“You think that because you don’t live with her anymore, it’s in your past?”
“Yes.”
His silence tells me he disagrees. He is funny like that, arguing with the absence of words. It paralyzes me.
“And what about your birth mom. Do you know much about her?”
“No.”
“Do you think much about her?”
“No.”
“We could talk about it more if you like,” he says, getting all comfortable in his chair. And suddenly I hate him. I hate him with all the hate I have inside of me.
“Can I go now?” I ask, getting up and not waiting for his answer.
I thought after missing three lessons Greg would cancel my swimming class. But when I explained to him that I moved into a group home and that my life was pretty crazy for a while, he said he had a gap in his schedule and could squeeze me in on Tuesdays at seven.
It is the only part of my week I look forward to, though today I feel different about this liquid dialogue with my mother. I arrive at the pool deck early, arms folded in front of my stomach, exposed in my swimsuit. I sit on the side, hesitant toes in the water. The lights at the far end of the pool deck are not working and the water appears cold and deep and unforgiving. I look down to my stomach to inspect the slight swell disappearing almost entirely when I sit up straight and suck it in. My breasts, pressed flat against me, are sore and hard, marked with sunken streaks that bend and twist like woodworm paths. A few days ago I had considered these scars a tolerable exchange for late blooming. And now, a hostile infestation devours the person I want to be.
I smooth down the edges of the large patch Band-Aid that covers the scars on my forearm. I have prepared an elaborate excuse to tell Greg, something to do with a curling iron, a ringing telephone, and a slippery floor. This struggle is new to me, me against my body. This constant battle to bury the truths that keep surfacing from under my skin, rising from some unknown depth in me. But things like this happen. I’ve seen it on Discovery Channel. In England, an entire prehistoric village just surfaced one day in a farmer’s best field, after a terrible storm. And the man didn’t know what to do. He tried to keep it a secret, his cows munching around the crumbling stone walls. Until the neighbours started talking and the archeological protection people took it over.
There is another girl in my lesson today. An annoying eight-year-old who tells me her name is Kati and then points out her new Tommy Hilfiger swimsuit. She keeps trying to push Greg into the pool while he’s explaining the lesson. I can tell he’s irritated, holding firm her arms, but he pretends he’s amused. Then she starts squealing, annoyingly high pitched, and I just know this little princess is some rich family’s spoiled brat. Greg turns to me and in an apologizing tone explains it’s just this one time, a favour for his friend who’s been sick all week and can’t come in to work.
“Just keep her away from me,” I blurt out, regretting the words as soon as I hear them aloud. It’s obvious from both their expressions that they’re taken aback by this. Greg’s brow creases with disapproval, and he takes a quick second look at me, as if checking to see that it’s really me.
I slip into the shallow end. At first the water is cold and angry, but soon it’s buoyant and weightless and forgiving. We practise floating on our backs and then on our stomachs. Kati’s body skims the water like a leaf down a river. Greg and I silently stand in water and watch her flutter around like a pinwheel, her hands making little precise circles. I dismiss her natural buoyancy. At eight, you have nothing to weigh you down. Greg taps her on the head and she bolts up, embarrassed. Then she dunks under for a second to fix her hair, and gives Greg a wide smile. “Looks awesome,” he says to her. “See if you can roll from back to front and front to back, like a rolling log.” And she plunges back into the water like an excited puppy wanting to please.
I move off to the side to try a few reckless rolls on my stomach, until I inhale water and start choking. I burst up, coughing and spluttering, frantically reaching out and then clinging to the side of the pool.
Greg turns to me and his smile disappears. “Before you can learn to swim, you must float, Snow. You’ve gotta trust the water. If you fight against it, you are going to gasp and struggle,” Greg explains patiently as I try to catch my breath. “You need to trust it. See—” he places his hand on the surface of water—“the water wants to hold you up, not pull you down.”
I nod my head but I don’t believe him. I don’t have his faith, his simple trust in water. The cradling fluid we are born in, a cool drink on a hot summer’s day, the shallow depth in a holy bowl. I know the danger of just a few drops in a gas tank, in a lung. I question Greg’s trust in something that has the power both to give life and to take it away. I question why water is so easily forgiven.
