Cricket in a Fist Page 10

  Benna was known to have made out with Barbara Steele’s older brother, who was in high school. Jasmine had seen the older brother and had imagined Benna sitting on his lap in one of her short short skirts, tongue-kissing. The image forced itself back into her head as she stared at her traitorous nose in the mirror, waiting for the inevitable. Will it thus, wrote J. Virginia Morgan. The book had a lot of hard quotes from philosophers, and it often wasn’t clear how these quotes related to the stories the author told about herself. Waiting for the blood that was welling into her sinuses, Jasmine understood what the book was trying to tell her. It was like what Justin, her swimming coach, said — streamline your body, and you just ease through. Own the events of your own life. Don’t drag, cannon-balling through life. She put her head back and blew hard through her nostrils, spattered the mirror, scarlet spray. Benna jumped and stepped back.

  “Get me toilet paper,” said Jasmine.

  Benna replaced soggy red wads of paper with fresh white ones for the next twenty minutes. She watched with undivided interest while Jasmine pinched her septum. “That was so gross.” Benna was clearly impressed. They left the mirror caked with brownish, drying blood, walked into French class together five minutes late, and sat together near the window. In the weeks that followed, Benna Hadrick changed Jasmine’s life. Before she met Benna, Jasmine had often sat and watched the rest of the class glumly. J. Virginia Morgan explained, basically, that it’s a mistake to try and fit in with the people that happen to be around. Who cares if they like you or not, or if they think you’re weird. But Jasmine couldn’t help it — she did want them to like her. After the nosebleed, she and Benna sat together, and Benna giggled all through class at all the jokes Jasmine made. After school, they drank peach schnapps on Benna’s fire escape and laughed until Jasmine almost threw up; they drank coffee in cafés; they talked to the punks on Rideau Street; and Jasmine watched Benna get her belly button pierced by a friend of her cousin’s, who was covered in tattoos. She’d been sure Benna was too cool to dress up for Halloween.

  “Where’s your costume?” said Benna.

  “Yeah,” said Megan, sidling up behind Jasmine. “You said you were working on it all week.”

  Jasmine promised she’d change at lunchtime, so after history class they all went to her house to eat — Megan, Mei and Benna, with Jasmine leading the way on zigzagging tiptoe because the morning’s rainfall had left the sidewalk covered in earthworms. Megan and Benna did the same, stepping gingerly. “This is sick,” Benna said, more than once. Her tail looked silly under the clingy black dress, a lopsided bump just below her jean jacket. Megan was dressed as a gypsy, with a long skirt, a kerchief and huge hoop earrings. Mei trailed behind, hands in the front pocket of the YWCA sweatshirt she’d pulled on over her witch costume. The year before, Jasmine and Mei would have picked up worms and helped them to the safety of the grass.

  As they turned onto her block, Jasmine bent down, picked up a worm and waved it in Benna’s face. “Sick!” squealed Benna, grabbing Megan’s arm. Megan hollered, and Jasmine tossed the worm into the street.

  “Don’t get run over,” Jasmine yelled.

  “You are seriously damaged,” said Benna. Megan laughed, and Mei, watching glumly, fell further back. Jasmine glanced at Benna’s hand, still holding Megan’s upper arm as they turned up the driveway of her house. Benna and Megan only knew each other because of Jasmine. None of her friends from before liked Benna. Mei had even phoned Jasmine one evening to say, in that painfully serious Mei way, “You think you’re cooler now, but I’m telling you as your friend, Benna’s changing you for the worse. She’s not even a real person, Jas.” That Mei was right in a way only made her more annoying. In a way, Jasmine was getting tired of Benna — how she seemed, almost always, to ever-so-slightly miss the point, and the way she ran her hand absent-mindedly up and down her thigh like she was trying to rub something away. How she was always pointing out high school guys with baggy pants and stupid expressions on their faces and wanting Jasmine to get all excited about them. Mostly, though, Jasmine was tired of waking up every day with Benna’s face in her head and Benna’s name running through her mind like a tune too catchy to shake. Against her will, she memorized Benna’s words and agonized over them later; every day, she dressed anticipating Benna’s approval and planned funny comments so Benna would laugh and grab Jasmine’s arm as though to keep from collapsing. It was not a good feeling. It was just like Virginia’s description of “toxic love” — how one random person glows with a poisonous, greedy light. Jasmine looked at Benna’s hand on Megan’s arm, felt sick and thought poisonous. But that kind of love, Virginia promised, ceases quietly and without warning, and the beloved turns out to be just like anyone else.

