Chapter 13: Thanksgiving Dinner Part 2

In all the furniture shifting, the coffee table had been pushed against the wall directly below Mum’s painting. That made it difficult for me to retreat to my favorite place – but not impossible. I sat on the coffee table and slid back to lean my back against the wall. I kicked off my shoes and crossed my legs inside my skirt. Carefully I smoothed out my skirt and made sure that it draped down to completely cover my legs, my ankles and my feet.

The material of my skirt stretched between my knees and thighs and made a taut flat surface that I could push my clenched hands into. The resistance of the cloth, pushing against my fists, made a most interesting sensation on the skin of my knuckles. Doing that also pulled the material even tighter against the outside of my thighs. It made my skin tingle.

The weight of my legs pressed down on my ankles and feet. The hard surface of the table pressed up into my ankles and the bony points of my bum. I relaxed my arms and let them drape across my lap, the backs of my forearms lying across the sensitive skin on the inside of my thighs and my hands lying loosely curled together on the taut cloth of my skirt.

I rocked my shoulders back and forth, making my spine slide against the wall. I could feel the individual bony bumps of my spine as they scraped against the wall with only the thin layer of cotton from my top between my skin and the wall. I straightened up and pushed my shoulders back against the wall. That took the bumps out of my spine and now my back felt smooth and flat against the wall. It also pressed the back of my head against the wall. I tilted my head to one side, rolling the back of my head along the wall. That made my hair swish, sliding against my neck and shoulders. I rolled my head the other way, delighting in the gentle pulling sensation in my skull, the feeling of the hair sliding across the skin of my neck, the soft swooshing sound as it moved and swung.

I lowered myself into that sea of sensation, exploring each one individually but at the same time letting all of them wash over me like I was a body surfer caught in a breaking wave. I ended up dumped on the shore of reality. I lay there, gasping for breath, feeling connected to the world with every bone in my body.

I had learnt something new. I had new knowledge. I had found out something more about Nana and her life. It helped me understand her better. It was also worth thinking about how one rash decision she’d made as a teenager – so many years ago – was still causing complications now. The effects weren’t all bad. I mean, she got to have Uncle Stan and she got to meet up with him and have him in her life as she grew old. But she also missed out on being his mother as he was growing up. How sad is that?

I guess I wasn’t all that upset finding out about Uncle Stan and Nana. I was a bit mad that they’d hidden all this from us kids. I understood about Nana being embarrassed and not wanting people always talking about it, but there’s a difference between not always talking about something and deliberately keeping us ignorant. It was typical of all of the adults in my family. Keep us ignorant, keep us in the dark, feed us cow manure and expect us to grow up into big strong healthy mushrooms. I hate it.

I thought about how helpless Nana must have felt when her father locked her in that school and agreed to have them take her baby away from her. Knowing that my family was keeping all these secrets from me was making me feel frustrated and helpless – and angry, especially angry. If what I was feeling was only a fraction of what Nana had gone through then that explained a lot about why Nana became as tough as she is.

I sighed. I admire Nana. I’m in awe of her. I love her. She is my idol – my hero. It was surprising, but what I’d learnt today hadn’t changed that. I expected it would have, somehow, but it hadn’t.

I opened my eyes. That was surprising – I hadn’t even been aware they were closed. I’d been so absorbed with sinking myself into the physical sensations, I’d closed my eyes to concentrate on what I was feeling. Now that my eyes were open, I was reminded that I wasn’t alone. Apparently I’d unplugged my ears too, and opening my eyes somehow reconnected my ears because what had been a distant roar resolved into a number of people all talking at once. The crowd seemed to have reduced a bit. I think some people were in the kitchen.

I let my eyes roam around the room.

When I say that, I don’t mean that there was a pair of eyeballs floating in the air and wandering around the room like a matching pair of eyeball-sized blimps – with ads for spectacles on the sides and tiny little cabins underneath for the ant-sized pilots to sit in and steer. That wasn’t happening, which is a good thing because that would be weird. No, the eyeballs were firmly stuck in my head. I want to be clear about that. When I say that I let my eyes roam around the room, I mean ... okay, you probably know what I mean.

