Primordial Soup Page 4

  “Wunderful …”

  She sat on the edge of her king-sized bed, looking at a cleanly-shaven leg, front view, side view, and, with an effort, back view.

  “Jus’ wunderful.”

  From what I could gather, Ursula was going on a three day Caribbean cruise with Harry. I rolled my mother’s panty hose into tight wads and bounced them into the bottom drawer of her dressing table.

  “See if you can help me match these,” I asked Cecilia.

  After folding the towels, sheets, and O.L. handkerchiefs, we were faced with the bottom of the laundry basket, the part we hated most, my mother’s knee-highs, which were like amputated stockings. If we got the tint wrong when pairing them, she stuck them in our face to make sure we weren’t blind. Cecilia opened the curtains.

  “Oh, I don’ know ’bout dat. Guard, Ursula, you take me by su’prise …” she cuddled the receiver to her breast, “Give time for you eyes to a’just. De air-conditionin’s on.”

  Daylight equalled heat, heat increased electric bills. Cecilia closed the curtains. We were condemned to live in semidarkness.

  “One, bu’ only one weeken’. You lil’ stinker, you.”

  The phone cord, wrapped around her wrist was robbing her hand of colour.

  “Tommy an’ Timmy are comin’, so it’s not nec’ry to vacuum. I hope dey do not destroy my house.” The thought of fingerprints on the refrigerator doors was already ruining her day.

  “You. Get dress.”

  She didn’t expand the order to Cecilia, maybe because her one-piece bathing suit had fringes around the bottom like a skirt.

  “Can I put on a towel?” I asked, meaning to wrap a beach towel round my hips, Hawaiian-style.

  “N. O.”

  “But you always let me wear it like that?”

  “You gettin’ tall now, dat don’ look good anymore.”

  I was puzzled. Usually my mother said not to “hoot” about the way we looked.

  “It’s only Tommy and Timmy, why should I care?”

  “You pu’ on dis B’yumuda short an’ you do no’ argue wit’ me for once you life.”

  I sat on my bed, staring down angrily at an ugly pair of army green Bermuda shorts she’d literally found at Gables Beach, in the sand, and now for some reason was making me wear.

  “I’m not going to wear something a total stranger wore!” I bawled as my mother passed by my open bedroom door, feeling more sensitive than usual at her accumulated injustices.

  “Dey belong-ged to a child. Look, child shorts, wha’s de matter wit’ you brains?”

  “Yuck,” Cecilia for once took my side, picking up the pair of shorts by its zipper and dropping them back down with distaste.

  “You chil’ren, you sick. Wha’ goes on in dere?”

  She gave the side of her head little taps then fingered her hair back into place. Her hair reverted back to the eight original curls of her sponge rollers, no matter how often she manipulated it.

  “You don’t even know if they belonged to a girl or boy,” Cecilia argued.

  “If the individual did not wear underwear?” I looked as scientifically arrogant as a sob would permit, “Would that not promote leprosy?”

  “My Guard, I don’ know wha’ dis world is comin’ to!” my mother stormed out of our room with the shorts.

  I felt an impulse to yell something like, “Leprosy!” but I heard the cycle knob of the washing machine being violently turned as she missed the right programme each time.

  “Kate?”

  My mother could sense a mile away I had opened a book. I liked reading more than anything else and Stag Head was a great listener.

  “Kate! I am goin’ to count three!”

  She made me serve her water on demand, even if the pitcher was less than an arm’s length away and I, at the other side of the house. Domestic assistance was one of the reasons I think my mother decided to have children.

  “One!”

  I pushed through the lines, condemned to the staccato reading which results from loss of concentration.

  “TWO!!”

  From the tone of my mother’s voice, I knew it was something serious like a night-light I’d not turned off or a tap I’d left dripping.

