Her Toes
TEN! What bounty! Paris couldn’t count that far, but he knew numbers when he saw them. Dearth was ear lobes, chewy delicacies when you could get them; scarcity was nipples, twin pink stars hung too high, halfway to heaven and spied only at night when Momma was undressing for bed. But toes, her toes, came in tumbling footfalls, in rooting litters, piggies popping out of socks, close and many, something a boy could actually reach out and touch. And sink his teeth into. If he had any.
Yow! The big ones knocked him flat every time. Sudden as eel faces poking out the dark holes at the end of her fuzzy pink slippers. Paris would make a grab for one, and back in it would scoot. Missed again! What a gas! That’s if Momma was in a good mood, playful as she sometimes was. Catch her in a nasty one and you might get a kick in the face. Momma was like the weather and Paris took what he got. It all came from her, succouring warmth and chilly blasts, she was everything. Hell, I’m just a stupid baby, he would think, wondering if he was old enough to have that thought, old enough to hurt himself on words.
Frustration? He couldn’t even walk, his toes were little rudders guiding him through the channels of the house, rubbery nubs that helped him scooch across the floor. Of course this made him easy pickings for the Lerch women, his hulking aunts who swooped down and scooped him up before he could squirm to safety behind the couch. They held him nose-length from their wet blubbering lips making kissy-face, and my God they were ugly! He stared, feeling faint, at large greasy pores and teeth that loomed like tombstones. Paris feared that one day, when Momma wasn’t looking, they’d gobble him up. “Gonna eat your tummy,” they’d chortle, and his face would crumple and give way like paper on fire.
“Gracious, Marilyn,” they complained, “you’re spoiling this child rotten. He’s turning into a real wimp.”
“He’s making strange.” Momma didn’t sound overly concerned.
“But we’re not strangers. We’re blood. You know, it’s a mercy Gord isn’t here to see what’s becoming of his son.”
This was the usual load being dumped and Momma didn’t bother to answer. Instead, she tapped a cigarette out of her pack of Kools and picked her lighter up off the floor with her toes. A habit, two habits, she knew her sisters-in-law deplored.
Her toes were long and misshapen, though dextrous, the stouter kin of her fingers. She opened cupboards with them, turned knobs on the stove. Did the dusting. Picked up blocks and threw them. Momma just naturally reached for things with her feet, ruffled Jet’s fur, tickled Paris under the arm. Scratched herself. Her toe-nails were painted fire-engine red and filed to an edge. And didn’t Paris know it, scoring his tongue on them as he might on a razor-sharp blade of grass.
He liked to bam his chubby hand down on her left and slightly bigger foot where the toes had grown in a tossed heap clambering piggyback on top of one another. In his view, he was helping her straighten them out, making them match the more regularly spaced toes on the other foot. But bam every time he flattened them, they’d spring right back into their oddly squashed assembly. “Stop that!” Momma would get exasperated. “Can’t you leave my feet alone?” No, he couldn’t. He adored them. They were his icons. His objects of worship, and the only way he could pray to them was to cling and nuzzle and suck. And when they strode away from him, in motion so sleek and so strong, but in anger slapping the floor so hard, he cried and cried and couldn’t stop himself.
The Lerch feet were something else. Ballooning appendages stuffed bulging into shoes too tight – toes with cleavage! He was always anxious that their feet were going to explode and gag him with rags of flying flesh. He’d been made to ride-a-cock-horse on one of those feet, straddling ankles like hips, and he’d nearly died of fright. “Wheeeee!” the Lerches screeched, mistaking his terror-stricken face for one stung with pleasure.
They clattered through the house in their black shoes, crunching up broken glass on the floor.
“Marilyn! The baby could hurt himself on this! Where’s the broom? You do have a broom, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, I don’t ride mine.”
The Lerches were like that. Not too subtle. When Paris was born, Granny Lerch, herself the mother of triplets, said to Momma, “Just the one, I suppose?” But Momma gave as good as she got. She bared a milky breast as if to feed him (another revolting habit), and pinged Granny on the chin with a warm thin squirt.
Where was Gord when his son was born, that’s what Momma wanted to know. “What do you expect,” they said. “It’s hunting season.”
Paris himself was a hunter. That one time anyway when the house filled up with a forest of legs and he meandered among them on the trail of something sweet. So many voices high above reminded him of birds singing in the treetops, repeating the same few notes, Sorry, sorry, we’re so sorry. Someone dropped a half-eaten sandwich and he crammed it in his mouth before Jet could get to it. Under the coffee table he discovered a wad of hard pink gum, which he pried loose, and on top of the table a glass of watery rye. Both excellent. He ate a pickle dressed in dog hair, two buttons, and most of a shoelace that got yanked back out by Aunt Mona Lerch. Paris was able to avoid his aunts for the most part, veering away from their hairy legs that were packed like pressed bushes into stockings and planted like monuments throughout the room. If only he’d kept his mouth shut when the green man appeared at the window.
As usual, this took Paris by surprise. “Da da,” he said, and it was like a knife plunged into the Lerches’ hearts.
“Oh!” gasped Fern Lerch. “He knows. Poor little pumpkin.”
“Instinct,” claimed Reola Lerch. “You can’t fool babies or animals. They just know. Look at Jet. Have you ever seen anything more pathetic?”
Gord’s mangy old hound did indeed look poorly. He had lapped up a bowl of Lerch chip dip that was catfighting in his stomach.
“Nonsense,” Momma said, stepping out of her shoes and examining a blister on her heel. “He always says that. Doesn’t mean a thing. It’s baby talk.”
“Well, I suppose,” said Mona Lerch, “that under the circumstances, you might find it a comfort to think so.”
 
