Thirteen Shells Read online

  “If your folks eat moose, you must eat squirrels and raccoons too.” The first time he said it, he was watering the lawn in his bare feet and drinking a can of Pepsi. Shell went home before Vicki came to the door.

  Shell crouches beside Vicki, eyeing the colouring book. “Stay in the lines,” she says. Shadows move behind the screen door and somewhere Pat Benatar’s on the radio. She knows the words to “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” just from playing all the time at Vicki’s.

  Vicki whispers hard, “Shell, I gotta have the stuff or else.”

  Shell shrugs and puts the comb back in her purse. When she says, “No, a trade’s a trade,” Vicki’s face crumples up like newspaper on fire. She turns away to cry, but Shell catches her by the shoulder.

  “I’ll bring it back,” Shell says. “Promise.”

  The tire swing at the back of Vicki’s is suspended from the lower limb of a thick black walnut. Timmy, Clarke’s soft brown dog, watches Shell and Vicki from where she hides in the shade beneath the back stoop. Timmy is gentle and smart and doesn’t need a leash. Smiling and tail swishing, she trots behind Clarke when he walks down to the corner store for chips and cigarettes and then sits and waits for him to come out again.

  The back lawn is littered with logs of Timmy’s poo, which turn white in the sun. When Clarke cuts the grass, the old-fashioned push mower grinds the poo into powder. Sometimes he’ll put down the mower and push Vicki and Shell really high on the swing. Shell was telling Vicki all about Mamoon coming over to her house for supper, and Clarke laughed and said they should call him Baboon. Shell felt sick at that and now hates Clarke even more. But she loves the tire swing and Timmy’s soft fur and the Tupperware pitcher of bright Freshie that is always in Vicki’s fridge. Plus, when Clarke’s on night shifts, he sleeps during the day and Shell doesn’t have to see him.

  Shell and Vicki — legs interlaced and holding tight to the swing’s rope — give themselves over to the spiralling pull of gravity and the swish of dusty breeze. Shell gets Timmy to jump in with them, but the dog — slick as an otter — squirms out of her tight embrace, lands with a yelp, and runs back beneath the stoop.

  Shell says, “Let’s have some Freshie and after that I’ll go home.”

  They weave through the yard, stepping around Timmy’s poo.

  “Can I come meet Mamoon?” Vicki asks.

  “No,” Shell says. Timmy pops out from under the stoop and runs a wide circle around them.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Clarke calls him Baboon.”

  “But I don’t say it. It’s not me that calls him that.” The straps of Vicki’s halter top have slipped down, exposing strips of pale, unfreckled skin.

  “Doesn’t matter,” says Shell. “It rubs off on you.”

  The kitchen is long, narrow, and without light. A black Thermos and matching lunch box are on the table, ready for Clarke’s night shift. Vicki’s mum’s hips are wedged between counter and fridge. The way she twists around reaching for things, it’s like she’s trapped in a kayak. The door to the darkened bedroom off the kitchen is open an inch. Clarke’s white-socked feet are splayed on the waterbed.

  Vicki’s mum takes a pizza and a bag of fries from the freezer and says it’s Vicki’s suppertime. Vicki goes to wash her hands. Vicki’s mum reaches down for a cookie sheet, chubby hands on her knees; the breast cleavage that squishes out of her V-neck is as big as a regular person’s whole bum. A clock radio goes off in the bedroom — “Still Rock and Roll to Me” blasts against the throbbing buzz of alarm. The waterbed sloshes. Clarke’s up. Shell leaves before Vicki comes back from the bathroom.

  After supper, Dad rummages through the camping gear in the basement. It smells like wood fire, baked potatoes, and wet leaves. In August, Dad will drive them up to Algonquin for a canoe trip. Kremski will come again this year, even though last time the suitcase he brought fell into Rain Lake and the flimsy straps on his fisherman sandals broke after the first portage. He stood there eating trail mix and smoking while Mum mended the sandals with twine, and when he threw his cigarette butt into the bushes, Dad yelled so loud Kremski’s eyes watered. Shell found the butt smouldering in a pile of moose droppings. When she came back with it, Kremski patted her on the head then snuffed out the still-burning end right between his bare fingers and Shell heard the singe.

