Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  “Two kids in the nest, eh?” I’m thinking to myself on the way downstairs. “Did I take my pill this morning?”

  This seeing signs thing is getting ridiculous.

  Me and Jenny went outside and played in the laneway, looking at the wild pear and cherry in blossom while Dave dickered with Elmer. We seen a vole and Jenny said he was wearing a teeny little velvet track suit. When we got back, I could see by the satisfied way Elmer was spitting off the porch and the dizzy look on Dave that we were homeowners.

  33.

  MONDAY MORNING I’m at work doing inventory when Marg calls. Tells me Asshole’s out on bail, which I knew, but she says Tammy’s having coffee with him today and, plus, Darlene’s went and flew to Cancun!

  I stopped at Marg’s on the way home from work. Had it figured out what I wanted to say to her.

  “If they want to be that frigging hopeless, Marg,” I’m saying to her in my head as I walk up the street to her building, “if the two of them is that bound and bent on screwing up, there is nothing you can do about it. You might just as well move to Strone with us and leave them to it.”

  Why they keep letting these jerks out of jail is more than I know. Every time I think we’ve got the worst of them rounded up, they let one go and we’re back where we started.

  Marg had Tammy’s two kids with her, so we didn’t get to have a serious talk. What I did find out is how attached her and them kids has got. Marg’s been over there half the time this year, you know.

  So there’s young Matthew. He’s ten now. Him and Marg are trying to make a paper kite the way they seen on some TV show. Meghan, she’s twelve and she’s spread all over Marg’s bedroom floor with her scrapbook stuff, cutting and gluing.

  Matthew was giving out instructions like a supervisor. And Marg, she was putting her thumb where he told her, to hold the two sticks, and she was folding along the line he’d drew, and then she was hunting in the back of the drawer for more string.

  Meghan, she come looking for a magazine she could cut up for pictures. Said she wanted nice pictures of pretty things for her scrapbook.

  “You know, Meghan,” I says, “you can have a section for things you don’t like, too, that maybe ain’t so pretty.”

  Marg took a glance at me.

  “You could cut out pictures of scary things,” I says, winking at Marg.

  Marg joined in, “Things that are sad.”

  “Things that make you mad.”

  “Things you are ashamed of that are not your fault.”

  “Things you are not responsible for.”

  Meghan looked back and forth at me and Marg. Kids always know when there’s more to the story. What were these two old ladies smiling like that for, with sad eyes, and telling her to cut weird stuff out of the magazines, instead of just nice stuff?

  “Meghan, honey,” Marg says to her, “me and Rose here, we’ve cut up a lot of magazines in our time, eh, Rose?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “And that’s one of the main ways we’ve learned how to tell our ass from our elbow.”

  The kid stared at us. How did we learn anything in a magazine?

  “You try that,” I says to her. “Start with: think of things that scare you,” I says.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Best thing you can ever do,” I says.

  I went in the other room with young Meghan, sat down with her, and I levelled with her. I told her something about the bad stuff that had happened to me, and I told her what had started me on the way to where I am now, feeling a lot better, getting my life going right.

  Meghan’s “no way” had turned into a “maybe.” But she sat there looking at the magazines like she wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Did you need any help to get started, Meghan?”

  She said that what scared her wasn’t going to be in no magazine.

  I took and flipped a magazine open, let the pictures float in front of her, the way Frances done for me, way back in the beginning. Meghan stopped one of the pages.

  “You don’t have to know why you’re choosing any of them,” I says. “Just if you see one and it looks like it’s about fear for you, cut it out and paste it on.”

  Meghan, she stayed in Marg’s room with a stack of magazines. I went out and me and Marg, we patted each other’s shoulder.

  Marg, she said to me, she said, “You’re such a good person, Rose.”

  I didn’t necessarily think bullshit so much that time.

  Matthew, he was fed up with the talking. Wanted to take his kite out to the hill.

  Marg took him. I stayed there and made macaroni and cheese for us all. Didn’t hear a peep out of Meghan the whole hour. She was in there cutting and ripping. I peeked in and saw her paper stuck with fists, sheets and blankets and hearts, all torn and torn again.

  Dave won’t believe it how common this is, this way of tearing up kids. He’s got to think it’s real unusual what happened to our Jenny and to me.

  When I was getting ready to leave, Tammy still hadn’t called.

  She’d been “having coffee” with Asshole since ten o’clock this morning.

  Marg stepped into the hall with me and shut the door behind her. She whispered, “What should I do if Tammy comes back here with him?”

  “Lock your door and call the cops.” I said it firm. I’d learned my lesson by now. You don’t fool around with these abusers. “He’s not to come near them kids. There’s a court order.”

  “But what about Tammy?” Marg says.

  I says, “I don’t know. Want me to stay?”

  “No, no, Rose, you’re busy this week, what with moving. You’ve been more than kind here tonight.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’ve locked that bugger out and called the cops on him before now.” Marg put her chubby chin up.

  I give her a hug. Marg, she always has a nice baby powder smell to her, and she’s soft as a pillow.

