Noise (4 page)

‘Keep them closed, baby. Wait till you see what I have for you!' she said through the door. Adjusting the brand-new penis at her waist, she took a deep breath and prepared to make her baby happy.

This is a story I never told the police. I'm telling you because you're not a cop. You probably read all my statements, right? I got dragged in by the cops yesterday, and I told them what I know because I do believe Teri should get in trouble for what she did to the deaf girl. I really do. A lot of kids at my school think we shouldn't say anything because even if Teri killed that girl, she was probably really high and, at the end of the day, she's one of us. The thing is I've known Teri my whole life. She used to be my best friend. That's why I came to you because I heard you're writing a book about the murder. I think that's weird, to tell you the truth. Why would somebody from
New York want to write a book about us? You must have so many murders in New York. And me and my friends, we're just nobodies in this world. You must be bored hanging out in Walton. Anyway, I never told the cops this story.

Can you turn your tape recorder off? I don't mean to be rude but machines make me nervous, and yours is so small; it looks like a black eye. You remind me so much of my sister except she has more tattoos. She has twenty-seven. She got her first one when she was twelve. Have you talked to Colby Straith? You have, right? Yeah, he told me he talked to the lady from New York. I hope you don't trust that guy because the thing is he's kind of a rapist. If anyone should be in jail, it's Colby fucking Straith 'cause when my sister was twelve, her and all those roughneck girls, the whole C-Town crew, they would go to Colby for tattoos, but he would just, well, you know, he said it was fair trade. My sister hates her first tattoo now, but what can you do? She's got that star for life. You
really
look like her, though. Your eyes move in the same way. I think that's why I trust you. Some people think you're a narc. They think you're working for the cops. I'm serious. Your face looks so funny right now. You just looked away from me and right down at your fancy tape recorder. You turned it off, right? I really hope you're not a cop because what I'm about to tell you is private and crazy. Slade said he doesn't think you are a cop because when he was in your hotel room he snooped around while you were in the bathroom. He said you had a whole shitload of pills from a pharmacy in New York City. I guess you caught him, right? And you told him the pills were for headaches, but he looked them up on the Internet and he said they were for anxiety. I really like your ring.

A long time ago, two summers ago, all I wanted to do was die. I was very suicidal. The priest told me to think of the darkness like a black bird and let it fly out of my body. Can you believe that? For a while, I tried to feel better by remembering the day I was most happy and that was a day when I was twelve and my dad was still alive. We were in the canoe over by Candle Island and I reached down and touched this whale that was moving through the waves and that dark place in the water, the part where the whale rose up, was right under my palm and my dad kept quiet and let the oars lie still and our boat just floated for a long time while we watched the whale in those waves far away.

I should let you know that a lot of people are lying to you, telling you bullshit stories about Teri, not because they're bad people, but I guess they want to be in a book. They think they might get famous or something. I'm not like that, though. I just think someone should know about what happened with me and Teri.

We were with Eliza. The three of us used to skip school and hang out by the train tracks over on Chatham Hill. This was when we were thirteen. Do you know Eliza? Some people call her Lizzy. She has thin eyebrows and her hair's bleached pure blonde. I heard she took off and she's missing and she's gone into hiding ever since Teri got arrested. I doubt she gave a statement because when Matty Hargrove got arrested she said she wasn't a rat and she asked the cops if she looked like she had a tail. She lies sometimes, Eliza. She says she's a model but she's never been in magazines. Anyway, we were by the train tracks because we used to go there to get away from everyone.

Teri said to Eliza: ‘Arielle wants to die, so today we're going to help her.'

Teri has this way about her. You believe she knows best. I did what she said. She told me to go lie down on the tracks and I did. I walked over to the tracks and I laid myself down in the low place. As soon as I lay down, five crows flew out of a tree and passed above, right above me. The rust was cold on my ankles; I could feel the old rain; the saved rain; all the old, saved rain under my body. The train was still far away and I was not scared. I'm finally doing what I should be doing. I'm finally giving up caring. I was almost happy because soon I would see my father.

