The Good Girl Checklist – Carrie-Ellise Poirier

2024

Prologue

Reinvention really is a fiddly business. I should know because, over a decade, I’ve compiled a wrist-thick compendium of guidelines, tested every technique, and trained every nerve to perfection.

I hid my brows and frown behind my fringe like a good girl (that was always Rule #1), played happy and smiled sweetly for the people behind the peeping mirrors (Rule #87), stopped criss-crossing my laces (an important yet overlooked Rule #192), and even perfected the prettiest Pan-Am smile (Rule #254) — although it still trembles and pinches the nerves behind my ears.

I fooled everyone with my flawless performance.

You should have seen me. My body moved with doll-like precision, each gesture rehearsed, each word memorised — and the perfect accessory, it turns out, is not red lips or an aerodynamically coiffed fringe, but an expertly engineered pattern of eye-accessing cues.

The point is, I was perfect.

Only, there was a problem. Two, actually.

No mask or veil or gesture could ever fool “That Woman” because she hides behind every reflective surface. And now, I’m trapped in this shrine of mirrors because I hadn’t accounted for Rule #2378: NEVER ever surrender my stupid passport.

Rule #27 was wrong: Sneaky little girls don’t get verrucas. They risk imprisonment.

2024

The Sweet Shop

Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays are pocket ledger days.

It’s Saturday.

Dad holds up two 20p coins. He doesn’t place them in our hands because he’s not giving us the money, he’s loaning it, like a reference-only library book we can never check out. Daniel takes one and, playing along like a good girl, I take the other.

With his terms accepted, Dad unlocks the bedroom door and declares the sweet shop ‘open’.

I clutch a box of incoming toy stock containing an antique doll and a harem of naked headless Barbie bodies. These are the priceless artefacts I am allowed to look at but never touch. Dee carries candy-striped paper bags because Dad never tolerates shoddy packaging, even for sweets.

Dad wears the cash float in his lopsided jacket pockets, shrapnel in his right, silver coins always in the left, hem stretched so taut it nearly brushes his knees. He’s like an old-fashioned scale, always measuring wealth.

My eyes take a moment to adjust to this room’s light. Boxes block two-thirds of the window, throwing a filthy tarp of shadow over the bed and wardrobes. A crisp fold of afternoon sun dog-ears Mum’s old vanity nook, so precise and deliberate, I swear Dad scored and folded it himself.

I’d prefer to hang back at the doorway, but Dad says I must earn my keep, so I carry box number 29 past the bed and into the fold of light. The doll’s left eyelid trembles with each flinch of the box.

A rotten stink bites at my attention. More of a sensation than a smell. Probably a rancid gherkin stuck to a McDonald’s toy, waiting to become valuable.

Over by the window, Mum’s carnival float, the one Dad handcrafted, is gone. What was once a festival of light and music, with dolls clanging tambourines and rustling their taffeta skirts, is now the barbed remains of shattered light bulbs, splintered wood, and bent rods bristling the carpet.

Stepping around the debris, I lose balance and lean against the wall for stability. My arm sticks to the tacky thermal wallpaper. I used to run my fingers along its once creamy skin, guiding me safely around to Mum’s side of the bed at night. But it’s gross now, suffocating below tar and nicotine. Its polystyrene core oozes from gashes like mouth spittle.

I set this Fyffe banana box atop the stack of nine identical Fyffe banana boxes, dog-earing a little more light.

Mum’s vanity nook is a contrast to the rest of the room, neat, everything in its place. She could be in the other room, cleansing her skin or brushing her teeth.

Dad avoids Mum’s side of the room like he dodges the produce aisle in a supermarket. Still, I’ve noticed subtle shifts in her lotions, especially the bottles that capture her signature skin scent of velvety rose petals and full cream milk.

I know Dad fiddles with them because the bottles stray ever so slightly from the diagram Mum drew. Her faded pencil rings and arrows show their proper placement and direction — labels always facing the window.

I don’t know why he touches them. Even I find myself here, in the dark, not sure how or when or why I came in.

Dad assumes I can’t pick the lock. A kitchen knife or metal ruler works. I wiggle it through the gap and, click, I’m in. So simple, I do it in my sleep.

Over by the bed, Mum’s clothes landslide from her wardrobe. Daily, something stirs. Today, the sleeves of her paisley dress reach out, paralysed mid-crawl, as though she wriggled right out of it. I sometimes wonder, if I tug its sleeve, I might find my ra-ra skirt, still whimpering in the back of the wardrobe. Though I dare not touch it.

