Whiteout

Chapter 1

Light.

Alive?

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Alive.

Dark.

Chapter 2

Maggie couldn’t remember a time when her mother didn’t feel angry. It could be over anything. She’d be angry at her father for daring to contradict her about the children. She’d chastise Nikka, her older sister, for being too nice, the neighbour’s dog for barking all the time, and the lady across the street for smoking in her driveway. But Maggie suffered the most, her mother's anger always directed towards her, confusing the five-year-old.

But Maggie knew how to set the dinner table. Her mother could never be angry at her for that. Nikka taught her, the fork on the left and the knife on the right. It occurred to Maggie the knife and fork should be closer to the person eating. They should both be at the bottom of the plate. Or, maybe put the fork at the bottom, close at hand, then put the knife at the top of the plate. It looked better. It made perfect sense.

Things needed to make sense to Maggie. Two plus two equals four makes sense. Don’t run out into the road because a car might hit you, makes sense. But putting a fork on the left and a knife on the right makes little sense. Why couldn’t they be together? Or at the top and bottom of the plate?

Maggie proceeded around the small aluminum and Formica table, the peeling floor squeaking under her sock feet, setting it for four people as she did every night. She felt proud of her new arrangement.

“Margaret! What are you doing?” her mother, Ruth, screamed behind her, causing Maggie’s little body to jump and her heart to lurch. Maggie turned and looked up at her mother, wanting to explain her new system; how much easier it would be, and it would make more sense this way.

“It’s a new way,” she explained, trying to hide her fear. Her mother wouldn’t see it that way. Her mother got angry at stupid things. Maggie liked things to make sense and thought things should be fair.

“Fix it now! You know better, or are you stupid?” she spat out, “you can’t even remember a simple thing like setting the table?” Her mother’s rage began setting in, which involuntarily set Maggie off. “It doesn’t matter!” she screamed.

This outburst got Nikka’s attention, and she came running out of the girls’ bedroom.

Maggie knew what Nikka, the peacemaker in the family, would say. She’d tell her younger sister to do it how Mom likes it.

She’d take her mom’s side, separate the two, and then later explain how it’s okay to be different and creative but to “stop pissing off Mom.”

But that wouldn’t work today. Ruth Phillips’ breaths came in rapid gasps, her mouth set in a thin, straight line, her face and ears reddening. She bent down to her youngest daughter’s face, making Maggie want to step back to get away from this raging monster. But she refused. There shouldn’t be so much trouble over setting the dinner table.

“You’re nothing but trouble,” said Ruth. “You keep it up, Missy, and I’ll send you away.”

Maggie stood her ground but her resolve weakened. Her mother’s sharp blue eyes held no kindness, only contempt. She straightened up and crossed her arms.

“I should have done that when you were born, called the social workers and be done with you.”

Send her away? Where? What were social workers? Maggie looked over at Nikka. She looked as astounded as Maggie felt.

“Mom!” Nikka gasped. “You don’t mean that!”

Ruth took a step back. With no preamble, she picked up a plate and hurled it toward the kitchen, barely missing Maggie’s head. Maggie screamed and ducked out of the way. Her mother continued into the kitchen, finding glasses, cutlery, anything within reach and started hurling them around the room. Glass shattered all around her, and Maggie covered her head, shielding herself from the flying objects.

The girls were screaming and crying when their father, Thomas, came into the house to the mayhem over the simple task of getting ready for dinner. Thomas quickly scanned the room. Ruth exhausted herself and slumped in a chair in the living room, making choking noises.

The girls huddled in the corner of the kitchen, sobbing quietly. Thomas walked over to the chair, scooped up his wife and carried her into their bedroom, closing the door with his foot.

Maggie looked up and saw her sister crying and deeply shaken. Her mother’s episodes were the worst she could remember. Nikka took a deep breath and seemed to assess the situation in the room.

“We have to clean this up, Maggie,” she said.

“Why? We didn’t do this!” Maggie whispered.

“Just help me, okay?”

Maggie gave up arguing. She didn’t want to give her favourite person in the world a hard time. She stood up.

“Wait,” said Nikka. “Stay there. I’ll get your shoes. I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

Nikka thought of everything. Maggie would have likely walked straight into the kitchen and cut up her feet. She stayed put as Nikka picked her way through the debris and towards the front door of the small house. Nikka put on her shoes and then brought Maggie’s, still being careful and quiet.

The girls knew from experience their mother would spend the next several days in bed, barely speaking. Maggie welcomed these respites, but her father and sister worried about her mother in this state. She wouldn’t eat or bathe or dress, and they feared she would get ill or die. Maggie thought her mother dying would solve a lot of problems.

