Thirteen Shells Read online

  Dad spends Wednesday in the garden. When Shell comes in from school, she goes through the front door so she doesn’t have to see him. She crawls between her bed sheets, pulling Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great from under her pillow.

  When Dad appears at the door, his face is shiny and filmed with dirt, and he’s got his shirt sleeves rolled up. The sweet scent of rotting apple follows him in. He holds Shell’s eyes in his for a long time, then sits down on the end of the bed.

  Dad holds out his closed right fist. Fingers squeezed tight, knuckles dirty.

  “Come on. See what it is.”

  The air is cold as Shell sits up, and her hand, next to Dad’s, is small but not much cleaner. One by one Dad lets her unfold his thick fingers. The false teeth are cupped in his palm — a lily pad of silver with five yellow pearls attached; tea leaves stick to the enamel.

  Shell lies back on her pillow.

  Dad asks if it was Shell who ripped up Paulina’s postcard.

  Shell nods. “I don’t like her giving you strudel.”

  Dad rubs his dentures on his knee. His shoulders go down. He says he has friends who are men and friends who are women. “The world is not so black and white, Shell. One day you’ll see that.”

  Shell blinks.

  “Paulina is married to Ted, also my friend. They have a boy, a bit older than you.” The three of them were at the opening on Friday. “Next time you’ll come too.”

  Shell touches Dad’s elbow. She wants him to make the caveman face. He does. But it is a sad caveman, a tired caveman. Shell wishes Mum would love Dad so much too. Maybe if she brushes Mum’s hair like she does Dad’s teeth, they will hug and kiss like Vicki’s mum and Clarke do right in front of Shell and Vicki, who just goes on talking or whatever and Shell looks away.

  Dad leaves, pocketing the teeth. Water runs in the bathroom across the hall. Shell turns the pages in her book, the sound of Dad’s shower sweeping over her.

  Children of the Corn

  Shell will be in grade four after the summer. It’s time to stop reading so much Judy Blume. After breakfast now, Dad gives her the World section of the newspaper and talks about things like what makes a war “cold” and what it means that the usa elected a cowboy president. Then there’s a photo in the Saturday paper Dad wants Shell to see. It is really simple: a close-up of a man’s hand — a white hand — and in the palm is a teeny-tiny black hand, the limp wrist of which disappears into the frame. Because the black hand is so small and brittle, the man’s hand looks giant. The picture was taken under a hot sun, for the light is stark, blinding.

  famine worsens in war-ravaged karamoja district of uganda

  “Dad, is it a little girl’s hand or a little boy’s?”

  “Does that matter?”

  Shell stands looking at the photo for so long, her legs get tired. The white man must feel like he is God — he could crush that tiny black hand like a snail shell. But does he want to feel like God? The photo makes Shell feel like God, and Dad putting the coffee on in the sunny kitchen — he will have felt like God when he saw the picture even if he doesn’t believe in God. Shell doesn’t know if she’s sadder for the starving child or for the man who held its hand.

  Shell and Vicki make “Feed Uganda” T-shirts by turning their own inside out and drawing on them with Vicki’s sparkly pens. But then Vicki can’t wear hers. Clarke, her mum’s boyfriend, lives with them now and he makes Vicki throw hers away, saying starving Africans should eat their cows instead of worshipping them. So even though there’s only ever bran muffins or dehydrated apples for snacks, Shell’s house becomes the Feed Uganda headquarters. They make posters at Shell’s desk, and with Mum’s help plan for a lemonade stand where they will also ask people to donate canned goods to send over to the war-torn region. Wouldn’t it be great if they could just hire a plane and bring the Ugandans to live here in Somerset? There are lots of parks around for their tents. And by the time winter comes, they could have apartments like the Cambodian people who live so quietly in the pink house beside Shell’s school. You know? Theirs is the yard where the soccer balls always land. Whenever there is a photo of Ugandans in Dad’s paper, Shell clips it for Vicki. But no picture makes them feel as sad as the one of the hand holding that of the world’s most breakable baby. They drink milk and stare quietly at the picture, and though neither knows how, they pray.

