Learning to Breathe

by Janice Lynn Mather

  The doorknob shudders and, with a pop, clicks unlocked and the door opens.

  “I thought you was dead in here or something.” Smiley stands, victorious, a bobby pin in one hand. “Hurry up, I gotta pee.” She squeezes in past me. “What, you wanna stay for the show?”

  I half-trip out into the hall, carrying the duct tape and phone with me. No sign of Aunt Patrice—I guess she found something better to do than preside over a bathroom dispute. There’s nowhere to go in this place, no space of my own. My legs carry me through the kitchen, out the door, to the backyard. I climb up into the scarlet plum tree, its bark rough against my hands and feet. I sit on the ledge where its biggest limbs connect to the trunk. From here, I see the bathroom window, a small square of light. Smiley sure is taking her time. What does she need to spend so long in there for, anyway? Who does she need privacy to call? What secrets does she have to tape closed?

  “This is it!” Smiley squeaks as we pull up to the house. I gawk at it through the car window; Grammy didn’t tell me they lived in a mansion. Later, I’ll realize it’s only average, an ordinary bungalow in a regular neighborhood. But right now, all I can think is that Grammy’s house could fit in the front yard, easy. Smiley leads me in and shows me the kitchen, where half-unpacked grocery bags are scattered on the floor like a bad child’s toys. Even so, there’s room to do jumping jacks in there, if you wanted. The oven is large, the fridge shiny and new. In the living room are two wide sofas and an armchair, a coffee table crowded with magazines, and a muted TV, images flashing frantically across the screen. Grammy doesn’t have a TV, but if she did, she’d turn it off when we went out. We pass the master bedroom.

  “Mummy don’t like people in there, but I’ll show you later,” Smiley whispers, taking me to her room next. It’s large and bright, a white double bed piled high with pillows. “I wish you could sleep in here,” she says, “but Mummy say she want you in your own space.”

  Last, Smiley shows me where I’m to stay. The bedroom is painted gray, the curtains drawn. Whoever used to sleep here went away and left everything in its place. The closet is half open, crammed with jeans and collared shirts. On one wall, a poster of a rapper half-scowls and half-leers at me. From the bureau’s top drawer, a balled-up tube sock peers out.

  “Gary used to sleep here. My brother,” she says, but from the way things look, Gary might walk through the door anytime, flop down on the bed, and demand to know what I’m doing in his room. Smiley perches on the bed to watch me unpack Grammy’s straw bag. “How come you don’t have more stuff?” She sounds surprised; she wouldn’t be if she knew Mamma, knew about the faded hand-me-downs rounded up and packed into a trash bag. The look on Aunt Patrice’s face when she saw my empty hands was bad enough. Imagine if I’d shown up looking like garbage day.

  “I have enough,” I say, and hope it’s true. I lift the fold of fabric Grammy used to cover the bag’s contents. Underneath is a spray of casuarina pine needles, still supple and green, to keep bugs away, and a neatly folded sheet, in case Aunt Patrice doesn’t believe in clean linens, I guess.

  “You bring twigs? What for?” Smiley asks as I pull the sheet away and the smell of home is released; the scent of Grammy’s trusty Pears soap, and the saltiness that comes from living near the sea. While Smiley chatters, I pull out seven handmade skirts, calf-length and elastic-waisted, in seven shades of Androsia: Atlantic blue and ripe-fruit purple, fearless red, June poinciana leaf green, the whole rainbow, each in its own deep, strong color, like Grammy went to the birthplace of every hue and drew out its navel string for thread. Nested in between the skirts are bags of homemade sweets: pink-and-white squares of coconut candy, brick-hard peanut and benny cakes, pineapple tart still soft from baking. Under those are panties, the tags still on, and new bras. Two of the bras are my size, and the third is a little bigger. Smiley snatches the larger one up.

  “You’s wear a size 36DD?” She nearly chokes on a mouthful of tart.

  Thirty-six D, though I’m not about to tell her that. I snatch it out of her hand and put it on the bed beside me.

