Heaven Skyy

Princey ran from bush to post to curb to hydrant and it was fun to try and keep up with him. I decided I’d let him go anywhere he wanted, just like if he was really free, maybe he’d take me on an adventure, we’d get lost together and have to struggle through the elements with only each other’s company.

The kids were coming home from school now. A big yellow school bus pulled over at the curb way ahead of me and I felt so angry, it was so unfair. A bunch of kids my age and younger got off the bus. They were loud and joking together as they walked towards me. I wondered what my class did that day. We had music on Friday’s, my instrument was the clarinet. Mr. Myers was our music teacher, he was strict and took music very seriously but for some reason no one took music seriously. The bad kids really goofed off big time in his class, which made even the good kids act bad too. One time all our grades were so low he decided we should all ‘start again’ and he took all our grades and a metal garbage bin to the yard and we all stood around as he burned them. This was ‘symbolic’ he said. For a week or two we were well behaved but then we got bad again.

Two boys who looked my age approached me.
“Cool dog,” said one boy, who looked like a mouse and had on a TuPac shirt.
“Can we pet him?” said the other boy, who was brown skinned and had greasy hair. He didn’t wait for an answer and reached down right away to pet Prince William.
“Sure,” I said, but William didn’t really want them to pet him and kinda hid behind my legs, which I was flattered by.
“Oh, well,” I shrugged, “guess he’s not cool with it.”
“Where do you live?” the TuPak kid asked.
“Downtown.”
“So you don’t live in the neighbourhood?” the brown kid asked.
“No, I’m staying with my Grandma for the weekend, she lives there,” I pointed at her house.
“What’s your name?”
“Tanya.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Greg,” said the kid with the TuPac shirt.
“Raj,” said the brown kid who was really trying to pet William now chasing him around in circles. William whimpered a bit and growled.
“Hey, stop that,” I said, and Raj stopped. He looked at Greg and said, “That dog sucks.” They both burst out laughing and I felt really bad. Poor Prince William.
“He just doesn’t want you chasing him around in circles, he doesn’t know you.”
“My dog would eat that dog for breakfast. My dad says dogs like that are for pussy’s,” explained Greg. Both boys burst out laughing; they thought they were so funny.
“What’s his name?” asked Raj. I didn’t want to tell them Prince William so I gave him some regular dog name.
“Scrappy.”
“Scrappy?” said Raj scrunching his face up in horror. Greg rolled his eyes.
“Anyways, later. Hey, I’ll bring my dog out later to meet your dog,” said Greg and both boys started laughing. I felt really bad, maybe they were just trying to be funny but whatever they said made me feel real bad. William didn’t care, he was just happy they were gone and he was back to sniffing pee stains historic on the tree trunk.

I brought William back and he was so happy he bounded around the place for a bit and it was really funny but Granny Glenda just stared at the TV. She was watching something that was practically black and white, all the characters had English accents and all the police officers wore those rounded funny caps. I told Granny Glenda I was going to hang out on the front porch.
I sat in a decorative rocking chair on the front porch and stared at the giant Christmas-tree-type-tree on the front yard. The driveway was black tarmac and the garage door was painted black like the front door. The houses across the street were similar, big yards, clean cut grass, bushes and tall tree’s with leaves scattered all over the place, orange, red and yellow. It really was like something out of a movie. I was so jealous that I couldn’t live in a place like this. With school buses and playgrounds and creeks and baseball diamonds. I had alleys and fire escapes and dark smelly stains on the sidewalks. There were parks and stuff but you had to commute to them and usually my Mom never took me to places like that unless some of her friends were going. Then she’d make a big deal and go and find some wicker basket to put food in and she’d wear some floral skirt and put her hair in braids so all her friends would be like “Oh, you look so cute!” She always had to dress the part.

My stomach started feeling funny so I bent over and hugged my knees. The street was so quiet, you could hear leaves landing on the road with a crinkly scrape. People often said that my mother was beautiful, and then a few sentences later they’d say I looked exactly like my dad. Only Grandma Glenda thought I looked like my mother, it’s like she didn’t want to acknowledge that her family had anything to do with the creation of the illness that is me. I decided then that I was going to go and lay under the Christmas-tree-like-tree. I didn’t care if Granny Glenda saw me, she’d yell and say I was going to get dirty or something but I didn’t care, if I did anything accept stand in one spot she’s probably find a reason to yell at me. I walked painfully to the tree, my hand on my stomach the other one on my hip as it was a great effort to walk there. I slid underneath the tree and it had the same feeling as though sliding under a giant ladies skirt, like I was about to see something I shouldn’t.

