The Monkeyface Chronicles (17 page)

I follow her toward the doorway that leads to her bedroom — I can tell it's her room by the padlock hanging open on the outside of the door. If the rest of the house resembles a monastery, then Adeline's bedroom is nothing more than a jail cell: bare walls, a small cot, a single bedside table. I sit on the cot and set my backpack on the quilt folded across the end of the mattress.

Adeline takes off her glasses and sets them down on the little table, then casually peels of her top. “Hey,” she says, “can you take my ‘street clothes' back to your place with you?”

“Uh, sure.”

“I'll stop by to change at your place tomorrow morning, as usual,” she says. “Do you like this bra?”

The bra is not Adeline's usual industrial-beige mechanism made from bullet-proof-vest material. The bra Adeline is wearing at the moment has slender straps and delicate cups, and it's translucent and violet-coloured. Just
thinking
about breasts normally causes my blood to run south, but seeing her pink nipples through the film-thin fabric creates a rush like a river during spring thaw.

“Nice,” I choke out, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Natural looking.”

“Your mom gave it to me.”

“My
mom
?”

An image flashes into my mind of my mother standing in the kitchen wearing this same brassiere, and my nether regions deflate. Adeline unzips the fly of her jeans and wiggles her hips free. The denim slides down to her knees, and she steps out of one pant leg, then flips the jeans onto my lap with the opposite foot. She is bound from waist to knee in a flesh-coloured contraption that resembles a medieval chastity belt more than a pair of women's panties. The only time I've seen anything like it was during my pre-teen explorations of the women's underwear section of the Sears catalogue, on the Old Lady page.

“If my mother can't keep me fat by force-feeding me junk food, she'll keep the guys away by dressing me in granny panties,” she says. “I swear, as soon as I get out of here, I'm wearing only lacey little thongs for the rest of my life. Now turn your head and hold out your hand.”

I do as I am told. She drapes the bra over my outstretched hand. The material radiates second-hand warmth.

“Put it in at the top of your backpack so it doesn't get crushed, okay? Your mother's bra is the nicest thing I've got.”

“Don't call it
my mother's
bra, okay?”

Resisting the strong temptation to sneak a glimpse, I unbuckle the top flap of my backpack and remove Volume XYZ of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
and
The New Illustrated
Art of Sex
to make room inside for her clothes.

When I turn my head, I'm expecting her to be repackaged in her stiff Tabernacle uniform, but she's wearing nothing but her Old Lady Underwear. She straightens, takes a step backward. Her naked breasts rise into perfect orbs as she reaches behind her head to tie her hair into its Tabernacle-mandated braids.

All I can say is “God.”

“You really shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain like that, Philip.” She giggles, her breasts bouncing slightly.

“
Proof
of God,” I say.

“Better,” she says.

My heart thumps. My head feels like a helium balloon.

“Well, my dear, the Day of Reckoning is nigh,” comes the shrill voice of Adeline's mother from just outside the bedroom door. “Pastor Vangelis has officially declared
war
on the Sinners and Blasphemers, and we are all to be troops in the . . . ”

Her voice trails off as she strides into the room. Time, motion, and sound come to an abrupt halt as she freezes mid-step to contemplate the scene in front of her: her giggling daughter, arms raised, back arched, naked from the waist up, and an open-mouthed boy sitting on her daughter's bed with her jeans in his lap and a skimpy brassiere dangling from the index finger of his right hand.

“AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Adeline's mother presses her palms against her temples as if to keep her head from bursting. Adeline folds her arms across her naked chest, grips her shoulders, and dances on her toes, shrieking almost as loud as her mother. I leap to my feet, adding my own startled voice to the dissonant chorus.

Candace Brown's glare moves from her daughter's naked torso to the enormous bulge in the crotch of my pants. Her eyes bug out as if I'm aiming a loaded pistol at her, and she screams even louder. When she sees
The New Illustrated Art of
Sex
in the grip of my left hand, she begins to hyperventilate.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
she pants, her face turning blue. She slumps against the bedroom wall.

“Her uniform is restricting her breathing,” I tell Adeline. “Loosen her clothing.”

Her mother leaps away from the wall and screams, “YOUR PERVERTED EYES HAVE SINNED
ENOUGH
, PERVERT!”

She lunges at me, panting like a rabid dog.

“Mom!” Adeline cries, “He was only trying to help!”

“PERVERT!” Adeline's mother hollers. “DOG OF HELL!”

I sprint through the bedroom door and stumble forward as something solid slams against the back of my head. I spin around to see Volume XYZ of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
lying on the floor where it landed. I rub the back of my skull, where a lump is already forming. Candace Brown is standing in the bedroom doorway.

“PERVERT! PREDATOR!” she sputters, trembling with religious fervour. “GODLESS DEMON!”

With both hands, she holds my backpack over her head, and hurls it at me with all her strength. It hits me square in the chest. She cocks her arm back and hurls
The New Illustrated
Art of Sex
at my face. I dodge the flying manual, and it skids across the floor behind me.

“THE DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING!” she screams, her face turning purple. “YOU WILL
PAY
, PERVERT!”

“Mom,” Adeline begs, “Calm down! Please!”

Adeline's mother spins around, her braided hair swinging like the chain of a mace, and she strikes her daughter's face with her open palm. Adeline tumbles backward, and her mother rushes into the bedroom after her, shrieking, “SINNER!” followed by the hard sound of a slap. “YOU WILL BE
SHUNNED
!” Another slap.
“SHUNNED!”
Another slap. “YOUR DISGRACE WILL BE
MINE! MINE!
”
Slap. Slap.

I rush back toward the bedroom to help Adeline, but her mother steps out and slams the door behind her. She threads the shackle of the lock through the deadbolt, snaps it shut.

