Bozuk Read online

  My dad used to say my mother smelled like baking and she captured his heart with her apple pie, the smell of apples and cinnamon. He made a big thing out of sniffing her neck and her hands. “Something’s cooking,” he said.

  “You’ve been sneaking chocolate,” he said, sniffing around my mouth, when I denied that I’d spoiled my appetite by eating before dinner.

  Just as the scent of apples brought him the first time I saw him, I decided to capture Coon with my smells. I figured I was performing a public service. If Coon was stealing from us then he was stealing from everybody. If I trapped him, it would be a good thing.

  Mr. Jung at the corner store didn’t agree with me. I tried to get him to donate some fresh chocolate bars because kids stole from him too and I’d be doing him a service, but he told me I was a fat girl who made up lies. After that, I swore I would never go back to his place of business, but of course I had no choice. My mother sent me there to get her cigarettes and tonic water and she never gave me money. Everything got charged up on her account.

  I taped a sign on the fence that said FREE CHOCOLATE, ate a few stale bars and climbed the tree, careful to smear a little chocolate around my mouth. It never occurred to me that he couldn’t read and magical thinking would be my real attraction. I believed that if I could keep a thought in my mind it was like a radio signal my father would pick up in heaven. He would do his best to make it happen.

  I was trying to concentrate, but my brain was so full of jittery thoughts, I almost wiggled myself out of that tree, head first. The other big problem was falling asleep. I had a hard time sitting in the hook in the trunk without dozing off. I knew if that happened I would probably fall of my perch and knock my teeth out, or break a leg and there would be no help coming. By evening, my mother was usually so drunk she wouldn’t have heard an elephant drop out of her apple tree. I would have waited there all night long, hollering like the tomcats that howl in the alleys of Kadıköy, and no one would have known. Even if they did, why would anyone in their right mind risk getting shot when they came in our yard to rescue me?

  I talked to myself and went over songs I knew – trying to remember all the words and not just one or two lines – while night took care of its dark business all around me.

  Why did my daddy have to die and leave us miserable females behind to do all this risky business? When would the grieving stop? I even went so far as hoping another man would come along and take my mother out for a spin in his convertible before it was too late and she made herself completely repulsive.

  Sometimes my nipples hurt. Something was happening to my body and soon I’d be caught up in the same terrible need that afflicted my mother. I’d take off like a cat in heat and leave her behind. Who would take care of her then?

  When I was numb from sitting in one position for so long and just about ready to yell uncle to my curious demons, I heard the boards give way as something hoisted itself over the fence. I hardly dared to breathe.

  Moonlight delivered Coon to me. I saw him clearly, sniffing the air. Who knows if it was my magic or just a compulsion to visit the scene of an earlier crime that brought him? It didn’t matter. He was there. He was much smaller than I was, with a ropey muscular body and long matted hair that was full of leaves and burrs, just like Frend when he dragged himself through the bushes and long grass that infected his ears and made them stink. The boy creature was wearing a torn shirt and jeans and a pair of new running shoes. Coon later told me that clotheslines were his haberdasher’s. He showed me how he pinched his shoes from back porches.

  As soon as he got near the base of the tree, I was going to jump and land hard, so his arms and legs would collapse under him. I was a big girl, and, tough as he appeared to be, I would have the advantage of surprise.

  That wasn’t necessary. As soon as he saw me, he froze. That was it. I had him. “Hi,” I shouted down to him. “I am a mad mother; and from now on I’m the boss of you.”

  CHEESE

  I grew up hearing different music. When everyone around us was listening to the British Invasion, my parents were stuck in the radio groove of their coming of age. I think being the child of older parents made me different, apart. My mother and father had a whole bunch of favourite songs. One was “Paper Doll” by the Mills Brothers and another was “Some Enchanted Evening,” from the musical South Pacific. I saw the movie on TV. At first I thought it was about singing fish – salmon chanted evening. On Sunday evenings, a dark night at the movie theatre, they put on their long-playing records and danced in the living room cheek to cheek. I would sneak out of bed to watch them. The dancing gave me split feelings. One was comfortable and the other wanted to get between them and break it up. I liked riding on Daddy’s feet. He was my dancing partner, not hers.

