Born Weird

by Andrew Kaufman

  NINETY MINUTES AFTER FLEEING her grandmother’s hospital room Angie was scrubbing her forearm at a sink in the women’s washroom on the departures level of the Vancouver International Airport. She’d rebooked her flight from the back of the taxi she’d taken from the hospital. The only other woman in the bathroom stood at the hand dryer. Her pantsuit was unwrinkled. The diamonds in her ears shone. She pretended not to stare at Angie. Then the dryer shut off and she gave Angie a gentle look as she walked confidently away on her strappy high heels.

  Angie looked in the mirror. The front of her white blouse was soaked. Her belly button bulged through the cotton. The ten-digit number remained perfectly legible on her red forearm. When she heard the final boarding call for flight AC117 from Vancouver to New York City, Angie turned off the tap, headed to the gate and boarded the plane.

  At row 18 a large man was sitting in the aisle seat. A third of him spilt over the chair. His right arm had already claimed the middle armrest. He did not look up as Angie pushed her purse into the overhead compartment. She stood for several moments before he moved into the aisle and then she wedged herself into the window seat.

  Her revenge was how often she had to pee.

  Angie made her first trip to the bathroom shortly after takeoff. Her second was twenty minutes later. When she returned from her third visit, the large man had moved to the window.

  “Touché,” he said as Angie lowered herself into the aisle seat.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  An hour and forty minutes later Angie was in the washroom for the sixth time when the plane began to plummet. She grabbed the faucet with her left hand, cradled her belly with her right and pushed her bum against the door. Water splashed onto the front of her shirt, soaking it once more. She immediately realized that Veronica was a stupid, stupid name. She made a promise to both God and her unborn daughter to find a better one, should they survive.

  The dive lasted three long seconds. When the plane levelled off Angie ran back to her seat. She fastened her seat belt, tightly. The large man beside her opened the plastic window shade. They both squinted. When their eyes had adjusted to the light they saw thick black smoke billowing from the plane’s far right engine.

  “I wouldn’t worry. There are three others,” the man sitting beside her said. Then he wiggled into his chair, folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes.

  “Good afternoon,” said an authoritative voice from the speaker over top of Angie’s head. “This is your captain. Yes. We’re experiencing some … minor … technical difficulties. Nothing to worry about, folks. But we’re going to have to make an unscheduled stop. We should be landing in the … at the … Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport in about fifteen, seventeen minutes. We … ah … apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll be all right.”

  It was the we’ll be all right that started the panic. There was a collective gasp. Angie’s breathing became shallow. Superstition took over and she began to believe that if she could just decide on the perfect name they really would be all right. Sarah, Rachael, Jenny, Candi, she thought, desperately. “Vanessa, Abigail, Helen, Franny,” she said out loud. Then the pressure overwhelmed her imagination and all she could come up with were random nouns. “Celery, Oboe, Loofah,” she muttered. “Garamond, Decanter, Frizzante, Pilates. Rolex, Evian, Dasani, Perriella.”

  The plane began its descent, which was steep. It dipped forwards. It wobbled to the left and the right. Angie used both of her hands to clutch the armrest as she became convinced that they were all going to die a horrible fiery death.

  Then she looked at her forearm and she instantly knew what had to be done. Unfastening her seat belt Angie stepped into the aisle.

  “Sit down!” yelled a flight attendant.

  “I’m saving us all!” Angie yelled back.

  The overhead compartment squeaked as Angie opened it. Pushing back a suitcase that started to fall out, she grabbed her purse, sat back down and fished her phone out. Then Angie dialed the number that she hadn’t been able to wash away.

  The plane jumped. The phone on the other end began to ring. The runway came into view. “Hold my hand!” she said to the man beside her. He opened his eyes and looked at Angie, blankly. “I’m pregnant and alone and frightened and you will hold my goddamn hand!”

  Angie held her hand out. Her seatmate took it. He squeezed, tightly. The phone rang for a fourth time. The plane tilted to the right. Several passengers screamed. The phone rang again and then it was answered.

