“She’s a difficult woman, I’ll admit, but I’ve never met anyone like her.” He slumped back against the couch cushions.
“Excuse me, I need to get something.” I rushed up the stairs. The bedroom was neat; it didn’t look as if Junior had been sleeping there. Downstairs I could hear the TV, the volume turned up too loud. I opened the closet door, walked to the back, and pulled down the last black blouse on the rack. I escaped a few minutes later, Junior following me to the door and urging me to stay and watch Law & Order reruns with him. His voice was pleading, his ankles pale and bony above his slippers, which were on the wrong feet.
After everyone went to bed, Laurel clutching the blouse like a blankie, I struggled with a double-penis military doll order but couldn’t decide if it should have four testicles or two. Would an extra penis automatically mean extra balls? And if so, one more or two? I tried attaching extra balls but they looked cumbersome and crowded, swinging between poor Ken’s legs like tiny balloons. I finally gave up and ate. I devoured two peanut butter sandwiches and half a bag of stale marshmallows, my teeth stinging from the sugar. I didn’t stop there. I ate a can of cold cream of mushroom soup and the leftover spaghetti from Sunday night that may or may not have been going bad. Hunched over the table shoveling food into my mouth, I suddenly imagined the woman running through my paintings doing the same, both of us pigging out together. Even though this woman didn’t exist, I suddenly missed her company. I imagined how it would feel for her to sit next to me, her presence soft and comforting, her breath reeking of garlic like Gramma’s. Without thinking about it, I reached out, grabbed the phone, and dialed Francisco’s cell. It rang six times before he finally answered.
“Hello?” His voice was sleepy and vague. “That you?”
I didn’t say anything. I clutched the phone to my ear and breathed. He breathed back, steady and slow.
“Francisco?” I whispered; it was the first time I had ever said his name to him. “My sister?” My voice cracked. He didn’t say anything. He kept right on breathing. “My sister’s having an abortion tomorrow,” I whispered. And then I hung up. Softly.
Chapter 12
Thursday, Dec. 15
WE GATHERED AROUND the kitchen table earlier this morning, our sad little version of the Last Breakfast. We even wore robes like the apostles, though we weren’t eating fish but Safeway brand cornflakes. Laurel looked especially tragic, with her unwashed hair and ratty nightgown, and even Stephanie was subdued, her ’50s-style poodle bathrobe slumped dejectedly over her shoulders. We ate in silence. The only sound was our chewing.
Halfway through our stilted meal Jay-Jay appeared. He had on the never-before-worn khaki pants Laurel had given him for his birthday, along with a wrinkled oxford shirt that looked vaguely familiar. He held typed papers in his hand and his face wore a hopeful, expectant look. I knew what was coming. I watched as he sat down and began distributing the pages.
“My Christmas list,” he said proudly. “The Really, Really Wants are highlighted in red type at the top. The Really Wants are in green, and the Wants But Don’t Have to Haves are in basic black.”
Laurel sucked in her breath but Jay-Jay didn’t notice. “I’ve itemized according to price, store, and website. This way you won’t waste time looking for something at the wrong place.”
“Well,” I began. “This seems very industrious—”
“Or you can just give me money and I’ll buy the stuff myself. Gift cards work, too—as long as they’re not stingy.”
No one said anything.
“But wrap them up, okay? I want to see presents under the tree.”
We tried, Stephanie and I, to act interested in Jay-Jay’s spiel. We asked questions, we nodded, we fake-laughed. By the time he caught the bus, even Stephanie looked frayed.
“My mom would totally light a joint right now,” she said. “Just to, like, get the edge off.”
When it came time to drive Laurel to her appointment, Stephanie was nowhere to be seen. I was disappointed. I needed her to pat my back and tell me that everything was going to be, like, totally okay. I put on my boots, zipped my coat, and waited in the trailer’s arctic entryway, thinking of the holy water in church and how we dabbed it on our foreheads as we entered. Gramma stuck in her whole hand and splashed it across her face. She believed in stocking up on good fortune. She also didn’t like the taste of the communion wafers and once took it upon herself to improve the recipe, rolling out dough over the kitchen table and cutting small circles with the cap from Mother’s face cream. After seasoning to her liking and baking on wax-papered cookie sheets, she tucked them inside a Tupperware container and carried them proudly to Mass. The priest blushed when she presented them to him, stammering that only those appointed by god had the authority to make the communion wafers. Gramma snatched her wafers out of his hands and sat out the rest of Mass in the bathroom.
