I shoot her an annoyed look: “Mark’s.”
“How pregnant are you?”
“Maybe four, five months, something like that.”
“Holy shit!” Jasmyn’s jaw drops. Her eyes fall to my stomach. She reaches out and pulls up my shirt to get a closer look. “Nah, you can barely tell! You sure?”
I nod my head.
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. It’s too late for an abortion. Don’t tell anyone,” I warn.
Jasmyn raises her fingers to her mouth and gestures that her lips are sealed. “That’s one thing about me—I’m true to my word. True to my word,” she repeats with conviction. And I believe her. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m just not thinking about it. Not yet, anyway.”
“Fuuuck,” she exhales and then hugs me again.
I stand outside the public library door for a long time, watch women with small children and old people walk out in friendly afternoon time, holding doors open and smiling at strangers. What is it about churches and libraries that makes people believe that if you frequent them you’re automatically a good and trustworthy person? I stand in the parking lot and bum a cigarette off this Latino guy with bloodshot eyes, who keeps calling me, “Yo, Charlene,” and asks me to come with him to some park. I stand there with him until I’m done my smoke and I head into the library.
I casually drift up and down the stacks, picking out books on volcanoes and plumbing, leafing through them with great interest, should anyone be watching. When I finally find what I’m looking for, I stand just to the left of the section and out of the corner of my eye scan the spines of books on pregnancy. A middle-aged woman comes by and seems to purposefully place herself right in front of my vision. She gives me a cold look and I’m sure she knows what I’m up to, so I pull out Nutrition for Cancer Patients and move to a carrel where I wait until the coast is clear. The moment she’s gone, I quickly grab four books, slide them in the middle of my pile, and go find a table in the kiddy section.
I scan the books, stopping on glossy pictures of smiling couples staring down at bare bellies, the men’s large hands spread over the women’s stomachs as if they were holding basketballs. I imagine my photograph, in the unwritten chapter at the back of the book, entitled “Teenage Moms.” In my photo, I’d be sitting alone in a chair, my round stomach exposed. I’d wear tons of makeup and I’d spike my hair, and I might even be smoking a cigarette because that’s what readers would expect.
In another book, there are charts and graphs, but mostly I look at the magnified pictures of glowing eggs: pink, red, green, and orange, like spongy coral reefs or exploding fireworks. The egg I like best is a blue-grey circle with outward-moving rings, as if a stone was just thrown into its centre. In the later chapters, there are lots of photos of fluorescent-orange babies floating in circles of black space, curled like shrimp. Black dots for eyes and pink-grapefruit veins. They remind me of fancy finger foods, served at a party, with a dark pumpernickel bread beneath.
I read that my baby is about eight inches, which I measure with my school-agenda plastic ruler. They say that at twelve weeks, the baby is bigger than an avocado. That it hiccups and has a heart, and had eyelids after only thirty-eight days, though I can’t imagine why it needs them so soon.
After seeing all the fetus pictures, the diagrams of women with inflated stomachs and veiny breasts start to catch my eye. I realize that I never thought of how much my body would change between the time of conception and giving birth. This gets me all scared and I become all panicky, as if I was just diagnosed with some terminal disease. I get a pencil from my bag and write down strange words—linea nigra, areola, fundus, varicose, edema, Braxton Hicks—but then I start to feel sick, my stomach swirls, and my head gets all hot. I take off my jacket and cover the books, go to the toilet where I throw up, twice. Still lightheaded, I return to my table, rip the magnetic strips out of the bindings, and slip the books into my knapsack.
I leave the library occupying another body. Leave behind my simple hokey-pokey classifications of right foot, left foot, and think about fingernails and eyebrows and that uncertain line that separates the wet part of your lip from the dry part. I think about breasts, nipples, and parts between my legs that I thought were there for sex, parts I never thought of before. I never questioned, really questioned, the stuff that comes out between my legs or why Mark’s tongue can command my nipples to grow hard. But now, I walk home thinking about all my muscles and bones rubbing together each time I step and I wonder why all this never occurred to me before.
