MIKE Martell’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at little Roddy Kostenko. Mike had a good six inches on Roddy. He was taller and chubbier than the small-framed boy. He leaned over Roddy and scowled. His hair was greasy and he wore a dirty brown vest. “If you don’t bring me Bettina’s panties by tomorrow, you’re dead meat, Stinko!”
Mike was never without his lanky cohort Eddie Wallace. The second boy’s eyes were bits of coal. “Yeah, Stinko,” he added, his reedy voice a lurid taunt. “No sniffing them, either.”
Mike lunged forward, and with both hands, shoved Roddy, knocking him off his feet. Just as he splashed into the muddy puddle, Roddy woke to the sound of his mother’s entreating voice.
Roddy turned to see his mother’s head poking in through his bedroom door. “Get up and have a shower, Roderick. You don’t want to be late for school, do you?”
Roddy shook himself from slumber, consciousness seeping in like a wet blanket tossed over him. “Yes, mom… no, mom.” The opposite was true. No, he didn’t want to have a shower, and yes, he did want to be late for school. Maybe starting at a new school was easy for someone else, some ideal boy who made friends with everyone he met. But it never got any easier for Roddy. So far, entering a new school in a new city more than half way through the academic year had felt like a new record low. He pulled himself to his feet and faked making his bed; only bothering to straighten the top sheet, hoping his mom wouldn’t notice the misshapen lumps underneath. She would, like always—but he’d be gone by then.
He kicked the book at his feet—a Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia (the letter P), which he’d read in bed the night before. It ricocheted off a box in the corner of the room, sending up dust and filling the air with the warm smell of stale cardboard. He still hadn’t unpacked everything though they’d been in the townhouse for a month.
“Hurry up, Rod! I need to get your little sister in and out of the tub before Grandma and Papa get here.”
Roddy grabbed yesterday’s pants, underwear and socks, and a clean brown t-shirt, his favourite. He trudged into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He let the cold water run into the tub without getting in. He took his time putting his clothes on, and splashed warm water from the sink tap onto his face. He soaked his short, dark hair; his mom had cut it the night before. He ran a bar of soap over his cheeks and forehead and rubbed the white bubbles across his face, then quickly rinsed before bending down to turn off the water running into the tub. His wet hair and the smell of soap on his face would be enough to convince his mom he’d bathed. Showers and baths made him feel like he was drowning; he avoided them.
Roddy meandered toward the kitchen, where his mom had a bowl of cereal waiting for him. And it was Golden Grahams, his very favourite. Most days, he was allowed healthy cereals—a choice between Special K or Cheerios, lest he be forced into something gross like All Bran. They got Alpen sometimes, too—but only when it was on sale. It tasted weird anyway.
“C’mere and give me a hug, baby. Happy birthday!”
Roddy sank into his mother’s waiting arms, jiggling around for a moment when one of her blond curls tickled the side of his face. He was so wound up about Mike and Eddie’s ominous warning that he’d forgotten his own birthday. Not that there had been any big plans, just Grandma and Papa driving up to Burlington. Roddy hadn’t had a birthday party since he was five.
Today he turned nine. For the past couple years, his mom—and his dad, before he was switched to the late shift at the Ford plant—had taken him and a friend to the fast-food restaurant of his choice for his birthday. But they’d only lived here for three weeks—he didn’t have any friends yet. Burlington was different from St. Catharines, the town where he’d grown up. Kids were tougher.
He munched his Golden Grahams, relishing their distinctive honey flavour. It was what his mom called “an acquired taste.” His little sister Olive sat silent in her high chair, slowly lifting her spoon and then placing it back down in her empty bowl. Her autism made her act that way. His mother stood at the kitchen sink scrubbing a pot; when she was done, she’d feed Olive.
Roddy picked up his wooden cereal bowl and drank the remaining milk, then brought the bowl over to his mom at the sink. She leaned down to kiss his cheek.