That’s when I noticed that Rebecca Louise was in charge. It was actually Rebecca Louise that was sitting upright on the coffee table and letting her eyes roam around the room. I was sitting inside my head and looking out through those little eye-sized windows.

Sensible Bec sat in the middle of my skull and looked out through Rebecca Louise’s eyes.

“Notice how everyone here is family?” she said inside my head. “So why are we hiding?”

It was a really good question. I didn’t have an answer. No part of me had an answer.

My attention was caught by Mira – one of the twins – standing with Aunty Ally and Tara over in the entrance hall. Remember that I said the twins were Aunty Janice’s – from before she married Uncle Stan? I think they mostly live with their father or something because we don’t get to see them too often.

The twins are sixteen so they aren’t much older than Tara and me but I don’t understand either of them. For a start, Mira has all these metal bits attached to her face. She has a stud in her tongue, two rings through her bottom lip – over on the left of her mouth, right next to each other, a stud in the left side of her nose, a bolt through her left eyebrow and five – count them – five different rings scattered all the way around the edge of her left ear. On the right side of her face she has absolutely nothing – not even an earring. If you see her from the right side, you see pure and untouched skin. If you see her from the left side, she looks like a bomb went off in a jewelry store and she was standing too close so she got all this shrapnel embedded in her skin.

I don’t understand why anyone would do that to their face. I don’t understand why anyone would want anything more than a couple of earrings in the first place and I certainly don’t understand why Mira went for the completely lopsided look. I asked one time why she did that and she shrugged and told me she that thought it looked cool. It’s a mystery.

Mira’s hair was dyed completely jet-black. It was cut short – to just below her ears – and the sides curved forward in a most interesting way. Last time I’d seen Mira there had been a streak of purple in her jet-black hair, and it had been slightly longer and straight. The time before that it was bleached the color of straw and super-short except for clumps gathered into little knots scattered over her skull.

So this mystery called Mira was standing with Aunt Ally and Tara. I don’t know what they were saying because their voices disappeared behind the noise of the other conversations in the room. They were standing right next to one of my pictures hanging on the wall – it was the sketch I did of Mum and Dad, with the rest of us circling around them. They were going to start looking at it any second now. I wondered if it was too late to rush over and take the picture down. Of course it was too late. I’d lost control of it as soon as the picture went up on the wall. Once it’s hanging there, anyone can look at it. It belongs to them now. It isn’t mine any more. All I could do was sit here and let them look at it.

I still couldn’t hear what they were saying but I knew the instant that one of them told Mira that I’d drawn it. I knew because all three of them turned and looked across the room at me. I looked down at the floor so they wouldn’t see that I’d been watching them. The floor was suddenly very interesting.

There was a bump and movement next to me. I looked up in surprise and saw that Sam had slid onto the coffee table next to me. I gave him a little smile and went back to looking at the floor.

“Are you going to have another meltdown – like last time I was here?”

His voice was soft. I could barely hear it over the noise of the room.

I shrugged. “No. What makes you think I’m going to have a meltdown?”

There was a pause.

“I guess it was the look on your face. You were sitting there and looking all – I don’t know – lost or something.”

“Oh! Well, maybe I was feeling a bit down but not that far down. Not like last time. Last time I suddenly figured out about my dad being your dad and I thought he was cheating on Mum and I panicked.”

“I remember.”

“I’m sorry about all of that. Especially with you. That was a bad way for you to find out who your father is. Did it mess you up?”

“Nah! It’s a bit weird, you know? Uncle Peter is my dad! But it’s cool. I like him. I mean, it had to be someone. At least it’s not some slimy guy that I can’t stand.”

I nodded slowly because I understood what he was saying.

“It’s not like I was lying awake at nights, thinking about my missing father. I love both my mothers and I’m happy with them. I’m kind of happy to keep calling Uncle Peter my uncle. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah! I get that.”

I sighed and looked around the room. An instant later, I heard Sam sigh as well.