THE CIRCUMSTANCES were weighing most heavily on Jet, as he was under the misapprehension that he was dead. Not from the chip dip. He had already passed on when he’d gobbled that up, figuring he could hazard it.
Even a dog can count to two – two wags of the old tail, two scratches behind the ear, two barks 1) woof 2) woof – and he had definitely counted two shots. One that levelled Gord, a gusher of blood oozing from his chest, and the other that killed him. He’d hit the dirt, in any case. Hunting accident? Jet wasn’t so sure. How anyone could mistake Gord for a deer was beyond him. (A bear, maybe.) Of course everything was beyond him now. And the part that really bugged him about dying was how little things had changed. You’d think, in afterlife, that a limitless supply of food would drift down like manna into a golden dog dish. Hah! Think again. He got the same meagre scoop of soybean-extended goop plopped into the same unwashed bowl that the very same toothless drooling baby stuck his hands into and licked when his mother (the same) wasn’t watching (which was most of the time). Then the door would burst open and a herd of those enormous women who had tormented him for years would thunder through the house for no other reason, it seemed, than to tromp on his tail. Jet had not expected injustice to have a supernatural dimension, to skew his chances at some kind of otherworldly betterment. Evidently it was a dog’s life and a dog’s death.
 
PARIS HAD no idea what was going on, but he sure liked it. Momma had emerged from behind a cloud of blue smoke, grinning, sunny side up. “Sweetie,” she said, “look.” And she wedged pennies between her toes and wiggled them. She astonished him by painting faces on them with eyebrow pencil and lipstick, giving them personalities and histories, family troubles told in tiny voices that lisped and squeaked. Grief had worked wonders on her. Used to be, you could never tell with Momma. Paris had seen things written on her lovely face that stopped him dead. Baleful wounding words reflected in a script of scowl and frown. You didn’t have to know how to read to get the message: Shut up, you make me sick. Get lost, I don’t want you. You’ve ruined my life. I wish you’d never been born. You were a mistake. You’re bad bad bad.
But there’d been a carefree unravelling of the scowl, the frown. Her look had been revised to one of collusion, of private fun, that made him pump his arms in wild excitement. “Hey rug rat, watch this!” She plunged her foot into the peanut bowl and nuts spun in the air as she tried to catch them in her mouth. Paris laughed and laughed. He wanted to do it too. He made a grab for a stray peanut, got it in his mouth, and choked on it. Momma had to hold him up by the heels and whap him on the back until – pop! – out it flew and bounced off Jet’s nose. This made her laugh and that was the best of all. She whirled him round and round by the feet, until his delighted shrieks turned into screams and tears ran all over his bald head like ants and the room became a spinning drain that sucked him down into darkness.
 
THE LERCHES were plotters and schemers. Benign ones if they were cooking up a surprise party or a bridal shower, but not always so. At times they felt it necessary, for moral reasons, to take on the exacting work of a less pleasant design. In a huddle, in cozening secrecy, they discussed the fate of their nephew, the unsuitability of his mother, what was to be done.
 
