Letting Go

(1,805 wds)

Letting Go

Creepo - our landlord - and his greasy friends peed over the balcony railing again last night. They’ve done that every Friday and Saturday night for the past two months. Mum says she’s tired of asking him not to do that sort of thing.

She says she has asked him to stop his friends from peeing off the balcony. She has tried to explain to him that the noise of his friends thunking around upstairs at three o’clock in the morning wakes us up. Mum says she reminded him that his rental ad said; ‘no parties.’

But every weekend Creepo and his friends screech into the drive-way and the rumpus begins.

“Enough of this creepo bullshit,” Mum mutters in my direction and I sigh. I know we’re moving - again. She says “One suit-case. Clara. Only bring what you need.”

I stamp my foot. I can’t fit much more than my clothes and my little toy horses into my suitcase. Not unless I scrunch everything tight and flat. If I do that, I can pack a few books too.

  My favourite toy. The toy I’ve had since I was a baby, is too big to fit into any suitcase. It’s a stuffed black and white dog I’ve named Pete.

Pete is about the size of a Cocker-Spaniel. He’s mostly fuzzy, but he does have a few bald patches. Nine years of hugs and tears are a lot for any stuffy to bear.

  Mum told me that her mother - my grandma - gave Pete to me on my first birthday. I don’t remember that birthday. I don’t remember my grandma either. Mum says she lives in a city ‘out west.’ Mum says not to bother asking to visit her, because we won’t ever do that. She also tells me not to ask about my father because he didn’t want me - not really. But Mum says she wanted me more than anything in the entire universe. That’s why I was born.

I’ve stopped asking Mum - or her friends - questions. Where’s the point of asking a question if no one tells you the real answer?

When we moved into the little apartment in Creepo’s basement, he said the little yard in back of the house was a part of our rental.

The yard is mostly packed dirt, thistle and scrub grass, but Mum and I dug up a sunny patch to make into a garden. She bought some good dirt from a gardening shop and we mixed it into our patch. We planted carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes. Mum said we were growing a fresh salad.

Then Mr. Creepo and his Pee-Pee friends ruined it.

I cross my arms and stamp my foot again. I know I’m too old to have a foot stomping tantrum, but I don’t care. I don’t care that our land-lord and his friends get drunk and crash around upstairs. I don’t even care that our garden is ruined and that the back yard stinks. I’m tired of never living anywhere for more than a few months. Whenever we move to a new place, I think ‘please - please - please let this place be our forever home.’ But the new place is never a forever home.

Mum rolls her eyes and slams her hand down onto the table. The table’s legs rattle and crack, and for a moment I think they might break. They don’t snap, but Mum’s rings leave scratches and dents on table-top. The table belongs to Creepo. Mum doesn’t care if she wrecks his furniture. Not anymore.

Her eyes are hard blue - like ice - as she stares at me. Her words are hard too. They fall from her mouth like big fat stones. They clunk and thunk around me. They fall so fast I don’t know what she wants me to hear, but I pretend to understand her. I watch her mouth move as she speaks. I nod and my fingers pick at the scratches and dents her rings have made in the wood.

I am still nodding when I realize Mum’s words have stopped. Her mouth is closed and twisted into a squiggle on her face. Whenever Mum is ‘done - done with everything,’ her mouth looks like a smooshed, pink squiggle. I breathe air deep into my lungs and hold my breath. I wait.

“For God’s sake Clara-Rae.” Mum says after a moment, and I breathe out. She rubs her eyes and turns from me. She stands with her hands on her hips and stares through the sliding glass doors into at the little yard. She stares into the yard and at the tree and the mountains beyond the white wire fence.

I stop picking at the wood and go to stand beside her. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t speak. Mum just stands with her hands on her hips and stares.

She chews at her bottom lip and sips air through her teeth. Mum does that when she doesn’t want tears to leak out from under her eye-lids.

I want to put my arms around her. I want to hug her and I want to know that everything will be okay. But I don’t touch her. Whenever I try to hug her, Mum’s body becomes stiff and tight. She feels like a mannequin.