I laid on my back just as the world around me was starting to fade away. I was certainly dying, and here they would find me, under this giant Christmas tree. I looked up at the branches spiraling out of the trunk, you could see almost right to the top of the tree, it really was naked. Green sap leaked like tears from the trunk and then froze fast like candle wax. I stared at the clouds going by between the branches and imagined that I was in Halifax where my dad was. I missed my dad and he said some day soon I would move out East with him but I was starting to doubt that was ever going to happen. I was making myself feel funny lying there, I was starting to get scared again and feeling out of place and really lonely. The sky was so big and just about everywhere and I was here under some tree in some place in Markham. Where was I? I couldn’t find myself on a map, no one but my mother knew I was here. I wondered if that terrible feeling in my gut would ever go away and I would always feel scared and lonely. I felt like I was going to cry again when suddenly I heard Greg and Raj.
“What are you doing!?” said Greg.
“Nothing,” I said sitting up and scooching out from under the tree.
“Why are you under the tree?” said Raj looking at me like I was completely crazy.
“I’m sick,” I said. They looked at each other like this was the weirdest thing they’d ever heard.
“You’re weird, if you’re sick why aren’t you in bed or something?” asked Raj.
“Maybe she has retardation?” said Greg and both boys thought this was hilarious.
“Fuck you,” I said. “Get off my property.”
“This isn’t you’re property you said you lived downtown,” said Greg. He had something in his hand that he was picking off little bits of and throwing on the ground, now he was throwing the bits at me.
“Get out of here now!” I said angrily. They looked at each other and smiled. Greg threw one of the little things he was tearing away at my face.
Raj laughed and said, “Make us.”
“I’ll call the police,” I threatened.
Raj suddenly scrambled under the tree and started collecting pine cones. I kept my eye on Greg who was still throwing things at me.
“Stop that,” I said, which only encouraged him to throw more. Raj re-appeared with a hand full of pinecones and whipped one at me that hit me in the shoulder, and then another one hit me in the side of my face. I felt hot tears come to my eyes. Raj whipped another that hit my ear and really hurt. I clamped my hand over my ear and screamed, “Get lost!” at them and I charged after Raj. They laughed at me and called me a ‘retard’ as they ran. I was so mad I could think of nothing short of murder now as I chased after them. Many of the backyards in Granny Glenda’s neighbourhood didn’t have fences so I could easily see where Greg and Raj had run to even though I couldn’t keep up. I’d fallen behind so much I guess they figured I wasn’t after them anymore so they had slowed down to a walk. I approached them quietly and right when I was up close Raj saw me and yelled, “Run!” Both boys split up but I went after Raj since he was the one who whipped the pinecone at my ear. I was so full of rage I could have killed him, really, I was already imaging scratching his face from forehead to chin and punching him. Finally he ran between these two houses and that’s when I caught up with him.

Someone was doing laundry and there was the sickly sweet smell of fabric softener coming out of a vent in a cloud. I shoved him hard to the ground from his back and called him a ‘fucking asshole.” He slowly got up from the ground with his arm wrapped around the back of his neck.
“My fucking neck,” he said turning around to face me. I could see he was really pissed now. With his other hand he took a swing at me but you could see it from a mile away and his fist slapped my elbow that had protectively come up to cover my face. He took a few more shots then pushed me to the ground and kicked me hard in my side. Then I heard Greg appear. I was so upset now tears were streaming down my face and I had this overwhelming knowledge that the world was trying to kill me. Everyone wanted me dead, dead as dirt. I started feeling really sorry for myself as another kick landed on my ass. Suddenly I started gasping for breath, like I was choking. I wasn’t actually choking but I made out like I was. I started gasping for breath like a person who nearly drowned and who’d been resuscitated by a lifeguard on a beach. I reached for my throat and flipped onto my back. I could see their faces against the clouds. Raj looked serious and Greg perplexed.
“What’s wrong with her?” asked Greg.
“I don’t fucking know,” he said but I could hear the fear in his voice. “I just kicked her in the back I didn’t fucking choke her.”
“Should we get our parents?” asked Greg.
“Fuck no, we’ll get in shit,” he said now kneeling down beside me. “What’s the matter, man?” he asked. “We’re sorry eh? Like, we were just joking around.”
I started coughing in addition to gasping now, for added effect.
“I think we should call 911,” said Greg. “We have to go get help.”
“Do you want water?” asked Raj, I shook my head no. I decided they had become worried enough and I didn’t want Greg to run and call 911 or whoever lived here to come out and freak out and call 911 or something. I slowly let the gasping and coughing subside and started to get to my feet.
“Yo, what’s the matter with you?” asked Greg.
“I told you I’m sick,” I said dramatically, “I have cancer.” They looked at each other gravely.
“My uncle had cancer,” said Raj, “He died, are you going to…”
“Eventually,” I said like it was no big deal to me. I started to get up and they helped me.
“Sorry I whipped that shit at you,” said Raj.
“Yeah, sorry, we were just goofing around.”
“I need to rest,” I said walking slowly away from them and out from between the houses. They followed behind me like I was some kind of mystical creature.
“You’re not going to tell or anything are you?” asked Raj. I decided not to answer. They followed me to the end of Granny Glenda’s driveway and I walked up to the front door without saying a word. It was a grand exit that I felt quite good about it.

