the “scream” school of parenting

I’m thinking of starting a Losers’ Club at our school. I’ll be president, secretary and membership coordinator, all wrapped up in one. I’ll let in gangly, zit-speckled boys whose legs and arms have grown faster than their bodies (not to mention their brains), whose Adam’s apples bob like golf balls, whose voices moan like cellos one minute and screech like cats the next. You know the ones I mean. They lean against the gym walls at dances, making sarcastic, sexist remarks, and think that farts are funny. The females I accept will be like me, girls who hate their hair, who always feel they’ve chosen the wrong clothes for the day, who have no boyfriends, no boobs (maybe our first meeting will be about whether there’s a connection), no life.

Okay, I’m feeling down. Way down. I just came from a Drama Club meeting where I found out I didn’t get the part I auditioned for, again. This time it was Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. The drama teacher, Ms. Cummings, a dumpy, mousy-haired hag who wouldn’t know a good actor if she tripped over one, told me I missed the part because I hadn’t mastered the “Nawlins” accent. Really, that’s the way she says “New Orleans.” As if she’s ever been there. The real reason is because I’m small (Mom says “petite”) and skinny (Mom says “slender”) and my chest isn’t noticeable from the audience (Mom says nothing). Cummings rattled on for days before the auditions about how she’d be looking for actors who can develop sexual tension. “You have to drip sensuality,” she urged. “This is Nawlins. This is the South – hot jazz, torrid, sweaty nights, passion,” blah, blah, blah. I felt like saying, You try to pulse with sexual tension when you’re almost sixteen and you’ve got a body like a rake handle and you can’t remember the last time a boy gave you the eye.

Ah, who cares. It’s my birthday and I’m going home to get dinner ready. I hope Mom and Dad make it home on time.

I climb the curved staircase, trailing my hand on the oak bannister, pad down the corridor to my room and toss my backpack on my desk. My CDs have been put away, my clothes hung in the walk-in closet. The bed has been made up, my TV and VCR and stereo dusted. I hate this. The cleaning lady has been in here again. I’ve asked Mom a million times to tell Audrey to stay out of my room.

I close the door and strip down to my underwear, tossing my clothes over my shoulder onto the carpet – take that, Audrey. I stand before the full-length mirror. What a disaster. Wheat-coloured hair. A plain, thin-lipped face, like the “before” picture in a makeup ad. A body as straight and boring as a throughway.

“Naomi, I hate you! You’re so deliciously thin,” Gillian bubbled the other day as we were dressing for gym. “You could be a model!”

For what? I wanted to ask. A Feed the Children campaign? Gardening clothes?

In my shower, as the hot needles of water prickle my skin, I wonder if I’ll feel different tomorrow. Some of my friends make a big deal about turning sixteen, but to me the only positive thing is that I’ll be taking my learner’s permit test soon. Dad promised to buy me a car when I get my permanent licence next year. That’ll be great. I won’t be trapped in an empty house any more. If only I had somewhere interesting to go. Or someone to go with.

I put the three steaks I took out of the freezer this morning in some marinade and set them aside. I’m planning my birthday dinner for six o’clock, so I have time to make a tossed green salad and prepare three big potatoes to be nuked. To save time, I hung some bunting paper around the kitchen last night. Just as I’m taking off my apron, the phone rings.

“I’m running a bit late, darling, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be home on time,” Mom says, breathless as usual. I can tell from the hollow rumbling in the background that she’s calling from her car.

With my preparations done, I pop a can of cola and take it out onto the deck off the kitchen to enjoy the last warm rays of the sun. The planks smell of sawdust and resin and wood stain. Our house, situated on three partially wooded acres, is brand new, designed and built by my father. It’s very secluded – except for the decrepit houses behind us that were supposed to have been torn down a year ago to make way for a golf course. Dad and the ­country-­club developers have been in civil court time after time. The owner of the old houses wants the tenants out but they keep getting delays. Dad’s furious, calls them no-goods and welfare bums, taking him to court on free legal aid while he has to shell out real money for his lawyer. He ought to hire my mother, but she’s too busy. The view out the back of our house, which should have included stands of young trees, streams and emerald fairways, is still a rural slum.

There are two semidetached brick boxes. One stands empty, waiting for the wrecking ball. The second contains two families. Behind the deserted building a dilapidated shed slumps in the yard, along with an ancient Buick sagging on concrete blocks, two broken motorcycles with flat tires and, believe it or not, an asphalt-paving machine. The other yard is graced with a teetering pile of used lumber, two wheelbarrows without the wheels, a doghouse without a dog and a yellow snowmobile seamed with rust.

Three preschoolers, two boys and a girl, are playing in this yard, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs as they pull a wagonload of stones across the bare, hard-packed ground. “IT’S MY TURN!” “IS NOT!” “I’M TELLING!” – that sort of stuff. These kids learned to communicate from the adults in the house–there seem to be four or five of them – who are honour graduates of the “Scream” School of Parenting. They shout, holler, bellow, whoop and bawl at each other as if deafness was in their genes. Right now, for instance, the mother is sitting by the kitchen window. I can see the smoke from her cigarette curling up through the screen.

“YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!” she hollers.

“WE’RE NOT DOIN’ NOTHIN’.”

“I’M TELLIN’ YA, STOP FIGHTIN’! AND SHUT UP YER DAMN YELLIN’ OR I’M COMIN’ OUT THERE!”

“I DON’T CARE!”

She doesn’t come out. She’s too lazy to haul her carcass off her chair.

“I’M GONNA COUNT TO THREE, THEN I’M COMIN’ AFTER YIZ! ONE!”

The three brats ignore her.

“TWO!”

“THREE!” I almost yell, just to end the racket, but the kids continue to scream at each other until the girl takes a rock from the wagon and bounces it off the head of one of the boys. The other boy laughs. The screaming intensifies as I get up and step through the patio door and into the kitchen. So much for country relaxation.