As She Grows

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  There is a meeting the next day, before I’m allowed back in class. I sit at the round table, shredding a paper into tiny strips while Ms. Dally recounts my outburst. She says how surprised she is that this inappropriate behaviour is coming from me, because I show so much promise and I could really get my high school education if I just stay committed to my goals. I fixate on her hands, soft and fleshy, with short efficient nails. I feel bad for this woman, in her brown skirt and thick fleshcoloured nylons with reinforced toes. I feel embarrassed for the words that came out of my foul mouth. I imagine her puttering around in her small apartment, expelling an explosive fuck after stubbing a toe; a reflexive apologetic hand immediately covering her mouth as if trying to push the blasphemy back in.

  When she’s done her lecture she waits for me to speak. Waits for an explanation or an apology or an acknowledgement that I was wrong. But I can’t bring myself to speak because all I’m thinking about is how I wish I was anyone else but me. I wish I didn’t exist. I wish my mother didn’t exist. I wish Elsie didn’t exist. I sit, lips pressed tight, strips of paper piled in front of me like curled pencil shavings. I lean down and blow them off the table and they drift like feathers down to the floor.

  “What’s your problem?” Ms. Dally asks, fed up. She is done with all the proper things she should say. “You walk around like you’re owed something. Like the world owes you something.”

  “Ya, it does,” I say firmly, fixating all my hate on her. “A life. It owes me a fuckin’ decent chance to get a goddamn fuckin’ life.” My eyes start welling up, which pisses me off even more because I’m not sad, I’m angry.

  We are both quiet for a while. I sit there, wiping my eyes, and Ms. Dally stares out the window, twirling her brown-bead necklace in her fingers. I want her to convince me that I have it all wrong. I want her to pull the answer out from behind my ear like a magic coin. After a while, she speaks in a calm and quiet voice. That’s the thing about Ms. Dally, she yells in whispers. “I can’t accept this behaviour in class, Snow. You are going to have to control your anger or you will not last in the program. This is a place for people who want to learn.” She tells me she expects that I will meet with Sheila to talk about what’s setting me off because it’s not a habit of mine to do such a thing.

  “Then I won’t come back. I quit school. There’s no point,” I say, still angry.

  Suddenly Ms. Dally gets all sympathetic, saying she knows it’s hard and that she’s here to help me, not fight me. She says an education is my best way out of a life I don’t want. I used to agree with her.

  Part of me just wants to blurt out something hurtful, squash her weak bones even more. Tell her that she has no idea, no idea whatsoever. The other part of me wants to say sorry. But instead I tell her I don’t know how she can do this job, how she can tolerate messed-up students like me dumping on her like that all the time. I stand abruptly, take my binder from the classroom, and start cleaning out my locker, throwing each object forcefully into the large garbage pail. Ms. Dally watches over me, tells me not to act so rashly, to think things over. But the more she pleads and the more desperate her voice becomes, the more determined I am, pulling each object slowly out of my locker just so I can savour the concern in her voice.

  Aunt Sharon comes to take me out for dinner. We go to the new Swiss Chalet that smells of industrial-dishwasher steam. She requests the spacious booth along the wall and an annoyed middle-aged waitress with sagging face and breasts slaps the plastic menus down on the table, stating it’s not really her section. I order a rib dinner with fries and Aunt Sharon orders a salad, because she says she’s watching her weight. She talks about her boring office job, Winky, and the trip she’s planning to Cancun next winter. When she asks me about school and the group home, I am distant and bothered, answering her questions with short one-word answers.

  “Elsie called me,” she finally says, just after the waitress takes away our plates.

  “Uh-huh?” I respond flatly.

  Aunt Sharon’s discomfort is painful to watch. “How are you doing then?”

  “Fine,” I answer, thinking she’s talking about the pregnancy, but then I reconsider what she might be referring to. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Well, Elsie told me what she said about your mom. I’d think that’s got to be hard to hear. I thought you’d want to talk about it.”