  Shell sits behind Dad on the stairs. He’s going through the fishing tackle. She gets a knot of lures to untangle. The fly ones with the pink feathers would make pretty earrings.

  “Bingo,” he says of a dish of ball bearings. These go with the slingshot hidden in a box with the Coleman stove.

  Shell follows Dad out to the back porch. There’s a load of washing still hanging on the line. Dad clears away the baskets and pegs. Shell holds on to the ball bearings while Dad fits his left hand through the slingshot’s wrist brace. Then he wraps his thick fingers around the sturdy Y grip. The tubular band of yellow rubber extends off each end; the pocket of leather joining the ends is where the ball bearing — when Dad asks for it — goes.

  When Dad pulls back on the band, his forearm hardens and the veins running along his bicep puff out. Behind his glasses, the left eye squeezes shut. He freezes. Waiting. When a squirrel dashes through the yard, Dad releases the shot.

  Snap! Ping!

  They are fast, the squirrels, but after a couple of tries Dad takes out a grey one nosing in the nasturtium vines. Dad doesn’t need to smile. He puts down the slingshot. Shell trots down the steps after him.

  “Tell your mum to give us a garbage bag,” Dad says, poking among the thick green nasturtium leaves. Shell comes back with an apple bag. The squirrel is belly up. Its eyes are pure black glass and its lips are pulled back to show off all four sharp yellow teeth.

  “Rats with fluffy tails,” Dad says.

  But the tail is not fluffy at all; rather, its hair is coarse and there’s a bony spine so it looks like a bottle brush. Dad grabs the apple bag, covers his hand with it like a mitt. He swoops down and gathers up the body, tail first. Then Dad ties the bag and puts it in the green rubber garbage can already out front on the boulevard, waiting for the garbage trucks that will come at seven the next morning.

  “One down, Shell,” Dad says. As the street lights start to glimmer, he sends her in.

  Mamoon is a boy but not really because his mum drives him everywhere or walks him if it is close enough. He could never have a paper route like the other boys, Shell knows. He is slender and taller than Shell by a whole head, and his face is shaped absolutely like an upside-down teardrop. Mamoon’s skin is the colour of the way Mum drinks tea — strong but with plenty of milk — and the dark curls on his head are softer than Head & Shoulders. The first time Mamoon came over to Shell’s, he brought her a necklace made of dried pasta in the shape of shells. Mum said it was beautiful and it is still hanging on Shell’s bedroom door. The day after, Shell took the second-best green glass medicine bottle from Mum’s collection on the kitchen sill and walked down to Mamoon’s. After she gave it to him, Mamoon touched his cheek to hers.

  Mum calls Mamoon special. And Dad is extra gentle to him. The time he was allowed to come for supper, Mamoon ate all his venison sausage and lentil salad. After he laid his knife and fork neatly across his plate, he thanked Mum and Dad. “Everything was delicious.”

  Shell should learn to be Muslim: gentle and polite and pleasing to adults. Girl Muslims must be super pretty if Mamoon is and he’s a boy, and they probably don’t lie or steal or dig holes in the backyard with their dads. Shell checked, but none of the makeup in her shoebox would turn her skin darker, so instead she lies out in the sun and brushes her teeth extra hard so they look white against her deepening tan.

  Saturday morning Mamoon is usually allowed to play, so it’s early when Shell goes to wait on his apartment steps. When the church bells chime for eight o’clock, Shell presses the buzzer that says Sandra and Mamoo
n Dardenne. His mum says it’s okay, so all three walk down to Shell’s. Mamoon’s mum talks with Shell’s mum for a while. She knows Barb Nutt because she teaches French and is also a mature student at the university. Mum nods and crosses her arms: “I would love to go back to school.” Mamoon’s mother smiles and touches Mum’s shoulder. Her answer is like Barb Nutt’s: “It will change your life.”

  Shell and Mamoon sit out front so that if Vicki walks by, she’ll see them together.

  “Is it your mother’s?” he asks of the makeup in the shoebox.

  “I traded a girl for some antiques me and my dad dug up in the garden.”

  “Like my green bottle?” Mamoon takes the mascara from the box and slowly unscrews the wand.

  “Our house was built on a dump that’s called a midden.” Shell explains it exactly like Mum: “That’s where people in olden times buried their garbage because there were no trucks to come for it.” And she tells Mamoon that the girl’s mum’s boyfriend is dumb and says it’s all garbage and that she has to give the stuff back even though they traded fair and square.

