I could have done my usual meandering
Instead, I point myself like a ship’s prow
And make landfall in front of Genie’s house.
IN GENIE’S FRONT YARD
What are YOU doing here?
Go away.
You’re still here.
What is the matter with you?
You have to leave.
My dad is getting suspicious.
Freakazoid!
Get lost!
You can’t just stand in our yard all night!
What do you want?
I have nothing to say to her, Dad!
I have nothing to say to you.
Please, Ella, Dad’s asking questions now.
I’ll get grounded again.
I’m sorry, okay?
Now go.
You’re crazy!
Why are you doing this to me?
INSIDE OUT
I had an epiphany
I say
Genie sighs, sits
And pulls out her phone
epiphany[n. pl -nies]
a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into reality or
the essential meaning of something, often initiated by some
simple, commonplace occurrence.
Go on, she says
It happened on the steps of the mosque
Samir and I had one of those final scenes
I’ll tell you about it one day
It was crushing, but kind of priceless
Anyway, after I was just sitting there
And this old dude started talking to me
He might have been some kind of priest
Long story why, but I thought of you.
And I saw you then, but inside out
And I saw things I recognized
And it terrified me to think that maybe
Everybody looks like that on the inside.
I know now that Samir does, and David
And Kayli, my mom, my dad even
Marika, Sarah, Kieran, it’s getting so
I don’t want to look into people anymore.
Somehow I thought you might be
The one who was neat and tidy inside,
I thought your meanness required control
But maybe you’re just as random as the rest of us.
I take things too personally
It felt like you wanted me dead
But now I’m starting to think
It was never about me, was it?
BLUE BALLPOINT
Do you have a pen and paper?
I ask
I want to draw your hand.
You’re so weird, Genie says
But she goes inside
And comes back out
With paper and a blue ballpoint.
I hate blue ink
So it seems fitting
But soon I’m frustrated
Freckles are hard to draw, I say.
Try living with them, she says.
And then
Want to hear all the names
I’ve been called?
Spot, spotty, leopard
Leper, patch, pixels
Freckle-face
Pox, poxy
Measles, dotty
Speck, splatter
Sprinkles, fly poop.
She sighs.
Ugly, fat, stupid.
I reach forward
And take her hand
Turning it over.
Palms are easier anyway, I say.
And let my fingers
Linger
On her wrist
On
A
Thin
White
Scar.
STARS
Genie falls back
Like she’s been shot
In a movie
Slow motion.
Her head rests in
The long grass.
She stares up
While the last glow of day
Leaves the sky.
I watch her
And wait
Expecting
Something
Crucial.
I don’t speak
But for the scratching
Of the blue pen
Tracing her life line
Her love line
Her fingerprints.
If there’s one thing
Marika has taught me
It is the value
Of silence.
UNDERNEATH
Do you know how breast cancer kills?
It’s not the cancer in the breast.
That doesn’t matter.
It gets into other things.
The lungs. The liver.
My mother’s brain.
In the end she didn’t know who I was.
I’d tell her that I love her.
“What?” she’d say.
Once she said,
“Where’s my daughter?”
I’ve never told anyone this before
This is not an excuse.
Reasons aren’t excuses.
Samir broke my heart.
Sarah was my best friend.
You have everything.
It wasn’t my idea to leave you.
It was one of those other bitches
But she was just trying to impress me
As if that will make a difference
In her pathetic life.
I hate those girls.
I hate all girls.
Especially myself.
Our parents look at us and wonder
Why we are the way we are
The moods and tears
The bullying, the jealousy.
But what do they expect?
Surrounded by rivals all the time
Like jackals fighting for a bone
Failure shoved in your face
Teachers looking at us
Like we’re shit on their shoes.
They’ve forgotten what it feels like.
Maybe we will forget one day too.
I sure hope so.
I heard your mom had bulimia.
Of all the things to be jealous of.
That’s fucked up.
I want a mom with your mom’s disease
Instead of the one I had and lost.
MY OFFERING
I join her
Lying back on the grass
Looking up through the branches
To the drifting silver clouds
The black sky above that
And beyond
The ozone layer
The orbit of the moon
The sun and planets
The Oort cloud, the heliopause
Space, the galaxy
Nebula, stars
The entire universe
And everything beyond
And everyone
Who has ever lived and died
Every atom of them
Goes on somewhere.
As beautiful as that seems
It is also terrifying
So precarious
A delicate balancing act
A fragile house of cards
An infinitely complex machine
That can never be understood.
No wonder I hide inside myself.
I cried, I tell Genie
The day I learned
How big the moon really was
And that it didn’t float
Around our sky
Like a lost balloon.
I used to let balloons go
On purpose, she replies
And pray for them to come back
How stupid is that?
Like God would care
About a balloon.
Like there even is a God.
Like he helped
The football team
Win the regionals
But ignored me
Begging him
BEGGING him
To let Mom live
.
What an asshole.
A swarm of bats flies
Across the moonlit
Silver sky
Gross, Genie says
And somewhere
So far away in time and space
That maybe only I can hear
The coyote howls.
INVERSION
I lock the mudroom door
Behind me
Because my mind and me
Need some time alone.
Pulling all the hands down from the wall
I lay them on the bed
Then, starting with the coyote paw
I grow a tree of hands
Back on the wall
The wild furry paw
Part of a sturdy trunk.
I flip the hands upward
The fingers bent or straight
Curled, waving, pointing
But not at me anymore
Not pushing down
Grasping
But branches
Lifting
Growing
Into the open
Sky.
Genie’s hand tucks in
Like all the others.
There’s nothing special
Or magical
Or dangerous about it.
It’s just a hand
With a scar more visible
Than anyone else’s.
I throw away my own hand.
The dripping sponge doesn’t fit
Somehow
It’s like a storm cloud
In a blue sky.
Instead
I coat my hand in red lipstick
I never wear it
And press a print right on the wall.
At the top
Perched there
Like a vibrant tropical bird
Poised to fly
Away.
TRUST
Then I make a secret plan
A vow for grade twelve
I will become Genie’s best friend.
What could be more audacious than that?
Maybe together we could use our powers
For good instead of chaos and heartbreak.
I’m probably an idiot.
She’s screwed me over twice now.
But there’s something about the idea
Of friendship with Genie that intrigues me.
Like the wild, wiry coyote
The vibrant bird and me maybe
She lurks on the fringes of civilization
Waiting for someone to tame her
And after all, if I can make a coyote sing
Maybe
I
Can
Do
Anything.
Acknowledgments
Sometimes I think editing a book must be like psychoanalyzing someone. If this is true, then Sarah Harvey knows me better than almost anyone in the world. Without her gentleness and rigorousness, this book would never have been finished. Thanks go to her and everyone at Orca for being so fabulous. Thank you Aida Bardissi for invaluable help with Arabic language and culture. Thanks to Kris and Carolyn at the Carolyn Swayze Literary Agency for making it possible to complete (continue?) Ella’s story.
To my patient husband and tolerant daughter— I know it’s not easy to live with a writer in the house. Thank you for understanding. Mum and my beautiful sisters—I could not do this without your unconditional love.
GABRIELLE PRENDERGAST is the author of the acclaimed verse novel, Audacious (Orca). She holds an mfa in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is a writing teacher and a regular contributor to blogs about verse novels. Gabrielle lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and daughter. She can be found online at Angelhorn.com and VerseNovels.com.