  “Grammy always buy a size up, in case I grow,” I explain. Smiley snickers; clearly, she doesn’t have this problem. I keep unpacking: five new toothbrushes, a few sticks of deodorant, six packs of pads, eight soaps, and the mysterious book she tucked in there, shrouded in fabric. The book isn’t big; only long as my hand, and three fingers thick. I bring it to my nose and breathe in Grammy.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just something from home.”

  Smiley screws up her face and goes back to rummaging through the clothes. She must say something funny because she keeps laughing, but I don’t hear. All I can think of is Grammy and that book and how I’d give anything to be in her kitchen, surrounded by the scent of vinegar and thyme leaves and lime, the brisk zing of the house on cleaning day. I can’t wait. I yank off the string and pull the cloth away. The book falls onto my lap, cover side up. The Pregnancy Book. The title stares me in the face, accusingly. I’ve never seen this book in my life, though it’s worn so hard it has to be older than me. I turn it over quickly, hoping my cousin hasn’t seen, wishing I’d never unwrapped it.

  Smiley’s already distracted by something more amusing; she pops one of my bras onto her head like a bonnet. “Hey, you don’t need no grocery bags when you go shopping. Look!” She takes another bra and tucks the sweets into the cup, slinging the hooked strap over her shoulder. It’s silly and childish and it’s exactly what I need. Her laughter spreads, taking up space in that strange room, swallowing me.

  But later, after Smiley leaves, I climb into the closet and shove the book way down deep, at the back. I’ve already seen how Aunt Patrice looks at me sideways, like a bit of dust in the corner of a room. It won’t matter that I never had a boyfriend, never kissed anyone, and never plan to. I know if she finds that book, finds any reason to suspect me of acting up, she’ll sweep me right out.

  I look up and see that the tree is bearing heavily. In daylight, the fruit will be half green, starting to blush purple and red. In the dark, all I can see is the silhouette of those knobby plums, the branches bare and leafless around them. I slide the roll of duct tape from around my wrist. Balancing on the tree’s strong limbs, I hoist up my shirt. No one to see, only the sound of the TV, faint, from inside, and the clatter of the next-door neighbor cooking. I feel for the ridge where the tape begins. Pull out a long strip. Again, I wrap it around the bottom edge of the bra, under my chest, around my ribs. Again. Again. This time, it’s holding. I’ll have to sleep in it, the stickiness against my skin all through the night. When I take it off to shower in the morning, it will sting, a giant Band-Aid you can’t rip away fast. I’ll just have to tape it right back on. Mamma’s voice plays in my head, bored and flat. Do what you gotta do.

  4

  I CAN ONLY STARE at the biology test for so long before flipping the paper over and putting my pen down. My head hurts, my mouth tastes of breakfast coming up the wrong way, and I don’t know any of the answers. I push my chair back, making the legs squeak against the tiled floor. Mr. MacDonald looks at me, then at the inverted paper.

  “I’m done.”

  He glances back at the clock. Forty minutes to go. “You know this is a big part of your grade,” he says, but I’m already heading for the back of the classroom, retrieving the straw bag from among the jumble of backpacks and totes. Equation for photosynthesis? I’ve got duct tape half stuck to my bra and half stuck to my skin. The same blouse that shamed me is patched up with mismatched buttons that can’t change the fact that it’s too tight. And this morning when I reached down and touched my stomach, I swear it was even bigger than it was last night. Equate that.

  Outside, the air feels humid and dank. Bag over my shoulder, I head for the bathroom. I lock myself in one of the stalls, flipping the toilet cover closed and sitting down. The bathroom is empty, and blissfully quiet. I have time to kill before three. Smiley doesn’t have volleyball practice today, and Aunt
Patrice isn’t picking us up; we’ll head home on the bus together. I pull Grammy’s book out of the bag. It opens to a section in “Signs and Symptoms” that’s all about morning sickness, which has got to be the most ridiculous name ever, because I puke at all times of the day. Many women find a few crackers first thing in the morning help reduce nausea, the book says. In the margin, Grammy’s scrawled Ginger biscuits and underlined the words three times. Too bad I didn’t see that tip right after lunch. I thumb forward to “Expanding Horizons.” Grammy’s filled half a page with her sloping handwriting. I hunker down, immersing myself in her words:

