“No.”
“Drink?”
“No,” I say. “Well, maybe a little.”
“A little what?”
“A little smoking, a little drinking,” I say weakly.
I’m ready for him to scold me, but instead he just takes a lab form from the desk and starts frantically scribbling and ticking boxes. He passes me the sheet to take down to the lab in the basement. “They’re routine checks,” he says. “Hemoglobin, syphilis, rubella, hepatitis, HIV, blood type.” The medical words swirl in my head. I think of fluids and tubes and pus and open sores. I start to feel dizzy, reach out a hand to brace myself on the table.
“You okay?” He quickly pulls a chair out from against the wall, “Here, sit. Put your head between your knees.” I lean forward on the chair, my head buried in my hands, focusing on the white-tiled floor. He continues talking, telling me about fetal alcohol syndrome and the effects of smoking on baby size. “If you are using drugs and not telling me, I need to let you know there are risks with congenital abnormalities and premature delivery.” I don’t even understand the words. His voice is muffled and distant. I start to sweat, my mouth gets dry, my muscles slip from bone, and I can barely keep myself on the chair. I tell him I’m going to be sick and he whisks a garbage pail in front of me. Instead I faint.
When I wake I’m on the chair, the doctor’s hands are holding me upright. “You with us now? You just fainted, but you’re all right,” he says, helping me up to the examining table. After a few minutes I am left alone to rest, lying on the crinkly paper. I close my eyes and concentrate on breathing. My face tingles as I feel the blood rush back to my skin. The back of my shirt is wet from sweat and I curl up for heat.
When the doctor returns he insists on continuing his checkup, poking and prodding my limp body. He takes my blood pressure again, weight, checks my ankles and hands for swelling. He writes down the names of the vitamins I need to take, recommends exercise, and tells me about a pregnancy book that young people like me seem to prefer. As I slip down from the table, he tells me a list of no’s: no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, no hooliganry at night.
“You mean sex?” I ask, concerned.
“No. That’s fine. Protected of course. I meant just be safe.”
Before I leave he gives me a referral to an obstetrician who deals with young ones like myself, and then writes down the name of a counsellor who can help me with things. I stand there, collecting his little slips of paper in my hands. Then he reaches out and gives me a little tweak on the cheek, in an almost loving way, which stuns me. I hate that. Teachers or social workers do it all the time. Lay it all down harsh and then find some way at the end to come across as nice, like they’re sweet people. Like they’re so afraid they’ll be hated. “It’ll be a long road,” he says and then pushes me out the door.
In a white lab in the basement of the medical building, I wait to get my blood tests done. Middle-aged ladies with blue lab coats sit behind a large counter, mispronouncing names and arguing with people who don’t have their health cards. I find a seat in between a wheezing elderly man and a woman with her toddler, who is outstretched on the floor, colouring a flower black despite his mother’s offering of the pink crayon. I’m surrounded by kids everywhere I go now, and I’m unsure if it’s just that I’ve never noticed them or that fate is trying to get me used to the idea. Across from me is another woman, who has this perfect little baby in her lap, staring wide-eyed at the little kid on the ground. It makes soft gurgling baby noises and every once in a while the mother leans down to kiss its perfectly round little head.
I hold my knapsack up in front of my stomach to hide my pregnancy. I do this, even though my sweatshirt and baggy pants already cover any curves. I think of the cigarettes and the drinking and the junk food I eat. I consider what kind of one-eyed, hairy-tailed creature might be growing inside of me. I start scraping my sharp fingernail along the back of my hand, scratching a triangle into skin. And when this doesn’t feel like enough, I slip my fingers up under my sweatshirt and gouge my nails into my stomach.
Already I am a bad parent. You will not forgive me. You will be born screaming, not at this unforgiving world, but at your own mother.