“Have a great day, kiddo,” she said with a smile. Her voice was gentle, and quiet, so as not to disturb Roddy’s dad, who’d just gotten to sleep in their nearby bedroom. If Dad wasn’t in there, Roddy thought, he could have snuck in and grabbed a pair of his mom’s underwear to give Mike instead of those of the notorious Bettina Inck—or Bettina Ick, as most of the other kids called her.
• • •
Karen the crossing guard loomed over him, grinning as usual. Roddy suspected Karen would give him her panties if he asked. She was abnormally friendly, like a drunk circus clown, always telling Roddy jokes he didn’t understand and strange stories about her and her husband. Roddy had seen Karen’s husband once, on his first day of school when Karen was just starting her shift. They looked a lot alike; both had that same peculiar smile.
“Hey there, little man!”
“Hi, Karen.” As usual, he responded with reserve.
“Did you hear the one about Star Trek and toilet paper, Roddy?”
“You told me yesterday. They circle Uranus, looking for Klingons.”
The light changed and she led him across Hampton Heath. The schoolyard was three short blocks away on Croydon Road. Roddy had no books to carry—he’d finished all his homework in class before the bell rang.
Roddy ignored Karen’s spirited farewell wave and kept going up the street, his steps unhurried in the cool spring morning. A girl with blond ringlets and a green dress had crossed the street at the same time. With each slow step he took, the gap between them widened. Roddy counted the number of steps it took to reach the schoolyard. The less time to kill in the playground before the morning bell rang, the better. The screech of nearby brakes startled Roddy and he stopped counting.
He glanced over at the car as it lurched forward again. A red Volkswagen driven by a man with slick black hair and a moustache. There were three little girls in the back seat. One of them picked her nose with gusto, staring out the window at Roddy. The smallest wore a bathing suit.
Elizabeth Gardens Public School was an unremarkable shoebox of faded yellow brick, just like Roddy’s last school. As he turned the corner onto Croydon and it came into view, a turbulent splash of noise turned into more specific schoolyard sounds with each step forward. A young girl screamed in defeat as another got dangerously close in a game of tag. The thud of a basketball smacked the tarmac. A little kid bawled after falling off the roundabout. The whizzing hiss of skipped ropes. Roddy passed the jumping girls and entered the schoolyard.
His approach of the main yard was interrupted by the jangle of the morning bell. Roddy made his way to the back door where the grade threes and fours lined up next to Mrs. Krevaziuk. The redheaded recess monitor wore a long navy blue dress. He measured his pace so he would blend into the middle of the queue. The tougher kids usually gathered at the end of the line. Taking his place, he glanced back but didn’t see Mike Martell.
Once the line-up was orderly enough to satisfy the teacher, students began to file in the twin metal doors and ascend the staircase to the second floor. Roddy had gotten used to the pushing and shoving, and knew not to take it personally. At the top of the stairs, he veered left and marched across the cardboard-coloured carpet toward Mrs. Giroux’s pod.
Elizabeth Gardens didn’t have separate rooms for each class; it had vast, open-concept floors divided into “pods.” And they didn’t have lockers; they had rubber tubs to store books in between classes. Instead of “O Canada” every morning they played “God Save The Queen.” And they said a version of the Lord’s Prayer with three extra lines added to the end.
Roddy made his way to his seat near the front. Mrs. Giroux thumbed the attendance list, strumming her emerald-green fingernails on her desktop. Her stringy blonde hair was pulled tightly forward into a little round ball at the top of her head. Her mustard-brown dress had a repeating pattern of black clubs and diamonds, like a deck of cards fallen into a jar of peanut butter.
Roddy glanced around and saw that Mike’s seat at the back was empty. Mrs. Giroux reminded the class about the swim trip that afternoon for all grade fours and fives. Roddy didn’t know how to swim well, and thoughts of the Olympic-sized pool at the Centennial Aquatic Centre up the street made him anxious. Still, his trunks were in his tub and his mom had signed the consent form. There was no way out of it.
