MUM WAS BORN IN Wiltshire, the crop circle capital of the world, which I’ll admit is a pretty weird coincidence. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence at all. She said she was going on a ‘spiritual journey,’ but who knows what that really means? Wiley once said that spirituality is what you make of it, and now that I understand what he meant I think it was a pretty smart thing to say. I could be spiritual about Swiss cheese and nobody could tell me it was wrong. Cheese is my religion, I could say, and who would have the right to tell me my religion wasn’t true or real?
Aside from Mum, none of us have ever met our relatives in Wiltshire. Auntie Prim is fourteen years older than Mum, and she moved out of their house when Mum was only two. Mum’s never actually said so, but Jess and I figured out that Auntie Prim was kicked out because she got pregnant. Our cousin Sebastian is only two years younger than Mum, and last I heard he still lives at home with Auntie Prim. Since I don’t know anything else about him I imagine him like Norman Bates, dressed in a grey wig and a flower-print dress. Turns out the guy who wrote Psycho actually based the character of Norman Bates on a real serial killer named Ed Gein, who skinned his victims’ bodies and made woman-costumes out of them. He even peeled the skin off their faces to make masks for himself. Before he got caught everyone thought he was a pretty regular guy, a little odd and maybe a tad too attached to his mother. Meanwhile he was stealing corpses from graveyards to decorate his house — capping his bed-posts with shrunken heads and making trophies out of human bones. Who knew.
I couldn’t imagine having a baby right now, at my age. There’s a girl a year older than me in grade eleven, Lily something, who had to switch to a special school because she got pregnant, but I don’t think her parents kicked her out. Jess told me that in grade seven she once saw Lily in the girls’ bathroom with a plastic baggie of oregano and a packet of cigarette paper. When Jess was in the stall Lily was showing another girl how to roll the oregano up into joints.
You can’t smoke oregano, I told Jess.
How would you know? she asked, so I let her go on talking about how it smelled like burnt spaghetti and how she was afraid to come out of the stall because she didn’t want to get beaten up.
I could’ve told on them, Jess said, as if this were some juicy scandal. But I never told anyone. You’re the first.
Ooo, lucky me, I said, but Jess pretended not to get that I was mocking her. It drives me nuts how she acts so scared of anyone who’s not a goody-two-shoes like her. She’d never told me the story about Lily and the oregano before, and the only reason she decided to tell me then was ’cause I’d just told her about Lily being pregnant. I think it must make her feel better to believe that certain people are just plain naughty through and through, and will get into trouble no matter what they do.
As much as I’d be totally freaked out about being pregnant if I were Lily, I also think it might feel kind of nice to have a little person inside you, using you as a blanket. When Mum was pregnant with Squid you could hardly see a bump until she was eight months. Squid was all nestled in there hiding, the way he still likes to be sometimes when he’s tired. When he was five he built a fort out of a moving box that the neighbours had put outside with the trash. The box was one made especially for hanging suits and fancy clothes in, so it had a metal bar running across the top. Mum let Squid use one of the fleece blankets to drape across the bar so it made a sort of tent within the box. Squid liked to curl up between the drapes of fleece with his stuffed giraffe, which he named Machu Picchu (he heard it on TV). He’d lie in there for maybe fifteen minutes every night before bed, and all you could hear was Squid talking very softly to Machu Picchu. We didn’t ask what he was doing because it was the only time we got a break from keeping watch over him. I once stuck my head in the box to see what it was like, and I didn’t blame Squid for liking it so much. The lamplight coming through the handholds at the sides of the box made the fleece blanket glow pink, the way it looks when you close your eyes in bright sunlight. And the smell of warm cardboard, like no other smell in the world. If I’d been small enough I would have snuggled up in there myself and taken a nap.