  I reached my mother’s view by rhythmical, “Three!” though she remained silent. She lay upon a lawn chair, on the dock, under the kumquat tree, wearing above the bellybutton underwear and a cross your heart bra with the familiar ball of tissue paper to absorb the beads of sweat which liked to form in her cleavage. The beads of sweat on her upper lip were disturbing her less. She thought her neighbours from across the canal were too near-sighted to know the difference between underwear and a white bikini. Her legs had razor stubble and baby oil below the knee, and the end of her curled up toes had small bits of skin missing. With a fingernail scissors, she liked to chop off all of the skin she called “dead”.

  I glanced at the canal, afraid she’d seen the deposit of O-bones and T-bones that the catfish were leaving close to the dock. My mother enjoyed making me stand there and wait as she pretended not to take notice of me.

  “You babushka, Kate, how you are wiping it?” she finally spoke.

  Heat expanded to my ears. Flabbergasted, I sought the correct response when “fine” came, on its own, to my mouth.

  My mother expected geometrical wonders from us. From each square of toilet paper, we were supposed to obtain a series of octagonal wipes.

  “You so ce’tain?”

  “Yes,” I answered though her stare was making me less and less so.

  “You star’ you days?”

  “What days?”

  I was too young to know what on earth she could possibly mean.

  “A’kay. Follow me.”

  She allowed me to enter her bathroom after I’d removed my sandals and checked the bottom of both my feet.

  “Now, you young, but some girls, dey start, you know, even a’ nine, ten, at el’ven. Me, I star’ when I was thi’teen. It’s a waste, such a shame, Mot’her Nature! A’ready you so skinny, jus’ skin an’ bones …”

  “Is something wrong with me?” I squeaked.

  “I show you sometin’. Now don’ get upset. It is norm’l. I … well … open you eyes.”

  Her waste basket wore a thick coat of varnish and shells. My mother pushed aside the loose carpet of short blonde hairs and dirty cotton swabs, until she found what she was looking for. It was wrapped in layers of white toilet paper which she proceeded to unravel like a mummy. Until then, I was almost having fun. Underneath the layers of toilet paper was a tight wad of cotton padding; without a further word of warning, she expanded it.

  I don’t know what I did first, gasp, shriek, or lift both hands to my forehead. The cotton padding was drenched with blood, vivid shiny red in the middle, like raw flesh; around the contours, it was exactly the brown of a well-done steak.

  “Dis was Mótina’s.” She ignored my agitation.

  “You cut yourself again shaving?”

  I pressed my stomach, my face, my watery eyes. The women of my mother’s single blade razor generation always had, I noticed, regularly chipped white scars down their shin bones. I imagined my mother shaving the skin off her shin, tan on the outside, white on the inside, like a potato peeling.

  “Now, dis happens to ev’ry woman, we lose a lil’ blood, ev’ry month. Dis is wha’ makes us a woman. Even if you a child still in you mind, you body is ’coming a woman.”

  “A little?! Oh my God, no! From where? My babushka??”

  She answered quietly, “No. You lil’ sis’er.”

  I instinctively knew she was not referring to Cecilia. A wave of outrage swelled in me.

  “I’ll urinate blood?!”

  The toilet bowl filled with tomato soup; macaroni hands, feet, buttocks, breasts floated to the steamy top … Harry lapped Ursula’s mess like a dog.

  I sunk to my knees. If I had had the strength, I would have crawled to the sink and held my wrists under the water. I was victim
to one of those preliminary heaves of vomit.

  “Now don’ get all upset wit’ Mot’her Nature.”

  “Why do we have to urinate blood??”

  “Honey. You don’ urnate. It’s jus’ a fact o’ life.”

  I could tell she was holding back. Probably the sucking out part, like when a scorpion stings a victim and an Indian has to suck the poison out of the wound and spit. I saw that once on Bonanza, I think.

  “Just like that?”

  “From dere, you make you poo-poo.”

  “I know that!”

  “From dis, you make urina. Well, dere, b’tween.”

  I bent forward as much as I could.

  “You see?”

  “No.”

  In a state of shock, I stared instead at the pendant necklace she was wearing. The multi-carat ruby shone like a sanguine sun. It used to be on the ring my father gave her at Niagara Falls when he popped the question, which she readily accepted upon seeing the stone.

