neighbour
and buried beneath a tombstone that reads
Beloved Siamese Twins
as though that was the
one and only thing
they were,
or that ever mattered
to anyone.
Popularity
Kids we hardly know,
kids who sidestepped us from day one,
start to sniff around
when they hear
we’re about to shoot some scenes
for Caroline’s film at school.
Permission slips are forged
and all the students in our class
offer themselves up
for interviews,
clamouring for a way in—
the chance to be a talking head
and show the world
how liberal and kindhearted they can be.
But Tippi and I have already told Caroline
who should be
getting airtime,
who deserves the limelight,
and it isn’t anyone who has
spent the entire term
ignoring us.
Yasmeen and Jon
will be the stars.
Constantly Rolling
Caroline and the crew
follow us everywhere,
the camera
constantly rolling
so they won’t
miss a thing.
I am used to being watched
and have sort of stopped noticing they are
there in the mornings
as I fumble around
getting ready,
as Tippi and I dry our hair, tie our shoes,
and snatch circles of buttered bagels for breakfast.
Sometimes we do something
completely ordinary,
like sweep the kitchen floor,
and Caroline lets her jaw drop
to show how fascinating
we are.
‘Wow!’ she’ll say.
And then again,