Mum eventually got sick of the box taking up space in Squid’s room, so she tossed it in one of the big metal bins outside Safeway one morning after she’d dropped Squid off at school. Pretty cruel. Squid cried for an hour when he found out, and Mum said he had to learn to let things go. Easy for Mum to say. She doesn’t even talk to her own Mum anymore, not even over the phone. Every year we get a Christmas parcel from England wrapped in brown paper and twine, and it’s become sort of a tradition for all of us to tear and pull and pick at it together because it’s got so much tape on it, pressed over every edge and fold. Mum always ends up having to get a pair of scissors to cut it open. For some reason we never think to get the scissors in the first place. Maybe ’cause it’s more fun to act like we’re ripping ravenously at the parcel, as if there’s something irresistible inside. Mum doesn’t let us do that with any other presents, For Chrissake don’t tear it, we can save the paper for next year. The funny thing is that Grandma’s parcels are probably the least exciting of all the gifts we get. She packs them chock full of lame stuff like underwear and wool socks, and the year Squid was born nearly half the thing was crammed with Huggies. For a few years all she sent was packages of dry beans, pasta, gravy mix, sardines, and wheat crackers, as if she’d mixed addresses up and sent us a box for the food bank by accident. Mum would sigh while she pulled out all the packages, would try to pretend she wasn’t excited to see the five Double-Decker chocolate bars tucked in among the beans. Double-Deckers were Mum’s favourite and you could only get them in Europe, but the rest of us didn’t really get what all the fuss was about.
When she told us about her trip to Wiltshire, I asked Mum if she was going to visit her Mum and Auntie Prim and Sebastian. She just laughed and wrinkled her eyebrows like she was all surprised, but I knew she wasn’t.
Now why would I do that, Grace? she said, as if I’d just asked her to jump off the edge of a cliff. And then she started talking about everything she needed to pack and all the chores she had to do, which really meant the chores that she wanted us to do. Of course, she didn’t give me the opportunity to ask why she wouldn’t visit her family. When I was reading the brochure for the Sacred Britain Crop Circles Tour, I pointed out to Mum that it said the trip only lasted eight days.
So how come you can’t buy a return ticket? I asked.
Grace, she said, please! Must you pester me? And then she went on her rant about how she was an adult and could make her own decisions, and she didn’t need a fifteen-year-old telling her what to do, thank you very much.
She must have told Wiley before she told me, Jess, and Squid, ’cause Wiley was only in the room for a few seconds before he snatched a beer from the fridge and sat outside on the patio with his lawn chair facing the lilac bushes.
When I was really little it didn’t seem weird that I didn’t know anything about my relatives. It was just the way things were. Grandmothers were nothing but characters in storybooks and movies. We never asked Mum about what Grandma was like or how it was growing up in England because she never told us anything in the first place. There was nothing to be curious about. It had never even crossed my mind to imagine what her life was like before Jess and I came along.
But when I was five some new neighbours moved in next door, and one of the kids, Darla, was my age. Darla’s grandmother lived with them in that house, and everyone, even unrelated people like me, called her Nana. Nana had her own little area on the top floor with a kitchen and everything. She was one of those grandmothers who really could’ve been a storybook character ’cause she had curly white hair like an angel and she was always smiling and chuckling at things we said, even if they weren’t funny. She was round and soft and she’d smother both me and Darla with hugs as soon as we walked in the door, and it seemed like every time we visited, she happened to have a pan of ginger molasses cookies in the oven. She smelled like lavender and Ivory soap. That’s when I started to wonder why I’d never met my grandma before, and why Mum had never taken us to visit her.
She’s a very angry woman, Mum said when I asked about Grandma. And I’d rather not talk about her.
What’s she so mad about? I asked. Maybe you can say sorry. I remember thinking this was a totally legitimate proposal. It seemed like all grandmothers had to be warm and jolly like Darla’s.
It’s nothing I did, Gracie, Mum said. It’s hard to explain. Grown-up stuff.
I tried asking Mum again a bunch more times after that, but she just kept using the same excuses. Wouldn’t say much about her sister either, said that she barely even knew Prim, and her dad had died of lung cancer when she was just a baby. But she did tell us a few things about Mere, the town in Wiltshire where she grew up. There was an old castle and a bacon factory, and lots and lots of farmland, just like here in the prairies except greener. She told us that when she first moved to Canada and went for breakfast in a restaurant, she could barely swallow the bacon ’cause it was so fatty — nothing like the lean cuts of back bacon she grew up with.
I couldn’t believe that people who had enough money to go to restaurants actually chose to eat that, she said. Streaky bacon, we called it.
If we asked for more stories about Mere, Mum would just say it was a boring little town and we wouldn’t like it anyway. Wiley made this cheeseball joke that they probably named it Mere because there was merely nothing there.
Probably, Mum said, not laughing.
But a few years later when we were doing the geography unit in Social, I learned that the word mere can also mean a lake or an arm of the sea. And even though I looked on a map of Wiltshire and saw that the town of Mere is nowhere near a lake or the sea, I still like to tell myself that’s what the name means.
