The Shore Girl (18 page)

“Creepy about the Judge, right?” she said, twirling strands of blue hair tightly around her baby finger. “The whole town hated that guy.” The dark stain down her front was shaped like a giraffe. The top of her apron hung open. Underneath, she looked even thinner than me. Starved, really. Her boobs just tiny little grapes.

“His place is haunted,” she said matter-of-factly, like it was something I ought to know.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“Really?” She picked up a bit, her painted eyes huge. She was old. Maybe sixteen.

“There's moaning and wailing,” I said.

“Moaning and wailing!” She scratched at her apron like there were crawlies in there. “High pitched? Sorta aaaaah-hhhhh! Or is it more hissy and gaspy-sounding? Does she sound all pathetic and sad, or more like she's coming to rip your balls off?”

“Who?”

“The dead Judge's wife,” like duh.

I nodded. I'm not good with small conversations. Or big ones. Nodding is a legitimate way to communicate. But then I thought of another thing to say. “It's complicated. The moaning. A lot of vocal range. Now it's the Judge, too, I think.”

“Ohmigod. Like are they trying to communicate with each other? Doors slamming and stuff? You live right beside that asshole's house, right?”

My cone started to drip. I didn't want to swipe licks in front of her, so I just stood there and let the goop run down my fingers. “Yeah. It's pretty intense,” I said, searching the window ledge for more napkins. There weren't any.

“Bet he'll never rest in shitty peace. He gave Chauncy Damer a two-year sentence for breaking into the Shauffers' barn and stealing a baby pig. Chauncy would have given that pig back, it was just a stupid bet with my idiot uncles, but the Judge threw him in jail anyway.”

She leaned towards me on the window ledge and ran her fingers through her blue hair, lifting up chunks that were black underneath. I held my ice cream under the ledge so she wouldn't see the mess.

“Chauncy Damer ended up murdering a cab driver in Edmonton and now he's locked up again. So it's just you and Mrs. Nielson and the dead people up there on the hill?” I nodded.

“Interesting,” she said.

I guess she hadn't heard about Rebee Shore. I was glad somehow.

“Great place for a party,” she added.

She slammed the window shut and I just stood there so she opened it again and said, “See you on the hill, Tiger,” and then I backed away and started down the sidewalk. I dumped the cone in a flowerpot on Main Street and wiped my sticky hand on some guy's lawn beside a yellow dog turd. I was half way up the hill before it dawned on me that I shouldn't have said that stuff about the Judge's house. A party for the ghosts up there might not be a good thing.

* * *

After supper I decided to test Melvin Peevley's theory about Grandma remembering stuff. We'd finished our pink pork chops and canned peas and she was leaning into the sink in her flowery housecoat, that's all she ever wears, that and the little beaded purse she hangs around her neck. I asked if she would tell me about the Judge. She had her back to me, rinsing off our gnawed-off bones for the bag in the freezer. That's another thing she hangs onto. Gnawed-off bones. When she didn't say anything, I tried asking again, giving clues. The Judge your neighbour, the guy who died in his bedroom a couple of weeks ago, the fellow whose little girls you used to look after, the man the town despised. She stopped washing my pork chop bone and held it up high, like a sword, and stared out the window. Finally I gave up and went into my room and restacked the boxes along the wall into an Autobot Transformer.

One minute I was lying on top of the dusty quilt, eyes closed, wondering which would hurt more, being shot in the ear with a
BB
gun or stung by a horsefly, and then Grandma's standing over me like a ghost in the dark.

“She used to suck on the middle two fingers of her left hand,” Grandma said. “She'd pop them out for a second, just long enough to say a few words or eat a cookie, then back they'd go.”

“Oh Kay,” I said. Grandma had three pink curlers on the top of her head. This was her nighttime outfit. She still had that beaded purse around her neck.

“She suckled those poor little fingers so hard they were shrivelled and stained as old pickled beets.”

“Do you know where you are, Grandma?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up straight. There were four clocks in my room, but none of them worked. It felt like the middle of the night, mostly because who has this kind of conversation in broad daylight.