Roddy tuned out Mrs. Giroux’s announcements. He realized Bettina Inck, who was in grade five, would be attending the swim trip. He still had no idea how to ask a girl for her underwear.
The bell rang after fifteen minutes and it was time to move from homeroom to Mr. Rozinski’s pod for science. The pods were separated by mobile green chalkboards with a large gap through which a river of pupils streamed from one class to the other. Roddy walked over the storage tubs, grabbed his science books, and headed to class.
Mike Martell stood in the gap between the pods, wearing that same dirty vest as he had in Roddy’s dream. He wore it most days, actually. Roddy veered far to the right and kept walking as if nothing were wrong, though anyone could see his pace was unnaturally brisk. A buffer of one or two kids separated him from Mike.
Mike stood still. He didn’t shake his fist. He didn’t say a thing. He stared directly at Roddy from the second he came into view until the moment he took his seat in Rozinski’s science class.
Roddy pretended not to see him, though out of the corner of his eye, it looked as if the boy’s lip was swollen. Roddy couldn’t imagine anyone in school crazy enough to take Mike on in a fight.
The lesson was about the growth stages of a butterfly, complete with a slide presentation on goatweed larva. They looked like hairy, stretched-out moles that throbbed. Roddy felt a spitball hit the back of his head during the slideshow. He ignored it. He knew it was Aamir who sat three seats behind him. Aamir used to get picked on by Mike and the others because of his Pakistani accent. Attention was drawn away from him when the new kid arrived, and he wanted to keep things that way. But Aamir wasn’t a very dedicated harasser. With someone like that, Roddy had learned it was best not to give them any kind of reaction. After three spitballs, including one Roddy suspected was still stuck in his hair, the onslaught ended.
The combination of the gross larva visuals and someone nearby farting a bunch of times made Roddy feel sick to his stomach. The class ended and he headed back to homeroom to drop off his book, breathing through his mouth to avoid the smell.
He stood by the tubs and felt a set of fingers press down hard and pinch his shoulder. Mike’s lips were an inch away from his ear. His breath was funny. Roddy thought the odour was a cigarette, though he found that hard to believe.
“Got the fucking underwear yet?”
Roddy shook his head.
“Get them for me. I don’t care if you have to rip them off her.”
Roddy’s shoulder twitched under the pressure. Mike squeezed harder and Roddy winced.
“Got it?”
He nodded. Mike shoved him to the ground and walked away. Other kids stepped around his body.
Time for recess. At the edge of Mrs. Krevaziuk’s class, Roddy turned right instead of left. He headed for the farthest set of stairs. Exiting the building from the grade-two doors meant he could avoid Mike and Eddie if they were waiting for him outside the normal door.
Bettina sat in the playground by the fence reading. Roddy took a deep breath, and walked toward her mass of black curls.
Bettina wore round-rimmed glasses with large frames, and a simple maroon-coloured dress that looked like it hadn’t been bought in a store. Roddy wondered if her mother had sewn it herself—or maybe even her grandmother. Then he remembered the rumours. Bettina’s mother had taken her own life when the girl was five years old. She lived alone with her dad in a small house, in the poor neighbourhood a dozen blocks east of his own family’s rented townhouse on Lakeshore.
As he approached, he saw her book was illustrated with colour pictures of flags of the world. He’d signed the same book out of the school library in St. Catharines the year before. Bettina studied the book in silence. Roddy leaned over.
“That’s Martinique,” he said, looking at the periwinkle flag on the page in front of her. It looked like the flag of Quebec except instead of fleurs-de-lys, it featured the white outline of a coiled-up snake in each of the four corners.
“It’s not an official national flag,” she replied without looking up. “Martinique is considered a part of France.”
Roddy nodded, impressed. Bettina gestured for him to sit. He crouched beside her, bolstering himself with one hand on the grey chain-link fence. The book was ordered by region. Bettina turned several pages without saying a word, moving from the Caribbean over to Asia. She leafed past the page for Nepal—whose unusually shaped flag was Roddy’s favourite — but stopped at the sight of the flag of Bhutan. A white dragon straddled a diagonal line along the centre of the banner, with a pale yellow triangle above it and an earth-brown one below.
