As She Grows

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  “You’re going to be in shit,” Jasmyn warns.

  15

  The next day the group home calls for a family meeting. I tell Pat I won’t go, that I’ve had enough meetings about every little thing. I tell her I’m sick of talking with everyone and never getting anywhere. “I’m all worded out,” I say, poking at my fat lip.

  But I don’t have a choice. She tells me the house is calling the meeting and it’s obligatory. Only it’s Aunt Sharon who comes, not Elsie. We sit in the front room of the house, sinking into the worn couches, knees level with our chins, while Pat and Miranda tower over us from straight-back chairs.

  I jokingly stick my tongue out at Miranda, but her face remains fixed in a serious gaze. “What!” I blurt out. “Is this Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Where’s Miranda?” I wave my hand in front of her glare, as if trying to snap her out of it. “Earth to Miranda!”

  Pat ignores my comment and starts the meeting. “We called this meeting to review your time here, Snow. But we are also concerned about your behaviour lately.” She darts a look to Aunt Sharon. And it starts to bother me that Aunt Sharon is sitting in this room, as if she had anything to do with my life. I look to Miranda who is now staring down at her notebook in her lap. “We’d like to hear from you first, Snow. Do you have anything to say about your recent conduct?”

  All heads turn to me, staring, waiting. The pressure is unbearable. I have no idea what Pat wants me to say. I almost feel like just blurting out that I’m pregnant. Just to prove how clueless they are. Instead, I stare at the ground and shrug my shoulders. I try my hardest to find the words, but all I come up with is, “I don’t know, maybe I’m going through a phase?” I look at Pat, hoping this is the right answer.

  “I think I can fill in the blanks a little bit here,” Aunt Sharon pipes up. “There were some family things that happened last week. Snow found out some things about her birth mother that were upsetting. And, well, with Mark gone, I think she’s just having a bit of a rough time.”

  “What are you talking about?” I challenge. “This has nothing to do with Mark.” And all of a sudden it pisses me off that Aunt Sharon is talking like she knows me, like she has any idea what I’m about.

  Aunt Sharon looks quickly to Pat and then at me. “I thought you might be acting out because you’re hurt about Mark. I thought I’d help you make them understand—”

  “You don’t know me. You think because you take me out for dinner, you know anything about me?”

  “I just wanted to help.”

  “I don’t need your help,” I say. “I never needed your help.” It occurs to me how great Aunt Sharon must look to Pat and Miranda. How supportive she must seem, like she’s all concerned about me. But if she was so concerned, she would have let me live with her.

  Aunt Sharon turns to Pat, a look of embarrassment on her face. “I think she’s a little upset at me too.”

  “I can speak for myself.” I cross my arms and face the door, my back entirely to Aunt Sharon.

  “Are your family concerns something you can talk about with me, Snow?” Miranda asks me.

  “No.”

  Pat straightens her back and shuffles the papers in front of her. “Well, I guess we’re at a bit of a roadblock here. Perhaps you can talk about what’s bothering you with Miranda, later on.”

  Anger surges through me and I feel the need to escape. I stomp my foot on the ground. I can’t stand these people on my back. They don’t help me when I need help, and then they criticize me when I mess up. I turn to Pat and look her straight in the eyes and then I speak slowly so she can fully understand: “I . . . don’t . . . want . . . to . . . fucking . . . talk. Got it?”

  Pat’s eyes become narrow and her jaw muscles start twitching on the side of her face. “Well, regardless of what’s going on in your personal life, we need to have a safe environment here. And that means getting along with everyone, including those you don’t like.”

  “I didn’t start that,” I snap at her.

  Pat holds her hand up to stop me. “We’re not getting into it,” she says firmly.

  “But—”

  “Drop it!” she says sharply. “What I’m saying to you, I’ve said to Tammy as well.” She speaks in generalizations, about certain “incidents” both here and at school. And about the dramatic change in me since my arrival. She makes it sound like I’ve done a thousand things wrong and nothing right. Pat does most of the talking, like she’s the heavy, with Miranda jumping in every once in a while to ask me my point of view.

