Deep Girls Read online

  “This is it, kids. Come on. You can’t stay in the car for the rest of your lives,” she calls out. Then she laughs again. The sound echoes between the high brick triplexes that run up and down our street. I’ve never heard a grown-up laugh like that. When my mother laughs, she always covers her mouth, as if she’s doing something wrong.

  The rest of the car doors open, and three young kids jump out.

  “Don’t forget the baby,” the woman calls.

  The biggest boy, who looks about five, scoops a baby out of the back seat and holds it up to his mother, like a package.

  “You take her, Ma,” he says.

  “No, Sweetie. She’s all yours. I have to supervise.” Then she disappears inside the bottom flat.

  The boy saunters up to the low wooden fence that surrounds the tiny yard and plunks the baby down in the high grass. Then he runs away, followed by two younger sisters. The grass swallows the baby right up, like a beast. No one has done any maintenance over there since the last tenants left in February, when the yard was still buried under hard-packed snow.

  A minute later the mother reappears. “Have they left you all alone, little Annie?” she says, looking down at the baby, who’s trying to part the grass with her head. “Don’t worry. Mama’s here.” Then she turns around and disappears again.

  The moving men are now carrying a brown sofa on their shoulders, like a coffin. One of its legs falls off and rolls into the gutter, landing a foot away from a sewer opening. I cross the street, pick up the wooden leg and head toward the house. The second I step near the yard, the baby starts to gag, her entire mouth stuffed with grass. It hangs out of her lips like long green whiskers.

  I don’t know what to do, so I climb over the fence and pick her up, still clutching the sofa leg.

  “Let’s get that yucky grass out of your mouth,” I say. Then I scoop, hoping my fingers don’t have germs. They shouldn’t have. The most high-powered microscope, even one invented by Einstein himself, couldn’t find a germ in my house, and that’s in spite of the fact that my mother cuts old ladies’ hair in our spare room. I wipe another wet glob of grass onto my jean shorts. “There. Done.”

  Just then the mother steps outside. “Well, Annie-belly. I see you’ve made a friend already. Hi, I’m Angela. Angela Dwight. Who are you?”

  “Alberta,” I say, hating my name. It tells everyone the obvious — my father wanted a boy and the best he could do was stick an “a” at the end of Albert. I wonder if he even knows that Einstein and his wife abandoned their baby daughter.

  “Alberta? Well now. Do you live next door to Saskatchewan?” Mrs. Dwight says. Then she throws her head way back and cracks up. There are wide spaces between her front teeth, as though years of laughing have caused them to separate.

  “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to tease. Have you seen my other kids?”

  “They kind of ran off,” I say.

  “Little rats. They’ll come back when they’re hungry. They always do.”

  I wait for her to ask for Annie, but she doesn’t.

  “Well, you two have fun. I’ve got lots to do.”

  My mouth falls open as I watch her go back inside. Annie is looking at me, her eyes wide open. If she could speak, she’d be begging me not to abandon her to the wild grass again. The neighborhood dogs even use this yard as a toilet. So, I keep hold of her and settle on the front stoop, away from the entrance, so that the moving men can still come and go. I jiggle her around a bit and, as I do, I realize this is the first time I’ve ever held a baby. I’ve touched a few before, stroking a fat cheek, but this is the first one to nestle in my arms.

  To my surprise, Annie falls fast asleep, snug against my chest. I watch the movers, who are on to boxes now, ones with dishes and clothes bursting out the tops. About half an hour later they finish and the moving van leaves. The other children wander back, and Annie wakes up and starts to howl.

  I have to find this baby’s mother, so I decide to go inside, uninvited. My mother would definitely not approve.

  “Oh, there you are Alberta,” Mrs. Dwight says. “I was wondering when you were going to bring Annie in. The changing stuff is there, on the table. I just unpacked it.”

  I follow Mrs. Dwight’s finger to the kitchen table, which is stacked with diapers and other baby paraphernalia, like wipes and powder. Does she really expect me to change a diaper? I don’t know how, and Annie is not my baby.

  “But …” I start to say.