  “I’ll do it!” Angie yelled. “I’ll get them. I’ll get all of them. I’ll bring them to you!”

  The back tires hit the runway. The plane slowed. The front wheels touched down and the passengers applauded. Angie breathed out. She realized how tightly she was holding both the phone and the hand of the man in the seat beside her.

  “I knew you’d come around,” Grandmother Weird said.

  “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Before we commit to anything …”

  “I’d start with Lucy.”

  “Well,” Angie said. She looked out the window and then she looked at her hand, which was still engulfed by the meaty palm of her seatmate, “I am in Winnipeg.”

  ANGIE WEIRD REALLY WAS BORN in a hallway, and this is how it happened. On May 4, 1987, when her mother, Nicola, went into labour her father, Besnard, drove them to the hospital in his beloved 1947 maroon Maserati. Besnard had purchased the two-seater seventy-two hours before Angie’s birth. It wasn’t suited for city driving. Besnard wasn’t used to driving it. He stalled six times on the way to the hospital.

  His sixth stall happened at the southeast corner of College and University in downtown Toronto. They were close enough to the hospital that Nicola could see it. She sat in the passenger seat, staring at it longingly. She stared at Mount Sinai Hospital in a way she hadn’t stared at her husband in quite some time.

  Besnard sat in the driver’s seat, trying to restart the engine. The car behind him began to honk. He sighed, deeply. The impending birth of his fourth child failed to excite him. He’d begun to see his children as some kind of venereal disease, direct results of copulation. At home he already had three children, all under the age of five. He loved all of them. He knew he would love this child too. This was the problem. As he continued trying to restart the engine, his wife opened the passenger door.

  Nicola got out of the Maserati and walked the last two hundred yards on her own. The doors to emergency slid open automatically. The admitting nurse dropped her paperwork and rushed over. Nicola was put on a gurney and wheeled through the swinging doors before Besnard had a chance to park. Nicola screamed as she felt Angie’s head start to crown. It was her fourth birthing experience and she knew that the worst was, or at least soon would be, over. They had almost reached the delivery room when a doctor ran up and stopped the gurney, examining Nicola right in the corridor.

  “Do not push anymore! Stop!” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” Nicola yelled.

  “Stop pushing right now!” the doctor said, firmly. He looked into her eyes and held her hand, gestures that Nicola never forgot. She stopped pushing. She breathed as deeply as she could. She concentrated on these things, which is why she didn’t notice how quiet everyone had become.

  “Can I push now?”

  “You cannot,” the doctor replied. “The cord’s around the baby’s neck.”

  Nicola gritted her teeth. She did not push. So much pressure built up inside her that her nose started to bleed.

  “Almost got it,” the doctor said.

  “My goddamn head is going to goddamn explode!”

  “Got it!”

  “Now?”

  “Now!”

  The cord unwound, Nicola pushed and Angelika Weird, quite literally, popped into the world.

  Angie never doubted that any part of this story was true. The question she asked herself was: did it really have the deep character-forming significance that her grandmother cl
aimed it had? Angie didn’t believe it had any greater impact on her personality than the fact that she was born in early May, making her a Taurus. She would, however, admit that she had never been able to wear necklaces or turtlenecks. Nor had she ever been able to make herself do up the top button on any shirt.

  It was with a nosebleed that Grandmother Weird got herself admitted into Vancouver and District General Hospital, eight days before she wrote her phone number on Angie’s forearm. She finished her lunch and washed her dishes and then she took a taxi to the emergency room. It was 2:30 p.m. when she stepped into the line. Fifteen minutes later, when she got to the front of it, Annie told the triage nurse that she was terminally ill.

  “Could you be more specific?” the nurse asked.

  “My death will occur at 7:39 p.m. on April 20.”

  “That is very specific.”

  “Twenty-one days from today.”

  “Maybe you could come back on the nineteenth?”

  “Maybe you should watch your tone.”