  When he told me that the tickling game we played at bedtime was the best part of his day, I thought that meant he loved me the most. Our songs were better than their songs. Ours moved quickly and some of them were funny old tunes like “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window” and “She Wore Red Feathers and a Hula Hula Skirt.” All the songs Daddy and Stella liked were about falling in love and never letting go. I thought that was sick. We are supposed to let go of dead people. What good are they? They can’t wash the car or take out the garbage. They can’t fix a broken girl.

  A broken shoe ruined my mother’s goodbye. When the hospital phoned to say Daddy had suffered another heart attack, she dressed up as if she were going dancing: crinoline, high heels, perfume – date perfect, while her taxi waited. But it turned into a pumpkin. In her rush, she tripped and snapped a heel. By the time she’d run back in the house and found another pair of shoes, Daddy had slipped right by her in the arms of another woman.

  I know he loved us best, but my father had been slightly deranged by war and the availability of comfort women happy to trade their bodies for silk stockings and the Canadian rations soldiers packed in their kits, alongside the government pamphlet warning about venereal diseases.

  When he died, our life fell apart. My mother needed to move on from grief and I was trying to take care of her. I had the idea of getting her a new dance partner. Then she might start acting like a mother again and I could have my old name back. Her calling me Mother and expecting me to take over her job was really wearing on my nerves. She was supposed to vacuum the carpet and feed me and Frend, my canine therapist, according to the Canada Food Rules, which I knew darn well included three vegetables, three kinds of fruit, whole wheat bread, milk and meat every day. Mystery meat and Wonder Bread sandwiches was no way to raise a kid and her dog. I wanted my mother to put her apron back on and start making chicken divan and chocolate cupcakes with Smarties on top!

  My complaints campaign against candy companies that short changed kids with smaller bars had been so successful, I knew I had what it took to organize any kind of business from corporate rip-ons, my free stuff, to child finding. If I wanted to get the goods on my new midnight friend, all I had to do was put up signs all over town and knock on doors. He had to belong to somebody. The thing is, he hadn’t told me one thing about himself that I could call a clue. As far as I knew, no one saw him but me. Maybe I was going through the same thing as Stella, who talked to my father and sometimes danced by herself while kissing the air around her. Maybe I was crazy lonely too and Coon was just a slice of moonlight that I could fold up and put away in my dress-up box.

  If that was true, I didn’t want anybody else checking out my untidy brain. I didn’t bring kids home to play and I didn’t let on how bad things had got at home. As far as anyone at school knew, I liked having the same lunch every day and it was only lunch after all. I had real meat, three vegetables, three fruits and milk with my dinner, didn’t I? Who could tell that my white blouse got washed in the bathtub and pressed flat in a towel under my mattress the night before picture-taking day? If people found out that my surviving parent was drunk all the time and I was a one hundred percent orphan, the child welfare people might take me away. That wa
s the last thing I wanted. Stella was all I had, except for Frend, who was way past his expiry date.

  The summer before Coon, I worked out my plan to get my mother back from her orbit with a corpse. Calling her down was no use. The only thing that was going to work was to get her a boyfriend who would marry her once he found out what a jewel she could be. My daddy used to say that. “Your mother is rarer than rubies,” he told me, while she made fried egg sandwiches for his breakfast, and the blood from his careless shaving got soaked up in little patches of toilet paper he stuck to his face.

  I knew all jewels needed polishing. What Stella required was the right touch, the romantic equivalent of a rock tumbler, to bring her back to her former glory.

  I made about a hundred handbills that said MAN WANTED in big red letters across the top and had a picture I drew with a write up underneath that said, “Stella needs a husband for herself and a father for her lovely daughter Madeleine, who is no trouble because she reads all the time. A fresh-baked widow who owns a nice house and car, she has insurance money and she likes to dance. Call 303-7251 and ask for Mother.”