“What a big dupa,” she huffed, as we filed out to the car. “God need to find a better cook.”
We ate those wafers on the drive home, and they were light and subtle with a small flavor of cinnamon, followed by a kick of licorice. We held the flavor against our tongues, closed our eyes, and swallowed these blessings not from god but from our fat and sweaty grandmother.
“Ready?” a shaky voice said. I opened my eyes to my sister standing in front of me dressed all in black, as if in mourning. I followed her out to the car.
“Laurel—,” I began, but she held up her hand.
“Don’t. Please. Just drive, okay?”
We waited silently through two intersections, and then we were there. It was a Thursday morning, a nothing day, temperatures in the low teens, yet more than twenty protesters stood in the parking lot waving signs with pictures of screaming fetuses and tiny fingers blown up to giant proportions.
Laurel blanched. I reached over and squeezed her hand. “We can do this,” I said, but my voice wavered. The protesters surged toward the car.
“Save your baby, don’t kill your baby,” they chanted, their signs bobbing and swaying. A camera went off.
“Carla!” Laurel clutched my arm and I hesitated, my hand poised over the doorknob.
“One, two, three,” I counted, and then I opened the door. The crowd swarmed.
“Jesus wants your baby to live,” a fat woman cried. “He sent me here to help you.” Her breasts pressed against my chest. The door to the clinic was only twenty-five feet away but it might as well have been another country. We were packed tight; we couldn’t budge. Laurel’s knees buckled and she fell against me. I gritted my teeth and pushed hard.
“Move,” I yelled, as I flailed against the fat woman. She refused to budge. “Move, damn it!”
They packed tighter, an array of jackets and faces and hats, their breaths stinking of coffee and righteousness. Laurel’s teeth chattered in my ear.
“Let us through,” I cried, pushing harder. “Let. Us. Through.”
“Pray to Jesus,” the fat woman continued. “Get down on your knees and pray—”
Her head snapped back.
“You heard her,” a female voice sang out, followed by a familiar snap of gum. “She totally said to get the hell out of the way.”
“Stephanie?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Richards,” she yelled, as she yanked the fat woman’s ponytail harder. “I’ll get you out of here in, like, a minute.”
She was dressed in camouflage tights and skirt, an oversized army coat hanging almost to her ankles. She looked tough and ridiculous as she tugged the woman by the hair toward the clinic door. The protesters parted like the Red Sea.
“Fucking freaks,” she muttered, expertly punching a man in the gut as he barreled down upon us. She leaned over and wiped a strand of hair out of Laurel’s face. “A few more steps and we’ll totally be there.”
A moment later we were at the door. I placed my hand over the small of Laurel’s back, her spine pressing my palm.
I helped her through.
Som
etimes my grandmother’s ghost visits me. This has happened twice before: on the night Jay-Jay was conceived and during the worst of my labor, when I was wet with sweat and howling for god to please, please, please put me out of my misery. Instead he sent my grandmother, who appeared before me in her faded red-and-blue-flowered dress, her stockings rolled down, the toes of her shoes cut to give her bunions room to breathe. She held my palm and recited recipe ingredients: two cups of sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, three egg whites. By the time Jay-Jay’s head appeared, I had been through half the cookbook. Today Gramma appeared in the clinic bathroom, the one right off the waiting room filled with empty urine specimen cups and surplus paper towels. I was drying my hands when I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror.
“Gramma?” I said. She had on a horrid green dress and sturdy Reebok sneakers, and she was fiddling with one of the specimen cups. “What are you doing here?”
“Ach, it cold outside,” she said.
“Did you come to see Laurel?”
“Such a clever cup.” She lifted it toward her mouth and I reached over, snatched it before it hit her lips.
