Y: A Novel

by Marjorie Celona

  When Luella sees me start to crown, she puts her hand on either side of my head to guide me out. She pushes down, freeing one of my shoulders, then pulls up to free the other. Yula pants and pushes hard, and in an instant I am in Luella’s arms, slippery as a fish, my eyes clenched shut. Luella strokes my nose to release the mucus and amniotic fluid, then rests me between Yula’s breasts, my head slightly below my body to help drain out the fluid. My arms and legs reach out aimlessly, quiver and paw the air, then curl back in again. My mother’s hands are trembling. I am half the size of Eugene when he was born and covered in soft, dark downy fur. Luella rubs me clean with a towel, wipes the vernix from my tiny face and body until I start to cry. I have skinny little limbs and my skin is red and wrinkled. My mother listens for my breath in the dark, silent morning. Luella dries me off as best she can and places me back on my mother’s chest, then covers us both in a flannel bedsheet.

  Yula feels her womb begin to contract again and then the pressure as the placenta moves down. There is a small gush of blood, and Luella guides the placenta out until she is holding the entire thing in her hands. She inspects it to make sure it is all in one piece, that there are no ragged edges, nothing left behind. She feels Yula’s abdomen to make sure her uterus is properly contracted and tells her that she is okay, that everything is going to be okay.

  My mother hadn’t expected me to be this small. Her heart pounds. She is holding such a small, delicate thing. I frighten her. I am too small to seem human. My eyes are still shut tight, and I’ve gone silent. Everything she should not have done rushes at her—stayed out that night, left Eugene by himself, gotten high, taken me into the city to be born. The weight of her decisions settles into her heart like rocks. She has killed her child. Will she kill another? I look so small and helpless that she’s not sure how I’m even alive.

  She feels my breath on her skin and looks into my little potato-size face. I am brand new. I know nothing. I know no one. The thought comes to her in a bright flash. I must never know her. I must never know what a monster she is. I deserve better. Someone will raise me here, in the city. Someone will raise me right. A real family.

  As she lies in Luella’s bed, she plans her death. She could walk to Dallas Road and drown herself in the ocean. She wants it to be painful. She wants to suffer. She searches her mind for options. She could probably get into the lobby of View Towers if she waited long enough for someone to walk outside, hold open the door. Oh, hey, let me in, okay? It would be that easy. Then it would be a matter of getting into someone’s apartment on the top floor. Take the elevator. Wait. Could she just knock on all the doors until someone answered, then push her way through and out onto the balcony? Could she do that? One of Harrison’s dealers used to live there. If only she could remember his name. Maybe in a little while she’ll remember. In her mind she sees herself falling toward the ground. It pleases her. I will never know her. I will never know about any of this.

  Luella rests her hand on Yula’s arm. Her fingers are covered in delicate silver rings, the nails neatly manicured and painted peach. Yula stares at her own hands, the cuticles overgrown and neglected, the nails deeply ridged and caked with dirt. They are still the hands of a girl.

  “I miss your mother,” Luella says. “Strange as she was.”

  “Me, too.”

  “She named you after me. Did you know that?”

  Yula shakes her head. “Why doesn’t my father like you?”

  Luella pauses. “Your mother and father—”

  “Had a toxic relationship. I know.”

  “At its simplest,” Luella says, “it was jealousy. She loved me more than she loved him. He wanted her to be in love with him, and only him, not someone else, too.”

  Yula shuts her eyes. The thought of Eugene overwhelms her, and she can’t bear to hear any more about anyone else’s pain, anyone else’s history.

  “Please,” she says. “Please take her.” She hands me to Luella, who cradles me while my mother struggles to get up. She sits on the toilet and lets the blood drain out of her. She hears Luella stripping the bed.

  She could take me to the hospital. She could go to jail. Every choice seems feeble somehow. Every choice feels wrong. She searches her mind for the name of Harrison’s dealer. She likes the idea of jumping off the balcony of View Towers. It seems so easy, so quick. If she goes to the ocean she’ll have to wade in, then let herself be carried away by the tide. There is a chance she’ll fight it; there is a chance she’ll fight to stay alive. But if she jumps? She likes the finality of this choice. This is what she will do.

