Southern Ontario The Fifties
CHAPTER
TWO LOOK ALIKES
Old Man McTavish had watered his front
lawn that morning so Joshua and Bill sat down on the curb in front of the
McTavish house. The hot afternoon sun
was not so hot near the wet grass. And
it smelled good.
Piya came along and sat with them. She looked up at Old Man McTavish’s house
and frowned. "Won’t he yell if we
sit here?"
"Naw," said Bill. "He’s
gone to do lawn bowling." Bill’s
mother knew everyone and everything in the neighbourhood and Bill liked to hear
his mother talk so he sort of knew everything too.
"Oh," said Piya and
relaxed. She began to dig bits of dirt
out of the cracks in the curb and flick them into the road. She wanted to see how far she could toss
them.
The boys were tiddly-winking stones into the
grating in the gutter.
Ingrid and Sam and John came racing around
the corner and down the block. They
fell into place along the curb.
"We wondered where you were,"
Ingrid gasped in her breathless voice. "We thought you were at the playground."
She used the ends of her incredibly long
braids to wipe the dampness off her forehead.
John used his hands to make a teeter
totter and to make a swing swing. Then
he slid down a slide and everyone slid with him. Ingrid wondered how John felt to be able to make such pictures
just using his hands. She wondered if
he knew how well he could do it. She
would ask Lucy about this when she got the chance. No use asking John. He
was just a boy.
Bill was watching in fascination as
well. "Too hot to slide," he
said when he had slid down a few times. "Where are – oh, here they come."
The twins, Ellen and Lucy, came out from
the walkway across the street. They
squeezed onto the curb.
"This is a six-person seating
place," hollered Sam, "So just squash off!"
Joshua started to move down to make room
but the twins both stood up at exactly the same time.
"Why can’t we be proper twins?"
Lucy asked so sadly. "We think together and sometimes we move
together. But we don’t look at all
alike."
Ellen looked sad as well. Sam pushed Piya off the curb so Ellen and
Lucy could sit down again. Piya punched
Sam and started for home but Bill grabbed her arm and sat her down on the other
side of him and Ingrid made a funny face at her to make her giggle.
Joshua wriggled his glasses up and down
his nose. "Stand together,"
he ordered. "You two, I
mean," he said pointing at the twins. Ellen looked curious and moved to stand closer beside Lucy but Lucy
frowned at Joshua’s bossy voice.
"Let’s see how you look side by
side," Joshua continued.
The gang looked at the twins. The twins looked at the gang. Then the twins looked at each other.
"See," complained Lucy. "We are totally different. People don’t even think we are sisters let
alone twins."
"I’ve got an idea," said
Ingrid. "Ellen, you stand on your
tiptoes a bit, yes, like that. Lucy,
you scrunch down a bit. There, now
you’re the same height."
The twins looked at each other.
"Hey, I’m looking right in your
eyes,"
"Hey, I’m looking right in your
eyes," they said together.
"All wrong! All wrong!" Sam shouted. Everyone looked at him. "You may be the same height but you sound completely different. Lucy, you got to talk lower down, like this,
and Ellen, you got to talk higher."
"How’s this, is this better?"
Lucy asked, deeper, while Ellen was saying, "Do you mean like this?"
in a lighter voice.
"Great!" Sam yelled and Piya
giggled and John, who thought the whole thing silly, rolled his eyes and made
his playground motions.
The twins walked around in their new
heights practicing their new voices while the gang watched and criticized.
"You’ve got to change your eye
colour," Bill said after staring at them with his eyes half closed and
being thoughtful. "Ellen has such
blue eyes and Lucy’s are much darker."
"You can’t change eye colour,"
said Piya. "I know because my
doctor aunt said I couldn’t when I told her I wanted green eyes."
"Sunglasses," Sam
screeched. "I’ll get some."
He raced home, threw himself upstairs,
grabbed a pair of sunglasses from his eldest sister’s dresser, dashed
downstairs again and into the kitchen, rummaged around in the drawer in the
phone table and found another pair.
As he was zooming out the back door one of
his brothers was coming in.
"Hey, take it easy," he said to
Sam. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Sam hollered and
raced madly back to the gang.
"Here!" he screamed, giving each
twin a pair of the glasses.
"The glasses should match," said
Piya. John rolled his eyes and climbed
the monkey bars at the playground. He
was doing such a good imitation with his hands of going up and up that Bill
almost told him to be careful.
The sunglasses did not match. Ellen’s were orange with black stripes. Lucy’s were plain white.
"At least their eyes look the same
now," Sam said loudly. "You
can’t really see them at all. Hey,
where’s Ingrid?"
"Here I am," she panted, running
up to them from along the block. "I got it." She waved
a bag at them.
"What is it?" Sam demanded.