“I tried all sorts of tricks to break her sucking habit,” Grandma said, continuing. “Soaking her fingers in vinegar, binding her hand in cotton strips, bribing her with mint jellies or paper cutout dolls.”

“Uh huh,” I said. Maybe Grandma was sleeptalking. Maybe I should go round the house and try to make a safe route for her.

“Nothing worked. He was furious with us both.
Get that
girl to quit gnawing on herself. It's obscene to watch.
But then one day she simply stopped. Just like that. She said, ‘I don't have to help them anymore.' And that was the end of the finger sucking.”

Grandma smiled, half chuckling to herself.

“I'm glad that worked out then,” I said.

“Oh, she was like that. Elizabeth. Once she made up her mind about something, she never turned back.”

Elizabeth. I thought about that lady outside the Judge's house after the funeral, a more grown-up version of Rebee. “You mean Rebee's mom?”

Grandma looked confused when I asked that, though not more than usual, and it was hard to tell in the dark.

“Rebee's mom. That Elizabeth?”

Grandma nodded slowly, painfully it seemed. “She looked nothing like Albert, or her sister Victoria, either. That's what started the talk, Elizabeth skipping along the sidewalk in her taffeta dress and patent leather shoes. There was no question she was her mother's child. Those busybodies around here couldn't see anything of Albert in her.”

Grandma looked old and frail, remembering the little girl. I pictured Rebee's almond eyes, like her mother's. Her grandmother's too, apparently.

“I think you should sit down, Grandma. Here, sit.”

“That poor lost girl. I should have done more.”

Who was lost? But Grandma had turned herself around, feeling her way back to bed.

* * *

About a month into school last year I asked Mr. McCormick, the gym teacher, if I could be excused. Normally, he said, sure, sure, be quick about it, but his wife and kids divorced him that week, moving as far away as they could get without a passport — Nova Scotia, I think — and they took his German shepherd Wally, too. Mr. McCormick loved that dog. He was in a crappy mood and said that I could do my business before gym class started and why didn't I grow some balls and climb the frigging rope already. I made it halfway up. The stream landed like a bowl of broken eggs on top of Mr. McCormick's bald head.

It's embarrassing to puke on your gym teacher. This morning was worse. When Rebee leaves the hill, she doesn't just meander down the road into town. She straps herself into a giant backpack like she's planning to hike across Canada. Then she takes the hard way, out back of our houses, which is straight down through the trees. I've seen her go this route a dozen times. Sometimes she's gone for an hour. Sometimes all day. Sometimes she brings home a carton of eggs or a six-pack of root beer. Sometimes she leaves with her hair in a ponytail and when she comes back, it's falling around her face.

So this morning I followed her over the cliff and down into the forest. It's dark like night in there. Very creepy. There's a broken wooden gate growing out of the ground. And a burned tree that looks like a woman praying. It's got fat knots in the wood for her boobs and two thick branches like arms reaching to God.

I was doing pretty good, keeping my distance, clambering over the fallen logs and moss-covered rocks, like Spider-Man without the suit. But I got so busy looking ahead, trying to keep her in sight, that I missed a tree root and went careening down the hill, head over ass. A tree stopped my fall, eventually, and I lay there panting, bark chips and needles stuck to my shirt. When I opened my eyes, Rebee stood over top of me. I'd never been that close to her before. She wore a purple tank top and jeans that sat low on her hips and she stared at me without blinking.

“Hello,” I said, my first word. Ingenious.

She didn't answer. Just stared. It made it hard for me to pretend that I'd skied down the hill on my ass on purpose. I hoisted my top half onto my elbows and tried to look casual. “You're bleeding,” she said, pointing to my forehead.

“What?” I raised my palm to my head and felt the lumpy wet, and when I brought my hand down it looked like it had come out of a bowl of tomato soup with pepper. There was no warning. Not even a millisecond. The volcano erupted and I spewed. It was like orange Slurpee when you yank on the handle too hard. I thought to lean to the side, eventually, but by then it was all over, and I daintily spit the last few blobs into the soggy leaves. I must have looked like a kid's drawing. I had a bloody red hand from touching my bloody head, and now orange watery puke all down my shirt, mixing nicely with the green forest bits I'd picked up on my way down.