  The back door was half open and the smell of cigarettes loomed as Jasmine reached for the doorknob. Bev was smoking at the table in the back den with a white-and-silver-clad Elvis impersonator. They had been there for a long time, judging from the density of the smoke. Silver sequinned sunglasses lay neatly folded on the wicker table. “Hi,” said Bev. She waved cheerfully at the other three girls and dropped ashes on the floor. “Lara’s stepkid,” she told Elvis. Jasmine led her friends to the kitchen and then up to her room without looking at any of them. Bev had once invented a board game called “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” The game involved cards, dice and a map of Graceland. It turned out she couldn’t sell it because of copyright infringement — the greatest tragedy of her life.

  Jasmine sat at her desk eating Alphaghetti out of the can while Megan and Mei ate their sandwiches sitting on the bed. Benna stretched out on the floor. She never ate lunch. “What’s with that guy’s costume?” Megan asked. Jasmine could smell Elvis and Bev’s cigarettes. She watched Sorbet flatten himself against the bottom of his cage.

  “That’s not a Halloween costume,” Jasmine said. “He’s an Elvis impersonator. You know? Elvis Presley?” Jasmine stood up and gyrated her hips. “Uh huh, uh huh,” she grunted. “You know?” Mei giggled.

  “That is weird,” said Benna. She laughed, “I’m sorry, but seriously. Seriously weird. What was that you just did?”

  Jasmine tried to lodge a three-hole punch in the window to keep it open.

  “Why?” said Megan. “Why is he here?”

  “She’s just friends with people like that. He probably has a show later or something.” The Alphaghetti was balanced on a pile of magazines in the middle of Jasmine’s desk. Smoke was creeping in, Jasmine was sure, through the crack under the door. Megan sat cross-legged on the tucked-in bed, apple in hand.

  “I can’t believe that’s your grandmother,” she said.

  “Step-grandmother.” Jasmine wished Benna had never seen the man with the glittery belt at the wicker table and that her father would come home soon to see what an idiot Bev was. Dad’s parents would never act the way Bev did — Granny and Grandpa Winter, with their tidy house and dark wood furniture. Tam-Tam had never met Bev, and Jasmine couldn’t imagine how she would react if she did. Bev was the kind of person who bought a glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary toothbrush holder at a yard sale and gave it to Jasmine’s father for his birthday.

  “He’s Jewish,” Lara told Bev.

  “As though that were the only problem with the gift,” Dad said at a dinner party, when he recounted the story to his friends from the psychology department.

  Megan lay back on the bed, talking about a note that had gone around the classroom that morning. At the open window, Jasmine tried to fan fresh air into Sorbet’s cage with her hands. The note had listed all the boys in the class in order of cuteness.

  “Big deal,” said Jasmine, feeling Sorbet for tumours. “They’re all losers anyway.” She took him out of his cage and held him near the open window. With her back to the room, she couldn’t decipher the other girls’ silence, didn’t know if they were all looking at each other, raising their eyebrows. “Cigarette smoke,” said Jasmine, “causes cancer. I happen to know that from personal experience, if you think it’s
some kind of joke.”

  “Personal experience means you have it yourself,” Mei said quietly.

  “I told you she didn’t really have a costume,” said Megan. Sorbet snuffled fuzzily through his nose. “I’m going back to school. Come on, guys.” Megan stood and Jasmine turned to see Mei looking at her uneasily.

  “I’ll stay with Jas,” said Benna. “We’ll just stay here if your grandmother won’t stop smoking. We can take your gerbil out on the roof.” Jasmine knew that sometimes Benna didn’t come to school, that her mother didn’t care if she went or not. Somehow, with Benna at her side, she was sure she could get away with anything.

  “Come on,” said Mei. “Come on, Jas. We have to go back.”

  “I can’t,” Jasmine told her. “Sorbet can’t breathe in here.” Mei was standing with her sweatshirt and backpack on, but didn’t move. “Bye!” said Jasmine. After Megan and Mei left the room, she handed Sorbet to Benna and hurried to retrieve her astronaut helmet from under a pile of laundry on the closet floor. She’d covered an old bike helmet in papier-mâché and painted it white, with a tiny Canadian flag on its back. The visor was made of an old ski mask she’d found in the basement.