“Mrs. Brown,” I say, “unlock the door, please.” I wish my voice didn't quiver.

She stares at me with burning eyes, takes a step toward me. Involuntarily, I step backward. “You will pay,
pervert
,” she says, her voice now eerily calm. “Your whole perverted family will pay for your sins.”

“Leave my family out of this.”

“Your family are sinners of the worst kind. Perverts. Liars. Full of greed and pride. Do you think we don't know?” She takes another step toward me. I take another step back. “Look at you! You are a punishment from God. Yours is a Godless home, a house of Atheism, a house of . . . ”

“You don't know what you're talking about. My mother goes to church every Sunday.”

“To a church of PRETENDERS!” she says, the evangelistic pitch returning to her voice. “A church of IDOLATORS!”

“She goes to the Catholic Church,” I say.

“We'll see how much
that
matters when the Day of Reckoning arrives,” Adeline's mother says, smiling smugly. “Rest assured, the Army of the Righteous will soon be knocking on
your
door.”

I scoop my backpack and books from the bare floor, and I turn and sprint from the house at full speed.

Adeline's mother stands on the front step, hollering after me, “THE DAY OF RECKONING IS
COMING
, SINNER! THE DAY OF RECKONING IS
COMING
!”

As soon as Candace Brown goes back into the house, I turn and run around to the back, where Adeline is already wriggling out through her bedroom window.

“Get me out of here,” she pants. “Get me out of here.”

Michael stays the night at a buddy's house, and my father is off somewhere on his motorcycle, so it's just Mom, Adeline and I who sit huddled around the living room table, trying to ignore the sound of the phone ringing over and over again. Between rings, Adeline grabs the phone and calls her father in Toronto.

“Daddy, come get me,” she cries. “She's gone totally crazy. I can't wait until summer. Please come get me, Daddy. Please.”

We listen in tense silence as Candace Brown shows up at our house, pounding on our front door and screaming insults at our family for nearly an hour, until she is joined by a chorus of Tabernacle faithful, including Pastor Vangelis. They shout vague threats about Devine Retribution and hammer incessantly on our windows and doors until at last the police arrive and make them go back to the Tabernacle. We can still hear them shouting down there in the Tabernacle parking lot the end of our laneway. Around three in the morning they give up, and all is silent, but none of us sleep.

The sun finally rises, and Adeline's father arrives. He emerges from a sparkling black limousine, flanked by two men wearing crisp, dark suits. Adeline's dad is a short but muscular man. He wears a black golf shirt and pants, shoes that gleam like they're fresh from the shoebox, and a pair of sunglasses, which he does not remove when he enters our home. His face is so cleanly shaven that it looks like a marble bust. He introduces the other men as Toronto lawyers.

Principal Lewis is summoned, as well a couple of officers from the local police force. Adeline's mother shows up with Pastor Vangelis, who wears flashy gold-trimmed red raiment very much at odds with the stiff compulsory outfits of his congregants. Sitting at the head of our kitchen table, he bellows evangelically that “THE SACRED BOND BETWEEN MOTHER AND CHILD SHALL NOT BE BROKEN!” but his protests are silenced when one of the lawyers points out that Candace Brown has in fact broken the skin on her daughter's face with her repeated slapping, thus also breaking their mother-daughter bond, at least in a legal sense.

When the police hear about the padlock on Adeline's bedroom door, they are ready to slap the cuffs on Candace Brown and charge her with assault and illegal confinement, but Pastor Vangelis counsels her to make a deal: if Adeline will agree not to testify against her mother, she will be allowed to break from the Tabernacle congregation and live with her father for the few months remaining until she turns eighteen. Although Pastor Vangelis relishes the publicity brought to the Tabernacle by their acts of self-righteous property destruction, he doesn't seem too eager to receive any media attention over child-abuse allegations.

Principal Lewis agrees to allow Adeline to finish her final school assignments by correspondence. It's good riddance as far as he's concerned; he cannot bear the thought of one more visit to his office by either Candace Brown or Lynette Lavender.

After signing the documents prepared in advance by the two lawyers, Adeline's mother is escorted out the door by the police. As she passes me and my mother, she mutters, “You will pay for this,
sinners
.”

Her sentiment is punctuated by Pastor Vangelis, whose exit line is, “The righteous
shall
prevail.”

Adeline gives me a disbelieving goodbye and a rather Spartan hug, and joins her father and his lawyers at the front door. The driver has been waiting with the engine running the whole time.

I run upstairs to my bedroom and pull Volume XYZ of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
from inside my backpack. I grab a pen from my desk and write on the inside cover,
“Don't forget me.”

When I hand the book to Adeline through the open window of the car, she bursts into tears. Then the tinted windows roll up, the limo coasts down the hill, and Adeline is gone.

And I am alone again.

Gears and Wheels

I
t is a cool, cloudy spring morning, and I am sitting on the front step, waiting for my grandfather to arrive. Lately, we've been spending our Sunday afternoons together. Since Adeline left town a month ago, it's not like I have anyone else to hang around with. We exchange emails every evening, but it's a poor substitute for walking with someone, eating lunch with them, exchanging books, laughing at each other's jokes, finding cryptic notes to meet secretly at the cemetery. I miss her.

At school, I still have lunch with Caleb, Cecil, and Anthony, but without Adeline there to stimulate conversation, we are just four guys with nothing in common. Once we've consumed enough calories to sustain us for the afternoon, Caleb heads for the library to rearrange words and fuss over the details of his latest short story, Cecil wanders off to practice vocal techniques with one of the music teachers, and I'm left behind with Anthony, who just sits there radiating disdain for other humans while I read a book. I'm currently studying
The New
Illustrated Art of Sex
. I want to learn all the theory, just in case.