As She Grows

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  Staff is watching me closely now, concerned after the discovery of my scarred arms and chest. They tell me that I’ll need to talk to someone, immediately. They tell me they want me to be honest with the social worker, say how I feel, and not to worry about a thing because they’ll help me with the baby. They won’t let me shut my bedroom door, even at night. And I laugh at this, like it’s the most hilarious thing in the world. That after all this time, a few scratches in skin was what it took for anyone to notice me. That it all comes down to broken skin.

  But there’s another cut on my body now. An uninvited one. The pain is not the same as when I cut my arms. The pain is not mine. It taunts me with each movement and breath. It won’t even let me laugh without stabbing me. When Karyn comes to change the bandages, I can’t bear to look at it. I am jealous of the privileged blade that sliced through my layers of muscle and flesh, layers I didn’t even know I had. I am mad that someone found a way inside and then sealed the entrance behind him.

  Karyn finds reasons to pop her head in my doorway. “Your grandmother keeps calling. What do you want me to tell her?” she asks.

  “Tell her about Betty. Say I’ll call her soon.”

  “Would you like her to come by?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

  Every few hours, Staff comes into my room, grabs my tit, and forces it into the baby’s greedy mouth. Even though they are more patient than the nurses at the hospital, they still ignore my squeals of pain and order me to relax. I reluctantly give in, kicking myself for never having realized that a tiny creature chewing on your nipple might not just hurt a bit.

  “She doesn’t seem to be getting any milk,” Ms. Crawl says as she and Karyn move in on my dysfunctional boobs, tweaking and prodding. They try not to stare too long at my chest, and I’m unsure if this is because they’re being considerate or because they don’t want to see my scars.

  “I’m not good for her,” I mumble, staring up at the ceiling. “Just let her use a bottle.”

  “Don’t be so silly,” Karyn persists, “you’re her mother.”

  Underneath my skin, milk prickles and buzzes like freshly poured Coke. I stare down at my stomach, saggy and lifeless, and then turn my eyes to the baby’s sucking mouth, allowing her to consume me. I think to myself, if it weren’t for this milky evidence, I’d almost believe my body was dead.

  Sky comes into my room and sits on the edge of my bed, updating me on her life as if she were filling me in on a TV show. She doesn’t look at Betty lying in the cradle beside my bed. She doesn’t even comment on her. Instead, she rambles on, her words so fast I only catch the end of her sentences. I try hard to focus on what she’s saying, but it requires such an effort. It’s like that time at the group home when I didn’t get out of bed for so long. When things were muffled and voices seemed so far away.

  She says something about leaving the house, something about a psychiatrist, something about school. My eyes fixate on her thin fingers, twirling a strand of her newly dyed purple hair. Staff told her they can’t offer her the help she needs anymore and her refusal to receive any outside care is just unworkable. They said her needs have changed since she first came here, and because she’s seventeen, she’ll need to make room for younger residents. They are giving her a week to find a place to stay or she’ll be discharged regardless. If, on the other hand, she wants to go to Smithwood Health Residence, they’d be open to arranging a meeting.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “A place for wackos. They don’t tie you down or anything, but they have shrinks and shit.”

  “So, are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. Probably,” she says, laughing. “What else am I going to do?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I thought she’d be gone a long time ago, and to be honest, I couldn’t care less. Even though she’s my only friend in this shithole, she’s been getting really freaky and last week she started to pull out her hair. At first, it was just a few strands on her head, but now it’s everything, including her eyebrows and eyelashes. She’s tried to cover it up by drawing on a face, as if she’s intentionally trying to be some high-class model, but I tell her she just looks stupid. For one small moment, I consider telling her about me—about my thoughts, about my cutting—but I don’t. I wouldn’t want her to think that I was copying her.

  “They knew you’d say yes,” I say, watching her fingers search her brow for stubble.

  “I know,” she says.

