Cricket in a Fist Read Free

with no bag, no intention to take a bus out of thecity and onto the highway. Minnie was exactly where I’d told her to stay, sitting on a grey chair with a big red backpack on her lap. She stood when she saw me, and it was plain that she was almost fourteen, poor Minnie, possessed by adolescence at its worst. Since I’d last seen her in Ottawa, six months earlier, her reddish hair had grown longer and she’d put on weight. She’d grown breasts — she had a woman’s body — and was wearing so much dark eye makeup it was visible from across the room. I saw her struggle not to smile as she stood and squared her shoulders. She came towards me past the rows of chairs and the pay phones, chin up, swinging her hips and pouting, catwalking in her yellow platform sneakers. I’d never seen her walk that way before. I recognized the blue and grey Adidas jacket that Dad used to wear.
    â€œMin.” I grabbed her and held on tight. She was bigger than me, more solid, and the shoes made her even taller. “What were you thinking?” She shifted uncomfortably in my arms, but relief made it difficult to let go. I released the back of her jacket from my fists and stepped away.
    â€œYou took out your nose ring,” she said. “You’re shorter than me. Why are you dressed like that?”
    â€œIt’s a Halloween costume.” I opened my jacket and showed her the dress. “The scarlet letter. You know? I’m a character from a book.”
    â€œOh.” She must have applied a fresh coat of lipstick while waiting, because her lips were dark, shiny purple. Her breath smelled like gum. It didn’t occur to her that I must be dressed up for a party, that I had cancelled my plans for her. Of course it didn’t; she was thirteen.
    I led Minnie down the escalator and looked up to see our reflection; behind me, she leaned on one foot as if she was trying to disappear into the escalator railing. She’d inherited Mama’s full features and Dad’s bulky height. Her nose and lips were fleshy, breasts full, lips full, limbs long. Away from the light of my apartment, I was pleased to see how good I looked in my costume. My hair was a vampish approximation of Victorian, my lips bright, shiny red. My skin looked pink and healthy and I was satisfyingly slight.My sister followed my gaze up to the mirrored ceiling and scowled. No one would have guessed that we were related.
    â€œI’m starving,” Minnie said, as we walked through the food court under Bay Street. After considering her options, she ordered Chinese food served from large metal tubs and waited for me to pay and choose a table. She used the disposable chopsticks easily and thoughtlessly, and I watched her eat half the food and drink a whole cup of pop. There was an amoebic blob of purplish red polish in the centre of each of her fingernails, and she still sucked her lips between bites — she would have been humiliated to know how childlike it made her look. Finally I asked, “So, what the hell happened?”
    â€œAre you going to rat me out?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here.”
    â€œDidn’t you think I’d come? Did you get my e-mail?” She’d been writing me daily, sending articles about J. Virginia Morgan and interviews with her. I had stopped reading her messages carefully, since they mostly consisted of rants about Lara’s mother, Bev, who’d moved in with them. “I guess you weren’t paying too much attention,” she said. “I wasn’t going to call you, by the way. But the person who was supposed to meet me at the bus station didn’t show up.”
    â€œWhat? Minnie? Who do you know in Toronto?”
    â€œYou know no one calls me that anymore. Jasmine.” Our mother had been six months pregnant when she had her ultrasound and decided on the name Emily Jasmine. As