  It doesn’t have to be that way. Right here in Somerset, there are enough food factories to feed the world. Even Dad agrees with that. All over the east end you’ve got the Kellogg’s factory, plus McTavish’s cookies, and Hot House — that’s for spices. Cling-On Chicken is out that way too. And what about the Washko candy factory where Sparkle Dips and bubblegum trading cards come from? A kid whose dad works at Washko brings broken pieces of trading card gum to school in sandwich bags. He says the sweet white powder coating keeps the gum from sticking to the cards. The flavour lasts about three chews before becoming wax, but when the kid pulls out one of those Baggies, the whole schoolyard gathers around him like they’re chickens and he’s a farmer throwing seeds.

  When Dad drives to East Somerset Lumber, Shell always goes with him — first, because the guard dog has no vocal chords and can’t bark at her, and second, for the factory smells. Even in winter Shell keeps the window down, drinking in the waves of sweet cookie giving way to rich chili powder, then to toasty cereal, and then something sharp but smell-less hits the back of her throat: that’s the ammonia Cling-On uses to clean the dead chickens. Finally they get to sugary pink bubblegum. Oh — and Phipp’s Brewery is in Somerset too, but right on the edge of downtown, so the wind blows the sick tang of yeast as far as Cashel Street, where it smells up the yard. The smell is not unlike the one that comes from Kellogg’s. Dad says that’s because both beer and Corn Flakes come from cereals. But that doesn’t mean you can have beer for breakfast, he laughs.

  Mum and Dad and Shell don’t eat food from factories but instead from the backyard garden, the co-op store, and from Schwartz the organic farmer, who delivers barrels of apple cider and whole sides of meat, which Dad and Kremski and other artists grind up into sausage right on the harvest table or smoke in the tin smokehouse out back. Once, when Kremski was feeding pork into the sausage grinder, he found the bullet used to kill the pig. Now Shell has the bullet in her horsehair button box, proof — Dad and Kremski said — that they are in touch with their food sources. Kremski grew up on Soviet sausages, which are even worse for you than Swiss Chalet.

  Mum says Swiss Chalet isn’t really junk food though. She even drinks her sauce right out of the cup. And also she cheats by getting cream for Dad’s coffee or tonic water for his gin at Thrifty Mart and not the co-op. Shell can’t come to Thrifty Mart with her anymore, though. The rows upon rows of bright boxes and sleek squeeze tubes, jars filled with orange goop, bags of marshmallow cookies make Shell greedy. She begs Mum for just one box of Shreddies or else an Aero bar by the cashier. And if she doesn’t get a treat, which she doesn’t, Shell steals: Fruittella, Trident, a Christmas orange wrapped in green tissue. Once, Mum tried to drive to Thrifty Mart in secret, but Shell hid in the back seat and popped up when the car came to a stop in the parking lot. Mum screamed oh-my-god so loud everyone packing bags into their trunks turned to look and a boy pushing a row of carts ran over to help. Mum doesn’t cry very much or at all, but she couldn’t stop once Shell scared her. She kept her sunglasses on in the store and all through the aisles she was wiping her eyes. When Dad found out, he grounded Shell for a whole week.

  Shell gets out the Uganda clippings and cardboard, but Vicki doesn’t come over. She’s in her backyard uncoiling a pile of dirty hose. “I’m sick of Uganda,” she says. Together, Shell and Vicki fill Vicki’s wading pool with freezing water then Shell rocks herself on the tire swing while Vicki pretends to swim, but she’s just splashing. Vicki’s mum comes out with a broken-in-half Popsicle: blueberry, bearded with frost. Does Shell wa
nt to stay for cartoons and a grilled Velveeta? Dad says Shell eats too often at Vicki’s, so Shell shakes her head no then drips Popsicle all the way up the block.

  Shell stops when she sees the blunt rearend of their yellow Dodge Dart parked in the drive. Dad was supposed to have driven the car up to the painting studio to meet Kremski today. Shell hopes he’s walked there and is not home because then she can have lunch alone on the front steps, dumping the lentil soup she hates into the thick Rose of Sharon bush. Mum always does something to the soup that makes it taste like coffee. Maybe it’s the bitter leafy bits floating on the top.

  Laundry turns the backyard into a sea of sailing ships, and in the kitchen sunspots dance across the walls. Shell smiles and kicks off her sandals: Dad’s painting shoes are gone from the mat by the door. Shell makes for the milk bottle in the fridge. Then she stops, looks around: something is different.

  “Dad?” Shell’s voice is soft.

