MAUREEN WENT DOWN TO PRINCESS STREET AND managed to get in the house without waking the Sarge. That was another first for Maureen. But of course, the Sarge was not expecting her that night. Maureen sat on the couch. She didn’t think she’d be able to strike a wink of sleep. Not with everything that had just happened to her. Not with everything she’d just found out. Maureen felt the world shifting under her feet. Nothing was like she had thought it was. No one was who she had thought they were. She lay down, planning the words she’d use to get the Sarge to tell her where her baby was. Mom, Mommy, you know Dr. Young? No. That was stupid. But before she could get any further, her eyes shut and she fell almost immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.
“REENIE, REENIE, REENS, REENS! REENS! ARE YOU AWAKE, Reens?”
Kathleen was shaking her by the shoulder, but Maureen kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to face the day or her family—not yet. But Kathleen was insistent and physically pried Maureen’s eyes open.
“Mo-Mo-Reen, Reenie . . . Mom, Mom don’t know you’re here yet. Get up, get up, Reens—”
Maureen exploded off the couch. “What do you think you’re doing, for Christ’s sakes, Kathleen?”
Kathleen fell back on her bum, frightened. Maureen bent down to help her up and said she was sorry, but then Kathleen pulled Maureen down and started tickling her. Maureen was helpless against tickling. She started screaming, “No! NO! I can’t—stop it, stop! . . . I can’t—ahhh—I can’t stand it! Oh no! No, stop . . .”
“Oh, now I got ya, Reenie!” Kathleen wouldn’t stop.
They were both screaming and squealing when the Sarge walked into the room and said, “Get up off the floor, you foolish arses!”
She reached down and hauled Kathleen to her feet by the front of her shirt.
“Jesus, Maureen, it’s all right for Kathleen—she’s simple—but what’s your excuse? Rolling around on the floor like a retard? . . . What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be over shacked up with your fancy new fella from the university?”
“Mom,” Maureen said from the floor. “Mom, I’ve got something I got to ask you.”
“Jesus Christ, Maureen,” the Sarge said as she headed for a mostly empty bottle of Canadian Club lying on its side next to the chesterfield. “I’m changing all the beds and trying to shovel out upstairs.” She tipped the bottle up and drained what was left in it. “Trying to give myself a bit of ambition,” she said by way of explaining the bottle of C.C. She headed for the living room door.
“Mom,” Maureen said, standing up to her full height, “I gotta ask you something.”
“Well, go ahead then and ask what you gotta ask me, fuckmentions. Hurry up. I got work to do.”
Fixed in the Sarge’s sights, Maureen could feel every bit of courage drain right out of her, but she managed to spit out, “What did you do with my baby? What did you do with my ba—” Before she got out the second “baby,” Maureen felt herself flying back into the chesterfield from the force of the smack the Sarge had given her.
Kathleen was bawling, “Mom, Mom, no, Mom!” She went over and sat next to Maureen, plucking at her sleeve. “Reenie, don’t cry. No, no, Reenie, don’t cry, Reenie.”
The Sarge turned on her heel and headed up over the stairs. Maureen’s face was burning from the slap and tears were pouring out of her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She propelled herself out of the chesterfield and up over the stairs, running after the Sarge. She caught up to her at the last few steps past the landing and reached out and grabbed her mother’s housecoat. Her mother kicked back and got her square in the guts. Maureen lost her balance and started to tumble backwards, but she was still holding on to the housecoat and dragged the Sarge back with her. They tumbled arse over teakettle until they came to a stop on the landing. Kathleen was hysterical. Maureen had ended up on top of the Sarge, and the thought came to Maureen that she could not remember a time when she had been this physically close to her mother, or even if she had ever been this close to her mother, and her next thought was to get away as fast as she could. She was so . . . close. She could feel her mother’s breath on her face. The Sarge was pushing her.
“Get off me, you bitch’s bastard! Get off me, you big bastard! Kathleen, get her off me!”
Maureen thought better of getting off her and, instead, put her knees on her mother’s shoulders. The Sarge pushed back, but she’d twisted something in the fall and winced with pain. Maureen held her down. “Where is my baby?”
The Sarge made a mighty effort but still couldn’t dislodge Maureen, who felt suddenly that she had the strength of ten because her heart was pure, or at least purely determined to get the answer to her question.
“Where is my baby?” she said again.
“The little bastard went back where it came from. Back to where it belonged.”
“The baby is up in Montreal?” Maureen looked straight down into her mother’s face.
The Sarge nodded, barely, and said, “Get off me,” and then pushed Maureen, who didn’t resist. “And don’t you ever dare to lay a hand on me again, or I’ll have the cops down on you so fast . . .”
Maureen was no longer listening to her mother. As she lay there on the landing, she thought, Montreal. The baby’s up in Montreal. At last, she knew where her baby was, and now that she knew, everything was going to have to change. She was going to have to go back to Montreal and find the baby. With the baby in her arms, she would finally be able to fill in that hole that had been gaping in the middle of her for so long. That thought, which Maureen knew should have made her happy, instead frightened her to death. Her wish to find her baby had always kept her going, but if she found the baby, then what?
“Get up, Reenie, get up!” Kathleen was trying to pull Maureen to her feet. “I’m always gonna be the baby. Right, Maureen? I’m the baby! I’m the baby! Mom said I’m always going to be the baby ’cause I’m retarded.”