PARIS WAS oblivious to intention, harmless or otherwise, even nature’s. Momma set him loose in the back garden and he found the patterns changed somehow – things looked different. He tasted some spider webs that were like cotton candy and sampled a dead bee. He spent a considerable amount of his time and patience improving a bush, attempting to reattach its fallen pinky-shaped leaves. It appeared the bush was broken and he hoped he hadn’t done it. A ribbon of wind brought the green man (boo!), who had a snack for Paris slung over his mossy shoulder. Carrots, the way Paris loved them, with clumps of earth still clinging to the rootlets. The green man ate the tops. Paris sat by his grass-stained feet and studied the lichen on his legs, while the green man stroked Paris’s head and hummed in his ear. A sad song, Paris thought, as it was getting cold and the green man had no clothes.
Momma was watching Paris through the window. He was sitting still as a statue, gazing beatifically into space. He’s seeing angels, she thought, or ghosts. Babies have those kinds of visionary powers, she believed, and they’re smarter than you think. She was positive he wasn’t seeing Gord or he’d be bawling his head off. Jesus! When Paris was all of three days old, Gord bought him a toy gun. Kid couldn’t even focus his eyes yet, and here was this idiot hovering above the crib, gun shoved into the blue plush head of a teddy bear, saying, “See, son, like this . . . BAM BAM!” When he was old enough to grab things, Momma had to take it away from him, he kept bonking himself on the head with it and got a nasty welt.
“Cripes, if he’s dumb enough to do that,” Gord had said, “he deserves it. Teach him a lesson. School of hard knocks, that’s how I was brung up.”
Ah, yes, the Lerch educational system. It had produced some real gems. Lerch logic? It was bent like a boomerang and Momma was sick of being hit with it. “Let the baby cry,” Gord’s sisters were adamant. “It’s good for his lungs.”
“Uh-huh,” she’d say, gathering him up and holding him close. At least there’d be no more crying now, she thought.
Momma felt a shiver, like a cold finger, running up her spine and she wheeled around. It was Jet, staring daggers at her. Over the days he’d been splicing odd bits of evidence together, adding one plus one, and it hadn’t been easy. But he had it all worked out, he had dredged up the answer. Thump, thump, thump, thump went his tail on the floor like a judge’s gavel. That flash of a familiar green garment he saw in the bush, and later, the smell of gunpowder on that woman’s hands. Where were you the afternoon Gord was shot? his cool probing eyes asked Momma.
Momma smiled at him, and said, “Dead dog.”
Then she turned back to the window to check on Paris. But he was gone. Vanished.
 
DOCTOR JACK was instructed to look for what the Lerches were convinced he would find. The stigmata of abuse. Bruises concealed beneath clothing, cuts, slashes, cigarette burns on the bottom of feet. They wanted him to witness, deeply etched on the child’s skin, the whole painful proof of his martyrdom in that house.
Not a soul watching him,” said Fern Lerch.
“Had mud streaming out of his mouth,” said Reola Lerch.
“Was about to eat poison berries before I knocked them out of his hand, poor dear,” said Mona Lerch.
She’d smacked Paris hard, too. His hand hurt like the devil. Couldn’t they tell the berries weren’t for him? Yew berries? He knew better than that, Momma had already warned him about them. No, they were a gift for the green man. He would suck the light out of the sweet fruit lanterns and spit out the seeds. Paris had been so absorbed in picking the berries that he didn’t notice the conjoined amorphous Lerch shadow fall over the fence. The green man had tried to warn him, grimacing and waving his pale fingers in fright, but they bundled Paris off and stuffed a mitt in his mouth before he could work up a decent scream.
“Ladies, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a healthier kid,” said Doctor Jack. “Now, he’s got a bit of an orange tinge. But that’s carrots, you know, too many carrots will do that. You tell Marilyn to cut down on them. Otherwise, I’d say she’s doing a great job with this boy.”
“But what about the marks?
“Oh, those. Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t believe he’ll be getting those any more. If you know what I mean? My condolences, by the way.”
“We can’t imagine what you’re insinuating, Doctor,” said Mona Lerch, snapping her purse shut, “but a father’s got to discipline his son.”
 
