by Amy Spurway
“So, we’ve got a genetic lineage of haywire senses with either half-assed impractical applications, or the potential to, I dunno, save people’s lives. But we’re also prone to going nuts and dying tragically before we ever get the chance to figure it out?” I say. “That’s not a blessing. And it’s outlandish as fuck,” I say, pretending I’m not fazed by hope’s fleeting flicker.
“Think what you want,” Peggy says as we pull into the parking lot of the hospital. “For all I know, Black Bernie Fortune’s blood was cursed but Lucy Dougall’s heart was blessed, and there’s a war between the two being fought in each of us. But I’ll tell you this, trees grow best with a shovel of shit round the roots. That’s not outlandish. That’s nature’s truth.”
She takes a long, exaggerated sniff of the air. “And we best change Dakey’s diaper before I bring him to see Charlotte.”
[…]
Char will lose whatever’s left of her mind when she hears Peggy call her child a goofy nickname like Dakey, and I’d like to be there to see it happen. Instead, I’ll be under a paper sheet on a table in the diagnostic imaging wing of the hospital, waiting for the ultrasound tech to tell me which everyday item my fetus’s size most closely resembles. Which, it turns out, is a fourteen-week-old lemon. This lemon has un-webbed fingers and toes. Its eyes and ears have moved into non-alien position. It can squint and grimace, flail its arms and kick its feet, drink and piss out amniotic fluid. I swore I wasn’t going to look at the screen. I kept my eyes clamped shut. I put my hands over them when they tried to flutter open. But at the last minute, I peeked through a crack in the wall of tears and fingers, only to see a little embryonic arse float toward the ultrasound transducer and wiggle.
As she’s wiping what remains of the now-warm goo off my belly, the ultrasound tech tells me that they just had the MRI machine free up because the old bird who was supposed to have hers this morning up and died. Ever alert to opportunities to get me a medical test because somebody else kicked the bucket, Dr. Divyaratna put me in the slot. Which means I also get to see what everyday items compare best to the sizes of Parry Homunculus, Ziggy Stardust, and Fuzzy Wuzzy. Last time, it was a June bug, a nickel, and a cranberry, respectively.
As the cold MRI bed slides in to the circular sarcophagus, it occurs to me that there’s a race happening in my body now. Who can grow faster, my baby or my tumours? As the magnetic din of doom begins to whizz and whir around my head, it occurs to me that maybe Peggy had a point. Maybe my squirrelly vision could be useful. A bit of a blessing even, albeit well disguised.
When the MRI tech’s voice comes over the internal speaker saying, “Miss Fortune, you’re wiggling. Please try to hold still,” it occurs to me that I should have pissed between the ultrasound and the MRI.
I wait for Dr. Divyaratna in a tiny closet of an office. When she enters, her nose is buried in a file folder, and she almost forgets to dispense her usual measured dose of bedside manner before getting down to business.
“Good day, Stacey.” She places a steady hand on my shoulder as she makes her way to her desk. “I heard of your mother’s tragic accident. Allow me to extend my deepest sympathies.”
I do the sad smile and silent nod thing.
“So. Fourteen weeks pregnant. How would you like to proceed in light of this situation?”
“What are my options?” I squint as I fix my gaze on the space above her head, trying to read the coloured lines between whatever words come next.
“Moving forward with a fairly aggressive proactive treatment protocol could increase your odds of a more favourable outcome and quality of life, and in that case I would recommend terminating the pregnancy. But if you elect to carry on, we cross our fingers and hope for the best.”
She flips through some papers and keeps going.
“The good news is that your tumours have not grown in size or complexity. Therefore, while carrying your pregnancy to term is not without risks due to your age and health status, it is not urgent that we pursue aggressive treatment options. We could wait until after you give birth, if you choose.”
“Can I see the pictures?” I say, my body and brain so numb that I scarcely notice how tightly I’m gripping the pleather arms of the faux-cozy doctor’s office chair.
“From the ultrasound?” Dr. Divyaratna smiles.
“No,” I say, “the MRI. The tumours.”
