Baygirl Read online

Iggy looked surprised. “Oh. Well, that’s…nice,” he said.

  “Yeah, but he might think it means we’re all buddy-buddy or something.”

  “Then why did you write it?”

  “It was Mr. Adams’s idea,” I said. “Not mine.”

  “But you wrote it,” said Iggy.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And it won. So it must be pretty good.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “If you have something positive to say about your dad, why don’t you want to share it with him?”

  “I dunno. I just don’t want him to be all Look at me, I’m such a great father my daughter even wrote a speech about me.”

  “I see where you’re coming from, Kit. I really do. But if you wrote something nice about your dad, why not show him? He’s an idiot, I know. And he hasn’t been the best father. But he’s a human being, Kit. And human beings don’t live forever. I don’t want you to have any regrets. Let him hear your speech. Throw the man a bone.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “And besides, you’ve asked him now. What are you going to do? Un-invite him?”

  “No, that would be the height of rudeness.”

  Iggy laughed. “The height of rudeness?”

  “It’s a Mr. Adams-ism,” I said.

  “Are you going to ask him along as well?”

  “Who? Mr. Adams? To public-speaking night?”

  “Sure. Why not?” said Iggy.

  I thought for a moment. “Yeah, okay. The more the merrier.”

  Iggy grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

  I ran next door and invited Mr. Adams. He told me that he’d look at his social calendar and, barring any previous engagements, consider showing up if there was nothing good on the telly.

  Mom didn’t get to dress up much, so on the night of the public-speaking contest she made her hair all big, put in a pair of giant hoop earrings and wore a patterned, neon wrap dress that I hadn’t seen her wear since I was eight. It looked like she was going to a disco. Dad, on the other hand, wore the suit he got married in—overkill, if you ask me, but it was either that or his old work pants and plaid shirt; he had nothing in between. His accessories were his telltale bloodshot eyes and bright red nose. Iggy looked normal and respectable. I hoped he would be mistaken for my father. At the last minute, while we were all piling into Dad’s old Buick, Mr. Adams came out of his house, said the telly was on the blink and hopped into the car.

  We sat through a wide range of speeches. One girl wrote about the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, another about being a competitive gymnast and another about life as a twin. Then I heard my name being called.

  I made my way to the podium. I heard Dad call out, “Way to go!” There was some chuckling. What was he doing? I hadn’t even done anything yet.

  I cursed the sling as I fumbled with the microphone, trying to get it adjusted to my height. Apparently, a midget had spoken before me.

  Then I began.

  Judges, teachers and fellow students: The speech I have written is entitled “This Place Where I Live: A Childhood Memory of Parsons Bay.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to battle my nerves.

  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Every color of the rainbow. That’s what the houses are like where I live. A ruby-red house with yellow trim and a bright-blue door. A robin’s-egg-blue house with green trim and a butter-yellow door.

  Windy, rainy, cold, sunny, snowy. That’s what the weather’s like where I live. Sometimes all in one day.

  It’s a regular old day in Parsons Bay. And on regular old days I go to the top of the cliff. The trail twists and turns and I’m winded by the time I reach my favorite spot. I sit on a boulder and look out over the Atlantic. It’s not raining, but my cheeks are wet. The air smells of salt. I can hardly see my hand in front of my face. A real pea-souper, Nan would say.

  I can’t see the ocean, but I can smell it. I can’t see the seagulls, but I can hear them. I can’t see the ships yet either, but I know they are there.

  I sit for ages. I am shivering, chilled to the bone, but still I stay, in my favorite spot at the top of the cliff.

  Then, I see it…just barely…the boat. Back from a day of fishing. I’m too far away to read what’s painted on the side, but its letters are blue, the same sky blue that streaks my Dad’s coveralls. Then I know it’s the Kitty Charmer. The best vessel on the Atlantic. The one named for me.

  I usually just watch from a distance. But on this regular old day in Parsons Bay, I decide to have a race. I run down the trail as fast I can, keeping an eye on the boat as it enters the bay. I go so fast I slip and slide down the steep bit, stones flying in my wake. When I get to the bottom I jump over the boulders that mark the head of the trail and beat it to the dock. I’ve won. I sit on the beach rocks, catching my breath, and watch as the Kitty Charmer sails in, smooth as silk.

  I wait for my father. It takes ages. There’s unloading and weighing and selling to be done. But, still, I wait.

  He looks surprised to see me.

  “Hungry?” he asks as we walk down the dock.

  I nod.

  “Me too,” he says. “And thirsty. Wanna come to the pub?”

  Mom would be mad, but I nod again.

  I wonder if kids are allowed in the pub.

  We head back to town.

  A man and his dog walk by. “I’m tellin’ ya, b’y. It’s some cold out today,” he says to us.

  “It is indeed,” says Dad.

  “And the fog,” continues the man. “Thick as pea soup. Never saw the likes of it.”

  The old man pulls up the collar of his coat and continues on. I try to wiggle my toes in my boots. They’ve gone numb.

  An old woman walks by.

