As She Grows

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  I catch the older ladies at the bus stop glaring at me, disgusted, as if I’m an open wound, oozing with sin. They try their hardest to make me lower my head in shame but instead I grab my pack of smokes and light one, sucking deep and hard until I get a buzzing head rush. Then I blow smoke directly at their loose-jawed faces and they mutter something about Jesus or God. I know they think I’m easy. Easy to pass judgement upon. And I wonder how many mistakes they’ve made in their lives. I wonder how big would their bellies be if they were forced to wear their sins on the outside of them.

  On the bus, the boys my age look away from me, like they’re embarrassed, as if I had my period smeared all over white pants. I brush closely by them as I walk down the aisle, rub my poisoned stomach against their backs, and watch their shoulders tighten. I take a seat at the back, across from this older man who immediately looks me over like I’m a slut. Like I would screw anything in a second, given the chance. His eyes penetrate me, loose lips mumbling porn-talk. I smile, spread my legs a little, trace my tongue along my upper lip like I can’t wait to suck him off. I stroke my stomach, twirl my belly button like it’s a nipple, and he squirms in his seat, all hot and horny. Then I whisper to him and he leans in closer. “You disgust me,” I say real loud.

  23

  You used to dip and turn and swim in my stomach but now your kicks are purposeful underneath my ribs, as if you are trying to break out of me. As if you are done with what my body has to offer. I reach down and feel the outline of what I think is your foot, hard and buried, like under a thick blanket. You respond to my touch with more kicks, and I quickly pull my hand away, terrified of this conversation. Terrified that you will be disappointed with empty words and the resentful stroke of my finger.

  I am given my final assignment for my parenting class in school. I have to make up a children’s book for my baby to read in the future. Some of the girls working on the project really like the idea and start planning their stories about girls who fight dragons or little boys who build spaceships. They spread the markers out on their desks and consider complex colour patterns to stimulate their children’s brains, like we read in the magazine article Miss Lucy gave us.

  I move to the back of the room and stare out the window, my paper blank. I can’t think of a thing to write. Fairy tales are dumb lies about talking bears and skies falling and poison apples. Little boys can’t build spaceships and little girls can’t fight dragons that don’t even exist, so why make them believe they can? It’s like showing them this fantasy world and then snatching it away. False hope is the cruellest thing I can think of to give a kid.

  Miss Lucy comes by my desk when there’s ten minutes left in class and tells me that I have to have a plot outline before I leave the room. I roll my eyes and reluctantly pick up my pen. I write about a little girl who receives a puppy for Christmas, but the landlord of the apartment her family lives in doesn’t allow dogs. So they hide it for about a month, until one day the puppy runs out the door when the little girl comes home from school. The puppy runs right into the landlord’s feet. At first, the little girl and her mother, who is now standing in the doorway, think the landlord is going to yell and kick the dog. But then he reaches down, picks up the pup, and starts patting it. And at the end, the puppy bites the man’s toupee off of his head, and they all start laughing and the landlord makes the little girl promise to not tell anyone about his hair and he’ll let her keep the dog. I add the toupee part because I know Miss Lucy’s husband has a toupee and she might think it’s funny. All in all, I know the story sucks, but I hand in the paper and head off for lunch.

  In the afternoon our class of six young women are forced to sit through Ms. Crawl’s boring pictures of her vacation in Scotland because Miss Lucy has a dentist appointment. Ms. Crawl says it’s important for us to broaden our horizons and see other parts of the world so that our children don’t grow up to be naive and ignorant. We sit around the centre table in the classroom as she flips the pages of her photo album and gives us boring details on stone circles and castles. She tries to sound smart, dropping names and dates all over the place, but really, what’s most interesting about the photos is seeing Ms. Crawl wearing jeans and posing in front of mountains and lakes. It’s strange because she seems out of place in nature.

  “What’s this?” I ask, speaking for the first time. I am pointing to a picture of a gravestone with a bouquet of purple and yellow flowers in front of it.