“It looks like it’s swimming between a sea of pee and an ocean of poo.”
“Um,” Roddy replied. Actually the colours had something to do with the Buddhist religion and the local monarchy, but he didn’t remember the details. Maybe it wouldn’t be hard to ask her after all. Bettina was smart—but also pretty weird.
“Are you going to the Aquatic Centre after lunch?”
Bettina flinched. “Yes. I hate swimming though. I hate that place.”
Roddy swallowed. “Are you wearing underwear?”
Bettina closed the book and looked at him.
“Will you lend them to me?”
Bettina continued to stare. Her face was placid; her eyes empty pools of blue.
“If I don’t give them to Mike Martell he says he’ll beat the crap out of me.”
Bettina frowned at the mention of the bully’s name. “Mike lives next door to me. I don’t like him.” The recess bell rang and she stood up.
“Will you lend them to me?” Roddy repeated, desperation creeping in.
“You can keep them.” She turned toward the school doors. “After lunch,” she added, walking toward the building while other kids around her ran in the same direction.
• • •
Roddy walked back to school after lunch enjoying the residual taste of fried Spam and Velveeta sandwiches.
Grandma and Papa had arrived at the townhouse. Grandma played cards with Roddy’s mom, while Olive spun a plastic plate on the linoleum floor. They talked about where to go for dinner that night, and Roddy picked Arby’s. He liked roast-beef sandwiches, as long as they made him one without mustard.
His grandfather napped on the living room couch, a wrestling match blaring on the TV a few feet away. Mom gave Roddy a special cupcake, with tiny silver candied balls sprinkled all over the vanilla icing. Time to go back to school.
Karen the crossing-guard tried to tell him another joke—something about a priest, a phone booth and a cantaloupe—but Roddy just nodded politely. She was wearing lipstick the same colour as her orange crossing-guard vest.
The bus waited in front of the school. Roddy entered the building to get the bag with his swim trunks out of his tub. He stopped in the boys’ room on the way back outside to take a pee. The empty bathroom had three floor-length urinals and a large round fountain-style wash basin with a foot pedal, designed to allow multiple boys to stand around it and wash their hands at the same time. Roddy entered a stall and locked it behind him.
As he was finishing, he heard the squeak of the washroom door. He hoped it wasn’t strange old Mr. Hyder. The rotund Hungarian janitor once came into the room and heard Roddy urinating into the toilet. He banged on the door and told the boy he needed to use a urinal “to do that.” He hadn’t tried to peek or anything, and had left the room once he was satisfied Roddy was peeing the right way for a boy. But still, the experience unnerved Roddy. Maybe it was outside of Mr. Hyder’s sense of the order of things, but Roddy liked a bit more privacy.
He heard footsteps and recognized a pair of unwelcome voices. One of them was high and sounded like a whiney girl.
“Ya think he’s gonna do it?” said Eddie.
Roddy heard a cough and the sound of unzipped flies, followed by noisy streams of urine. He lifted his feet from the ground so his shoes wouldn’t be visible in the gap under the stall door.
“He better.” Mike’s reply was low and gruff. After a pause, he added, “If I don’t bring them home tonight, my dad’s gonna give me a lot more than a fat lip.”
Roddy held his breath. Rezips followed by the flushing of urinals.
“We’ll scare him. Then he’ll do whatever we say. If he was here right now, I’d flush his head down the toilet!” One of the boys let out an ugly hyena laugh.
“Why bother? We’ll just tell him that’s what we’re going to do. That should be enough. Besides, he could just hold his breath while the toilet flushed. Getting your head flushed isn’t really that scary.”
Neither boy washed his hands. Roddy listened to the slow squeak of the door closing.
