AUDACIOUS

GABRIELLE PRENDERGAST

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Text copyright © 2013 Gabrielle Prendergast

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known

or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Prendergast, Gabrielle, author

Audacious / Gabrielle Prendergast.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4598-0530-9 (bound).--

ISBN 978-1-4598-0265-0 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0266-7 (epub)

         I. Title.

PS8631.R448A83 2013         jC813’.6        C2013-902108-6

C2013-902109-4

First published in the United States, 2013

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936062

Summary: Raphaelle’s involvement with a Muslim boy is only slightly less controversial

than her contribution to a student art show.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs

provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book

Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia

through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover design by Teresa Bubela

Cover artwork by Janice Kun

Author photo by Leonard Layton

www.orcabook.com

16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

For Alice

Contents

Chapter One: Sirens

Chapter Two: Dinosaurs

Chapter Three: Mandalas

Chapter Four: Portrait

Chapter Five: Martyrs

Chapter Six: Angels

Chapter Seven: Juxtaposition

Chapter Eight: Pornography

Chapter Nine: Books

Chapter Ten: Lies

Chapter Eleven: Snowflakes

Chapter Twelve: Black Ink

Chapter Thirteen: Chiffon

Chapter Fourteen: Tea

Chapter Fifteen: Truth

Acknowledgments

chapter one

SIRENS

PARTING

I guess

This is the part where I

Gather with all my girlfriends

To say goodbye.

The problem is that final scene

Transpired already

I’m not sure when or where.

They walked away, one by one

Looked back with a self-important glare,

Or maybe didn’t look back at all.

We don’t slump across my bed,

Wet red eyes and dramatic voices.

I can’t believe you’re moving. It’s so unfair.

I think I’ll just DIE!

Then paint each other’s toenails

Pink and blue with glitter

And blow on them until they dry.

Instead I fold jeans and hoodies

And a pink vintage dress I wore

Just

Once.

I throw away much more.

Garish 1960s skirts and shirts

At the last moment I snatch out the pink dress too.

I won’t wear it

Again.

It wafts into the charity pile, angel like,

For a girl from the East Side, I think.

I throw in the golden shoes too, and hope they fit her

Whoever she is.

Goodbye, I say to her imagined loveliness.

She waves back from her rain-sagging porch.

Goodbye.

THE LIST

Jill and Casey

So long ago I barely remember.

I left them in the sunshine

Under a papaya tree

Holding hands and crying

As the taxi backed down the driveway.

My heart closed like an envelope

In my bony chest.

Later, when I looked down from the plane

A long white cloud stretched across the horizon.

Megan

Of the lilting words

The church that wasn’t Catholic,

And was therefore scandalous.

We rang the bells

And then something unknown

Happened to her father’s job.

They went back to Wales.

Claire, brilliant Claire

We wrote songs about Ancient Egypt,

And cut our own hair.

Her parents divorced

And she got the one in Florida.

Jan, who I never called Janelle

She wanted a boyfriend

And when she got one

Had no time for me.

And the rest

Those girls in junior high

Who only pretended

To like me.

I don’t care.

I let them go, like the vintage pink dress.

At the new school

I’ll start again.

SIRENS: PART ONE

I will leave behind

The paralyzing nightmares

The smell of whiskey

The callous concrete

The sound of a locking door

My insolvent heart

So easily led

Seduced by their Siren smiles

Their swift promises.

Things not remembered

Entirely accurately

Not quite understood

The things I’d rather

Not memorialize in

A journey eastward

I discard, reject

Purge from my mind and soul so

My reinvention

Can begin.

chapter two

DINOSAURS

THE TRIP : PART ONE

OR HOW I LEARNED TO

APPRECIATE VLAD THE IMPALER

If I told of it in rhyme

I could make it seem sublime

The truth, however, was more like

Being skewered on a spike

Or a twelve-hour drive in a hot car with two teenage

Girls, arguing parents and a radio that doesn’t work.

THE HOTEL

Read this

Someone wrote on the Gideon Bible.

It will change your life.

That may be, I write in reply,

And mine is a life

That needs changing,

But I don’t have the time.

Moments later, I take it out again and sign my name

Raphaelle

A Bible autographed by an angel

Has got to be worth something.

DINOSAURS

These are the reasons we couldn’t make the trip in June:

Michaela’s baseball

Michaela’s grade-eight graduation trip

Michaela’s friend asked her to stay for a week

On the island.

Michaela wanted to go to Bible camp

Michaela had to do math at summer school

She’s not stupid, Mom says,

Just not much good with numbers.

She’s quite good with telephone numbers, I say.

Michaela wanted to go to the end-of–summer-school party

Michaela wanted to throw an end-of-summer-school party

Michaela had to repeat the summer-school exam

The more I think about it

The more inclined I am to categorically declare

This is all Michaela’s fault.

By the way, this was an ocean once

Writhing with fish and trilobites.

Dinosaurs splooshed around in marshy lagoons

And ate palm fronds

Or each other.

Now it’s dust and sand, dry and hot.

The dinosaurs left this place 65 million years ago

And never came back

I can’t say I blame them.

THE TRIP: PART TWO

Beyond the dinosaurs there is nothing to see.

Dad’s jokes about cruise control

Make Mom’s lips pinch.

I can see her in the rearview

Staring forward, squinting in the golden light.

But as the land flattens out, I am suddenly free.

A giant dome of blue sky above us, my soul

Expands to fill up every empty open inch

No mountains or trees or oil rigs,

The land feels new

Clean, uncluttered.

Like a shaved head,

Shiny and bright.

What are you grinning about? Michaela groans

I feel like we’ve landed on the moon.

I can tell Mom agrees

But Dad’s fingers tap the steering wheel

He grins too, sunglasses on, and begins to whistle

Delighting, I alone understand, in all the unknowns.

What’s that plant, he says that afternoon

The purple flower makes Michaela sneeze

And retreat to the car, whining

While we finish our meal.

I savor that purple flower,

And its name I know:

Prairie thistle.

NEW HOUSE

Okay, first let me say: It’s huge.

Michaela and I try to count the rooms,

But lose track at twelve.

Our old bungalow eight blocks from the beach,

The one with the blackberry winding up the porch,

The cracked path,

The tiny tiled second bath that no one wanted to use?

It could fit in the three-car garage.

Heated garage, my father says, ominously.

There’s a suite—not like our old suite,

Low-ceilinged cave

With dewy walls and unknown smells—

A real suite, bright high windows and its own patio.

Mortgage free, Dad says, no more tenants.

Mom pretends not to be pleased.

The girls will fight, she says.

But Michaela is already moving in

Picturing slumber parties, pink-pajama frolics

Late nights of gossiping

Can I have my own phone?

And boys, eventually, one day

Silently, stealthily,

Sliding the screen door closed

And stealing,

Slick and satisfied,

Into the night.

I don’t mind. I’ve picked my room.

A gabled loft above the attached garage.

The bonus room.

It has its own narrow staircase,

With a door at the bottom.

We could put a bathroom up here

Dad says about a giant closet.

Yes, please, I say.

Even Mom laughs.

There’s a window, facing east.

I can see the