  “I know, I know. She might not need a new one. But let’s give her one anyway. Okay?” Then she vanishes down the hallway. I hear her call out, “When you’re done, we can try to organize lunch.”

  Now I’m starting to panic. Who does she think I am — Mary Poppins?

  Annie’s big brown eyes stare up at me and a smile spreads across her face, two tiny white teeth sticking up from her lower gums.

  “Okay, okay. But just this time,” I say softly. I lay Annie down on the table and undress her, trying not to stare at her naked body. Even though she’s just a baby, it doesn’t seem right. It isn’t that hard to change a diaper, once I figure out all the snaps and tabs and things. Thankfully, it’s only pee.

  There’s no crib or playpen in sight, so I carry Annie outside with me. The other kids are gone again.

  “Here,” I say, offering Annie to Mrs. Dwight. “She’s changed. I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, I see,” she says, scratching her rust-colored hair. It’s pulled into a lopsided ponytail, with loose pieces springing out all over the place. I notice, for the first, time, what huge boobs she has. They’re practically spilling out of her orange t-shirt. I also notice that the orange is mostly juice stains.

  “Well, what time can you start tomorrow?” she asks, plunking Annie back in the yard.

  “Start?” I ask, wondering if I should warn her about the dog poop.

  “Yeah, you know. When can you get here? This lot gets going awfully early.”

  “But I …”

  “I mean, you want the job, don’t you?” Mrs. Dwight asks. “I’ll pay you and you look like you know what you’re doing. These kids won’t give you any trouble.”

  “But I’m not looking —”

  “Oh, thank God,” Mrs. Dwight says suddenly, looking over my shoulder. I turn to see a taxi pulling up to the curb. A man gets out and Mrs. Dwight claps her hands. “Thank God,” she exclaims again, bouncing in her flip-flops.

  I want to explain that she made a mistake. I didn’t come for work. I just happened to notice the leg fall off the sofa and then Annie eating grass. But when the man turns around, all my thoughts vanish. The words turn to mush in my mouth.

  Standing in front of me is the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen. He’s tall and muscular and tanned, with black wavy hair that falls into sky blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a wide mouth surrounded by a mustache and small beard.

  All three kids jump on him and he catches them, no problem. If my father tried that, he’d break his back.

  “I’ll be over at seven,” I say, without taking my eyes off Mr. Dwight.

  But Mrs. Dwight doesn’t hear me. She’s too busy laughing. Mr. Dwight looks my way and my breath catches. I want to attract Mrs. Dwight’s attention and tell her I’ve changed my mind. I can help out with lunch after all, and supper too. I don’t really need to go home. What will I do there? Watch my mom vacuum up the snippets of gray hair that get trailed from the spare room down the hall to the front door when the old ladies leave. Sometimes, I think she and that machine have fused, like the hose is an extension of her arm. But the entire family is now heading toward their new house, the kids forming a chain anchored to Mr. Dwight’s leg. His arm is around Mrs. Dwight’s shoulder while she leans her head against his chest.

  Doesn’t he see the stains on her shirt?

  As they pass the yard, Mr. Dwight scoops up Annie with one big hand. She squeals with glee as she travels through the air to her father’s shoulder.

  I stand there watching, transfixe
d. I want to be Mrs. Dwight and Annie all at once. I want to fly through the air, laughing out loud as I land on Mr. Dwight’s broad shoulder. And I want to be held like Mrs. Dwight, with my head resting on Mr. Dwight’s chest.

  “Alberta!” My mother’s voice slices through the air like an arrow. I look across the street to see her shaking a towel over the banister. When she’s done, the white hairs lay curled in the grass like slugs. My mother is constantly shedding hair and dust and dirt, removing germs. If she’s having something delivered, like the day the new washing machine came, she lays newspaper along the hallway. I could hear the men cursing under their breath as they slid and tripped on the sheets.

  I want to follow the Dwights into their new house. I want to become part of their family and hide away from my mother and her chores, and my father and his lectures on Einstein.

  But the Dwights’ door slams shut and I have nowhere to go but home.