  At the end of the meeting, we all stand at the door and Miranda tells Aunt Sharon that I’m a very special girl and I have a lot of potential. She says she would like me to get into a co-op program where I can live with just one adult role model and a few other girls in a house. “I don’t think this is a positive environment for Snow,” she says. And I storm past all of them and head up to my room.

  Jasmyn asks me to her new boyfriend’s party on Saturday night. His name is Hayden, he’s twenty-four, and he has a blond goatee and tattoos of snakes and fire all over his arms. He screams in a band, pisses on the audience, and has tons of girls after him. I tell her I’ll go, just to get away from Staff.

  “They call it the fuck-hut,” Jasmyn claims as we enter Hayden’s apartment, “but that’s just a joke.” Looking around, I get the feeling it’s not a joke at all. The walls are painted black, the ceilings are red, and there are massive artsy murals of what look like naked girls with nipples the size of melons all over the walls.

  There are people everywhere and the music is so loud it vibrates the floor. “Hayden’s roommate’s an artist. Isn’t he amazing?” she yells, as we stand below a mural full of dizzying thick strokes of paint and a glob of steel wool sticking out from where the woman’s crotch would be.

  “What’s that?”

  “Her kooch, stupid.” Jasmyn laughs and I follow her down the narrow corridor, jammed with people. Some guys nod at Jasmyn as she passes by, but no guys even look at me, and I figure that I must be giving off some pregnant scent because they wouldn’t be able to see my stomach under my bulky sweatshirt. In the living room, spliffs are being served like appetizers on a tray. We find Hayden in the kitchen. He is gorgeous and sexy and his blue eyes penetrate your soul, just like Jasmyn said. She hangs off him, laughing too much at his jokes and agreeing too much with everything he says. He gets us drinks all night, mine with only a little alcohol.

  “She’s sick,” Jasmyn is quick to say, but I know it’s not because she’s concerned about covering for me. It’s more because she’s embarrassed her friend doesn’t drink.

  After a few glasses, I go to the washroom because my head is spinning and I think I’m going to throw up. I lean against the counter, staring at my face as it drips and contorts in the mirror. And I realize it can’t be alcohol making me feel so crazy, there had to be something more in the drinks. The music pounds in my head and a person appears in the mirror behind me. At first I can’t make it out, but then I focus hard and see that it’s Hayden. He’s taking my hair and brushing it off my face, his head moves in close, hot breath on my eyelids. Then his lips are on mine, hard and sucking. He jams his tongue down my throat. The door shuts, voices are distant and vague. Hayden pries my mouth open, sucking my protests into his wet mouth. As my limp hands try to push him away, he starts to get all forceful and rough. And then the clinking of his belt buckle shatters in my head like glass.

  He pushes me to my knees and tries to stick his dick in my mouth, but my head falls back, my neck muscles weaken. He swears angrily, calls me a cunt and slut, grips both his hands on my head, and forces himself into my mouth, squeezing my head harder and harder, yanking my hair, and I squeal in response, like this little pig, which turns him on even more. And I think he’s going to kill me. He will twist my neck. I will die tonight. I taste blood in my mouth as I allow my teeth to rip the inside of my lips because I am terrified of what he might do if I cut him. I focus all my energy on not throwing u
p. Jasmyn pounds on the door as her boyfriend slams his body into me, coarse pubic hair jamming up my nose.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” he says when he’s done, releasing my head and zipping up his fly. The warm fluid drains from my numb lips, down my chin. I lean forward, throw up all over his feet, and he kicks me to the floor where I crumble onto my own puke.

  I wake up hours later, on the floor by a dresser in one of the rooms. There is a couple sleeping in the bed and another guy on the rug a few feet away. My head pounds. I pull my body off the ground and stumble to the washroom, study my puffy, red mouth in the mirror. My hair is matted with dried vomit. I brush my teeth with someone’s toothbrush and gargle with gobs of toothpaste. Without cash for the bus, I have to walk home. I stumble out the front door and down the sidewalk, past perfect little families on their way to church. They are nicely dressed, their proper shoes click-clicking on pavement. I see the parents stare at me from the corners of their eyes, reach protective arms around their innocent children as I pass, drop to my knees and vomit in a bush.