"Dye. My mom uses it on her rugs. I got a dark one for Ellen and a light one for Lucy. If their skin was closer in colour it would
be a huge improvement." Her mother
was always talking about “huge improvements” of one sort or the other but
changing skin colour had not been one of them as far as Ingrid could recall.
She opened the bag and took out two jars.
"It’s powder," Bill said.
"Oh, I forgot," groaned Ingrid,
hitting her hand against her head. "You have to mix it with water."
"Ohhhhh," everyone said in a
disappointed voice, except for John. Piya giggled but that was what she did no matter how she felt.
Joshua gave a long sigh and a huge roll of
his head and as he did so he noticed a pool of water on the sidewalk that was
left over from Old Man McTavish’s lawn watering.
"Water!" he whooped and
surprised even Sam. They all knelt
around the puddle, even John. He was
becoming interested in the whole thing. Besides, the playground was hot.
"Don’t push me," Piya said to
Sam. Joshua was going to push Sam out
of the way but decided to make room for everyone instead. "Spread out," he told them. And they did. Then everyone fit around the puddle.
Ingrid opened the lighter powder and
poured a bit on the water.
"Here’s a stick," John
offered. "Can I mix it?"
"Sure."
The water turned pinkish. Ingrid put more powder in. John stirred. The water got pinker and quite thick.
"Perfect," announced
Ingrid. "Now, what will I put it
on with?" Just as she said this
one of her braids fell off her shoulder and dropped into the pink liquid.
"A brush, a brush!" shouted Sam.
"I guess it is now," Ingrid said
with a shrug and a laugh.
She looked at Lucy. "What should I do
first? Your face?"
Lucy looked at the pink goop. "Maybe my hands first," she
suggested. "Then I can see them
turn colour."
"Okay." Ingrid dipped her braid in the dye and
brushed it over the backs of Lucy’s hands. It went on like paste."
"Awfully pink," said Joshua. He
personally thought it was exactly the colour of some pigs he had seen once at
the Saturday Market but he decided not to mention this.
"It will be fine when it dries,"
Ingrid assured him.
When she had covered the backs of Lucy’s
hands she leaned back onto the grass. "Oooooh, it’s wet," she said. Then she had an idea. "I
know. I’ll sprinkle some of the dark
powder on this wet grass and you wipe your hands in it, Ellen."
"Okay," said Ellen, looking
doubtfully at Lucy’s bright pink skin.
Ingrid swished her pink-tipped braid in
the grass to try and clean it. She
wondered what her mother would say.
Ellen rubber her hands in the dye on the
grass. They turned a purply brown.
"Yech," said Bill and John and
Piya.
"Maybe this wasn’t such a good
idea," Ingrid said. "Lucy, wipe that paste off on the grass."
Lucy did so and her hands were now sort of
orange.
"Now we’re even more different,"
Ellen said. "Well, at least it
will wash off."
Ingrid didn’t say anything. Joshua looked at her and raised his
eyebrows. "It will wear off,
I’m sure," she whispered to him.
Everyone sat around quite quietly.
"If your hair was the same colour it
would make you look more alike," Piya suggested.
"We could dye it – " Ingrid
began.
"No thanks."
"No thanks." the twins said
together.
"If both were either curly or
straight it would be enough, likely," said Piya.
Ellen looked at Lucy’s curly/curly hair.
Lucy looked at Ellen’s board/straight
hair.
"Iron yours," Ellen said.
"I’ll help. Then we’ll both have
nice straight hair."
"I’m not going to iron my hair,"
said Lucy. "I like curly
hair. We can curl yours. Mom has a permanent in the bathroom
cabinet."
"I don’t want curly hair,"
shouted Ellen. "I want you to have
straight hair and look like ME!"
"I want you to have curly hair and
look like ME!" Lucy yelled back.
"Hey," said John and Bill and
Piya and Ingrid.
"Hey!!" said Sam, only louder.
Joshua was the one to roll his eyes and
stay silent.
"Straight hair, straight hair,
straight hair!"
"Curly hair, curly hair, curly
hair," bellowed the twins and you can figure out who said which.
"Oh great," Joshua finally said,
"Now we have a war on our hands because two people DON’T want to look like
each other."
"I don’t want to scrunch down."
"I don’t want to stand on
tiptoes," hollered the twins.
Bill and Piya shrugged and went off home.
"I don’t want lighter eyes,"
"I don’t want darker eyes,"
yelled the twins.
John and Sam and Ingrid sighed and drifted
away.
"I am proud of my braces."
"I am proud of my straight
teeth," cried the twins.
Joshua threw up his hands and walked away.
"I want to be ME!"
"I want to be ME!" the twins
shrieked.
"Get off my lawn!" Old Man
McTavish screamed from his front porch.
Ellen and Lucy clutched at each other in
shock. Old Man McTavish! Where had the gang gone?
"Yikes."
"Yikes." they yelled at the
exact same time. And ran off home.