“Jesus, you scared me!”
“Ha, ha.”
Gradually, in ones and twos, other kids arrived in the dark, nine of us all told, ranging in age from eight to twelve. I was actually glad to see Eddy; he was big, and stronger than the rest of us. We stood around, coughing and wiping noses on sleeves. The monument, square and made of stones, was about ten feet tall; it loomed enormous against the dark sky. The cross looked fragile in contrast, flat and lacy and beautiful.
I dropped words into soft darkness. I'd thought hard about what I'd say, and it came out now with the force of weeks of personal misery. “Does anyone know why we got a Catholic cross here on the Southside Road?”
“Fucking Micks,” said someone.
I pulled out my tools, one by one. The other kids stared, some openmouthed. I paused dramatically, then spoke again.
“First,” I said, “I gotta get up there.”
“Lift her up, Eddy,” said Juanita.
“Yeah, yeah,” came a chorus, and the night was full of suggestions.
They got me up on Eddy's shoulders. When he stood, I wavered at the height; Eddy laughed nastily and grabbed my bum. I shrieked and almost fell, steadying myself with a hand against the stone.
“Stop that!” I hissed.
“Aye, aye, captain.” He took his hand off my arse.
The cross was eye-level now, but I needed more height to reach it. I extricated my legs from Eddy's hands and eased myself up until I stood on his shoulders. Eddy swore and braced himself, but he held.
The cross felt rough and cold under my palms. It was much bigger close up, the size of my head. “Okay,” I said, “hand me the tools.” Juanita did, and I almost fell again reaching for them. I placed the wrench and chisel down on the flat part next to the cross, and took hold of the hammer with both hands, balancing my pelvis against the side of the monument while Eddy gripped my ankles. I gulped. “I'm going to hit it now.” I swung the hammer with all my strength. It hit the cross. Chips flew; it was only sandstone. My fingers went numb from the impact. A cheer erupted from the more enthusiastic members of our troop.
“Shut up!” Eddy said.
“Hit it again!” someone else said.
I did, and more chips flew off. And again, and a piece broke off; a small piece, but it signified progress. My arms felt like rubber. I made a halfhearted fourth swing but missed, and tore skin off the back of my hand.
“Who else wants to try?” There was some shoving and squealing as people lobbied for a turn at the decapitation. Eddy was a trooper; almost I began to like him. Bits of cross flew off. It was fascinating to watch the silhouette change, and scary, as if a hole had opened up in the universe: that monument had looked a certain way for our entire lives, and now we were changing it. Raggedly, painfully, we hacked and hacked at the thing and at last we got it down to a hard, metal core. It looked like a giant whose head we had chopped off, leaving only the esophagus sticking up into the air. Only wouldn't blood be spurting from an esophagus? I'd watched Mom gut and clean partridge; I remembered that tube in the bird's throat sticking out.
“Let's just leave it,” said Juanita.
Others murmured in agreement. I looked at Eddy, and after a moment so did the others.
“Give me the hammer.” It took two of us to get him up there, one for each of his feet to rest upon, but he clambered up and then he struck and struck at the thing. The blows rang out in the night. I was sure we'd be heard, but no one came. At last he came down from our shoulders; we rubbed them with relief. Eddy backed away, breathing hard, studied his work, and grunted.
“I can't budge her more than that.”
He'd managed to hammer down the metal core so that from nearby, almost underneath the monument, we couldn't see it any more at all. From farther away it looked sad and wilted. We all stood around and looked at what we'd done, quiet. I sucked my torn hand. The stone looked shorn, bereft.
“What do we do now?” Juanita whined.
“Shut up,” I returned half-heartedly. I felt very tired.
“I'm scared,” said little Colleen, and sniffled.
“Me too,” said another. “What if the cops get us?”
Eddy wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You see any cops?” he sneered. His father was in and out of jail, and his older brothers too; he knew about cops.
“What if the priests come to get us?” said another kid. “They'll know who did it. They have powers. My mom told me so.”
Little Colleen began to cry.
“We did it,” I said. Words welled up from inside me, from some adult display of bigotry I'd overheard, or from some TV show. “We broke the Mick cross. I don't see no priests. Do you?” No one answered. I raised my voice. “Who sees a priest?”