Waiting for my death might have been peaceful except Teri got so angry at Eliza. I've seen her when she's vicious but never as she was that afternoon. Teri's so small and that's why some people don't think she could have killed the deaf girl but I've known her my whole life and she can have this fury. She went crazy because Eliza was being dreamy and not watching me. Eliza sometimes is in her own world, as if the sky is a mirror or the dirt is a catwalk. She walks; one hand on her hips; she turns. Teri's yelling, ‘This is going to be fun. Watch!' And I guess that's when Eliza saw me, waiting for my suicide.

Eliza yells, ‘Get off the tracks!' She's like, ‘Ari! Get off the tracks!' I think I heard the train. And Teri moves closer to me. She comes right up to me. She whispers. She touches my forehead. She says, ‘Just stay there. You want to kill yourself, don't you? Just stay there. Stay where you are.'

Teri said she was really proud of me. I looked towards her to say goodbye and she had this smile on her face. She was kneeling in the long grass, smoking a cigarette, with this smile I did not like. It reminded me of the look on Colby's face right after he gave my sister that tattoo. It's like they've taken something, not like a
thief, but like a winner who's cheated. Oh, I can't explain. I heard the train. The train was coming. I heard the rumble, the wheels in all the dirt and gravel. And I tried to be good, to be ready, to do what I wanted which when I was thirteen was only and always to die. I thought of my sister and how she played her radio at night; the sound I could sometimes hear; just sometimes her singing; her little voice in the bedroom; and after my dad died, she'd move the radio to the wall between us, and sing louder because she didn't want me to hear her tears, I guess, or she wanted me not to be alone with the air and the silence.

There was so much rain underneath me on the tracks. I could feel the breath of the train and smell the coal. I heard the rumbled noise getting closer to me and I was wondering if there was a man in front of the train, a driver, who might see me because I know those coal trains have no captains or passengers. I heard Teri say, ‘Good girl. Stay still.' And then I thought it was her hand but it was Eliza and she was just above me and beside me and she was pulling me and grabbing my shoulders and Teri just started pounding on Eliza's back, just whacking her and Eliza's white hair was like lightning. She was just being flung around and Teri is screaming. She's yelling, ‘Eliza! Get off her. Leave her alone! She
wants
to die! Let her die!'

I was so dizzy when I stumbled over the rails. Eliza pulled me towards the grass and I could feel her tears and the ground trembled a little when the train passed us by. We just lay there crying and dizzied and shivering. Teri threw her cigarette into the grass and she spoke to me so coldly. She hated me more than she's ever hated any girl in Walton. ‘Arielle,' she said. ‘I thought you told me you wanted to die.'

‘Well, not like that, I guess.' That's what I told her, almost like an apology, but she just left me and I remember she walked away on the tracks, kind of showing off, I think, that she could balance on the edge and not lie down on the rain. She always had this way to make me feel ashamed. I felt like I was the one who had done the wrong mistake and I almost ran after her to tell her I was sorry. Eliza kept saying, ‘She would have let you do it. She would have just walked away.' I didn't want to talk about it because Teri was my best friend. But Eliza kept talking about it and she would not stop. She's like, ‘You know what? Teri would have just gone home, and been almost happy, saying, “Oh, Arielle committed suicide!”' A week or so later, when we were in English, Teri told me she was just joking around and she was trying to save me. She said she was using reverse psychology.

Have you seen Eliza? You should ask her about that day. She might not want to talk about it to you because, in this town, people like to forget the terrible things. It's that way, already, with the deaf girl. Nobody calls her by her real name. And they never say murder or stabbing. They just say, ‘That thing that happened by the river.' Same with the cops. They kept asking me about ‘the incident'. I got a little mouthy with them, which they didn't appreciate. I said, ‘I don't know why you use words like
incident
when a girl my age was stabbed.' I hope you don't use the word incident in your book but I guess that's pretty much your choice.

Do you know Teri's mother? I saw her yesterday coming out of the Safeway. She was just pushing her cart in this frail way. She always seems faint, almost as if she's been faded out or rubbed away. She told me Teri's just a scapegoat and we're all the bad girls who messed up her good and kind daughter. She said she got a big lawyer
for Teri and the lawyer told her all about the dead girl and how she kept a diary and wrote about how she wanted to be reincarnated, or something, go to the other side. After Teri's mom yelled at me, I had to go back to school and it's been so hard to concentrate. I keep wondering how Teri had all that power with me. Do you know? If you met Teri, she'd probably convince you she was right about the whole world, even if you are from New York City.

