Free Stunt by Claudia Dey Page B

was haunted by the ghost of his own father. We had a child buried in our backyard. Drowned. My father watched television. My mother turned to God. Our estate was auctioned off. We lived on a cherry orchard. It was cut down.
Que sera sera.
My mother was a witch and full of spells and she drove my father, an artist of some repute and much adored by all, mad, upon which he walked into the forest behind our home never to be seen again. That last part is true.’
    I know to never ask her again about her beginnings. So they sit, hot blisters on her skin, never to burst.
    Fingers stuck with rings, Mink directs me to her vanity table. She places me, pawn, in front of her, queen. Photographs and dried bouquets crowd the edges of the mirror. The hairbrush is cradled in her hands like it is made of sparrow bones. Will she beat me with it? No. She is trying to even out the attention she expends. She senses a deficit in me and she wants to correct this. Things should be symmetrical. Octagonal. Even love. So she picks me for the hour. She picks me for her riches. ‘You’re so small, Genie. Some might call it a disadvantage. Even a deformity.’ She pairs her face with mine. A rare bird on my shoulder, it could split apart into a swarm. ‘I wouldn’t. You have your father’s face. But you have good skin. My skin. Lit from within. Bet I could find you in the dark.’ She straightens. ‘Don’t look so sad. Sadness will wreck your face. It’ll freeze that way.’
    Mink touches my scalp. Her fingers are a pitchfork. She pushes my shoulders down. She lifts her one heirloom. It hovers above my head. I worry that it will break when it touches me and that her meagre history will be lost to her forever. It doesn’t.She brushes my hair. It is full of knots and tangles. But Mink ploughs through.
Tickety-boo.
    The first few pulls make me feel seasick, but as she goes on, I hope that she will never stop. With every stroke, she is whispering to me. Grand whispers made of fur and dynamite.
This is where you come from,
she is telling me.
The land of smooth hair. Welcome back, child. You have been away too long.
    I know this much. You told me. She was born here in Toronto and her parents named her Monique. They gave her away. You guess that her mother was probably young, even twelve, and lived in tenement housing and plunged needles into her arms. Mink is a nickname you gave to her. She is adopted by an older couple who dies before I am born. She is their only child. She goes to a private school. She wears a kilt and a blazer and a tie and she is on the swim team. The medley. She knows her lace, her silver and her seams. She goes to dance and piano classes. She has many trophies. Everything in her house is polished. At night, everything shines. When her mother drives through the city alone, she puts a dummy in their back seat to deter kidnappers. That is how rich they are. Everybody wants to take them for ransom money. Still, her parents worry about bills so they keep the house very cold. In the winter, Mink’s trophies gather frost. When Mink marries you, an orphan painter from northern Ontario who does not cut his toenails, never uses a napkin and misquotes ‘Kubla Khan’ (though you were very close to getting it right), her parents disown her. This is why she never speaks about them. This is why she did not go to their funerals. She needed a beast, one who would wrap her in a horse blanket and steal her from her front stoop.
    Mink never met her birth mother. According to you, she wanted to remain hidden. Does she live in a bunker and carve the name MONIQUE into the wall over and over again? Are there other women in other bunkers carving names, names that no longer match faces? Somewhere Mink has a mother covered in needles. Somewhere Mink has a mother who could pass for her sister.
    She steps back. She laughs. ‘You look like a peacock. Like peacock roadkill,’ she says. I open my eyes.