Another girl was abducted from her own home. The search didn’t last very long; her battered body was found a few weeks later, very close to her home. Her neighbour was charged soon thereafter, and because he shared the same last name as the little girl who disappeared before she had a chance to buy milk, and because the memory of her loss was still on the collective mind, people mistakenly thought there was some connection. She was eight years old, and had been raped before she was killed. Her neighbour was charged because he was quiet, and still lived with his parents at the age of 30. They found her hairs in his car and even though this could be explained simply by the proximity of their daily passing, he was charged with her murder. Virginia remembers this too. Reading the paper every day when she came home from school. Not another one?
Dawn didn’t get home from work until after five, and that left Virginia and Rosanne lots of time to play. They used to watch Little House on the Prairie and eat cookies, then play on the telephone. Virginia liked to engage strangers in conversation.
“Hi. Remember me? We met at a party before.”
“No. I don’t remember you. Should you be playing on the telephone?”
or,
“If we met at a party, what’s my name?”
or,
“Sorry darling, you wouldn’t have been to the parties I go to.”
and once,
“Oh you! Yes, I remember you!”
“Ya. It was a good party, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“We had a good time dancing.”
“We did. What else did we do?”
“We, um, we ate lots, and drank all kinds of beer.”
“Oh, did we get drunk?”
“For sure we got drunk. Don’t you remember me dancing on the table?”
“You were wearing a short skirt.”
Butterflies in Virginia’s stomach. “I always wear short skirts.”
“And it was tight too.”
“That’s the style. So, do you have a girlfriend?”
“Aren’t you my girlfriend?”
“No!”
“But at the party you said you would be my girlfriend.”
“We didn’t really meet at a party, asshole!”
“Where do you live?”
Virginia hung up, her heart in her throat.
“Whatwhatwhat?” begged Rosanne, pulling on Virginia’s arm. “What did he say?”
“I think he thought I was someone else. That was really gross. You have to do it next time.”
“I’m not as good as you. I always start laughing.”
“We’ll do the cracker one then.”
“Yaya.”
They stuffed a few saltines in their mouths, dialed a number at random, and when someone answered, they pushed their mouths against the receiver and chewed and chewed and chewed.
The newspaper on the table was open to page three, news of this third little girl, the one who was found after a short time. There was a problem with the timing. She got off the school bus at 3pm, and was seen by neighbours as she picked the mail out of the mailbox at the end of her driveway. Before 3:15, said the woman at the end of the road, who was positive it was before 3:15 because she also watched for her son to get off the same bus, and walk down the lane, usually a few moments after the dead girl. By the time the girl’s mother and older brother arrived home at 3:45, she was gone. The news today was that the girl’s mother was now saying she was home by 3:35 on the day her daughter went missing. If this were true, it would have made it much more difficult for the neighbour to have done the crime, as he had an alibi at the local gas station until at least 3:30. The future of this man hung on 10 minutes. Virginia imagined the time between 3:15 and 3:45, or 3:35. The girl got home with the mail and reached under her t-shirt for the key around her neck on a string, let’s say. Opened the front door and slung the mail on a table in the hallway. Went straight to the refrigerator and opened it, stared inside for a while and hung off the door, which was something her mother reprimanded her for. Finding nothing, she went up to her bedroom and pulled her Barbie dolls out from underneath her bed. She kept them in a box or a worn shopping bag, same as Virginia. Played Barbies on her bedroom floor while downstairs, the front door opened and he walked in. He knew this was a chance to be seized, as he’d been watching for weeks. Knew mother would be home within minutes. Knew father didn’t get home until well after dark. He climbed the stairs and looked into the parents’ room first, could hear her talking in Barbie voices. Barbies getting dressed for a grand ball that was going to take place that evening. One Barbie seemed angry at another – a confrontation over a red dress. He went in the bedroom and said hello before he covered the little girl’s mouth with a tissue soaked in, well soaked in, something that would knock her out. He carried her out the back door like a parcel, seconds before her mother and older brother walked through the front door. Two naked Barbies in scissor-kick position on her bedroom floor.
Virginia repeated this scenario, in bed during one of Dawn’s Thanksgiving parties. Refined it a little in places. Changed his shoes. Or the way he incapacitated her. Virginia couldn’t sleep because her cousin snored beside her and the party was raging. The Big Chill record played over and over again, songs Virginia associated with Dawn and would do in the future. Joy to the World (Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog), Natural Woman, Pale Moon Rising. Earlier, Dawn had pulled Virginia up to dance to a slow one, drunk, “I love you so, so much,” Dawn told her, holding her cheeks. “Mom,” said Virginia, “you’re drunk.” “Oh phooey,” said Dawn. “It’s way past your bedtime kid.” Cousin snoring, The Band playing outside her door, practically, and then there was a shadow at her door, blocking out the light of the open crack. The shadow moved up and down. Not a shadow. It was somebody. Virginia saw an eye, a cheekbone. Fingers moving up and over a shoulder. She heard muffled voices – couldn’t make out the words, but these were clearly the voices of a man and a woman, and he was trying to convince her. Virginia heard the whispered cadences of come on, come on, it’s okay. The uncertain replies from her. The bodies moved up and down again and she saw his eye again. It was a friend of Dawn’s brother, Uncle Gerry, someone who played on his hockey team. Then Uncle Gerry, booming up the stairs. Her door slammed shut and she heard Amelia out there, crying. Amelia came into her room and crawled into bed next to Virginia, shaking and crying without breath. On the other side of the door, in the hallway, the men bounced off each wall. Dawn’s voice, telling them both to get the hell out. Grow up! This is my house! You’re fighting in my house! Amelia curled into a ball on the inside of Virginia’s foetal curve. Their cousin snored.