She tilts her head, and eyes me like I’ve lost it. After a quick rummage, she glides the big black sheet into place on a big white wall-mounted box. She turns on the backlight, and there they are, shining and leaping out from the greyness of their surroundings like wispy white explosions. Seditious little stars in a matter-of-fact grey sky. Parry Homunculus, Ziggy Stardust, and Fuzzy Wuzzy, fully illuminated. Before I know it, I’m parked in front of the light box, gently tracing the white lines that trail away from the solid centres with my fingers. Smiling and welling up with tears. Whispering the only lullaby Mama ever sang to me,
There was liquor on the barroom floor,
and the bar was closed for the night . . .
[…]
“They let you out?” I try not to sound weak as I emerge from Dr. Divyaratna’s office with an armload of leaflets on tumours and pregnancies and ways to deal with both, to see Char standing there with Daktari perched on her cocked hip, gnawing on the tip of one of her neatly tied back dreadlocks.
“Yo, I be blowin’ this pop stand. Back to tha muthaland,” Char booms, with a crotch thrust, a fist pump, and kissing her teeth at the wall, before flipping some kind of switch, straightening up, and adding with a sweet shrug, “actually, moving into Peggy’s with my baby. Doctor said that I’m right as rain.”
“That’s great.” Though I doubt that it is. Then I watch as Char’s aura or halo or whatever it is begins to materialize, gently pushing past her matted mane and into the emptiness surrounding her. An earthy, vegetative green base gives rise to little dashes of light purple. Like violets blooming in a bed of moss. Something new has taken root in Char. And it’s starting to bloom.
The drive home is a slow, greasy one. Snow. Then sleet. Then snow on top of sleet on top of snow followed by a precipitous drop in temperature. Mossy and Char and the baby are all conked out in the back seat. Peggy is white knuckling ’er along the mess of a highway. I feel sick and cranky.
“So what did the doctor say?” Peggy asks.
The words “None of your business” race to the tip of my tongue out of pure habit. But I haul them back. “The tumours aren’t worse. I’m fourteen weeks. Some decisions to make.”
I consider telling her about Dave’s offer. About how close I was to calling him back the night of Mama’s funeral, to taking the money from Dulcie Copper and the ladies’ auxiliary and high-tailing it back to Toronto. But I don’t. Because I still might.
“Are you going to keep the baby or what?” she says, staring straight ahead, her nose turned up ever so slightly like she’s sniffing for something I’m not ready to give.
“It’s not a baby. It’s a fetus.”
“You were a fetus once.”
“Don’t dare pull a guilt trip on me, Peggy.”
“Guilt’s not what I was after,” she says. “Just sayin’.”
“Do you honestly think I can raise a child?”
“Don’t know. But you wouldn’t be alone. People will help.”
“Yeah, you with an orphanage for all the poor motherless snot monsters on the Island?” A split second later, I see that I hurt Peggy’s feelings. Not by her face or her voice of course, but by the little red-oozing cuts in the foreground of her otherwise pale purple head cloud. I wonder if my words looked like tiny silver daggers as they left my mouth.
“There are worse things in the world than babies raised by other mothers.” The little seeping slices in her aura zip shut.
“There are worse things in the world than abortions, too.” I shrug.
“Indeed, there are.” Peggy’s eyes drift to the rear-view mirror, scanning the l
ine of peacefully snoozing passengers in the back seat. The car fishtails just enough to yank her eyes back to the reality of the road.
“Becky Chickenshit’s pregnant too, eh?” she says. A dose of gossip to take the edge off. “And Sarah Spenser just dropped the asking price on the property.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Right from the horse’s mouth.”
“When?”
“Today. Me and Charlotte and the baby paid her a little visit.”
“Ol’ biddy was right bloody gobsmacked to see us!” Char erupts in Britishness from the back seat, making me wonder how long she has been faking sleep and exactly how many personalities live in that mixed up little head of hers.
Peggy and Char’s faces are plastered with nearly identical shit-eating grins. Which makes me nervous as hell.