  The gaps of silence in our conversation require such an effort to leap over, I’m unsure if I will secure footing on the other side.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Kind of hard to fit it all in my head.” I swirl my greasy fingers in the little bowl of warm water with the wedge of lemon floating. “I’m pissed at Elsie for not telling. I’m pissed at you too. But then I’m sort of glad she didn’t tell me.”

  “You know, I’m sure this won’t make you feel any better, but after a while, it just became the truth. It didn’t feel like a lie.”

  “She didn’t drown,” I say cautiously, hoping Elsie lied about that part.

  “No.”

  “I feel like a fuckin’ idiot. All those swimming lessons.” I squeeze the lemon wedge, mushing it hard between my fingers. The waitress arrives and slaps the bill down on the table. Aunt Sharon pulls a twenty out of her wallet and slides it under the salt shaker.

  “It’s best to focus on the future, Snow. The past is the past.”

  I slam back against the vinyl booth. “What the fuck does that mean? Why do adults talk like this?” I say, glaring at all the grownups in the restaurant. It’s these little shot-glass sentences adults use. Like the quickest way to numb their thoughts is through these little clean phrases. “Speak your mind, will ya?” Aunt Sharon waves her hand downward, gesturing for me to lower my voice. “Who cares if someone hears?” I yell. “I don’t care!” I pick the lemon wedge out, rip the pulp flesh from its skin, and drop it back in the water. Then I pick at the peel, flicking the pieces onto the floor until nothing is left in my hand. “It was better thinking she died right after I was born,” I mumble. How can you live your life knowing you were a mistake? Like given the chance, your mother would have rubbed you out.

  “Snow . . .” she says, but that’s all she says, because there is nothing left. I cringe hearing her say my name. For the first time ever, I’m embarrassed of it.

  “Is that all Elsie told you?” I ask, giving her one last chance to tell me she knows about the pregnancy.

  “That’s all she could say. We got in a fight. I hung up on her. Why . . .” She pauses. “Was there more?”

  I shake my head.

  “She was a good person, Snow,” Aunt Sharon finally says. “I’m glad you had such a good impression of your mom. She had a lot of potential. She was just really messed up. Had the wrong friends, clashed with Elsie. I think from the day she was born she was trying to get out of that house.”

  “And you?”

  “I was older. I got out earlier.” Got out. From what? I’m tired of this “Jeopardy” game. Tired of being given the answers when I need to figure out the questions.

  “What the fuck is wrong with us?” I say, shaking my head. Aunt Sharon’s lip disappears under her front teeth, like she is clamping down on words she wants to confess to me. The waitress returns, a stupid smile on her face for the first time.“Have a nice day,” she says, placing the change on the table. Aunt Sharon leaves her an undeserved toonie tip and passes me a five-dollar bill.

  “All families have skeletons in their closets,” she says. “We just happen to have a whole graveyard under our basement.”

  It feels like a long time since I last saw Eric, even if it was only two weeks. A lifetime, really. A time when I had a boyfriend and a birth mother who wanted me. I don’t tell Eric about Mark leaving. Or about my dinner with Aunt Sharon. Instead, I divert him with talk about my anger. I tell him about flipping out on Ms. Dally at school. The ability to distract a counsellor from what’s really bothering you takes practice, but after a while it’s very easy to do. J
ust know which bone to give them and they’ll chew forever.

  “And what do you think you get out of it? Getting angry?” Eric asks.

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing. It’s like I can’t help it.”

  “You probably get something out of it, you just haven’t identified it yet.”

  “Yeah,” I say, not telling him what I’m really thinking. “I suppose I’m tired of feeling numb. I just want something to prick me alive.” I can tell by his look that he’s impressed. “Do I sound like your textbook?” I ask, nodding toward his stacked bookshelf.

  “Why, did you steal one?” he jokes and taps on his fishbowl. “What do you think, Fred? Is she a thief?” We both sit there for what seems like forever, staring at Freddy happily swim around in his bowl. Then Eric gets all serious. “You see, Snow . . . It’s like a junkie who has to shoot up in his penis because there’s no vein left.”