In the morning, Virginia woke up early, sandwiched between her cousin and her sister. Amelia’s eyelids were puffed shut, and black around the edges, coal smudged. Virginia opened her door and found that Uncle Gerry and his friend had broken through the wall, left a concave about the size of a man’s shoulder. Plaster dust on the floor beneath. Downstairs, Uncle Gerry was asleep on the couch. The dining room table was covered in an army of beer bottles, which Dawn had lined up neatly in anticipation of the morning clean-up. The house smelled of bad breath and cigarettes. Most surfaces held empty bowls with bits of dip and cheese crusted on them, full ash trays. In the kitchen, the turkey carcass sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by stacks of clean plates and cutlery. Virginia picked a few shreds and dipped them into a bowl of cranberry sauce. She put on her jacket and rain boots over her flannel nightgown, and went out to the backyard, kicked at the piles of wet leaves, looked back at the house. Dawn’s curtains were drawn shut. The morning was one colour and the house, the trees and even the leaves on the ground blended into it. She couldn’t watch cartoons because of Uncle Gerry so she went through the hole in the fence, and down the gravel lane to Rosanne’s house. Her mother answered the door.
“Must have been quite a party over at yours last night.”
“It was my mother’s Thanksgiving party. My whole family was there.”
“Was they?”
“Yes. And my uncle and his friend got into a fight.”
“So that’s what all the yelling was. Well come in then, you’re letting in the rain.”
Virginia stamped her boots before she came in. “There’s a hole in the wall outside my bedroom.”
“Really now. What did your mother do?”
“I don’t know. She’s still in bed. Can I watch cartoons?”
“Little Ben’s in there. If he bites you, you come and tell me.”
Little Ben sat cross legged about two inches from the tv, in baby blue, polyester pyjamas. Spiderman crawled up his back. He watched The Smurfs with his chin in his hands. Gargomel held Smurfette in a glass jar. Little Ben’s bum crack peeped out of his pyjama bottoms.
“Hi Little Ben,” said Virginia, and sat down on the couch behind him. He ignored her. “Hello Little Ben… can you hear me?” She kicked his bum, stuck her big toe in his crack. “Is there anybody home?”
“Fuck off!” he said, without looking at her.
“You’ve got a dirty little mouth Little Ben. I’m going to tell your mother.”
“Go and tell her then. See if I care.”
Virginia put her foot flat on his back and pushed a little. Within seconds he had his teeth around the fleshy pad under her big toe. She screamed. He began to cry and call for his mother. On the television, Smurfette was dancing in the jar, trying to knock it over.
Virginia went back home through the laneway, limping a little. The Heath’s Labrador, Mitzy, was out now for her morning pee and barked at Virginia from the other side of the Heath’s tall wooden fence that lined the laneway.
“Shut up you dumb old dog,” she said. “I’ve already been bit once today.”
At the sound of her voice, Mitzy became more incensed and leaped at the fence, shaking it. Virginia ran the rest of the way to her yard. Dawn stood at the back door and smiled when she saw Virginia crawl through the gap in the fence. Dawn wiped her hands on her pants and went back in the house. It began to rain.
“Could you smell cigarettes when you came back in darling?” Dawn said, filling a bucket with water.
Virginia stood in the middle of the kitchen and took a big sniff. “It smells like an ashtray.”
“Well leave the door open, will you? Have you been over to Rosanne’s house?”
“I wanted to watch cartoons because Uncle Gerry is asleep on the couch.”
“That’s fine. I don’t know how you can stand that wretched little brother of hers. Her mother is nice enough, but.” She dropped a grey mop into the water. “Listen, did you hear your Uncle Gerry having a fight last night?”
“It was only outside my bedroom door,” Virginia said, stripping the turkey of some of its last shreds of flesh.
“Your sister saw it. She was pretty upset.”
“Amelia slept with me.”
“Virgninia. Did Amelia say anything to you? Did you hear what your uncle and his friend were talking about before they started fighting?”
“No. I was alseep.”
“And she didn’t say anything to you this morning when she got up?”
“She was alseep when I left.”
“Well she’s gone off somewhere. Go get the vaccum cleaner out of the basement sweetheart. You would have been wise to stay away today.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can help me clean now. Your Aunty Dell thinks you don’t do enough.”
“Is she still here?”
“Well Saffie’s still here isn’t she? Of course Aunty Dell is still here. Go get the vacuum and look busy when she gets out of bed. We’ll fool her, okay?”
“I do lots of housework.”
The basement was undone. A concrete box underneath the house. Wet and chalky. Cold, uneven floor. White and black mold growing on the walls in cauliflower patterns. Swollen boxes stacked against the back wall, old records, lamps, clothes. The tattered street hockey net of some cousin, grown out of it. Dawn had put a carpet down there once. She spent an entire morning cleaning the leaves and organic mulch and dirt off the bucket window to let some natural light in and laid a multi-coloured carpet on the flattest part of the floor. She wanted to make a play area for the girls. But carpet can’t mask smell, and the the window was north facing. Even after she’d carted their Lego down, the dollhouse and the chalkboard, her two daughters refused to play there.
The carpet was still there now, and Virginia knew to avoid stepping on the top left corner that was perpetually soaked. The only life down here was the mold and the freezer. It, full of meat because Dawn stocked up every time Dominion had a sale, banged and buzzed while Virginia made a straight line to the vacuum cleaner in the corner, her eyes on it never roaming to the other dark corners of the room. Where had Amelia gone? Either to the Duncan Donuts to play table Asteroids and smoke cigarettes with poor Mrs Park who owned it, or to the beach with Jen Heath – but it was raining – or she could be in the library, reading the magazines. Dawn wouldn’t worry until it started to grow dark outside.