  I told her I love her.

  “You too.” She pats my arm.

  We were at the start of the month of June. It was a beautiful night, still light after supper. Air was sweet. I come across a big lilac bush in a vacant lot and picked an armful.

  Josie was propped up in bed, looking at her curtain moving in the breeze. She put her face in the lilacs, breathed them in.

  To this day, when I smell lilacs, I can feel that hour. How it was, after my long day, to sit there on the edge of Josie’s smooth, white bed and tell her that we’d found our valley.

  34.

  TUESDAY COME and I had to go to Group for the last time.

  Now, you know, me and Meredith, we’d never saw quite eye to eye. But what I learned from her is most of the most important stuff I ever learned in my life. So I was ready to thank her very much. I had a card for her and a little present, wrapped up. I go to hand them to her.

  She don’t take them. “You’re making a mistake, Rose,” she says.

  I went cold. Everybody looked at her. Silence.

  Was this Meredith? Meredith, who was always there with her questions? Do you think it’s appropriate for Asshole to bust the dog’s teeth, Tammy? Whose fault do you think it is, Marg, that your father’s in jail? Darlene, do you think it’s really the best idea to marry somebody you never saw in your life? Always them professional little questions. Never no statements, no judging.

  But now all of a sudden, there’s Meredith, out of the blue, judging me in black and white: You are making a mistake, Rose.

  I’ll tell you, it stopped me dead. I’m one of these people who tend to think, if I don’t agree with somebody, that they could be right. At that time, I was more like that than I am today.

  I look around at the rest of them.

  Everybody was gawping at Meredith. Frances, the helper, looked like the boss was losing
it.

  Meredith says, “You haven’t completed your therapy.”

  I said I planned to go for therapy in my new place. That was part of my deal with Dave, I said.

  “You’ll have to pay for it, you know. This is one of very few areas where this service is available free of charge.”

  “I know that. But it’s important. If I have to pay, I will.”

  “But you know how unstable you are, Rose.”

  She was white as a sheet, breathing quick. I didn’t know what to make of it. She’s the one looked unstable to me. “You will go back to your old behaviour patterns.”

  “I’ll be tempted, likely,” I says, “but I know what to do now.”

  “What will you do?” she asks me. And I wish yous could’ve heard the voice on her. It’s like I’m below human intelligence. Like, what will you do, you moron?

  Me and Dave had it planned. If he got tempted by the drug scene or if I got tempted by some guy, we were going to run straight and tell somebody. Get help. No secrets. We’d broke through on secrets. We knew, now, why them things had a hold over us. It was the secret buzz. Now that me and Dave were teamed up to beat it, I felt good about our chances.

  Or I did until Meredith says to me, she says, “You need to be in this group, Rose.”

  “Wouldn’t another group do me?”

  Meredith says, “I am the one who has become familiar with your history.”

  That brought me up short, I can tell you. Could that be right? She’s the only one could help me? There was no other type of help that would do me? I felt scared. Would I have to start all over again?

  Frances looked like she was busting to say something.

  I says, “My history?” I says. I’m thinking, isn’t that just about the same as the history of half the frigging world? Wouldn’t any shrink pick up the gist of it pretty quick?

  “I have worked with you for approximately eighteen months.”

  I don’t know what to say. I’m confused. Is she telling me I’m going to fall apart without her? Could that be true? Did it have to be her and no other shrink? Jeeze. Maybe it was true! She was making me wonder. I had counted on going to Group every Tuesday. Meredith had steered me right.

  And then she said to me, she said, “Rose, you are in no position, at this time, to adopt a child.”

  Trickles of sweat run down my sides, under my shirt.

  “You are a victim of childhood sexual abuse. You have a number of unresolved issues. Your behaviour is unpredictable. The problem will be passed on, through you, to the child.”

  “There’s just the one problem that’s cropped up lately,” I says. My voice is shaky as my hands.

  “Just one, you call it!”

  Meredith puffs herself up. She looks even bigger. What is that in her voice? It’s like she wants to scare me. It’s working. She is scaring me.

  “I’m not fit to adopt Jenny?” My throat is tight.

  “I would certainly not advise it!”

  I want to ask her why not. But I’m scared of what she’ll say. I look at a scratch on the table, trying not to cry.

  Meredith’s voice is still going. I can hear her telling me that I involved myself with a man again recently and might do so again at any time and that men like that are very dangerous to children like Jenny and that I am statistically unlikely to protect her. She’s amazed the adoption has been approved.

  I’m stammering that I’m hoping for better things.

  Meredith tells me that my chances are very slim.

  Frances stands up.

  She says, “Dr. Debenham!”

  Meredith gives her a stare, cold as a dead fish. “Yes, Frances?”

  Frances’s busting to say something.

  Meredith, she’s daring her to go ahead and try saying it.

  Frances said that her feeling was that this decision was up to Rose. But then she sunk back down. She had her job to think of. Couldn’t lip off to Meredith too much.