  I GO OVER to the Dwights’ every morning at seven and stay until four. I play with the kids, wash their faces, feed them lunch, stick bandages over their scrapes, and do all the other things any normal mother would do. Mrs. Dwight does nothing. At about eight o’clock every morning, she pulls a ripped plastic chair down the hall from the kitchen and plunks herself in it, tipping her chin to the sun. If Annie cries, she opens one eye and tells me to check on her, like I wouldn’t have thought of that myself.

  Nobody mentions anything about money after that first day, but I don’t care. The payoff for my work is the daily return of Mr. Dwight. I watch him sauntering down the street from the bus stop, his heavy-duty lunch pail swinging by his thighs, which are packed into tight and perfectly faded jeans. The kids run to meet him, their arms wrapping around his strong legs, and he lifts them one by one and helicopter-rides them down the street.

  I always turn away when he runs up the steps and kisses Mrs. Dwight. I can’t understand how they can be related, if married couples can be considered related. I look from one to the other, trying to fit them together, but I can’t. In my mind, they repel each other, like magnets turned backward.

  I also wonder whether Mr. Dwight is aware of the chaos in which his wife is raising his children. I suppose he can’t really know, since he’s away all day, working machines that roll up miles of wire fence. Bits and pieces of those rolls dot the Dwights’ backyard, rising out of the gravel like strange modern sculptures. He even used some of the fencing to line Annie’s play-yard, which he also cleaned up.

  Occasionally, I linger for a few minutes, but Mr. Dwight barely notices me. He darts a quick glance in my direction, then goes into the house. That’s Mrs. Dwight’s signal to pull her plastic chair inside and gather her children. Then the entire Dwight clan disappears until after supper.

  I BEGIN TO notice that every morning, at about ten o’clock, Mrs. Dwight rises from her plastic throne and enters the flat. One day, Darren just happens to be close by.

  “Darren, where’s your mom going?” I ask.

  “Mommy’s feeding Daddy’s fish,” he replies.

  “What fish?” I ask, convinced he’s lying. But he’s already off on his bike, out of reach. I have never seen any fish in the Dwights’ flat.

  The next day I follow Mrs. Dwight inside, on the pretext of getting juice for one of the kids. I stand by the fridge and watch as she drags a kitchen chair to the side door and climbs onto it. Then, from deep within her t-shirt, she pulls out a string, on which a shiny key dangles. While the chair miraculously holds her weight, she stretches up on tippy toes to open a padlock that’s hooked into a bracket. Then she climbs back down and pushes the door open with her hip. She has to open it quite wide to pass through, but she shuts it carefully behind her as soon as she’s stepped inside. Ten minutes later she comes out and reverses the entire process.

  “How many fish does your daddy have?” I ask Darren the next day.

  “I dunno,” he answers, shrugging. He jumps on his bike, pedals off, and shouts back, “Around two million.”

  I begin to position myself in the kitchen every morning at ten o’clock, to try to see inside the fish room, but no matter how hard I try, I never get more than a snippet. I try to have my eyes ready in different positions, but I just keep catching the same frame. I can see shelves and tanks, and sometimes water, but I never see any fish. Occasionally, something flickers, and I suppose it’s a fish, but my glimpse is too short, and the lighting too dim, to tell.

  I want to see more, but unless I can get hold of that key, I never will. The room is obviously top secret. I imagine Mr. Dwight towering over his wife, instructing her to keep the fish hidden, shaking his finger like a parent talking to a child. Maybe this is why he keeps her. She’s his fish slave. There can’t be any other reason, they’re so mismatched.

  ONE NIGHT, WHEN I’m in my room and my parents are sitting on the front balcony drinking their evening tea, I overhear them discuss me.

  “I don’t like her hanging out over there,” my father says.

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Run over there and pull her home? Cause a scene?” my mother replies.

  “Can’t you just tell her to stay home?”

  “Oh, sure, you think it’s that easy? You’re not here, you don’t know. She just goes while I’m busy with my clients. What can I do?” My mother’s voice sounds helpless, as though my actions are propelled by forces way beyond her control, as unstoppable as gravity.

  “Of course, I’m not here. I’m at work. What do you want me to do about that?”