  “Luella?” she calls from the doorway to the bathroom.

  Luella appears in the dim light of the hallway, holding me in her arms.

  “I need,” my mother begins, her words slow and careful because she is lying, “I need to be alone with my baby for a while. I’d just like to rest for a bit and think things over. I need to do this before we go to the hospital.”

  Luella looks at my little face. I am breathing; I seem to be okay. And Yula is right—I will likely be taken away, and she will be arrested. Luella nods. She will give my mother as long as she wants before they decide what to do.

  In the dark of the bedroom, my mother waits. It is three in the morning. She nurses me, and I fall asleep. My mother waits another hour, then pulls herself from the bed, leaving me momentarily, and peeks into the living room. Luella has fallen asleep on the couch, the television on mute, the screen displaying hundreds of small birds gathered at the shoreline in search of food. She goes back into the bedroom and swaddles me in her gray sweatshirt as tightly as she can. She pulls her coveralls over her body and finds a pad of paper and a pencil on the bedside table.

  This is the most important thing I’ve ever asked of anyone in my life. I need you to forget that I was here and that this baby was born. I’m going to leave her at the hospital and then be on my way. I do not ever want her to know about me or Harrison. Please do not tell anyone. Please. I will take her to the hospital, and then I’m going to disappear. Please—whatever you do—don’t tell anyone about this. I want her to grow up free from the burden of all this. I want her to have a wonderful life. Such a wonderful life. This will not happen if she knows anything about me or how her brother died. I never want her to know these things. Please do this for me. It is the right thing to do, I think.

  Together we creep past Luella’s sleeping form. My mother unhooks the chain and opens the front door inch by inch, holding her breath, until the door is shut behind her and she is standing in the cold night air. She rests me on the bench seat of Joel and Edwin’s truck and tries to start the vehicle but the ignition won’t catch. She curses them and their fleet of old shitty cars, wrenches the door open, and slides out of the truck. She lifts me out and holds me tight to her body. She looks toward Park Boulevard and the big white apartment building that looks like a wedding cake. It is too far to walk to the hospital. She’ll never make it. It would take hours and too many people would see her. She presses her face against mine and listens to my breathing. I am okay. I am okay. I am so small, but I am okay.

  She could rest me on the doorstep of one of the apartments, but it is so early, and it is so cold, and what if no one walks by? She could ring the doorbell, but she’d never get away in time. She walks down Heywood Avenue, toward downtown. It is 4:30 a.m.

  High above the trees of Beacon Hill Park, my mother sees the towers of Christ Church Cathedral. She thinks of the old video Harrison showed her once of him singing “Once in Royal David’s City” as a choirboy. How he stood stiffly in his maroon cassock and white ruff, hands clasped, and sang the solo part while the rest of the choir stood behind him. How sweet and innocent his face was; how sweet and innocent all the boys’ faces were.

  She decides she will take me to the cathedral. She will give me the most majestic start to my life. She will set me beneath the blue front doors, beneath the tympanum. She heads up Quadra Street and a few cars pass, but no one stops and no one slow
s down. I am so small that it looks as if she’s carrying a loaf of bread or a little stuffed animal. The cathedral rises up ahead of her, and she shifts her weight. She is so tired that she is limping. She wills the heat of her body to transfer into mine. If she can just get me to the cathedral. If I can just survive.

  She crosses Burdett, carries me up the wheelchair ramp that leads to the cathedral’s entrance. The cathedral looms cold and gray in front of her. As she kneels to set me down, the hideous thought enters her mind that I will not be discovered here either. It is too early. She sees my face grow gray in her mind, my little body cease to move. She thought it would feel sacred, but instead the long shadows from the spires drag over my face, and she fears that I will be taken away by demons. She looks down at me. I lie motionless on the concrete. It is too much, and she snatches me up into her arms.