  I was always thin, so I couldn’t hide past three months, but some of my friends went four, five, even six months before anybody knew. My auntie Doreen was two thirds of the way through before she even told her husband. She waited until the day before he was to go out to sea and dropped it into conversation, over chicken souse and Johnny cake. “You want hot pepper? You need some lime? You mind another child?” Poor man. He nearly had a heart attack. She was older, and he already had white hair, and he thought she had seen the change. Of course, as my mother used to say, long as a man and a woman get together, anything can happen.

  The main bathroom door bursts open and an army of girls rumble in, erasing the scene Grammy’s words painted, making those big-bellied women disappear. The noise shouldn’t surprise me—it’s the girls’ bathroom, not My Secret Pregnant Place of Refuge—but I jump up anyway, the book falling out of my hands. Before I can stop it, it slides out from under the stall’s door.

  “What’s that?”

  “Somebody drop a book.”

  Through the space between the wall and the door, I see a girl bend to pick it up.

  “Man, hide that, ain nobody want see no book now,” someone says. “I just finish that biology test.”

  The girl who picked it up tosses it on the counter. “I was so glad when Doubles get up. I didn’t want to be the first to leave.”

  I recognize Brenda, short and nosey; she glances down at the book as she reaches for a piece of paper towel. “Hey, look at this!” She dries her hands off on her skirt and picks the book up, brandishing it like an accusation. “Pregnancy Book?”

  There’s a series of ooohs and gasps.

  “Let’s hear it, man! Who been knocking boots?”

  “Bang bang!” someone jokes.

  “Ain mine!”

  “Girl, don’t bring that round me!”

  Brenda’s peering at my closed door. “Hey, somebody in here.”

  “Who?”

  “I bet you whoever in there, that’s hers.”

  “Hello? Hey, this belong to you?”

  “That’s Raisin Legs?”

  “Don’t be stupid, she don’t have no bunch of scars on her. That’s Raquel?”

  “Raquel still in the classroom. Tiny?”

  Someone bends down, peering under the door. “Those ankles look tiny to you?”

  The girls draw together, making a single, curious body. My head spins. I can’t breathe. I back up as far as I can.

  “See the shoes, you could tell by the shoes.”

  “That’s Tamika, man.”

  “Hello, I standin right here. Plus I don’t wear black socks.”

  “And you ain pregnant!”

  “Yeah, that too!”

  Hands on the outside of the door, rattling it. The stall is shrinking by the second.

  “Who it is, man? You think she pregnant for real?”

  “Who you know is read pregnancy books unless they pregnant?”

  “Maybe she in there trying to take the pregnancy test right now.”

  The voices start to sound farther away, as if some invisible padding is suffocating me. There’s only one way out, and it’s through the wall of girls crowded around that door, through the voices and the hands and the questions and speculations and conclusions. I have to escape. But if I open that door, my secret comes out with me.

  “Hello? Hello?” Someone bangs on the door. An eye appears, shoved right up against the gap.

  “You could see?”

  “No. Hello?”

  I can’t stay in here forever; someone’s gonna guess right, or look under the door and see it’s me. Why prolong the torture? I take the straw bag by its worn straps, fling the door open, and make a break for it.

  The cluster of girls scatters, shrieking as I barrel through them. There’s a hollow sound, wood slamming against bone, and a distant “Oww!” Someone cries, “That’s Doubles!” and someone else asks, “Her?” I don’t stop moving—not till I’m outside.

  But it still isn’t over. They rush out after me, clustering like ants around a drop of water. “What wrong with you? You hurt Samara, ya know! Got her right in the head with that door.” A sea of different voices all merge into one. My head feels light enough to float right off my body.

  “Ladies?” A stern voice breaks through everything. Ms. Wilson, the school counselor. The chatter is silenced momentarily before, like a flock of birds, it changes direction and takes flight again.

  “Ms. Wilson, she gone crazy.”