  “Wow,” said Benna. “Did you make that?” Jasmine climbed through her window onto the roof, and Benna stuck her head out to watch. Breaking the most serious of all rules, Jasmine slid down the slanted roof on her bum, the bottoms of her socks sticking to the asphalt like Velcro, and perched on the perilous edge. When Megan and Mei appeared on the sidewalk, Jasmine dropped the helmet in their path. It didn’t smash against the sidewalk, but tumbled gently, turning over in the air. Even its impact was gentle and almost silent as it cracked in front of Megan. Both girls looked up. Mei was hugging herself miserably around the chest. Even Megan seemed defeated, looking back down at the once-perfect helmet with its burgundy fibreglass guts exposed. Jasmine pushed herself up the roof backwards and went back inside to put on warmer clothes and get Sorbet and Benna.

  An hour later, the clouds had cleared, but the black asphalt was still damp and cool through Jasmine’s jeans. She hadn’t been able to fit the whole cage through the window, so Sorbet sat on her lap. Benna sat beside her. Jasmine wore a thick, loose sweater, wool socks under her sneakers and a black and red striped tuque she once found in Agatha’s old closet. The possibility that Sorbet would be cold had occurred to her, but this seemed preferable to the inevitable results of second-hand smoke: either a tumour or asphyxiation, whichever set in first. The cuff of her sweater hung over her fingertips and lay on Sorbet’s back, serving as a blanket. The little beige body vibrated steadily under her palm, whether from cold or from fear it was hard to tell. Jasmine figured it was a combination of the two: the cool, damp air and the shock of finding stripy-haired Bev reclining in the den across from a reasonable facsimile of Elvis Presley, an old catfood dish full of cigarette butts on the table between them.

  Benna was wearing her dress again, and it pulled up when she sat, her pink tights visible to the knee. She reached over to rub Sorbet’s head between the ears. “You should sleep over at my place,” she said. “You could bring Sorbet if you wanted. We could rent movies and stay up all night.”

  “Yeah.” Jasmine pressed her cheek against Sorbet’s back. Mei used to sleep over sometimes last year, and they’d lie in Jasmine’s bed looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars. Jasmine told Mei that if you concentrated really hard, you could convince yourself you were floating in space, weightless, far away from everything, with nothing to see but blackness. You could convince yourself that the stickers were real stars, each one thousands of times bigger than the whole earth. She and Mei had lain side by side in silence for a long time, being astronauts. Sometimes Jasmine moved her hand so it was touching Mei’s, and if Mei didn’t move away Jasmine felt like every nerve in her body was concentrated into that square inch of skin.

  But sleeping over at Benna’s was completely different. Benna had her own double waterbed in the attic bedroom and a fire escape at the window, so her mother, who slept downstairs, didn’t even know when Benna left and came home. The bedroom was so big there was an extra single bed for guests in a little nook in one corner. Jasmine had never seen a house so messy — there were books, papers and clothes everywhere, dirty dishes piled in the kitchen and dust caked into dried toothpaste around the bathroom sink. And the floor in Benna’s own room was entirely covered in clothes; after she did laundry in the basement, Benna just dumped her clean clothes back on the floor. Jasmine had seen her do it. Benna’s mother, Lynette, had long brown hair parted in the middle and wore brightly coloured polyester shirts. She was a social worker. One time when Jasmine was there, Lynette said to Benna, “You look a little provocative, don’t you think?” Benna was wearing a lacy black top and jeans so low her thong showed.

  “You got a problem, cunt-hole?” Benna yelled so loudly Jasmine barely resisted covering her ears.

  And Lynette just rolled her eyes, saying, “Really, Benna.” She even laughed a little.

  Jasmine didn’t really want to bring Sorbet to Benna’s house. He might get lost in all her piles of clothes, for one thing, or eat something weird from the floor. The phone rang inside the house, and a few minutes later, Bev called her name. Her voice was getting closer. “Jasmine, you in there?” Bev was in the bedroom; Jasmine could picture her standing in the middle of the floor, hands on hips, taking in the empty gerbil cage, open window, piles of clothes on the floor. Maybe she would notice the Alphaghetti can and feel bad for not making lunch. “Are you allowed to play out there?” Stupid Bev, standing there in the middle of the room, cigarette burning between her yellow-stained fingers, scattering ashes everywhere. “Your school called. You have to go back — you’re late.”