But instead of saying all these things, I say, “The water’s too fucking cold.” Which makes Greg roll his eyes and leave me alone, clinging to the side.
7
As much as I want to be with Mark, I am afraid to call him. Afraid of what he’ll say, that he’ll blame me for getting pregnant. He thinks I’m mad at him, ever since a few days ago when he took off with his friends, leaving me waiting at his doorstep for three hours on a Saturday night. As if I didn’t have anything better to do. So I try to make myself busy with Jasmyn, tagging along with her to parties I don’t care about, just so I won’t be home at night, if he calls, which he never does. Finally, he does phone, and even though I pretend I’m busy, he begs me to come over in his sweet baby voice, telling me he needs to see me and that he misses me. And hearing this, my stomach swirls and I can’t wait to drop the phone and get over there. Jasmyn was right: ignore a guy for long enough and he’ll come crawling back to you, all sweet and horny.
“Hey, babe,” he says when I arrive, leading me to his room and then pressing me against the closed bedroom door, Spliff’s paws scratching the wood on the other side. He kisses me hard. “Hmmm,” he moans when he pulls away, as if he’s just tasted a good meal. “Where’ve you been?”
“Out with Jasmyn,” I say, still cold.
“And guys?”
“What do ya think, we’re nuns?”
“Oooo, feisty. I like it.” He playfully pushes me and I push back. He catches me in a headlock and I untangle through his legs, laughing. He flips me to the ground, my elbow slamming against hard wood and I give out an exaggerated scream as he rolls me over onto my back and pins my arms above my head.
“That hurt,” I whine to his smiling face. He fakes like he’s about to drop spit down on me and I start to laugh. “Don’t! Don’t! You better not!” I try to wriggle out of his grip but his hand is tight on my wrist, burns my skin, and when I think he’s going to let go, he squeezes tighter.
“Ow!” I squeal.
“Come on, wimp,” he growls and I escape his grasp. Mark’s knee comes up and hoofs me in the stomach. I grunt and reflexively kick his chin.
“That fuckin’ hurt!” I yell, clutching my abdomen.
He laughs uneasily. “Just tryin’ to toughen you up, princess,” he says, and cradles his jaw, moving it back and forth.
“Well, fuck off!” I yell, getting up. I walk to the bathroom, close the door, and look down into my underwear to see if there’s baby on it.
When I come back out of the bathroom, Mark is waiting by the door. He pulls me close to him and gently rubs his hands up and down my back.
“You’re different,” he says.
“What?” I pull back.
He shrugs his shoulder. “Nothing. You’re different than you used to be. I don’t know. Harder.” I push him away and squirm out of his arms to leave. I don’t need this. But he pulls me back and then he whispers in a sweet voice, “Stay a while. I want you to.” And I can’t stand how he can always make me feel so good like that, especially when I’m most hating him: how just the tip of his finger can let the air out and deflate me into absolution.
“Okay. Till curfew,” I say, still cold. He then
releases me and walks past me into the bathroom. And I stand there, wondering what I’m doing. Because even though I’m not sure I want to stay, there’s also no place I feel safer. It’s as if his arms lock down on my sleeping body, freeing and trapping me all at the same time.
I lie down on his bed. I push aside his clothes and flick hash crumbs off the mattress. The little black specks that make me think of the cockroach shit on his kitchen cupboard shelf. Mark shouts over the running water as he shaves, laughs about his landlord’s eviction notice that he and Josh are now using as filters for joints because the paper is nice and thick. Then he laughs about his buddy Jake who got busted tonight for B and E. “He walked right out the front door with the fucking TV. What a dick.”
He comes out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist.“Hey, beautiful,” he says, and I get all warm even though I’m not sure if he’s saying it to me or the mirror he’s flexing in. He loves his muscular body as much as I do. It’s not like the boys’my age, with their struggling chest hairs and pimply backs.