  Someone is hiding — in a cupboard or behind a door — watching her, waiting for the right time to jump out and scare her, like Dad has done too many times, once making her pee.

  The washer bangs in the basement.

  “Mum?”

  From the brown stove to putty-coloured cupboards to the ceiling of peeling yellow Dad needs to redo — the kitchen is all the same. But, also, it’s not the same at all. There are two new bottles of tonic water standing between Dad’s splattered coffee pot and the antique toaster that cooks only one side of the bread. And — up, up, up — there it is, on the top of the pea-green fridge, a big white box of store-bought cereal. The bird on the front is done up in bright primary colours: green breast, white eye; the comb crowning its head is the same red as the teardrop wattle hanging beneath a sharp yellow beak. Shell knows that bird, would recognize it from a million miles away. But Corn Flakes are what other kids eat — Vicki sometimes, kids at school, or kids in magazine ads whose mums use crumbled Corn Flakes to coat chicken and bake it up crisp or they stir Corn Flakes, peanuts, and hot marshmallows together and, once congealed, cut the stuff into squares which are wrapped in that cling film which leaks toxins into the very food it is supposed to protect. Some kids eat the sugar-coated kind, which are not Corn Flakes at all; they’re called Frosted Flakes and they’re also made by Kellogg’s right here in Somerset.

  Shell’s breakfast is never cold or from a box. Usually Mum slow-cooks oatmeal porridge; eggs and bacon are for the weekend, or Mum pours buckwheat batter into the heavy antique waffle iron to make thick cakey waffles, which they drizzle with syrup Dad and Shell tapped at a sugar bush.

  With the Corn Flakes rooster’s empty eye fixed in the corner of her own, Shell waits for Mum at the bottom of the stairs. Mum’s faded red T-shirt says in peeling lettering: Life’s a Picnic. She’s carrying a basket of laundry.

  “Hand over that filthy shirt,” she says to Shell, who crosses her arms over the blueberry drips and sparkled letters and shakes her head.

  Mum frowns. “Come on, Shell. People will think we don’t own a bar of soap.”

  Beneath Mum and Shell, the washer stops banging, concluding its spin cycle with a groan of relief. As Mum steps towards the basement door, Shell grabs her elbow. Squeezes.

  “What?”

  Shell points at the rooster crowing on top of the fridge. Like Kookaburra in the old gum tree. Merry, merry king of Corn Flakes he.

  “Those,” she whispers. “What are we doing with Corn Flakes in this house?”

  “Oh,” Mum says before disappearing into the basement. “They’re for Jégou. He’s coming to visit.”

  One time when Dad and Jégou were sharing a place in Vancouver during art school, Dad found him fast asleep in the shower: standing up, the spray of water gone cold. In Dad’s stories, Jégou is always falling asleep — while holding hot soldering irons, during Christmas meals, driving. Either that or he is getting hurt. Like when he was changing a tire and the jack collapsed so the pickup rolled backwards right over his foot. He screamed at his neighbour to come help, but the old guy was deaf. And all that was before Jégou moved to Newfoundland, which is the really funny part, Dad says. Or not funny, “iron” something. Now, after ten whole years of unanswered Christmas cards, Jégou calls. He’s at the Saskatchewan farm where his dad still lives, driving back to Newfoundland. Though Somerset is about three days out of his way, he’ll be dropping in to visit. And because back in art school the only things Jégou ate were Corn Flakes and homo milk, Dad added them to Mum’s shopping list.

  Will one box of Corn Flakes be enough?

  Will I get to have some too?

  Will Dad?

  If there’s leftovers, will you get some marshmallows to make squares?

  Can we open them now?

  Now?

  Mum gets the vacuum cleaner out right after the next morning’s oatmeal. She washes the kitchen floor and wipes fingerprints from the bottom cupboards. Along with tonic and gin, there are two six-packs of Radeberger in the cold room. Mum says Jégou will need more than six beers if he’s going to fall asleep in the shower again or back his car over his own foot. Dad, sampling a garlicky Greek olive that goes perfect with beer, says, “Hey, that’s not fair.” For supper Dad will make homemade fettucini with fresh pesto from the backyard basil. One of his good stoneware ashtrays is out on the coffee table in the living room and a selection of records leans up against the turntable: George Jones, Hank Williams, and the Miles Davis record that has a cartoon-like Fat Albert on the cover, even though it’s not for kids.