  “Eric,” I say, no idea of what he’s trying to say. I lean forward and whisper, “I hate to tell you, but I don’t have a penis.”

  “No, but when you run out of places to feel, you’ll eventually get to that point where you’ll either stop or go over the edge.”

  Sometimes Eric says the most bizarre things. I wave my hand over my head, which is my usual indicator that I have no idea what’s he’s talking about. I look at my watch. We still have ten minutes. I try to think of another topic, maybe the girls at the home, but Eric moves in too quick. “So, what’s going on with Mark?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, as if it had already slipped my mind. “He moved to Montreal. Left a couple weeks ago.”

  “Is that what’s making you so angry?”

  “No.”

  “You okay, then?”

  “Yup,” I say, as if I was surprised he’d be concerned. “I’m fine.” He pauses in his non-verbal could-you-explain kind of way. “I’ll deal,” I add, realizing it’s pointless to tell him how I really feel. Eric couldn’t possibly understand this kind of love. He’d extinguish the all-consuming flame with a quick and logical pinch of the fingers. I feel myself starting to get upset, my eyes get watery. I bend down like I’m looking for something in my knapsack.

  “You know, it’s understandable if you’re upset. You were together for—what?—five months?”

  “Seven,” I correct him. I keep looking in my bag, like I’m searching for something really important. “I’m fine. What can I do? I mean, he’s an asshole. Everyone says so.”

  “He must have had some endearing qualities for you to stay with him.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like I thought we’d be together forever.”

  “You might want to talk about it sometime. I mean, you were together a few months, right? He did just take off. You have a right to be angry. It’s all right if this is what’s been making you upset.”

  I shoot up from my bag, my eyes now dry. Look him straight in the eye. “What makes you think I give a fuck about him?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought . . .”

  “Read my lips: I don’t care. Okay? I . . . don’t . . . care.” I say it slowly and clearly. “It’s not a big deal. It’s not like I don’t have other guys.”

  “Oh, sorry. I just . . . thought . . . he was your boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, well, just ’cause he’s my boyfriend doesn’t mean I don’t fuck other guys.”

  “Okay,” he says, holding his hands up as if surrendering. The room becomes uncomfortably silent. I pick up my bag to show him that I’m going. “Did you find it?”

  “What?”

  “The agenda.” He motions to my knapsack, but smiles somewhat so that I know he’s on to me.

  “Yeah,” I say, getting up to go.

  “Sorry,” Eric says again as I leave.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, more out of obligation than anything else. I hate the power of that word. Sorry. I hate its insistence on a reply. The way it forces forgiveness out of you, like the obligation to exhale.

  “You little bitch!” Tammy is up in my face, her crossed-eyes now abnormally straight. We are in the TV room and I am refusing to stop flicking the channels. Tammy pushes over the bowl of chips from the coffee table where my feet are. I knew this was coming, since I fooled around with Steve, this guy she’s liked for months. She must have just found out.

  “You’re blocking my view,” I say calmly, knowing it’ll piss her off.

  “You fuckin’ little slut,” she yells, and I feel her spit on my face. She wants me to throw the first punch so that she can claim self-defence and it won’t affect her probation.

  I peer around her head to get a better glimpse of a TV show I’m not even interested in. “He’s not your boyfriend,” I explain. “He doesn’t even like you. He thinks you’re scat.” When I say this she flips her lid. Goes all twitchy-like and throws a punch that gets me in the shoulder. I jump up, pushing her back into the TV stand.

  By now Jasmyn is off the couch, grabbing Tammy so I can get to her. Only, I don’t even want to. For whatever reason, I don’t even want to fight. Which ends up not to even matter, because Jasmyn needs no invitation to do damage.

  “Let go of me, you fuckin’ cunt,” Tammy yells at her. “What the fuck does this have to do with you?”

  “’Cause I can’t stand you,” she says. And then Tammy and Jasmyn start going at it. Slapping and pulling hair and kicking around the TV room. It doesn’t stress me out too much since I know Jasmyn is just messing around with Tammy. I know, because if Jasmyn were serious, Tammy would be down in a second.

