All the Broken Things (29 page)

Orange was hitting the mattress to get Bo’s attention, and when he looked back, she began to sign.

“What’s she saying?”

“Beats me, kid,” said Max. “She goes too fast.”

And then Bo asked the question that had been plaguing him. He said, “Did Orange see?”

“See what?” Max said, before he realized that Bo meant had she seen Rose, and then he bit his lip, said, “No, kid. God, no.”

B
O FOUND
G
ERRY
washing down Loralei’s cage, the animal circling a stake off to the side, worrying the chain with a batting paw, making a game of it. Gerry aimed the nozzle at a spot caked with bear crud and fur, and opened fire.

“Loralei’s getting so ugly, soon she’ll be useless. The hairless bear,” he muttered. “Alive!”

“Did you know my sister knows sign language?”

“Yep,” said Gerry.

“Who taught her?” Bo felt like shit for not having taught Orange himself, for not thinking that she might be taught, for not knowing there was such a thing as sign language—it was so obvious now that he knew—and for thinking she was in any way smaller or lesser than she really was.

Gerry said, “Calm yourself,” and walked off.

“What?” Bo called after Gerry. “Why can’t I know?” He glared at Gerry’s back. “Gerry, come on, tell me.”

Gerry turned, his face creased up in a temper, and gestured at Bo. “You’re getting too close to the bear, boy.”

He was. He’d moved in far too close to Loralei, her snout near his feet. Bo waited for Gerry to turn back to his work, so that he could touch her muzzle.

“Loralei’s not as easygoing as she used to be, Jangles. Be careful.”

“She’s fine.”

“Sure. But move away, will you?”

Bo shifted out of range, squinted at Gerry. “Orange is my sister.”

“Oh, for Chrissake. That teacher of yours bought a book, then hired some kid to teach her the basics. Back in October. What’s the big deal?”

Bo stared at him until he turned back to his task, water ricocheting in all directions off the cage. The crud melted down the bars, Gerry coming in closer for the bits
that clung, then spraying so wide he misted both Loralei and Bo. When the crud was blasted away, Bo could see that the floor of the cage was scratched in places, buffed in others. Painted steel. It had once been red, still was in the corners. Loralei watched the water arc, casting a rainbow in the air. She seemed to look lovingly at her cage. She pushed up and wandered to the end of her chain, tugging, then acquiescing, pulling back her lips, nostrils flaring at the reek of the cleaning session.

Gerry poured a cup of bleach into a bucket of warm sudsy water and sloshed that over the cage floor. The bear started at the noxious smell. “She doesn’t like bleach, much,” said Bo.

“No. She prefers the smell of her own fecal matter.”

Gerry sprayed again, rinsing off the bleach, and then edged toward Loralei. She reacted with bearish joy to the water and light playing just out of her reach. She swatted at it, head rolled toward Gerry. She bobbed like a great brown seal does for fish treats from its trainer.

“Hang on,” Gerry said to her. He went over to his trailer and inside, disappearing. Bo heard him call, “Beverley.” No one answered. He came out again with a tin of tuna fish. “Here, kid, open this for her.”

He tossed the can and a flimsy opener at Bo.

“I want to learn so I can talk to Orange too,” he said as he cranked open the tin.

Gerry said, “Ah.”

“Seriously.”

“Don’t hand-feed her. Jesus, kid.”

“How else am I gonna give it to her?” He tossed the rest of the contents in Loralei’s general direction.

“I was going to use it as bait to get her back in the cage.”

“Oh,” said Bo. “Sorry.” Loralei finished up the tuna, and swiped her tongue along her lips, seeking out the last traces.

“If I could talk to her,” said Bo.

“You’ve been talking to her for years.”

“Sure, but I haven’t understood a word of it.”

Gerry thought that was funny. “Hang on.” He went back in the trailer and came out with a book.
Picture Dictionary of Signs for the Deaf
. “Here,” he said. “I can’t hold onto any of it. I’m as stupid as I ever was. She’s only, what, four? Five? And she goes too damned fast for me already.”

“You’ve been trying to learn?”

“Yeah, well. I thought there might be something in there for the bears.”

“Sign language for bears?” Bo laughed.

Loralei looked over, and then went back to delicately licking fish oil off single blades of grass. Then she ambled toward Bo. When she got to the end of her chain she hunkered down and made soft eyes at him. Begging.

“I got nothing else, Lora,” he said. He looked down at the book, only half listening to the bear chirr for more. Gerry had gone in to get another tin, to use to get her back in the cage.

Bo flipped the book open, stared at the drawings of hands fluttering. He would learn this.
Go. Me. You. Love. Down. Up
. He tried one out, realized that speaking this way moved the air, sliced through it. Nice. Loralei watched him: cut, swoop, finish.

“Girl,” called Gerry. “Come on.” And she did, veering away from Bo so fast he was shocked at her speed. “Let her loose at that end, would you?”

Bo unhooked the chain from the stake, and she bounded straight into her cage. The second can of fish wasn’t all the way down her gullet and she was rubbing, rubbing.

“Jeez,” said Bo. The book fell. He picked it up from its sprawl, saw a name and number printed on the inside cover:
Emily
. He looked up. Gerry had seen him seeing it. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

Gerry shrugged. He closed the door of the bear’s cage, but Loralei didn’t care. She was lost in a bear dream, licking her lips, rubbing her ass fur off. Bo couldn’t watch. He pocketed the book and went back to Max’s trailer, banged on the door until Max opened up.

