As She Grows

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  Since it’s our last Saturday night together, Carla and I decide to celebrate. She arrives at my apartment, throws her bag on the kitchen table, and pulls out two plastic Baggies with the shrivelled brown mushrooms her brother carefully weighed for each of us.

  “It’s not very much,” I say, disappointed, holding the bag up in the air and moving my eyes in for a closer inspection.

  “Believe me,” Carla affirms, as if she knows what she’s talking about. “It’s enough.”

  We boil the water for the Lipton Cup-a-Soup and then fill our mugs. Carla carefully drops in the hardened dried-up pieces, crushing them between her fingers like spices. She concentrates hard, tongue slightly out, as if she were a scientist working with dangerous chemicals.

  “Cheers,” we say, clanging our mugs together, eager to start slurping disorder into our minds. “Here’s to our friendship!”

  We drink the watery soup, stopping every once in a while to chew the mushroom bits. When we are done, we slam our mugs down on the table and stare at each other. I can hardly hold back the excitement. But nothing happens. We wait another half hour and, still, nothing happens.

  “We got ripped off,” I announce angrily, pulling back my chair.

  “No we didn’t,” Carla says. “My own fuckin’ brother wouldn’t rip me off.”

  “Whatever,” I say, thoroughly pissed. “What a waste of cash.”

  We move into the living room and turn on the TV. We are not talking to each other. Every once in a while I mutter how much of a waste this was and Carla tells me to shut up. But then, after about two hours, I’m watching the TV and I see people’s faces start drooping and bulging, and rainbows trail behind their moving bodies like rustling flags.

  I look over to Carla, who is staring glaze-faced at the television. “You see that?” I ask, and though she doesn’t respond, I think she must, because she starts laughing uncontrollably.

  Time becomes liquid. I pick up my mug and stare down a hole a thousand feet deep. I want more. My upper lip detaches from my mouth, creeping over the rim like a wet slug. I watch it inch slowly to the bottom of the mug, sucking the last drops of cold liquid with its pulsating mouth. Butterfly wings miraculously sprout from its side and then my winged lip floats out into the room, my hands wildly trying to capture it in flight. I call for Carla to help, but she just sits there, laughing and pointing at my nose, trying to say something that only comes out as incomprehensible giggles. We move out to the apartment courtyard, where wet grass licks our bare feet with a thousand hungry tongues. Our sore stomachs ache from laughter as we take turns watching light drip like honey through a plastic water bottle balanced on our foreheads.

  When things become ugly and real once more, we lie in the dark, back on the couch, eating chips and watching MuchMusic. I am in a bad mood, disappointed I can’t stay in that magic world, pissed at Carla for not bringing more. I scan the room with disappointed eyes, no longer able to see the beauty in the ugliness around me. And then the phone rings. It’s Mark. He’s mad that I did ’shrooms, tells me he doesn’t want me getting into that stuff. I tell him it was just this once and then I lie and say it was awful.

  “It’s that Carla bitch,” he says. “She drags you into this crap.”

  “Shut up!” I want to say more, but I can’t, because Carla is staring at me as I talk. “I can make my own decisions.”

  For some reason, Mark backs down. He tells me to come over, he wants to see me. When I tell him I’m staying with Carla, he gets all sweet and starts saying how much he misses me in his bed. His voice sounds so good, I consider going but I look to Carla, who knows what’s going on, and she shoots me an evil look. She gestures for me to hang up.

  “I can’t come,” I say firmly. But then Marks gets all mad, telling me I can’t always be the one who gets to choose when I come over. That sometimes he should get a choice. He tells me Carla is jealous that I have a boyfriend and that I shouldn’t let her tell me what to do. He keeps going on about it, getting more and more mad, until finally I tell him I’ll be over in an hour and hang up the phone.

  “It’s just easier if I go,” I explain to Carla, who’s rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. “You can stay in my room. Elsie won’t care.”

  “As if,” she says angrily. “Why’s he such an asshole?”