  After Shell cleans her room and helps Mum fold laundry, she can raise funds for Uganda. She puts on her clean Feed Uganda T-shirt, but the sparkles have smudged and the U has melted into an O. Mum says it looks fine and she’s not to ruin another T-shirt no matter how worthy the cause.

  With a Tupperware jug of lemonade and a stack of plastic cups, Shell goes out to the sidewalk where Dad has set up a card table and chair.

  “You’re also raising awareness, Shell,” he says. “Remember that. It’s just as important.”

  Last night at the harvest table in the dining room, while Mum sewed new cloth napkins and listened to Kate and Anna McGarrigle on the radio, Shell made a campaign sign. Because the newspaper photo was worn out from being in her pocket, she’d made photocopies down at the library, one of which is glued in the middle of a piece of cardboard. Above it, Shell wrote, “Won’t you please lend a hand?” Then she copied some facts about the famine from a magazine at the library: how children are the real casualties and most are killed by anemia and also the country is in a state of anarchy. When elections are held there in September, Shell will already be in grade four.

  Shell sits alone in the driveway with the lemonade. She wishes she could be sick of Uganda too and go to the pool like Vicki did about an hour ago — Clarke at the wheel. Likely they will stop at Putterman’s after for a soft ice cream. Mum comes out and coats Shell in Coppertone and makes her put on a hat. A few adults on bikes stop. They read Shell’s T-shirt, gulping down lemonade which they say needs more sweetening.

  “Oganda?” They’ve never heard of the place. One guy with a ponytail and damp cowboy shirt says it’s just imaginary. “The kid’s making it up.” But then they see the picture and read the facts. “Oh, right, Uganda.”

  Even though the lemonade costs only a quarter per cup, each of them puts a two-dollar bill in the jar Mum usually ferments the kefir in. Then a bunch of kids come by, bathing suits still wet from the pool. The kids go to the Catholic school about five blocks from Princess Anne. Shell thinks it’s because of being Catholic that they spend such a long time looking at the photo of the hands. One boy who is tanned very dark with long eyelashes reads the information to his friends. Then, blowing his nose into his towel, he says he has no money. A few of his friends say they will come back with canned goods. What do Ugandans like to eat? Shell remembers that the magazine she read talked about aid workers givin
g out cereals and grains, like rice and maize, which she knows is corn because in Social Studies they learned how the Native Indians right around Somerset used to grow it. She tells the Catholic kids to bring rice, corn, cereals, and also baked beans because Mum says they are nutritious.

  Shell’s about to drink the last cup of lemonade herself when Kremski rides up on his bike, a paper Swiss Chalet hat in his back pocket. He squints against the smoke blowing up from the cigarette clamped between his teeth and says he’s looking for Dad. Dad owes him money. Kremski’s right pant leg is rolled up. His calf is so thin compared with the size of his sneaker.

  “Uganda, huh?” Kremski digs two quarters from his jeans’ pocket. But before he drops them into the kefir jar, he wants to know what Shell’s going to do with the money. Shell can’t answer. Kremski shakes his head and says that’s the most important question about foreign aid and one people fail to ask. Why don’t the goddamn Americans intervene in a real crisis instead of creating them in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador?

  “Shell, you ask your dad what corruption means,” he says, wiping spit from his lips. He deposits his money but says Shell can keep her refreshments, he doesn’t like lemonade.

  Shell, her cheeks burning, watches Kremski ride away, chicken leg flexing its sinew, and she feels hate for him, and if he wasn’t Kremski she’d run after him and throw his quarters at his bald spot. Instead, she plucks them from the kefir jar and drops them, along with Kremski’s pocket lint, down the sewer grate. Then she packs up her stand. The Catholic kids never come back with their cans.

  Dad is kneading pasta dough. He’s good at it because of all his work with clay. Though Mum has her doubts, Dad bets Shell an ice cream cone that Jégou will show up for dinner tonight. Outside on the porch, Shell watches the cars, trying to guess which one will be Jégou’s.

  Dad comes out with a Radeberger. Shell says she’s not sure what to do with the seven dollars and twenty-five cents she raised for Uganda. And what does corruption mean, because Kremski came by and called her that. Dad says, being from the Soviet Union, Kremski’s nature is to be skeptical. For example, if Shell kept the seven dollars and twenty-five cents for herself, that would be corrupt.