  “She was in the stall, and she come out and start swinging—”

  “And she have this book—”

  “No, that ain true, we was by the door and when she come out—”

  “She mean to do that—”

  “What’s that noise?” Ms. Wilson cuts them all off, tilting her head toward the bathroom. Someone’s still in there, wailing like they’re getting murdered.

  “That’s Samara—”

  “That’s what we tryin to tell you—”

  “She smack Samara in her head—”

  I didn’t smack anyone, and if I did, it wasn’t on purpose, I want to say, but all I can do is lean against the closest wall, pulling in air.

  “Samara’s hurt? Show me.” Ms. Wilson starts striding into the bathroom, then glances back at me. “You wait right there, Indira,” she calls over her shoulder. “Don’t move.”

  “Come see!” someone says, urging her into the bathroom. Ms. Wilson returns a minute later, leading Samara out.

  “Tamika, you take Samara to the nurse,” Ms. Wilson says. “The rest of you, get back to class.”

  “But we had a test and we done—”

  “Then wait quietly in the library until time to go home. Almost half an hour left in the day.” Ms. Wilson watches Samara retreat down the hall, leaning on Tamika’s shoulder as though she may never walk unassisted again. Reluctantly, the other girls start to follow.

  Ms. Wilson turns to me, peering over the top of her ancient plastic glasses. “Indira? Why would you hit her?”

  “It was an accident,” I mutter. “They was all outside the stall.”

  Ms. Wilson frowns at me. “Why were they outside your stall?”

  “I—I—sorry.” My head’s starting to spin.

  “Indira? You don’t look good.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. My tongue, my voice, my body all seem to belong to someone else, but I force myself to go on. I can’t get sent to the nurse’s office. “I didn’t hit her, she was just in the way.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And do I need to bring Samara in to discuss this fight?”

  “It wasn’t a fight.” I scramble for clear thoughts. “It was a mistake, I hit her with the door when I opened it, is all. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  Ms. Wilson weighs my words for a moment, then nods. “You know we don’t tolerate fighting.”

  “It wasn’t a fight.”

  “I’m going to let you off with a warning, and you can write an apology letter to give to Samara tomorrow,” she says, and I almost melt with relief. Then she adds, “Someone needs to pick you up, though, and I want to make sure you and Samara are separated for the rest of the day. Go on to my office, you can wait there.”

  What choice do I have? As I walk away, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to look. Brenda holds something out to me.

/>   “I ain mean to get you in trouble,” she says. It’s the book. She holds it so the cover faces down, its title hidden from view. I take it, and before I can say anything, she’s turned away, running to rejoin her friends. I shove the book deep in the straw bag and walk to the office. I should be thankful that no one said that word to Ms. Wilson: pregnant. Even so, the talk will spread between them, and out into the whole school from there. But before I can even worry about that, I have a bigger problem to face: who’s coming for me.

  Aunt Patrice is at work. Uncle is away this whole week. Only one person would answer the home phone now.

  • • •

  “Some girls just can’t stay out of trouble.” Gary steps into Ms. Wilson’s office, his teeth displayed in a wide grin.

  “Gary Johnson!” She exclaims his name like a five-foot-eight-inch birthday present just waltzed in. It’s been eleven years since he graduated, but she still springs up out of her chair and rushes from behind her desk to hug him.

  “Ms. Wilson! Still young and beautiful as ever,” he croons as she lets him go. I want to throw up.

  “What are you doing these days?” She eyes his chef’s jacket approvingly. “Still at the hotel, I see.”

  “Obviously,” I mutter, bending over to fiddle with my shoe buckle so I don’t have to watch this charade.

  “So you came to get Indira here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Gotta help out the family.” I can hear the fake smile in his voice.

  “I know your parents appreciate it.”

  I feel him looking at me again and stay down, pretending to straighten out my socks.

  “Is there something in your shoe, Ms. Ferguson?”

  I stand up, imagining my shoe bouncing off the panes of Ms. Wilson’s owlish glasses. “No.”

  “Give your mother and father my regards, Gary,” Ms. Wilson says, holding the door open. “Indira, I trust tomorrow will be a new day. And don’t forget that letter.”