  My father fixes small appliances. I suspect that instead of fixing the toasters and coffee makers that cross his desk, he disassembles them and tinkers with their innards, trying to uncover the mystery of the universe among the wires. I’ve seen him do this at home, opening the iron or blender, tapping delicately with needle-nosed pliers, as though he’s a heart surgeon. He’ll ask me to pass him tools and explain things, as if I care.

  Then my mother says, “I’m not happy, George.”

  “But you know I’m trying my best,” my father replies. “We’ll make one soon, you’ll see.” I can’t imagine what they want to make. A machine that can make my mother happy? A supersonic vacuum cleaner, or robot duster?

  “But soon I’ll be too old,” she says. “It’s dangerous to give birth after forty.”

  My mother’s words smack me. My parents are trying to make a baby. I can’t believe it. Is it because they want a boy, someone my father can really turn into the next Einstein? Isn’t his body too old? Don’t the tubes and fluids for all those functions dry up? I know how babies are conceived, but to picture my parents trying to make one involves imagining my father taking off his gray suit and hanging it neatly on his special suit hanger. And then my mother, removing one of her neat blouses, and unhooking her stiff, wire-rimmed bra. The rest is completely unthinkable, so I just tuck them both under the sheet, and force my thoughts to wander elsewhere.

  I think about how my dad doesn’t even seem to enjoy having me all that much. I’m like a puzzle he can’t put together. I didn’t come with an instruction manual, like some new appliance. A strong memory of my grade three Christmas concert comes to me. I was Rudolph and the rest of the class was singing my theme song as I pranced around, leading the team. I looked down at the front row, where my parents were sitting, and there was my father. I expected to see him cheering me on, but instead his mouth was wide open, and he looked completely baffled, like he had absolutely no idea what I was doing, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was the most complex story he’d ever had to follow.

  I could operate my lightbulb nose by pressing a button hidden in my palm. The wire ran up my sleeve to a battery pack. I was supposed to give three quick flashes whenever the class sang the word nose. But when I saw my father, I stopped flashing. I was afraid my nose might be scaring him, that he might think I was about to be electrocuted.

  The teacher was disappointed after the show. She didn’t say it, but I knew I was the dullest Rudolph she’d ever put out on stage.


  THE NEXT DAY is Wednesday, my mother’s varicose vein day. That morning, out of the blue, she asks me to go with her. She points to the back of her knees, to show me the progress of her treatments. The lines, which used to be bright green and purple, have faded now to light green beneath her white skin. She gets twenty needles in each leg. I imagine the magic liquid seeping in and spreading up the tiny streams of my mother’s veins, cleansing them of whatever chemical stained them and made her look old.

  “Sorry, Mom. I can’t stand watching him give you those needles.” I scrunch up my face to show her my disgust.

  “But, Alberta, you don’t have to watch. You can wait in the waiting room.”

  “Well, then, what’s the point of coming?”

  My mother’s face falls. I feel a little twinge of guilt as she pulls on her straw sun hat with the yellow ribbon and picks up her matching yellow handbag.

  She doesn’t even turn to say goodbye at the door.

  As soon as she’s gone, I dress and run across the street to the Dwights’. Mrs. Dwight is already outside tanning.

  “Good morning, dear,” she says. “The twins are just finishing their breakfast.” She waves toward the door, like I won’t know where to find them.

  As always, when I enter the house, I fantasize that the fish room door will be wide open. Of course, this would spell disaster. The whole flat would be flooded in a minute. I can see the kids scooping up the fish in their fists, squeezing the life out of them, or biting off their heads.

  I get the kids ready and put them outside, then I wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. The insides of the Dwights’ cupboards would give my mother connip-tions. They are coated in crumbs that stick to the residue of jam and syrup. As I work the hot soapy water, I imagine how thrilled Mr. Dwight will be to come home to a clean kitchen. I wonder whether the father of the family Camille is working for is anywhere near as gorgeous as Mr. Dwight. I hope he isn’t. In my mind, I picture him grotesquely overweight and balding, and his breath reeks of garlic whenever he bends close to give Camille an order.