They heard nothing from their parents’ bedroom as they were sweeping, picking and sorting through any dishes or glasses to salvage. There would be no dinner.

*

Maggie and Nikka shared a small bedroom in the house. Each girl had a small bed with barely a foot of space between. Later that night, Maggie and Nikka laid awake, facing each other in their beds, whispering.

“I hate her. I wish she would die,” Maggie declared in a sharp whisper.

“You don’t mean that. Don’t talk like that,” Nikka admonished. “You can’t piss her off like that. Just stop it, okay? Look what happened!”

“Why doesn’t Daddy stop her? She’s mean to all of us.”

“I don’t know, Maggie. But we have to help Daddy, okay?”

Maggie didn’t answer; her mind swirled in confusion and resentment.

“What’s a social worker?”

“It’s someone from the government who takes kids away to live in foster care. You do NOT want to go into foster care, okay?”

“It would be better than being with Mom,” Maggie said.

“They would separate us, Maggie. We wouldn’t live together anymore. You would have to go to a different school, and everyone would know you were a foster-care kid. Do you want that?”

Maggie panicked over the thought of foster-care. She didn’t want to live with her mother. Living without her father seemed like a fair trade. She knew her father loved her, but he didn’t dare show it, as Ruth always seemed to be nearby.

Maggie had some lovely memories of her father rocking her, and she had absolutely no memories of him yelling. He was often sad-looking, and always calm. She also didn’t care about switching schools. She just started school, but to be without Nikka? Nikka laid out her clothes in the morning and made sure she had breakfast. She walked her to school and home. Nikki helped with her homework and showed her how to do things around the house.

Thoughtful and quiet, Nikka could understand their mother’s mood and sometimes could deflect her anger.

“No! No, I only want to stay with you,” Maggie told her sister.

“And I want that too, so we have to be better.”

*

A few weeks later, Maggie set the table, making sure the fork went on the left and the knife went on the right. She imagined an entire conversation where her mother came up to her and apologized; and that she didn’t realize Maggie could be so creative and special, and to please go ahead, set the table in her new way.

She’s never sorry...

Barefoot, Maggie brought cups of water to the table, spilling some on the kitchen floor. She carefully placed the cups, now plastic to replace the glass ones smashed by her mother, on the table and turned to get the cutlery when her feet slipped out from under her in the small puddle created after the spill. Maggie cried out in surprise, landing on the kitchen floor, which got her mother’s attention.

“Maggie, for Christ’s sake, what are you doing? Get up right now! Did you break something? You better not have broken anything!”

There’s nothing left to break.

For the first time, Maggie didn’t want to utter the thoughts popping into her mind.

“I slipped and fell.”

“Get up right now; you’re ridiculous.”

Maggie turned over on all fours. She felt a sharp pain in her left palm and pulled away from the floor, only to slip again. A piece of glass sliced a one inch long gash just above the wrist of her left arm. Blood started dripping onto the floor, causing her to scream in alarm.

“I’m bleeding!”

Thomas came into the kitchen, followed closely by Nikka, who gasped at seeing all the blood pooling on the floor.

“Oh, no! What happened?” Nikka asked.

“I think it’s glass,” said Maggie, staring up at her mother. Thomas came around to tend to Maggie.

“She’s being dramatic; it’s not that bad,” insisted Ruth, slowly backing into the living room.

Thomas looked over at his wife, and Maggie saw something she’d never seen before in her father. He looked angry at her mom. He never got angry with her. Maggie held her bleeding arm, watching her parents stare each other down.

Thomas hurried towards his bleeding daughter and wrapped a hand around her wound. “She needs stitches. I have to take her to the emergency,” said Thomas.

Ruth looked defeated. Then, her eyes hardened, and a sneer appeared on her face.

“You ruined everything,” her mother said, her voice filled with disgust.

Maggie didn’t know if her mother was talking to her or her father.

Chapter 3

Maggie thought school was boring, but at least it was away from her mother.

By grade 3, she became fascinated about regrouping. She learned the right-most numbers were the ones, and the next set of numbers, the tens. It made perfect sense. It made subtraction make sense. And it made school less boring.

During one class test on regrouping, Maggie completed the test before anyone else. Looking around the class, she noticed one of her classmates next to her, shaking his head. Maggie scanned the classroom on the lookout for the teacher.

“Do you get it?” she whispered, leaning over to him.

His face brightened seeing she wanted to help.

“No… how can you subtract from zero? Zero is nothing.”

