IT WAS FRIDAY after school and Rose was at work. Bo wished Gerry would come by. He had memorized the phone number from the contract but didn’t dare dial it. He was playing with Orange on the floor in the small living room. He galloped her stuffed donkey toward her and then, just as she grabbed it, he pulled it away. He crouched for a long time playing this game, sometimes letting her win, and then his legs cramped and he stood. A shadow fluttered at the window and he looked out at the porch.
It was Emily—her hand made a tiny nervous wave, her manic smile was painted on too late. She’d seen. Bo slammed himself in front of Orange anyway, to hide his mother’s shame and now, perhaps—and this feeling grew—his own shame, as Emily witnessed the horror of his sister, her skewed self, her snot, her ugly. In the tiny unwinding moment, Orange was. Emily tapped at the window, and Bo shook his head, even though she surely could not see him.
“Let me in, Bo,” she called, the glass shunting the words off into watery dreaming. “Open the door, for heaven’s sake.” She was banging on the door.
“Don’t move,” he whispered to Orange, but as soon as he got up, she began to flipper around the living room, throwing herself over and over, in her new freedom. He thought of seals, and then gathering fishes, and then tried not to think. “Please, Orange. Be still. Jesus.”
She looked up at him, swinging her head. She made a face and he was chastened. Then, just as suddenly as she had made the face, it was gone and she was a seal again and then she was a cow or a horse, always some sort of animal, transforming. Some aberration of an animal. Some wrong-beast. Orange had become wild from playing, and then being held down—this had only exacerbated her need to move.
Emily tapped on the pane and demanded he open up, for crying out loud.
Bo belly-crawled to the hall and stood to open the door, first brushing down his clothes, straightening things. He peeked around the jamb before Emily saw the door had in fact been opened for her.
He said, “How can I help you?”
“What?”
Bo blinked. Emily pushed in and dropped her rucksack. She moved past him and turned to the living room, looked down on Orange, who was now sitting, flipping her head side to side, tossing her arms around herself in a rough hug.
“Wow,” Emily said. “The rumours are true.”
“Rumours.”
Emily shot him a look. “Cool,” she said.
“It’s a fucking freak show,” he whispered.
Emily made a face to indicate to Bo how incredibly stupid he was, then said, “Freak show is cool,” and looked back at Orange.
A hole had been cut from under him. Not a hole through the floor, like in the cartoons, but a hole in the Earth, a hole in the universe, and this hole was pulling a portion of his body into it; it was not unlike a punch, but a punch that takes forever to land, and then as it does it thins all the flesh around it into a long elastic bubble. Nestled inside this bubble in his gut was Emily, and nestled in with her, Orange. Freak show is cool.
“Yes.” It was all he could think to say.
“What’s her name?”
“My mother calls her Sister.”
“And you?”
“Her Vietnamese name means Orange Blossom. I call her Orange.”
“Wow,” said Emily, and squatted down closer to Orange. “I’m Emily,” she said. “Hello there.”
Orange swung her head side to side as if not to notice Emily, but Bo could see she was taking it in, the shiny novelty in her midst—a new person. Emily twisted her smiling face up to Bo.
“My mother works with disabled kids. Did you know? She teaches swimming. It’s therapeutic.”
“Swimming,” repeated Bo, and felt sick. His toes were clutching at the edge of the deep end, the water surface oscillating, flicking light at him in a fearful enticement. Sharks.
“Maybe Orange would like it. Not everyone is afraid of the water, you know.”
“I’m not afraid,” Bo said.
“Come on,” she said. “Remember grade five—the field trip to Sunnyside pool?” and then, “If someone held her on a flutter board, though.”
“She wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t like other people to touch her.” At Sunnyside, he had sat tucked into himself against the chain-link fence, claiming a stomach ache.
“Well, you could hold her.”