  “Oh, that’s nothing important,” she says dismissively, lifting the corner to turn.

  “It’s a grave,” I say, holding my hand down on the page.

  “Right,” she says, releasing the corner and surrendering to my persistence. “That’s Betty Corrigal,” Ms. Crawl explains. “Well, that’s not Betty, it’s her gravestone, obviously. It’s in Orkney. Right here.” She uses her sharp pencil tip to point to the place on the opened atlas. “On a tiny island called Hoy.”

  I lean in closer to look at the photo. “Who was she?” The girls on either side of me, who at first showed no interest, now move in closer to the photo album.

  Ms. Crawl pulls her chair up to the table. You can tell she’s excited to have our full attention, for once. “Well, this local man told me about it and then I looked it up at the library when I returned home. I was biking along the road, in the middle of nowhere, among rolling hills of peat, it was just charming. And I saw this man just off to the side of the road at this gravestone. He was placing these lovely flowers down, so I stopped and we chatted. He had this wonderful Scottish accent and he told me about Betty.”

  “Was she his daughter?” Tawnya asks.

  “No. Betty died a long time ago, in the nineteenth century. But he puts flowers on her grave every month. A few locals do.”

  “Why would they, if they didn’t know her?” I ask.

  “She fell in love with a sailor, and after he left for sea, she found out she was pregnant . . .” Miss Crawl hesitates for a moment, as if she’s unsure she should continue.

  “Go on,” I say, now intrigued even more.

  “And she was so devastated, because illegitimate children were a sin back then, not like now. The poor girl hung herself.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yes. Terrible. Remember, it was quite unacceptable then to have a baby out of wedlock,” she says, trying to make the story into some history lesson.

  “What else?” Lynn, the girl sitting beside me, asks.

  “The people had to bury her, but because she killed herself, they couldn’t bury her in consecrated—that means ‘holy’— ground, so they buried her on the boundary between the two parishes.”

  “That’s so sad,” Tawnya sighs.

  “Yes, it’s very sad. Her body was buried in peat and so it remained preserved. But peat isn’t like dirt, and her body kept rising up through it, to the surface. The man on the side of the road said that soldiers from the Second World War, during trench-digging training, would get drunk at night and go in search of Betty’s body. Apparently, the rope was still around her neck.”

  A couple of us hold our hands up to our necks, feeling our own vulnerable throats. A door down the hall slams shut and we all jump in our seats and then burst out laughing due to our own edginess.

  Ms. Crawl continues with her ghostly tale. “The problem was, she kept rising up. And they tried different things to keep her down, but nothing worked because of the peat. So finally they rigged something up to keep her in the ground, and this local guy, who had made himself some false fibreglass teeth, offered to make her a headstone.” Her hand points to the photo: “This headstone.” “That’s perfect,” I say, leaning back in my chair and clapping my hands together.

  “What’s perfect?” Ms. Crawl asks, confused.

  “The story. It’s a perfect story,” I answer.

  All through dinner that night I compose my children’s book in my head. I stay up late writing it, even sketching some pencil drawings of Betty in the grave. At the beginning of the book
she has flesh, but then as the story goes on she changes to bone. Some of the pictures look a little too scary for a kid, so I put in some flowers and bunny rabbits around the edges, and some yellow stars in the sky at night. The next day I hand in my book, pictures and all.

  When I get it back, Miss Lucy tells me that it’s a highly inappropriate topic for a child and gives me an F or the opportunity to redo the assignment. I tell her I like it the way it is and that I won’t change it, thank you very much, which makes her just shake her head and return to her pencil sharpening.

  Aunt Sharon comes to visit about one month before my due date. She meets me in the visitors’ room. When I walk in, Ms. Crawl and Aunt Sharon are whispering.

  “Oh, hi, Snow,”Ms. Crawl says, not realizing I had walked into the room.“I was just telling Sharon about the hospital plans.” She smiles and puts her bony, crow-like fingers on my shoulder, as if she were this loving person. I cringe and make a face to Aunt Sharon.