• • •
The swimming pool was the size of a car lot. Roddy felt small. His eyes stung from chlorine in the overheated, steamy air. He wiped sweat from his forehead and turned toward the man walking up to the assembled kids.
He didn’t look that old to Roddy, maybe the same age as his own dad—but the swim coach had wrinkled skin that was crosshatched like a meat pie. Roddy wondered if that’s what happened if you lived underwater.
The coach wore a bright red Polo shirt and shorts the colour of a brown-paper bag. A large silver whistle dangled around his neck on a white cord. He shook the hand of the group’s hairy chaperone, burly Mr. Rozinski, and then turned to face them.
“My name,” he pronounced slowly in accented English, “is Sergei Hamatov. Under my tutelage, you can become a championship swimmer.” The coach intoned at length about his glory days coaching championship swimmers decades ago. He noted with pride that the summer Olympics were going to be in Moscow next year. Sergei offered his predictions about the success of one of Russia’s top swimmers, who also happened to be named Sergei. He pointed this out with obvious pleasure.
Roddy stopped listening. He’d been embarrassed to undress in the change room in front of the other guys. A boy named Scott who sat next to him had wrapped his towel around his waist and then changed into his swim trunks underneath the towel. Relieved, Roddy did the same. Mike and then Eddie had taken all their clothes off, Mike loudly proclaiming “We’re all men here.” Roddy had looked away.
The first fifteen minutes were spent dividing the class into two groups based on ability. Since Roddy only knew how to dogpaddle, he ended up in the Tadpole group. He didn’t know any of them, but they all got along, happy to be in the shallowest part of the pool. Olga, the coach’s assistant, had severe features but a gentle voice. She told the half-dozen boys and girls in Roddy’s group their simple goal was get over their fear of the water.
“Let your worries wash away,” she said in accented English. “Water is your friend.”
Roddy closed his eyes and allowed himself to float in the pool. He tuned out the splashes and noisy shouts from the deep end, where advanced swimmers received diving instructions from Sergei.
Then he felt a hand cover his face and another grab his chest, pulling him underwater. Panicked, he thrashed around to free himself, but the grip on his chest was too tight. A fat belly pressed up against his back. His trunks were yanked down and he felt a spasm of pain as someone in front of him kneed him in the crotch. His bare testicles ached, and a yell filled his mouth with water. He tried to open his eyes but the chlorine stung too much.
As soon as it started, it was over. All the hands let go and he splashed to the surface coughing and gasping for air. Roddy opened his eyes, pulling his trunks back up. Olga stood at the other end of the pool talking to Sergei. Feet away, Eddie Wallace snickered. Mike Martell hovered right in front of him, leering. Without thinking, Roddy reached forward and launched his fist at Mike’s face. Mike shook from the blow but didn’t make a sound. He looked surprised. The other Tadpoles stared and blinked.
Roddy adjusted his trunks and dogpaddled to the nearest ladder out of the pool. He looked at the round clock on the wall; the swim class was almost over. With rubbery legs, he headed for the change room. As he approached the door, he noticed Bettina leave the pool as well.
In the empty change room, Roddy didn’t bother hiding his nakedness under a towel as he changed back into his shorts and T-shirt. He’d never hit anyone before, except for slapping Olive once when they were both small.
• • •
As Roddy exited the change room, Bettina stood outside. She too had changed quickly, replacing a flowered bathing suit with the plain maroon dress she had on earlier.
She grabbed his hand and led him to the right.
“We’d better be quick,” she said, leading him to an unmarked door in between the boys and girls change rooms. She turned the brass knob and opened it. Roddy hesitated a second and she gave him a gentle push, urging him inward.
“We don’t have much time.”
They were in a small storage closet with a cement floor, blue-tiled walls and a lightbulb over their heads with a drawstring attached. It reeked of soap, evoking the feeling of getting your mouth washed out for doing something wrong. Roddy felt a queasy sensation in his belly like he was still in the pool.
