Shadow Girl (3 page)

“Do you want me to meet you at Loblaws? I can help.”

“No. You’ll just want me to buy all kinds of stuff.”

“No, I won’t. Honest. But you should see all the Christmas decorations in the stores. And there’s all kinds of great toys and chocolate and candies in Zellers.”

“Sounds as if someone’s hungry.”

Jules laughed. “I can hardly wait to eat.”

He put the dried noodles in the boiling water. “Shouldn’t be long now.” He turned around to look at the table. “Pretty bare, huh? It’d be good if we could put cheese on this spaghetti or eat it with garlic bread.”

“There’s Cheez Whiz in the fridge, but it’s kinda dried-up and old.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’ll eat what we’ve got.”

“Then maybe watch TV together?”

“Sure.”

Jules didn’t know how much boys ate, but she seemed to eat a lot for a girl – or so her dad said. But she just ate when she was hungry and until her stomach was full. Tonight she ate two plates of spaghetti. When they were finished, her dad went into the living room to watch the news while she did the dishes.

When she joined him, Jules kept her fingers crossed that there’d be something good on. “
Mr. Magoo’s
Christmas Carol
’s just starting. Want to watch it, Dad?”

“Sounds good.”

Her father loved Mr. Magoo, but his “bumblingness” drove Jules crazy.

Doesn’t matter. Just watching a Christmas show with him’ll be fun
.

Even before the program was over, Jules felt herself getting sleepy. She’d eaten so much spaghetti that her belly was bulging. The warm house and food made her warm inside, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

“I’m going to bed, Dad.”

“Okay.”

“Have a good sleep.”

“You, too.”

When she got to her room, she changed quickly.

Yikes! It’s like the North Pole up here
.

She got into bed as fast as she could.

I won’t be imagining anything tonight. I’m falling asleep standing up!

T
he alarm clock rang. Another gray day outside.

Brrr. This room is freezing
.

Jules got up and dressed quickly.

Friday the thirteenth. Yikes. But it’s payday and Dad’s going shopping. There’ll be food in the fridge! And maybe he’ll buy me a Christmas present
.

It wasn’t often Jules woke up feeling so good.

She washed her face and combed her straggly brown hair. Jules often wished it could be dark red or black – something dramatic. She went downstairs to the kitchen. Her dad was already gone.

No milk. No bread, even. How am I going to make breakfast? Or lunch?

She heated up the leftover spaghetti on the stove. If she ate a big enough breakfast, it wouldn’t be so hard to miss lunch. She filled her stomach as much
as she could bear, cleaned up the kitchen, and got ready for school.

She was going to walk with Patsy today. They’d plan the weekend. Maybe they’d go skating at Teresa’s again or, even better, go to the plaza and play “Pretend” – pretend to buy this or that, pretend to be this or that person.

Patsy was slow getting ready, and they had to run most of the way to school, which was hard to do because the sidewalks were slippery. It was fun, though – the funnest part of the day.

At lunch, despite the big spaghetti breakfast, Jules was hungry all over again, but she had to pretend she wasn’t. She went outside and watched some of the kids go home, the ones who lived nearby.

Will their mom or dad be there? Will there be food in the fridge or cupboards? Will they make the same kind of meal I do?

It was hard to keep warm, just standing and waiting, and it seemed a long time before the rest of the kids came outside. Some were holding cookies or an apple or orange. Jules watched them eat and imagined the taste of the food in her own mouth. She couldn’t help it.

Tonight Dad goes shopping, and maybe he’ll buy a treat
. That thought made her happy.

After school, Jules got to Zellers in record time. She bypassed the candy section – her stomach was too growly – and went straight for the dolls. Hers was
still on display, which meant she could play with it.

She’d told her dad the name of the doll she wanted way back in October, and over and over again since then. She’d told him the price, too.

I hope he remembers. I don’t want anything else for Christmas
.

“You’re getting too old to play with dolls, aren’t you?” he’d said last week.

“No, I’m not, Dad. Lots of my friends still do.”

He looked like he didn’t believe her, but she didn’t know how to convince him. She’d thought about asking for something else, a book maybe. She loved to read.