  “Well, dere is a hole dere. It still too lil’, but it will get more big later!” she stunned me out of my stupor.

  “Why?”

  “Why we have hairs? Why we have a nose? It’s like dat. You accept!”

  I was offered an elastic belt with metal hooks onto which I could attach a wad of cotton padding. Securing it in place was the same principle as stabbing a hook into bait. It was big enough for a Red Cross nurse to dress a wounded soldier.

  “But how will I know when it will open?”

  “You did no’ feel any ting?!”

  “I didn’t start bleeding yet.”

  “Yes you did. You don’ feel?!”

  I remained wordless, thoughtless.

  “You don’ see?!” her tone rose, “Me, I see!”

  Though my mother was shorter than me, her stride was longer, and her steps, more rapid. In the utility room, she confronted me with my Tuesday, and four pairs of my Friday underwear. When she fought for these in the clearance sale bins, she was more concerned with the colour white than the days of the week. Each bore a meat stain from what I’d hidden down there. I underwent the humiliation of her sticking a pair in my face. Although to my mother all her neighbours were near-sighted, her own offspring were far-sighted. I had been careful to hide the underwear in the middle of the laundry basket, but my mother washed even the whites in cold water to save electricity and traces of brown had remained. My forearms lifted to protect my guilt-laden face.

  “It’s a’kay, honey. It’s no’ yo’ fault,” she reassured me, “De world mus’ turn.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The three of us waited outside for the Tattas to arrive, hostesses of a solemn reception. Most of our neighbours simply let their guests in and out the front door without formality. We always had to help ours in and out of their car doors. This must have been some old Eastern European tradition, dating back to the horse and carriage when the beloved one needed a hand to make it down the high step; or dating back to the invention of the first car, when the entire village wouldn’t miss its arrival or departure for the world.

  Ursula and Harry’s light blue Lincoln Continental turned lazily into our driveway, the wheels making crackling noises over the residues of sand. I stood awkwardly, looking at my own reflection in the tinted window instead of opening the door. How thin I looked, and dark beneath the eyes. The electric window descended, swallowing me and simultaneously giving birth to Harry’s bald head and white suit. The air coming out of their car was a mixed blessing, wonderfully cold yet saturated with stale cigarette smoke and aftershave.

  “Hi there, baby doll,” Harry greeted me with amused eyes and a wink, absentmindedly inaugurating his emergency brake.

  “Cut it out, Harry!” Ursula shot Harry a discontented glance and squeezed his knee. There were white marks around her fingers where she’d removed her rings.

  “Don’ run in my driveway! You get black oil on you feet, you drag all ’cross my house!” my mother warned Tommy and Timmy, “I do not wan’. Be care, my cactus!”

  “Boys will be boys,” laughed Harry and handed my mother the red suitcase Ursula had brought over last time, and a shopping bag full of sandy flip-flops and a greasy tube of sun block without a cap.

  “My guard, my guard, wha’ I get myself talk-ked into!” my mother joked, but there was something sad and weary in her eyes, usually sharp and accusing, that made me go and put my arm around her shoulders protectively. Melancholic people can go through life with bloodhound eyes, they receive little compassion, but bad-tempered people need only look discouraged one minute, and they get whatever they want. Ursula and Harry waved to us as they pulled out of the driveway. I rested my chin affectionately on her head. “Aya! Don’ do dat. You stringbean! You hurt my neck!” was the thanks I got.

  “Now you stay outside an’ play! I don’ wan’ no one in my house, in an’ out, wit you dirty feet!”

  The others ran down to the canal. I staggered slowly after them. I didn’t feel like a child any more. I felt that the revelation my mother had made to me, of losing for some unknown reason quantities of my own blood and having to dress the wound all by myself made playing impossible. I foresaw a dismal life in that mature weirdness where play was undesirable to every adult.

  Cecilia watched with amazement as Timmy and Tommy pulled up the dripping crab trap. They found a host of pig tails inside, caught here and there among the rusty grilles like waterlogged carrots. A stench rose, similar to the fish that float down the canal, swollen and upside down. Along the bottom of the trap, scrambled the multitude of armoured legs belonging to a forlorn navy of stone crabs. They faced us heroically, each holding out a single overgrown pincer.