After a moment, I shifted a bit. Then I swivelled on the spot so that I was facing Sam – still sitting cross-legged on the coffee table.

“I have a question for you,” I said.

He turned towards me and lifted one foot up onto the table. He rested his arms on his knee. Then he put his chin on his arms and looked at me.

“Okay.”

“Do you feel more like you’re English or do you feel like you’re an American?”

He screwed up his face at me – just for an instant.

“I don’t remember England. I was only, like, three when we left. So I guess I’m mostly American. But sometimes I feel like I don’t really belong.”

I sensed that he had more to say, so I nodded to tell him to keep talking.

“Both my moms have these little cards that say they’re allowed to work in America. That’s because they’re English and not Americans. And they aren’t allowed to vote. They get angry about the way gays are treated and they aren’t allowed to vote for somebody who will make it better. That will be me too, when I grow up. I’ll have to have a card and I won’t be able to vote.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. We could all move back to England.”

He screwed up his face again. “I hope we don’t. I kind of like living here. It’s scary to think about having to move to England. I wouldn’t know anybody.”

I nodded. “Me too. But don’t worry. I don’t think they’re keen on moving us back to England anytime soon.”

“Good.”

“But if we’re not going back to England – if we really are staying here – then The Parents could get naturalized as Americans. Uncle Stan explained it to me. If they get naturized, or naturalized, or whatever it is, then we get it automatically. We can become proper Americans. Then we’d really belong. No nonsense about green cards and voting and stuff. The law says we’d have exactly the same rights as anybody else.”

He sighed. “That would be good. I think I’d like that.”

I nodded at him. “Me too.”

“Do they give you a certificate – when you get to be a proper American?” asked Sam.

“I don’t know, Sam. Maybe.”

“I’d like that. I’d like a thing I can hang on my wall that says I belong,” he said.

“Yeah.” That sounded like an excellent idea. I would like that too.

We looked at each other and shared a moment of silence together. Then without any discussion we both turned at the same time and looked back out across the living room. Together we watched the swirling patterns of people as they moved around the room.

A short time later, Sam broke our self-imposed silence.

“I’m going to England when I’m older – not to stay but just for a short time,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’m going to find the guy who did that to Mama Penny and smash his face in.”

He said it so calmly but with utter certainty.

My eyes went straight to Aunty Penny. She was glancing sideways at Uncle Stan and rubbing her arm nervously. Uncle Stan wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was maybe standing a little bit too close to her for her to be comfortable. By too close, I mean that he was standing about three feet away from her. I watched as she found an excuse to sidle away from him by another couple of feet and then she relaxed. She’d tried very hard to hide her nervousness and make the move look casual but it was pretty obvious to me.

Uncle Stan didn’t notice. He knows about the way Aunty Penny is and usually he’s good at making sure he doesn’t crowd her but I think sometimes he forgets. It must be hard for him. He’s known Penny for, like, six years or so and she’s still afraid of him. I hope he realizes how much of an achievement it is for her to stand in the same group and talk with him like a normal person – like she was doing now.

“Did she tell you about it?” I asked.

“Nah!” said Sam. “I figured it out on my own. It wasn’t hard. There’s something broken inside of her. I don’t think it’s ever going to get better. There are only three guys in the world that she can touch and be relaxed with – me, Dan and Uncle Peter. She can hug us and she can be hugged by any one of us and be happy about it. But if one of us comes up behind her or surprises her, she flinches away until she realizes who it is. She flinches away like she’s about to get beaten.”

I could hear the pain in Sam’s voice as he told me this. Even hearing him describe something I’d already seen was enough to have me nearly crying.

“A couple of times when she’s woken up and I was standing over her, she’s screamed. I mean she was absolutely terrified. Then she sees that it’s me and she calms down.”

“That must have been pretty upsetting,” I said.

“I hated it. It was awful. It doesn’t happen any more though, so that’s good.”

“Do you mean she’s gotten better?”

“Nah! I talked to Mama Ally about it and we worked out a way for me to wake her up so that she knows it’s me. I sit next to her instead of leaning over her and I tell her over and over that it’s me while I’m shaking her arm. She’s okay when I do that.”