I step over Mum’s dress, careful not to tread on any part of it, and I’m rooted exactly where I’ve stood countless times before, staring down at a trail of my chocolatey fingerprint stains crawling up the mattress like big fat ants. For a while, I could see Mum’s head indentation in the pillow and smell the apple-scented oils from her hair. Now Dad’s fake Donlup trainers impale what’s left of its crumpled remains.

The mattress convulses as he charges across her side. The only other time he walks with this much violence is when he’s crushing double-walled boxes.

He kicks aside a decapitated doll’s head and takes a swipe at a frozen chicken breast. Nope, it’s a Himalayan salt lamp. It really is hard to tell these days because nothing is ever what it seems. It tumbles onto the floor with a hollow, boney clunk.

Reaching above the headboard, he lifts the cupboard flap. Tubs as big as fruit bowls contain a medley of sweets for our mix-up. Using his head as a buttress, one foot still impaling Mum’s head, we begin our transaction.

On the menu are ten varieties of sweets, priced exactly the same as the newsagents around the corner. No special family or employee discount, which means he has a built-in profit margin for his wholesale cost. When the newsagent sells overpriced sweets — anything at retail — he calls it “price gouging”. I’m not sure how this is different, but I’m also failing level one maths.

Dad says he’s teaching us the value of money, because “That Woman” “does not pay your child support.”

Cadbury is the only brand Dad stocks that isn’t a cheap look-a-like. In his shop, Parma Violets are just violets and taste like pen ink. Dolly Mixtures are just hard, soapy, and tasteless. And cough candy comes without any of the twist.

His candy stock reflects his tastes, which are the same as Daniel’s who is not yet seven.

Rule of purchase number one: No more than five of one variety at a time. Artificial fruit flavours apparently count on his five portions of fruit-and-veg-a-day plan.

Fizz, fondant, colour, and flavour cost extra.

Brown chocolate mouse (1p). Pink chocolate mouse (2p).

Rule of purchase number two: No change. Money not spent in his store pays down our debt chart.

He slides out a pillow-sized plank of Dairy Milk chocolate. Blocks the size of pencil sharpeners mean a price increase, now 5p per block. I purchase four blocks.

With our bags loaded, a sour lace already wriggling from Dee’s squirming lips, Dad locks the door and we follow him downstairs to finalise our transaction.

Where once our family agenda planned trips to [arboretums, Billy Graham crusades, and Weston-Super-Mud], now hang our debt ledgers.

Dad adds 20p to each of our columns, and we hand back his twenty pence coins.

The chart is not just a receipt, it’s also a reminder of how much we cost and, therefore, owe. His paper trail works one way, though. I don’t recognise several entries.

Dee’s chart resembles his gappy smile. Between the 20p sweet shop entries are shards of one and two penny line items, fragments of what must be additional sweet allocations. In the middle of his column, growing in like a new adult tooth is a £5 entry. Daniel, still tonguing loose his own baby teeth, is officially a toy investor. Dad loaned him five pounds to purchase five toy trains from his junk box to sell at the toy fair.

My chart overflows with figures like £4.83 and £9.72. Amounts exceeding £50 are written in red. Apparently, £49.68 is close enough. That sort of thing gets me in trouble at school.

Every transaction is recorded to the penny, so Dad has a paper trail to thrust at Mum, I mean, That Woman, when she returns for half his house.

We spend a lot of time staring at this chart. As though it’s a magic eye picture that will someday reveal a hidden pony or dolphin. Here, we receive regular ultimatums and always a choice: purchase sweets from the cupboard or pay down our debt chart. The only line items struck off so far are refunds for dodgy sweets, like when I have to say “Um, Dee’s shrimp doesn’t have a head. Shouldn’t it be half a penny?” Dad lives ten years in the past, so he thinks the half penny still exists. Though, I’d never dare openly tease him about money.

I don’t see numbers any more. It really is a magic picture, only there are no animals, just Dad’s mental state.

Overcrowded entries appear with increasing frequency now we’re getting school letters and solicitor bills. Recently, my chart is full of stacked entries, which resemble my ex-best friend Sarah’s teeth. Teeth growing on top of other teeth on top of other teeth, a serious case of an overcrowded mouth, which she called Hyperdontia.

Pinned next to our chart is the most recent letter from Mum’s solicitor, dated May 12, 1994. It says “Fifty percent of the proceeds, as valued, will be payable to _ on the 28th of November 2003.” Every occurrence of Mum’s name struck through. With one stroke of Dad’s marker, Mum no longer exists.