  When Ms. Crawl leaves the room I explain to Aunt Sharon that she’s really a bitch. “She just acts nice in front of you,” I say.

  “I can tell,” she smiles. “Annoyed the hell out of me in just five minutes.” She lifts up a large brown paper bag that was resting on the ground beside her. “I brought just a few things, things I heard are useful for the hospital. Of course, I wouldn’t know.” She pulls out a yellow nightie wrapped in clear plastic, some slippers, a toothbrush, and a housecoat with rabbits on it.

  “Thanks,” I say, picking up the nightie package and studying it. “Can I?” She reaches out to touch my belly.

  “Sure.”

  She pokes her finger in a little and then flattens her hands against my shirt. “So tight,” she says. “Does she kick?”

  “Sometimes,” I say, watching her mesmerized eyes.“Her foot is here—” I lead her hand just below my belly button and hold it firmly to the slight bulge. Her eyes widen. I never understood why Aunt Sharon didn’t have kids. She’d make a good mother, with her pie-making and everything.

  “That’s incredible!” she says, her eyes tearing up. “Isn’t that amazing.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” I say, just to make her feel good.

  We both sit down and she starts talking, nervous talk, all fast and breathless. She tells me about how busy she is at work, how she’s hardly ever home anymore. I mention Elsie’s broken arm, but she quickly changes the subject and talks about this party she’s having at her apartment, where women come to her house and buy Tupperware.

  “You hate Elsie?” I ask her, interrupting.

  Aunt Sharon opens her mouth to answer but then stops herself. “Jesus, the questions you ask.” She takes out a cigarette and starts to light it. I’m in shock. I can’t believe she smokes. Aunt Sharon never smoked. I can’t believe she even has cigarettes on her.

  “What are you doing?” I yell.

  “What?” She looks at me and then looks down at her body, taking a quick survey to see what the panic is about.

  “You’re smoking!”

  “Oh,” she laughs, and continues to light her cigarette. “Sometimes I do. Every now and then.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I say, astonished.

  “It’s not so strange, is it?” she asks, taking a deep drag. She looks so natural, like she’s been doing it for years. But it seems so wrong for her to be smoking.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” I say. “Ms. Crawl will kill you.”

  “Ms. Crawl can kiss my ass,” she says, and I’m happy with this new side of Aunt Sharon.

  “I asked you if you hated Elsie,” I remind her.

  “I know.”

  I wait for her to tell me about all the bad things Elsie has done to her. And then I could tell her all the bad things. And we could share in this whole I-hate-Elsie session.

  “It doesn’t help you to know what I think. You’re not me.” A responsible adult answer. She disappoints me. I thought she’d have more bite.

  “But do you love her?”

  She laughs a little, her shoulders bobbing up and down. Only it’s not a happy laugh. She looks off, beyond me. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “Well, if you had to say something you hate about her, what would it be?”

  “You’ve been watching too many talk shows,” she jokes, taking another drag. She turns her head to look out the window, like she’s deep in thought. I lick my lips, anticipating her juicy answer. I imagine her hateful answers gooing out of her mouth like venom. A mix of cursing and tragedy. And then she finally replies, “She gave me a life I can’t crawl out of, I guess.” I wait for a few minutes, but that’s all she says. And I’m left in confusion as Aunt Sharon finishes her cigarette in silence. Because it always seemed to me that Aunt Sharon was doing just fine in her life.

  24

  I read that babies can sometimes sense when you’re dreaming. This thought terrifies me. Blood rushes to my face as if I have just been caught in a lie. Having access to my body is one thing, but my mind? How much do you know?

  Do you know about the bloody babies that look like dead puppies? Have you seen my pale hands reach down to push you back inside while the faceless doctor sews me tight with what looks like yellow wool? Do you remember me giving birth in a subway washroom stall and then just watching you crawl away, leaving a slimy trail of goo and blood behind?