I nodded to tell him I understood.

“She sometimes has really bad dreams, too. She wakes up in the middle of the night and screams and screams. I hear Mama Ally telling her over and over that she’s safe now and that it’s all over and that it was all finished with a long time ago. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yeah! I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was when she was young – before my parents were married and that’s more than twenty-two years ago.”

“They think I don’t know about it but nobody could sleep through all that screaming. I lie in bed and listen to her crying and I get angry – really, really angry. Then I lie there and plan what I’m going to do to whoever did that to her. Most of my plans involve a lot of pain and a lot of blood. Does that make me a bad person?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” I said. “I was about to promise to go with you and hold him down while you do your thing. I figured out about Aunty Penny too. And whoever it was who messed up Aunty Penny also hurt my dad.”

“Do you know who it was?” asked Sam.

“No I don’t. Not yet. But I have a few ideas. I’m getting closer. I’m going to find out. I promise I’ll tell you when I find out. Then, when we’re older, we can go to England together and pay him a visit.”

We fell back into silence. The groups were continuously splitting and reforming. I watched as Aunty Ally and Aunty Penny rejoined each other and linked arms. They saw Sam watching them from across the room. They both smiled at once. It was like the sun coming out. The happiness beamed from their faces as they looked at Sam and they did little finger waves. Then they got cornered by Aunty Janice and the three of them formed a little circle.

“It’s not all bad,” said Sam, beside me. “Mama Penny hugs me at least once every day, often more than once. I used to think it was a bit much, you know? But then I figured it out. She would’ve been more comfortable if I was born a girl. But I wasn’t. She would’ve been fine when I was little. I’ve seen her with babies and little children and she has no problems playing with them and hugging them. But now I’m getting bigger, that must be hard for her. So it’s like she’s set herself a challenge – hug me every day. Most days she’s fine and it’s just a hug. But there are times – like after she’s had a bad night – when I can tell that it’s difficult for her but she still hugs me. She makes herself hug me. It’s like she’s refusing to let her past get between the two of us. How awesome is that? I don’t complain about getting hugged all the time any more. I let it happen. I let myself enjoy it. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah! Totally.”

I smiled at Sam.

“Do you think that maybe sometimes you might let me hug you too?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes at me.

“What is it about girls and hugging? I don’t get it. You all act as if hugging is the most important thing in the world. You don’t see boys hugging all the time. Which is good because that would be gross.”

I chuckled to myself. “It’s true. Boys don’t hug all the time. But you do wrestle. You boys are always wrestling. And what is wrestling? You put your arms around another boy and flex your big manly muscles. Wrestling is hugging in disguise. So actually you do see boys hugging all the time.”

“Eeew. That’s disgusting.”

He punched me in the arm. It wasn’t hard – it was more of a symbolic punch. I guess I should take that as a compliment. Liz always says that if a boy punches you in the arm it means he likes you. I don’t think she means the way cousins like each other though.

I grinned at him. “So, do you think maybe sometime you might let me wrestle with you? I might not have all the big manly muscles, but I bet I could pin you to the floor in no time.”

He laughed. “You’re joking, aren’t you? I could take you with one arm tied behind my back.”

“Sure, sure, whatever.” I did a big exaggerated yawn and then we both laughed.

He slid an arm behind me and gripped me around my waist. Then he pulled as if he were trying to drag me sideways across his lap. I wrapped my arm around his neck and tugged him into a half-hearted headlock. We pulled back and forth a few times. We were both laughing and neither of us was trying very hard.

Then I saw Dad glaring at me from across the room. Aunty Penny was standing next to him and she was glaring at Sam. I think we both saw them at once, because we both stopped at the same time. We stopped laughing and sat up straight, but we left our arms around each other. My arm was loosely draped around his neck. His arm was looped around my waist. We each used our free hand to straighten up our clothes where they’d become ruffled.

“I guess we shouldn’t be wrestling in our good clothes,” whispered Sam out of the side of his mouth.