When I got back inside Granny Glenda ordered me to sit in front of the TV where she could keep an eye on me, or what she could see of me through her steamed up glasses. At some point I guess she went outside and looked for me and having not found me immediately jumped to the conclusion that I’d runaway or gotten in with a bad crowd.
She worked busily in the kitchen chopping things heavily on the cutting board while I watched a commercial about starving children dying somewhere and I wondered how they could be so starving when they were so goddamn fat and I figured the whole thing was a scam to get money like the one my mother got involved in when I was 10. She gave someone $1000 who promised her that in time she’d get $45000 back or something like that, some kind of a pyramid investment. I didn’t know they were still building those things. Anyways, turns out they weren’t, and since the money was saved up from our social assistance funds we officially had nothing, or so my mother said to every single person she knew. She cried for days and for days all her stupid friends came over and wailed with her and brought food cause apparently we couldn’t afford it.

Simon came home not long after my sentence in front of the TV and demanded a ‘smackeroo’ from me. He pointed to his sunken in cheek and bent right over so I could reach. That would roughly be the last thing Simon would say to me the rest of the evening, not because he was mean or anything, he just didn’t have much to say in general and Granny Glenda liked things that way. I heard her speaking from the kitchen,
“Just upped and dropped her here this morning, no call no nothing,” the refrigerator door opened, “Don’t eat anything now, dinners almost ready!” The fridge door shut.
“Like I was saying, I swear to you Simon, this woman needs to see a psychiatrist or something, you should see what she was wearing, what am I supposed to do huh? Say no? She’s liable to leave the poor kid at some strangers house just so she can – Leave that there,”
“Leave it here?”
“Yes, I’m marinating it for tomorrow.”
“Looks delicious sugar pie.”
“Like I was saying, kid looks like she’s lost weight again, this woman, I’d report her to Childrens Aid but what good would that do the kid? Put her in a foster home full of bad influences and whatnot. DOWN! Princey, no –“

When dinner was ready I went to the dinning room table to join them. At lunch we ate at the kitchen table, but dinner at Granny Glenda’s was always at the dinning room table. There was a glass cabinet with china plates and cups that I used to love looking at cause they had these little blue towns with blue mountains and blue windmills and rivers painted on them. There were plates with famous people painted on them that were ‘collectors items’ and a wall display case full of spoons from different parts of the world. They were all just little tiny teaspoons but the handles had a little flag or symbol on them indicating where that spoon was from. I never understood the spoon thing.

The dinner looked so good, it looked like a feast out of story book. There was a roasted chicken surrounded by potatoes, there was applesauce and butter, bread, a glass of beer for Simon, a glass of red wine for Granny Glenda and a Mountain Dew for me. There was a plate of cheese and some pickled peppers. I suddenly felt starving and I pretended that I had been gone on a long journey like in Lord of the Rings and this was the first meal I’d had in months after eating nothing but crackers and bread to keep me alive. Simon carved me out a leg and plopped it on the plate with potatoes and some salad. I picked up the leg in my hand and bit into it like I never knew what cutlery was for. I could see the indignation and horror on Granny Glenda’s face and then came the shouting.
“Use a fork! Don’t you have any manners!”
Simon interrupted her, “Just leave her be Glenny, she’s a kid. Probably hasn’t eaten such good food in a dogs age right?” he said, smiling at me. I really liked Simon, he was old and thought all kids were hilarious. I nodded, my cheeks stuffed out with greasy roast chicken. Granny Glenda angrily stuffed food into her mouth as though by doing so she was preventing a stream of yelling from getting out. Simon kept looking over at me and laughing and hooting as I sucked the last bit of meat off the chicken leg.