  The hard part was the drawings. The pictures of my mother took forever. I had to be careful to make her face big and pretty, but not so gorgeous the guy would be disappointed when he saw her in the flesh. On the other hand, I didn’t want anyone to pass by the posters thinking I was trying to get rid of dehydrated kittens.

  I stole some money from Stella’s purse, paid a couple of kids I knew to take the bus all over town and put up the ads, and postered our neighbourhood myself. Who knows whether or not my employees did their job? When nobody called, I started to wonder if they’d taken all the money straight down to Jung’s. I went out and found Joey Leggett at the dirty bum slide, sat on him for a few minutes and rubbed dirt in his face. He didn’t confess, so I had to let him go.

  About ten days after the first poster went up, this skinny bald guy called Bill came to the door. It was in the morning and, miracle of miracles, my sleeping beauty was actually asleep in her bed for a change. I was glad the guy couldn’t peek around the door into the living room and see her sawing off boards in the Easyboy. He said he was a photographer and he wanted to take my picture for the newspaper because I was a story. I told him he could snap away if he took my mother on a date. Bald Bill wasn’t half as handsome as my daddy, but maybe he was a good dancer. I could hope. The guy said he would. He promised. “After,” he said, so I went out in the backyard with him while he fooled around with his camera and a big umbrella.

  “Take off your shirt,” he said, and I said no. Even though I wasn’t developed, it didn’t feel right. Besides, I didn’t like people to see me without my clothes on. I still don’t. My body is my business.

  “I’ll take her to the Cherry Bank for dinner if you take your shirt off. This is an artistic shot. It’s going on the front page of the weekend section of the paper.

  “No way,” I said.

  “I have a great idea for the shot. I’m going to smear your chest with honey and, before you know it, you’ll be covered with flies. No one will be able to tell.”

  I was half repelled, half interested in this idea. It was dumb enough to be compelling.

  “Will they bite me?”

  “Nah, we don’t have the biting kind. They’ll be licking the honey off you. Flies have tiny tongues. Al you’ll feel is a little tickle.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “I’ve already got the headline,” he wheedled, fishing a jar of honey and two Oh Henry bars out of his bag.

  “Who are the Oh Henry bars for?” I asked.

  “One for me and one for the first little girl to take her shirt off.”

  “OK,” I said. I was used to bartering. My father gave me candy too. “Two candy bars and two dates, right?”

  “Right.”

  The sun was high in the sky and I was covered with honey from my waist to my neck. I kept wishing for a glass of lemonade, but I had to sit still on the old kitchen chair Bill removed from the back porch. I was wondering if he was husband material after all. Maybe not. He was too weird. Bill put the chair between the big hydrangea and the fence, and it didn’t occur to me that he did that so Stella wouldn’t see if she happened to look out the window.

  “How long do we have to wait?”

  “Until the flies come.”

  They were coming, but not in any great numbers, just enough to irritate the hell out of me while they buzzed around my face. The poor things got their feet stuck in the honey as soon as they landed; so the numbers were adding up but not fast enough for my taste. Bald Bill was looking around the yard. He said he had to go for a minute.

  Next thing I knew he was poking up under the eaves with the rake and a whole lot of angry wasps came out of their paper hotel to have a look around. I don’t know what got into my head. I just sat there waiting when I should’ve run for it. In no time at all, those wasps came right at me. Bill had his camera in his hand and he was clicking away.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, just like my father taught me.

  “You’re gonna be a star, Mother,” he said. “Front page.”

  I ran in the house and banged the screen door as hard as I could. It was lucky I only got bit three times; lucky I am not allergic to wasps like some people and lucky I knew about putting raw onions on stings. My gin soaked housemate had a jar of martini onions in the fridge.