“I guess so,” I replied in the same way.

“That’s why I went easy on you,” whispered Sam.

“Sure, sure, whatever.”

The laughter bubbled up inside of me and I strained to stop it from bursting out and spilling all over the floor.

Comfortable and relaxed, we sat together and watched the room.

Angie exploded into the room and ran around, dodging legs and furniture without slowing down. The green of the cast on her arm flashed – a bright spot of color against the muted tones of her dress.

Her path took her sweeping in a wide arc past me. I waited until she was at the closest point and I swooped out and picked her up. She squealed and wriggled but I hung onto her. I stepped back to the table and sat down again – lifting Angie onto my lap. Angie wasn’t ready to sit. She struggled in my lap and whined about being held. I gripped her tighter. Sam was sitting there next to us and watching with a grin on his face.

“Angie, listen to me, listen to me,” I said. She stopped struggling.

“You have to be more careful with your arm. If you knock that cast against something, it’s really going to hurt. Slow down a bit, okay?”

“Okay. I hit it this morning and it really hurt. I forgot,” said Angie.

“That’s a good girl.”

“When will my arm get better? I want to take this off,” said Angie.

“It’s going to take a while – I mean weeks. In the meantime, your cast is like a big Band-Aid. You know how you have to leave a Band-Aid on until the sore gets better? The cast is like that.”

“Can I get down now?”

I was just about to let her slide off my lap when I noticed something.

“Hey! What’s this?” I asked.

The cast had some writing on it in black marker. Tara had signed it and done a smiley face. I felt a stab of jealousy that Tara had gotten to sign it before me. I’d been so busy with my own stuff I hadn’t even thought about signing Angie’s cast.

“Wait here. I’ll go find a marker and sign it too,” I said.

“Nuh uh! Only one person gets to sign.”

I opened my mouth in surprise.

“What? Who told you that?” I asked.

“Tara. She said it’s a game. Everyone wants to but only one can, so you have to be quick. You can’t `cause Tara already did,” said Angie.

“Huh! Tara told you a big fib. She was messing with you. Really! It’s a big competition to see how many signatures you can collect,” I explained.

“Nuh uh!”

“It’s true. Ask Sam. Ask Dan. Ask anybody.”

Sam leaned over and poked Angie gently with his finger.

“It’s true,” said Sam. “I had a friend who broke his leg. He ended up with forty-two signatures on his cast.”

“Huh!”

I watched as different expressions raced across Angie’s face as she tried to absorb the change in rules.

“Can I go and get a marker and sign your cast?” I asked.

She looked doubtful and then gradually more and more determined. Finally, she nodded.

I lifted her up and slid out from under her. I sat her on the table next to Sam and darted off to my room. I returned within a minute with a handful of colored markers in my hand. I knelt in front of Angie and chose a spot on her cast a bit away from Tara’s name. Carefully, I wrote my own name in black marker and then I used the colors to do a tiny butterfly next to my name. It was pretty simple, but I figured if Tara could do a smiley face, then I could do a butterfly. The butterfly wasn’t supposed to mean anything. I thought it would look pretty.

I handed the markers to Sam. Angie held her arm out so that Sam could add his bit. Sam picked up on what Tara and I had done by adding a little blue mouse next to his name. He said that he wanted to draw something but couldn’t think of anything better to draw. Angie didn’t mind – she loved it. We handed the markers to Angie and she toddled off to get others to sign her cast.

Mum came into the living room, herding others from the kitchen. She announced that there was time for a quick welcoming circle and then it would be nearly time to start serving dinner. After a quick discussion about where to do it, we all trooped out onto the front lawn and made a circle. I ended up between Tara and Leroy. He’s the other twin. I stood there and tried to watch him out of the corner of my eye.

