of fruits and vegetables.
The students riding home together from St. Joseph’s and St. Michael’s were jubilant with the anticipation of two months of summer holidays. The dramatic clouds, rising wind, and dropping temperature heightened their excitement. They shrieked and hollered at one another, tossing a melon-sized green foam rubber ball back and forth across the aisle. The driver followed the proceedings in his mirror, occasionally trying to spike the errant ball back into the seats with his free hand.
Cathy Mugan sat with her head resting against the bus window, watching the telephone wires turn from black to copper green against the dark sky. As a little girl, she had interpreted this strange metamorphosis as a mysterious, private sign from heaven that a storm was coming. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the other students playing their game. If the ball came near enough to bounce off her head, she swatted it away, smiling, and then went back to her wire-gazing. Beside her, her classmate and best friend, Janet St. Amand, popped up and down in the seat, participating vigorously in the game, calling out loudly for the ball to be passed to her.
When the bus began to slow down for her stop, Cathy looped her school bag over one shoulder and pushed herself out of the seat past Janet. She felt sick to her stomach. The words “secretive and uncommunicative” escaped from the report card at the bottom of her schoolbag and scrawled themselves in a mean-lipped script across the air in front of her in dark, navy blue ink. Instead of letting the canvas bag hang at her side, she scooped it up and folded her arms across it so that it pressed against her queasy stomach.
The two Miller boys who lived next door and Dan O’Neil from across the street had been up in the aisle playing furiously since the bus left the school parking lot. Now, along with Cathy, they descended the stairs of the bus to depart, still in possession of the ball, looking to make one last great serve. At the last moment, Scott Miller lobbed the ball into the centre of a mob of friends and skipped out of the bus.
The three boys called goodbye to Janet, who hollered out over the din that she would phone Cathy later. Cathy waved to her friend but turned her head away from her neighbours without saying a word.
The bus stop was at the foot of the Mugan driveway. Cathy crunched up the gravel shoulder of the road towards the pavement, surreptitiously watching for movement behind the white lace curtains on the laundry room windows. She could see nothing.
The laundry room was empty when she stepped into it, but before she had completely closed the door behind her, she heard footsteps approaching. Her mother snapped on the overhead light and the two of them stood for a moment in the yellow glare, observing one another. Cathy noticed the fired-up, glassy eyes and the fine dusk of perspiration glistening on her mother’s upper lip and cheeks. Coming down off the single step leading from the kitchen into the laundry room, her mother advanced towards her, cracking a yardstick in front of her on the plastic runner that protected the carpeting.
“You’d better be here, miss.”
The final hiss was pressed out from between her mother’s teeth as if from between steel rollers. Carefully, Cathy leaned back on the door, pushing it gently closed.
“It’s almost past 4:15. You’re to be home here on that bus by 4:15, sharp, miss. No excuses! Do you hear me? And don’t think I don’t know what goes on, on the way home, my lady.”
Cathy dropped her gaze to the carpet. It was a long way from here up to her room.
“I saw you getting off that bus with those kids from next door, little miss hot pants secret admirer.”
Startled, Cathy looked up, her head cocked quizzically to one side.
“Thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’t you? Who is it? That O’Neil kid across the street? Huh? You might as well tell me because I’ll find out who it is.”
Like a missile, the yardstick suddenly flashed past Cathy’s face, landing with a brittle smack against the hot water tank beside her. At the sharp sound of wood cracking against metal, Cathy peed herself. Instantly, she squeezed herself as tightly as possible to stop the flow. Tight, tight, tight.
Please God, not now.
She choked the flow in time. Nothing ran down her legs. Her cotton underwear would blot up what had escaped. Now, though, her stomach really began to churn. She parted her lips slightly, cautiously, to breathe through her mouth. Pores on the surface of her skin dilated. Her mouth flooded with saliva. She was going to vomit.
“So. It’s starting already, is it? Every mother’s nightmare. A slut of a daughter.”
While her mother’s voice rose in pitch, Cathy’s sense of the present suddenly became distorted; everything began moving at half-speed. Her mother, in slow motion, wagged a white index card in front of her. There was a coin taped to a corner of the card. The words that her mother spat out floated past her.
“I told you no boys in this house until you’re finished school. Do you hear me? You go to school for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to learn. There’ll be no hanging around after school, joining clubs and teams and other nonsense and walking home with boys just to be popular, let me tell you.”
Her mother’s glazed, frenzied gaze looked right through her.
Cathy let her school bag strap slide off her shoulder and fall to the ground. Her bladder continued to threaten. She was going to have to run.
“I’m watching your every move, young lady.”
Had her mother seen her wave to Janet and mistakenly thought it was meant for one of the neighbourhood boys?
“By God, you should have had my father for a parent. Then you’d understand discipline, my dear.”
Her mother’s teeth flashed wet and shiny as she spoke, and little bits of spittle flew about, some landing like cold little pinpoints on Cathy’s face. As Cathy raised an arm to wipe her face, her mother slapped it away, buried her fingers in Cathy’s hair, and jerked her face up to greet her own.
“I want to know who this secret admirer is, right now. Tell me or I’ll tan your hide until the skin blisters off of it.”
Cathy heard the wheezing breath squeezed out of her mother’s asthmatic throat, a sign that she might have been shouting recently.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom.”
“Don’t remind me that I gave birth to you. The President with that obedient, angelic little girl and what do I get?”
Adele pushed her backward, letting go of her hair. Then, with an abrupt flick of her thick wrist, she presented the white card again, so closely that it almost brushed the tip of Cathy’s nose. Pee began to trickle down the inside of Cathy’s thighs. She jammed her legs together, tightly crossing one knee over the other.
“Who’s this secret admirer of yours sending you things through the mail, then, if you haven’t been up to anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t just get mail from strangers, young lady. Who sent you this?”
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“This. Right here. It’s addressed to you.”
“I