Eddy still held the hammer. “Anyone who says anything⦔ he said, and smacked the hammer into his palm.
“I won't say nothing,” said Juanita stoutly.
“Me neither, me neither.”
And that was how the monument to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin came to lose its cross. Thinking about it now, I'm sure it was an Anglican symbol. Not that it mattered. I didn't have any hostility toward the Catholics. None of us did, really, at that age; it was all throwing snowballs and getting into fights with kids from Catholic schools because that's what one did, that's the way it was. I couldn't say where I first heard the word “Mick.” It was just there, like the monument, a word hard as stone.
We all dispersed. I didn't go home right away. I went up the Hill, alone, to the Fairy Rock. The way was strange in the dark; it took me some time to get there, and when I found it I wished I hadn't. It looked like a gaping mouth, the small pale stones around it like broken teeth. I thought I saw the Rock itself shift, change shape, lurch toward me. I turned and ran, bumping and sliding down the slope, my feet going so fast the rest of me could barely keep up.
When I got home I slid through the back door like a shadow, went up the stairs. A light shone under my parents' bedroom door. For a moment I thought my father had come home and my heart leapt, but then I heard my mother in there, her voice muffled. She was crying.
I went into my own dark room and climbed under the covers, still wearing all my clothes. The cold had gotten into my bones, and the crying. I shivered for a long time before falling asleep.
At last the subway arrived at my stop. The car reeled and I fell against a stranger.
“Watch it, b'y!” â a Newfoundlander.
“Fuck off!” So much for solidarity.
Outside, I charged across the street and through the door of the glorified greasy spoon, waving guiltily at the other day-shift waitress. She looked grim. Jim had opened up a patio in May, essentially doubling the seating in the restaurant, but did he hire more staff? Of
course
not. The place had become trendy, and as the weather warmed up so did Jim's greed. Two of us covered the entire restaurant inside and out, and the bus boy was Jim's step-son, the kind of slug who stands around smoking when he should be clearing tables, then steals your tips.
I changed into my uniform in the back room. I hadn't shaved my legs in days and they looked like cacti sticking out from the ugly blue polyester dress with the sewn-on apron. I scuffed into my regulation red shoes, reminded as always of the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the girl who got stuck in red shoes and danced until she dropped dead. Fucking morbid European tale. Customers were already pouring in by the time I emerged. The other waitress grabbed my arm.
“You take the back, okay?”
“You're a champion, girl.” The back was hell, but the front was worse; you were farther from the kitchen. She smiled and hurried on her way, saying, “I already took an order for you. Number four wants the special, sausage, over-easy, brown toast, homefries.”
I rushed to the kitchen to give the order and scrounge a pen and pad. Two tables nabbed me on my way, and so it went. Breakfast was a miserable blur. The patio wasn't popular with the early diners, but as the breakfast crowd segued into lunch the place got blocked. People asking what the
soup du jour
was, and for all I knew, it was soup du my-arse. A table ran out on me without paying, and when I told Jim, he shook his head.
“That'll have to come out of your pay, Ruby.”
“
What
?”
“It's a standard management procedure. Gives you more incentive to be attentive to the patrons.” That's what he called people who ate at his trashy place:
patrons
.
“But it's not my fault they hopped the fence.”
“Ruby⦔ he said. And then he actually wagged his finger at me.
I looked at him. I imagined placing a nail gun to his lips and firing metal prong after metal prong into his face.
“Incentive,” I said. “Sure thing, Jim.”
By one o'clock I couldn't think, I couldn't talk, I could barely keep my legs moving, and I'd had to do my own table-clearing so that the slug could have his smoke breaks. I was relieved to see Brendan at his favourite table, right on time, with his inevitable newspaper. Brendan was a painter, an old guy, and a gentleman. I'd modeled for him a couple of years ago; he'd avert his eyes the whole time I was getting out of my clothes, even though he was going to spend the next three hours staring intently at my naked body and painting, oh, say, my pubic hair. I went over to take his order. He looked up and smiled his bright, crooked-toothed smile.
“How are you today, Ruby?”