  Within a few minutes, Pat and Miranda are already in the room, yelling at me to go upstairs and get some air. They jump between the two interlocked bodies and split them up. Jasmyn immediately backs off, but Tammy starts kicking, her legs going crazy in the air. It’s like she’s gone completely crazy and we all just shut up and stand still, shocked, because she’s absolutely losing it. Even Jasmyn stays back. Tammy starts knocking over chairs and spit flies out of her mouth. “You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?” she yells in my direction, but Miranda is blocking her way. Finally Pat moves in, puts a hold on Tammy, and brings her down to the ground. But Tammy keeps kicking and yelling that she’s fucking going to kill me, so then Miranda pins her other shoulder to the floor and Tammy lies there flat out on her stomach, slowly giving up the struggle. “Let me go, man,” she mumbles, her face pressed into the carpet. Pat speaks calmly into her ear, telling her to just relax. And after a while all you can hear is Tammy’s breathing, slow and heavy. I start to feel all shaky and strange and I just have to get out of there.

  Mute Mary arrives home while I’m standing outside the front door and I explain to her what just happened. “How fucked is that? What a nutcase,” says Mary. And I realize I’d never talked with her before, really talked, and she’s kind of okay. She’s being really friendly to me for a reason; she says she’s pissed at Tammy because she keeps borrowing money and smokes off her and doesn’t pay back. She bitches about how Tammy keeps on making up stupid lies about giving money to her family or about someone stealing it. And we start laughing about how weird she is. About how she always picks at her crotch and how she stinks up the bathroom, even when she’s taking a pee.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Tammy comes tearing out the front door. Before I know it, her fist is in my face and my hands fling out instinctively, hitting flesh and teeth and bone. With my eyes closed, my other senses sharpen. I taste blood in my mouth. I hear Jasmyn and Miranda and Mary screaming at Tammy to back off. We all become one large, thrashing cluster and somehow move out onto the lawn. I break free from Tammy’s grasp and stare in disbelief at the clump of my hair still in her clenched fist. But I don’t go after her because, with the sudden release, thoughts of the baby fill my head. My hands move in front of my stomach, Jasmyn jumps in front of me as Mary goes to hold back Tammy. And we’re all out there on the front lawn, four girls in bare feet, screaming and shouting at each other. Tammy must finally realize that it’s three against one and s
he takes off down the street, barefoot, her white oversized T-shirt blob fading into the distance. For some reason, I chase after her and behind me I can hear Jasmyn’s heavy breathing. Within seconds she passes me, wide stride, her heels kicking up high behind her.

  Lucky for Tammy a bus pulls in at the stop on the corner and she clambers up onto it, racing to the back window as it pulls away. I catch up to Jasmyn, who is now standing, surrendering hands up in the air. Breathless, I hold one hand on her shoulder for balance. We watch the bus converge into darkness, Tammy’s smiling, crazy face against the back window, her fingertips pressed against glass. Flicking her tongue like a snake and giving us the finger.

  “Look at her—she’s fuckin’ nuts,” Jasmyn says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You’re a bit of a screwball yourself,” Jasmyn turns to me, a smile widening on her face. She playfully pushes my shoulder.

  “Certified,” I joke, and we share a smoke that Jasmyn finds in her jacket pocket on the way back.

  “Look at my nose,” Jasmyn says, pulling one nostril to the side. “The earring’s sunk in. Fuckin’ bitch got me right in the face.” I look closely at the almost invisible glint of diamond under the streetlight and start laughing. “Shut up! Hurts like hell,” she says, sticking her finger up her nostril.

  “You’ll live.”

  I hold my hand up to my jaw and move it around a bit. “Look at your face,” Jasmyn says laughing. “You’re going to be one ugly bitch tomorrow.”

  “I know,” I say, picking out the drying blood from the edge of my nose. And we recount the whole event, from the TV room to the front lawn, play by play. It’s all like one big joke. But our smiles quickly fade when we see Staff on the front porch, arms crossed, staring down our approach.