But once you’re finished a book, that’s it. With a doll, you can play and play and play. It becomes a friend. Something to love
.

Mrs. Adamson came over to where Jules was standing. “Hi, Jules. How’re you doing?”

“Okay.” Jules smiled shyly.

“You love that doll, don’t you?”

Jules nodded.

“I wish I’d had one like it when I was small.”

“Really?” Jules looked at the expression on Mrs. Adamson’s face to see if she was being phony.

“The few I did get I managed to keep, though. I still love them.”

Jules wanted to say that she’d kept her dolls from many years ago, too – but she had only a couple left, and they were in pretty bad shape. When she was little, she liked to experiment with their hair and try
to figure out how the leg and arm joints worked by pulling them off. Or she’d make the dolls go on wild outdoor adventures they often didn’t survive. But she wasn’t like that now.

I’m going to take care of this one if I get it. And I’ll take it with me if we move again. I’ve lost too much
.

Mrs. Adamson talked to her a lot that day, in between customers. It was hard to know what to say back, but that didn’t seem to bother Mrs. Adamson. She talked about any darn thing, and she answered Jules as if she was really listening.

“It’s great working in the toy department because I can get lots of bargains. I love toys almost as much as my kids do.”

When Mrs. Adamson went over to rearrange a display some customers had messed up, Jules watched her and wondered why some adults treated kids as if they didn’t remember being one, and others treated kids as if they never forgot.

J
ules got home around five o’clock, tidied up, and played her recorder.

An hour later, the usual worries began. “What’s keeping him?” she said out loud.

It isn’t snowing. That can’t be it
.

He has to work overtime. That happens sometimes
.

There’s an extra-long lineup at the bank. Fridays are busy
.

Crowds in the supermarket. For sure
.

Not many taxis. Not at this time of night
.

All those things
.

But when her dad was late, it was almost always because he went for a few beers with his work buddies and forgot the time, especially on payday.

By seven-thirty, Jules had just about given up when she heard her dad fumbling with the outer screen door.

“Jules, Jules, I need your help,” he called out. Taxi drivers often helped him carry the groceries in, but not today. He took a taxi home on Fridays because he had so much to carry, but also because he smashed up their old wreck of a car a year ago, along with somebody else’s. That was scary. He almost went to jail.

Jules didn’t care if they had a car, although her dad was an auto mechanic, and he thought it was crazy that they couldn’t afford to buy one. He worked at Thompson Motors and could make any kind of rotten car go.

“Hi, Dad. I’ll take the bags.”

“Hi, honey!” he said in a loud voice.

His whole body smells of beer
.

“I was getting worried about you.”

“What the hell for? I made pretty good time, pretty good time.”

“Sure. It’s not so late.” Jules carried the groceries to the kitchen table and went through the bags eagerly to see what was in them.

On days when her dad drank a lot, he bought things he wouldn’t normally get, like fancy cuts of meat or canned asparagus, forgetting to buy milk or bread. But it looked as though he’d covered the basics and bought only a few weird extras.

“How often do we have steak, Jules? We’re going to have steak tonight. Steak and potatoes and mushrooms.”

“Did you buy potatoes, Dad? We’re all out.”

“Sure, I think I did.” He started searching through the bags. “Whoops,” he said, laughing like a little boy. “Guess I forgot. But it’s okay. I got some fantastic bread. We’ll have that and steak and mushrooms, and I even bought dessert.” He pulled out a package of brownies and a box of powdered strawberry doughnuts.

Jules’s eyes lit up. “Great. I can hardly wait.”

“You’re a poet and don’t know it.”

They both laughed.

She put the groceries away while he cooked. Before long, dinner was ready. Jules didn’t like steak as much as her father, but she’d eat anything.

He kept drinking.

“I’m finished, Dad. Can I have dessert?”

“Sure, hon.”

Powdered strawberry doughnuts. Ooey-gooey good!

She gobbled one down.

Her dad was in a good mood, but she knew from experience that beer was more responsible for it than the fact that it was payday and Friday night. It didn’t matter, though.