  Timmy forced a kumquat branch into the trap. When he tilted it, three crabs hung on stubbornly.

  “Stop it! I’m going to tell! That one’s just a baby!” The tension in me sought release.

  “That one’s just a baby!” Tommy Tatta imitated me.

  “It doesn’t really matter, Kate. Mommy says we’re having them for dinner on Sunday.”

  Tommy let out a violent, “Ugh! Better not be with prunes!”

  The trap splashed back into the canal, the brownish water lifting the crabs just enough to give them hope before they were plunged to the murky bottom again.

  Tommy, tired of swimming, knocked on the screen of our patio. He didn’t know that if it loosened, he would be subject to the medieval kind of punishment one still found within my mother’s realm.

  “You aren’t allowed to go in anyway when you’re wet.”

  “I gotta! Tell your mom to open up.”

  “Just go behind a tree. Don’t make a big deal about it,” I advised him for his own sake as well as mine.

  “I don’t want everyone to see.”

  “See what?” I pried.

  “My Oscar Meyer weenie.”

  I thought his answer oddly corresponded to my absurdest whims and puzzled over it, with ketchup, mustard and relish. I was more convinced than ever that whatever it was, it was edible. For some unknown reason, I began to resent him. Maybe it was the hint of arrogance in his words, “My Oscar Meyer weenie,” insinuating whatever he had, I did not.

  Timmy and Cecilia bent down under the dock to discern spitting barnacles and hermit crabs. The tide was high and they waved their fingertips around in figures of eight. There Tommy was standing, his back to me, with his bathing suit bottom still on, yet a long yellow arch of urine swayed left and right as though he were watering flowers with a garden hose.

  “Where are you, Kate?” I should have known I could count on my sister to jeopardize my position.

  Tommy turned slightly, and I saw he was definitely holding something in his hand; it was a cross between a gigantic earthworm and a small bratwurst. It had a tiny mouth and no eyes whatsoever.

  “Kate?!” she called again with such insistence, as though my seeing whatever crustacean she had found were a matter of life or death.

  The underdeveloped creature wriggled in dissent
before Tommy hid it. I saw it thrash to the left and right. It was the embryo of a fire-spitting dragon. Just as a grape-sized egg yields forth a crocodile, it, too, would grow up into something horrendous.

  A leech suckled my monthly blood until it grew teeth with which it began to gnaw a tunnel inside me. It grew scales, claws and a single horn, tools it used to scrape its way further into my flesh.

  I read to Stag Head, “That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must cleave to his wife and they must become one flesh …” “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband.”

  So I would hunger for my husband’s flesh, and he would crave for mine. I closed the Bible. Conspiracy was in the air, I could smell it like the unseen smoke of a distant barbecue. Parents hid the gruesome facts of life from their children. No wonder they always had to be alone to converse freely.

  CHAPTER 8

  Our boat hung on davits so it wouldn’t become home to a colony of barnacles. I lay on its deck, listening to the canal, the lapping of the sea walls, the occasional gulps under the dock, the thumps and rubbery screeches of other boats colliding into the tyres thrown over the half-waterlogged, half-scorched poles of their docks.

  I smelt lighter fluid on the breath of the hot breeze hitting my face. I stared into the setting sun until I could project small suns wherever I looked. The Minsky family had arrived and Joseph was pulling in the cord of the crab trap. The first few feet were white followed by the slimy green part of the cord that usually remained beneath the waterline. That’s when whoever did the pulling was less enthusiastic.

  With tongs, Joseph grabbed the first stone crab by the big claw. The second crab hooked itself onto the bottom of the trap, and he was pulling it up, upside down, by a back leg. I projected a sanguine spot onto the back of his dark curly hair, and bang, shot him. Sharon held a bucket near to the trap so Joseph could knock the third obstinately clinging crab off the grille and into it.

  “De children? Where dey dis’pear?!” my mother asked, with regal offence.