  “Will you just look at her,” she says, looking at me. “She’s froze to death, the poor thing.” And then to my dad, “You better get that child inside, my duckie. She’ll catch her death out here.”

  My dad just laughs and rolls his eyes and we keep walking. I look ahead. The brightly colored houses stand out in the fog. They remind me of the fluorescent-orange buoys I saw bobbing in the ocean moments ago. The salt air is mixed with food smells now, half salty/ half sweet. We’re near the pub.

  Dad opens the door. The fiddle, the accordion and a blast of heat bombard us. People sing from their tables. Some of them raise their glasses to us and smile. “Oh, God love her, look at her red cheeks,” someone exclaims.

  Funny, warm, friendly, inviting. That’s what the people are like where I live. “The salt of the earth,” says Dad, as we are welcomed into the pub.

  He introduces me to everyone as “his Kitty Charmer” and his voice is proud. I beam in his shadow.

  He has a giant glass of a dark drink. But I won’t tell Mom. He buys me a plate of chips. He sings along to the music. He laughs and jokes with the crowd. He’s the life of the party. And he’s my dad.

  He dances all the way home. “Dance with me, Kitty, dance with me.” So between fits of laughter we skip and jig and step-dance through the streets of Parsons Bay.

  “What a marvelous place to be,” he says, arms in the air, spinning in circles in the middle of an old dirt road as if he wants to grab his surroundings and hold them near.

  I look around and I agree. I love it here, this place where I live.

  Thank you.

  The auditorium filled with applause. I scanned the audience until I saw him. We locked eyes. His were shiny. My instinct was to look away, but I didn’t. For a second I thought he might, but he didn’t either. Instead he winked and stuck up two thumbs.

  I didn’t win, but the way Mom carried on in the lobby, anyone would have thought I did. She said my speech was wonderful and amazing and brilliant, even the parts a
bout the pub. She called Mr. Byrne over to where we were standing and said, “Wasn’t she marvelous?” and he said, “Yes, she certainly was,” and I was embarrassed but happy at the same time. Iggy was beaming. When Mr. Byrne said he ran a writing group and would I like to join, Iggy answered for me, saying, “Yes, she definitely would!” and I didn’t mind a bit because that would have been my answer anyway.

  Even Mr. Adams seemed impressed. “You’re no Emily Brontë—who was from Yorkshire, by the way,” he said, “but you weren’t too shabby, not too shabby at all.”

  And while all this was going on, Dad stood in the background until Iggy took a step back and said, “Come on over, Phonse.”

  Dad took a step forward. He stood next to me, shifting from foot to foot, then patted me on the head like I was a toddler who had just done something really clever. “Good job, Kitty,” he said. “Good job.”

  When we got home, Dad said we should celebrate. But we all knew what that meant. So we sat around and discussed the other speeches just long enough for Dad to have one drink. Then we all went our separate ways and left Dad alone in his chair to gnaw on the bone I had thrown him, savoring every last morsel, until nothing was left but tiny sharp fragments.

  five

  Digestive Biscuits And World Chaos

  Finally, after six long weeks, my sling was removed. The doctor said the bone had healed wonderfully and I could resume normal activities. So after a celebratory ice cream with Uncle Iggy, I went to Mr. Adams’s house to give his skirting boards a good two-handed scrub. But first, we got to talking about Mr. Byrne’s writing group.

  “I’m pleased for you, lass,” said Mr. Adams. “Chuffed to bits. You must be ’appy as a pig in muck.”

  I was surprised by his enthusiasm. “Well, yeah. But I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, it’s just a writing group.”

  “Just a writin’ group?” he yelled. “It’s more than that, lass. It’s therapy! Writin’ is good for what ails you. I write letters meself. Just wrote one this week, as it ’appens.”

  “Really? To who?”

  “To whom,” he said. “You’d think you’d know the proper English language by now.”

  “Ee by gum!” I declared. “Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

  Mr. Adams laughed. “You’re a right gobby little mare, you know that, lass?”

  I ignored him. “To whom?”

  “To perfect strangers.”

  “Strangers?”

  “Do you need your ears checked? Yes, strangers. This week, for example, I ’ave written to the president of Campbell’s soup.”

  “Why?”

  “Because last week I opened a can of chicken noodle and the bloody noodles were all different lengths. Can you imagine? If you ask me, they should be uniform length. Mmm, mmm good, my arse!”

  I was afraid to ask my next question, but I found myself strangely interested.

  “Who else do you write to?”

  “Prison inmates.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of that kind of thing—writing letters of support so they are not so lonely.”

  “Aye, some people write those kinds of letters. I start my letters off with ‘thinking of you’ rubbish in case some prison authority decides to read it, but further down in the letter I convey a very different message.”

  I was even more afraid to ask the next question.

  “What kind of message?”

  “I just like to remind ’em of why they’re there, like…that they brought it on themselves by being the moral decay of society, the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low. I like to tell ’em that the world is a safer place because they’re locked up and I hope that they never get to see the light of day. And then I tell ’em that they deserve worse than what they got—after all, they’re living in the lap of bloody luxury with their TVs and their videos and their gyms and their three meals a day. They live better than most poor people in Third World countries. It’s disgustin’. So while they are sittin’ there living the high life, I like to remind ’em with a little letter that they are rotten, rotten people.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Now,” said Mr. Adams cheerfully, “how ’bout some tea and bickies?”