After she’d done the dishes, they turned on the TV. Jules hoped her dad would just get tired and fall asleep.

She looked outside the living room window. It had started to snow. She asked if she could have some of the canned orange drink he’d bought.

“Okay, but that’s got to last. I don’t want it all gone tonight.”

“No, no. I won’t drink it all.” But she could have. It tasted so good, and she never seemed to get enough.

She gulped the orange drink quickly and went back to the living room. Her father was having another beer. She’d counted the empty bottles when she was in the kitchen, like she always did.

“Just a lot of crap!” he said, switching channels.

Jules could stay up late any night of the week when her dad wasn’t around, but if he was, he let her stay up as long as she wanted on Friday and Saturday nights. If she’d been playing hard outside during the day, she usually got sleepy by eight o’clock.

She wasn’t tired tonight, though. And she was still hungry. “Dad, can I have a brownie?”

“Goddamn it! Are you going to eat everything?”

“No! I won’t, I won’t. It’s just that I’m still kinda hungry.”

“Hungry? After all I made for you? After all you ate? Goddamn it. Goddamn
you
!” He stormed into the kitchen.

Jules thought about making a run for her room, but hiding wasn’t always the best thing to do when her dad wanted to yell at her. He’d get angry if she bolted, and he’d chase her, screaming and yelling outside her locked bedroom door, making her feel trapped. Sometimes if she just stayed put, shrinking herself down and pretending she wasn’t there, things would calm down.

“Here!” He threw the cardboard package of
brownies at her, hitting her on her cheek. “Eat them! Eat them all!” He thundered into the kitchen again and came back carrying the can of orange drink and the doughnuts. “Here, finish all this off, too!” He slammed the doughnuts and drink down on the floor in the middle of the living room and stomped back into the kitchen. “I work hard all day at a job I hate. Spend all my money on groceries, and she wants to eat everything in one night! All right! Okay! Then that’s what she’s gonna do. Here!” he roared as he brought out a bag of carrots, a package of bologna, a loaf of bread, eggs.

He kept going back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, taking whatever he could find from the fridge and cupboards, and putting the food in the middle of the living room floor. “Go on. Eat it! Finish it all, like the goddamn pig you are! And when there’s nothing left, it ain’t gonna be my fault.”

Jules bent her head down into her chest. Her dad never liked it if she looked straight at him when he was like this.

He marched back to the kitchen. Jules knew what people meant when they said someone was larger than life. Her dad looked and acted like a giant, a giant on a rampage. He was banging the cupboard doors as he opened and closed them, screaming and grabbing more food.

Time to escape
.

Jules hadn’t seen him this crazy for a long time.

What if he forces me to eat the food he’s piling up?

That thought was terrifying. If she was fast enough, she could get upstairs before he noticed. If he followed her to her room, she could lock the door. She put the brownies on the sofa and ran.

When she got to her room, Jules locked herself in and listened at the door. It was important to know what was going on, though, so she decided to open the door a few inches in order to hear him.

When he realized she wasn’t there, the rampaging got worse. He threw dishes on the kitchen floor and against the walls. Smashing stuff was one of his favorite things to do when he got mad – or destroying something Jules cared about.

“What does she expect? Goddamn kid! I’ve had it. I’m done!” Then she heard him dialing a number on the phone. His voice changed to the one he used for his friends. “Hey, Hank. Yeah, it’s me. Got anything going on tonight? Wanna go to the Izzy?”

There was a silence as Hank answered.

“Great! Get yourself over here and let’s do it. It’s Chrismus, for Chrissake. I wanna have some fun.”

As her father listened to Hank, it felt as if the house itself were catching its breath.

“Yeah? Perfect. I’m ready.” He slammed the receiver down.

He’d once pulled the phone wire out of the wall and thrown the entire set across the living room. But then they couldn’t use the phone for a long time.

“A goddamn leech, a bloody stinking leech, that’s
what she is!” His voice got louder, stronger, rising out of his chest like a lion’s roar. It could take over a room and squeeze out every other sound. “I’m stuck. Stuck in this stupid life! I work hard and come home to ‘gimme, gimme, gimme.’ Christ! I can’t take it!”