“These are urine sample cups,” I hissed, feeling as if I were talking to Jay-Jay when he was young. “You aren’t supposed to drink out of them.”
“Nie, not Laurel,” was all she said, looking at me with her blue eyes, layers of sadness in the shadows, small flicks of hunger: Polish eyes. “I come to see you.”
“Did it have to be in the bathroom?” Gramma never gave a hoot for privacy and used to pee in a plastic bowl if one of us was using the bathroom when she needed it. She’d dump the contents in the toilet as soon as it was free, wash her hands, and store the bowl beneath the kitchen sink. No one dared breathe a word of this to Mother.
“Once, when I still young, I lost my baby,” she said. “It so small, like a teeny fish.”
“I know,” I interrupted. “Mother told us.”
Gramma stared at me with her blue, blue eyes. “You know nothing,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly harsh. “Sit. There not much time.”
I closed the toilet lid, plopped down, and folded my hands as if in church. I had the feeling that whatever came next wasn’t going to be pleasant, and in a way I was right. In another, I was very, very wrong.
“After the war, we move to Podlaskie, before we live near Warsaw,” my grandmother began. “That is after I marry Dionizy.” Gramma sighed. “I never love him, but what the so, eh?”
I glanced nervously at my watch. Leave it to Gramma to pick the worst possible time to tell her story. Growing up, she didn’t talk much about Poland. It was over and done with, she used to say. Then she’d bake a strudel or cream puffs and spend all day in the kitchen as if in penance. “I should check on Laurel,” I said. “She probably needs—”
“Nie, she waiting for them to jab her blood.”
“Blood work,” I corrected.
But Gramma ignored me and continued. “The Russians ain’t as bad as the Nazis. It hard to get meat but we do okay. Momma and Poppa and Lizzie follow a couple of months later. It take all Poppa’s money to bring us all there.” She sighed again. “I not sure why he don’t smuggle us from Poland. Maybe it too hard to leave. We there almost a year and there is a knock on the door late, ach, June 15, 1941, I never forget that date.” She spit over the floor. “Soldiers come for Poppa and Dionizy. They say they only need to ask question. Dionizy forget his hat. I still see it on the floor by the door. It brown and yellow. I still hate that hat.”
Gramma stared at her hands. “That the last we see of them. Momma learn the next day they on the transport. She think we are next so she send me and Lizzie to the country. ‘Watch your sister,’ she say. Lizzie is eight year younger. We stay with friend of cousin. Momma get taken three days later. I don’t say this to Lizzie but she find out. One night she gone. ‘Left to find Momma,’ she write and that is all. I never see her again.”
I squinted at Gramma as if seeing her for the first time. “But the Russians were on our side,” I said. “They were the good guys.”
Gramma spit again. “Kurwiec. They want Poland for themselves, all of us out. I never see Poppa or Lizzie again. Momma make it to Siberia, I get some letters, then nothing. Dionizy the only one who live. After he come back we have a baby, a little girl, she have yellow hair like the dandelions. I name her after Momma. I am already in love with Manny then, he from far away but a good man. Maybe the girl is his, I not know. She die four months old. Dionizy pry her from my arms when I sleep, I cannot give her up. As soon as the war over, I leave and come here. I steal money from Dionizy’s store, get on the boat, leave. I have no reason to stay.
“I get letter from Manny, ‘Meet me in Chicago.’ I go but he ain’t there. I stay months and he never show up. Maybe he get lost or change his mind. A few while later I marry your grandpoppa.” Gramma sighs. “Too many girls die.”
“Maybe it’s a boy.” I knew right away she was talking about Laurel.
“No, it a girl,” Gramma said, placing her moist hand against the side of my face for a moment. “Do widzenia,” she said, and then she was gone.
“Jesus,” I whispered to myself as I washed my hands over and over, and then went back to the waiting room, where Stephanie read magazines and Sandee, dressed in her Mexico in an Igloo uniform, checked messages on her cell. She had taken off the early part of her shift to be with us.
“You look awful,” she said, handing me a cherry Life Saver. “Your face is damp and sweaty.”
“I’m fine.” I laughed harshly, then covered my mouth with my palm.