  “You don’t know him,” I say defensively. “He’s not like that.” And I can’t explain because no one understands him the way I do.

  Mark treats everyone like shit and people can’t understand how we’ve lasted so long. No one crosses Mark because they know he doesn’t care, doesn’t care whether you’re a friend or a stranger; he’ll turn on you over a stolen cigarette. But I know he would never hurt me, he tells me himself how he wouldn’t, ever. It’s like I’m this little egg Mark can’t bring himself to crush. Still, I’ll pester him over something stupid like him not phoning me. I’ll keep going on and on, calling him an asshole and prick, not letting it drop. Till I know I’m just testing him. Till his fist comes out in front of my face and he’s got spit on the corners of his mouth and the veins on the side of his forehead are popping. And even though I know he’d never do it, there’s that second of silence when I close my eyes and brace.

  And I know what people would say to that, which is why I never mention it to Carla or anyone, because no one understands Mark the way I do. No one gets that he’s trying with me, really trying to be a good person. And although people might think it, no one would admit that there’s something admirable about a crazy dog who obeys the mere snap of his master’s fingers, or a child who will stop frantically crying only in her mother’s arms. No one would admit a certain jealousy for such selective loyalty.

  The next morning I drag my tired body to Carla’s house to say goodbye. I thought Carla would be angry that I’m late, but she’s not. Instead, she’s waving excitedly at me from in front of her house, jumping up and down on the curb, like she’s going to summer camp or something. She has only packed one suitcase because she says she’ll be coming back lots and can slowly move her things. She asks me to come to the bus station with her because her mom is refusing to drive.

  “She’s being a bitch,” Carla says dismissively and shrugs her shoulders. She says that her mom had been all nice to her the past couple weeks, buying her clothes and ordering take-out food every night. She says she knew she was being like that just so that Carla would change her mind. She says she knew it wouldn’t work, but she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get some new clothes.

  We stand out in front of the house for a few minutes, waiting, but I don’t know what for. Carla fiddles around in her purse as if she were stalling. I see her mom peeking out from behind the drapes and I quickly look away, but her sad expression lingers in my mind. It’s a look I’ve never seen before, one that’s never been directed toward me. It’s the look of someone being left behind.

  “Did you say goodbye to your mom?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

  “Yep,” she says happily and picks up her suitcase.

  I look to the window and see that the drape is back to normal, but I know Mrs. Costa is still standing there; I can see the shadow outline of her body. I feel sorry for her and get mad at Carla for being so stupid. Because there’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Costa. There’s nothing wrong with a mother who nags at you only because she cares. I get so pissed at Carla for having a half-decent mother and not appreciating it that I can’t keep my mouth shut.

  “Don’t you feel bad?” I ask.

  “Whose side are you on?” she blurts out, dropping her case on the sidewalk. She stands there, fists clenched, glaring at me. Like she’s going to take me on, right there, on her front lawn.

  “Yours,” I say, caught off guard by her intensity. “I was just wondering.”

  “Well, shut up, then.”

  We walk in silence until Carla starts breathing heavy, says she’s tired of carrying the fucking case and that she needs a cigarette break. We sit on a bench and I ask
her about this guy named Jason that she met last week and that’s all it takes before, suddenly, she’s in a great mood. Carla blathers on about his car and his hair and his Rolex. I watch her mouth move and wonder how she can be so vacant in her own life. And I wonder why I can’t be the same.

  When the bus pulls away from the station we wave at each other, like we’re in a movie. Carla is frantically flapping her hands and yelling something through the window, but I’m just standing there, my arm held fixed in the air. I don’t care what she’s saying to me, something probably like I’ll call you. It doesn’t matter. In a few moments, she will sit back down, open her M&M’s and eat them in priority order of favourite colour. And I will pass through the bus station, tell the homeless beggar to fuck off, and then enter the piss-stained washroom and kick in the cubicle door as hard as I can.