Maggie glanced around for the teacher again, then back to her classmate. “Zero is nothing when it’s by itself. But when it’s with other numbers, it’s like a holder,” she whispered. “Like, you know, like when you put your coat on the bus seat to save it for a friend.”

“But how do you subtract from it?”

Maggie began a detailed explanation, leaning closer. “So… see here, where it says one hundred and thirty minus sixteen? You need the zero so that the number is right, you know, it’s one-thirty and not thirteen. But you can take numbers from the next spot over. So, it’s like it’s one twenty and ten and ten minus six is four… then in the next column, it’s two minus one instead of three minus one, so it’s one. And then for the final row, it’s one minus nothing which is one… so the answer is one hundred and fourteen.”

“Oh! Okay.”

“Maggie Phillips, what are you doing?” Maggie’s teacher, Mrs. Cudmore, called out from the back of the classroom. A shiver of fear ran through her.

“Have you completed your work, Maggie? Do you need more work to do?”

“Okay!”

If the punishment for breaking the rules were a few more arithmetic questions, Maggie felt okay with that. Her teacher smiled.

“Eyes on your own work, Maggie.”

She’s not like Mom, that’s for sure.

That day in grade 3 didn’t scare her. In grade 6 she got the scare of her life. Mrs. Trembley, her teacher, asked her to stay after class.

She worried she’d done something wrong, terrified that Nikka might be angry with her. She tried to be good, friendly, kind and never talk back, like Nikka.

“Maggie, come to my desk, please,” asked Mrs. Trembley.

She tentatively moved to the teacher’s desk.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not in trouble,” the teacher said. Mrs. Trembley held up a math assignment sheet about word problems. “I just want to ask you about your schoolwork. What is this drawing? Here, in the margin?”

Her doodle depicted a crude drawing of a woman with something sticking out of her head. Maggie knew the something was a knife.

“It’s doodling. It’s nothing.” Maggie felt her heart hammering in her chest.

“I see. Is everything okay? At home, I mean? You know you can talk to me.”

Maggie stiffened. The family business is no one’s business, Nikka always declared. No one needed to know. Nikka taught her a new phrase the year before: “Mandated Reporter.” Teachers are mandated reporters, and Maggie shouldn’t trust them. She mustn’t share anything about their home life. The teachers could report them to the government and they’d be separated.

“No, I mean yes, everything is fine.” Maggie swallowed, trying to control her apprehension. She hoped she sounded convincing. An idea popped into her mind. “Well, I mean, my mom is sick. She’s getting better.”

Maggie congratulated herself on her quick thinking. Sick Mom means no call home.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Okay, that’s fine. You can talk to me if you need to, okay?”

“Sure… what was my mark?” she asked, skillfully changing the subject.

“You got one-hundred percent as usual. You’re a smart girl, Maggie. Keep up the excellent work.”

*

At home later that night, Maggie told Nikka about her meeting with the teacher.

“Shit, Maggie, why’d you draw that?” Nikka whispered, furious.

Maggie shrugged, feeling exasperated. “I don’t know! Who cares?” Her voice rose as she spoke. She understood Nikka’s worry.

“Don’t you remember what Mom did that time? Do you want the school to call here, getting people involved? Do you want them to separate us?”

Maggie remembered. She would never forget that time. She unconsciously touched the scar on her arm.

Maggie realized her mistake. “Well, I told her Mom is sick, but getting better. What if she calls here? What if Mom answers?”

She could imagine what her mother would do if the school called. She would see the drawing and go ballistic. She would learn of her lie.

Well, she IS sick. She’s crazy. She’s fucking crazy. Ooh, dirty word, but it’s true.

This could be bad. She imagined faceless social work people, dragging her and Nikka to different foster homes. Maggie imagined a foster home must be like a prison. There would be bars on the windows and wires inside the glass, like some of the windows at school. She would have to sleep on the floor. There wouldn’t be any food.

Couldn’t we be in the jail or a foster home together, Maggie thought? That makes more sense. But Nikka says they’d separate us.

“They probably won’t call,” Nikka said. “I mean, there are lots of other things teachers have to worry about. You’re getting good marks. It’s probably okay.”

“Maybe you could go to school and pretend to be Mom.”

Nikka laughed.

“Pretend to be Mom! I’m only five years older than you! I don’t think that’s going to work. Look, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it will be okay. But don’t do it again.”

Maggie felt relieved. She took a deep breath.

Nikka looked like a beautiful grownup and behaved like one. Maggie felt like an ugly duckling next to her. Nikka always told her she was pretty and would grow up to be even prettier. She always told Maggie she had smarts. But her mother’s voice mixed in sometimes, telling her she was stupid and worthless.