I'm sorry but can you please not put this story in your book. It's not that I think you're a narc. I just decided I do not want anyone to know this story. Please promise me. You could give me a different name? I guess that would be all right, but not really, because even if you changed my name everybody will know it's me because I'm the only one in this town with red hair who lives by the railroad and has a father who died so suddenly when he woke up with his heart closed, just closed, like a broken clock, the doctors said, like a wrongly tied wire.

Sitting in the waiting room of Tommy's Tyre Town, with late February, 5 p.m., and the ash-grey sleet that incessantly peppered the wall of windows all conspiring to obliterate any shred of hope and good cheer, Ulla Shooks wished she could kick off her thick-soled shoes and rub some cream into her bunions. After a forty-hour work week, dishing up pot-pie and lasagna, mushy green beans and flavourless corn kernels, after five shifts of keeping the chopped eggs, the croutons, the mixed lettuces and all the other stainless steel bins on the Saving Grace Hospital cafeteria salad bar full, everything ached. And the pain–like her heavy hips, her sixty-
year-old breasts, her sagging cheeks and wattled neck–the pain, too, seemed at the mercy of gravity. It settled mostly in her feet.

Ulla Shooks sat with her back to the other wall of windows, the one offering an unabashed view of the three men at work in the two garage bays. She didn't want to see it. Any of it. Their grease-smeared faces, their cigarettes, their ill-fitting blue uniforms: one hanging loosely from a scarecrow of a man whose skin was so pale he'd be invisible if not for the oily stains; the other not quite containing the belly, neck or arms of the crew chief, a mopey man who could easily be either thirty or fifty years old; and Tommy, whose shirt might actually fit should he ever decide to tuck it in.

For more reasons than even she was aware of, Ulla couldn't bear willing witness to the activities in the garage. And even though the air wrench's harsh ratchet startled her, sent a jolt up and down her spine every single time one of the men tightened or loosened a lug nut, she preferred to look the other way, out the other windows where the view offered up the Long John Silver parking lot, Plank Road and, somewhere through the thick winter clouds, Tussey Mountain.

And if the placement of the flickering television (perched on a plywood shelf near the ceiling in the far corner in the direction of the unseeable mountains) was any indication, the mechanics didn't want her watching them anyway. Ulla would've gladly watched the broadcasted game show, despite the jagged bolts of static that shot across the TV screen each time the air wrenches fired; would've found comforting distraction in the too-excited cheers from the audience and in the charming wit of the impeccably haired host. Would've enjoyed these, but couldn't because the only other waiting customer in the lobby kept pacing back and forth between his chair, right beneath the television, and the high counter by the
door to the garage, muttering to himself about how much time he was wasting.

Rude. Inconsiderate. Ulla wasn't about to look, but she felt sure this man, with his fancy tie and his clean fingernails, probably drove a pricey Japanese car. Something garishly coloured. It would not have occurred to her to rush the service on her ageing Ford Taurus. Patience does a body good: human or automobile.

By the time the man had paid and left, the game show had ended in a frenetic chorus of shrieks and palpably urgent music. In its place, the local news promised details and regular updates on a breaking story about a stand-off at the city's animal shelter. Ulla, not tall enough to reach the volume or channel buttons on the television itself, half-heartedly looked around for a remote. Truth was, even if she'd found it, and even though she was the only person in the room, changing the channel without Tommy's OK went against her nature.

Ulla riffled through the stacks of magazines on the low, flimsy and only table in the waiting room.
Auto Week. Popular Science. Modern Turkey Hunter. Sports Illustrated.
Nothing provided for the gentler gender but a single coverless
Woman's Day
, and it two years old. More out of obligation than interest, Ulla picked up the magazine and flipped to the table of contents, not at all surprised to find not one, not two but three different articles on the topic of sex. One a survey, one a how-to and the third too disgusting to even finish reading the title. And in
Woman's Day
, of all places. Ulla clucked her tongue and slipped the magazine to the bottom of a stack.