  “He is not thoughtful, this man,” Mamoon says.

  “He calls me a hillbilly.” The word is so ugly to say out loud, but Mamoon doesn’t get it, so Shell tells him hillbillies have buckteeth and no running water and eat animals they find dead on the road. If he wants to know more, he should watch Hee Haw. Shell saw it once at Vicki’s.

  Mamoon thumbs through one of Vicki’s Archie comics. Shell is not a hillbilly. He says that he would rather have the antiques than this strange blue shampoo or this kind of American bande dessinée.

  “Your antiques have stories in them,” he says, untwisting the coral lipstick. “But this is nice too.”

  Mamoon leans over and touches the lipstick to Shell’s mouth. Shell stiffens at first and then relaxes while Mamoon traces her lips. The warm day softens the makeup, so it glides on easily. Then Shell takes the lipstick from Mamoon. He closes his eyes — lids quivering — while Shell makes his lips match hers, only sometimes straying outside the line.

  “When you get your antiques back, we can make a museum for them.” Mamoon tells Shell about one museum in England he saw that is full of Egyptian mummies.

  “Like King Tut.” Is Mamoon from Egypt too?

  No, from Brussels.

  “Huh? Like sprouts?”

  When Mamoon smiles, his teeth are as Chiclets against his bright lips. “It’s in Belgium.” He says he misses it.

  Mamoon’s mum comes right at noon. She is wearing jeans and sandals and her loose hair flows to her waist. She must get lots of strays stuck in her bum crack.

  Shell’s wiping the lipstick off on the inside of her arm, but his mum, Sandra, says, oh, Shell’s so pretty with her lips like a cupid’s bow. Shell badly wants to see inside Mamoon’s apartment, and she’s got a million questions for him and his mum bubbling inside her, but they won’t come out.

  And while they are standing there in the driveway making plans for next Saturday, when — yes! — Mamoon can come back, Shell sees Vicki crouching on the boulevard across the street, under the big oak tree with brown, diseased leaves. She’s holding tight to her Strawberry Shortcake. Her flip-flops have thick rainbow soles, and the same yellow halter top she always wears is drooping down so her nipple shows.

  Mamoon and his mum are already a few houses up the street when Vicki starts crossing over.

  “Hi, Shell.”

  Shell puts the lid on her shoebox and goes inside. She shuts the door and the curtains so Vicki, now standing in front of the house, can’t see in.

  The next Saturday, Mamoon can stay all afternoon and even have lunch.

  Dad takes him on a tour of the garden, stepping around the bag of sheep manure spilled over near the runner beans. Dad says the Latin names for all the tangled-up plants and Mamoon nods. Mamoon calls Dad by his first name like Dad said he could and then he says the garden is very sympathetic. In Brussels his grandparents have a garden out in the country where a large apple tree grows.

  Are they his mother’s parents?

  Mamoon nods.

  Dad doesn’t ask where Mamoon’s Muslim grandparents are.

  They have grilled cheese outside. The white cheddar is almost spicy, but Mamoon likes it — as well as the homemade bread, dills, and chili sauce instead of ketchup. Mamoon is so careful eating he does not need the napkin Mum included for him on their tray.

  “Did you get your antiques back?”

  Shell shakes her head. “That girl doesn’t care about some makeup. And Clarke’s always saying ugly things, so she doesn’t deserve it.”

  “But, I think, you are not like your parents always,” Mamoon says.

  “How?”

  “That’s what my mother tells me about my father. I don’t have to be like him. Even though I love him.”

  Shell doesn’t ask why Mamoon’s father doesn’t live with them like Vicki’s dad too. But she does say, “How do you know if your mum and dad don’t love each other anymore?”

  Mamoon scratches his curls. “They never meet each other’s eyes.”

  “Oh,” says Shell. “And is the air always cold?”

  Mamoon nods as he and Shell get into the hammock, head to foot. They are very still, their arms crossed over their chests like King Tut in his sarcophagus. Mamoon’s mum will be there in less than an hour. After he goes, Dad and Shell will drive out to Wild Oat Country Market to buy enough tomatoes to make a full batch of spaghetti sauce. The squirrels ate so many of Dad’s, the yield is not nearly enough. They make the drive every other day now, but it’s not just to buy tomatoes — it’s to get rid of another squirrel. Dad takes the back roads and the Dodge Dart smells of peanut butter and fear. Above the bumpity-bump and the constant ping of loose gravel, the squirrel in the live-animal trap wedged behind Dad’s seat natters and throws itself against the sides of the cage.