  The day after I arrive back at Beverley, a Children’s Aid Society social worker comes to the house and meets me in the visitors’ room. Apparently the hospital called her. Ms. Crawl pushes me through the door, and without even looking at the woman standing by the chair, I stumble into the room. I head straight over to the couch, slowly lower my sore body down, and sprawl out on my back. Then I roll up my sleeve and extend my scarred arm, as if she were going to take blood. I keep staring at the ceiling because I don’t want to look at her face.

  “I’d rather talk to my own counsellor, Eric,” I announce. The woman tells me she’s not here to counsel me, but to have a better understanding of my needs. She says Children’s Aid is very concerned about me and my baby and that seeking medication and counselling would be in my best interest.

  “Humph,” I scoff. “Counselling.”

  “I need to tell you that if you’re unco-operative, then we could impose a condition that in order for you to keep your baby, you need to seek medical attention and counselling. It’s not a punishment, Snow. We’re trying to help. We are very concerned about depression. We want you to feel better.”

  “Just give me the pills,” I say. “I’ll take ‘em. But no counselling. It’s a waste of time.”

  She asks me questions about my cuts. When I do it. Where I do it. How I feel when I do it. And then she asks, “Do you know why you do it?”

  “Because I’m crazy?”

  “No, you’re not crazy. In fact, it’s not as uncommon as you might think. People do this for different reasons, when regular coping doesn’t work anymore. Most often, they cut lines in arms, legs, anywhere really. Sometimes it’s where people will see it, like a call for help. I guess it’s a way of communicating, though instead of using paper, they use skin.”

  I turn my eyes toward her for the first time and I stare her up and down. My body is none of her business. I own it and can do what I like. Just because I’m a teenager doesn’t mean I’m public property. I’d like to see her shed her clothes, stand naked in this room, and explain the scar across her breast, and the bruise on her thigh, the rose tattoo on her bikini line, and the reason why she bought such ugly earrings. “It’s not for you,” I finally say. “It’s for me. The words are meant for me to read.”

  “Yes, you did them.”

  “No,” I correct her. “I uncovered them. They were always there.” They have always been in my body, waiting to surface. The way a sculptor claims his hands only release the shape from stone.

  As the thick glasses slide down her sharp nose, she tells me she’s going to talk to Ms. Crawl about a counselling referral to an adolescent mental-health clinic.

  “They won’t understand it,” I say before I leave. She thinks because I carve letters, people can read me. But it is my own language of blood and skin.

  Aunt Sharon comes to visit me at Beverley five days after the birth. She saw me once in the hospital but I was too out of it to really care about visitors. She brings me flowers and body lotion and a few bags of diapers, even though I get them for free. She doesn’t comment on my greasy hair or my puffy eyes. Instead, she sits on the chair in between me and the baby’s crib, and asks if she can hold Betty. I motion that it’s okay, and she gently lifts Betty’s tiny body out and takes her into her fleshy arms. She smiles lovingly down at her and runs two fingers over Betty’s small head.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Aunt Sharon says, “so very beautiful.” She looks over to me and then back to the baby. “And s
o tiny. Hello, Betty.”

  “She pees all the time,” I say.

  Aunt Sharon laughs. “I bet she does. Don’t ya, sweetheart? Don’t ya, sweetheart. Don’t ya sweetheart,” she keeps repeating, tweaking the baby’s little chest until she starts squiggling.

  “Why didn’t you have kids?” I ask her.

  She stops rubbing the baby’s stomach, but doesn’t look up at me. Instead she gently places the baby back into the crib. “I don’t know. It wasn’t in my cards I suppose,” she says with a weak smile. “That doesn’t mean I never wanted one, though,” she adds.

  “I think you’d make a good mom.”

  “And so will you,” she says, heading toward the door.

  I watch her walking away but I don’t want her to leave. I want to tell her to stay, but I can’t. “Thanks for the flowers,” I blurt out, just as she’s about to exit.

  “You’re very welcome,” she answers and waves goodbye.