They say first love lasts forever. What they don’t mention is that it’s not really your first love. There are things to prepare most people for this, like the love of a parent, a dog, a grade one teacher, or even a stuffed animal. Really, most people have been loving in multitudes by the time they even kiss someone. But it seems to me that since Mark truly is my first love, he will penetrate my bones.
Mark is not feeling well. He has a cold. He asks me to come take care of him. He doesn’t even mention anything about not seeing him for a while. I fill a brown paper bag with treats like orange juice and vitamin C pills and Tylenol and a comic book for him to sketch from. When I get to his apartment, he pouts like a little boy from his bed as I hold his tea with honey up to his lips.
“How are you?” he asks me as I scramble around the room picking up balls of crumpled toilet paper.
From the way he says it, I know he’s asking about the abortion he thinks I had. That he thinks I’ve been at home sick for these past couple weeks, recovering. “Fine,” I say. “Don’t worry about it.” And I climb into his bed, ignoring the funny look he’s giving me, like he doesn’t believe me.
We sleep all afternoon, or rather, Mark does. I tell him I don’t care what we do, I just want to be with him. I take off my clothes and cling to his body, my fingers firmly pressed against his chest.
It’s one thing to love only one person your whole life. And it’s another to have that one person not love you back, not the way you want him to. I’d give anything for him to want me. I stay awake for hours, listening to his soft breath, mouthing the words I love you into the back of his neck. And I pray to a God I borrow every once in a while. I pray for him to just give me this one thing, this one small thing I ask for. Just give me this.
I wrap my leg over his thighs and Mark squirms, half waking. “You need to shave your legs,” he mumbles grumpily, brushing my leg off, pulling his sweaty body away, and returning to sleep. I’m careful to keep my legs on my side, hold my bare chest into him, my stomach pressing into his back.
Mark would be a good father. I know it from the way he moves his marijuana plants around the apartment for optimal sunlight. I know it from the way he falls to the ground to play with Spliff the moment he walks in the door. Or how he talks about his little brother, like he’d give his life for him. And even though I work so hard at proving to Mark that I will love him no matter what, it’s only Spliff and his brother who he absolutely trusts. And I think it would be like that with the baby.
“So how’s it going?” my counsellor Eric asks nonchalantly, as if everything were normal and he were going to just ignore the fact that I’d missed my past two appointments. I notice he’s styled his hair differently, brushed it down over his forehead instead of off to the side. It’s as if he was trying to look younger or cooler, only trying to look younger makes him only look older.
“Fine,” I say. “Feeling better now. Went to school today.” It’s a small lie. One that I know will make him happy. I don’t tell him I have no intention of going back to that school. That I’ve missed too many classes in the past few weeks. That I’m too afraid of teachers yelling at me, astonished at my nerve, to just walk back into class after so long. I don’t tell him I can’t take another day of walking down those halls surrounded by stupid people I can’t stand. And that I’m sick of dress codes and dumb-ass teachers who have nothing better to do t
han give you detentions for having bloodshot eyes.
I tuck my chin down deep into my jacket collar and wait for Eric to say something, but he doesn’t. Then I notice the little fishbowl on the table. Inside is a single orange goldfish swimming through a pink castle. “Cute fish,” I say.
“Yeah? You like him?” Eric gets excited and leans his face up to the bowl. “Bought him today. His name is Freddy.” He taps on the glass, the fish ignores him, but Eric sits there staring and smiling anyway, like it’s his child or something. Sometimes it seems like I’m a thousand years older than he is. “You want to feed him? I bought these fish treats”—he offers me a little plastic Baggie full of flaky orange things. I shake my head, declining, but then feel bad right away because he seems disappointed. So I reach forward, pinch some flakes, and sprinkle them in.
“What do you think they taste like?” I ask as we watch Freddy frantically suck them off the surface.
