Bestial Acts by Claude Lalumiere

BESTIAL ACTS

    Now, most of the time, Aydee has no reason to think of the man and the woman. Occasionally, she spots someone walking down the street who for some reason or other—a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, a frown—sparks an unpleasant memory. These are not unwelcome incidents. They remind her that the man and the woman are nothing but a memory to her, that she has succeeded in stepping into another life.
    Aydee: that was her secret name, the one she’d given herself. No-one knew of it, especially not the man and the woman who’d given her that other name when she was born.
    For the first ten years of her life, Aydee lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with that man and that woman. The man made good money. He had a job that required him to wear a suit and tie—he sold something or other, stocks, buildings, insurance, whatever. He shaved every morning, except for the moustache that was much too big for his small face.
    Most of the money from the man’s job went into business suits and cocaine. The man and the woman rarely slept, rarely ate, and rarely thought of food at all. Occasionally, the man or the woman would order pizza or bring home TV dinners. Even then, she wouldn’t get enough to satisfy her appetite.
    The woman had the habit of letting small change accumulate at the bottom of the cutlery drawer. Aydee would pilfer it in order to buy lunch at school. Aydee didn’t know if the woman noticed that Aydee took that money. Aydee was always careful to leave enough change in the drawer so that it would look undisturbed. Still, she sometimes had enough left over to buy a snack on the way back from school.
    Most weekends, the woman would get on the bus to see her mother and bring Aydee along. Aydee and the woman rarely exchanged even a word during these bus rides. Aydee passed the time reading off the street signs, like a countdown to armageddon.
    Fat and mean-mouthed, the woman’s mother chain-smoked so carelessly that she often had at least two cigarettes going. Every time they visited, the old crone would spew hatred from the moment they stepped in the door to when they left. She’d start with that “no good husband” of her daughter’s. Always the same litany: “Did you have to marry one of
them
? They look at you, and all they see is a slave, you know. That’s all they’ll ever see.” Then she moved on to immigrants, neighbours, family . . . she never ran out of spite. While the old crone ranted at the younger woman about this and that, she would serve Aydee platefuls of food: tomato-lettuce sandwiches, homemade cookies and doughnuts, fried eggs and bacon, chicken noodle soup, fruit salad, chicken with gravy, meat pie, apple crumble . . . There was cigarette ash in every mouthful. Still, Aydee ate. The old woman, chiding her daughter for Aydee’s thinness, would always insist that they take some food back with them—but that invariably angered the younger woman, who screamed back that she knew how to take care of the girl. It was an argument that the old woman always lost. Aydee knew the old woman didn’t really care about her. All she wanted was to dominate her daughter. Aydee was just the most convenient weapon. Every visit resulted in the same fight.
    On weekdays, while the man was away at his job, the woman would spend the whole day cleaning, working herself into white-hot rages at the dust and grime that constantly undermined her efforts at spotless cleanliness. She shouted at the dirt in the corners; she screamed at the smudges on the floors; she hissed at the mildew on the bathroom tiles. She could not abide the slightest smear or dust. The apartment reeked of disinfectant. The woman fuelled her fastidious campaigns with a constant stream of cocaine and jumbo bottles of cola.
    Aydee had taught herself to be meticulously clean and tidy. Thus, for better and for worse, Aydee was ignored, invisible.
    On her tenth birthday, like most nights, the man and the woman were sitting on the