  By the time Meredith got done with me, I felt about as much self-worth as a puddle. I didn’t hear much else that went on there that night. I barely even heard the rest of them out in the hallway afterwards, trying to tell me that Meredith was full of shit.

  Got home. Phoned Dave.

  There was nothing he could say to me.

  “She’s a professional. She must know.” That’s alls I could choke out.

  I told him we should forget the whole thing. I wasn’t fit for a mother or a wife. I told him I’d better keep working here, since I need this shrink. No other shrink would do. We’d better not buy the house. I said I was going to call Children’s Aid and say forget about the adoption.

  35.

  DAVE, HE WAS BEGGING ME, “Give yourself some time! What the hell’s happened? Think it over!”

  The next day at work I’m stunned. I don’t know how I got through that day.

  I was shrunk to nothing. I was no good for a mother to Jenny. I was unpredictable. I was a victim. I was never going to be no different. Meredith said. Meredith had went to university. Meredith must know. I needed Meredith. She was the only one could help me. Better stay here with her and let go of all the crazy dreams.

  Just when I’m finishing for the day, there’s a car load pulls up in front of McIlveen’s Plumbing and Heating.

  Out piles Marg, Tammy, and Tammy’s kids. They troop in and stand there while I sort out somebody’s hot water heater that was rusted through and the water was pouring out the bottom while the pump was overheating trying to keep the tank filled. They look at me while I turn off the lights, lock the door. Then they frog march me to Marg’s car.

  They took me to Josie.

  Josie was sitting on the veranda. The kids, they spotted a good climbing tree by the porch and was up it like monkeys. Tammy went hurrying after them, fussing. I walked across the grass with Marg.

  Josie, she watched us coming to her. Never took her eyes off me. Watched me climbing the steps to her.

  Soon as we’re on the porch, Tammy and Marg, they let loose yapping, trying to tell Josie what the problem is. They’re flapping and clucking.

  “Meredith told her she’s not fit!”

  “She says she’s not going to marry Dave now!”

  “You tell her, Josie. She won’t listen to us!”

  “She wants to give up on adopting little Jenny!”

  “She is so fit for that, ain’t she, Josie?”

  They sounded like kill day in the hen yard, as Al would say.

  I was sitting beside Josie, on a low stool, not saying nothing. If I wasn’t fit, I wasn’t. If I was screwed up permanent, that was that.

  A child of my own and I was going to save her? Our family had been dysfunctional since cave days. I was going to make it right?

  I was never going to screw around no more? Looking at a lake was going to help me? A cripple across the road? Some big business plan? I was going to be in on it? Help run it? A loser like me?

  I’m no good. Never will be. What the hell use is it to struggle and try to learn? You’ll be right back here anyways. Dreams is for kids. The whole world might as well be paved right over in a solid sheet of concrete.

  Tammy told her kids not to climb so high.

  Marg says, “Oh, they’re all right.”

  “There’s no reason Rose can’t be a fine mother, is there, Josie? Meredith’s got a hold of the wrong end, there, I’m sure,” Tammy says.

  I was thinking how, when you’re a kid, it all depends on what the adults are telling you. Are they saying you can climb high or are they telling you you can’t?

  Josie, she just sat there until the worker come to get her for her supper.

  Then there was this quiet. They seen that she hadn’t had no chance to say nothing. She was being pulled backwards, away from us, in her wheelchair. Made me think of
a wave rolling out. She said, “I see the toy cow.”

  The things Josie says, eh, they’ll hang there in the air. One car went by. Josie rolled away.

  Tammy says, “Rose likely gets it, don’t you, Rose?”

  I says, “What she’s talking about is Meredith. That’s all I know.”

  We headed back to my place to make dinner. In the car, I talked about the last time Meredith bawled me out in Group. It was a long time ago now, before Josie got hurt. Meredith had been yelling at me that no man was going to rescue me. I had to do the work for myself, as if I didn’t know it.

  “And that’s the same thing Josie said back then. She seen a broken toy cow.”

  “But what the frig is it supposed to mean?” Marg says.

  “I don’t know. Something. Meredith’s messed up or something?”

  We stopped and picked up Jenny.

  I was quiet and there was a big cloud at the back of my mind, but it was okay with them all jammed into my place, cooking. Tammy’s Meghan kneeling up to the coffee table, drawing and colouring with Jenny. Matthew found one of Dave’s adventure books laying around.

  When they left, the weight had shifted a bit inside me, but I still wouldn’t promise nothing.

  Sally phoned. Marg had told her.

  “We shall mount up with the wings of eagles,” she says.

  “Okay, Sal.”

  “You’re going to be all right now, Rose?” she keeps on at me.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “You think about what Josie said. You figure out what that broke goat means.”

  “Cow.”

  “I bet it means you’re as fit as can be for Jenny’s mother and Dave’s wife.”

  “How’s it supposed to mean that?”

  “Well, but I bet it does. We can tell Dave not to worry, right?” she says.

  “Look, Sally, I don’t know. I don’t know nothing. I feel like a truck hit me.”

  “Things won’t look so bad in the morning,” Sally said. “The mercy of God is new, every morning.”