I didn't dare look up. All I could see were her scuffed runners sinking in moss less than a foot in front of me. They hadn't backed up an inch. Most people gag, or cover their mouths, or jump to a safe distance to escape the explosion. Rebee just stood there in front of me. I wanted her to be gone. I wanted her to back down the hill and melt into the trees so I could disappear off the planet. I looked at my gooey shirt, looked at my runners, looked at her runners, looked at the ants marching along the log, looked for something else to look at.

She asked, “Can you stand up?”

I remained perfectly still, trying not to pant, trying to ignore my dripping head.

“Well?” There was a hard edge to her voice. No pity. Those that stuck around were usually the “oh dear, poor puking boy” types. Big hair ladies, mostly. Rebee had none of that.

“You can go,” I said. “I'm gonna just hang out for awhile.”

She was on her knees then. She had swung her heavy backpack off her shoulders and it landed on the ground with a thunk. It was a blue deluxe model, the kind that prepares you for anything, with outside pockets handy for water bottles or wet shoes, and a rear pocket big enough for a folding avalanche shovel. I wanted to be dead, but I wanted to see inside more. When she opened the main zipper and started rooting around, I snuck a peek. It looked like everything she owned had been crammed in there. Jacket,
T
-shirts, a cracked mirror with a shiny frame, two rubber boots, a couple of apples, even a nightie. I thought she was going to pull out an
IV
bag, but her fist dived down and came back up with a tattered roll of Life Savers. Wintergreen. She popped two in her mouth without offering me one.

“You travel prepared,” I said. I waited for her to say something like yeah, I know, or, what brings you to this neck of the woods. She didn't. So I said, “I know who you are.”

“So do I.”

I wished I could hang myself from the nearest branch. “I mean, I — I live next door. Just temporarily, probably the summer. I'm Joey. My grandma used to look after your mom, when she was just a little girl. Elizabeth.”

She looked at me hard and I bit my tongue to stop myself from turning away. The tip of her booger finger was bent under in a weird, E.T.-come-home way.

She said, “Her name is Harmony.” She passed me the Wintergreens, and when I reached out with my non-bloody hand, I could smell the reek of me fill the forest.

“I stink.”

“You do.” She sat down and crossed her legs, pulling the backpack onto her lap.

“Sorry I puked.”

But she had her head in her backpack and was sorting through her stuff.

“I'm sorry your grandpa died.” Wasn't I just full of apologies. “I never met him. I'm sure he was a great guy.”

Her head popped out of her bag again. “Here.” She was holding a folded white
T
-shirt in her fist.

I wasn't going to put on a girl's shirt. I shook my head. “Thanks anyway.”

“Like you said. You stink.” She dropped the shirt in my lap.

“I'm leaving now,” I said, trying to pass her back her shirt. “Sorry.”

“Put it on. Unless you want pink.”

She almost smiled. But there was something else, too. Something tight and ninja-like. My skin felt shivery as we sat there staring at each other in the shadows.

I really stunk. I thought I might be sick again just having to breathe me in. So I fumbled with my shirt buttons, hoping she would find a hedge to hide behind or that she'd at least look away, but she sat cross-legged in front of me and watched. I crunched up my puked shirt like a dirty diaper and hucked it over by a tree. By the time I got my scrawny white arms and puny pounding chest and pathetic protruding ribs into Rebee's shirt, she was pouring water from a plastic water bottle over a piece of cotton.

It took a few seconds for the horror to pass. She was handing me a wet mini pad and pointing to my forehead. I swiped a few times until the pad was covered with brown red blood and pebbly grit, and Rebee held out her hand and took it from me. She rolled it like a cigarette and stuffed it into the avalanche shovel pocket and passed me another. And another. And another. I thought we might do an entire box's worth, but we stopped at four.

“It's just a scratch,” she said. “Can you stand up?”

I didn't want to appear helpless, not after spitting up like a baby and passing blood-soaked mini pads back and forth, so I jumped right up.

“Well, that was fun,” I said, sliming my hand up and down my jeans.