  That night, I wake slowly. Mark’s breath on my face, a mix of beer and toothpaste. His gentle fingers brushing the hair off my forehead. His skin close to mine, heated and rough. I nuzzle my face into his. My mind slowly rousing from sleep. But then suddenly my eyes rip open. Reality strikes me like a swift kick to the head. I’m at home in my room, it’s dark, and that’s Mitch’s face, not Mark’s, inches away from mine.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I yell, and at the same time I’m bounding out of bed, pulling the sheet off with me. Mitch is standing now, stunned, his mouth is hanging open like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. The smell of alcohol hits me hard.

  “Get the hell out of my room, you disgusting bastard, you motherfucker!” I start throwing words at him, my strength increasing as I see him shrinking, helplessly, like some drunken bum. He turns to go, but I move in behind him, push him so hard he stumbles forward and hits his head on the door. It’s then that I see Elsie at the entrance. I see her lips wildly moving but I don’t hear anything because my head is pounding. I concentrate on her mouth until the sound becomes clear.

  “What are you doing!” Elsie yells.

  I look to Mitch, who’s looking at me, and then I look back to Elsie. I realize that she’s saying this to me, like I’m the one with the problem. “What?” I scream at her in disbelief. “He’s a fuckin’ pervert. He was in my room, kissing me. Fuckin’ pervert!” I spit on the ground, my gob of saliva hitting Elsie’s bare foot by mistake. “I’ll fuckin’ kill him,” I shout, grabbing the scissors off the dresser and moving forward through the door. But Elsie moves in and blocks my way, grabbing my arm.

  “Don’t be a stupid fool,” she says, her voice eerily calm. “He wasn’t doing nothing. Just saying good night.”

  I am stunned. I can’t believe she’s saying that. Can’t believe she’s not believing me. All those times I stuck up for her, lied for her, and this one time that I need her to back me up, just this once, she doesn’t. “Are you fuckin’ crazy? You don’t believe me?” I stare at Mitch, now leaning up against the far living-room wall, arms outstretched and fingers spread as if he were bracing himself. He looks like an animal caught in headlights. He lowers his eyes to the floor. “Deny it! Deny it! Try to, you fuckin’ pig!” I yell, tears now coming down my face, my body starting to crumble. “A fuckin’ pig!” Elsie keeps blocking the doorway, but my shaking body is hardly worth the effort. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you! I swear to God!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay . . .” Elsie repeats, half holding me back, half hugging me. “He’s going home. We’ll deal with this in the morning,” she assures me, and then gently but firmly pushes me back into the room. “Go to bed.”

  The door closes in my face, and I stand there stunned, unable to comprehend what exactly just happened. I fold my arms in front of my chest and start bawling and wheezing, dropping to the ground as my back scrapes along the wooden door. I expect Elsie to open the door any minute, expect her to come in after he’s gone. But after a while she doesn’t appear, so I go to the bathroom to wash my face, scrubbing it hard with soap. And when that doesn’t seem like enough, I press my toothbrush against my skin, scraping my lips and cheeks and forehead till all of Mitch is off me.

  Back in my room I prop a chair up against the door and crawl into bed. I put the scissors under my pillow and lie in the dark, thinking of all the heavy things in the room that could be used as weapons: a lamp, a stapler, one of the empty wine bottles that line my windowsill. I remain still and alert, listening to the darkness for anything, a footstep, the slight ping of a door-handle spring. And then I hear it, soft and steady at first, then louder and faster. It’s a familiar noise, my grandmother having sex on the pullout couch. The frenzied squeaking springs, the deep-throated animal moaning. And finally, Mitch’s rough grunt suspended in the black air in front of me like ejaculated terror.

  My body thrusts forward on the bed, stomach muscles clamp, mouth opens, and I start convulsing, but nothing comes out. Just ugly noises, as if I were being strangled by a thick unforgiving rope. I hang my head over the side of the bed and stick my finger down my throat, only to heave unsatisfying air. Then I look down at my thighs and see the opened scissors in my determined hand, roughly scratching back and forth like a knife in hard wood. I scratch and scratch, harder and harder. And I don’t stop until I see the tiny droplets of blood rise through the unexpected cracks in me. Until all of a sudden, I am calmed. And I can breathe once more. My skin broken.