  And now I wonder, When you kick my stomach, are you really kicking at me? And are you clutching that umbilical cord not because you’re playing with it, but because you feel the need to hang onto something? Like if you let go, you’d be thought to extinction?

  It’s four in the morning. I am startled awake by my own thoughts. I sneak downstairs and carefully make my way down the back hallway. I tiptoe, hop, and zigzag a complex trail of quiet footing along the old hardwood floors. Step in the wrong spot and even the slightest creak will alert Staff on the night shift to my presence. Within a few weeks of living here, all residents have figured out how to avoid these landmines of sound.

  I lean up against the wall and rest the phone on my belly. Music from a cheap radio mixed with the tap-tapping of a computer keyboard filter out from underneath the office door down the hall. I dial Elsie’s number. The phone rings forever before she finally rips it off the hook.

  “What the hell?” Elsie yells groggily into the phone. “Someone better be dead and bloody to call this late!”

  My voice is small. “Who’s my father?” “Snow?”

  I take a deep breath so she can’t hear me shaking. “Who’s my father?”

  “Jesus Christ,” she snaps. “I’m not getting into that now. It’s too late.”

  “I want to know. I need to know. Now,” I command.

  “I told you. He was some guy your mom hooked up with. I don’t know who. She didn’t tell me. Now, I’m going to sleep.” And she hangs up.

  My heart pounds in my chest. I immediately call back, letting it ring and ring and ring until I’m sure Elsie has pulled the plug from the wall. I stand there for what seems like hours before I leave the receiver on the table, its distant ghostly ring resonating down the hallway behind me.

  When I wake in the morning, I call Aunt Sharon at work. I tell her I need to speak to her: “Today. Now.”

  She doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. She simply says we can meet at eleven, outside Licks in the Beaches, down the road from her office. “We’ll have a morning ice-cream,” she says cheerily.

  I arrive at the restaurant where Aunt Sharon and I are to meet an hour early. I pace up and down the street, staring into store windows and moving out of rich people’s way. At the corner a man with worn plaid trousers and a stained shirt passes me a flyer, our pinkies touch, and I pull my hand away. The shock of soft, warm skin under the dull-green paper sends tingly shivers down into my stomach. Suddenly, I’m embarrassed. I continue walking, staring down at the paper claiming “Canada’s Best Mattress Sale” and think about all the hands I touched today: the woman who gave me change when I bought my gum; the ma
n who held the door open for me; the bus driver who passed me my transfer. I think of how it’s even possible I can feel so alone, when I’m surrounded by so many people.

  When I get sick of being bumped and jarred, I find a doorway and slump my bloated body slowly down to the ground. Some older guy with dreadlocks and a Marley T-shirt passes by and asks me if I’m selling. I figure he means selling my body, so I tell him to fuck off, but then a few minutes later I realize he may have only been talking about weed and I feel bad for being so harsh. I slip off my shoes and study the imprints that run deep and red into my skin and someone tosses a loonie at my feet.

  At eleven o’ clock, I head over to Licks. Aunt Sharon is waiting on the bench outside the door. She buys me a mint-chocolatechip ice-cream cone and orders herself a double-scoop rockyroad waffle cone. “So good to get out of the office,” she says, oblivious to my face of stone. “We should do this more often.” She leads me down through the park and onto the boardwalk. I walk slowly, breathing heavy, my lungs squished inside my own body. I am quiet and unresponsive, trying my best to get her to ask me what’s wrong, but she doesn’t. Instead, she’s annoyingly upbeat. I’d swear she was being happy on purpose.

  While Aunt Sharon points out seagulls, cute dogs, and interesting cloud formations, I rehearse my words about a thousand times in my head. My heart races, my lips are dry. It’s as if I’m standing at the edge of a cold pool, psyching myself up to jump into something I know will take my breath away. But it isn’t until we are at the entrance to Aunt Sharon’s office, her hand on the door, that I finally spit it out.