  “An eye for an eye,” my father’s Bible said; and I too am a great believer in tit for tat revenge. I hid in the shade of the back stairs on the hottest Saturday in human history and thought up all the ways I could saddle up Bill and ride him into hell’s fire without getting burned myself. First, I decided on dog shit. I would find out where he lived and cover his door handle with Frend’s finest. I could take a lump of doodoo and put it in a paper bag and light the bag on fire right under Bill’s kitchen window.“ Enjoy your dinner, Bill,” I would shout while I ran down the street.

  I waited for the phone to ring. Stella kept on keeping company with her virtual gentleman friends: Ed Sullivan, Edgar Bergen, Sid Caesar, Fred Astaire and Jackie Gleason, and I kept my head down. After a few days, it occurred to me that Bill was a fake. I picked up a newspaper when my mother sent me to the store for provisions. There was no Bill anywhere, no pictures, and no stories. He was just a garden-variety pervert.

  I just folded up, and Stella got after me about my posture. “You’re going to end up looking like a question mark, Little Mother,” she said, until I wanted to scream. Who needed eye contact with other humans? I liked the ground better than the two-legged creatures that walked on it, the Bills of this world. I saw bugs. I found money. I skipped pavement cracks. God knows, we didn’t need any more bad luck. I couldn’t imagine how we would manage with a broken back.

  My father once told me about a friend of his who’d broken his back in a motorcycle accident. The friend’s mother had begged him not to get a motorcycle. He was an only child. She’d lost his twin at birth. It had choked on its cord and come out blue. After his accident, she’d come to visit him in the hospital, bringing a gift. When he opened the box, there was a toy motorcycle inside and it had been smashed to bits with a hammer. The next year at Christmas, he mailed his mother a doll he’d painted blue.

  “What good did that do?” my daddy asked me and I couldn’t think. Two people got hurt and nobody learned anything from it except it is easy to wound someone if you really want to do it. I got his point.

  MOSTLY LIGHT

  E-mail to the motherboard

  Ever since early man discovered the first reflective surfaces, we’ve been gazing at ourselves in mirrors. Vanity may be older than prostitution. Edison made it easier when he discovered how to paint with light. I have observed that many people keep their good photos and throw out the ones that are unflattering. I find the whole phenomenon of personal mythologizing fascinating. Everyone’s snapping with phones now. Bad luck for the artists who used to make their livings painting portraits. Now Herat,
home to the finest miniature painting, is an Afghani war zone.

  I am the man Mad photographed with the bird. She will be surprised when she sees it.

  There were no family pictures taken of Mad after her father died. If we are to believe her, no one apart from the pervert who attempted to photograph her half-naked bothered. Since I am mostly light, the way living humans are mostly water, I shall try to stay out of the way when Güzel points the lens at our friend. I don’t think she would recognize me, but Mad is an intuitive person. It is my job to help, but not be seen, except as others. Visibility has complications, which she is discovering. She will say that she can’t quite put her finger on it, but Güzel is not quite present, except in conversation. Sooner or later, she will attempt to touch him. I have been careful, but she senses my presence. I see her wrinkling her nose and sniffing. Our scent is ozone, but she thinks she smells orange blossoms, which the Turks make into the most delightful jam. Her little friend’s breath smelled like apples. Many people have one acute sense that triggers the imagination. That is the beauty of being human.

  I wonder if she knows that Iman’s fiancé has married her in absentia, to restore her honour. She might object on feminist grounds, but what does Mad know about the reality of being a woman, even an educated woman, in this part of the world?

  FIVE HUNDRED METRES

  “Dress modestly.” Güzel has phoned from the Hotel Metropol, which is directly across the street from the American Embassy, abandoned after the jihadist bombing, and invited me to visit the Blue Mosque with him this morning.

  I have no idea what he means. Surely he doesn’t intend for me to button up like the Kurdish women I see in the streets wearing headscarves, blouses, long skirts and overcoats that cover them from neck to ankles. I shiver at the sight of those dismal coats hanging like burial cloths in the markets. Whenever I pass shrouded women, I see the shapes of Pamuk’s suicide girls hanging from headscarves in their grey dormitories, or the captive girls in the Topkapı Harem. I see Iman giving up the ghost in a closet in Tripoli.