All the cells in his body built tight walls around themselves and he stood there thinking of standing in the water holding Orange, his father sinking into the murky dark deep end, shirt billowing. Bo’s head began—of its own accord—to shake back and forth. Emily reached out her hand to push a strand of Orange’s wispy hair back off her cheek. And Orange did not move. She let Emily move the hair behind her ear, and she kept very still. A marvel.
“She doesn’t let anyone touch her.” Bo moved beside Emily and squatted down on his haunches. “Orange—”
“My name is Emily. Do you like to dance? I do. Very much.” Emily spoke very quietly, the words tumbling over each other. Orange let her inch closer. “Do you like to swim? Does she, Bo?”
“I don’t know. She’s never—”
“Does she like to bathe?” said Emily, then turned back to Orange before he answered. “If you like the bath, you will like the pool. I’ll take you one day. Emily.” She repeated, nodding, “Emily,” and touched her own collarbone, “Me.”
Orange, sweaty and dirty, leaned her torso against Emily. Her breath purred. Bo edged over to sit beside his sister, and when he put his hands out, she began to bash him with her stubby fists. She hammered him—his arms, his shoulders, his face—so fast, hard.
“Oh my God.” Emily sunk down to the floor. “That’s enough, Orange. You stop that.” But Orange did not. If anything she increased the pummelling.
Her hands were nothing but fists. She used them as cudgels upon him, but she was small and the damage she did was minor. Bo said, “It’s okay. It’s normal.” He was used to it, and began to laugh a little, especially since Emily looked so concerned. “She doesn’t mean it, Emily.”
“Oh,” said Emily. “Oh!”
Bo opened the palms of his hands and caught Orange’s fists in his. He let her struggle against him to slow the momentum of her beating so that somehow he unwound her from herself, and stopping seemed like her idea. Soon she was calm and relocated, contained.
“She’s like a new creature,” said Emily. “Not a human and not an animal. Some new thing.”
Bo liked this. It made it sound as if Orange were a rare discovery. He pulled his lips in, and held them there, thinking, then said, “My mum—” He thought of Orange butting her head and body against the door to her room while his mother twisted the dial on the TV or the radio louder and louder to keep Orange’s yearning at bay. If he admitted it was horrific, he was admitting something about his mum, and this seemed equally horrific. A bad feeling, like water pushing at the back of his heart and up toward his eyes, came over him. “She thinks Orange is shameful.”
“She’s human.”
“My mum?”
“I guess. I meant Orange, though.”
“No,” said Bo. “You said it yourself. She is something new.”
“Next year, when the weather gets warm and our pool is open, we’ll sneak her out and bring her to my house. We’ll be quiet.”
“No.”
“Promise.”
“I can’t.”
Emily folded her arms and turned a quarter-turn away. “Promise.”
“Maybe,” he said, then, “Hey, Emily, don’t tell anyone you were here. That you saw her,” he said. “Promise?” The limp child was now deeply asleep in his arms. “My mum will be home soon,” he said, hoping that Emily would leave. He saw she was looking elsewhere, down the hallway, into his life.
“Why did you come?” he said. “I mean, in the first place?”
“Oh,” she said, and twirled around. She stared at him and smiled.
Bo shook his head. He didn’t get it.
“Dummy,” she said.
And then he saw. New jeans. They were cigarette legs, holding tight to her body. She looked taller, and he wondered whether he imagined that or whether she really was.
“They look nice,” he said.
“Yeah, I finally got them.”
Bo shifted Orange over his shoulder and stood nodding for a bit, feeling awkward, not knowing what to say to Emily anymore. “I better put her to bed,” he finally said.
“Okay,” Emily said. “I’ll let myself out.” She waved with her fingers and turned to go. “See you.”
But after she left, he did not put Orange to bed, but sat with her, in the living room, a dumb sitcom flickering on the TV. He sat in the only comfortable chair they owned, an upholstered rocker, green, the Naugahyde peeling, and watched her sleep in his arms.