  “Benna’s sick,” Jasmine yelled. “And I’m taking care of her. Diarrhea. The kind that comes out like water.” Benna pressed both hands against her mouth, trying not to laugh. They waited in silence, staring at each other. Benna’s eyes were light brown.

  “I think she’s gone,” Jasmine whispered, leaning close.

  “I don’t know,” Benna whispered back. “I think I can still hear her walking around. Is she staying here all day?”

  “She’s living with us,” Jasmine said. “Because she’s sick. She’s dying.”

  “Dying?” Benna’s whisper cracked. Jasmine could smell her musk-and-mint breath.

  “Yeah. She’s got six months to live.” Jasmine leaned forward and rested her forehead against Benna’s shoulder. She did it before she realized she was going to, and then she stayed there, scared to move. She felt one of Benna’s hands on her back. The way they were sitting, Sorbet was sheltered in the space between the two girls’ chests. Jasmine opened her eyes and stared at the white patch of skin beside her face. Benna’s neck. “Benna,” she said, kissing the patch of skin. She wanted to put both arms around Benna’s chest but couldn’t because of Sorbet. She kissed her again. Benna didn’t move; her hand was still on Jasmine’s back and she seemed to be holding her breath. Jasmine sat up, eyes closed, and pressed her lips against Benna’s. They were just as soft as she’d expected them to be. The hand moved to the back of her neck. “Benna,” whispered Jasmine.

  “Jasmine!” Bev. Her face was framed by the window. “Jasmine,” she said. “Should I call your father at the university?” And Benna was turning; she was scuttling up the roof like a spider on her hands and feet, shoving past Bev and in through the window. Jasmine turned her back and stared down at Sorbet.

  “I’m going back to school!” Jasmine yelled. “Okay? Just give me ten minutes. Don’t call Dad, okay?” She rubbed her eyes and glared at the massacred helmet on the sidewalk below, reduced to ruin by her own hands.

  Gravity, Jasmine knew, is the enemy. Gravity isn’t natural or pure; it’s the pull of things bigger and heavier than you are, sucking you in, pinning you down. In space, if you threw something, it would just keep going in a straight line forever, moving effortlessly ahead and away; it would not plummet
down and smash. In space, though she knew she’d still be in orbit, or at least within the gravitational fields of the earth and the sun and possibly Mars (where she hoped to live someday in a biosphere), Jasmine would be weightless. That was why she loved swimming and went to the pool three times a week. Not because she wanted to be a competitive swimmer, like Dad and Lara thought. Swimming reminded her of space in a lot of ways. She knew from watching The Right Stuff about eight hundred times how much training astronauts have to do. They put you through all these gruelling physical tests to see if you’ll throw up or go crazy when you’re weightless, and one of the tests is going underwater in a space suit to see if you’re afraid of water. So she decided to start her training right away. She trained as much as she could. Obviously, Jasmine wasn’t afraid of water, like a lot of people are.

  Benna appeared on the sidewalk, speed-walking away, bleached-blond hair bouncing against the collar of her jean jacket, bunny tail visible through the dress. She was practically running. No mess, Jasmine quoted to herself, is irrevocable. Just lift yourself out of it. She’d had to look up irrevocable in the dictionary.

  After dumping the contents of her backpack onto her rumpled bed, Jasmine filled it with clothes, just like the day before, again shoving her bathing suit and towel on top. She had one hundred dollars saved and buried in her underwear drawer, and she put it in her wallet. After settling Sorbet in one side of her jacket’s front pouch and his food in the other, she moved one of the sketchpads on her nightstand and picked up The Willing Amnesiac. She had signed it out of the public library, and it was wrinkly, as if it had been in a flood or snowed on or dropped in the bath. Opening the book for a moment, Jasmine readjusted the bookmark and then looked at the author photo on the back. It was a black-and-white close-up, and one side of J. Virginia Morgan’s hair was about to fall into her eyes. When Jasmine first saw the photograph, she’d thought of a popular girl in her class who had hair like that. One side was always flopping down and she would push it back with her hand or by moving her neck quickly to one side — like a horse, Megan said. Virginia looked kind of like Jasmine, only older and pretty. Her face was thin, the high cheekbones almost skeletal, and her nose was straight and narrow.