I wake up the next day, wishing I hadn’t told anyone, wishing that this baby hadn’t become the centre of my nothing. All Staff wants to talk about is my pregnancy. I am asked into the office for endless meetings about my health, about where I will live, about giving up smoking and about drinking more milk. Still, the confession is like a huge weight lifted from me. My jaw no longer aches, shoulders and neck relax, and I don’t have to worry every second about hiding my pregnancy. I can now wear just a T-shirt when I’m hot and I don’t have to force myself to finish what’s on my plate. And if my hands end up resting on the curve of my belly, I don’t have to pull them away.
Staff wants to organize a house meeting for me to make the announcement about the pregnancy to the other residents. As if anyone is really going to care. But everything has to be processed in this group home. People can’t even fart without there being a group meeting about it. I think of an excuse in order to delay the confession a few days, because if I tell the others I’m pregnant, they will say, That’s what sluts deserve. I need to wait until things die down, which happens sooner than I expect because two days later Nicole tells me that Jasmyn broke up with Hayden after she found out how many girls he’s been fucking behind her back. And that night, after dinner, Jasmyn leads me down into the laundry room, which is where all the residents’ really private conversations take place.
“I’m sorry I was such a bitch,” she says, among the humming and clanking of the dryers.
“That’s okay.” I smile and we hug, but my uncommitted arms loosely drape over her shoulders. I don’t forgive her. And really, deep down, I hate her.
We start to climb the stairs. “You heard what’s going on?” she asks, and then Jasmyn tells me all the juicy details of how Nicole caught Mute Mary masturbating with a Barbie doll in the third-floor bathroom last night. And by the time we reach the top stair, she has linked her arm with mine and exits with a dramatic howl of laughter that makes all the other girls’ heads turn.
And so four days later the residents gather in the living room at seven, as we normally would, for announcements and house meetings. The others are especially rowdy because today is also the day we plan our monthly group outing and they have hopes of Wonderland.
“I’m gonna have a baby,” I announce to a now silenced circle of bodies lazing on couches. I stare down at the ground as they try to read my expression.
“Is that a good thing?” Mute Mary finally asks.
“I don’t know. I’m getting used to it.”
“Well, congratulations?” Mary says as if it were a question.
“Yeah, congratulations,” Nicole adds.
“I had no idea,” Tammy says reflectively, as if it explains my behaviour. As if I’m forgiven for everything.
I dart a glance at Tracy, who’s staring at the door, a blank expression on her face. I wonder what she’s thinking, because she’s had two abortions in the past year.
“I’ve known for weeks,” Jasmyn pipes in. “I was dying to say something.” And she starts to recount all the close calls. The conversations almost overheard by Staff, the pregnancy test boxes in the torn garbage bags in the backyard, the pregnancy pamphlet Nicole found in our bedroom last week. And of course, Jasmyn takes full credit for redirecting suspicions of my enlarged tits with her quick-thinking explanation of a new padded Wonderbra.
17
I try to keep busy, focus my mind on the baby, but my mother keeps creeping back into my head. She forces her way through my entangled thoughts, dense and prickly, her small hands bloodied and rough from the thorns.
What do you do when you find out your mother was only fifteen when she gave birth? When the arms that have carried you all these years suddenly disintegrate and you’re left in the empty grasp of someone who probably fe
ared you more than she loved you? My birth mother’s protective whispers at night have become childish tantrums demanding understanding. Her voice is needy and whiny. I owe you nothing, I whisper back into the dark, I am not your mother.
I choose not to look for her. At least, not in the obvious places. I will not ask Elsie or Aunt Sharon for stories of my mother, stories that may or may not be true. I will not go to her old school and talk to her guidance counsellor. Instead, I will search for my birth mother in safe places. Places like buildings, where I can choose to enter or walk away. And it will be my choice, this time, to need my mother.