 

Turning her head only as far as necessary to catch a glimpse of the big clock behind the counter–its hands made of polished
wrenches, miniature pictures of tyres, oil cans and various other automobile images made up the numbers–as best she could tell, Ulla determined it to be 5.30. No hurries. Nobody to get home to. Nothing going on at church. But Lord have mercy, her feet hurt. She'd have liked nothing more than to slip out of those tight, black shoes and prop her feet on the table until her car was ready. But under no conceivable circumstances would Ulla Shooks sacrifice decorum for comfort. No. She'd settle for the small, small comfort of knowing she did the right thing.

Ulla reached into her serviceable purse and plucked out the newest issue of
Hark!
, the Riggle's Gap First Congregation Church of the Brethren's biweekly bulletin, and began reading closely over the lists of deaths, births, calls for prayer, admonitions and aphorisms, and one or two good-natured, clean jokes. Ulla took care to turn the pages of the centre-stapled, single-fold publication by their corners to avoid the easily smudged ink. While she had no official editorial role, Ulla felt sure that her efforts towards pointing out typos and grammatical errors were appreciated by the higher-ups.

Five thirty. Her feet hurt. And the wind-driven sleet tapped an unending, erratic beat against the glass. Ulla had a headache. Probably from the various fumes she smelled wafting from the garage. She couldn't concentrate on the issue of
Hark!
, but wasn't ready to concede defeat. Ulla took her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose. Anyone passing by on Plank Road, anyone who took the time to slow down, anyone able to penetrate the night, the storm, and peer into the fluorescent-lit diorama that was the waiting room of Tommy's Tyre Town, would've thought Ulla Shooks was praying as she sat there. Or weeping.

Who could've guessed that she was indulging in her one decadent fantasy?

‘
Miss Shooks! Miss Shooks!
' All the fifth-graders cried out excitedly. ‘
Tell us again about the wicked old comma splice!
' They flock around her, the boys, the girls, their eager pencils clutched tight. ‘
Miss Shooks! Tell us what happened to the boy who put
e
before
i
!'

‘
Miss Shooks.
'

A bell. The door?

‘Miss Shooks?'

Ulla clutched at the copy of
Hark!
She must've closed her eyes. Must've dozed off. It wasn't her imaginary students calling her name. It was Tommy, standing, untucked, directly in front of her, clicking a ballpoint pen against a clipboard.

‘Speed-balancing, Miss Shooks?'

‘Excuse me?' Ulla said.

With the pen, Tommy pointed towards the counter, but he looked in the direction of the new customer.

‘You want me to speed-balance them wheels?'

Ulla looked at Tommy, then at the girl standing in the middle of the room, then at her own weary feet. She had no idea what ‘speed-balancing' meant.

‘Why, yes,' she said to Tommy. ‘That'd be real nice.'

Tommy scribbled something on the clipboard then stepped behind the counter, where he, and Ulla from her seat, stared at the girl. The girl.

The girl stood, her booted feet (scuffed black lineman's boots, laced up to mid-calf) planted wide, her mangy thrift-store faux-fur coat hanging nearly to her ankles, but open enough for anyone to
read her Hunka-Hunka-Burnin-Luv T-shirt, the text arcing over and under the mounds (and even Ulla could see that they were mounded) of breasts, the coat open enough for anyone willing to look at the wide crescent of pale flesh where the hems of her shirt and skirt didn't quite meet, the dark pucker of her navel, the shiny gold barbell piercing it, stood with her hands plunged deep into the coat pockets, stood with her mouth open, another gold ball fixed in her tongue and clicking against her teeth, with her black-lined eyes shut, stood with the melting pellets of sleet glistening like diamonds in her hair, on her collar, stood swaying and bobbing her head in time with a bass beat that even Ulla and Tommy could hear pulsing from the girl's earphones.

‘Can I help you, ma'am?'

Then louder.

‘Can I help you, ma'am?!'

When the girl opened her eyes, Ulla forced her attention back to
Hark!
, and worked hard to keep it there as the girl shuffled over to the counter to negotiate with Tommy.

‘Ya'll sell retreads?'

Ulla wanted to look. She could hear the girl's music. She could hear Tommy's ballpoint pen clicking and clicking.

‘No, ma'am,' Tommy said. ‘We don't carry retreads.'

