December, 2011

Noure is a town past its prime, left whimpering and forgotten for the animals to scavenge in the unkempt wilderness. A garbage island west of trees too thin to climb and east of plain nothingness.

It’s been two weeks since we settled, and there’s been nothing but distaste in my mouth. It’s sour and burning, like the smell of this town. Oatmeal in the mornings tastes like asphalt paving our driveway. Dinner burgers, the greasy pig-boy that lives down the street.

I did nothing but kick rocks down the street and play video games on the couch. There were kids in the town but they were mostly much older, and hollered at me in passing: shrimp. I attended no school, as my mother called “breaking in your new home”. Initially, I had been thrilled, but with no new friends and a sickeningly repetitive routine, it quickly grew lonely and blue at Noure.

I missed my boys back at Horizon. We would often cycle down the meandering roads and drink soda at the diner. So in a lazy afternoon, blurry in vision after another zombie murdering spree, I decided: I want to tell my friends how many zombies I’ve killed. I put their names down on paper because back in Horizon I had more friends than I could count and no one laughed at our bright blue training wheels.

EVAN’S FRIENDS: ALEX, FREDDY, BRANDON, PHILIP, ROBERT

And I had squinted, unsure of this odd feeling tugging at my stomach. It felt foreign. It felt like guilt. And so on the last dotted line, I scribbled down her name.

VANYA.

I missed her, I thought. Our last interaction had left bubbling shame in my gut. She was a little girl, vying for amusement, and not only had I been rough with her, but abandoned her. I imagined her staring out the small square of her orphanage window now, face compressed to the glass, nibbling dust and dirt. Where are you? Come back and play. Dad had always taught me to be a gentleman, and a gentleman makes his amends.

* * *

My mother is stricken. Her tightly pinned hair has left a strand astray. And she presses the landline to her ear so tightly it leaves a crimson print on her skin. “Don’t you dare. I don’t-” She looks up as I padded into the living room, “I’ll talk to you later.”

She rests the phone on her lap and pats her dress smooth. “Hey sweetie, how can I help you?” Her voice is soft, like honey or butter in the microwave but there’s nothing soft about my mother. She’s all sharp edges and serrated sides.

Needles and threads and cutting scissors lay scattered at her feet. A contradiction of my orderly mother. A harbinger. As an avid creator of arts and crafts, she makes little puppets and dolls to play god. She prods at them with her pointy heeled toes.

I hand her my list carefully. “Can I please call some of my friends back home?”

The taut skin of her face creases. “This is your home now, sweetie,” she reminds me, “you’ll make new friends.” She lays a selfish hand over the phone. My mother is greedy, going green before my eyes.

But there is a superpower that every six year old harnesses and when we widen our eyes and jut our bottom lip out, quivering, there is nothing much an adult can do but to let out a permitting, exasperated sigh of concession.

“Fine.” I watch her melt, runny at the edges. She reaches for the note and scans it. I watch her eyes linger on the last line. Then a brow arches and I cannot help but grow warm. Flustered, I tug at her dress. “Mom, she’s just a friend,” I mumble defensively.

Hmmmm is her only response. But she lets me, because she sits me on her lap and reaches to dial the number even though I know them by heart. And I let her. Because Mom only spoon-feeds her love. I suspect she knows no other way. “Remember to be polite. We practiced this the other day.”

I nod, and lift the phone to my ear, fumbling at the size. Long beeps echo until it hisses and cracks and a woman’s voice travels through the machine.

“Hello, Johnson residence.”

“Hi Mrs. Johnson, this is Evan. May I please speak to Alex…”

-

Halfway through my list, mom moves me onto the couch. She picks up the scissors on the floor with a cool determination on her brow and walks out the front door. I don’t notice. I forget I’m in Noure, instead, I’m in my old room building Legos with my friends. When she comes back, I’m dialling my last number.

Her number. I suck my inner cheek. She must be so angry. I remember once upon a time I had ruined her favorite book and she had screamed into my ear so loud I thought I would never hear again. And when I press the phone to my ear again, it is all I hear. Loud livid crackles that hurt my ear. She answers with a wrath that makes my head spin and heart sink and toes tremble, like touching a live wire.

“Ow.” The phone slips from my hand. And mom looks at me, question in her eyes.

I deflate, sagging, folding myself into the couch. I feel paper thin. That day when I had snatched the book from her hands, the one bound by leather, breaking at the edges like she’d carried it in her sleep, she had looked at me a way I had never been looked at before. Like I’d stolen her life. It scared me. Because I ripped it apart and threw it into the lake. And the way she cried was like I’d killed her. It was stupid because it was a book she couldn’t even read—pride and prejudice—and I knew she carried it around to look smart. But I washed my hands till they scabbed that night. And in that moment, I thought I’d lost her. Forever.

But the next morning, she had showed up at my door, beaming, the sun were her eyes, and she dragged me to catch the bus. She won’t though, tomorrow.

I feel the warmth of my mother’s hand on my shoulder. When I look up, her eyes are sad, like she knows. And I open my mouth to tell her I think I need to go back. But before I could, we’re distracted by the sound outside.

I hear dad come home before he steps in. The violent screech of his car tires and a large thump. It sounded painful because there was a loud pitched scream. But it wasn’t dad because his voice is deep and coarse when he yells “what the fuck.”

I follow mom as we run outside. And there’s dad on the driveway kneeling over his dented bumper. It’s scratched and smeared bright red. Like melted twizzlers under the sun.

A large creature was lying on its side. A dog, I recognize, deep pants and golden hair matted red and brown. Its eyes were greying, losing sight, but its paws they scrape scrape scrape the pavement like something is chasing it and all it can do is run.

Then there’s a clear sharp snap, and it’s mom’s turn to scream. “Jeremy!” My dad’s name. His hands are around the dog’s throat. And he looks up at us. “Nancy, for god’s sake, take the boy away.”

But all she did was walk away, holding her arms to her chest. And dad sighs, he beckons me closer and we kneel over the dead dog. There’s a large gape on its side, fleshy sheen insides. I feel bile rise to my throat.

“Why dad?” I whisper, “We could’ve saved him. Taken him to the animal doctor.”

I put my hand on its head, still scruffy and warm. But its eyes are glassy, unseeing, like the stuffed animals at the mall behind the glass. I try to close its eyes, like soldiers do in war movies, but they don’t budge. Instead it’s cold and slippery and hard beneath my palms like touching marbles in a jar.

Dad peels my hand from the dog. His face is sombre, spent, crumbling at the edges. “It was necessary,” he explains slowly, “to spare it from so much pain. It is an act of kindness.”

His voice was soft, imploring, patient, gentle tendrils reaching towards me—to understand. But it makes me recoil. Is this kindness?

Mom calls animal control, and we watch as they lift and carry the dog to The Heaven Farm. They pull up in their big white pickup trucks, men and women dressed in ominous black. Grim reapers with long metal tongs as scythes.

The sky is dark when we head back inside. Long shadows slither over our lawn. It colours our white-painted house a dark blue. And I’m half past gone, in and out of sleep against my father’s hip. I never stopped to ask about the jagged broken wires running down the side of the house, or why Mom’s scissors were sleeping in the bushes that night.