  “Maybe you should take a seat.”

  The nurse looked down at her paperwork. She did not look back up. Annie took a seat beside a woman whose skin had taken on a yellowish hue. She folded her hands in her lap. She stared straight ahead. She set herself an impossible task: she would not move until her name was called.

  A parade of broken limbs, troubling coughs and exaggerated parental fears came and went. Just after 4:30 in the morning, after sitting still for fourteen hours, Annie was alone in the waiting room for the first time.

  “Angela Weirs?” a nurse called.

  “Close enough,” Annie said. She stood. Her joints were stiff. She took small jerky steps. The nurse led her into a room with curtains for walls. The thin brown paper crinkled as Annie sat on it. Her feet were a long way from the floor. She swung them. She waited for quite some time and then a doctor arrived. He was yawning, stubbled, and a third her age.

  “So. You are dying?” he asked. He looked at her and then down at his clipboard. “Slowly.”

  The doctor put in the earpieces of his stethoscope. He placed the chestpiece on Annie’s chest. He listened to her heart. He took the instrument off her skin and blew into it. Then he put it back on her chest and listened again.

  “That is the loudest heartbeat I’ve ever heard.”

  “I have a very large heart.”

  “It does, however, sound like it’s working perfectly.”

  “I’m not here because I’m sick.”

  “Okay. Then why are you here?”

  “It is imperative that I stay alive until 7:39 p.m. on April 20.”

  “Well, you see, that’s a problem,” the doctor said. He gave a small laugh and then he sat down beside her. “That’s not really what we do here. We help sick people get better and you, I guess unfortunately, aren’t exhibiting any symptoms.”

  “What sort of things are you looking for?”

  “Difficulty breathing? Dizziness? Sustained aches and pains. Loss of consciousness. You know, things like that. We work best with symptoms.”

  “Bleeding nose?”

  “That would be a start,” he said. He signed the bottom of the page. When he looked back up he saw thin but strengthening lines of blood running from both of Annie’s nostrils. As her eyes rolled back in her head the doctor rushed to catch her.

  AT THE EXACT MOMENT THE WHEELS of Angie’s plane touched the runway, Lucy Weird, the second oldest, straddled a stranger on the second floor of the Millennium Library in Winnipeg. She was in the stacks, by the 813s. It was the library’s least frequented area. Lucy’s shirt was buttoned to the top. Her grey wool skirt fanned out in a circle. The library patron lay on the floor, on his back, wearing nothing.

  Lucy slid down. She waited for the sound of his voice.

  “Forty-nine,” he said. Lucy pushed up. She slid back down. “Forty-eight,” he said.

  Lucy took a deep breath. She repeated the cycle. She closed her eyes. Her eyes remained closed as Beth, her least favourite co-worker, pushed a book cart towards the 800s. Beth looked up and took in the scene. Leaving the book cart behind, she scurried away.

  Unaware, Lucy continued. “Twenty-six,” the man beneath her said. Lucy focused on keeping a steady, yet building, rhythm. It wasn’t long before she heard footsteps. The footsteps came closer. When the footsteps stopped, so did she. Lucy leaned backwards and put her hand over the young man’s mouth. She kept her eyes closed.

  “Amanda?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  “And who? There’s someone else. Is it Beth?”

  “Hello.”

  “At least I’ve made someone happy today.”

  “Woo mmad meee haappi,” the man underneath Lucy said. She pushed her hand down harder.

  “This is very bad, Lucy,” Amanda said.

  “Fired bad?”

  “Help your friend get dressed and then come to the office.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said. She nodded her head. She kept her eyes closed. She listened to the footsteps walk away. When she couldn’t hear them anymore Lucy took her hand off the man’s mouth. She leaned forwards. “Start again,” Lucy whispered.

  “What?”

  “From the top!” Lucy said.

  “Two hundred and eighty-seven,” he said. Lucy pushed up and then she slid back down. “Two hundred and eighty six,” he said.

  “One!” the young man said.

