Weirdos are Living in My House

Chapter 11 Back

I had got used to talking when I was in Dawson Creek, so when I got back to Vancouver, I just kept talking. My dad and Hatty came to get me from the airport, and they were both very happy to see me, which made me feel good. I don't think my mom and brother were as happy to see me, and I didn't know if I was as happy to see them, either. My brother said I had verbal diarrhea, and my mom said she was glad I'd had a good visit with my grandma, but I didn't have to tell her every single thing that anyone had said or done while I was in Dawson Creek. My dad just said: "Mmm Hmmm," but it was always hard to tell if my dad was listening. Sometimes it drove my mom crazy when she didn't think my dad was listening to her, but it also drove her crazy when she accused my dad of not listening, and then he repeated back what she'd just said to him.

After being away for a few weeks, I noticed things I hadn't noticed before like that my dad was driving my mom crazy, no matter what he did. I don't know why. He did the same things pretty much the same way he always had, except for not going to Rotary and Masons and the Fire Hall. I liked that he did the same things at the same times. I liked knowing that he'd put on his suit and go to work on school days, and relax or run errands on weekends. I liked knowing what to expect from him, but my mom said he "hadn't experienced personal growth." He was already a grown-up. How much more growing was he supposed to do?

I never knew what to expect from my mother, and it bothered me. She knew that, too and thought it was a joke. "Sarah doesn't approve of me," she'd tell her friends, and laugh. But honestly, what kid would approve of a mother who didn't care about things like going back to school shopping before school actually started? She said that I should just take my last year's scribblers and pencil case to school the first day of grade seven, but the best part of the first day of school was having a brand new pencil case and new scribblers. Everyone knew that. My mom said if it was up to me, I'd have a conventional mother who wore an apron and baked cookies and held tea parties every afternoon, and her friends laughed again, as if that was something to be ashamed of. But what was wrong with cookies and tea parties? What was the difference between having tea parties, which I wanted to do, preferably with someone like Mrs. Fraser who would read my tea leaves and tell me about nice things that were going to happen, and sitting and smoking and arguing about things that they actually all agreed about, which is what my mom did with her friends? I asked her that too, and she stopped laughing and looked grouchy. Then she gave me some money and told me if I felt that strongly about having new school supplies, I could go buy my own. So I did. As I left, I heard my mom tell her friends that she was getting awfully tired of doing "the kid thing." I didn't know what that meant, but it didn't sound good.

There was a small department store a few blocks from our house, so I walked there to buy my school supplies, and I saw that there was a new family in the run down house at the end of the block. That house was even smaller than ours, and the previous family had been kind of scary. The kids, who were younger than me, but older than Hatty, so not very interesting, always had runny noses and not very nice clothes, and their dad dug up the lawn and planted potatoes, so they must have been really poor. Now there was a girl who looked like she was my age swinging on the gate in front of her house. She said"hi," and I said "hi" back, and then she asked what grade I was going into, and I said Grade Seven, and she said she was too, and was it a nice school? And I said: "no."

It turned out she and her mom and brother and sister had moved from a place called Brittania Beach, but her dad was a miner so he had to stay there and work. So I told her that when we moved from Dawson Creek, our dad had to stay there for a while, but he got to come to Vancouver. She asked where I was going, and I said to buy school supplies, and would she like to come? But she said she couldn't because she had to stay there and watch her sister and brother. Sometimes I had to stay home to watch Hatty when my mom was at university or gallivanting about, which is what my dad said she was doing when he didn't know where she was, so I understood. I knew right away we were going to be friends, and we were.

I forgot that it was Labour Day, and the department store was closed, so I bought my school supplies at the drug store. When I brought them home, my mom tsked, and said that I hadn't got very much for my money, and I should have waited. I thought that if she'd bought me school supplies before the last minute, I wouldn't have had to buy them at the drugstore, but I didn't say that. We'd already had that fight, and I'd won.

Ryan wasn't going to live with us anymore, because he had a girlfriend he was going to live with. They weren't even going to get married first! It was shocking. He brought Kara to meet us, and I loved her right away. She was a hugger, like my Grandma Williamson. We weren't a huggy family, except for Hatty who hugged anyone she could catch. Kara was a nice calm person who dressed nicely and worked in an office. She and Ryan played jokes on each other and laughed a lot, but it was the nice kind of laughter that used to be in our house in Dawson Creek. I was sorry that there wasn't room in our house for both of them. She would not have liked to sleep in our TV room and share a bathroom with all of us. I didn't even like sharing a bathroom with all of us. Now that Dan was going to go to high school, he was always in the shower.

So Ryan and Kara came over, and then some more people came over, and then more people, and there were people spilling out of the front door and the back door. Most of them were students from Simon Fraser University, but there were some others, too. At first it was all friendly, because a lot of people hadn't seen each other for a few months, but then things got political, because things always got political, and there were real arguments, with people disagreeing with each other, and shouting. Something horrible had happened at the beginning of the summer at a place called Kent State University in Ohio, wherever that was. Some students had protested the invasion of Cambodia, and the US National Guard had killed four students. There was lots of talk about how young people had to "get radical" and "take it to the man" and how everyone over thirty was "the man," which my mom agreed with, even though she was way over thirty, and my dad did not. He started whistling the Beatles song "You say you want a revolution," and then one of the students said: "Right on, Man," so I guess the student didn't actually know the words. My dad started going around and talking quietly to people, and soon the people he talked to finished their drinks and left. Soon Mom was only talking to a few of the students and looked around to see what had happened. My dad said he explained that the kids - that was us - had to go to school in the morning, so it was time to wrap things up. My mom said that he sure knew how to spoil a good time, and then he asked her how much she'd had to drink, and she said that wasn't the point.

Ryan and Kara were about the last ones to leave. They both hugged me, which was a surprise, because Ryan wasn't a huggy person either, and Kara looked at Ryan, and then said to me that I could come to their apartment and visit any time I wanted, and even sleep over!  I thought that was really nice of her.

I waited awhile for Mom or Dad to notice it was past my bed time and to tell me to go to bed because it was a school night, but they didn't. Mom was saying that Dad didn't realize how important her friends were to her, and Dad said he did realize and that was the problem, and then Mom said that friends were family that you chose, and then Dad said that was horseshit. Friends were friends and family was family. My stomach was starting to really hurt, and it didn't seem like they were going to stop shouting at each other, so I went to my bedroom and shut the door. Lucky Hatty was already sleeping, but I could still hear them. I couldn't turn on my radio, because Hatty was sleeping, so I got into bed and pulled the curtain that my dad had said made the bed seem like the berth on a train. I wished it blocked out sound, but it didn't.  

I thought about Dawson Creek, where the only loud noises at night were my grandmother's ferocious snores, and I wished I was there.