  When she’s gone, I slowly heave my sore body out of bed and pick up the baby, the way Aunt Sharon did. I lie back down, placing her on my chest, her warm skin against mine. Then I reach for the children’s book I wrote in class and read the story of Betty Corrigal aloud to my daughter.

  28

  New dreams haunt me at night. I am unsure if they are good dreams or nightmares, or something in between.

  Betty Corrigal’s body is rising through the peat. Her face is peaceful and loving and sorry. She’s not a skeleton. She’s a young woman with blonde hair and a blue dress and red lips. Sometimes, she has my mother’s face, what I imagine it to be. Her lifeless body surfaces up to the salty Scotland air as fishermen and farmers wearing black rubber boots pass along a distant road. In my dreams, I am standing over Betty’s grave. Her lips are moving, and I hear a whispery, windy voice, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. So I drop to my knees and lean my head down, into her cold, open grave, closer to her fluttering lips. Then suddenly her grey eyes open and she stares straight into the depths of me. Her pleading voice echoes clearly in the darkness. “Bury me, bury me . . .”

  I understand what to do. It’s so clear. I reach out my hand, hold it firm against her pale skin, pressing my fingers over her gasping mouth, and push her under the thick peat. I keep reaching out, transferring all my weight, and push her under.

  Three weeks after Betty is born, Eric invites me to his going-away party for work. One of the other counsellors is having it at her house and he says a few of his other young clients will be there. He tells me to bring Betty so he can meet her. Ms. Crawl and Karyn try to convince me to go because they say it will be good “closure” for me, and I finally give in just so I don’t have to hear their nagging voices anymore. So they pack up my baby bag, strap Betty into her car seat, and whisk me off to a big house in Oakville with a circular driveway.

  I stumble up to the front door, Betty’s car seat hooked onto one arm and Eric’s present in the other. Karyn had bought a mug for me to give to Eric, wrapping it up nice. We fought for about ten minutes about me having to bring it.

  I knock on the door but no one answers, so I push it open and enter the house. I have no idea what to expect. I have never been to a rich person’s party. In fact, I’ve never been to an adult party. When I enter through the front door I am surprised to see balloons and streamers and a big silver flashy banner hung across the living-room wall that says Goodbye. There are about thirty people standing around, wineglasses and beer bottles in their hands. No one notices me. I spot Eric circulating around the room, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down with laughter. When he sees me, he shouts my name and walks toward me, stopping along the way to pick up a huge basket full of things for the baby, like pacifiers and diapers and baby talc.

  “You look great,” he says to me, his hand squeezing my shoulder. He places the basket on the table. “I’m sure you’ll be needing some of this stuff.”

  “Thanks,” I say, but it’s unclear whether I’m thanking him for the gift or the compliment.

  “I think motherhood has made you even prettier,” he adds to my unconvinced smile. He bends to his knees to get a close look at Betty on the ground beside me. “And this one’s for Betty,” he says, pulling a pink stuffed bear out from around his back and holding it up close to her face. She opens her mouth to suck on its glossy black nose.

  “This is for you,” I say, passing him my present. I know I should sound more enthusiastic, but I can’t get my voice to jump out of its sleepy tone. He unwraps it, wildly tossing the paper on the floor.

  “Ah,” he exclaims. “That’s wonderful! I’ll drink my coffee from it every day. Thank you, my dear!” he says, bowing like he’s from Japan or something. I can smell the beer on his breath.

  I want to leave after that, because there’s nothing more to say to him, but he pulls me around the room, introducing me and Betty to a few fat frumpy ladies. They ooh and ahh at the baby and ask me questions about labour and how I’m sleeping at night. I mumble one-word responses until Eric finally dumps me on the couch in the far corner, obviously reserved for dysfunctional teenagers. Across from me is a dumpy-looking girl who eats a chunk of cheese and then stabs at her zits with the toothpick. Beside her is an equally ugly guy, face hidden under a baseball cap. When the girl looks like she’s about to talk to me, I dart my foot out to rock the car seat and she reclines back into the couch. It hasn’t taken me long to learn that Betty’s presence either stops conversations with people my age or starts ones with adults. The guy ignores me for a while until he insists I take a sip of his Coke, even though I tell him no three times. An understanding smile breaks my mouth as I finally hold the pink frosted glass up to my mouth. The powerful stench of rum burns the inside of my nose and I lower my eager lips into the stinging liquid. I finish the entire glass, smack my lips, and pass it back to him.