  Lucy breathed deeply in. For several blissful moments sensation overwhelmed her. She felt that everything was beyond her control. She felt free and limitless, almost lost. Then it all went away. Lucy stood up. She adjusted her clothes. She picked up his shirt and held it by the shoulders as he put his arms through the sleeves.

  “I want to see you again,” he said.

  “Close your eyes,” Lucy said. He closed his eyes. She bent down and picked up his boxer briefs. “Now open them.”

  “Okay?”

  “There! You’ve done it. You’ve seen me again!” Lucy said and she handed him his underwear.

  Without looking back Lucy walked out of the stacks. She went to the bathroom. Then she went into Amanda’s office, which was small, windowless and cluttered. There was a stack of files on the corner of her desk. It leaned to the left. Lucy looked at the floor. She looked at the far wall. She clasped her hands behind her back. Then she grabbed the pile, turned all of it sideways and tapped it against the desk until every folder was perfectly aligned.

  “You need help,” Amanda said.

  “I don’t deny it,” Lucy said. She set the pile back on the corner of Amanda’s desk.

  “And what’s with the hair?”

  “I just got it cut,” Lucy said. She tucked the right side of her bangs behind her ear. There was nothing she could do about the three tufts that stuck up at the back.

  “It’s just so clichéd, Lucy.”

  “You mean the naughty librarian thing?”

  “Don’t even say that. This is the first time that anything like this has ever happened here.”

  “It’s the first time you’ve caught me.”

  “You’re fired.”

  “Usually I’m pretty safe up there in North American Literature.”

  “Collect your things and go.”

  Lucy extended her index finger and adjusted the files, slightly. She nodded her head. She left Amanda’s office. There was nothing she needed to collect from her desk and no coworkers she needed to say good-bye to. Lucy walked to the main doors and went through them.

  On the sidewalk Lucy stood perfectly still. Having just been fired in a ridiculous and humiliating way, she wanted to feel shame, to be so overwhelmed by self-doubt that she no longer knew who she was. She wanted to feel lost. But all she felt was the dry dusty air. A bus stopped in front of her. She hadn’t realized that she had been standing at a bus stop, but when the doors opened Lucy decided to get on.

  There were twelve people on the bus. Lucy counted each one as she walked by them. She took a seat at t
he very back. She closed her eyes. The bus rounded many corners. Her body shifted and swayed. When she was sure that she’d lost track of time, Lucy pulled the cord.

  Lucy stepped off of the bus. She watched it drive away. Then she looked around. The houses were mainly sixties-era bungalows. The lawns were perfectly kept. The street signs told her that she stood at Druid and Forester. Lucy had never been here. She had never heard of either of these streets. She wasn’t even sure what part of town she was in. But Lucy knew, without doubt, that if she went six blocks north, and then four blocks west, and then south for another nine and a half blocks, she’d be in front of her house.

  “Damn it!” Lucy said.

  She walked into the middle of the road. She closed her eyes and she held out her arms and she turned in a slow clockwise circle. But no matter what direction Lucy faced, she knew the way home.

  ANGIE SET THE TIMER ON HER PHONE and waited on the sidewalk across from her sister’s house. Forty-five minutes passed before a dented and dirty taxi arrived and Lucy stepped out of it. It had been nearly eight years since Angie had seen her sister and the first thing she noticed, and then couldn’t stop staring at, was her haircut. The bangs on the right side of Lucy’s head were at least three inches longer than the bangs on the left. The bottom was sliced in a zigzag, like the mouth of a jack-o’-lantern. Three tufts stuck up at the top. Lucy’s haircut didn’t look fashionable or avantgarde—it just looked crazy.

  Angie walked across the street. Lucy turned and saw her coming. They stopped when they were three feet apart. Neither decreased the space between them. Angie tried not to stare at Lucy’s hair.

  “It’s me. Your sister. Angie.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “Your boobs are so big!”

  “Well, I am pregnant.”

  “How did you find my house?”