The day after Mum left, when I was taking Squid home on the bus after his concert, I told him that Mere was an underwater city where everyone was born with gills instead of lungs. Since he doesn’t get any more answers from Mum than the rest of us, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make something up.
But Mummy doesn’t have any gills, Squid said, curling his finger around his nose.
Well, I said, you just haven’t seen them. They’re these really small slits, and they’re on the sides, sort of below her armpits. I scratched under my armpits like a gorilla to show him.
But how come I never saw them? Squid asked. Nuh-uh, he shook his head. You’re just teasing.
Nope, it’s true, I said. Think about it: Mum is always wearing shirts that cover up the spots under her armpits, right?
Squid narrowed his eyes.
Plus, I said, she doesn’t need to use them when she’s not in the water. So they’re hard to see ’cause they just lie flat, like flaps of skin.
Squid was quiet. He crossed his arms, slid his fingers back and forth along the tops of his ribs.
Are we ever gonna get to go to Mere? he asked.
I dunno, I said, how long can you hold your breath?
Squid got all excited about that. Oh a long time, he said, nodding like a bobblehead. I’m the only kid in grade one who can blow up a balloon. The other kids say it’s too hard.
You should probably keep practicing, I said. And you need to be a good swimmer too.
Like an amphibian? Squid asked. Amphibians are good swimmers.
Yep, you’re right, I said. In fact, that’s exactly what the people in Mere are. Amphibians.
Looking back now, I realize it was my fault that Squid got into trouble at school. When I got home the next day, the little red light on the answering machine was blinking. Wiley must not have heard the phone ring ’cause he was out in the garage. The message was from Mrs. Trainer, Squid’s teacher.
Hello this message is for Belinda Spector, Sebastian’s mother? This is Louise Trainer, your son’s teacher. Yes I’m calling because Sebastian had some difficulties at school today. Please call me at your earliest convenience. Two-four-six, twenty-five-hundred, thank you.
Without even thinking, I erased the message. I didn’t think it was any of Mrs. Trainer’s business to know that Mum was away and couldn’t return her call. And I got this feeling from the way she talked that she was probably just another prunecrotched ol’ battleaxe (as Wiley says), and that whatever Squid did must’ve been her fault anyway. It’s hard to understand why Squid does some of the things he does, but I guess I did some pretty weird things when I was younger too. For a while when I was four or five I insisted on drinking everything from a sponge because I thought it made things taste better. Didn’t matter what it was — juice, water, chocolate milk — it had to be put into a bowl so I could soak it up with my yellow sponge. It was a real sponge too, not one of those cheap synthetic ones you can get at the dollar store. This sponge used to be a living thing. Makes me gag to think about putting my lips around it now, and I wonder why Mum even let me drink from something that was supposed to be for scrubbing our dirty bodies in the bathtub. Just goes to show you that those neuroscientists are probably right when they say your brain keeps growing until you get into your teens. You start looking back and wondering what the heck was going through your head when you did all those ridiculous things. And so because I knew that I did my share of freaky things as a kid, a tiny part of me wasn’t all that surprised when Squid finally told me that he had taken the class newt out of its aquarium and accidentally killed it. Don’t get me wrong, I was shocked, but not altogether surprised, if that makes any sense. Before I let myself lose it on him I tried to tell myself that ‘accidentally’ was the key word. Shit happens, right?
All right, I said to him. How did this happen? We were in his bedroom and I had made sure the door was closed even though Jess wasn’t home yet. She’d stayed after school that day for bio tutoring, which was lucky ’cause I knew she would’ve freaked if she found out about this.
I was making a potion, Squid said quietly. The juice of a newt, remember? Suddenly everything made perfect sense. One of Squid’s favourite books was about a friendly little witch who could stir up potions that would give kids superpowers. One of the kids in the story had wanted to be able to swim like a dolphin, so the witch prescribed the juice of a newt, which she said would give him the power to breathe underwater.
That was a story, Squid, I said. I was pressing my fists to my ears to stop myself from yelling. Just a goddamn story!
But I didn’t think it would hurt! he said. Tears started to pool in his eyelids.
What did you do, squeeze the thing to death?
No! he wailed. I just scraped him a little. On his back. Squid made like he was scooping ice cream.
I could picture what had happened then. Squid holding the newt against the table and scraping its back with the plastic spoon from his lunch bag, the newt wriggling and Squid’s fingers mashing down so it couldn’t get away. Squid not knowing how hard was too hard ’cause he was only a kid and didn’t think it made any difference.
I wondered if newts had blood, and what colour it was if they did.