I stare out at Pete who is propped on a canvas lounging chair that Creepo gave to us. Pete’s sad brown eyes stare back at me. They look too sad. I know he is only a toy, but sometimes I pretend he is an enchanted puppy. If I wish hard enough he might become a living puppy. A puppy to play with, and with whom I can share my secrets. A best friend.

Before we moved into Creepo’s basement, Mum and I lived in an apartment in the city. In that place I had my own bedroom and my own bed. I kept Pete on my bed to protect my dreams.

When we lived in that apartment Mum said we were ‘subterranean mole people.’ I had to stand on a chair if I wanted to look out of the window and the walls were damp and cold. That apartment always smelled like mud, but I didn’t mind. I liked having my own bedroom and I liked Mrs. Rafferty who lived in the apartment above us. She stayed with me when Mum was cashiering at the grocery store, and when Mum was - somewhere.

On the nights Mum went out with her friends, Mrs. Rafferty and I ordered pizza and we made popcorn. We watched movies about talking cats and dogs, or movies about horses. The next mornings we ate pizza for breakfast.

Mum and I eat pizza too. But she doesn’t buy pizza from a restaurant. We eat the frozen pizza she brings home from the convenience store where she works now. Her new job.

The convenience store is on the highway. It’s all glass and bright lights. Big signs that shout; “Gas - Snacks - Ice ”, stand on the highway right before the turn-off to the store.

Mum says that most of the people who stop to buy things are tourists who smell like sweat and old coffee. They drag their sticky kids into the store with them. She says they ask to use the bathroom, then they buy coffee for themselves, and chocolate or chips for their kids. She’s sick of sticky kids and stinky people. Mum wants a different job.

Sometimes I think Mum wishes she had a magic wand. A wand she’d wave and everything would be different. Poof - all the tough times would be over. Even I’d be gone.

  “Why aren’t you packing,” Mum says. Her voice is still hard. She still doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t stop staring out at the sky and mountains.

I go to the closet and burrow through our winter jackets and sweaters. My suitcase is tucked behind an old vacuum cleaner, a nubby broom, and a rusted dust pan. None of those things belong to us. I pull the handle of my suitcase and it clonks the vacuum cleaner onto the floor.

For a moment, I’m stopped. I hold my breath and listen to my heart’s beat. I wait for Mum to say “Ah for Christ-sake Clara-Rae you’re a walking mess.” But she doesn’t say anything. She stands and chews on her thumb-nail.

I drag my suitcase across the carpet to the sofa, and pull a box out from under the coffee table. It is filled with my jeans, socks, undies, and tee-shirts. I zip open my suit-case and sigh as loudly as I dare.

Mum takes her phone from her back pocket and I hear her fingers tap-tap-tapping at the keys.

I toss all of my socks into the suitcase. Then I grab my jeans, shirts and undies, and cram them into the case too. I rip open the bag filled with my little plastic horses and rain them down onto my clothes. They fall like a rainbow; red, orange, blue and green.

Mum finally looks at me. Her face is as still and as quiet as a whisper. I expect her to tell me to pack more carefully. Not to bunch up my clothes. But she says nothing. Her mouth is twisted and squiggled again. Her eyes look too bright. She steps from the glass door and comes to sit too closely beside me.

I want her to stop staring at me. I want her mouth to stop looking like a pink squiggle. My insides feel wiggly, as if I’ve been on a spinny-twisty carnival ride. I grab one of my books from the coffee table and pretend to read the words on the cover.

Mum traces my cheek with her finger tip. She runs it along my nose and chin. My ears. Mum brushes back the tangle of my hair. She rests her hand on my shoulder for a moment, then she stands up.

“Hey,” she says. “I’m just gonna go for a walk - I need a smoke. We’ll be headin’ out before supper, eh.”

I don’t stop pretending to read the words on the cover of my book. I don’t look up as the weight of her gaze lifts, and I hear her step across the room to the door. I wonder if the story in my book will change I read the ending first.

I sit on the couch for a long time after I hear Mum lock the front door. I sit until all the shadows on the walls fade into one. Before the sun sets I go outside and gather Pete into my arms.             

 I bring him inside with me and we snuggle together on the couch - Pete and I - as the night rises.