They aren’t identical – Mira and Leroy – not even a little bit. Leroy is thin and gangly. His hair is that brownish red color and he wears it long –below his shoulders. He’s supposed to be not bad at playing the guitar but I’ve only heard him play once and that was ages ago. His hand felt clammy in mine. It also felt a bit strange. I had to think about it but I figured out that I’m not used to guys with long thin fingers. I’m used to hands that my little hand can disappear inside of – Dad, Dan, Liz’s dad, Uncle Stan – they all have big hands. Even Sam is kind of stocky and his hands are wide and stubby – for his size I mean.

So Leroy is the odd one out when he’s with our family. I guess I felt a bit of sympathy for him when I realized that. Or maybe he doesn’t care about things like that – I don’t know. Like I said before, both the twins are a mystery to me. I can hardly figure them out at all.

The Parents got the circle started by welcoming everyone to our house. Then they started going around the circle. Most people said something really quick – I think because everyone was hungry and also it was a bit cold outside. We weren’t freezing or anything but it was definitely chilly.

I kept looking at Leroy out of the corner of my eyes as I half-listened to the comments people were making. He had a couple of pimples on the line of his jaw. I could see a little line of softly curling hairs along his upper lip and a little patch of similar curls right on the point of his chin. He was standing kind of slumped over with his eyes half closed. His head started nodding up and down – just the slightest of movements – and I felt his fingers twitching rhythmically in my hand.

Angie waved her cast in the air and explained that she’d hurt her arm and now she had to have a cast on it. I think she was prepared to keep chattering on about it for as long as everyone was willing to listen. Tara obviously thought the same as me, because she cut Angie off and told everyone about a certificate she’d gotten for a piece of writing she’d done in English. I didn’t know about that. She must have gotten it when I was all wrapped up in my own stuff. I squeezed her hand and smiled at her.

Then everyone was looking at me and I froze. I hadn’t even thought of something to say. Not that I could have said it anyway with everyone staring at me like that, but still. Last time we did this, Dad had gotten everyone to look away from me when I had to talk – and I’d got to talk about Dan instead of talking about me. Dad must have not had time to remind people to do that – either he didn’t have time or he deliberately didn’t do it because he was still mad at me. I shook my head to tell them I had nothing to say and then I bit my lip and looked down at the ground.

Dan’s rich deep voice came rolling out from the other side of the circle.

“This morning Bec helped serve Thanksgiving to vets and homeless people at the Y.”

Everyone’s eyes swung around to look at Dan and it was like a huge weight lifting off me. Then I figured out what Dan was going to say next and I shrunk a little bit inside. This next bit was going to be too embarrassing for words.

“She met up with a little girl who was living on the streets and got her back with her family. It was a generous and lovely thing to do and we should all be proud of her.”

All that weight suddenly came back onto me as everyone looked at me again. There was a murmuring of people agreeing and saying things like “well done” and so on. Like I said – totally embarrassing.

All I could do was stand there and shudder with everyone staring at me and talking about me like that. I suddenly developed this theory. You know how light is made out of millions of tiny little photons and each photon is like a ball of energy. Well I was picturing streams of photons shooting out of everyone’s eyes and hitting me and bouncing back to them. I figured there must have been billions of photons hitting me because of all the people looking at me and that my body was actually feeling the effect of all of those little balls of energy hitting me.

Of course, I’m sitting here in my room and writing this down and I know that my theory was stupid. Photons don’t shoot out of people’s eyes – they come from the sun or a light or whatever. Then they bounce off you and if they go into a person’s eyes they see you. But the same number of photons keep hitting you even if nobody is looking. Dan explained that to me once. So I know my theory was stupid, but I wrote it down anyway because that’s what I was thinking at the time and that’s what I was feeling and so that’s what I’m supposed to write.

So anyway, I was standing there and I think I was physically shaking. Tara kind of huffed and told Leroy it was his turn and he should get on with it. I don’t know if Tara was getting jealous of all the attention being on me, or if she was being kind and trying to get people to stop looking at me. Either way, it worked.

Leroy stirred and looked up. He told everyone that he was playing in a garage band and that they’d had a gig at a school party and that it had been really cool. He stopped and nodded a couple of times. Then he dropped his head and disappeared back into the music in his head.

Sam was next. He chewed his lip for a moment and then blurted out a question.