Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,47

or not cruel enough or funny enough, because there is no small amount of irritation circling her presence in the group. Still, the girls persist in pursuing her for now, overlooking her oddness in favour of the cute, and she does what is required to keep the scales tipped her way. She fulfils their tasks.

Tracy tells her to walk up to another girl, a girl with a sweaty forehead and sweaters that cradle the fat rolls on her back, and say: “You should tell Jason Cowie you want to kiss him. He really likes you.” Ana does this thing, with a grim stomach, but for a few days, she does not have to worry. She is tolerated again.

And then, on a bright spring day, Tracy and Siobhan are behind Ana, two steps below ground at the front of the house, at the door of the basement apartment. She has never taken anyone here before, has not even unpacked her second suitcase. But she has succeeded in humiliating the fat girl, and this visit is her reward. A wave of worry washes over her as she takes the rainbow-striped shoelace around her neck and puts the key in the lock. The door gives, unlocked after all.

Inside, an empty ashtray on the coffee table sits next to two glasses, wet streaked with melting ice. Everything else is sparse. It’s not that they haven’t unpacked yet, it’s that they don’t have much to unpack. There’s a television on a wheeled stand and a beige corduroy couch, both belonging to the landlord. Empty walls. But her mother’s African violets line the windowsill. Any new apartment must have one sunny window where they can sit, rotated a quarter turn every other day. Her mother plucks the dead outer leaves, and uses a toothbrush to remove grains of soil from the fresh foliage. Once a week, Ana and her mother carry the pots into the bathroom where the hot shower is running, and the mirror lined from steam. “How are my babies?” murmurs her mother, and now Ana does this, too, as soon as she comes home, when her mother is off teaching her ESL night classes, and she hears the feet of the landlord’s family overhead: “How are my babies?” Ana murmurs.

“Who lives upstairs?” demands Tracy.

“I don’t know,” says Ana, high pitched. She is looking at her mother’s closed door, wondering if she’s awake, if she’ll come out and see her. The place is so small that if Ana turns her body here in the living room, she can see all of the little kitchen, and the time on the stove: 3:45.

“I gotta whiz,” says Siobhan.

“I’ll show you my room,” says Ana, but they only have to walk a few steps from the living room to the bedroom, banging into each other.

“Nice poster,” says Tracy, and Ana combs the comment for sarcasm. She looks at the poster with Tracy’s eyes: a pink satin toe shoe balancing on an egg. Ana has never taken ballet in her life. Her mother had a boyfriend last year who gave it to her for Christmas. He was a dancer once.

They are in her room long enough to complete this exchange before Ana notices the bundle under the blankets on her bed. She sees it heaving, face covered. Ana breathes quickly, spins on her axis, tries to lead Tracy out of the room. At that moment, a scream from down the hall, and Siobhan appears, jumping up and down, her arms flapping, a yell that sets off a yell in Tracy, and there they are, the three of them in the tiny hallway, two screaming and one frozen in anticipation.

“Your dad’s in the bathroom! He’s in the tub! He’s totally naked!” Siobhan’s eyes like planets.

Her dad? It can’t be; he’s gone, gone away. But a small part of Ana thinks Siobhan knows something she doesn’t, thinks: Maybe today, maybe – and shoves the girls to get past in the dollhouse dimensions of the basement apartment.

“Watch it!” shouts Siobhan, and Ana, for once, ignores a command, flinging her body through the open door to the bathroom. There is a man in the bathtub, but the bathtub is empty of water, and the man is not her father. He is older, with a thatch of grey pubic hair, a flaccid penis hanging to the side, an afterthought. His hand flops over the edge of the tub. He’s dead, thinks Ana, matter-of-factly, and she wonders if she should draw the shower curtain, like