“Don’t know. You want to try?” He jokingly offers me the bag again.
“Okay,” and I dip a finger in and put the thin flakes on my tongue. “Hmm. I think that was steak and broccoli flavour.”
Eric laughs and leans back in his chair. I realize that I’ve sort of missed him. “So,” he says, “what have you been doing? Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Just sleeping mostly. Thinking. Listening to music.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Stuff. School. The house. Mark. Stuff.”
“Did you eat?”
“A little. Not very hungry.” He writes something down and I feel the need to explain before he jumps to his therapy conclusions. “I get like that sometimes, just need some time off, you know? Away. Only, I can’t go away, so I just go to sleep.”
“Were you thinking about your mom?”
“No.”
“Your grandmother?”
“No,” I shoot him a look of surprise and then annoyance. “She’s the last thing on my mind.”
“Can we talk about her? Our conversation sort of stopped short last time.”
“Whatever,” I respond, pissed off that he’s pulling out the psychobabble, just when we were having a normal conversation.
“Have you talked to her?”
“No.”
“Do you want to talk to her? I mean, are you trying to avoid her?”
“No. I’d talk to her, like if I saw her in the street or something. I’m not mad at her. I just don’t want to go over and have afternoon tea, you know?”
“Do you worry about her?”
“Sometimes.” Eric stays silent and I can tell he is waiting for me to say more, because he moves his finger up to his lips and gently taps, as if signing for me to talk. I roll my eyes, realizing the truth is the shortest way out of this one. “Sometimes I wonder who’s looking after her. I did pretty much everything for her, shopped, cleaned. For all I know she could be dead for a week, lying on the floor. It’s not like I wonder that all the time, it just crosses my mind.”
“Well, how would you feel if I said she’s okay?” I look at him. “She called me. Said she wants to see you.”
“She called you?” I ask, annoyed and shocked all at once.
“Yes.”
“Why the fuck would she call you?” I can’t stand the thought of Elsie talking to Eric. I think of how she used to talk to Mr. Hensley, convincing him that I’m the one with the problem.
“Maybe she misses you.”
“Ha!”
“She wants you to go by the apartment.”
“She probably needs me to do something for her. She probably wants me to clean.”
“Do you want me to ask her to come in? All three of us?” His words send panic all over me.
“No,” I blurt out like an idiot. I don’t want him to know her. I don’t want him to see her. I’d be too embarrassed. “I’ll stop by. See what she wants.”
I pick a time when Elsie would be out at work, figure I’ll just leave a note. But as soon as my hand touches the doorknob to the apartment, I know she’s there. I hear the TV and smell the Marlboros. And then, as I walk in, something strange. Floor cleaner?
I almost don’t recognize the kitchen. At first I think she’s painted it, but then I realize that the original colour when it’s clean is white, not dull yellow. There aren’t any dishes in the sink and the table is cleared of magazines and ashtrays and unopened bills. There’s even a new rug by the fridge, blue and green, with yellow circles on it.
“Elsie?” I yell. I peer around the doorway and into the living room. Comforted with what I see: just like it always is, messy, worse than ever. The radio and the TV are on. “Elsie?” I head to my room and find Elsie’s back emerging from the closet. My clothes are piled on the bed.
“Oh, hi,” she says, as if she wasn’t surprised to see me. “Just in time. You want some of your clothes? I’m cleaning out the closet and putting my stuff in. I need the space.”
“I have what I want,” I answer coldly, knowing that she just wants to get me angry. “Give it away to the less fortunate. Oh, no, sorry, that would be me.” She doesn’t respond, scratching the hangers along the metal bar. Only she’s pulling them so fast, I know she’s not really looking at the clothes. “I can’t stay.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m busy anyway.”
“What happened to the kitchen?”