The truths Elsie gave me are no longer truths. My mother did not grow up in that apartment building five blocks away, like Elsie said. Her feet never touched the lawn I lay on. Her hands never grasped the metal door handle I so often ran my finger along. In truth, real truth, my mother lived in the west end of Toronto, with Elsie and Aunt Sharon, in the stockyard neighbourhood that smells of meat and blood. The area where, on a hot summer’s day, the smell of death forces you to breathe through your mouth.
“She left home when she got pregnant,” Elsie says over the phone. “After that, she lived at friends’ houses and I think some house on—”
“Just give me the address of where you guys lived,” I say quickly. “I just want to walk by, that’s all.”
Elsie stutters and is confused over whether the unit they lived in was unit fifty or fifteen. “I don’t know, it had a prickly brown shrub just to the left of the door. The basement window had a crack in it, eh? I always thought they should fix it. You know, it’s a housing complex, you know, not very nice, it—”
“That’s good,” I say, not wanting her story.
“I just want you to be—”
“Enough,” I say sharply, slicing off her words.
“But . . .”
“Bye.” I hang up the phone.
The real place where my birth mother grew up is simple: a small building with cement walls, and a front lobby that smells of urine and cigarettes and curry. A broken elevator and a piss-stained stairwell. Bed sheets and tin foil line windows. Rusted balconies are stuffed with bikes and old chesterfields.
Unit five has a paint-chipped door leading out onto the street and a cracked basement window. The yard in front of the building is unkept, discarded cigarette packages and white plastic bags line the wire fence. I position myself in front of the apartment, wishing time could overlap, fold in upon itself for just a brief moment. My eyes take in everything, every angle, every colour. The curve of the road stretching down to the corner. The green-painted bricks of the building next door. The initials scraped into the cement walkway. The two dents on the silver doorknob, like dimples on a face. I just stand there, slowly twirling in full circles, ensuring that something I see must have been witnessed by my mother’s eyes.
Before I leave, I take one last look and I am strangely satisfied. I deeply inhale the smell of blood and flesh from the few remaining slaughterhouses. I think about my mother and her home and being fifteen. I think about her wanting to escape from here. Think about how, in time, maybe, I stopped being a mistake and, at some point, I became a way out.
Miranda tells Aunt Sharon about my pregnancy over the phone. Our deal is that she will make the initial phone call but I will have to follow up and meet Aunt Sharon to talk to her in person. I agree to anything, as long as I don’t have to be the one to hear Aunt Sharon’s voice when she hears the news. I pace the hallway of the group home, listening carefully to Miranda’s tone as she answers Aunt Sharon’s questions.
“Did she sound mad?” I ask Miranda when she hangs up the receiver.
“No,” Miranda says thoughtfully.
“Surprised?”
“No.”
“Disappointed?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Miranda thinks a moment. “I don’t know. Sad, maybe? She’s coming over.”
“Now?”
“Yep.”
I take a deep breath and go up to my room to fix my face and brush my hair. I put on my baggiest clothes and my hooded sweatshirt so that when I put my hands in the pockets in the front, you can’t see my large stomach at all. Aunt Sharon comes over just an hour after Miranda hangs up the phone. I wait for her on the porch of the house, and throw up once in the bushes before she gets here.
“Hey,” she says, warmly smiling.
“Hey,” I say, embarrassed. I slowly get up and descend the few stairs to meet her on the pathway.
“You want to walk?”
“All right.” And we travel about a block before I start to speak. “Elsie knew about this. I told her that day she told me about my mom. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you.”
“God only knows. She probably thought it would bother me to be left out. She’d take pleasure in that.”
“But you’d think she’d take pleasure in telling you how I fucked up.”
“You’d think,” she says, obviously without realizing how cruel it was to agree with me. “So how are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “You know, it was a surprise at first. But what can I do? I’m gonna have it, so I might as well make the best of it, right?” I hear myself saying the words but I can’t believe they’re actually coming from my mouth. I have no idea why I’m trying to sound like everything is so great.