Even though he’s had a shower, he still smells of alcohol and smoke. He nuzzles my neck I start thinking about the baby, and I cry as soundlessly as I can, but I know he can feel my wet face. Still, he doesn’t say anything; pretends not to notice but moves his lips down to my shoulder. I tell him anyway.
”Well, what are you going to do?” he asks casually, not even pulling back.
“Me?” I question. He stares, oblivious to what I’m trying to say. “What are you going to do? What are you going to do?” I repeat his words until his face gets it.
“Well, it’s in your body.”
I look at him in disbelief and then curl away to face the wall. “Babe.” Mark lies back down and strokes my stomach. Then he pulls his hand away and strokes the back of my neck. “What I’m saying is, you’re going to have an abortion, right?”
“Ya,” I say, but don’t tell him it’s too late for that. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I grate my teeth together, biting hard, cursing myself for leaving it so long.
Mark’s body relaxes and he slides his arm tight around me. “Even if you had kept it, I’d be here for you. One hundred percent.”
He rolls me over and we have sex, real hard, like he’s intentionally ramming the baby. And I let him, pretending I’m really into it, pulling him deeper, thinking the whole time, It would just be an accident.
Jasmyn and I are squatted behind the house, under the laundry vent that blows a cloud of clean above our heads. She is trying to convince me to go out tonight. I don’t want to let on like anything is wrong so I pretend I’m up for it. Jasmyn isn’t like Carla, in fact, she’s almost opposite. She’s hard and angry and says she’d be a good lawyer because she says she can get her way with anyone. I’m not sure I could ever call Jasmyn a friend, like Carla was, but it doesn’t matter. That’s what’s nice about Jasmyn and me: this funny acceptance that we are each other’s last choices.
“Come on. It’ll take your mind off things,” Jasmyn says, taking a deep drag of a joint. She can tell there’s something wrong with me. Something probably about Mark, but she doesn’t ask. High-pitched screams come from the kids playing in the backyard next door. “Brats,” Jasmyn hisses dramatically. She extends the butt out in front of her for me to take hold. I inhale, watching the flutters of red and blue through the holes in cedars, flickering like the last few spotty frames of an old home movie.
It’s a cold walk to the pool hall five long blocks away. The owner, Dan, will give us free drinks, “so long as the guys keep coming for you delicious young ladies.” Jasmyn complains the entire way, toes squished in her cousin’s high heels. She stops every few minutes to pull down the miniskirt that keeps creeping up into the warmth of her jacket. She asks me to fix her eyeliner smudge because her fake nails are too long—and as I’m doing it, she grumbles at my loose jeans and bulky sweatshirt, “Like my fucking grandmother,” she moans. I tell her they’re the tightest pants I have, which seems to be an acceptable response because she backs off.
When we arrive it’s as if Jasmyn suddenly has cozy sponges on her feet. She bounces in the door, flipping her head back and laughing hysterically as if I just told her the funniest joke. Everyone in the bar turns to look at us and she pretends she’s all embarrassed, puts her hand gracefully up to her mouth as if to cover her vulgarly exposed teeth. Her entrance is spectacular, and I don’t tell her I see her practising in the mirror late at night. “I’m gonna be an actress,” she says all the time, “a fuckin’ star.”
Dan gives us beers and a group of older regulars immediately call us over to the corner pool table. Most of the men are Italian, standing around smoking cigarettes, hairy stomachs popping through buttons sewed on again and again by dutiful fingers. Those same fingers that tap on the Virgin Mary’s porcelain head in the front window, waiting for their husbands to come home. The way I’ve seen Carla’s mom do. Jasmyn flirts, sticks her ass so high in the air you can see the edge of her underwear when she aims her cue. As she’s waiting her turn, I see her rub her fingers up and down the cue all erotic-like, then press it tight up against her crotch. I laugh and pretend I’m having a good time, but really all I’m thinking about is my pregnancy. And all I want to do is go home, go to bed, and stop my mind from thinking.