  “Don’t you want me to do some housework?” I waved my slingless arm. “Look. I can do it properly today.”

  “What’s the point? It never looks any different anyway, sling or no sling. You, my dear, don’t use enough elbow grease. Might as well sit here and ’ave a cuppa.”

  “But I feel bad about getting paid for doing nothing,” I said.

  Mr. Adams nodded in agreement. “Aye,” he said. “I know. It’s highway bloody robbery, that’s what it is. Takin’ advantage of a poor old man like me. It’s shockin’.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “But still, maybe you shouldn’t pay me on the days that you say that I’m too useless, lazy, idle and cack-handed to work.”

  Mr. Adams burst out laughing. “Kit, flower,” he said, “I’d pay you just for the entertainment value.”

  He put the pot of tea on the table and stretched the tea cozy over it. He took a digestive biscuit out of the package. “Misshapen,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Misshapen. Digestive biscuits should be perfectly round. This is a bloody wonky oval. Just look at it.”

  “Looks okay to me.”

  He handed me a pen and paper. “Take this down, Kit.

  Dear Mr. McVitie,

  I have been a long-time consumer of your digestive biscuits. I particularly enjoy the milk chocolate ones, but of course will take the plain ones if my local corner shop hasn’t had the foresight to keep the shelves fully stocked of the milk chocolate ones. I mean, really, is there any need to ever run out of stock? Wouldn’t it be logical that when you see that your shelves are being depleted, you order more stock in anticipation? Bad management—that’s what it comes down to.

  Speaking of bad management, you must be having a spot of trouble in that department yourself, for just moments ago I picked up one of your digestive biscuits and noticed that it had a peculiar shape. It wasn’t round, as it should be, but a weird misshapen oval. Where was your quality control the day that biscuit was made?

  You might say, ‘Oh, it’s only one biscuit that slipped though the cracks,’ but if one is allowed to slip through, who’s to say what could happen next? If your quality-control people are getting lax, who’s to say that I won’t be the only victim of the wonky digestive biscuit? I say nip it in the bud! I say get control! We don’t want to live in a world that is disproportionate, imbalanced, unequal, unsymmetrical. We need a world that is consistent, unvarying, orderly, reliable. Otherwise, mark my words, there will be chaos.

  Sincerely,

  Reginald Adams

  In all of his excitement, Mr. Adams started coughing. I got him some water, and while he was drinking it, I patted his back. He started to choke.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing? Are you tryin’ to kill me?”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  He picked up the letter and gave it a once-over. “Your writin’ is atrocious.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks? It’s not a bloody compliment.” He passed me a dictionary. “Look it up. Atrocious.”

  I flipped to the As and scanned the page.

  Mr. Adams let out a huge huff. “A…T…R…”

  “I know how to spell it. Geez, give me a chance.” I ran my finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘Exceptionally bad; abominable.’”

  “Now use it in a sentence.”

  “The disproportionate, imbalanced, unequal, unsymmetrical, misshapen digestive biscuit is atrocious.”

  Mr. Adams laughed so hard his c
oughing fit started again.

  Mr. Byrne’s writing group met in the library every Tuesday during lunch hour. When I walked into my first meeting, I was surprised to see that some of the students were from the boys’ school and even more surprised to see that Elliot was one of them. I couldn’t believe how much his face lit up when he saw me. I felt embarrassed and excited at the same time.

  The group had been discussing poetry. Mr. Byrne asked if anyone had anything they’d like to read.

  Elliot raised his hand.

  My palms went sweaty. I felt nervous for him and wished I didn’t.

  His poem was amazing. It was like a song. It didn’t rhyme or anything, but it had this rhythm, and everything he described, well, it was like I could smell it and taste it and feel it.

  I could hardly breathe.

  His words whirled in my head.

  I found myself wishing, once again, that Amanda Shea didn’t exist.

  “Nice poem,” I said when the meeting ended.

  Elliot smiled. “Really?”

  “Really. It was amazing.”

  Elliot took a stack of papers out of his backpack. “Keep me company for a few minutes? I have to put up these flyers.”

  I followed him into the hall. He stopped at the first bulletin board.

  “Hey,” he said. “You got your thingie off.”

  I held up my arm. “Yep.”

  “Good,” he said, shoving the stack into my arms. “You can help.”

  I looked at the top flyer. “Your school is hosting a winter dance?”

  Elliot held four thumbtacks between his lips while he lined up the paper evenly on the board.

  “Ugh, don’t do that,” I said. “What if you swallow one?”

  “If I didn’t know better,” he murmured, the tacks moving up and down in his mouth, “I’d think—”

  “Stop talking!” I yelled. “You’re going to friggin’ choke!”

  Elliot gave a stifled laugh, then removed the thumbtacks one by one and pinned the flyer, perfectly straight, to the board.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he said again, “I’d think you really care about me.”