After dinner I didn’t have much to do and I knew this was the worst part of the day. They liked to watch the news and horrible British TV shows that I didn’t understand and even if the sun was a good hour from setting Granny Glenda didn’t like to let me out. Mom would let me stay out until 10pm some nights. Granny Glenda said that’s when all the ‘bad elements’ came out. I sat at the kitchen table as they watched TV and worked on my drawing and continued to lament the fact that I left my book at home. It was the worst thing I could have done to myself. I asked Granny Glenda if she had any books and she said there were some in the living room. They were all books on knitting, famous places in Scotland, famous Scottish castles, popular Scottish dogs, and some Scottish recipe books. Nothing. So I sat in the kitchen drawing my scenes of devastation and waiting to get tired so I could go to sleep. After about an hour of that I asked Granny Glenda if I could go to sleep, maybe I could prowl around upstairs and see if I could find any thing that belonged to my dad.

The room was totally clean like no one had ever stayed in there. There were still tracks in the carpet from the vacuum cleaner. Granny Glenda insisted I wear a pair of old, huge pajamas that must have belonged to her at some point. The t-shirt had a picture of two fuzzy kittens and the pants were pink floral pattern. She scooped away my clothes, holding them at arms length.
“These are going directly into the washer,” she said like they were each individual turds. “Straight to bed,” she ordered on her way out.

The room was white and baby blue with a window that faced the road and the big tree in the front yard. On the wall above the bed was a panting of kittens attacking a ball of yarn. On the wall opposite a painting of a little boy and girl holding hands in a field somewhere in a fantasy world where butterflies and bumblebees and blue birds fluttered around you all day. I turned off the main light and turned on my bedside table light. The soft glow of the ambient light made me feel like I was truly in someone else’s story, in a fairy story where in the night an owl will come to my window and lead me out into the night sky to some kind of magical land where I became a hero and a friend to all sorts of magical things.

My room at home faced a brick wall. There was no overhead light and the walls were painted white. Mom said I wasn’t allowed to paint the walls cause if we moved we’d have to paint them white all over again and so painting it once was really like painting it twice. The white paint job wasn’t even good enough to cover the ‘drawing’ job done underneath. Whoever lived there before us used a black magic marker to draw all kinds of weird cryptic stuff on the walls that only got partially covered with the white paint. There was what looked like a giant spider on one wall, a skull, a lightening bolt, a tree or veins, some words like ‘die, free, live the life, gold, music in our, dark paths’ and some other junk. That room felt like I’d shared it with people I’d never hope to meet, while the room at Granny Glenda felt like I’d been the only person ever in it.

The house went very quiet after Granny Glenda went to sleep. She made a big deal of it, back and forth from the bathroom to her room, opening and closing of drawers, the sitting and standing from the bed, creaking away. Finally there was silence. Everything was so quiet you couldn’t hear cars, sirens, or people talking, not even an airplane to rumble through the night sky. I thought this must be what it’s like when you’re dead. I looked out the window and other than the jagged tips of the Christmas tree nothing seemed to move. The orange street lights lit up the empty paved road and I thought about how one could probably run up and down that road without ever getting hit by a car. I turned off the light and let the orange street light cast unfamiliar shadows on the walls and the silence have its way with me. From where I was laying I could see two stars in the sky and that made me feel even lonelier and more lost. I closed my eyes and thought about school and school projects but it was hard to keep my mind from the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I must be sick, I thought, I must have some illness no one is telling me about, how can someone feel this way and not be close to dying.

I suppose at some point I managed to fall asleep cause I woke up when bright lights flashed in through the window. At first I thought someone was in my room and had turned on the ceiling light, but then I heard the car engine out front. I jumped up and saw my mom’s car in the driveway. I looked at the little bedside clock radio and it read 2:30am. Why was she here now!? I panicked. I felt so tired and dazed I didn’t know what to do. My mother got out of the car and slammed the door and it sounded like a bomb in a neighbourhood like this one. She paced outside the car for a little while like she wasn’t sure what to do. I tiptoed downstairs as quietly as I could hoping she wouldn’t ring the doorbell or knock and wake everyone. Granny Glenda would be furious to find my mother here at this hour. I got to the front door and William started growling.

“Just me William, just me.” He growled at me even more, the little prick. He didn’t seem like he was going to bark so I unlocked the door quietly but just then my mothers shadow appeared in the beveled glass of the front door and the dog went mental, yowling, barking and click, clacking excitedly all over the floor. I felt it best to get my mother in as soon as possible so as not to create too much chaos and just as I threw open the door my mother rang the door bell and the warning beep on the alarm went off.
“What’s that?” my mom asked addressing the beeping and within 10 seconds the house was filled from floor to ceiling with the sound of a siren. William completely lost his mind and all the lights upstairs went on.
“Why did you do that!” my mother scolded me. She looked panicked at the alarm panel and kept saying “Oh Tanechka, why did you do this!”