The men can’t take their eyes off Jasmyn. Within an hour, Jasmyn’s drinks line the bar ledge like trophies. She offers me one of her Singapore Slings, all proud as if I’m the ugly duckling under her wing. I take it and drink it like it’s a shot, slamming it down on the counter when I’m done, and the men around me cheer and buy me another. They start crowding around me, fat stomachs rubbing against me, thinking they’re going to get some action, but I tell most of them straight up I think they’re losers, so they back off. I feel sorry for one guy though, who seems pretty nice, so I don’t mind when he sits beside me at the bar, telling me about how bad his marriage is and how I remind him of his daughter, his sweet daughter. He says he hasn’t seen her in three years and tells me all the things he’d like to say to her. I start to pretend he really is my father, pretend the words are coming from my own dad’s lips. But then, just when I’m feeling close to it being real, he tries to slide his hand up my top. And I get so mad at him for ruining a good moment that I grab his fingers and snap them back until he falls off the bar stool, squatting and squirming and pleading for me to let go. “Fuckin’ pervert,” I mumble and then flick him away like an annoying insect.
But I am luckier than most. I know this. While Jasmyn spends her life trying to forget her father, I can create mine out of the infinity of things I don’t know. How he’s the kind of man who plays football on Sunday afternoons with his buddies. Or that he’s a great cook and can make chocolate cake from scratch. Or how every now and then, he stops in the middle of an ordinary moment and senses something missing, as if a part of him were walking around out there, somewhere.
Jasmyn waves from across the bar. “I’m going for a walk,” she shouts, giggling and tripping over her stiletto heels. She trails behind the man who holds her hand as if she were a schoolgirl at the crosswalk. I wait about twenty minutes, till midnight, then Dan slips me five bucks and calls me a cab because I don’t want to be late for curfew.
Back at the group home I lie in bed with my clothes on, my belt buckle digging into my stomach. The ceiling spins and I happily get lost in its dizziness. I think about how much I love this feeling, this inability to focus. Conclude that if we all lost our bearings every once in a while, we could bear life a little longer.
I fall asleep with the light on, only to be woken by banging and screaming and things breaking apart downstairs. Jasmyn’s explosive words surface like air bubbles, popping when they reach my ears. I visualize the melting icebergs we saw in the documentary in class this week; the slow release of trapped air thousands of years old bubbling up through arctic waters. Something tells me Jasmyn’s words originate from a depth none of us can perceive.
Staff will stand in the centre of
the room tomorrow, hands on hips, shaking heads and whispering things like what a waste. Before them will be overturned chairs, scattered board-game pieces, broken mugs, inverted coffee table, and an unscathed TV that always miraculously avoids the fury. They will tsk-tsk their way around the room, picking up chicken bones and toast crusts. They do this every time someone trashes a room, as if they just can’t fathom such ingratitude for a home. They don’t realize that’s just it: we beat the walls to batter any lingering sense of home out of us. We all have this trapped urgency for release.
“Bitch!” Jasmyn yells downstairs and then slams the bedroom door behind her. Although I reached up to plug my ears before she even touched the doorknob, the noise still makes me jump. Jasmyn storms into the room, seemingly unconcerned that I am awake and fully clothed. “I hate this fuckin’ place,” she says as she rips off her jacket and whips it against the wall. “They think they’re my fuckin’ parents. They can’t tell me nothing.”
“What happened?”
“Fuckin’ cop throws me in the car, says I’m a frickin’ prostitute.” She sits on the end of her bed and hurls her shoe across the room. It hits the dresser and knocks over the hairsprays.
“Why didn’t you tell him you weren’t?”
“I did! We both did. We said we were just fooling around, but he don’t believe us. The prick gets up in my face and starts telling me how I’m gonna get killed. How just last week he had to spray down a sidewalk covered with the blood of some girl just like me.”
“Who were you with?”
“This guy,” she says dismissively.
“From the bar?”
“No, another guy.” And we both know she didn’t know him. It occurs to me in this moment that I know nothing about Jasmyn.
She throws some scrunched-up money from her pocket onto the dresser.“Not fuckin’worth it, man.” And I can’t figure out why she’s so angry if everyone is right. And then I realize that’s exactly why she’s so angry.
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