KIDNAPPED.
Paris was doing his best to make life miserable for the perpetrators of the crime. To stop his screaming, Reola jounced him around like a pinball in her arms and he deposited a slimy hill of regurgitated carrot on her plank of shoulder. He filled his diaper as fast as they could change it, kicking and cycling his pudgy little legs, while Fern struggled to hold him down. He caught her between the eyes with a sudden spurt of pee and she was so shocked she drove the safety pin into her thumb. She ran squealing from the room and Paris rolled off the wardrobe clutching a jar of Vaseline, huge gobs of which he was then able to massage into the rug.
Paris hoped he’d be able to keep these tactics up until Momma came to fetch him. He didn’t plan on staying in this funhouse any longer than he had to. He felt a strange force here, as though something had him by the cheeks. As though his babysoft face were being pulled and tugged out of shape, and he was being remoulded in their likeness. Everyone in this place looked the same to him, even Puff Lerch, their fat, irritable cat that took a swat at him when he’d yanked its tail. No sense of humour. That’s what Momma would say. A family trait. And family was everything to the Lerches, Momma said, though they didn’t realize they were sealed in theirs like a tomb. You’d think family was some kind of weapon the way they use it to bludgeon outsiders. Momma could really get going sometimes, her feet pacing back and forth, back and forth, her toes clenching and curling when she stopped to drive a point home. And Gord bouncing up and down, sizzling hot ’cause he couldn’t put two words together to save his soul.
Where was he, anyway? Paris half expected him to leap out of a closet, roaring, making those monster faces that terrified him. That made him cringe and shake. A response that Gord seemed to want. And not want. A response that brought the pain, the punishment. Swift and hard, like being put to sleep under a stone blanket.
Paris decided to scoot under a table. He was attracted by a brown thing on Grampa Lerch’s leg. A mole, but to him it passed for a crumb of chocolate and he thought he might try to pick it off and eat it. Apparently they didn’t believe in feeding babies here, and he supposed he would have to fend for himself. If nothing else, he had a wicked set of fingernails. Momma usually chewed them down for him, keeping them trim, but she hadn’t gotten around to that recently.
 
MOMMA WAS TARDY. “I’m late,” she said, finally breezing in, forgetting that she was furious with the Lerches. She threw down a bag of stuff on the floor and kicked off a pair of new purple high-heeled shoes. “Been out shoplifting,” she announced, grabbing an apple out of the fruit bowl. She took a bite and promptly tossed it over her shoulder. “Woody,” she said, disgusted, then twirled around a couple of times. Nice dress, Paris thought, made of wind and leaves. And look! Her toes, dancing!
“Goo, goo,” he said, and immediately regretted it.
“Why, honey,” her voice turned sharp, “what a cliché. You’ve been here a couple of hours and already you’re talking like them, I can’t believe it. And what are you doing tied to the leg of that chair? Wait a minute, who in the hell tied my baby up?”
Momma remembered now – she was furious. “What are you bunch trying to pull here, anyway? Sneaking around my back yard and stealing my kid. I could have you all arrested. And shot,” she added. Momma always exaggerates, but the thought seemed to please her, and she started smiling again.
“Good grief, Marilyn, there’s no reason to fly off the handle,” said Mona. “We were simply trying to help you out, give you some time to yourself. Didn’t want to bother you, we know how you’ve suffered.”
Momma rolled her eyes and Paris gurgled.
She noticed that Fern was sitting in a corner watching TV and sucking her thumb. Reola was attending to Grampa Lerch, patting his shoulder and cooing in his ear. He had a swath of bandage wound around his leg and was snivelling into his sleeve. Feed him to the cat, about summed up Momma’s sentiment.
“If you want my advice,” said Mona, “that boy of yours needs a firm hand. You better show him who’s boss, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Do tell,” said Momma, lighting up a Kool and crouching down to untie Paris from the bowlegged Lerch chair (even their furniture looked like them). Smoke wreathed her face in vaporous thorns. When his hands were freed, Paris reached out to brush them away. She squinted at him and his heart hopped like a frog in his chest.
“That’s Gord’s old baby harness,” said Mona. “You can have it if you want.”
“No thanks.” Momma tucked Paris under her arm, then collected up her shoes and bag of stuff, securing them under the other. “Say bye bye, Paris.”
“Da da,” Paris said.
Then Momma raised her foot and grasped the doorknob with her toes. Her unnatural, malformed monkey toes, the Lerches thought. Her wondrous, her divine toes, Paris thought. My useful toes, Momma thought, opening the door with one expert twist of the knob and sailing right through.