“It’s not my fault, I saw you out there I didn’t want you to ring the bell – “
“Jesus Christ!” I heard Granny Glenda storming down the stairs. My mother’s fingers were poised above the keypad.
“Don’t touch anything!” screamed Granny. Simon came down after her looking worried and older then normal and I felt really bad for having bothered him.
“Why didn’t you just ring the bell!” yelled Granny Glenda over the alarm, the telephone started ringing. “Simon, don’t just stand there, go answer it, it’s the alarm company!” Simon looked completely dazed but obediently went off to answer the phone. Mercifully Granny Glenda stopped the alarm and now only the dog continued to bark at an alarmingly loud and nerve grating rate.

“You’ve gone and bloody well woken up the whole neighbourhood. What do you think you’re doing coming around so late! You are the stupidest woman I’ve ever met you know that!” Now Granny Glenda was really letting my mother have it. Simon returned approaching the situation cautiously but taking his spot behind Granny Glenda.
“I’m sorry Glenda I never intended to come this late, it’s just that things didn’t work out at the cottage – “

“How can things not work out at a cottage at 2:30am? How exactly? You think you’d have known much before that wouldn’t you? Or you could have called couldn’t you have? But no, you’re such a self-absorbed little tart you don’t think about anything but yourself –“

Now my mother had to lay into Granny Glenda. She was always going on about how she knew, she just knew that Granny Glenda thought she was an asshole and a tart so when Granny Glenda went and said it I’m sure the highly rehearsed tirade my mother had always been waiting to give her just jumped out of her mouth having been kept down too long.

“Your lazy, stupid, irresponsible son left me in this situation, without a job, without a penny, his own daughter, he left her behind, he abandoned us! Do you know how hard it is to try and raise a daughter without the –“
“Don’t give me this abandonment shit! My son worked hard to take care of both of you but you and your stupid drama’s and you’re big ideas about living in Butan or moving to Peru and all sorts of stupid things that changed from one day to the next –“
“And where is he now, your son! Where’s my child support!”
“I wouldn’t let him give you child support if he was a millionaire! You get enough from the government you disgusting whore!”

And that was that. Tears were streaming down my mother’s face; Granny Glenda was shaking from top to bottom. I was completely frozen to the spot. Why did I ever open the door? Would things have been different if I’d just let my mother ring the bell? I felt hot tears coming to my eyes too, I felt so bad for everyone but mostly myself. Then Simon spoke and I could have started crying like a little baby right there.

“I think it would best for everyone if you just left now,” he said, and that included me no doubt. Granny Glenda turned around and stormed upstairs to get my backpack. My mother turned and left, I heard the car start. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I just stood there. Granny Glenda brought my backpack downstairs and stuffed all my unwashed clothes into it. Simon followed her into the living room and I heard Granny Glenda shout, “Not now! I just want them out of here.” She appeared again in the hallway with my bag.

“Make sure you have everything,” she ordered me. I took my bag but didn’t feel like I had the strength to even hold it. I barely looked inside but I nodded anyways. “Should I give you the pajama’s back?” I said, my voice was so small and teeny. Granny Glenda’s voice cracked as she answered, “No, no just take them with you, go now your mother is waiting.”

I left the house and heard the door slam behind me and the driveway light went off before I even got to the car. Mother put the car in reverse before I even closed the passenger side door. The car was backing out of the driveway before I’d even put my seatbelt on.

The car was already filled with smoke, my mother looked stricken and angry.
“You see what happens!” she started yelling at me. “She’s just like her son. They don’t care about anyone or anything, just themselves. Selfish. A grandma should want to be with her granddaughter, her only granddaughter, it’s like she doesn’t even care about you or her granddaughter’s mother. If she never saw us again she wouldn’t even care. She doesn’t care about anything but her precious son. And where is he? Huh? Where is he?”

I didn’t know where he was.

“How was I supposed to know that Arturo was going to be at the cottage. No one knew he was coming, he just showed up. After what he did to me the last time I saw him, he kept treating me like a hooker and telling these other guys that I was a stripper in Chernasky, he put $20 in my pocket. He’s a creep. I didn’t leave right away but I left when I saw him talking to all these girls and they kept laughing and looking at me and I knew they were talking about me. What was I supposed to do?” Then her cell phone started ringing, she looked at the number on the caller display and summoned all kind of tears and answered the phone. She started crying and speaking in Ukrainian to the person on the other end. I was glad not to be her earpiece anymore and I closed my eyes and tried not to think of anything that happened that day.