“Mrs. Richards.” Stephanie’s head popped up from the magazine. “Listen to this. Tobias Wolff, the writer? He says that he sometimes rewrites a story five times.”
I popped a Life Saver into my mouth, the flavor flooding my tongue with memories of elementary school and the promise of recess.
“I’m thinking of applying to Stanford,” Stephanie continued. “It would be totally awesome to study with Tobias. He wouldn’t have to like anything I wrote. Just knowing his bald head was in the same room as one of my stories would be enough.” She snapped her gum happily.
I picked up an old People magazine. Reese Witherspoon stared back at me with her pretty hair and pointed chin. “We have to stop her,” I said. “She can’t do this.”
“Well, that’s really not up to us,” Sandee began. “It’s her body, after all, and what she does with it is her choice.”
“But she’s my sister.”
“If I got pregnant my mom would be ecstatic,” Stephanie said. “One more person on our welfare check. Not that I’d raise it in that house. I’d run away and, like, go into foster care.”
“But you’d have it?”
“Oh sure,” Stephanie said. “Why not?”
“What about college and Tobias Wolff?”
Stephanie shrugged. “He’d totally have to wait.”
“Thank you, Stephanie.” I set the magazine down.
No one stopped me as I walked down the back hallway and through the first door. A young girl sat on an exam table wearing nothing but a pair of Scooby-Doo underpants.
“Sorry,” I said. She didn’t even look up. Three doors later, I found Laurel huddled against the back wall of an examination room wearing an ugly pink hospital smock. When she saw me she let out a muffled sob.
“I couldn’t do it, Carly,” she sobbed, gripping my hand so tight I let out a little yelp. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t do it.”
I hugged her hard, spit running out of her mouth and across my shirt. “Sorry,” she cried over and over. “So, so sorry.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said.
“The doctor,” she began, but I gathered up her clothes and shoes and pushed her toward the door. “I need to sign—”
“You don’t need to sign anything.” My voice was harsh and deep, and Laurel looked at me in surprise. I pushed her down the hall and into the waiting room.
“We’re leaving,”
I said. Sandee and Stephanie dropped their magazines and rushed over.
“Cool top.” Stephanie yanked Laurel’s smock down over her back. “Can I borrow it sometime?”
We hurried Laurel out the door and past the reception area where a girl with pierced eyebrows yelled that we needed a doctor’s approval before leaving. The protesters cheered as Stephanie helped Laurel into the backseat. Sandee drove behind us the whole way, and it was comforting to look out the rearview mirror and see her dusty Subaru. Laurel slumped in the backseat, Stephanie’s hand tight on her arm. No one said a word. The only sound was the persistent and steady snap of Stephanie’s gum.
Gramma’s Communion Wafers
6 cups white pastry flour
1⅛ cup butter/margarine
Pinch of salt
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1½ teaspoon anise (ground or liquid)
3–6 tablespoons cold water (for consistency)
Preheat oven to 350˚. Mix ingredients in a large white bowl; use your hands, the way the priest uses his hands to make the sign of the cross. Roll dough out until it is very thin. Cut circles out using a small jar or cup. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 7–10 minutes, depending on desired consistency. Eat with dark red wine. Close your eyes and swallow. Know you are blessed.
Saturday, Dec. 17
“I’m going to be an aunt,” I told Barry. It was past midnight, and we sat up in Jay-Jay’s tree house, naked except for blankets wrapped around our flushed bodies. It was two degrees outside, the sky clear, the stars glittering cold. Beside us, a small camp stove gave off sputtering flicks of heat.
“Didn’t think she’d go through with it.” Barry grunted and rubbed his foot.
“Yeah, well, now she’s talking about a home birth. In my bedroom.” He handed me a joint and I inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed. “Laurel’s moved in, Stephanie’s on the couch, and Sandee stops by every other night to complain about Joe. Do you know him? The fish-and-game guy?” Barry shook his head no, so I continued. “I can’t paint or work on my dolls; I can’t even use my own bathroom. It’s almost Christmas and I’ve barely gotten Jay-Jay anything.”
Dolls Behaving Badly Page 13