  I am relieved to finally reach the group home. My mouth is so dry I think my tongue will crack. Jasmyn comes out the door, just as I walk into the house. As if she were waiting for hours to time this perfectly. “Slut,” she says, brushing past me. “Don’t talk to me.”

  “What are you . . . ?” The words seem to evaporate as soon as they hit air.

  Jasmyn spins around quickly, her face right up to mine, our noses almost touching. With a clenched jaw she firmly repeats, “I said, don’t talk to me.” Then she turns and storms away.

  I enter the house a slut and boyfriend fucker. If Jasmyn is angry at someone in the house, then everyone is angry at her. Staff may have their house rules, but the residents have a far more effective punishment. I lie down on my bed, clothes still on, hair matted, and wait for my inevitable persecution.

  Girls jump on hate here. They fight over scraps of me like vultures to a dead animal. I fuel them. I am ignored, brushed up against. Rooms clear when I enter. If I speak, I am attacked. If I remain silent, I am guilty.

  The next morning I sit outside Eric’s office door and wait for him to arrive at work. I can tell from the expression on his face when he sees me that I must look like hell.

  “What happened?” he asks, staring down at me, his keys clenched in his fist.

  I open my mouth to answer but then my eyes cloud and I start crying. I drop my head into my knees, crying so hard I start to gag and then throw up all over the bottom of my pants. Eric bends down beside me, rests his hand on the back of my head, and holds back my hair until I’m done. Then he waits until I can lift myself up and follow him into his office.

  I spend the next two hours with Eric. He cancels all his other appointments for the morning. I sit on the couch, a blanket wrapped tightly around my body. In front of me is a box of Kleenex, a glass of water, and a garbage pail to throw up in. My body is shaking. Stomach muscles ache from crying so hard. If it weren’t for my skin, I think I’d break apart.

  I tell Eric everything. Almost everything. Some words spill out of me and others are forced up through my throat. Sometimes Eric leaves to give me privacy to cry, other times he sits silently across from me, patiently holding out Kleenexes as if he were offering peanuts to a squirrel. I tell him about the pregnancy. I tell him about my birth mother being a fifteen-year-old druggie. I tell him about Mitch in my room that last night at Elsie’s. I tell him about Hayden and about smoking and drinking and about sometimes just wanting to die. I tell him I’m scared.

  I strip my mind. I don’t care what truth he knows. I have nothing to hide except the marks on my body. Those I keep for myself. I couldn’t risk him taking those away, because if he did, I’d have nothing.

  At first Eric says things he is supposed to say, like, “I encourage you to report this to the police.” And then he says other things he shouldn’t: “Goddamn punk should be castrated.” As he’s speaking, his face gets red and his fists are tight and small bits of saliva collect at the corners of his mouth. He catches me staring, intrigued at his response. His anger makes him human. Faulted. Like me.

  He quickly shifts in his chair and returns to his responsible, flattened expression. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  At the end of it all, I sit, exhausted, in a tight ball on his couch, stomach pressed hard into my thighs. I clutch clumps of wet tissues in my hands. My head pounds, my mouth is dry and tight. My eyes burn. I feel cleansed and terrified all at once.

  Eric puts his hand on my knee and holds tightly. “We will get through this one layer at a time, Snow.”

  “I just want to be told what to do,” I say, completely drained. I have no fight left in me. “I don’t want to think anymore.”