‘You don't got any retreads?' the girl asked, with a shift in her tone.

Ulla couldn't help herself, she had to look, to see whether that young hussy had leaned in and perched those breasts on Tommy's counter, which she had, but Tommy, to his credit, would not be moved.

‘No, ma'am. We don't carry retreads.'

‘What's the cheapest tyres you got?' she asked, the syllables punctuated by the click of metal against her teeth.

‘What kind of car is it?' Tommy asked.

The girl pointed into the parking lot, into the night, and both Tommy and Ulla looked.

‘That old Ford Taurus out there,' she said.

Tommy sucked some air through his teeth. Ulla felt he was giving the girl's question too much thought. Too much importance. Ulla felt the best thing would be for Tommy to send the girl on down the road, to some other more appropriate tyre store, one with a different clientele.

Tommy flipped open a thick binder.

‘I can do these for forty-five dollars apiece, but that don't include speed-balancing.'

The girl asked if she could get just one.

‘No, ma'am,' he said. ‘Wouldn't be safe. But I can do your front two.'

‘OK, then,' she said.

‘Be about half an hour.'

Tommy eased back into the garage. The girl went into the unisex bathroom opposite the counter. Ulla could still hear her music, even through the closed door. Ulla thought she heard the girl singing. Ulla most certainly heard the unregulated stream of urine, and clearly heard neither a flush, nor water in the sink. Ulla said a little prayer that the girl would wait outside for her tyres. Or maybe go eat at Long John Silver's.

But sometimes the Lord likes to test his followers.

The girl sat directly opposite Ulla. Directly. Not even one chair to the right or left.

Ulla held
Hark!
as high as she could without seeming too obvious, peered over its hard edge once or twice and determined that it didn't matter because the girl still had her eyes shut.

Had her head leaned back against the window, rolling rhythmically from side to side. Bump, bump, bumping the glass for percussive emphasis. Over the girl's shoulder, night had turned the window into a mirror. Ulla saw her own reflection–checked her posture–and beyond, in reverse, and incrementally smaller, Tommy and the other men in the garage, who'd paused in their work to gawk at the splay-legged girl sitting across the room, with her eyes closed, bobbing to music and fingering the stud in her navel. Clear as day, Ulla could see them! They stood right behind her, just on the other side of the glass, lined up like Christ and the two thieves at Calvary.

Shame. Shame on them all.

Mercifully, their voyeurism was brief.

Mercifully, the poor girl never knew.

She was too immersed in the song. The song she began to sing. Well, maybe
sing
wasn't the right word. The girl began to speak the lyrics of the song. Erratically. Partially garbled, but forceful nonetheless.

‘There's a new girl in your life. Long red wavy hair. Green green lips and purple eyes. Skinny hips and big brown breasts…'

Oh dear Lord, she was singing about breasts! Ulla looked again for the television remote. Ulla looked towards the Long John Silver's sign, an improbable beacon in the distance.

‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women…'

Surely, Tommy must be just about done.
Surely
. Surely, the girl won't keep singing about breasts in public. Surely, the Lord wants Ulla to learn something from this.

‘Use the word: fuck!'

What? Surely, Ulla must've misheard.

‘The word is love.'

The girl spoke, sang. Sang louder with each verse.

‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women. Use the word: fuck! The word is love.'

Ulla stuffed her church bulletin into her purse, clutched the purse to her chest, like a lifejacket. A flotation device. She tried to pray, but found her silent words supplanted by the girl's song.

‘Use the word: fuck!'

Ulla cleared her throat. Maybe the girl just didn't know she was singing aloud.

‘The word is love. Use the power of women. Use the word…'

Ulla closed her eyes, but it didn't help. The air wrenches wailed behind her; across the narrow lobby, the girl sang her nasty song. Song. Yes! The Lord surely meant for Ulla to stand firm in this hard moment. To witness. To testify. To counter the wicked with the godly. Ulla knew what to do.

Ulla began to sing.

‘Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?'

Ulla threw herself into the song, wavering briefly in and out of tune before finding her key.

‘Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?'

And the girl:

‘Fuck! The word is love. Use the word.'

And Ulla:

‘Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you washed (are you washed) in the blood (in the blood)?'

‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women.'