  Finally, a fat woman in a yellow skirt starts clanging her spoon against her glass to gather people together for a few toasts. Eric is called up through the crowd and stands to the side, beaming as if he were a child about to be given a ribbon. The fat woman starts by saying how she’s known Eric for ten years and how he’s been as much a part of her life as coffee and parking tickets. Everyone laughs at this, and then the next person pipes up how the first time she met Eric, he had tripped down the office stairs and landed at her feet. After hearing a few of the same comments, I feel the need to get out of that room. I pick up Betty’s car seat and head to the kitchen.

  The kitchen is huge and white and has a silver fridge with an ice-cube maker on the door. At first I just pour a glass of orange juice for myself, but then I notice all the liquor bottles over by the stove, and making sure that no one is around, I grab the half-empty vodka. Without thinking too much about it, I slip the bottle under my sweatshirt, pick up the baby, and head out the side door. Pain sears through my side as I squat down, my back pressed against the brick wall, my feet stretched out in front of me. I lift the bottle to my lips and take large, hungry gulps. At first, the harsh liquid makes me gag, but then a warm burn travels down my throat and through my veins. My body becomes numb and nothing matters anymore. I finish the whole thing, stashing the empty bottle in Betty’s car seat, under the blanket.

  After a while I pick up Betty and hold her close to me as I stumble along the side path toward the backyard, the interlocked brick below my feet like a dizzy, moving puzzle. When I turn the corner, I spot the pool, the water shimmering silver under the moonlight, just like in a movie. It’s one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. I open the black iron gate and carefully lay Betty down on the ground, up close to the fence. Then I trip up to the side of the pool and plop down on the edge. I take off my shoes and immerse my legs, the water like cool pudding on my swollen feet.

  I sit there for a long time, relieved to be away from the music and bright lights. Fingertips skim the rough concrete around me, sweeping stones into my hand. I start tossing the pebbles into the water, contentedly watching them disappear into the calming darkness. Th
en I throw in a leaf but it refuses to sink, taunting me with its hesitation. Angry, I get up, twist off a long branch from a bush, and return to my position. Leaning out over the water, I fiercely stab the leaf until its pierced body drops just slightly under the surface, away from the thoughts that scream in my head.

  Then I hear you crying, your piercing wail rising above the clanging of glasses and the laughter. And I know that you’re crying to be fed, or because you need your diaper changed, or just because. I know you’re crying for me, and I hold my hands up to my ears to block you out because I know those pleas will turn to resentment one day. I know you’ll wish you were never born to me. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I yell, pressing my hands over my ears, squeezing out your cries. And I just want it to stop. I just want silence.

  I fiercely poke my stick into the half-submerged leaf, shaking and ripping, until it’s completely shredded and the fragments begin to sink. The words in my head repeating over and over again: If I rise, bury me. If I rise up in you, bury me.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to my agent, Jackie Kaiser, my editor, Barbara Berson, and everyone at Penguin Books for their support and belief in me. Thanks to friends and readers of the manuscript: Julie Zwillich, Kristina Steponaitis, Mary Bell, Johna Janelle and Marcia Beck. Thanks to Melanie Nicholl for sharing those wellearned Friday lunches.

  I’m appreciative of the many creative writing instructors for their astute feedback and encouragement. Thanks especially to Barbara Greenwood for planting the seed, Antanas Sileika for reminding me that it’s still there, and to Ann Decter for finally helping it grow.