  THREE

  • • •

  16

  My dreams are about the baby now. No longer overexposed ghostly memories of my mother. Instead, these images are dripping and dark and pungent. I dream of a purplish yellow fetus, floating in liquid in a large jar. It has a bony, prickly spine, bulging head, and tiny curled seahorse body. The jar is on a counter in a lab with test tubes and microscopes, and there are people in long white coats who are staring at crystals through thick goggle-like glasses. My eyes return to the baby, only to find it flailing about, the liquid churning like a stormy ocean. Its hollow mouth gasping up against the glass, drowning. I feel my own lungs fill with fluid. And I yell to the people in the white lab coats to help it, but they ignore me. So I finally lift the heavy sealed bottle and smash it on the floor and the baby splashes out, flipping on the ground like a gasping fish. And I don’t know what to do, so I lift up its slimy body and hold it to my chest. And I sing the only lullaby I know, Hush little baby, don’t say a word . . . as it starts to relax and eventually turns blue and stiff in my hands.

  “I guess I’ll keep it,” I announce casually as if I were talking about a stray dog or a duplicated gift. Three wide-mouthed youth workers circle around me in the office. Miranda rises to shut the door. The books I stole from the library are spread out in front of me. Staff cautiously await my next move. I could get angry, flip the table, or throw a book. I could say it’s illegal for them to snoop through my room, but what they don’t know is that I left the books where they could find them. Eric gave me the idea. He said it might be easier to break the news that way.

  We are quiet for a moment.

  “We just can’t believe we didn’t know,” Pat finally says, as if they think I might be lying. As if what’s most disturbing is not that someone in the house is pregnant, but that they didn’t pick up on the signs. They sigh a lot and talk in whispers, as if I’m dying, avoiding any upsetting words. Tell me I have options, or alternatives, too afraid to say the real word: adoption. They tell me we’ll take one day at a time, that we’ll need to find some community supports, that we’ll have to watch our diets and stop smoking.

  When I leave the room, Miranda follows me, tugs at my sleeve, and whispers, You know, I was adopted. When I ask her why she’s whispering, she turns all red and chokes on words.

  Staff sends me to a health clinic that same afternoon. I don’t understand why I just can’t wait a day, but they say that I should go as soon as possible, considering my activities. The waiting room stinks of sickness and mothballs and diapers. It is packed with old people and kids running around sneezing and wiping their snotty hands on the chairs.

  The doctor seems angry with me the second I walk in the room. Without even raising his eyes from his file folder, he tells me to close the door and sticks a wavering finger out, directing me to climb up on the table. He is old, with grey hair and pale folds of flesh that hang like saggy elephant skin from his face. It’s as if age has drained his body of colour. It gives me shivers. But then he raises his head and I spot two beady blue eyes glimmering through his thick yellowed-glass lenses.

  Immediately, he starts to give me quick orders, like hold out your tongue, breathe deep, inhale, exhale. He taps me o
n the left elbow and tells me to roll up my sleeve so he can check my blood pressure.

  I panic. “Can you check my other arm?” I blurt out, knowing that if he says no, I’ll run. A doctor would send me straight to the mental hospital if he saw my cuts. He motions that he doesn’t care which arm I pick, and so I reposition myself on the examining table and offer him my unscarred right arm.

  “Well, you seem healthy enough. What’s the problem?” he finally asks.

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” He looks up at me. I see that it’s not only his glasses, but the whites of his eyes are yellow too.

  “Yes.”

  He looks down to his file folder. “They didn’t write it down,” he mumbles, irritated. “Why didn’t you say?” The man is looking at me as if I were an idiot.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  He sighs, puts away his stethoscope, and leans back against the counter. “Any symptoms?”

  “No.”

  “No upset stomach? Breast tenderness? Headaches? Constipation?”

  “No,” I lie, thinking maybe he’ll just send me away.

  “When was your last period?” He positions his pencil to write the date down.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Come on, now, you’ve got to know. It’s important.”

  “But I don’t know.”

  “Guess.”

  “I don’t know. Probably about six months ago,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

  I’m surprised to see colour actually leak into his face. “And you haven’t seen a doctor?” I shake my head. “We’ll have to get going then. You’re young and healthy. Everything should be fine. I’ll just check your tummy. You’ll need an ultrasound appointment to check dates and make sure there are no anatomical problems.” He doesn’t ask me the things other people do. Like how come you waited so long or how could you not know you were pregnant, or what did you think, it would just go away? Instead he asks me, “Do you smoke?”