Wooden shelves held gallon bottles of pink industrial liquid soap and dozens of stacked rolls of Scott toilet paper sealed individually in wax paper. Near the door, there was a padlock and a rusty outsized key ring. Roddy saw the door had a latch for the padlock. On one wall, a poster labeled “Penthouse: Miss April” featured a nude blonde woman. She had hair between her legs that was a different colour from that on her head.
Roddy looked away. He’d never seen an adult undressed before except his dad in the bathroom shower once, by accident. He’d never seen a naked girl.
There was barely enough room for the two of them in the closet; only a few inches separated them. Roddy was nervous but Bettina spoke plainly.
“I’ll need to wear your underwear if I give you mine.”
They both turned away from one another. Roddy unbuttoned rapidly and took off his shorts, removed his green Hanes and pulled his shorts back up. He stared at his grey running shoes the whole time. Her dress-clad bum brushed against his for a quick moment as she bent down to take her panties off. Roddy trembled with nerves and shame. His blush deepened and he stepped aside an inch to give her more room.
“How did you know to come here?” Roddy asked, still facing the wall.
“I’ve been in here before.”
They turned to face one another and Bettina held her plain white panties out to him. Roddy picked them up by the waistband. It didn’t feel right to touch a girl’s underwear. He wanted to get the panties out of sight. He began to stuff them into his back pocket when the door opened from outside.
There stood Sergei Hamatov. Behind him were all the kids from class: dressed, in their shoes, plastic bags or knapsacks in hand, ready to board the bus back for school.
Sergei clutched the doorknob in one barnacled hand while the other grabbed at the whistle dangling around his neck. “What are you children doing in here?” he stuttered.
“You children?” Bettina stepped forward. “You know my name is Bettina. We live on the same street. So does he,” she added, pointing to Mike Martell, whose face cast downward. The children standing nearest Mike stepped away.
Bettina turned to Roddy. “Sergei and Mike’s dad are friends.”
Roddy walked up to Mike. In his outstretched hand were Bettina’s panties.
“You said you’d flush my head down the toilet if I didn’t get you these.” He thrust the cotton pair up at Mike’s face but the bigger boy made no attempt to take them.
“You imbecile!” Hamatov shouted at Mike. His whistle pendant shook. “Why would you bother this innocent girl?” He lunged forward and smacked the boy’s face, leaving a big red mark.
“We’re going to find your teacher and have a talk about this. And with your Dad!”
At that, Mike began to blubber out loud. The Tadpoles stared and blinked as Mike started to cry. He shook and tears flooded his cheeks. No one else moved. The water dripped from his face onto his vest, mixing with specks of dirt, streaking them.
Sergei grabbed the wet boy’s neck and jerked him back to the change room. The beet-faced Russian turned to face the rest of the class. “Stay here and wait!” He kicked open the change-room door and pushed Mike inside.
Roddy turned to Bettina. “Let’s go,” he said. He headed down the corridor toward the Aquatic Centre’s front entrance, and she followed quickly, bending down discreetly to pick up her underwear. As she caught up with Roddy, she put them in his back pocket.
The front doors had windows reinforced with a hatch of thin metal wires, embedded in the glass like translucent graph paper. Roddy pushed them open and they both stepped out. It had rained since they were in swim class, and the grass and sidewalk were both damp.
Roddy turned to Bettina.
“It’s my birthday. Do you want to come over? We’re going to Arby’s for supper.”
Bettina nodded. They passed the school bus and walked south. Bettina took Roddy’s hand. He squeezed it. Together, they headed for home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shawn Syms’ short stories, journalism, poetry, criticism and other writing have been published over the past 25 years in more than 50 publications. His debut story collection, NOTHING LOOKS FAMILIAR was published in 2014 by Arsenal Pulp Press) A Journey Prize finalist, he is also the editor of Friend. Follow. Text. #storiesFromLivingOnline (Enfield & Wizenty, 2013).
LF #003 © Shawn Syms. Published by Little Fiction | Big Truths, December 2011.