  The possibility exists, too, that she could end it for us both. She sits on the steps and rocks me in her arms. We could die together. Not everyone was meant to survive. Not everyone was meant for this earth. But there is such a sweetness coming from me that she cannot bear this thought either.

  She traces my features with her finger, explores the divot between my lips and nose. It is Eugene’s face; it is mine. My cheeks are full and heavy. My lips gummy and malleable. My brow is furrowed, as though I sense something is wrong. Still, I have yet to open my eyes.

  Across the street, the fluorescent lights of the YMCA flicker on. The Y opens early, my mother recalls. The sky is getting lighter, an eerie purple-blue. She will wait a few minutes, then she will leave me in front of the glass doors. I will be found immediately, she thinks. I will survive this. She wishes she could leave me with something beautiful—a conch shell, a gemstone, something to be cherished. She fingers the Swiss Army Knife in her pocket. It’s all she has, and she tucks it between my feet: a parting gift.

  And so my mother, a girl in navy coveralls, walks down the steps of Christ Church Cathedral with a bundle wrapped in gray, her body bent in the cold wet wind of the summer morning. She opens her mouth as if to scream, but there is no sound here, just the calls of birds. The wind gusts and her coveralls blow against her body, framing her belly as she walks toward the YMCA, exposing the tops of her brown workman’s boots. Her coveralls are stained with motor oil, her shoes far too big. She is a small, fine-boned woman, with deep brown hair tied back in a bun and a pale, startled face with wild, moon-gray eyes. There is a coarse, masculine look to her, a meanness. Even in the chill, her brow is beaded with sweat. She stops at the entrance to the parking lot, then takes a step forward and looks around her. The street is full of pink and gold light from the sun. The wet of last night’s rain is still present on the street, on the sidewalk, on the buildings’ reflective glass. Everything shines pink and gold and blue. If anyone sees her, she will lose her nerve. She looks up again, and the morning sky is as blue as a peacock feather.

  XXII.

  Dear Shannon,

  I guess first of all thank you for writing. Yes, I am your father. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Never imagined I would hear from you and it took me a bit to figure out what to say.

  Well, hi there. I live twenty minutes north of Niagara Falls with my wife Nancy and our two sons Kip and Arthur. I work as a mechanic and Nancy stays at home with the boys but she’s got a little eBay business on the side. The boys are six and two. I am forty-two years old. I was born in Powell River, left when I was fifteen and never went back. I have an older brother, Dominic, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in years, though last I heard he’s moved back home. Our parents died a couple of years ago. Long-time smokers, both of them. My father worked at the mill. We weren’t close. Speaking of parents, my wife’s mother is living with us right now. She had a stroke last year and has dementia. Twice this morning she asked if I was here to deliver a pizza!

  Yeah, I’ve got blond hair.

  I don’t think there’s anything unusual about my sense of smell. Nothing that I’ve ever noticed anyway. Does your blindness bother you? You write about it as if it doesn’t.

  I keep writing things and then erasing them. It sounds like you’re a lot like me—you’ve got the wandering spirit. You’re restless. I always had a hard time staying in one place for too long. Your mother is the opposite way.

  Your mother was real sick right after you were born—I mean, sick as in beyond upset, as in changed. She didn’t abandon you because she didn’t love you. I just want you to know that. I need to tell you a few things. I hope I can explain this well.

  Our son died the day before you were born. Eugene was almost three years old. It was my fault. I was having a lot of problems—okay, look, I’m just going to be honest with you and not candy coat anything. With the help of my brother, I’d gotten myself addicted to drugs pretty bad and your mother and I were fighting about it nonstop. The night it happened I was supposed to go in for work but all I wanted was to drive into town and get a fix.