  5

  There is another photo.

  In the morning, when Elsie has gone to work and there is no sign of Mitch, I sneak out of my room. I take the photo from the shoebox at the bottom of the hall closet and carefully place it in the pages of my math textbook. Then I put the textbook in my duffle bag packed full of clothes and shoes.

  It’s the photo Elsie used to show me at Christmas. She’d let me hold it in my hands for a while, but then she always carefully put it away, back in the box, when she thought I wasn’t looking. I’d watch her slide it neatly in an envelope, tsk-tsking and shaking an annoyed head at the tiny bent top-right corner.

  The photo is of me as a baby. Maybe one week old, Elsie says. I’m round and pink and drooly. I’m in a little yellow jumper, my eyes all clear and innocent and pure. I love myself like that. But that’s not why I love the picture. My mother’s hands are in the photo. Her outspread fingers, firm and strong, on either side of me. No rings, bony white knuckles, chipped middle fingernail, a mark on her right hand, probably from the IV drip. She is holding me high and tight, proud to show me to the camera. And that’s why I love the photo. Because she could have left me in my crib, or lying on her chest. But instead, she held me up high and took the weight of me in her hands.

  Aunt Sharon’s apartment is a tiny bachelor down at Wellesley and Yonge, in a three-story brown-brick building. She’s been living there forever, since before I was born, though I only see her at our pathetic family gatherings at Christmas and Thanksgiving. And lately, the past few years, I haven’t seen her at all. I throw down my heavy duffle bag and stand outside her door, in the hallway that smells of old people and mothballs. I have been in this apartment before. When I was ten I stayed for two weeks. My memories are shades of blue: blue carpet, curtains, bedspreads, turquoise towels with ducks on them. It was a strange place. Strange, but cozy. Aunt Sharon was a person who took care of things. All things. I knew this because stuff in her house, like kettles and spare toilet paper, would have little knitted coats on them.

  It was five years ago and it was the third time that year it had happened, but this time was the worst. By the time the ambulance had arrived I had Elsie’s purse, health card, and a change of clothes stuffed in a garbage bag, ready by the door. I had combed her hair, rubbed her arms and socks with a magazine perfume sampler, and squeezed toothpaste on my finger and put it in her mouth. There wasn’t enough time to fix up the living room, so I just kicked the empty liquor bottles under the couch and sprayed some hairspray into the room. When the ambulance men came to the door, I calmly showed them in, told them not to mind the mess since we weren’t expecting company.

 
I pointed to my grandmother’s unmoving form on the couch. One man rushed up to her, knelt down, and started pulling things with cords out of his bag. Then it was like he just froze, picking up her pill bottle and holding it up in the air for the other guy to see. The guy then rolled his eyes, shook his head, and started to put the cords and things back into his bag. There was walkie-talkie static and numbers being called, like in a taxi. The younger one told me to come into the kitchen where he asked me questions, speaking to me like I was a baby, like I didn’t understand what was going on. He didn’t know that this wasn’t the first time.

  “How old are you, Snow?”

  “Thirteen,” I lied.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “Just a few minutes,” I lied again. It was actually more like hours. When I had come home from school she was passed out on the couch, which wasn’t that unusual for four o’clock in the afternoon. Her nightgown hiked up around her waist, her yellowed cotton underwear with the elastic cascading like Christmas tree trim. I had pulled her nightgown down and tucked it in around the edges of her as if making a bed. Then I went about my usual routine, moved around the lump on the couch, brushing her outstretched arm each time I passed between her and the coffee table. After I finished my homework I made some ravioli, pushed her heavy legs over, and sat squished on the side of the couch to watch TV. It wasn’t until I was going to bed that I climbed up and peered down at her face pressed into the cushion. It looked strange, not her usual sleeping face, but pale and lifeless and there wasn’t that snoring gurgle that she usually does. All of a sudden my blood drained from my face, my head went spinning, and I grabbed the phone.