  “What if it gets out while we’re driving, Dad?”

  Dad really laughed at that.

  When Dad ran out of ball bearings, he phoned the city’s pest control and two men in cop uniforms delivered a cage. Natural crunchy peanut butter from the co-op store lures the squirrels inside. Once, he caught a cat and another time a possum, but other than that it is squirrel after squirrel after squirrel. There’s got to be a million of them.

  Dad and Shell have it down pat: they park in the ditch out front of a feral apple orchard and climb over the wooden fence rotting into the ground. Shell will go off to pee if she has to and Dad will lift the cage by the carrier handle. Inside, the squirrel will be shivering, its flat black eyes full of fear. And it hasn’t even touched the peanut butter it had wanted so badly in the first place. When they’ve gone some twenty paces into the orchard, ducking twisted branches and slipping on fermenting fruit, Dad puts down the cage. Shell stands back while Dad opens the latch. The squirrel sprints away, deep into the orchard. That’s when Dad says what number they’re at so far since getting the trap. When they take the one in the cage behind the shed, it will be twenty.

  “So cute,” Mamoon says.

  There must be a nest of squirrels in the black walnut above the hammock. Shell counts eight, or maybe ten, jumping from one thick branch to another.

  “What is?” says Shell.

  “How are they in English? You know, with the tails.”

  “Squirrels?”

  The way Mamoon says it makes Shell laugh. “You think they’re cute?”

  “Of course. We don’t have them in Belgium, but there are so many here.” Mamoon especially likes the way they sit back on their haunches and wipe their faces with their tiny paws. “Shell! Look!” A grey one goes dashing up the trunk, an apple core gripped in its teeth.

  “Rats with fluffy tails,” Shell says.

  Mamoon looks over at Shell. Deep lines crease his wide forehead. “Rats?”

 
“Well, just imagine them without the fluff. Like if you shaved the tail and saw it’s just a bone.” Shell is talking loud. “Then you’d see how ugly they are.” And Shell is talking fast. “They tear up gardens and they’ve got no natural predators here, so that’s why it’s okay to kill them, because nothing else will kill ‘em so they just go on and on getting worse and eating all my dad’s tomatoes.”

  “Kill?” Mamoon says. “They are alive creatures.”

  “No” — what did Dad call them? — “they’re rodents.”

  “A rodent is a creature. So are birds and fish and —”

  Shell twists out of the hammock. Both she and Mamoon fall, capsized, on the hosta beds below.

  Mamoon scrambles after Shell, who cuts through the garden and climbs back behind the woodshed. Brambles, tall and sharp, scratch their bare arms and faces. A stretch of chain-link fence runs alongside the shed. Two black dogs with clattery chains and flat faces live on the other side. It’s some time since Dad’s been back here with the clippers, so the dogs aren’t visible through the bramble and maybe aren’t even there. But then they come barking, the fencing bowing against the throw of their weight. Mamoon freezes, his back pressed against the shed. After a man shouts, “Candy! Royal!” the animals quiet down, chains settling with a final shake.

  Mamoon’s hand sweats in Shell’s. His slim fingers squeeze hers in return.

  Shell waits, but neither Mum nor Dad come to check. Shell tries to get Mamoon to smile, or at least to look different than he does right now: like he does not know Shell anymore, or want to either. Shell pulls Mamoon further along the side of the shed. A rough wool blanket covers what might be a coffin, but one small enough for a pet or a baby. Shell drops Mamoon’s hand as she kneels down before it. When she throws back the blanket, Mamoon’s face pales. The hair lining his forehead seems to recede. A squirrel — pure black but for a bright white shock at the tip of its twitching tail — shivers at the back of the animal trap.

  “Hello, Mr. Squirrel,” Mamoon whispers. He crouches beside Shell and shifts his weight so that his nose is but a few inches from the cage’s front panel. “Wow.” As he leans in, his hand presses into Shell’s back, dampening her T-shirt. “Shell, you and your dad won’t eat it?”