  There’s a kind of superiority you feel when you’re high sometimes, like nothing can go wrong. That’s why I used to get high. I used to love that feeling. I longed for it. Your mom and I left Eugene alone for a bit so we could take a drive and sort some things out. We drove to the water and talked and I hate to admit this, even to myself, but I was just waiting for these guys to show up who I knew would have some stuff. The other thing I want to tell you is that your mom was only eighteen. She was just a kid. We were both kids. Kids on the beach. And all I really cared about was getting high. It’s in your blood—your poison blood, your mother used to say to me—so keep that in mind. Drugs grab hold of you like you wouldn’t believe.

  The guys showed up and I got your mom a little stoned so I could enjoy myself without her yelling at me. Well, I got too high. I didn’t mean to get that high. I don’t even know how many hours went by, but I had to call my brother to come and drive us home.

  When we got back, Eugene was sick, really sick. He’d managed to get the tops off a couple of bottles of cough syrup—knowing us, they probably weren’t even on properly—and he drank the whole thing. We just thought he was sick from it, you know? He threw up and your mom took him into the bedroom and they went to sleep.

  The whole time I was itching for another fix and at some point I realized that the cigar box where I kept my stuff was on the floor of the living room and that Eugene had gone through that, too. And God knows how much of it he ate. This is hard for me to say. Once, when he walked in on me, I told him I was eating powdered sugar—do you see? Do you see how horribly I fucked up here? Our boy just thought he was eating sugar. I keep saying our boy but he was your mother’s son—I mean, I wasn’t his real father—somehow this makes me feel like more of a monster. He died in his sleep, in your mother’s arms. As I said, this was the day before you were born. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone lose the one thing that’s really keeping them connected to this earth, but all the life just shot out of her when she realized Eugene was dead.

  I did sixty days in Kent and three years in William Head for killing our son.

  I was charged with Failure to Provide the Necessities of Life to a Child, and Criminal Negligence Causing Death. I pled guilty to the first charge, and the Crown did not prosecute me on the second. I was lucky, Shannon, though I’m not sure why.

  I want you to know how much of an accident this was. We loved Eugene. I loved him like he was my own son. We were in such a fog that night. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back into my mind and tried to search for the part of myself that let us leave him alone that night. Whatever part of myself let me make that choice is a part of myself I want to destroy. I go hunting for it late at night. I want to find it and make sure it never takes over me again.

  Your mother didn’t do any time. I told the police that she had nothing to do with our leaving Eugene alone. I mean, it was my fault, but I didn’t want anyone to think for a second that she had anything to do with it.

  Your mother’s name is Yula. I can’t tell
you enough good things about her. She’s a small person with a heart so big she doesn’t know what to do with it. I’ve never met someone who feels so much. No one will ever love you like Yula loves you—her own father said that to me one time.

  Gee, what else. She was born without her left pinky finger. On her right ankle she has a little tattoo of a peace sign. She likes chocolate doughnuts. She had it pretty rough growing up. Her mom died in a motorcycle accident when she was sixteen and her dad was a peculiar and moody man. He was always threatening to kill himself.

  We lived in a little pine cabin across from her parents’ house on Mount Finlayson. I am not in touch with her anymore, but I’m going to tell you where we used to live and there’s some chance that if you go out there, that’s where she’ll be. Her kind doesn’t leave. It’s 2317 Finlayson Arm Road. It’s right past the entrance to Goldstream Provincial Park, up the Malahat. She has had nothing but a horrible dark time since Eugene’s death, and I know that meeting you would be like the sun coming up.

  I don’t want you to think that I left your mother because I didn’t love her anymore. It’s just that—well, first of all, I was in prison for almost three years and that’s such a long time to be away from someone. But also she didn’t want to see me anyway after Eugene died. She tried to kill herself right after she left you. While she was still in the hospital she wrote me a letter saying she needed to never hear from me again. I gave her that. I figured it was the least I could do.

  I’m not sure that I am a bad person at my core. But I have done such bad things. I don’t know where one starts and the other stops.

  I was not there when she left you. But I know for certain she did it because she wanted to give you a better life. She didn’t want you to know that you were born to people who had fucked up their lives so bad. She thought you would be better off without her.