“Kid,” said Max. “What the—?”

Bo waved the book and pushed into the trailer. “Orange,” he said, once he got in her room, and smiled at her. Then he fumbled through the pages.
You
, he signed.

Me
, she said. Then something he did not catch. And she was off and he was helpless. She spoke so quickly.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, after exercising Bear along the back perimeter fence, Bo coaxed her into the crate and cooed, lying down beside her outside the grille, until she fell asleep. He loved listening to her suck her tongue and chirrup as she drifted off. She became a cub again.

When she was asleep, he headed west, out the Dufferin exit and then north, up Strachan, the book tucked into the back of his jeans. He had until noon, when he and Bear were set to perform again.

He noted the change in air quality from butter, cotton candy, animal, to fume and asphalt. He turned on Queen and then up Roncesvalles, through various neighbourhoods, their differences marked by how much junk accumulated on their front porches, how much garbage rolled down the gutter along the curb. It was already hot at 8 a.m., salty trickles sliding down his belly, wicking into his clothing. At Bloor, he turned west, climbing the hill at High Park toward Clendenan.

The park looked tired, summer weary. Bo half hoped to see Soldier Man guarding the periphery, but in this hope he was disappointed. He saw a fox, ears pricked and watching, then gone. He decided he would walk back through the park. Maybe he would find Soldier Man then, see how he was doing.

Clendenan, Annette, Laws, its ravine-hugging curves,
and then St. Johns and he was right outside Emily’s house. It took him several minutes to work up the nerve to climb the porch stairs, and then he was listening to the trill of the doorbell on the other side of the door, and the sounds of someone stumbling down the stairs. Moments later Emily stood in the door, the breeze whirling her hair in an impossibly beautiful pattern.

“Hi,” she said.

He pulled out the book from his pocket.
Picture Dictionary of Signs for the Deaf
. Held it up. “Teach me,” he said.

She took a short step back. “Come in.”

Bo’s step over the broken weatherstripping and into the foyer was like a caught breath. He was a freak. He belonged here the least of anyplace he had ever been. “Maybe not,” he said, and made to step back out. “How long were you teaching her?”

“Whenever I babysat. I thought you might get angry with me.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might not want her learning to sign. And I knew your mother wouldn’t like it.”

Bo felt sick. “I just never thought of it,” he said.

“It was Miss Lily’s idea. When she found out I could sign, she thought of it. But I didn’t do it just for the money. I did it for Orange. You know that.”

The door slammed shut behind him and she stood in front of it, not barring his way exactly, but making a quick
exit awkward. She put her hand out and it took him a little too long to realize she wanted him to hand her the book.

He gestured with it. “Is it hard to learn?”

“I’m not that good,” she said.

He handed it to her, and she riffled the pages, so that the illustrations seemed animated, hands opening and closing, in a language he did not know. A flip book in sign language.

She found the page she was looking for, and put the book down on the radiator in the hallway. “Do this,” she said, fisting her hand and bringing it to her chin, then dropping her hand to meet her other hand, index fingers extended and touching.

Bo did it.

Then, she took her right palm and touched her forehead, dropped that hand to meet the other one, again with index fingers extended, touching. “Do it.”

“Again.” He shook his head. He had not marked it well enough.

“Do this and then this.” She showed him.

“What does it mean?”

“First learn it.”

The foyer smelled dusty, old, brittle. Emily wore a pink blouse with a little lacy collar. He realized he wanted to kiss her. But instead he fisted his hand and made the first sign, and then unfurled it and made the other sign.

“Faster,” she directed. “More emphatically. Not so sloppy. Make the motions distinct.”

He began to stand taller, felt his muscles pulling along his belly, his butt, his thighs. He felt strong, in a way he didn’t ever feel unless he was whacking someone, or wrestling.

“Again,” Emily said.

And when he had done it over and over many times, she grabbed his hands in hers, stopping him, as he recalled doing to Orange to contain her, to hold her energy inside of his own energy.

“Enough,” she said.

“Did I get it right?”

“You got it,” she said.

“So, what does it mean?”

She handed him the book, open to the leaf for the visual of what he’d been signing.
Sister. Brother
. He had signed
sister
and
brother
over and over so that they rolled into a wave of thought.

“Will you keep teaching me?” he asked.

“The book can do that, can’t it?”

“No,” he said. “Can you?”

“Sure,” she said. “But Orange learned from the pictures in the book mostly. She wanted to communicate really badly.”

“I should have known she wanted to speak. I’m an idiot. I wasn’t paying attention.” But it wasn’t that. It was worse,
he knew. He had assumed she was stupid. Assumed her inside was as awkward and ugly and dumb and wrong as her outside. He was no better than anyone else.

“How could you have known?” said Emily.

“With all the hitting, I should have figured it out. But I didn’t think she thought like I did.”

They moved from the foyer through the house to the back porch, sat on aluminum chairs. Emily taught him to build some signs into sentences.
I am your brother. You are my sister
. After a while, Emily went inside to get them each a glass of lemonade. Bo looked out over the swimming pool, the shimmer of green. His father was everywhere and nowhere, death lurking in every flick of insect on the surface of the water. He shifted his gaze to the plants growing up the backyard fence, trying to stop these thoughts. And another memory: his father squatting with a gun, cleaning it, smiling at Bo. “It will all be over soon,” his father said, “and we will be safe.” The recollection was so awful, Bo went back to staring at the water’s surface.