“This better not be something I read about on the front page of the paper tomorrow.” I cross my arms and stare out the window as Peggy guides the car onto the faintly compacted tire tracks between the snowy ditches that are now the Middle Rear Road.
“Don’t jump to convulsions,” Char says, all cool and shady.
“You want Mossy to stay with you tonight?” Peggy says when we reach home. “Put him to work. He can at least shovel you out.”
“No, that’s okay. I need some time by myself. To think.”
“Suit yourself,” Peggy says. “Call if you need anything.”
I turn on every light in the trailer in an effort to chase away the grey dimness of dusk and aloneness. I put the tea on. I watch the layers of fish-scale clouds in the sky grow darker as flecks of snow swirl and twirl and fall. I eat one of the godawful green-and-brown squares stashed in the freezer because one of the pamphlets from the doctor’s office said a quick hit of sugar might make my baby move enough so that I can feel it. Then I call Dave to rhyme off all the reasons why I can’t leave this place. When the sky is too dark to see the snowflakes anymore, and my head is too light for any remotely coherent thought, I go to my room and lie down in the cozy bed that I’m surprised to discover I actually made.
[…]
There’s always a snowstorm around mid-March here. While Toronto is beginning to melt into a semblance of springy goodness, the East Coast is getting smacked by Sheila’s Brush. The story goes that Saint Patrick had a mistress named Sheila, who happened to be his housekeeper. He kept her good and secret, and she kept him good and clean. But now in the afterlife, when Saint Paddy is being celebrated with a day of green drunken debauchery, Sheila takes it upon herself to purge and purify the land with one whore of a sweeping storm. That way, when spring finally comes, the Earth and the people are truly ready. And grateful as fuck. Last night, I dreamed about Mama. She was wearing her Greeting Gale dress but with her hair all loose and long and wild. She was laughing like mad and sweeping up a storm. A hard grinding rumble shoves me into wakefulness. I hoist myself out of bed, and slink into the kitchen to see what the hell.
There’s a snowplow out there clearing ten tonnes of fresh snow from the driveway. A couple of young fellas are shovelling a path from the driveway to the trailer. There’s an old guy pushing piles of snow off the steps. He gives me a big wave and a bigger smile. I don’t have a clue who he is, so when he knocks on the door a few minutes later, I hesitate. It is eight a.m. I’m schlumping around, bleary-eyed, braless, and filthy yoga-pantsed. And I don’t know the going rate for unsolicited snowplowing and shovelling services. The only money I have to my name is the stack of fifties in the envelope from the ladies’ auxiliary, and I wonder if I’d be violating some law of the land if I asked for change. G’wan, ya cheap bastard! Give them poor boys proper pay. And invite them in for tea, for Christ sake! Mama would haunt me for being cheap. And rude. I pull on a half-clean hoodie and open the door.
“Hope we didn’t wake ya, dear.” The old man beams with a friendly familiarity.
I smile politely. “How much do I owe you?”
“Not a cent, love!” he laughs.
“Here, let me just get some —”
“No, no, no.” The old man raises his work-gloved hands in protest. “It’s the least me and the boys could do for you, Crow.”
I look over at the three strapping guys finishing the pushing and plowing.
“They growed up, wha?” the old man says.
“Sorry.” I offer a sheepish smile. “I don’t recognize . . .”
“They sure remember you.” He gives me a wrinkled wink and a half-toothed grin. “You and Effie, God rest her soul, yous two saved their lives.”
The Alward boys. I didn’t save their lives. I ruined them.
I was the one who told Children’s Aid.
I was sixteen. Philly, Lukas, and Grubby Alward were two, three, and six years old when they moved from Town into the dilapidated old schoolhouse at the foot of Church Road, just a few clicks off the main road down past The Wharf. Their mother put up a barely legible sign in the gas station looking for a summer babysitter, and Mama made me call. Tishy Alward hired me over the phone. She paid me a flat thirty bucks per week — if she paid me at all — but she’d always leave me some hash and some liquor every Friday. Tishy Alward was, by my teenage estimation, a terrible boss and a worse mother, but her little Friday gifts were a good time, so I kept my mouth shut about what I saw and what I suspected.