“How pregnant are you?” I feel like Aunt Sharon can see straight through me, like she can see my top lip nervously twitching.
“About six months.”
“Jesus”—Aunt Sharon stops in her tracks—“that’s a long way.” She looks down and skeptically studies my stomach area under my sweatshirt. “You can’t be that big. You sure it’s in there?” she jokes.
I lift my shirt and expose my round stomach.
“Look at that!” Aunt Sharon exclaims, her hand immediately pressed againt my skin.
I tell her about my doctor’s appointment and the pregnancy homes that Staff is looking into. I tell her the baby might be Mark’s, but that I’m not really sure. I’d rather sound like a slut than get Mark in trouble.
“I went by your old house off Keele,” I say, just before we reach the group home.
“You did?” she asks, surprised.
“Yeah. It’s kind of gross.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You ever been back?” I ask.
“No,” Aunt Sharon says, smiling politely at me. “I left that place a long time ago.”
Now that I’m not hiding my pregnancy, I see that pregnant people are treated differently. It’s like you have this innocence about you, as if you’re a representative of Mother Nature herself. I figure it must be something instinctual, this communal need to protect those with child. Bus drivers wait until I sit down before pulling out from the stop. People open doors for me. The girls offer to do my laundry. Staff allows me to eat in between meals and skip my chores if I don’t feel up to working.
My stomach becomes our new household pet. On command, I pull up my sweatshirt to reveal my bulging tummy. The girls place their hands on my tight skin, cold palms cupping my belly in search of movement. They act all excited for me, but I’ve noticed that there are fewer condoms in the jar by the bathroom door.
“It’s so hard!” Mary says, pulling her hand back fast, her face half-disgusted, half-amazed.
“Feels like a lot of gas. I fart all the time,” I say. “I look like I’ve got a bowling ball in my stomach.”
“Yeah, but look at your tits,” Nicole says. “What I’d give for tits like that.”
They suggest names like Destiny, Electra, and Rain. They become instant experts on diet and suddenly recall their mothers’ secret recipes, like cucumbers on your swollen feet. Suddenly, they think they have the right to boss me around, ripping cookies and cigarettes right out of my hand. And of course, we have discussions about labour. Nicole tells me that after delivering the baby, her cousin shot out a chunk of flesh full of teeth and hair and little toenails
. Tammy says her sister shit all over the delivery room. And Jasmyn’s friend’s friend almost died giving birth to a baby that nearly ripped her body in half. There is laughter about all this, mostly due to Tammy’s gruesome accompanying sound effects. I pretend to laugh along, but really my stomach churns and acid rises to my throat as I imagine my body snapping like a wishbone.
“Don’t worry,” Pat, who has two children of her own, says. “By the time you’re full-term, you’ll volunteer to get hit by a bus to get that baby out. Mother Nature takes care of everything, even fear.”
On weekend nights I watch thin bodies float carefree past me while my fat stomach anchors me to the couch. Jasmyn and Tracy suddenly become best friends and laugh at stupid inside jokes about guys they know. It seems like they intentionally have more fun when in my presence, but I know Jasmyn doesn’t really like Tracy. She couldn’t possibly, after all the bad stuff she has said about her.
My social life has become the Staff, because no one else wants to hang out with a pregnant girl who can’t party or smoke. To make me feel better, Staff buys me chocolate milk and cheddar cheese. My community time is reduced to playing Scrabble on Friday nights. I am strangely content doing this, staying in my pyjamas, as if life for me is now one continuous lazy Sunday afternoon after a very rough Saturday night.
The house sends me to take a tour of a pregnancy home right away. Beverley, it’s called. Apparently, my group home isn’t allowed to have me there after my seven-month date. “We’re not equipped,” says Pat, as if she were talking about electrical capacity.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I don’t really fit in anymore anyway.” Which is true. The more I’m forced to witness what I can’t do, the more I resent it.
As She Grows Page 17