“Me and Barb cleaned it. It was her idea.” Barb used to be our family social worker, years ago. But now she just works with Elsie. For some reason, she likes her. She tells me that my grandmother is a good person in a bad life. When she says this I’m tempted to tell her all the things that could change her mind, but I don’t. Because if Barb looks out for her, that means I don’t have to.
“How’s that shelter you’re at?”
“It’s not a shelter, it’s a group home.”
“Well, whatever it is, how is it?”
“Fine.” I glance around the room. She’s been sleeping in here, but everything else looks pretty much the same.
“Good.” She turns around, puts her hands on her hips, and looks me up and down. I look away. “Jesus Christ, what the hell have they been feeding you? You’re fat.”
“I am not.” I look down at my body to confirm there is no sudden bulge.
“You pregnant?”
“What? You crazy?” I deny, wondering how she could possibly guess. And there’s no way I’d tell her, not face to face, to see the satisfaction in her eyes knowing that she was right about me all along. I cross my arms and look around the room. “You haven’t moved my stuff,” I say, trying to distract her.
Elsie ignores my comment, her eyes fixed on me. “Don’t be getting pregnant or you’ll end up a no-good mother like me.” She starts picking up clothes off the ground. I consider denying it once more, but let it drop.
“You’re not a bad mother,” I say, more out of obligation.
“Hah. One daughter’s dead and my granddaughter’s at a shelter. I’m a bad mother.”
“It’s a group home. And besides, there’s always Aunt Sharon.” Elsie glares at me when I say this. “I didn’t plan it this way.” She fumbles in her shirt pocket for a cigarette.
“I know.” And for a second there it almost gets nice. It’s so pathetically nice, I feel like we’re in a movie.
Elsie lights her smoke and then shoots an angry look at me. “I’m not gonna change, so don’t get your little therapy people to call me.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t get anyone to call you.”
“That guy”—she waves her cigarette in the air—“that guy asked me to come in and talk, ‘open up lines of communication, start the healing,’” she says in a mocking voice. “Fucking dick.” She storms past me out into the living room.
“I didn’t tell him to call.” I pursue her into the room, enraged that Eric lied to me.
“I can just see you in that little office,” Elsie says, now picking up newspapers from the coffee table, “acting like some little fucking prince
ss who’s got it so bad. Did you tell him how you fuck any guy who says boo to you? Did you tell him about beating the crap out of that girl last year? Or that your boyfriend is a drug dealer?”
“Shut up!”
“You didn’t tell him about that, did ya?”
“Shut up! You don’t know anything about Mark. You don’t know anything about me, so don’t go saying shit you don’t know about.”
“Tell your shrink not to call. I sure as hell don’t need anyone tellin’ me how awful I am.”
Suddenly I get the urge to flee. My head rushes, my heart pounds, and I just need to get out of there, for good. “Don’t worry, Grandma.” I turn and look around me for something to pick up. Something to take with me. Anything. “I can tell you that myself.” I pick up the clay pencil holder, the one I made in grade three. I pass her in the kitchen, now sitting at the table, staring straight ahead, deeply inhaling her cigarette as if she wanted her body to get sucked right into the filter.
I slam the door behind me. My head swirls and I have to hold onto the wall for balance. I look down and see my hand clenching the pencil holder and I wonder why I took it. I think of the lady in the building across the road, whose basement apartment burned down when I was a kid. All she saved was some old jacket she hadn’t worn in years. She just knelt outside of her smoking apartment, clutching this ratty coat, and, in between wails, listed off all the things that were going up in smoke: my photos, my wedding ring, my CD player.
As I’m walking to the bus stop I begin to taste sour tears in my mouth. I feel like a moron when I pass by some guys chilling on a bench, liquid pissing from my eyes. I lift my hand to wipe my wet face and I’m suddenly engulfed with the smell of Elsie. In my sweater. On my skin. Like she’s inside me, seeping out of my pores. I spit on my hands, rubbing them together, washing her off me. Then I frantically start wiping my face, hard and rough with my scratchy wool sweater, until my skin burns.
As She Grows Page 10