I’d ride my bike down there for seven o’clock every morning. I was supposed to start at nine, but after about a week, I realized that Philly didn’t get a diaper change and nobody got breakfast until I got there because Tishy slept late, and she was liable to backhand the first little face that woke her. So I’d feed them some toast and wash their filthy faces, maybe take a swipe at the table full of empty bottles and dump the overflowing ashtrays while they watched a bit of Romper Room, and then take them outside to play. By noon, Tishy would be gone. I didn’t know where. She never said where she worked. She never left a number where she could be reached.
“If ya needa foind ’er, jus’ call da cops,” Grubby would sigh.
Poor little Grubby didn’t even know that his name was Andrew. He only found that out when his grade primary teacher got after him for not responding during attendance. Grubby also almost got suspended that year for bringing beer to school instead of lunch. He tried to hide it in his desk, so his mother couldn’t get at it.
Every day, I’d pack the boys up and walk them to The Wharf, then to our place for the afternoon. When Mama got home from work, she’d feed them supper, and drive them back home once Peggy reported seeing Tishy’s taxi turn down the road. Tishy never asked where we were or what we did. She’d just smile and slur, “They’re in good hands with you, baby doll.”
Early one mid-August morning, I showed up and Tishy wasn’t there. The front windows of the schoolhouse were smashed. The TV was, too. The kitchen table was on its side, bottles and butts everywhere. And Grubby had a black eye and a blood-crusted nose, courtesy of one of Tishy’s “boyfriends.”
Mama came and helped me clean up the boys. We packed little bags of their favourite toys and clothes. I called Children’s Aid, and Mama waited with me until the social worker came to collect the Alward children. I never saw them again. Mama tried to update me on them from time to time, but I didn’t want to hear it. It was bound to be another sad story.
“Harry Alward,” says the old man who just finished shovelling the snow off my steps, holding out his hand. “Tishy’s brother. That’s Lukas in the green jacket. Phil in the orange hat. And Grubby at the plow.” Grubby parks the plow, hops down, and gallops over.
“Crow!” he says, stopping short to doff his hat like some kind of gentleman.
“Oh for the love of God, Grubby Alward! Look at you! Ya grew up.” I choke back tears.
“More by good luck den good man’gment.” He grins.
It’s scarcely past eight o’clock. But loud and clear, my mother’s voice echoes through my mind, and before I know it, her words escape from my lips, “Well don’t just stand there. Y
as must be ready to eat a horse and chase the driver after all that work. Come in. I’ll put the tea on.”
The Alward men attempt to decline, but I’ll have none of it.
The boys tell me all about their kids and the snow removal business they run with their uncle, who ended up getting custody of them. They tell me about how Mama would go visit all of them — including Tishy — for years afterwards, how she’d hug the bejesus out of them every time, and tousle their hair like she did when they were little. They said even Tishy eventually got herself together enough to see her grandkids at Christmas. Around each of their heads, sturdy red-orange flickers dance within soft blue ovals, the edges of which diffuse into the uncoloured space like watercolour robin’s eggs.
Maybe I didn’t ruin their lives. Maybe I’m not such a prick after all.
Then again, maybe I am. Because a few hours later, when Becky Chickenshit shows up on my doorstep, all my downhome “Come in, I’ll put the tea on!” warm fuzziness goes right down the toilet. It takes every ounce of self-restraint in my still bleary-eyed, braless, yoga-pantsed body to not slam the door in her snivelling little shrew face.
Becky Chickenshit stands there, the awkward rhythm of her blinking eyes magnified by the thick lenses of her horn-rimmed glasses, face pulled taut by the bobby pins haphazardly holding her hair back. Her long red peacoat gives way to a gaudy floral broom skirt that hovers above a pair of beige pleather granny boots. She looks Amishly uptight and hippy dippy ridiculous at the same time.
“You must have been resting,” she says, eyeing my ensemble, then shifting her gaze up to what I assume is my three-inch-long scrub of hair sticking up like a duck’s arse, before she settles into comfortably condescending eye contact.
