For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu Read Free Book Online Page A

life. They ignored their radio and the screams of real crimes.
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    Adele went to study at the University of Western Ontario, in another Ontario town that sprawled through strip malls and industrial lands, hardly different from the one she’d started in. Helen left a year later. She went to UCLA on a cocktail of scholarships and bursaries that just covered her first year.
    On a weekend, she drove by herself to Santa Monica. She bought a sandwich and sat on the Venice Beach boardwalk, laughing reedily at artists hawking sketches, musicians in the costumes of their subcultures thrusting tapes at passersby, the deluded parade of people who thought they’d
make it
one day. Helen went to California like a gold-rush miner, expecting to find a place where dreamers were ground underfoot by the hard-working, the wise. She would return wearing a suit of gold or she wouldn’t return at all.
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    We drove as a family to drop Adele off at the bus station. The buses picked up from a long strip like an airfield. She wore impractical traveling clothes: high heels and a cinched blazer, both in electric blue. Her hourglass figure shimmied away with the distinct ticktock of her shoes on the asphalt. Bonnie and I held hands as we watched her go. We were the same height, had the same baby plumpness, the same sweaty palms. At a certain point, we couldn’t tell if Adele was walking toward us or away.
    I have no memory of Helen’s leaving. If it was by plane, train, or bus. If we said goodbye. I have only memories of events that took place before she left and memories of events that took place after. It was as though when she left, she vanished in the night, unnoticed.

3
Thursdays
    E VERY DAY BUT THURSDAY , Bonnie and I came straight home from school. We did our homework at the kitchen table. Bonnie turned my threes into birds and sideways pairs of breasts. I watched the back of our mother as she shelled shrimp in the sink, her spine rigid and visible through a cotton shift. She inhaled sharply as she cut her finger on a spiky leg. She lifted her finger high enough for me to see the drop of red falling into the bowl of naked shrimp, and then she went on. Their briny gray juices got into her wound, and she went on. We would eat her blood for dinner.
    The doorbell rang. My mother jumped as though slapped awake. She went to open the door. “Yes?”
    Bonnie climbed over me to see who it was, and I followed. We strained to see past our mother.
    The woman at the door was pale and thin and seemed to quiver at the edges, like she was made of water. She had limp red hair. Her freckles were a handful of sand tossed in her face. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Lisa Becker. I live down the block.”
    My mother stayed mostly behind the door. “Did you just move in?”
    â€œNo, we’ve lived here for a few years.”
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    â€œWell, I, uh . . .” Mrs. Becker seemed to have forgotten why she had come. She glanced around for an explanation. Her gaze landed on the plastic box in her hands. “Oh, right. I heard you had a little boy and girl. I had some toys we don’t need, so I thought I’d give them to you.” She opened the container: a rag doll and some toy cars.
    â€œMy son is fourteen and my daughter is thirteen. But thank you.” My mother started to close the door. Something in Mrs. Becker’s face stopped her. “How old are your children?”
    â€œI don’t have any children.” She moved her head and hands constantly, like a bird, and it made it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. “I had a miscarriage a few years ago and my mother had already bought me the toys. You know—whether it was a boy or girl, we’d be ready.” She closed the container. “I guess they would have been more useful to you back then.”
    I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but I could feel the distaste radiating off her