To my horror my throat swelled up and my eyes got hot. I glowered down at my pad and said, “What can I get for you?”
“Well, let's see. What soups do you have?”
I struggled to remember. Soup. Soup. I opened my mouth and a horrible choked voice came out. “There's beef vegetable⦠and tomato cheddar⦠and French onion⦔ My voice ran out on me and my nose began to run.
“Ruby, is everything all right?”
“An', an'⦠beef onion, an'⦠French tomato⦔ Everything went blurry. Tears were spilling out; Brendan waved a paper napkin at me and I snatched it, pressing it to my eyes.
“It's okay, I'll have the⦠whatever you said first,” he said.
Sobs broke from my body.
“Sit down, sit down!” He waved me into the seat opposite him.
I kept crying and Brendan kept feeding me napkins. I knew there were tables I should be looking after, and I was probably losing more dine-and-dashes, and Jim was probably writing up my pink slip right now. I didn't care. I was having what my grandmother called “a good cry.”
Have a good cry, then. I'll make you a nice cuppa tea.
Not that
she
ever cried â it was something other women did, and she put up with the weakness of their flesh while they did it. There could be a nuclear explosion and while we waited for our eyeballs to boil in their sockets and our flesh to peel off in strips, while we had a good cry, Gramma would've made us a nice cuppa tea.
I hardly remembered leaving the restaurant, couldn't recall saying goodbye to Brendan. I found myself walking along Bloor Street in my blue polyester uniform and my deadly red shoes, face stinging and swollen. I was headed home, I guess. It was a long walk; after nearly an hour I turned wearily into my street.
I got to my front steps and glanced guiltily at my motorcycle, still languishing out front. Poor girl, she'd had a bad day too, I was sure, abandoned like that⦠abandoned⦠My keys. Shit! I still didn't have my keys.
And then I remembered Earl and his self-appointed mission. I took the front steps two at a time, wrenched open the door that led to the uppermost apartments of the long, narrow house, and charged up the inside stairs to the landing, halting in front of Earl's door. And stood there. Why wasn't he popping out in his usual annoying, pathetic way, having waited all day for me to come home? Especially today, when he'd have a
reason
: he could
save
me, emerge from his hole brandishing a key. I pounded on his door.
“Earl? It's me!” No answer. I pounded again, and rattled his doorknob. I barely heard the skittering claws on the linoleum. Something furry struck at me from behind and I flung it away with my arm, a grey whirl. We both yelled. It's not true that cats always land on their feet; they just like you to think they do. Earl's scabby pet landed in a heap on the floor, glaring and singing in her throat. Swallowing, keeping my eyes locked with hers, I backed down the stairs. “There, kitty; nice kitty.” God, that cat hated me. In fact, all animals hated me, dogs and horses, probably budgies too. The only animal who'd ever liked me was Snow Puff, and even she had turned against me after that strange night on the Hill. I was halfway down the stairs now. The cat opened its small pink mouth, revealing perfect little predator teeth; another yowl came out. I slithered over the last three steps and slammed the door.
I'd find Izzie myself. Sometimes she was out and about, puttering in the yard or pretending to do maintenance work. As the weather got warmer you saw her more often â one summer she painted the front steps twentynine times, cordoning them off with elaborate structures of string and misspelled signs â in winter it was hopeless to try and rouse her. She didn't like leaving the house, so sometimes I'd go on a beer run for her. I'd hung with her a few times on the porch, drinking beer, listening to her rambling on about her life. Sometimes, very rarely, a story would emerge with startling clarity, a narrative she'd told a thousand times but that still retained some kernel of real experience. There was a son, who never visited her but had a job out in Brampton, or sometimes Aurora. There was the time she dated a pro hockey player. The time she got raped by a doctor in a hospital. And every now and then she'd look at me, really see me, and the sudden intensity of her gaze would be too much. It was how I imagined an angel would look at you.
But mostly she hid, and she drank. I slipped into the porch outside her apartment on the main floor of the house and started banging with my fist. Bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I worked the door over for a while, then for variety, leaned out and whacked on the window. “Izzie! Izzie!” Finally I gave the door a couple of kicks with my red shoes. I was rewarded by shuffling sounds and a voice on the other side of the door.